Author Topic: Idiot of the Day 2016: Election year extravaganza of idiocy. (Read 15670 times)

SnowFire · « **on:** January 11, 2016, 09:53:33 PM »

Today's philosophical conundrum: should Anti-Virus software recognize itself as malware?

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/google-security-researcher-excoriates-trendmicro-for-critical-av-defects/
https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/detail?id=693

Basically: TrendMicro exposes a node.js server over HTTP which accepts arbitrary commands. With no origin check. So approximately any page served over HTTP could execute arbitrary commands without any user interaction. Yes, you go to www.evilrpgdl.com and they can run whatever commands they like on your box. There's a sample very simple 3-line script that shows this off in the bug report.

If that's not enough, attackers can also invoke a hideously out of date version of Chrome, with the title "Secure Browser" helpfully added, with --disable-sandbox enabled for free, then run commands from there. (If you don't know, Chrome sandboxing is the most important security feature that prevents you from getting pwned when browsing the web. And it is turned off.) AND! The node.js endpoint helpfully provides an API to export, retrieve and decrypt encrypted passwords.

I'm willing to give most software a bit of a break on security holes, which are often obscure and require multiple layers of slightly off assumptions to be broken, but software whose entire purpose is security doing the reverse?

(for srs, though: don't use Anti-Virus software in general, not just TrendMicro. It doesn't actually help anymore.)

Grefter · « **Reply #1 on:** January 11, 2016, 09:57:43 PM »

Yes.

Some more than others much sooner (Norton back in 2000 at latest).

But yes.

Ranmilia · « **Reply #2 on:** January 13, 2016, 05:10:32 AM »

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/40kdsz/wizards_may_be_cracking_down_on_unsanctioned/cyvzi9d

Wizards of the Coast has made some questionable decisions regarding Magic and the play thereof, lately. Some of them are justifiable if you squint really hard and say they're a business that needs to make money. This, though. This goes beyond questionable, and straight into pants on head territory. I can't see how this actually helps their business in any way.

Yes, let's now dictate what stores do in unsanctioned, non-WOTC affiliated events, and threaten their distribution licenses if they don't comply.
Yes, let's specifically target and kill off the stores that were running proxy-allowed Legacy and Vintage events. Let's just ignore that those events unquestionably raised interest and sales of real cards, by letting players who weren't millionaires experience the formats and giving them incentives to build towards legitimate decks.
Surely, people who want to play those formats will just go "aw, shucks" and buy legitimate cards if they want to keep on doing so. Surely, they won't go and buy cheap, high quality Chinese counterfeits instead - we're stamping those out by doing this, yes sir! This makes sense!
Yes, let's make sure we include the part doubling down on calling a sharpied card on a kitchen table "counterfeit" and "copyright infringement."

NotMiki · « **Reply #3 on:** January 13, 2016, 06:41:26 AM »

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/whitesboro-vote-keep-racist-seal

um

Reiska · « **Reply #4 on:** January 13, 2016, 08:26:50 AM »

Quote from: Sir Alex on January 13, 2016, 05:10:32 AM

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/40kdsz/wizards_may_be_cracking_down_on_unsanctioned/cyvzi9d

Wizards of the Coast has made some questionable decisions regarding Magic and the play thereof, lately. Some of them are justifiable if you squint really hard and say they're a business that needs to make money. This, though. This goes beyond questionable, and straight into pants on head territory. I can't see how this actually helps their business in any way.

Yes, let's now dictate what stores do in unsanctioned, non-WOTC affiliated events, and threaten their distribution licenses if they don't comply.
Yes, let's specifically target and kill off the stores that were running proxy-allowed Legacy and Vintage events. Let's just ignore that those events unquestionably raised interest and sales of real cards, by letting players who weren't millionaires experience the formats and giving them incentives to build towards legitimate decks.
Surely, people who want to play those formats will just go "aw, shucks" and buy legitimate cards if they want to keep on doing so. Surely, they won't go and buy cheap, high quality Chinese counterfeits instead - we're stamping those out by doing this, yes sir! This makes sense!
Yes, let's make sure we include the part doubling down on calling a sharpied card on a kitchen table "counterfeit" and "copyright infringement."

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes down to it. What they really want to do is just kill off Vintage and Legacy entirely, because Vintage and Legacy players don't give Wizards money, because probably 95% or so of cards you would play in either format are out of print and Wizards makes nothing off secondary market sales. But they can't really openly murder those formats because the people who *do* own decks that cost thousands of dollars to build would be rightfully pissed off. (They already are pissed off, because they're running out of opponents.) And the only way Wizards *could* make money off these formats is to renege on the Reserved List, which they can't afford the backlash from, even as much as they acknowledge that the Reserved List was a very bad idea for the game.

Sooner or later, one or the other will have to give, though; either the Reserved List will have to get reneged on, or Vintage/Legacy will die as formats, and when they die as formats, the secondary markets of cards only legal in those two formats will likely crash very hard. Both formats are inherently unstable since their playability is dependent on a finite pool of cards which is shrinking over time (as more and more of the cards in question become too damaged to play) - even with the utmost of care, the fact of the matter is the *newest* Power Nine cards for instance are 21 years old, and any amount of handling of 21 year old cards is not going to be good for their lifespan.

SnowFire · « **Reply #5 on:** January 13, 2016, 09:09:37 AM »

Amusingly enough, I never check the magic TCG reddit, and I checked it anyway today (before Alex posted the link!) for totally unrelated reasons and saw the hubub. WTF indeed. Horrible, horrible decision.

Reiska: You're giving WotC too much credit. It's just a plain mistake, with the largest reason being what Alex already described - this decision will either entirely kill Legacy, or it will perversely incentivize TRUE counterfeits - the kind that every store owner who's invested in card stock hates - rather than harmless proxies + actual stuff bought from the store. Legacy & Vintage will eventually die? Fine. Let them die. Just don't upset the status quo, and the status quo is helping them die slower. Obviously Wizards can't openly sanction events that allow proxy cards, and that's fine, but why not just ignore them? Even if hypothetically WotC makes no money off them - a very false claim - it's not particularly harming WotC either. It's a baffling & bizarre decision to threaten stores that are basically holding hobbyist events for the highly-committed that encourage them to spend thousands of dollars on the game, some of which will flow to the stores which will then be incentivized to hype up Magic more.

Anyway, I highly doubt it's because Wizards has some secret master plan to force Legacy players to play more Standard or something, or Legacy will somehow ruin them. It's either some strange legal advice they got (this would be the favorable-to-WotC-but-plausible tack, IMHO) or Hanlon's razor applies as usual here (more likely IMO).

Reiska · « **Reply #6 on:** January 13, 2016, 09:47:19 AM »

I never intended to say it was anything but a mistake

Just that, to me (a relative outsider to the hobby) it reads like an effort to accelerate those formats' demise, because Wizards has little vested interest in promoting a tournament format that almost exclusively uses cards which have been out of print for over a decade. They make nothing directly off most legacy/vintage tournaments since the number of sanctioned ones is, AFAIK, very small (and as you point out, no, trying to accelerate the format's demise is not going to work, it's going to drive more demand for actual counterfeits). And that is where the Reserve List is doing them more harm than good, now.

Grefter · « **Reply #7 on:** January 13, 2016, 11:19:58 AM »

From memory, Wizards do actually have a hand in the resale market. That one was on the wall 2 decades ago and they aren't stupid.

Reiska · « **Reply #8 on:** January 14, 2016, 01:14:51 AM »

Something else occurred to me as an outside possibility: they could be trying to kill off specifically paper vintage/legacy as a prelude to more aggressive support of those formats on Magic Online, where they aren't bound by the Reserved List.

NotMiki · « **Reply #9 on:** January 14, 2016, 02:21:04 AM »

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jon-ritzheimer-militia-care-package--4

Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays.

SnowFire · « **Reply #10 on:** January 14, 2016, 07:27:32 AM »

Reiska: Well, the idea I'm attacking is the idea that Wizards would intentionally want to kill Vintage & Legacy, and (the sometimes-extension seen) further that if they did so they'd make TONS OF MONEY off forcing those vintage players to draft the newest set 24/7. This is crazypants. Wizards at best loves the cachet of showing off rich geeks playing each other with Black Lotuses at the GenCon Vintage tourney, usually likes keeping card dealers happy which means letting them invest in old cards they can sell to collectors & Legacy players, and at worst doesn't care.

Wizards probably feels bad about this. However the Order Came Down From Corporate, and nobody's sure why. Good reasons might be lawyers (the whole bizarre "maybe Chinese courts think proxies = counterfeits" angle), but equally likely is just some crazy exec somewhere who just said this is the new rule. Or maybe it just came from nowhere and nobody can be found to own it. Who knows! Corporations are not usually the soulless, efficient, hyper-rational entities from economics textbooks & Reddit. Sometimes they just do random shit because ???

Grefter · « **Reply #11 on:** January 14, 2016, 07:33:36 AM »

Bullshit.

They are always soulless.

Fenrir · « **Reply #12 on:** January 14, 2016, 09:36:35 AM »

Dumb opinion piece of the day 3 2 1 go

http://www.donotlink.com/hvpy

Tags:
David Bowie
Philosophy
Welfare

"You can't fix the local housing problem by floating in a most peculiar way"

Grefter · « **Reply #13 on:** January 14, 2016, 10:59:25 AM »

Literally criticizing a performer for portraying characters during performances.

Good job.

AndrewRogue · « **Reply #14 on:** January 14, 2016, 06:02:35 PM »

Does the Guardian just like shitting on dead people or something?

The Duck · « **Reply #15 on:** January 14, 2016, 08:12:08 PM »

Come now, they like shitting on alive people too.

SnowFire · « **Reply #16 on:** January 14, 2016, 09:33:05 PM »

Looks like WotC backed off "marker on cards = counterfeits = banned":
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/proxies-policy-and-communication-2016-01-14

Also apparently proxies are now "playtest cards" in WotC-ese to distinguish them from official-tournament-proxies (which are... the same thing, but only given due to reasons of damage / marking in play.) Fair enough.

NotMiki · « **Reply #17 on:** January 15, 2016, 02:44:13 AM »

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mlk-jr-day-fun-shoot-air-force

. . .

dunie · « **Reply #18 on:** January 25, 2016, 03:59:21 AM »

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/the-tampon-tax-explained/

This is old-ish, but tampon tax. Not fair they're excluding healthier options like the Diva Cup, but hey. Or maybe that tax goes to all the exhausted bodies manufacturing said cotton balls (most w/chemicals) or cups.

Not to deflate the overwhelming sexism of consumer products, but:

chocolate does not need to be taxed
raspberry gelato does not need to be taxed
if it is illegal to enter stores without shoes and clothes, then all clothes should not be taxed in every single state, nor online or anything ._.

Grefter · « **Reply #19 on:** January 25, 2016, 04:51:46 AM »

Eat the rich.

dunie · « **Reply #20 on:** January 26, 2016, 03:54:23 AM »

In return for…..

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #21 on:** January 26, 2016, 05:15:11 AM »

Quote from: bambi on January 25, 2016, 03:59:21 AM

chocolate does not need to be taxed

Neither do cigarettes but they've gotten it in their head that it'll dissuade people. I mean, you need tax revenue to sustain services so if you're gonna tax things make it shit people don't need, like candy.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #22 on:** January 26, 2016, 05:22:07 AM »

Seems like a lost cause considering we're just starting down a slide towards utterly insane chocolate prices last I looked (turns out: cocoa is REALLY hard to farm, takes forever to cultivate, and terrible working conditions for horrifically underpaid farmers in barely stable countries means a lot of them just gave it up five or more years ago.) Pricing is kept remotely stable right now by sacrificing quality (less cocoa butter, more bee wax) but that'll start changing.

dunie · « **Reply #23 on:** January 27, 2016, 11:02:26 PM »

so we seem to agree that raspberry gelato should be tax free.

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #24 on:** January 28, 2016, 05:02:39 AM »

It should be 100% taxed for being pretentious.

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Author Topic: Idiot of the Day 2016: Election year extravaganza of idiocy. (Read 15670 times)