1) iPad devilry. Good and interesting take on the backwards step.

2) CmdrTaco’s iPad review. Review from someone who has actually used one.

I used to have a person or two that I’d talk to on AIM with, where we’d do something I can only describe as Link Tennis. I link them to something I’m looking at that’s interesting, they do the same, ad aitourdaium. People, however, have a habit of being too inconsiderate to be online when I feel like I need to share a link with someone. Then came IRC. I idle/chat in a handful of IRC Channels mostly constantly. The fix to my problem was to just paste my link in the various channels that someone might be interested. However, I don’t keep logs of IRC activity, so if I want to get at a link that I distributed later I wouldn’t be able to find it and it’d be lost on me forever.

Enter, the Linkstream.

So, I’ve battled with the various ways that I could share and update links as I came across them. My first plan was to just update a page on my webserver and display it dynamically. For this, I wrote a shitty Ruby script that would do this all magically for me. The problem here, though, was that I would have to have Ruby installed and the script around on any internet-capable device that I wanted to update links from. So, that option was out. My next plan was to write a web-app that would allow me to insert messages, it would display them in reverse-order, and syndicate it on my website. I opened up my trusty-coding notepad when it occurred to me that someone already does this. Twitter.

Twitter? I use twitter, but I didn’t want to pollute my feed with my links, and I didn’t want to pollute my linkstream with the random infrequent messages I put on Twitter.  To solve this, I created another twitter account for this purpose.  There were problems with twitter, namely that they use bit.ly for their links, regardless of whether it breaks the 140 character limit or not. They have some criteria for their link-shortener, but I didn’t know it and I didn’t want to destroy the internet with the wide-spread use of URL shortening services.  So, I needed to find an alternative.

There is a surprising few alternatives to twitter that exist.  I suppose it’s silly to attempt to make a ‘new twitter’ when they clearly have a foothold on the industry of being twitter.  I had only three criteria:

1. It is currently in operation.
2. It has an RSS Feed
3. It doesn’t shorten my god-damn URLs.

I was very happy to find Jaiku, which fits all three of these criteria.  So, for your link-browsing pleasure.  It’s probably going to slow down the website some, ’cause it will aggregate the RSS feeds before the rest of the content of the page, but that doesn’t particularly concern me.  If it concerns you, go somewhere else.

Now, I know that the intended purpose of this shirt is to reference “sin”, but I think the TCP/IP definition is far better.

If I knew anyone Jewish, I’d almost certainly buy this for them.

source: http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/i-put-the-syn-in-synagogue/

That is all.

I got this weird threatening email today. Spam has now changed to become exortion.

Hello

I am very sorry for you is a pity that this is how your life is going
to end as soon as you don’t comply. As you can see there is no need of
introducing myself to you because I don’t have any business with you,
my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it
as I have already been paid for that.

Someone you call a friend wants you Dead by all means, and the person
have spent a lot of money on this, the person also came to us and told
me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name ,picture
and other necessary information’s we needed about you. So I sent my boys
to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation
needed for the operation on you, and they have done that but I told
them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see if your life
is Important to you or not since their findings shows that you are
innocent.

I called my client back and ask him of your email address which I
didn’t tell him what I wanted to do with it and he gave it to me and I am
using it to contact you now. As I am writing to you now my men are
monitoring you and they are telling me everything about you.

Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? As someone has paid us to kill you. Get
back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your life,
$15,000 is all you need to spend You will first of all pay $8,000 then I
will send a tape to you which i recoeded every discusion i hade with
the person who wanted you dead and as soon as you get the tape, you will
pay the remaining $7,000. If you are not ready for my help, then I
will carry on with my job straight-up.
WARNING: DO NOT THINK OF CONTACTING THE POLICE OR EVEN TELLING ANYONE
BECAUSE I WILL KNOW.REMEMBER, SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU VERY WELL WANT YOU
DEAD! I WILL EXTEND IT TO YOUR FAMILY, INCASE I NOTICE SOMETHING FUNNY.
DO NOT COME OUT ONCE IT IS 7:PM UNTIL I MAKE OUT TIME TO SEE YOU AND
GIVE YOU THE TAPE OF MY DISCUSSION WITH THE PERSON WHO WANT YOU DEAD THEN
YOU CAN USE IT TO TAKE ANY LEGAL ACTION. GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT YOUR
REPLY VIA Email:killershortgun@gmail.com

Of course, since I’m a bastard and don’t mind confirming that an email address works, I replied simply with “I am willing to pay” I got the following in reply.

Hello,

Respect to your mail,Since you are eready to comply with our rules and
regulation governing this aquada network.You are required to carry out with
the payment as soon as you receive this mail.

Here are the information below through Western Union Money Transfer:

Receiver Name:Joyce Alaxandra

Address:56 BishopsGate,London.Ecw 4rt,United Kingdom

Amount:$8,000

Upon receipt of this mail,you are advice to location any western union
transfer agent around you and make the payment in two installment which is
$4,000 each making it $8,000.Once the payment is made you are to forward the
slip giving you you via email which contains Sender Name Address and MTCN to
enable pickup by our network.

Warning:Our men are still waiting you at the moment,so do not try anything
funny or you will be killed immediately.So you are to get back to us as soon
as the payment is made today.

From The Aquada Network.

Hrmm, I simply replied “The money is sent, reply when you get confirmation.” We’ll see where this goes.

They replied.

Hello,

We are expecting to receive the confirmation from you as soon as
possible.You are to scanned the payment slip and sent it via email for
confirmation.

Also,I want you to know that,you sont have to gamble with this network to
avoid any drastic action from this network if will find at that you are
playing games with us.

I await you reply.

From The Aquada Network.

They want a scanned payment slip? They got one. One 8.5″x11″ PDF containing 45 tiled Goatse Images.

There hasn’t been any replies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CULT OF THE DEAD COW CATCHES THE COMMIES PUBLISHING PORNOGRAPHY ON THEIR WEBSERVERS

NOT SAFE FOR WORK: Chinese Government Web Servers Loaded With Kiddie Porn Graphics, Sex Toys, And Good Old-Fashioned Pron. Western Government Web Servers, No Pron But Plenty Of Holes.

Lubbock, TX – March 4th, 2008 – CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), the world’s most attractive hacker group, announced today that it has discovered terabytes of pornographic content on Chinese government Web servers. The sexually explicit images were exposed with Goolag Scanner, a Web auditing tool that uses Google search to reveal Web site vulnerabilities. Goolag Scanner was released on February 20th by the cDc and has one hundred thousand downloads to date.

“This suggests two things,” said cDc spokes-model Oxblood Ruffin. “One, Adult content is out of control with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) middle-management types; and, two, Web site security on government and military Web servers in China is stronger than in the West. Because apart from loads of dubious wanking material, we didn’t find the same kind of vulnerabilities that we discovered in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and France just for starters. In fact, we were so concerned about some of the holes we found in the U.S. that we had our attorney forward some of this data to the Department of Homeland Security.”

HOW GOOLAG SCANNER WORKS
Goolag Scanner is an automated “Google hacking” application. Google hacking is a form of Web site auditing that takes advantage of “dorks,” or extended search queries, that look for very specific kinds of data (credit card information, mp3 files, passwords, IP
configuration data, etc.). There are approximately 1500 dorks in circulation. Goolag Scanner searches whatever it is asked to search: a specific Web site, or a vast network. It will do whatever it is asked to do. And then it will return the results.

WHY CULT OF THE DEAD COW WILL NOT PUBLISH WESTERN SECURITY HOLES
We ain’t stupid. We have shared our findings with some security experts, selected journalists and NGOs, and they’ve been corroborated. But that’s it. We have zero interest or motivation in providing a roadmap for bored teenagers, criminals, or any government
agencies.

WHY CULT OF THE DEAD COW WILL PUBLISH CHINESE GOVERNMENT DATA
We couldn’t care less about these assholes. Any country that props up dictators and practices genocide doesn’t catch a break from us. China should be grateful that we just found this bone-polishing material.

MAN WHO TYPES WITH ONE HAND, CAN THUMB MANUAL WITH OTHER
And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for … the naughty bits. Following are five links selected at random from the ocean of crap we found on Chinese government Web servers. We’re sure that Hu Jintao would like to thank Sergei and Larry for making all of this possible.

http://book.comic.gov.cn/book/disc/l/Loli的时间/23/004.jpg

http://sextoys.win.mofcom.gov.cn/www/18%5Csextoys%5Cimg%5C200751016377.jpg

http://www.jcdj.gov.cn/dat/2006/8/28/pics/E/LHUNXHENFXZM.jpg

http://citizen.hld.gov.cn/UploadFiles_5376/200706/200761285049124.jpg

http://www.srjt.gov.cn/image/bt/DVD1KP-012A.jpg

DOWNLOAD GOOLAG SCANNER

http://goolag.org/download.html

DIGG IT

SECURITY ADVISORY: The following program may screw a large Internet search
engine and make the Web a safer place.

LUBBOCK, TX, February 20th — Today CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), the world’s
most attractive hacker group, announced the release of Goolag Scanner, a web
auditing tool. Goolag Scanner enables everyone to audit his or her own web
site via Google. The scanner technology is based on “Google hacking,” a form
of vulnerability research developed by Johnny I Hack Stuff. He’s a lovely
fellow. Go buy him a drink.

“It’s no big secret that the Web is the platform,” said cDc spokesmodel
Oxblood Ruffin. “And this platform pretty much sucks from a security
perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for web site owners to
patch up their online properties. We’ve seen some pretty scary holes through
random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site,
I’d be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The v
ulnerabilities are that serious.”

Goolag Scanner will be released open source under the GNU Affero General
Public license. It is dedicated to the memory of Wau Holland, founder of the
Chaos Computer Club, and a true champion of privacy rights and social justice.

GOOLAG SCANNER FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES

Goolag Scanner is a standalone windows GUI based application. It uses one
xml-based configuration file for its settings. All dorks coming with the
distribution of gS are kept inside one file.

Download GoolagScan
Digg it
Cult of the Dead Cow Main Site

The rules can be found here on his personal tech blog.

Stand by for standard procedure.

For instance, 50% of traffic will be pushed to a different page. That page will redirect you (if Javascript is enabled) to wherever you came from after 15 seconds.

w00.

Security Tip:  Check cookies often.