SoylentNews

exec now supports a reserved <startup> alias, which at the moment executes a script that triggers a sequence of aliases related to starting SedBot(2) in #Soylent and ##.

the <startup> trigger fires when the bot attempts to identify with nickserv, and like other reserved aliases can't be triggered from irc.

my intention is to make scripts to enable easy management of the current sedbot.awk script, unless FoobarBazbot returns beforehand in which case he'll be able to take the reigns.

the advantage of the <startup> alias is that if exec is disconnected temporarily, sedbot will restart when a connection is re-established.

a test was performed by pulling the network cable out of the machine hosting exec and leaving it unplugged for a while. when the cord was eventually plugged back in, exec came back up and restarted sedbot without any intervention.

https://github.com/crutchy-/test/blob/master/irc.php
https://github.com/crutchy-/test/blob/master/irc_lib.php

bot admins now have a little more control over scripts that are executed

to see a listing of running scripts/processes:
~ps
this will generate a list in the format:
[$pid] $shellcmd

to kill a process listed by ~ps:
~kill $pid

if the bot is restarted (~restart) or quits (~q), all processes (including any children) will be killed

bot source code is here: https://github.com/crutchy-/test

This is fodder for testing https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode/issues/59.

Nested "blockquote" and "q" elements:

test1: zero

one two three

four five six

seven eight

nine.

Nested "blockquote" and "em" elements:

test2: zero

one two three

four five six

seven eight

nine.

if you would like to log an irc channel, you can /invite loggie.

as a backup, exec also has a logging feature.
you can /invite exec to a channel, or if you're not op, go to another channel with exec already in it and do '~join #yourchan'
then if you want to switch logging on, do '~log on'. you can switch off logging using '~log off'

logs are publicly accessible here: http://irciv.us.to/irc_logs

if you want exec to go away, do '~part' from within channel, or '~part #mychan' from any channel with exec in it

Four U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration employees saw or heard a handcuffed San Diego student locked in a cell for five days without food or water, but did nothing because they assumed someone else was responsible, investigators said Tuesday. The Justice Department's inspector general faulted several DEA employees for their handling of the April 2012 incident that left Daniel Chong in grave physical health, cost the agency a $4.1 million settlement and led to nationwide changes in the agency's detention policies. The employees told investigators they found nothing unusual in their encounters with Chong and assumed whoever put him in the cell would return for him shortly. Chong, then 23, ingested methamphetamine, drank his own urine to survive and cut himself with broken glasses while he was held.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4-dea-employees-encountered-man-forgotten-cell

"At least he's a loon with balls."
"Does that make him a balloon?"

Found it hilarious when I thought of it, needs sleep badly.

Between 1776 and the present, the United States dispossessed Indians of more than 1.5 billion acres, nearly an eighth of the habitable world ( http://invasionofamerica.ehistory.org/#0 ). For most of that same period, the native population was in a free fall, dropping from perhaps 1.5 million people when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence to a low of 237,000 in 1900. After the native population and its land base bottomed out, American sports teams began adopting Indian-themed names.

Today, the Braves, Indians, Blackhawks, Seminoles, Chiefs, and the Washington NFL team claim to honor native peoples with iconography such as Chief Wahoo, arrowheads, and tomahawks. It is easy to assert that the name of your favorite team expresses solidarity with the survivors of the long, sordid history of Indian dispossession. But what if sports lore included the specifics of how the U.S. acquired the land below your team's home field ?

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/07/washington_nfl_team_tribal_land_the_braves_chiefs_and_dan_snyder_s_franchise.html

UPDATE: let me know what you lost to Microsoft's stupidity - details at www.nerdcore.org.uk

Having been a little under the weather over the last few days, I've been less than diligent reading my usual news sources and rather averse to playing Minecraft with a splitting headache. Today I discovered that Microsoft have been very heavy handed in dealing with a botnet they wanted to take down and have used a US federal warrant to seize 22 domains belonging to dynamic DNS server No-IP:

Soylent News Article: http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/07/01/1353230

Microsoft Statement: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/06/30/microsoft-takes-on-global-cybercrime-epidemic-in-tenth-malware-disruption.aspx

No-IP Reply Statement: http://www.noip.com/blog

Microsoft's intentions are laudable - many companies would have decided that a botnet was "someone else's problem", shrugged and ignored it. Going after it themselves to protect their customers is a Good Thing (TM) and shows a good awareness of their responsibilities as a good corporate citizen.

Unfortunately, all of those sentiments and the good will they would have earned by doing this were dashed to the floor and smashed into a billion pieces when they heavy-handedly decided the best way to go after these scumbags was to close down the entire dynamic DNS service their C&C system was built on. Never mind the vast majority of legitimate users, never mind that No-IP has a long history of helping chase down and catch people doing exactly this, never mind the shaky international legal grey area they've just thrust themselves into, Microsoft themselves have just launched what could well go down in history as the biggest DoS ever deliberately launched by a corporate entity in history.

I live in England. In 2006, the Police and Justice Act was passed. Clause 40 was specifically crafted to make Denial of Service attacks illegal. Here's some of the relevant language from the passage in question:

"Clause 40: Unauthorised acts with intent to impair operation of computer, etc"

"A person is guilty of an offence if"..."he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer"..."to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer"..."whether permanently or temporarily." (3, 3.1, 3.1.a, 3.2.b, 3.2)

"The intent need not be directed at"..."any particular computer"..."any particular program or data" (3.3, 3.3.a, 3.3.b)

"For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above the requisite knowledge is knowledge that the act in question is unauthorised." (3.4)

"A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable"..."on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or to a fine or to both." (3.6, 3.6.c)

From my position as not-a-lawyer, Microsoft has by definition in UK law illegally DoS'd my Minecraft server, a criminal act that could see folks go to prison.

1 - Can the Microsoft in the UK be held accountable for the actions of it's parent company in the US?
2 - Does the US Federal warrant count as authorization seeing as it's worthless in the UK?

So far, I've sent an email to the EFF asking for any advice they may be able to give on this matter, and I'd be interested to hear their take on what's going on here. I'm also preparing a letter to Microsoft UK about this, as well as currently setting up a blog (on my own server again, good work No-IP for bagging some new domains asap!) to detail everything that happens.

At some point I'll be asking for anyone else affected in to the UK to let me know who they are, what got taken down and how much of an impact it's had on their lives and businesses. Microsoft should be brought to account for the huge amount of trouble they've caused - I'd wager a lot of money that the seizures have caused far more damage than the botnet they sought to take down would ever have been capable of.

Microsoft must pay!

everyone uses and abuses poor ol' sedbot in irc, but currently it's only working in #soylent. its also in #test but isn't working there for some reason.

for anyone who just can't live without sedbot functionality in other channels, you can do "/invite exec" and then "~sed on" to enable (or if sedbot makes a grand entrance you can do "~sed off" to disable). if you're not a chanop, you can do "~join #chan" from any other channel with exec already in it (usually #soylent).

works similar to sedbot. doesn't do vowel replacement or regex though.

Check out http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Feeds for a trial concept in article summary development.

Thanks go to prospectacle for his ideas.

Eventually feed sources will be read from here: http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Feed_sources (currently read from a file on the bot host).

For the curious:
Bot script: https://github.com/crutchy-/test/blob/master/irc.php
Feeds script: https://github.com/crutchy-/test/blob/master/scripts/feeds.php
Wiki script: https://github.com/crutchy-/test/blob/master/scripts/wiki.php