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Comment Re:not supposed to be on the web! (Score 3, Insightful) 329

And it's the developers of all those packages and distros that symlink /bin/sh to bash instead of something minimal and well-audited that we should be screaming at. But "remote root exploit in bash" is sexier (after all, Apple doesn't put procmail on every Mac) so that's what goes in the headline.
 
...and next time someone goes on a rant about systemd versus "the Unix way", remember that daemons passing input from the network to /bin/sh is part of "the Unix way".

Comment Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... (Score 1) 307

"In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad."

Mr. Wong, with all due respect (that's not much for the record). Horse. Fucking. Shit.

  If you make a rule against X (and ban X-related subreddits) but not rules against Y and Z, you're making a moral statement that Y and Z are more acceptable than X. There's just no other coherent reading of those rules. If you're trying to make a community where bestiality and racism are considered morally better than leaked celebrity nudes, that's fine - it's your site, but have the spine to fucking own it.

The Military

Could Tech Have Stopped ISIS From Using Our Own Heavy Weapons Against Us? 448

JonZittrain writes: This summer, ISIS insurgents captured Mosul — with with it, three divisions' worth of advanced American military hardware. After ISIS used it to capture the Mosul Dam, the U.S. started bombing its own pirated equipment. Could sophisticated military tanks and anti-aircraft missiles given or sold to countries like Iraq be equipped with a way to disable them if they're compromised, without opening them up to hacking by an enemy?

We already require extra authentication at a distance to arm nuclear weapons, and last season's 24 notwithstanding, we routinely operate military drones at a distance. Reportedly in the Falkland Islands war, Margaret Thatcher was able to extract codes to disable Argentina's Exocet missiles from the French. The simplest implementation might be like the proposal for land mines that expire after a certain time. Perhaps tanks — currently usable without even an ignition key — could require a renewal code digitally signed by the owning country to be entered manually or received by satellite every six months or so.

I'm a skeptic of kill switches, especially in consumer devices, but still found myself writing up the case for a way to disable military hardware in the field. There are lots of reasons it might not work — or work too well — but is there a way to improve on what we face now?

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