My reading list 9/8/2014 - FBI Superhackers and 42 minutes of Islamic State goodness

#FeynmanLectureChallenge Day 6 -

“The true logic of this world is in the calculus of probabilities.”
   —James Clerk Maxwell

Want to see me calculate the probability that anyone will actually read this post?  It's really simple
P(R) = Probability of readership of a post on this blog, N(R) = our estimate of the number of times a post has resulted in readership, and N = total number of blog pots.  P(R) = (N(R)/N) therefore
P(R) = 0/2800 so P(R) = 0.  Ta Da!  OK I twisted Feynman's words abit to make things fit.  Sue me
 :-P

Ars Technica - Feds say NSA “bogeyman” did not find Silk Road’s servers -

Turner wrote [PDF] that the server's IP address was "leaking" from the site "due to an apparent misconfiguration of the user login interface by the site administrator—i.e. Ulbricht."

Reading the filing I don't see a lot of difference between what the FBI did and what Weev Aurenheimer did technically speaking.  Have to see if anyone raises that argument I guess.

Boing Boing - The Cobra Effect: law of unintended consequences, squared -

This article is too short to excerpt.  I am sure that Doctrow probably meant to make a point about perverse incentives and Digital Rights Management, but while he was at it he bolstered the arguments againt many of the government programs he supports by providing support to the idea of perverse incentives and moral hazards.

Hacker News - The Islamic State (Full Length)  -



OK so it's not technically reading.  Shut up and watch it.

Pando Daily - Court docs show Gawker REALLY doesn’t want former interns to hear about upcoming class action suit -

Now, having considered all these things, take a look at the ten page letter, embedded below, in which judge Alison J Nathan is informed of all the ways that Gawker wants to try to stop former interns finding out about the upcoming unpaid intern class action suit against Gawker.

All I can do is sit and taste the delicious irony given how hard Gawker site Valleywag rags on Silicon Valley about these very issue.

Techcrunch - The #Gamergate Question -

My takeaway I am rapidly becoming too old to give a crap about this stuff.