encourage everyone to hack the pages their browser shows to make them their own. Stop being consumers.

3.6: "It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it."

Because the Holy Bourgeois Aesthetic demands we only allow people with Strong, Stout Hearts to rule over us.

I think the Eich coup was about where I gave up on "social justice", as the game is presently played, being any more than a fashion accessory for the upper middle class.

Because JavaScript Cryptography Considered Harmful. Which, of course, depends on whether CAs, and the authorities that govern them, are part of your threat model.

If FireFox took a stand against stupid bullshit that costs more than it benefits, they could kill it. They're big enough to do so.

Raise your hand if you really thought firing Brendan Eich was about LGBT rights and not corporate control over the window to the web...

Maybe better to just start calling them Netscape again.

DUAL_EC_DRBG was a random number generation algorithm that only its mother could love. It's slow, complex not provably more random than other algos, and comes with magic, unexplained constants, which are the last thing you want to see in an ostensible entropy generator based on asymmetric crypto... and if you want FIPS certification you have to use the given constants. Why did NSA want it in there so badly? Why, after a potential flaw was found and corrected, did NSA personnel "suggest" a change that, in retrospect, only made that putative flaw more reliably exploitable? Cryptologists explain.

On the hardware side, Theodore T'so observed that Intel was very eager to have RDRAND be the exclusive source of entropy for the kernel's RNG, as was one goofball at Red Hat who tried to introduce a kernel parameter to do the same thing. He fought them both off, thankfully.

In general, see also ProPublica on the SIGINT Enabling Project.

I Hunt Sysadmins discusses why sysadmins are high-value targets. In short, sysadmins are often softer targets than the high-value Linux systems they might be paid to secure or administer. They probably use webmail or social networking services from PRISM partners, and the things they look up often reveal information about their projects and methods. The thrust of it is how to look at haystacks with CT technology instead of boring old flat radiographs, and as odious as the ends are, the means are the stuff of a fascinating, occasionally scintillating read. They are, after all, just a very large IT shop with a one-of-a-kind data set to play with.

Of course the haystack analogy breaks down before it starts as there is no +1 Needle of Revealed Wisdom to locate and extract. Is Russia fomenting a "color revolution" in the US as payback for the two we gave them in Ukraine? Is China building a fifth column inside the US to ensure their trillions in dollar holdings will hold value? Is French heavy industry spying on major US political patrons and stealing intellectual "property" or business information? Does Germany still believe the USA is faithfully holding all their gold on deposit at Fort Knox? Is Elizabeth Warren really a danger to foreign investors favored by the ruling class? etc.

If you think situational awareness is a waste, you're probably forgetting that government organizations can provide good service to customers iff the government thinks it's important. City hall treats you with hostility not because they're the government, but because you're not.

as a means of keeping the working class obedient and docile and paying for the middle class. They are also rational from a safety perspective. The devil (or the intent to exploit, if you prefer) is in the details.

The mistake is assuming that the ancien regime exists to serve you, which is not only laughably ahistorical, but nauseatingly consumerist. Unless you're part of the gentry, you exist to serve them.

Rays can be traced both ways. Each bit of intelligence gathered provides information about how and whence it was collected. That's not the sort of thing you throw around casually unless you're trying to burn it. (See also "parallel construction".)

Besides, why would they when GCHQ's already got a whole company of Internet trolls to run propaganda ops (or as they call them, "Internet effects operations") and outsourcing makes for cleaner hands and more deniability?

what they don't realize is the more they do this shit, the more they'll create extremists.

How do you know that they don't? C'mon, systems thinking (or even murder thinking): for which agents in the system is that outcome a win (motive)? Who is equipped to pull it off (means)? Who has the political capital to put such a thing through without mass disobedience (opportunity)? Or, forget that, and just look at the USA's documented habit of quietly funding, arming and training a new flavor of fundie (ISIL, 2012, Jordan) to break down working secular governments so Grover Norquist can drown them too in a bathtub and steal the hydrocarbons from under them.

Static analysis is useless in politics. Assume every word or act from every authority figure is an attempt to exploit until proven otherwise. (If infosec were a high school graduation requirement, this consumer politics of jousting with pool noodles would collapse instantly.)

It's what comes out of most Americans' mouths when they open. They can't help it, though. They've mostly accepted that social self-determination is bad and needs to be razed at gunpoint and replaced with markets.

It was also well-documented after WWII that there was a powerful network of industrialists trying to defend their privileges in capitalism, and that the John J. Birch Society was a creation of the same Koch family that bankrolled climate denialism and the Tea Party movement.

If we're going to play G-d and hand out deserts, you're right, Alyssa Rosenberg did deserve to be executed (but, sadly, wasn't).

It's worth noting the inventor of the MIPS processor (John L. Hennessy) also coauthored the leading computer engineering texts. Write what you know, they say....

"they won't be designing the same thing 50 times. See that's the ARM markets biggest handicap, there are dozens of companies reinventing the wheel over and over again."

They aren't inventing squat. They're taking a soft IP core processor provided by ARM and connecting their own pieces up to it, same as any other SoC or S-100 computer. No testosterone-drunk manly geek auteur nonsense, just instantiating, wiring, simulating, taping out and profit. Buying that three-year head start from ARM was a good idea for them.

Get yourself a book on Verilog or VHDL and build yourself a couple of toy SoCs using IP from OpenCores. If you're feeling really adventurous, borrow the Hennessey book from someone at work and design your own processor. Really, if you're gonna fanboi, at least know what you're fanboi-ing about.