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IBM has over a few years built up a remote work program for its 380 000 employees. Now they are "quietly dismantling" this option, and has told its employees this week that they either need to work in the office or resign (alternative source). From the report: IBM is giving thousands of its remote workers in the U.S. a choice this week: Abandon your home workspaces and relocate to a regional office -- or leave the company. The 105-year-old technology giant is quietly dismantling its popular decades-old remote work program to bring employees back into offices, a move it says will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work. The changes comes as IBM copes with 20 consecutive quarters of falling revenue and rising shareholder ire over Chief Executive Ginni Rometty's pay package. The company won't say how many of its 380 000 employees are affected by the policy change, which so far has been rolled out to its Watson division, software development, digital marketing, and design -- divisions that employ tens of thousands of workers. The shift is particularly surprising since the Armonk, N.Y., company has been among the business world's staunchest boosters of remote work, both for itself and its customers. IBM markets software and services for what it calls "the anytime, anywhere workforce," and its researchers have published numerous studies on the merits of remote work.

This is despite that teams may not even be in the same town so it's effectively a telecommute at work anyway. And sometimes there's isn't even a desk assigned to the employee anyway. Instead employees get a locker room type closet with a trolley suitcase like thingy to stash all their junk that people used to leave on their desks. IBM employees are not allowed to leave any items on the desk, since it is not their desk. Every morning it's the "musical chairs" and everyone will try to grab a desk in a good location. What's a good location might however be different for a programmer needing concentration in silence . . . . and a salesperson next to you doing "Lines Of Calls" (LOC) instead of "Lines Of Code".. LOC like you . . . . well, that just ruined the day for you.

Managers at IBM know that this is a stupid idea, but the goal was to save money, which trumps everything. So they tried to sweeten the deal a bit by letting people work at home. Basically, they have outsourced their office space building services to their employees. But if you can't at least put a picture of your wife and kids on your desk there won't be any attachment to the "place of work". Neither will there be any attachment to the company either so turnover rates goes high.

Adding to the dismal situation is that these IBM e-places are as pleasant to visit as a trip to concentration camp with very loud, greying chipped concrete colored paint, rickety desks and chairs that make IKEA furniture look like luxury items.

Maybe IBM just have become a simple maintainer of large amounts of software they primarily had already or purchased from others and then branding it IBM. SPSS was bought but hasn't changed since they purchased it yet they still want thousands of dollars in licensing every year. At least their net promoter score (NPS) has gone to 27 compared to say Tesla at 97. Out of a range -100 to +100.

Some companies have started using the strategy to move office often and far enough to get rid of employees as the housing market punish them. Without having to pay out for firing them.

Already a year ago IBM have begun the usual India replacement, but the people getting that treatment didn't have any work at home policy. The key thing to understand about this company is that it's like a small city. They have more than 300 000 employees world wide. And just like cities there are good and bad parts of town. Working at Watson, that's upscale. Working for IBM Global Services as a NOC engineer, sysadmin or Java developer is the slum. Workers at IBM "true blue" probably let you have an easier time to opt for work at home in the past than a red-headed stepchild working at IBM Global Services. The clients in IBM Global Services are the table pounding types and mostly in financial industries. They'd just have to complain to the sales representative that they heard a dog in the background of a conference call and the work at home ends for everyone. Incidents like that has been observed to occur at IBM. But you can also bet your ass that the Ph.D researchers at Watson who have any work at home privileges are keeping them. The company was always scared shitless to upset that apple cart. People doing security scans at IBM, always had to give those guys a pass, no matter what. Bottom line is that it's where you are inside IBM that will ultimately matter.

TD;LR: IBM treats everybody who isn't a Ph.D like shit and won't let them work from home. The hauling back of employees to offices is just an excuse to get rid of employees. and yes their offices suck. As an investor, it might be advisable to reconsider being that in IBM as they seems to live on their name more than substance.

Fox's WTTG-TV interviewed a "former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor" about the murder of Democratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich. According to the story, the former detective-contributor said that Mr. Rich had exchanged e-mails with Wikileaks. The story was echoed by Breitbart News and the Washington Times. Rich's family and the interviewee cast doubt upon it. WTTG-TV posted "an important clarification" (archived copy) about the recantation. Breitbart News, Infowars and the Washington Times (not to be confused with the Seattle Times) had carried the story as originally presented. World Net Daily, under the headline "News media blackout over Seth Rich revelations," had observed that

The story that many conservative media considered a “bombshell” Tuesday didn’t even register as a blip on the screens of CNN, ABC and CBS.

Right Wing Watch made a similar observation:

In recent days a report from Washington D.C.’s Fox affiliate on the death of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich has dominated the conservative media world, including Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars, and the Drudge Report, while most other outlets are covering the ever-increasing number of White House scandals.

From an archived copy of the story:

A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report -- generated within 96 hours after DNC staffer Seth Rich's murder -- detailing the contents Rich's computer said he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.

        "My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks."
        - Rod Wheeler, former DC homicide investigator

"I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.

The revelation is consistent with the findings of Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor and whose private investigation firm was hired by a third party on behalf of Rich's family to probe the case.

—Fox News (archive link)

A report on Monday evening claimed to find links between slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. But Rich's family told BuzzFeed News, "[W]e see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails."

—BuzzFeed News

[...] Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted Wikileaks before his death.

Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews.com story.

—CNN Money

[...] Wheeler himself admitted he had "never seen the emails directly." Furthermore, his claims of "evidence" were based on the fact that an unnamed federal investigator had told him he saw the emails between Seth and WikiLeaks but that when he went to the police with concerns, he had been "shut down" and the investigation was being impeded by "a high-ranking official at the DNC."

—Haaretz

additional coverage:

• Media Matters for America
• Infowars
• Heavy
• Washington Times (earlier story)
• Breitbart News
• Breitbart News
• Breitbart News
• Washington Times
• The Guardian
• Mic
• Newsweek
• The Independent
• 1011 News
• The Week

previous story:
WikiLeaks Announces $20k Bounty For Murderer(s) of DNC Staffer

Too much going on in the world. Can't get anything done.

Shadow Brokers threaten to release even more NSA-sourced malware 2017-05-16

In June, Shadow Brokers will launching a monthly subscription model. With security exploits for:
  * Web browsers, router, handset exploits and tools
  * Select items from newer Ops Disks, including newer exploits for Windows 10
  * Compromised network data from more SWIFT providers and Central banks
  * Compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean nukes and missile programs

More details in June.

Looks like right now can be a good time to up those security measures.

And so my first attempts at programming a PIC seem to have failed. Upon further research, there seem to be two main ways of programming PICs, one of which involves using either a high voltage (at least +8Vdc, up to +13Vdc on older devices) on the PIC’s MCLR pin or a low voltage +5Vdc on the same pin. Not sure if the latter method is enabled by default on new PICs straight from the factory though. If it isn’t, that might be why my efforts aren’t working. I’m going to have to shop for some new parts to build a PIC programmer that can do high voltage programming, just to be sure. This looks like another promising circuit and method to try. If it works on the breadboard I’ll solder it onto one of my prototyping boards along with a ZIF socket and start using it to do my PIC work.

I graduated college with a degree in electronics and computer engineering eighteen years ago, and haven’t seriously done hardware almost since then. After I wound up looking for hardware random number generators in an attempt to respond to a post here, I decided to try building one myself, based on the design here. I ordered a few Picaxe chips just for the purpose, though I wound up using a circuit design based on this instead but used a 74LS14 Schmitt trigger inverter instead of the 74ALS04 described there. As suggested on the link I used a MAX232 RS-232 Line Driver to generate the 16 V the transistors use to generate avalanche noise. Unfortunately, the Picaxe-08M2 could only send the random data back at 2400 baud, and so I wired the same circuit up to a cheap Arduino Nano clone and managed to at least get 115200 baud. Going to higher baud rates doesn’t seem to improve data transfer speed.

The random data it generates seems to be very good though, and passes the ENT and FIPS 140-2 tests. The Dieharder tests almost all pass, with only two or three getting a Weak rating, but from what I can see even that is already very good. Just seems to mean that I might not have completely eliminated the bias from the circuit using the von Neumann algorithm alone. The hardest part about this project seems to be getting the random data out of the circuit and into my computer at a reasonably high speed. And that leads me to USB, which looks to be rather complicated. ordered a few PIC16F1455 microcontrollers which should be able to do full speed USB at 12 Mbps, which is good enough for my purposes, although it looks like getting that to work is going to be complicated to say the least.

My PICs just came in today. Later, I’m going to start with getting them programmed with some basic stuff and try to get familiar with the toolchain (SDCC), start with the “hello world” of getting the microcontroller to flash a LED, using my Arduino as a programmer, and then try to figure out how to do the rest later on. Once I have a working design I’ll upload it somewhere, both the hardware designs and the software.

I'm not doing this up as a proper story right at the moment because I'm not feeling especially professional and I prefer to be when talking about site business as a staff member. That said, this needs some attention.

A combination of personal issues and burnout have caused staffing on the site to drop annoyingly low. Here's the current shortfalls in staffing:

• Half a dozen or so Editors. We could use ten. Preferably folks not on a GMT or east coast time daylight hours schedule.
• Two perl coders. NCommander is still around doing systems and infrastructure but it's just me and paulej72 writing perl for the site currently. We realistically need four to six.
• Two board members. We need a bare minimum of three to prevent tie votes.
• Zero treasurers. The two board members have been covering this but we need someone who's good with finances and can keep track of everything officially.
• Zero artsy types. All UI design choices and graphics are currently done by us code monkeys, this is far from ideal.
• Zero wiki admins. We usually have to figure out who even has emergency backup access to it when something needs administratively done.

Again, this is not an official call to arms. This is me being annoyed at the state of things and venting. Board and treasurer decisions will be made by the board and it's not even my place to ask for recruits, so I'm not. That said, if you want to volunteer for any staff position, we're always open.

Best way to get in touch is to contact us on IRC (look over to the left) but don't expect an immediate response because we're often busy doing Life Stuff. Email works as well. themightybuzzard@soylentnews.org or any other staff member will get you forwarded to someone happy to help you on your way to exploitation.

This attack seems to be both serious and urgent and it has now reached the local news outlet but not made the headline at soylent, a technology focus site. So I present what has been submitted so far to get the news out.

Anyone foolish enough to run Microsoft's Windows operating system should now disconnect or patch it immediately. And in any case make an additional backup. Preferably using another system to ensure an uninterrupted backup.

Beware that hospitals, bank and telecommunications may be unavailable due to this ransomware virus as they are still recklessly relying on Microsoft software products.

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cafebabe at 2017-05-12 21:07:08
NSA-created cyber tool spawns global attacks - and victims include Russia

cafebabe [soylentnews.org] writes:

From Politico [politico.com] via Edward Snowden [twitter.com] via Vinay Gupta [twitter.com]:

Leaked alleged NSA hacking tools appear to be behind a massive cyberattack disrupting hospitals and companies across Europe, Asia and the U.S., with Russia among the hardest-hit countries.

The unique malware causing the attacks - which has spread to tens of thousands of companies in 99 countries, according to the cyber firm Avast - have forced some hospitals to stop admitting new patients with serious medical conditions and driven other companies to shut down their networks, leaving valuable files unavailable.

The source of the world-wide digital assault seems to be a version of an apparent NSA-created hacking tool that was dumped online in April by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers. The tool, a type of ransomware, locks up a company’s networks and holds files and data hostage until a fee is paid. Researchers said the malware is exploiting a Microsoft software flaw.

Thoughts on a similar scenario were published by the Harvard Business Review two days before this incident [hbr.org].

More sources: here [dailymail.co.uk], here [dailymail.co.uk], here [dailymail.co.uk], here [dailymail.co.uk].

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c0lo at 2017-05-13 00:34:33
Almost 100 countries hit by ransomware attack (merge2 "Massive Ransomware Attack Hits NHS and ISPs")

c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

(while merging, maybe it worth sanitizing the comments in the prev story. Yeap, that one with "Woowaa! Woowaa! There's a cyber-attack!!! Change the lightbulb!!!!!" it's childish and there's no information into it)

Australian Brodcast Corporation reports [abc.net.au] - 2 hours ago

'Biggest ransomware outbreak in history' hits nearly 100 countries with data held for ransom

A global cyberattack has hit international shipper FedEx, disrupted Britain's health system and infected computers in nearly 100 countries.

The ransomware attack hit Britain's health service, forcing affected hospitals to close wards and emergency rooms with related attacks also reported in Spain, Portugal and Russia.
...
It [the atack] is believed to have exploited a vulnerability purportedly identified for use by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and later leaked to the internet.
...
Private security firms identified the ransomware as a new variant of "WannaCry"[pt] that had the ability to automatically spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft's Windows operating system.
...
Leading international shipper FedEx Corp said it was one of the companies whose system was infected with the malware that security firms said was delivered via spam emails.

"Like many other companies, FedEx is experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware," the company said in a statement.

Only a small number of US-headquartered organisations were infected because the hackers appear to have begun the campaign by targeting organisations in Europe, a research manager with security software maker Symantec said.

By the time they turned their attention to US organisations, spam filters had identified the new threat and flagged the ransomware-laden emails as malicious, Vikram Thakur said.

Massive, Fast-moving Cyberattack Hits 74 Countries [wltx.com] - 5 hours ago
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cafebabe at 2017-05-12 16:39:04
Massive Ransomware Attack Hits NHS and ISPs

cafebabe [soylentnews.org] writes:

From InfoSecurity [infosecurity-magazine.com], FastCompany [fastcompany.com] and elsewhere:

A major ransomware attack has been reported, with targets including banks and NHS Trusts all being hit.

According to Russia Today [rt.com], a number of NHS employees have been reported as being hit by the ransomware, while one user posted on Twitter [twitter.com] a screenshot of the ransomware which asks for "$300 worth of Bitcoin".

Woowaa! Woowaa! There's a cyber-attack!!! Change the lightbulb!!!!! [youtube.com]

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cafebabe at 2017-05-12 18:53:36
Massive Ransomware Attack Hits NHS and ISPs (Addendum)

cafebabe [soylentnews.org] writes:

Further sources: BBC [bbc.com] (and here [bbc.com]), Russia Today [rt.com], DailyFail [dailymail.co.uk], Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk], Guardian [theguardian.com].

Telefónica reportedly affected [twitter.com]. NHS failed to patch computers [twitter.com] which affected US hospitals in 2016. 16 divisions of the UK's NHS taken offline [twitter.com] with aid of NSA Fuzzbunch exploit [twitter.com]. The fun of a public blockchain is that ransom payments of £415,000 have been confirmed [rt.com]. Cancellation of heart surgery confirmed [bbc.com]. Doctors unable to check allergies or prescribe medication. Patient access to emergency treatment denied [twitter.com] in part due to hospital telephone exchange being offline [archive.org].

It also appears that one of the affected parties refused to answer a Freedom of Information request in Nov 2016 about cyber-security due to impact on crime detection [whatdotheyknow.com]. Similar parties provided responses to the same request [whatdotheyknow.com].

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cafebabe at 2017-05-13 03:59:23
NSA-created cyber tool spawns global attacks - and victims include Russia (Addendum)

cafebabe [soylentnews.org] writes:

One or more anti-virus companies may have been hacked prior to WannaCrypt infecting 75000 Microsoft Windows computers in 99 countries. First, anti-virus software like Avast fails to make HTTP connections [soylentnews.org]. Second, five million of ransomware emails are rapidly sent. Although many centralized email servers were able to stem the onslaught, many instances of anti-virus software had outdated virus definitions and were defenseless against the attack. Indeed, successful attacks were above 1%. Of these, more than 1% have already paid the ransom. Although various governments have rules (or laws) against paying ransom, it is possible that ransoms have been paid to regain access to some systems.

Also, file scrambling ransomware has similarities to REAMDE by Neal Stephenson [soylentnews.org]. Although the book is extremely badly written, its scenarios (offline and online) seem to come true with forceful regularity.

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Defenders or enablers? [foxnews.com]

I was reading this article and thought it might be a good submission as a follow up to the post about Comey's firing.

I held back, as I thought it might already be referenced in the comments. As such, I went back and, as I was reading through the comments, came across this gem from VLM:

Could someone explain the Russia conspiracy theory?

It seems to be anointed queen in waiting lost because she sucked and the electorate hates her although the elites love her, therefore someone is to blame, and it can't be her and it can't be the D party leadership, so obviously it was gremlins or space aliens or ... I know, Russians!

Is there anything to it beyond "argh matey here be tinfoil internet pirate hats"

This got me thinking about the various ways in which we (Americans) have allowed ourselves to be divided, and discussion has devolved into demonization and wacky conspiracy theories.

I posted the following as a response (with minor changes) to VLM:

Regardless of whether the outcome would have been the same, the Russians continue to use active measures (as they have for decades) to influence public opinion in countries of interest for them. This includes the US, UK, France, much of the former Soviet bloc and FSM (okay, FSB) knows where else.

The rise of social media and the ridiculous conspiracy theories^* of the right in the US have primed the public to accept fake news (that is, lies intended to pollute public discourse) as long as it comports with their existing biases. That, and demonizing political opponents has weakened our political system and allowed folks like the Russians to muddy the waters and make it more difficult for us to work together to address the issues we all face.

It's appropriate that we all stand together to identify and understand how our public discourse and political system are being affected by those who wish to weaken, destabilize and/or harm the US.

^*Partial list of right-wing conspiracy theories. Feel free to add any left-wing ones you think appropriate.
Pizzagate
Birtherism
Jade Helm
Common Core will turn your kids gay
Agenda 21
Sharia Law coming to your town
Plans for firearms confiscation
FEMA Concentration Camps
Clinton death squads

I posit that by promoting bald-faced lies as truth and attempting to discredit those with whom we disagree, we open ourselves up to just the sort of stuff that Russia has been trying (and with the expansion of news bubbles, aided by social media, being more successful) to do for decades.

I chose not to submit the Reuters article, as it seemed to be more of a piece with the Comey firing article. What's more, even though many sources were cited, the core source(s) were anonymous. I'm sure that if there's truth to the allegations, we'll hear more about it soon.

All the same, it seems appropriate for the US to examine the role of external actors on its political and information ecosystems.

Just because the folks attempting to sway public opinion with lies are doing so at the expense of your political enemies, they are not your friends, and should not be defended or given a pass on their interference in our system.

Such actors are a threat to our national interests and should be treated as such by all of us.

I guess the question becomes, are you an American first, or a [Republican|Democrat|Libertarian|Alt-Right|Communist|Socialist|Whatever] first?

I'm an American. And my fellow Americans (regardless of political stripe) are valued members of my society. Let's work together to make our country successful for all of us. Doing so will benefit society as a whole, socially, economically and politically.