SoylentNews

Los Angeles Gang Tour Puts A Twist On Drive-Bys

2010 article I found for crutchy on IRC.

NVIDIA Announces “NVIDIA Titan X” Video Card: $1200, Available August 2nd

Move Over GTX 1080, There’s A New Titan X In Town

Meaningless for anybody who doesn't want the general compute features. It's $200 more expensive than its predecessor, probably to avoid cannibalizing sales of more expensive Pascal GPUs intended for businesses.

The billion-dollar RNC question: What is Peter Thiel doing there?

Fun for everyone.

Not a big enough deal to get an article. Prices start at $460-$535, significantly more than 8 TB drives which can be bought for $200 on sale.

Seagate Announces 10TB Consumer HDD Lineup With Five Year Warranty

Seagate's New 'Guardian Series' Portfolio Brings 10TB Helium HDDs to Consumers

Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB Helium HDD Capsule Review

Melania Trump speech appears to plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention address

Watch Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention Speech

It should come as no surprise that Runaway might have multiple identities. Among other things, I have a "whistleblower" identity. That personna has been around for awhile, contained within a Virtual Machine. He is rarely turned on, he has very few contacts, doesn't browse randomly around the web. only connects via VPN, uses a very secure browser. Very secure.

Tonight, he did a search online - and was greeted with a popup, suggesting that he check his settings.

Oh-oh. I've obviuosly done something WRONG!!

My secretive self isn't going to share any real details about his mistake(s). Suffice to say that I overlooked something that Edward Snowden addressed in one of his interviews.

If you need to be, or even if you only want to be, secure online, you need to revisit ALL of your security settings now and then. Keep in mind that companies might be bought and sold, that TOS may change, and privacy policies might change. Changing privacy policies contributed to my own little screw up.

I'm not really worried about anyone tying together certain online identities, but I know that I did slip up. Each and every slip up makes it easier for the opposition.

At any rate, it's time to retire that personna. It's probably not a good idea to maintain the same secret personna for more than a few months anyway. Or, even a few weeks, if you're playing high stakes games like Snowden.

Some people object to many of the submissions, which might be labeled "current events". Some of those objections are pretty verbose. Some people don't want to read "the news" when the click on Soylentnews, they want to read "Technology News". Which is fine - that's why I come here. I learn all kinds of things about technology. In fact, some of the tech is over my head, and I fail to learn from it because I lack the proper education.

But, "the news".

First objection to THEIR objections is, "Why do you click on the story if you don't want to read it?" Again and again, we've heard that our computers have an "off" button. If the intartubes get to be to much, you just shut the damned computer off. There are dozens of sites online that spew unfiltered hatred, such as stormfront. You don't click on their links? Well, then, why click on a story here that you don't really want to read? It's pointless to click the link, just to post a "Is this news?" post. I may start moderating those posts as flamebait, or troll. Come on children - grow up.

Second objection. Current events. Real shit, in the real world, that may directly affect any one of us. Stuff is happening, for real. I mean, really, for really real. Lives end, bodies are mangled, buildings fall, city blocks are burnt up, children are scarred for life, mothers bury their babies. Real life happens, and it impinges upon each and every one of us.

Some of our members are travelers. We have members who live in various states and cities that are directly affected by many of these current events. That is, we have members who might be directly impacted by current events. So, you or I feel "safe" from these events - we should feel no concern, anxiety, compassion, or empathy for those members who are living through those events?

Third objection. Elitism. I really don't like elitests. I don't like them in politics, don't like them in the community, and I don't much like them on the interwebs either. What is it that makes one person better than anyone else? At what intellectual level, or financial level, do you become "better" than everyone else? These current events obviously generate a good deal of discussion. Obviously, a lot of members feel the need to sound off, and/or get some intelligent input from other members. (You're not going to find much intelligent discussion on Facebook, FFS)

Elitests, go back to objection 1. If you're to good, or to highly stationed in life to be concerned with current events, just don't click the link. I don't care how elite you are, you really don't have the right to limit when, where, or how the rest of us discuss these current events.

Objection four? That would be the "intelligent discussion". THAT is the PRIMARY reason I come here. People post stuff in response to current events that make me think. Hell, I've got my opinions. I really don't need help forming opinions. But, people actually post things here that make me re-examine my opinions. A lot of people actually post links that support the facts and opinions they post. Soylent is a learning experience, because it consists of mostly intelligent people.

Let the discussions take place. I learn, and maybe I teach. Exchanging information is never a "bad thing".

Stop trying to be censors, alright?

If/when people stop responding to a certain kind of post, then the posters, such as myself, will begin to self-censor. If our submissions generate a lot of discussion, then there is obviously a need for those submissions. Some of us just need to blow off steam. Some of us actually have something to offer. Let it happen, alright?

And, one more time - if you don't think it's "news", just don't click the link. Blow it off. I do that with some stories.

Pakistani QT killed by brother for what would be usual vanity stuff for Westerners on social media:

Qandeel Baloch: Pakistani social media star strangled by her brother

Qandeel Baloch, one of Pakistan's most famous and controversial social media stars, has been strangled to death in what police are calling a case of so called "honor" killing in the city of Multan in the country's province of Punjab. Azhar Akram, Multan's chief police officer, told CNN that Baloch was killed by her brother in her family's home after he had protested at the "kind of pictures she had been posting online."

[...] She had nearly 750,000 followers on Facebook, where her videos went viral but were also the subject of much debate and discomfort. In recent weeks, several of her posts encouraged her audience to challenge old practices of Pakistani society. In a July 14 post, Baloch referred to herself as a "modern day feminist."
Hamna Zubair, the culture editor of Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told CNN that she had received much criticism for carrying pieces on Baloch. One commentator asked her if she would be "reporting from a brothel" next.
Baloch tightly controlled her narrative in the media. She shared little about her personal life and was something of an enigma; nobody really knew which city she was based in.

She found fame and slipped into the national consciousness after declaring that she would perform a live strip tease online if Pakistan won a cricket match against arch rival India.
As her media profile grew, Zubair said Baloch became aware "of her power to deliver a certain message about being female in Pakistan," and that she had become a "burgeoning activist for increasing women's visibility" in the country. She made more headlines after posting selfies on her Instagram account with Mufti Abdul Qavi, a senior member of the clergy. The bizarre pairing led to frenzied media coverage and resulted in Qavis's suspension from his post on one of Pakistan's religious committees. After news of Baloch's death, while waiting to go on air on a local channel, Qavi told CNN that "her death should be a lesson for all those who point fingers at someone's honor."

[...] A couple of days ago, local media reported that Qandeel Baloch had married at 17 and left her husband about a year later. After the reports were published, she confirmed that her legal name was Fouzia Azeem and that she had been using an alias for safety reasons. Earlier this week Baloch had stirred up more controversy by releasing a kitschy music video on YouTube called "Ban," which mocked some of the restrictions that she had been subjected to. Behind the scenes, however, things were a bit different. Hassan Chaoudhry, a reporter for local paper Express Tribune, told CNN he had spoken to Baloch on the phone just two days ago, saying she was sobbing and "feared for her life." On the morning she was murdered, Qandeel had shared a picture of herself staring defiantly into the camera, wearing a pair of leopard print pants and a black tank top. She had written that she was a fighter. "I will bounce back," she said, adding she wanted to inspire women who have been "treated badly and dominated by society."

This is a story that can only be found on NextBigFuture and wire services:

Super controversial Brilliant light Power aka blacklight power claims to be generating bursts of megawatt power and claim independent validation

Wikipedia article.

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
To Our Beloved Users,

The Russian Government has passed a new law that mandates that every provider must log all Russian internet traffic for up to a year. We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process. We think it’s because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider.

Luckily, since we do not log any traffic or session data, period, no data has been compromised. Our users are, and will always be, private and secure.

Upon learning of the above, we immediately discontinued our Russian gateways and will no longer be doing business in the region.

To make it clear, the privacy and security of our users is our number one priority. For preventative reasons, we are rotating all of our certificates. Furthermore, we’re updating our client applications with improved security measures to mitigate circumstances like this in the future, on top of what is already in place. In addition, our manual configurations now support the strongest new encryption algorithms including AES-256, SHA-256, and RSA-4096.

All Private Internet Access users must update their desktop clients at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/ and our Android App at Google Play. Manual openvpn configurations users must also download the new config files from the client download page.

We have decided not to do business within the Russian territory. We’re going to be further evaluating other countries and their policies.

In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure.

If you have any questions, please contact us at helpdesk@privateinternetaccess.com.

Thank you for your continued support and helping us fight the good fight.

Sincerely,
Private Internet Access Team