ReHacked vol. 221: How To Raise a Roman Army: The Dilectus, The Titanic Sub trip, French govt. says users of uBlock Origin, Signal etc. are potential terrorists and more
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The Titanic Sub trip
The tourist submersible that went missing while exploring the Titanic wreck was previously the target of safety complaints from an employee of OceanGate, the parent company that owns the sub and runs tourist expeditions of the wreck. That employee complained specifically that the sub was not capable of descending to such extreme depths before he was fired.
Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering | Ars Technica
On Sunday, news broke about an OceanGate Expeditions tourist submarine headed for the wreck of the Titanic that went missing with five people aboard. Soon after, details emerged about the sub's non-standard design that did not meet regulations, including steering apparently handled by a $30 Logitech F710 wireless PC game controller from 2010.
The Other News
Collections: How To Raise a Roman Army: The Dilectus – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry #history #longread
The first thing to note about this process, before we even start is that the dilectus was a regular process which happened every year at a regular time. The Romans did have a system to rapidly raise new troops in an emergency (it was called a tumultus), where the main officials, the consuls, could just grab any citizen into their army in a major emergency. But emergencies like that were very rare; for the most part the Roman army was filled out by the regular process of the dilectus, which happened annually in tune with Rome’s political calendar. That regularity is going to be important to understand how this process is able to move so many people around: because it is regular, people could adapt their schedules and make provisions for a process that happened every year. I should note the dilectus could also be held out of season, though often the times we hear about this it is because it went poorly (e.g. in 275, no one shows up).
The ‘manning up of boys begins in the cradle.’ But what boys really need is emotional support from their dads | Cognoscenti #health #psychology
While doing research for a book I was writing, I interviewed high school-aged boys to discover who they turned to for emotional support. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t their parents. “My parents, especially my father, always tell me that I need to learn to handle problems on my own,” George, then a high school junior, told me. Six months before we talked, he had attempted suicide when his girlfriend ended their relationship and he felt incapable of handling the situation on his own.
American males of every age, race and income level are lost and bewildered, angry and scared. Sobering new statistics suggest that when we set young men like George adrift too early, they sink instead of floating. That shouldn’t be surprising. They receive very mixed messages: Men are too soft. Men are toxic. But one thing is clear: traditional tropes of masculinity — the tough guy who swallows his feelings and solves his own problems — no longer serve boys, men or the rest of us.
LastPass users furious after being locked out due to MFA resets #security
LastPass password manager users have been experiencing significant login issues starting early May after being prompted to reset their authenticator apps.
The company first announced that users might need to log back into their LastPass account and reset their multifactor authentication preference due to planned security upgrades on May 9.
However, since then, numerous users have been locked out of their accounts and unable to access their LastPass vault, even after successfully resetting their MFA applications (e.g., LastPass Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator).
P.S. That’s why BitWarden is the better choice.
Drones take to the waves: Saildrones are getting data where people can’t | Ars Technica #technology #longread
Science fiction often paints a terrifying picture of the future—think aliens decimating humanity, à la The War of the Worlds. But sometimes the future becoming the present can be pretty amazing—who doesn’t love successful space launches majestically catapulting humans skyward?
Or take Earth’s oceans, which are currently in the middle of a technological revolution that, outside of some very nerdy circles, has gone largely unnoticed.
“We’re at the cusp of a proliferation of lots of autonomous vehicles in the ocean,” said Alex De Robertis, a biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Things that were science fiction not so long ago are kind of routine now.” That includes saildrones, which look like oversized orange surfboards, each with a hard, carbon-fiber sail (called a wing) and a stash of scientific equipment.
Life before cellphones: The barely believable after-work activities of young people in 2002 #history #society
Recently, a number of my younger coworkers expressed shock that I was able to complete a master’s degree while I held a full-time job. It was easy: I worked at a literary agency during the day, I got off work at 5 p.m., and I studied at night. The key was that this was just after the turn of the millennium. “But what would you do when you had work emails?” these coworkers asked. “I didn’t get work emails,” I said. “I barely had the internet in my apartment.”
The very idea that, once work hours were over, no one could get hold of you—via email, text, Slack, whatever—is completely alien to contemporary young people, who never let their cellphones leave their hands. Yes, it’s because they’re addicted, but it’s also because we’re all expected by bosses, co-workers, and friends to be online and available pretty much every time of day. Especially since the pandemic and the growth of remote work, job responsibilities seem to be ever-expanding to fill all available time. One survey suggests that U.S. workers were logged into their employers’ networks 11 hours a day in 2021, as opposed to 8 hours a day before the pandemic. A survey of U.K. workers found a majority said they wished their employers would restrict work communication to work hours only.
European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries | TechSpot #technology #hardware
What's old is new again, at least in the European Union. The European Parliament recently voted in favor of new legislation that would overhaul the entire battery life cycle, from design to end-of-life, which includes important caveats for smartphone users.
Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today with most phones, but that wasn't always the case.
Here’s how Ferrari designed a car that won Le Mans on its first attempt | Ars Technica #automotive #history
On Tuesday morning, a triumphant Ferrari celebrated its latest race win. Not this past weekend's F1 race in Montreal, though; 2023 is still looking rough for Scuderia Ferrari's open-wheel racing program. Instead, the glory was brought back to Maranello by its new endurance racing effort, which just won the 24 Hours of Le Mans after an absence of 50 years. It did it with an all-new car, against tough opposition, and the enormity of that result has taken a little time to sink in, according to Ferdinando Cannizzo, technical director of Ferrari Competitzione GT and technical director for the Ferrari 499P program.
"What I can tell you is that it is clear for us that the challenge that we accepted was very ambitious, that we finally achieved a very historical result," Cannizzo told Ars. "We are aware that the company achieved an historic results, and I think everything will mature in the days that will come; we can probably realize the value of what we have done all together."
Criminalization of encryption : the 8 december case – La Quadrature du Net #privacy #freespeech
French govt. says users of uBlock Origin, Signal etc. are potential terrorists
“All members contacted adopted a clandestine behaviour, with increased security of means of communication (encrypted applications, Tails operating system, TOR protocol enabling anonymous browsing on the Internet and public wifi)”.
General Directorate for Internal Security (Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure, DGSI)
“All members of this group were particularly suspicious, only communicating with each other using encrypted applications, in particular Signal, and encrypting their computers and devices […].
Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’ | WIRED #ai #futurism #society #technology
AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation—from fake images to deepfakes to fake news. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable. That may also affect how they think about identity.
Your own identity can be threatened by deepfakes, too, if people are creating images or videos of you doing things you never actually did. In the US, people often identify with their jobs, and those could soon be threatened. Will AI make people more reliant on and distracted by technology at a time when that’s already a major issue? There are countless ways AI could reshape how people operate in the world. But researchers are only just beginning to grapple with the implications of an AI-saturated existence.
Over 100,000 ChatGPT Account Credentials Made Available on the Dark Web | Tom's Hardware #security
ChatGPT users should be wary that their personal data might've been leaked online, following the dump of more than 100,000 ChatGPT account credentials on the dark web. As reported by The Hacker News and according to Singapore-based cybersecurity company Group-IB, the credentials for users that logged into ChatGPT ranges from its launch (in June 2022) through May 2023, meaning that it's still an ongoing event. The U.S., France, Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil seem to have contributed the most users towards the stolen credentials.
"The number of available logs containing compromised ChatGPT accounts reached a peak of 26,802 in May 2023," a Group-IB specialist said. "The Asia-Pacific region has experienced the highest concentration of ChatGPT credentials being offered for sale over the past year."
Drag in Tokyo: There's a Village Behind Every Drag Performer | Tokyo Weekender #subculture #art
A recent graduate of the Tokyo Designer Gakuin, Okini Marciano also makes costumes for her fellow drag queens and showgirls in Tokyo. Marciano’s dresses are heavily influenced by Y2K fashion and ‘gyaru’ aesthetics.
Another recent addition to the Tokyo drag scene, Moon Juun.J, is an experienced and prolific costume maker in the global drag scene. Juun.J’s resume ranges from local queens and Opulence stars to The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula contestant HoSo Terra Toma and Drag Race UK contestants River Medway and Copper Topp.
Supporting drag performers in the Kansai area, Osaka-based Velma Joan Belle is a do-it-yourself queen, from her wig to her dresses. Most recently, Belle created a sensation online when she put out a video about crafting her own gown and hair accessories from recycled Starbucks bags.
6 Anime Series About Idols to Watch if You Loved Oshi No Ko | Tokyo Weekender #culture #art
Dazzling performances, adorable outfits and a loyal-to-a-fault fan following — this is the world of Japanese idols. While idol culture has long been a mainstay in Japanese entertainment, it’s the catchy music and aspirational stories that have made this setting all the more manga- and anime-worthy. Can’t get enough of Oshi no Ko? Neither can we. Here’s a list of six other idol-themed series to get your cutesy musical group fix.
sub.rehab · Find your next diving spot #internet
Due to the ongoing protest against Reddit's new API terms, many subreddits are either private or restricted. sub.rehab lists instances of the Reddit communities on alternative platforms.
The title says it all…
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