WTF World 4: Who Cares About The Royal Wedding and Hanson Singing MMMBop? A Human Cannonball Died and Anonymous Brings Down PSN Again (Maybe)

Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.

www.9to5.cc

Right now we have a couple of articles, weekly columns, bi weekly webcomic. Soon we'll have some videos up there too. So go there... go there now. Add it to your favorites. Share with your friends.

Please... I beg of you. For the love of all that is good, visit my site. Now back to the old and out of date blog you've somehow found:

Ok, remember how I said that I would follow Google Trends and then blog about them and it would be a fun way for me to keep up to date with current events and keep you informed about today’s hot topics? I was wrong.

The reason there hasn’t been a WTF World in the past few weeks is not just because I’ve been spending time being wrapped up in the Montreal Canadiens playoff run (Keep Calm and Carey On boys) and working on the more permanent home of this blog, it’s also because Google Trends have been like 90% about either Dancing With the Stars, American Idol and the Royal Wedding.

I see the problem now; I have it set to “United States”. Things are so much clearer. You want to know what’s really strange? I just changed my trend settings to the UK, and the Royal Wedding is trending less there than it is in the US, WTF America? Correct me if I’m wrong but there was a pretty big war in the late 1700s where the main point of it was for you guys to stop caring about England and the monarchy, something about independence? Ring a bell? Probably not: some 250 years later and the hot topic in the land of the free is what Cateherine Middleton will be wearing when she marries Prince William. Side note: Am I the only one that thinks Prince William is getting way bald for his age? He’s only 28.

So yeah, where does that leave us? Hanson performed on Dancing With the Stars last night. How is this news? Hanson singing MMMBop was terrible when the song was big in 1997, why is it news when they sing it 14 years later? I’m serious, I really want to know. Let’s put this in perspective: A band whose one major hit was 14 years ago played their one hit wonder on a show where Kirstie Alley and Ralph Macchio are in a dance competition. Like, it’s bad enough that this is happening in the first place, but it’s worse that this has resulted in millions of Americans searching for Hanson this morning. I’m pretty sure that “MMMBop” is probably going to get a pretty big iTunes boost today. Fuck you America.

So what is news then? Found it. Matt “The Manx” Cranch dies yesterday in England during a Human Cannonball stunt that went wrong (yep, I set Google trends to the UK while seeing if they cared about the Royal Wedding). The Manx climbed into his giant cannon and when it blasted him out the recoil from the thing apparently caused his safety net to collapse, so instead of landing in a safety net, he landed on the ground, and died later in hospital. Two weeks ago he was a bartender, last week he was a human cannonball, today he’s dead. He was 23. I’m not really sure if I like reading the UK news, it’s not about washed up celebrities, it’s about people dying after being shot out of cannons.

Finally, a news item that is close to my heart. The Playstation Network has been down for the past 4 days and when I last checked it was still “undergoing maintenance”. Sony has pointed the finger once again at everyone’s favorite group of hackers: Anonymous. Only this time, Anonymous (or at least, the AnonOps) is like “Hey Sony, it’s not us this time.” Which sort of makes sense and sort of doesn’t. So, Sony decided to take George “GeoHot” Hotz to court over jailbreaking the PS3, Anonymous got all up in arms and launched a denial of service campaign against users of the PSN. The problem here? They weren’t hurting Sony so much as they were hurting gamers and gamers are sort of “their people”. Anonymous (or again, I must stress, the AnonOps) saw the error in their ways and stopped the attacks until they could come up with a better way to hurt Sony.

Last Thursday, the same denial of service attacks started again, and as I mentioned, Anonymous denied knowledge of the attacks. The problem here? How could they deny it? It’s a group of anonymous hackers, to think that the head knows what each of the thousands of hands is doing is absurd. However, it certainly hit Sony where it hurt, with the launch of some huge games before the long weekend (new SOCOM, Mortal Kombat and… uh… a little game called Portal 2 that’s main selling point is a co-operative mode) having the PSN down for the past 4 days is a pretty big deal.

Here’s a conspiracy theory that’s been kicking around: Sony is letting this drag on on purpose. Why would they do this? Two very likely reasons that I can think of. One, it turns public opinion against Anonymous even further. Typically “the internet” (made up largely of gamers and geeks) rallies around the actions of the group (see: Anonymous vs. HB Gary, Anonymous defending WikiLeaks, or Anonymous defending the lovable Casey Heynes), but less so this time, even less so now that Anonymous is coming between them and their Portal 2. Reason two: What better way to push the launch of a pay service (ala X Box Live) than with promises of a “more secure and stable” PSN? Just sayin’... it could happen.

That’s it for today.
-K

Hanson image from TooMuchNews

WTF World 3: Casey Heynes the "Zangief Kid" Lays the Smackdown and Anonymous Has A Run-In (OH MAH GAWD!) Now With Working Video Link!

Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.

www.9to5.cc

Right now we have a couple of articles, weekly columns, bi weekly webcomic. Soon we'll have some videos up there too. So go there... go there now. Add it to your favorites. Share with your friends.

Please... I beg of you. For the love of all that is good, visit my site. Now back to the old and out of date blog you've somehow found:

This is going be really quick since I’m crazy busy today, so there’s only one topic. I just wanted to chime in on this latest internet trend (or should I, keeping with the rasslin' parlance of my title, call him an internet phenom?): Casey Heynes, the Zangief Kid.

I really prefer Zangief Kid to Casey "The Punisher" Heynes, but all the great pro wrestlers have multiple monikers, so I guess it doesn't really have to be a one or the other situation.

Anyhow, for those of you who are not familiar with the events, video is here, for those of you who prefer strange Taiwanese re-enactments of news events, you can see that also, here.

So here's how I imagine this whole thing went down, Casey is a little on the tubby side and is probably picked on all the goddamned time, this little kid is probably a "cool" kid who likely picks on Casey on an almost daily basis. Scrawny kid probably feels like this will be the sort of thing that years from now he will want to reminisce about the "good ole days" of picking on Casey, he'll probably even want to tell his kids about what a standup little fellow he is. Why rely on simply TELLING your kids though, why not video the whole thing, throw it up on the internet and save it forever. Nothing is better than public humiliation right? Why not make it super public? Strangely, this is the exact plot of the film Tormented. In that movie, the bullied fat kid comes back from the dead and kills everyone even remotely associated with his bullying, this scrawny kid got off light.

I was a scrawny little kid, and I got picked on a little bit in elementary school, and I have a bunch of friends who got really picked on and bullied, and often, the outcome is the same: eventually, a line is crossed, and the tormented lash out, often violently. Then the punishments are dished out, usually only for that single act (initial bullying, violent lash out). The bully gets a slap on the wrist, and the kid who lost it gets in more trouble since his actions were more severe. The fact that this bullying probably persisted for months if not years before the incident is rarely accounted for.

Thankfully, in this case, the punishments are apparently a little more fitting, I've read some reports that the little kid didn't get suspended at all, but I think this just might be internet folk fanning the fire. Supposedly, what actually happened is that Casey got a 4 day suspension, and the bully got a 21 day suspension (which of course his mother is up in arms about since her child you know, just punched a kid in the face a few times and danced around like an asshole, Casey powerbombed him). Casey's mother is a little surprised too, saying that she always raised her boys to "walk away from a fight". Why? I'll bet Casey walked away from a hundred fights before this one, and where did it get him? If the institution won't put an end to it, who will? Casey will. Like Big Daddy Cool he will fuck your ass right up.

Don't worry though Casey, even if your mom doesn't have your back, someone else does... these guys. That's right, when they're not engaged in online battles with security agencies, they're defending little boys. Anonymous seems to think that Casey shouldn't have been suspended at all... a viewpoint I might want to agree with. By all means, sit him down, explain to him the consequences of his actions and explain to him that he shouldn't have done it. What other choice did he have? (Note: I haven't been able to find any fallout of the hacks, other than messing with the school's website, I'd like to know what, if anything, happened on the 15th).

I've worked in elementary schools, kids who get picked on who tell a teacher get picked on even more. Teacher's can't be everywhere, and students outnumber them 30 to 1, and only a few of them are usually out on the school yard during recess, so they're outnumbered about 100 to 1. You can't really expect them to even be capable of accurately monitoring all the actions of that many kids, all running around yelling their crazy heads off.

How many times do you have to walk away and suffer the abuses of others before you have to stand up for yourself? It's a tricky situation. I don't think Casey should get off Scott free, he did resort to violence and that's wrong (bla bla bla), but I also don't think he had much of a choice. This way, there's a chance that his torment might end (though, given the way kids are these days, I doubt it), tattling wouldn't have done it, walking away wouldn't have done, maybe a body slam is what it takes?

I'm rambling now, and I don't have an answer. Remind me not to have kids.



-K

WTF World? Vol 1: HBGary gets "pwned" by Anonymous, Lance Armstrong Retires and Nir Rosen Resigns After Being a Jerk to Lara Logan on Twitter

Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.

www.9to5.cc

Right now we have a couple of articles, weekly columns, bi weekly webcomic. Soon we'll have some videos up there too. So go there... go there now. Add it to your favorites. Share with your friends.

Please... I beg of you. For the love of all that is good, visit my site. Now back to the old and out of date blog you've somehow found:

All this and more! Except, not really.

In preparation for my eventual weekly editorial over at http://www.9to5.cc/ I am going to take a couple of practice swings at my idea for a recurring article. I call it "What the Fuck World?" because I think swearing is funny.

Basically, the idea is that I'll keep tabs on some of the top trending searches in the world for a week and then write about my favorites on Mondays. Today is Wednesday, and instead of a whole week, I'm just doing the searches from right now. I know I'm cheating, but it's my article and I make the rules so fuck yourselves. See? Cussing. Classic.

So what's going on in the world today? (Heh, I almost wrote "toady").

Lance Armstrong

Why is Lance Armstrong in the news again? Oh, he's retiring. Again. Don't worry though, he's going to keep fight cancer... or something. Why do people care about Lance Armstrong? Well.. he has those classy yellow rubber wristbands and beat testicular cancer for one, and for two, he may have won so often by cheating. Even though he was never caught, his teammate Floyd Landis alleged that good ole' Lance doped himself and also showed other cyclists how to beat testing (and he's not alone, this Armstrong fellow that every body's into has had like a dozen similar allegations brought against him). Anyways, he retired in 2005, then had a comeback in 2008 with a goal of racing in 2009 Tour de France, he finished 3rd. So yeah, he's retiring again, better quit while you're ahead, to fight cancer.

Anonymous Hacks HBGary

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. What's HBGary? They're a technology security firm. These guys are big deals in the electronic security biz, one of their biggest clients is the US Federal Government. What happened? They were hacked by Anonymous.
Ah... 4chan. Why CEO of HBGary Aaron Barr would possibly want to piss off Anonymous, I could not explain. I mean, sure they occasionally hack the hell out of various websites and banks and what not, but to specifically call them out seems like jumping in the deep end, wearing lead boots, in a shark infested pool on your period. I'm sorry, I meant while menstruating.

So a couple of days ago, Aaron Barr claimed that he had infiltrated Anonymous and was willing to sell their identities. He claimed that he had the names of key members and leaders and that he tracked the information through IRC, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Anonymous claims that they know who's on the list, and that it's not them, and it's certainly not their leaders. On February 4th, the Financial Times ran the story about Barr's claims and then Barr made an appointment with the FBI (since the FBI doesn't like Anonymous either) to presumably sell them the list, even though some of his own people questioned his methodology. Where's the mistake here? One, he was half cocked, two, he announced his intentions publicly.

One day later, on February 5th, Anonymous more or less shut down his network. The also took down the HBGary Federal site and left a very public notice of their intentions, calling him out and saying he knows nothing about security (that looks really good for a security firm I'd imagine). They were just getting started, the broke into HBGary Federal's e-mail server, extracted 40,000 e-mails and posted them on Pirate Bay, the else claim to have deleted about a TB of HBGary backup data, you know, just cuz.

Barr starts panicking and tries to get help from his colleagues. In an amazing act, the President of HBGary (which owns HBGary Federal, the company Barr works for) Penny Leavy logs into Anonymous' IRC chat rooms and asks them to leave her company alone. Hilarity ensues (Penny joins at line 522, if you've got the time, it's a worthwhile read). But how did Barr compile this list? I will oversimplify, but basically, he created multiple aliases and started logging into Anonymous chats to try to "infiltrate" them. He linked their IRC handles to Twitter and Facebook accounts, then cross referenced their friend groups and tried to make sense of it. He even started to play his real life personage against his made up IRC self. Basically, if someone posted something on an IRC webchat, and then someone posted something similar on Twitter, and someone made a similar wall post of Facebook, they MUST be the same person, right? As I mentioned before, even those in his own organization found his methodology faulty.

Last week he revealed himself to a person who he believes is CommanderX (one of Anonymous' particularly effective hackers), telling him that he doesn't want them to end up in jail, and he's just pointing out the vulnerabilities of social media. Whoever this person was, Barr's pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. They kept hacking his personal accounts shutting down his devices, basically trying to push him off the Internet. In the IRC chat above, they told Penny Leavy that it would all stop if they just fired Barr.

Then, shit got real. When they got inside of HBGary's computer, Anonymous found links between the Chamber of Commerce and the Bank of America, including plans to falsely incriminate their opposition, planting fake documents, cyber attacks, you know... totally legal stuff that a security company working for the government should do... yeah. They also uncovered HBGary's plans to launch a smear campaign to help undermine Wikileaks.

As of today, HBGary has cancelled all of its public appearances at public events, saying some of its staff has been threatened, and that's where we're at.

Wow, that was longer than I expected, I think I'll do one more.

CBS' Lara Logan


I'm not gonna lie, I sort of hoped that Lara Logan was involved in a sex tape, not that she's particularly hot or anything, I just thought it would be a good way to cap off this post.

But no, this ties in with Egypt and how the media is being treated. But looks like I was wrong, there was some sex, just not the good kind. While covering Mubarak stepping down, a part of the mob cut off Logan from her crew the proceeded to beat, assault and sexually abuse her until she was eventually rescued by another, presumably friendlier group (made up of Egyptian women and soldiers). She was flown back to the US and hospitalized. Somebody named Nir Rosen from NYU's Center on Law and Security made fun of her on Twitter, saying she was trying to outdo Anderson Cooper (who was also attacked in Cairo).

Yep, he made fun of her for being mobbed and sexually abused, what a guy. In the end, he apologized and the resigned from his job. Dumbass.
-K