solarbird | Oct. 9th, 2015

Oct. 9th, 2015

george what even are your ears

yes you have a nose fine GET DOWN

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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Well, this is abrupt - they thought they had a couple of years left:

SHA1 encryption expected to be easily cracked by end of year.

eta: I'm kind of proud of this:

Current Mood: surprised

“Obama has pledged to make the TPP public but only after the legislation has passed.”

Wikileaks release of TPP deal text stokes ‘freedom of expression’ fears
Intellectual property rights chapter appears to give Trans-Pacific Partnership countries’ countries greater power to stop information from going public

Wikileaks has released what it claims is the full intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the controversial agreement between 12 countries that was signed off on Monday.

TPP was negotiated in secret and details have yet to be published. But critics including Democrat presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, unions and privacy activists have lined up to attack what they have seen of it. Wikileaks’ latest disclosures are unlikely to reassure them.

One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread.

…

“The text of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter confirms advocates warnings that this deal poses a grave threat to global freedom of expression and basic access to things like medicine and information,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of internet activist group Fight for the Future. “But the sad part is that no one should be surprised by this. It should have been obvious to anyone observing the process, where appointed government bureaucrats and monopolistic companies were given more access to the text than elected officials and journalists, that this would be the result.”

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

So yeah, hey, I went to VCON 40!

It's a little bit of a blur, mostly thanks to too much fun crammed into too few days followed by unfortunate con crud. All of the panels I was on went really well, and most were heavily attended - the exception being Sunday morning at 10am on self-publishing, that one not so much. None of us were awake, and by "us," I mean "VCON members" - this is a pretty seriously late-nite con.

I hung out with the hot tub crowd for a bit, and one of the surprisingly large number of fem!Sheps (the two most technically impressive were in the masquerade, see below) kept me in alcohol and unexpected affection. I got to wave papers in the air like a five-cent street-corner Leninist during the Puppies panel and that's always a good day.

They had a Family/Fannish Feud PM game-show that was not remotely worksafe but our team didn't make it up on stage, which is a damn shame. They also had super-snazzy technology that my version from some years ago didn't have and it was pretty sweet - you can see the projector in shots from below.

Captain Canuck picked up Steve Rogers and his punching bag, which was pretty hilarious but didn't stay posed long enough for me to get a shot. The Turkey Readings - wherein terrible works of fiction are read and acted out by audience members, with the rest of the audience bidding in cash to make them stop - had some new people and some prime material this year.

The Dead Dog almost imploded, because the hotel totally didn't separate "quiet" and "party" spaces and shut it down, even though I have it on good authority that this was in the contract and there will be repercussions, and everyone including everybody snuck off Elsewhere to By God We Will Have a Dead-Dog and did. When I left just before 4am, it was still going pretty strong - just every so often we had to suddenly All Be Very Quiet, with concordant shushing and sssssssssh and apparently being a party made up entirely of snakes.

Ain't no party like a Slytherin party, is what I'm saying.

So, yeah! Bought next year's memberships already, will be there for 41. You should too, it's great.