Category Archives: panopticon

Extortion hacks have completely rattled the entertainment industry

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Chris Unthank, the director of digital systems for Larson Studios, was in a panic this past December. The company he works for, a California-based postproduction studio, had apparently been hacked. Files containing the company’s work were being held hostage by a criminal known as TheDarkOverlord. Among the property stolen was 10 episodes of the new season of Netflix’s show “Orange is the New Black.” Unthank found all of the studio’s data stolen and deleted, and the hackers demanded payment via bitcoin in exchange for the data’s safe return. “Once I was able to look at our server, my hands started shaking, and I almost threw up,” Unthank told Variety in an interview. TheDarkOverlord demanded 50 bitcoin, roughly $50,000, to not leak the unaired episodes of the Netflix series. After conferring with federal law enforcement, studio President Rick Larson and his wife and business partner Jill Larson negotiated with hackers and […]

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The AI is Always Watching

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My phone can now understand me but it’s still an idiot when it comes to understanding what I want. We have both the hardware capacity and the software capacity to solve this right now. What we lack is the social capacity.

We are currently in a dumb state of personal automation. I have Google Now enabled on my phone. Every single month Google Now reminds me of bills coming due that I have already paid. It doesn’t see me pay them, it just sees the email I received and the due date. A creature of habit, I pay my bills …read more

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Let’s Put A Hackerspace In Prison

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The Hack42 Hackerspace in Arnhem, Netherlands is one of the best hackerspaces we’ve ever seen. After taking over a decommissioned military base, the Hack42 crew has filled a compound rimmed with razor wire with eclectic gizmos, tools, and a community that keeps growing the space. At this year’s EMF camp, Hack42 member [jos] laid out his plan to found the ultimate Hackerspace. He’s going to put a hackerspace in prison to create the ultimate hacker village, a monument to technomancy, and an anti-panopticon panopticon.

[jos] recently noticed a very large, very old prison — currently used to house refugees — …read more

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