Monday, January 30, 2017

Akiba's Beat Special Edition copy for Europe version - Controversy?

Well, whoever came up with this life-ruining Special Edition copy of Akiba's Beat for Europe release on PS4 and PS Vita, surely had ruined the entire purpose of what a cartoon/gaming nerd can be. Sure, only radicalized nerds may be filthy enough to buy the game through their heavy obsession with the Japanese animation stuffs like it's starting to get their parents worried about their future. This is pretty much it, the deepest of the barrel you can see from the European Special Edition copy of the game where people with no decent or professional ambitions like Doctors, Firefighters, Engineers, Basketball Players, etc. for instance, may grab the guts to buy the game as if they don't even care about their decent future. It doesn't matter if they bought it through Special Edition or Standard Edition copy but based on the content decency of the Japanese animation stuffs nowadays, we can design an infographic of the life altering level from Japanese animation stuff starting from the top level being the positive cartoon shows you can watch without any problems with the bottom one turning you into a future-less slacker once you watch any one of these at that level.
I have been seeing a couple of registration forms on various websites where even an Organization is needed to be filled in addition to your personal information and especially for your professional role depending on the form. Obviously, those kinds of stuffs welcome the employed and especially for some DJ pools which have the same kinds of criteria when registering. But in case of European version of Akiba's Beat Special Edition copy, this is all the opposite as if the copy applies to those who don't care about semi-decent or professional careers at all like they have no plans to begin one on their own. Not to mention that dropping out of school just for this bullshit or becoming a YouTuber is already a foolish idea.
This is already pissing me off upon seeing a news like that from Siliconera's Twitter account for the first time but it's not the only gaming news site, isn't it? If you don't care for Akiba's Beat like you have no interest whatsoever, good for you.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Meitupics app privacy issues

The Meitupics app has been around since 2008 as developed by the Chinese company, Meitu, and is one of the most popular app as it allows you to enhance the selfie photos you've taken with various features to make yourself look better. It is famous for tuning your skin in which wrinkles, acne, blemish and other skin imperfections can be removed for real. This is thanks to using the Beauty Retouch feature where you can look like some kind of an Asian celebrity, pop idol, actor, radio or variety host, etc.
Although it is a Chinese app where the popularity took China by storm, the recent popularity was spread around the globe and I guess that many of the news sites are caught the attention on how viral the app is like they mention that you can look like a Japanese-style cartoon character or something. One problem with those articles is that you don't look so much like a Japanese cartoon character or what not as we have already seen other technologies and artists that can make you look like one even better from the entire head to the rest of your body. I've also seen certain games where you can use the photos of yourself stored on the hard disk to put your face onto the custom character like some gameplay video of the boxing game posted by Angry Joe although that game doesn't capture the rest of your body that can be used for the custom character. Like I have said above, this app may make you look like some celebrity you would see on a variety show, drama, idol concerts and the list goes on. Sure, there may be stuffs that make you look like the one from various Japanese animated shows but...
Anyway, the real problem is that your data will be collected and sent to the Chinese government but since this is a Chinese app, it doesn't look like a big deal until the recent time, the rest of the globe happened to be using it due to the claim that you can make yourself look like some Japanese animated character. However, the official website of the app doesn't mention such claim as the way you look like that is kind of partial. Even better, why was the app available globally in the first place instead of locally in China?
So the real problem here probably lies with someone's bottom-of-the-barrel behavior in which there was a chain reaction of articles about this app claiming that you can look like a Japanese animated character when you can probably look like some famous person who can be seen on TV. I guess that it caused the app to be viral globally that brainwashed many people into using it without first knowing the security issues. And by using the app because of that reason, you may have cut your respect for the developers.
Lastly on my social media update, I already blocked the one behind the Culture Japan series as things about Japanese animation have been getting so much worse including the games that follow that style nowadays. Not to mention that he happened to be radicalized as well and especially that he recently used the app. I don't know if I'm pulling the plug on discovering anymore Japanese cartoon shows like that in the future. No more such bullshit like girls represented by other living things, home appliances and other manmade stuffs which can travel like tanks, ships, transports, cars, helicopters, etc. for instance. Back then, cartoon shows including 3D ones were interesting to watch but nowadays, the ones produced in Japan are like, Argh. Your best bet will be to find the decent ones to watch if you're interested.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Brian Krebs has found and identified the real culprit behind the Mirai botnet

This one's a highly interesting news if you're a huge IT nerd like me like this is a cybersecurity topic. However, there will be stuffs from this news that will turn you off after knowing the fact that Brian Krebs has revealed the complete origins on who's behind the Mirai botnet.
Last year in September, a number of IOT devices were knocked offline with the Mirai botnet along with various websites and Minecraft servers which were the next victims. The security researcher, Brian Krebs had done hundreds of hours of research and investigation and shared the screenshot of the culprit's motive on his security blog, Krebs on Security. Supposedly, it looks professional enough with cybersecurity topics and especially for the tech news sites I've been visiting like Neowin, Engadget and Softpedia to name a few. A week after the assult, the botnet author released the source code so that anyone else could be involved in the attacks and indeed, such attacks were kind of childish and immature and done for fun.
Of course, the investigation was not an easy task, Brian Krebs had his accounts compromised upon investigating the culprits behind various cyber-attacks and botnets. In fact, he might as well cooperate with the law enforcement agencies as well as the cybercrime units over his findings so that they could begin the investigation as soon as possible. Also, such a great but complicated job he had done triggered a series of praises from many people that he deserves a reward. Of course, it can mean that his investigation actions might have annoyed the culprits but we still won't tolerate those kids who do childish shit by compromising devices, services, servers, computers and even websites like that. It is childish enough that it can land those kids in serious trouble although they can deny all that trouble they want like they're indirecting cussing you in the forums but don't care about all the childish cussings out there, just focus on the bravery and excellence Brian Krebs had from this investigation.
There were tons of links that would bring you to the previous cases and investigations and it wasn't the first time Brian Krebs had his things compromised and later restored but I'm not going to talk about too much technical things in details as those things he described from his blog are too technical and I'm not a goodie in cybersecurity stuffs either but what I knew about was that certain companies earned money from all those illegal cybersecurity activities. Do you really want to be foolish enough to work there? It's like the passion of those culprits is too negative as evidence from their work experiences?
Why can't Linkedin do the investigation of those employees who have illegal skills and work experiences? Won't they be used as evidences in court or what not?
Then, there came a controversial finding Brian Krebs had done. According to his glossary along with the screenshot of the culprit's avatar, there are references of origins and Mirai Nikki/Future Diary is one of those reasons that the name of the botnet is derived from. Even worse is that the culprit nickname is named after some cartoon character. Needless to say, that character doesn't seem to be from Future Diary, but some other media I don't even know of.
Furthermore, the culprit was studying Computer Engineering degree at the university at the time as sourced from Softpedia which Brian Krebs also put in his blog. It appeared that the culprit had multiple alias and compromised the university he studied in. There were official comments stating that the culprit, Jha, was offline for almost a week that he couldn't register for classes and all that. But then, he wasn't the only culprit out there who did this shit as if he denied his actions to everyone and started cussing on Brian Krebs saying that Brian was a sociopath. If you think that cybersecurity investigation is one part of a stupid behavior, it is you who probably has a childish behavior out of your ignorance.
It seems that the Mirai botnet author has altered his behavior too negatively like a kid. And I guess that he's already into those radicalized cartoon shows where he would look like a fool with a delusional relationship with those female characters he liked in which he would make up the disgusting imaginations. A character's who mean but nice as if he/she takes you for a fool at first doesn't seem to be quite bad enough unless he/she is completely spoilt like he/she may be different than a western movie/drama character who takes you for a useless puke that you may be yelled at constantly but a cartoon character who's a psycho-lover? NO, it's violent and scary to call it a love that way and I had seen those dramas where psycho-lover characters went after the victims they liked while the real nice lovers were trying to search for and rescue those victims so f**k those kinds of fictional characters, they deserved to be arrested for violent behaviors. What about those characters with other personalities then? I guess that it is beyond the scope.
Even if a few culprits behind the cyberattacks were arrested, the investigations don't end here. There may be similar botnets to Mirai and as stated above, even Brian Krebs had become the victim of those compromises while investigating. It will take weeks, months or even years to uncover many cyber-criminals over the compromises people had encountered. Also, you DO NOT learn the courses offered by schools to do the bad things in the future and it has been why the schools have the disclaimers on some of the assignments. On the Vlog side, I don't know if many famous Gaming YouTubers out there will talk about this because, not only the news is so fascinating enough, but also the fact that those kids behind the Mirai botnet became so radicalized that the behavior is so disgusting as we can know of. In fact, cartoon shows have never been one of my main interests in the first place but I guess that it was best not stumble upon one in the first place.

Friday, January 13, 2017

M1 Fringe Festival 2017 Controversy

The first time we discovered about this controversy was in the social media and I went deeper through the discovery where I stumbled upon a blog post about it in which various adult performances that would take place in this year's Fringe Festival were disguising themselves as art. Some of the performances were too disgusting that they were scrapped due to the fact that they exceeded the 18+ rating according to the review by Info-Comm Media Development Authority or IMDA. It was a controversial festival we had discovered and avoided but we knew the simple quote of, "Don't like it? Don't attend it!". I can't believe that M1, one of the local ISPs, had gone EXTREMELY INCOMPETENT INTO WASTING TIME AND BRILLIANCE WITH THIS SHIT DISGUISED AS ART! HOW CAN YOU CALL THIS DISGUSTING BULLSHIT AS ART?
Such stuffs like the ones used in this year's Fringe Festival can land the organizers in deeper trouble as it violates the law that goes against the adult content and yet the event goes on with a bunch of those performances despite the fact that some of them were SCRAPPED!
There were news articles about this year's Fringe Festival's controversy although there wasn't so much of them. What will annoy us more is that certain news articles contained the positives about those adult performances. Why do the performers perform such shit in a festival like it's beyond me? And why would they positive looking news articles about those disturbing performances like they liked them or something? Readers may stop reading future news articles from those news sites because of this controversy defense and the worse thing is that there might be organizers and performers attending to defend that event but the usage of the obsessive behavior into calling that bullshit as art is unacceptable.
I don't know about the previous M1 Fringe Festivals but this one's like landed the organizers in deeper trouble like they can get away with this organization and denying it. If they continue this kind of controversy for next year's Fringe Festival, I don't know what the M1 customers will do should they find it out. Will they change ISPs because of that? Will M1 be regarded as the ISP again after that controversy? That discovery already sickened me before we even entered this year!

Oh, I even forgot the update post until now which is the link here from Singapore Affairs' Wordpress blog. Everything above was typed in based on my overall discovery along with the references to their viral blog post. You can act disappointed like a kid if you want over those two cancelled performances but I feel that CANCELLATION is a BETTER WORD for them than amendment! Simply calling for amendment to meet IMDA standards was like Arts Engage, the arts groups, making accusations over censorship. Perhaps, things wouldn't look exactly the same if they were to follow the standards before getting licensed by IMDA. Prior to M1 Fringe Festival's official statement, Arts Engage had issued the open letter to IMDA about that situation.

What's funny about this is that you can see a bunch of event defenders who are attendees of course at this link, Art or Farce, Skin or Sleaze from Kopi Talk SG Wordpress Blog and especially that they were trashing out some local Facebook group about locals defending marriage and family. It also drew defenses from performers and organizers in the official social media comments.

The Fringe Festival is like still on-going until January 15 after it started from the beginning of this month. There will be those who want to attend it but the best option will be, don't care for them. And lastly, I don't appreciate or allow those adult stuffs like the ones used in the event. They're excessively disturbing looking and they can alter the psychological behavior negatively if you're too obsessed. Oh, if you happen to end up like those two Microsoft employees who suffered from PTSD because of this Fringe Festival, I don't know if you can sue the organizers or something in the future but better still, don't attend this event if you're heavily disturbed by this controversy.

Microsoft employees file lawsuit against their company over PTSD after being forced to watch indecent content

As part of the online safety team, two employees were assigned to it to determine which content should be taken down or reported to the law enforcement. Such disgusting contents they were forced to watch caused them to develop the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD and the contents looked rather traumatic as if they had out-going nightmares of whatever they saw.
One thing Microsoft missed out was that the two employees were not briefed about the psychological impact of doing such jobs and denied any support. Instead, Microsoft came up with a Wellness Program in which should the employees be affected by such disturbing contents, they could have a break during work-time but that is not going to help since there's no support over psychological issues those two employees had as part of the company's Digital Crime Unit. Even the other team members of the online safety team were not provided the comprehensive mental health program. Such suggestions for the Wellness Program were not quite good enough that one of the two employees, Blauert, was scolded for playing too much video games during work-time. Even if those two employees were transffered to a new position, they still suffered the PTSD over time and I guess that after they were forced to watch the disturbing contents, it marked the beginning of the serious trouble and especially that they had to remain in that position for 1.5 years before they were allowed to transfer positions.
In the recent time like December last year, the two employees eventually filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over the PTSD and it looked like none of them returned to work as the psychological damage was too great that it would take a long time of recovery. Blauert, on the other hand, wished to return to work at Microsoft but I guess that he wasn't allowed to use the computer-type electronics until he had fully recovered enough to be fit for work again.
It was a painful damage caused to those two employees of the online safety team who worked at Microsoft and I guess that life and future threatening events for instance are what we should keep a lookout for. Various examples may include the contents of war, disaster, fear, guilt over whatever you've done, horror, helplessness or even maybe something violent like someone's being assaulted for instance. The suffering starts within a few months or maybe years later like what already happened to those two employees.
The entirety of this blog post may look off-topic but I do have another concern about the controversial local event that took place last week of this year. It will be talked about in the following blog post because I have a feeling that it may have damaged the reputation of one of the local ISPs, M1. I might be lucky that I'm a Singtel user and that I avoided the event without even knowing when it started but obviously, that event was notorious for having a bunch of adult performances. Do I want to end up like those two Microsoft employees by attending that bullshit event?
We don't allow such mature contents like those that traumatized those two employees in whatever events, workshops, briefings, or even the educational assignments.

Privacy Dashboard for Windows 10

At least the mistakes had been realized that we eventually came up with solutions to fix them but it depends on the kind of serious mistake that had been made. However, there were certain mistakes that had gone so viral and controversial could lead to a serious of investigation like the ones that landed Microsoft into serious trouble. What about certain companies in the US that have been notorious for continuous troubles they land themselves into perhaps, for violating users privacy on their accord for years, using the fossil fuel or any other source that heats up the climate temperature, for instance? Corruption-wise, they never realize the amount of trouble they have landed on like they have been ignoring it, thinking that consumers' concerns are whiny or something.
Eventually, after a long time Windows 10 was released like two years ago, it seems that Microsoft had been pressured into adding a privacy dashboard feature for that OS that allows a wider adjustment on what can be toggled on or off. Not to mention the presets that range from Basic to Full Telemetry levels. However, that feature will be part of the upcoming Creators Update of Windows 10 and the privacy features are said to be extended in Redstone 3 update. The data collected by Microsoft will not be used to target ads to you. One fact about Basic Telemetry Level is that it has been around ever since Windows NT 4.0 days as if Microsoft will need to assess the technical situation the consumers have encountered.
We definitely hope that Microsoft is doing the right thing this time with the upcoming Creators Update like they did the right thing for the Xbox One Kinect. Simply upgrading someone's computer to Windows 10 as a punishment is what only idiots do until the day Creators Update is released which is sometime in April this year. And if you do that to your child's computer or something regardless of whatever wrongdoing your child has done, I can assure that you will be scolded and disciplined at work for electronics property abuse and to privacy advocates, you will have lesser respect than before after having damaged your cyber-reputation as a parent.