Kim is displeased, which generally means that someone will pay. As you may know, the country has its own version of "the internet", which is accessible only within the country - apart from its propaganda website, which is available internationally. Well, that's usually the case:
Someone in North Korea is in a lot of trouble.
The secretive state somehow accidentally opened access to all the websites hosted on its servers, revealing that it only has 28 registered domains.
On Monday at around 10 p.m. Pacific time, North Korea's nameserver – that contains information about all of the ".kp" websites – was misconfigured, allowing it to be accessed. This meant Matthew Bryant, a researcher, was able to access the domain names and some of the file data about the site.
Bryant dumped all of this on Github – a site that hosts computer code. It's the first real look into the secret online world of the hermit state North Korea.
It turns out that Best Korea's "internet" is pretty darned limited. Which comes as no surprise; so is food supply.
Although former Oregon gov. Retread had been advised well over a year and a half in advance that his "Coverup Oregon" website was going to flop, he chose to ignore it. When the inevitable occurred (and desperate to save his reelection bid), he threw a hissy-fit and ordered the A.G. to file a $6 billion lawsuit against software giant Oracle despite the fact that our crack bureaucrats had only signed contracts for time and materials with the company. Retread's fit of pique ended up costing taxpayers an additional $25 million in legal fees.
After he resigned in disgrace, our accidental governor from Minnesota decided that the state should settle with Oracle, and that has been done. She touts it as a victory. But far from the $6 billion sought, Oracle will pay the state's legal fees and provide it with software for other IT systems. Total cost to Oracle: $100 million. Total cost to Oregon: hundreds of millions.
Oregon’s settlement of its long-running legal war with Oracle last week comes with a hidden price tag for the state — hundreds of millions in likely spending for new IT projects.
That’s a big asterisk on a deal that officials last week portrayed as being worth more than $100 million in benefits to the state. The agreement provided a sort of compensation for the more than $300 million in federal funds and tens of millions in state funds wasted on the Cover Oregon website fiasco.
In addition to its assumption of new IT spending, the pact may contain hidden costs and will significantly boost Oregon’s payments to Oracle over time, according to an expert.
“Oracle made out like a bandit with this,” Dave Welch said after reading the settlement. He is chief technology officer for House of Brick Technologies, an Omaha firm considered a leader in advising Oracle clients on license agreements. “I’d love to see the party (Oracle) threw when they settled this thing.”
Oracle wins big, and Katie portrays the settlement as a victory for Oregon. Because after all, we won't see the actual costs until well after the elections.
The software and support obtained at no cost could “easily exceed” $100 million, but “it will require a substantial investment of effort, time and money to realize its value,” he wrote in an email to Oregon agency directors Friday. The consultant KPMG “estimated that the state would need to spend between $490-515 million to implement a fraction of the software contained in the (Oracle deal),” he added.
Uh-huh: "free" is a very good price - for Oracle. But in the Willamette Valley, we've sort of become inured to this sort of idiocy. The place is dominated by out-of-staters who always vote for anyone with a D on the ballot (and always vote for anything claiming that it's for the children™).
Yes, well, "Answer Desk" is a premium service offered by Microsoft; "Windows 10 Help Desk" sites are premium scams. And there are a lot of them. Bear this in mind:
For Windows problems, start with https://support.microsoft.com, the official, top-level support page for everything Microsoft makes.
Most of Microsoft's Web-based help is free, automated, and self-service. It includes various search tools, chatbots, and other services that can lead you to common solutions.
According to The Oregonian, "Amazon goes on Oregon hiring spree". Really?
Not so much. It's temporary full-time work, from your home, with your own equipment, paying $10 an hour. Oh, and there are a few requirements:
You must live in one of 20 specific states (Oregon and Washington being among them).
Your schedule will fall somewhere between 3 A.M. and midnight PST, running from Sunday through Saturday.
You must have a computer running a 64-bit Operating System and 10 mbps download and 5 mbps upload or faster from a reliable service provider (no satellite or wireless internet). Your system must be directly connected to the router or modem using an Ethernet cable, and it must run Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or the latest three versions of OSX. If using a laptop, it must be connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Auto-updating must be enabled for the Operating System.
If using Windows, then Windows Defender must be activated and all third-party antivirus software must be uninstalled.
All that for ten bucks an hour and no benefits. But they ship you a headset, so how cool is that?
You can still surf the net, do email, and charge your devices at them, but if you want to do the first two, you have to use your own tablet, notebook, or phone. The browsing capability has been deactivated at the kiosks themselves because homeless people were monopolizing them and using them to watch porn. Several incidents were reported as well in which homeless guys were masturbating at the kiosks. Sheesh! Here in Portland, that sort of thing generally only happens in the Multnomah County Libraries.
There was a little too much "linking" going on there, from the look of it.
The consortium that installed 400 LinkNYC kiosks across the city said it will remove web browsing from the kiosks while it works with city officials to explore potential solutions to their abuse.
“The kiosks were never intended for anyone’s extended, personal use and we want to ensure that Links are accessible and a welcome addition to New York City neighborhoods,” LinkNYC said in a statement.
The mayor considers this a "quality of life" issue, to be "tackled head-on". Well now, most likely that sort of thing will end anyway, come winter.
But while we're on the subject of tech-stuff here, Edward Snowden's got a website. Seems as how he's got a little tired of Moscow and would like Obama to pardon him before leaving office. That means time's running out, as there are thankfully but 127 days remaining in his term, and both Pantsuit and Ferret-head have called for him to face charges under the WWI-era Espionage Act.
The ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch launched the website yesterday, which asks people to sign a petition urging Obama to pardon Snowden and make a donation. Undoubtedly, some will.
Recent polls indicate that a majority of Oregonians are willing to pass Measure 97, imposing a 2.5 tax of gross receipts for businesses in Oregon on top of the taxes and fees that the businesses already pay. Heavily pushed by the state's hard(ly) working public employee unions, they say that it will "force big businesses to pay their fair share" - and "pay their fair share" is a term that's very popular among unions and other Leftists, who continue to assure people that they won't ever notice it.
Sane people understand that the affected businesses will jack up prices in order to pass the additional costs along to customers. Unfortunately, Oregon today is populated with a very large percentage of people who are either not sane or are completely ignorant. And the Comcast internet subscribers in Eugene are now getting their first taste of what to expect should Measure 97 pass:
Comcast high-speed Internet customers in Eugene are now paying higher monthly bills after the cable provider began passing along a city-imposed fee that was at the center of an eight-year legal fight.
The fee, averaging about $3.15 per household per month, will go to the city’s general fund to be used at the discretion of the City Council, according to the city.
Comcast is levying the new fee on customers to recover the 7 percent fee on gross Internet revenue it will have to pay the city annually for the privilege of operating Internet service in Eugene via the city’s rights of way.
A short notice on Comcast’s Internet customers’ bills in September notes: “Following a recent decision concerning a 7% City of Eugene license fee, your billing statement now reflects recovery of that fee.”
In their infinite wisdom, the Eugene City Council decided that paying millions of dollars per year in franchise fees to the city for providing cable television and landline phone service to residents was insufficient because although Comcast uses the same cables to carry broadband internet signals, the internet is somehow different and should therefore be taxed accordingly. What they did, then, effectively adds another nearly $40 per year to the tax burden of residents who purchase Comcast service for broadband internet.
As has been discussed here previously, passage of Measure 97 will have an identical effect, but on a much larger scale; prices for virtually all consumer goods will rise as companies pass the additional taxes along to consumers. Very little will be left untouched as everything from food to medication to fuel will rise in price - nothing is exempt.
Meanwhile, the Portland City Council is considering a return to taxpayer-funded election campaigns, despite the fact that they never have enough money to provide basic services such as road repairs and maintenance - and despite the fact that the last time they pulled this, voters eventually shot it down. That was only six years ago, but led by Nurse Amanda, they're considering it again - but this time without allowing voters a chance to give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire.
The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing "recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung" about the devices. It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product.
Samsung has issued a global recall of the devices in the wake of numerous reports of explosions and fires resulting from the lithium-ion batteries overheating. They call this "thermal runaway" and while water may initially extinguish the fire, another interesting aspect of Li-Ions is that the fires often re-start; the water doesn't necessarily stop the runaway. That's one reason why bulk shipments of Li-Ions are banned from cargo holds.
A good rule to follow: never buy the first generation of tech. Let somebody else find the bugs.
The idea was a simple one and long overdue in the eyes of a new mayor: free public Wi-Fi in City Hall.
And as the more than 40 signs and stickers around the building attest, that’s now a reality. Residents can get online while they’re waiting to apply for a permit or get Department of Motor Vehicles services.
Oh - the SSID turned out to be a bit problematic in terms of the optics: it's CON-PUBLIC. What they meant was "City Of Norfolk - Public" access. It just didn't come out as expected. So they'll eventually rename the network.
Chicago's department of transportation has installed the first pair of units containing a computer, camera, and sensors in their "Array of Things" project, and they expect to have 500 of them up and running across the city by the end of 2018. That assumes, of course, that they aren't shot to pieces by the end of 2018, so good luck with that.
Catlett and other proponents of the Array of Things say the big data it collects will help the city run smarter by tracking traffic patterns, detecting flooding and analyzing air quality in certain neighborhoods, among other things.
Air quality monitoring might be one thing, but you don't need big data in a place like Chicago to detect traffic patterns: if there's a road, there will be traffic on it. Want to detect flooding? Look out the window.
Yes, well, "Answer Desk" is a premium service offered by Microsoft; "Windows 10 Help Desk" sites are premium 
There was a little too much "linking" going on there, from the look of it.
