Pinhasi pays the ransom out of his own pocket and gets the key.
He tells the victim he used his propriety technology to decrypt the files and sends a bill.
Pinhasi is telling a fib, which is OK in the US. That is, it's OK unless money changes hands, and then it's wrong, because that's how we roll here.

It depends.

It is illegal if the ransom is being paid to an entity that is sanctioned or in a sanctioned country such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.
It does not matter that the payer didn't know the ransom is coming from a sanctioned country, the payer is breaking the law.

Here's a source for checkng present sanctions. https://ofac.treasury.gov/
"The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that paying ransom to cybercriminals is now illegal. In an official advisory, the agency stated that organizations that facilitate ransomware payments to hackers on behalf of ransomware victims, including financial institutions, cyber insurance firms, and companies involved in digital forensics and incident response, are violating OFAC regulations."

And a cyber crime advisory.
https://ofac.treasury.gov/medi...
It's also illegal to use a third party to facilitate payments to sanctioned entities, or to be the third party.

But it appears to be Ok to pay if you know the ransom is being done by a fellow American or, I suppose, a European. Except for this week, Norwegians.

Every data center AND evert petroleum or other fossil fuel refinery or storage/processing facility. Hit the orcs where it will hurt them the most.

Ukraine should be going for the power plants too... Steam turbine blades and reduction gearing begin very sensitive and vulnerable at those RPMs, and all that.

Aside from a few specific cases that became prominent, do you think he was personally sitting down with a list of borown people to send his ICE brownshits out to attack? On course not. It was a general directive to scapegoat them and make their lives hell... ALL their lives, even citizens and green card holders. Given maga's modus operandi, this is almost certianly just more of the same; and Dubrovsky was not arrested because he's the ringleader of some ransomeware gang but just because he's Canadian, is a prominent figure, and made the mistake of travelling somewhere the magat minions could get their filthy mits on him.

Yeah... You know what happens when you call the police about gang activity down by i-drive or fruitvale BART?

1) They'l not show up in time to help. They pretty much never do. Either it's "All officers are responding to other calls." or a single squad car's "officers" simply refuse to go without a second or even third car along with them because they're too chickenshit to show up except with overwhelming force.

2) Since they won't be there in time to stop whatever gang activity they were called for; they'll be pissed off that you wasted their time and made them drive into the 'hood, and they're more like to arrest you for calling them than they are to go chase down and arrest the gangbangers who were the actual problem.

I saw both happen multiple times when I lived there.

Lower the score? Fuck that noise.

Any cop who decides it's he is prerogative to stop, arrest, "detain", interrogate, approach, or otherwise darken the day of anyone who did not, in fact... and I mean objectively true FACT, not some made-up narrative or demented fever dream... commit the crime, should a instantly on a one-way trip up the river for assault and kidnapping. And any DA or judge who goes along with an attempted frame-up should join them on a conspiracy charge.

"Close enough for government work." and "Whoopsie! Can I get a do-over?" don't cut it when you're talking about taking away someone's freedom and, potentially, life.

Chicago? LOL... I used to live in Oakland. And yes, even in high-crime areas, the police are part of the problem more often than they are part of the soluiton. And no... letting them stomp all over peoples' civil liberties and the constitution in general does NOT make for a safe and civil city; otherwise Oakland would have been a paragon of law, order, and prosperity for the last 20 years.

To be pedantic, Slay The Spire 2 hasn't been released yet, it's still in beta.

Somewhat, we do know of some large parties that bought the Trump memecoin. The problem isn't knowing who did it, the problem is that this activity isn't counted as political fundraising which it clearly was, it was just "buying a memecoin". I don't want foreign governments and the ultra rich paying my president bribes to get favors. We know who did it, but it's currently legal apparently.

For normal people yes, for politicians it's a loophole to avoid corruption laws.

Weird Al also recently released an educational video about the brain recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

They were just brown people anyway. So far as peety, alexi, peety, and donnie are concerned, that's just a bonus achievement unlock... more points to score from the base and a nice bronze trophy icon to go with their gamertags.

My grandfathered-in HBO Max account was the last thing keeping me on AT&T. So now I can bail to T-Mobile for their more international-friendly plans and their willingness to actually support ALL of the new iPhone's features.

Unfortunately, if that were true, the likes of Cellebrite, NSO Group, Anduril, and Palantir would all be long-since dead and buried.

While that is certianly a very nice thought, I don't think it's accurate. If self-interest were the determining factor, we wouldn't be where we are in the first place. The fact that the man was elected even once, much less the second time, demonstrates quite clearly that there are vast hoardes in this country who hate brown people, immigrants, and LGBT people far more than they love their bank accounts, IRAs, and 401ks.