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> This was the exact same technique that was used in 2021 by Audacity's update mechanism, which also redirected traffic to servers hosted in other Aeza Group ASNs and planted a dropper for later campaigns.

I can't find anything about this, can you link a source?


I believe they meant saving space by converting a lossless collection to a good lossy format like Opus.


> Youtube (but not Youtube Music)

I get Opus on Youtube Music, both in Firefox on Windows and in the Android app.


Nice. That's a welcome change.


TFTCentral did some pretty extensive testing on this topic: https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/the-oled-black-depth-lie-w...


There's actually a very recent talk about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zrcemxCg4Y



Court documents can be found here: https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/assange-v-government-of-t...

Paragraph 210 of the judgment argues why the US's kidnapping/assassination plot is not a valid ground for refusing the extradition:

> [...] On the face of the allegations (on the evidence before the judge and the fresh evidence) the contemplation of extreme measures against the applicant (whether poisoning for example or rendition) were a response to the fear that the applicant might flee to Russia. The short answer to this, is that the rationale for such conduct is removed if the applicant is extradited. Extradition would result in him being lawfully in the custody of the United States authorities, and the reasons (if they can be called that) for rendition or kidnap or assassination then fall away.


What an utterly absurd judgment, that should have no place on a free society. They have a literal kidnapping/assassination plot, and yet the Judge considers it all above board and that it doesn't show any prejudice.


How is extradition a kidnapping plot?


Assange's team brought evidence that the USA had a kidnapping/assassination plot in case he attempted to flee to Russia. They brought this as obvious evidence that he will not be safe in US custody - they were already willing to kidnap or kill him without a trial. This should prevent his extradition from the UK to the USA, as the UK in principle doesn't extradite prisoners to countries where their safety and UK judicial rights are not guaranteed.


https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

From reading that article it doesn't sound like there was any plot. Mike Pompeo wanted such a thing, but it was never approved. It was hotly contested and never attempted. The article also made it sound like Russia had more of a plot in action to move Assange to Russia.

So there was about as much plot for the US to kidnap Assange as there was to make Mexico to pay for a wall. Hot air from politicians that just evaporates.


The plot was exceptionally well advanced and was actively surveiling the equadorian embassy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstler_v._Central_Intelligen...


From that link

>The lawsuit alleged that the CIA violated their constitutional rights by recording their conversations with Assange and copying their devices after suspicions were raised that Assange was working for the Russian intelligence services.

Recording conversations is not the same as plotting a kidnapping.


> Recording conversations is not the same as plotting a kidnapping.

That is true, but I was replying to OP who said such a thing never happened, when it is clear they did, including the CIA hiring a 3rd party firm to monitor Assange via illeagal methods.

Revisiting your point, this is the original source of the kidnapping allegations: https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange — reveals for the first time one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency and exposes new details about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks. It was a campaign spearheaded by Pompeo that bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work toward prosecuting Assange, and risked a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally.

The CIA declined to comment. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment.

Additionally later on accusations of a plot to assaninate Assange became prominent too. These allegations were presented and detailed in court last month by Assanges legal team. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-68344106 (ctrl-f assassinate).

Disgusting.


We did kill that top Iranian general out of the blue under Pompeo's watch, same time frame. So it's hard to say other assassination plots were just hot air and would never be acted out.


> How is extradition a kidnapping plot?

Extradition is not a kidnapping plot.

Administrations and agencies actively+eagerly seeking methods to deliver revenge to Assange in the form of kidnapping and assassination - this is also not extradition.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plot+to+kidnap+assange


[flagged]


> It is absurd, he should be on a flight right now.

For the crime of reporting information that embarrassed the US government.


Yes, it is considered a cardinal sin to discredit authority through embarrassment. It may not be an official crime, but they will make it feel that way. This isn't unique to governments. Try discrediting any authority figure with embarassment (parent, teacher, manager, police) and watch what happens. The result somewhat irrational and ego driven, but it's relatively consistent.


most effective way of dissent is to ridicule and embarrass them. Why bother with challenging or "debunking" their lies when you can just make fun of them.

sadly Assange was not a "funny man" and totally lacked the gift of humor. So the only tool he had was his rightousness coupled with his will to embarrass.

Sadly for him he is a self obsessed and attention seeking cretin. Would he have had any charisma or the gift of humor the outrage of what was done against him would be a lot bigger. One can only dream of the damage that could have been done against these criminals in the US and Britain (and the EU) by somebody who knows how to package these things into better. The raggedy Wikileaks outlet was never going to be capable of this. A shame because anyone who believes in civil rights all over the world deserves better.


You know that's not true because if the US govt were what you seem to allege (extradites and arrests mere critics) then you wouldn't be safe to post this here.

It's also a national pastime to crap on the government. Are you not aware that thousands of reporters and millions of people embarrass the US government every day?


You appear to have a different definition of "embarrass the government" than I do. Embarrassing a government is an action that they are willing to kill people over (like reporters). There's a big difference between leaking state secrets that materially harms the government and poking fun at them. One will get you disappeared and tortured-not-tortured, the other is a useful distraction.


Lions don't attack every animal that sets foot on their turf.

The release of "Collateral Murder" damaged public opinion of the US invasion of Iraq and US foreign policy in general. If journalists embarrass the US government by telling them their nose looks funny, Assange embarrassed them by pulling their pants down at the half time show at the Superbowl.


Knowingly handling stolen (secret) property is still a crime. It's not about the embarrassment. If he only released the infamous helicopter attack or specific "criminal" documents, that'd be one thing. However, he dumped the entire diplomatic communications (among other stuff) that literally put people's jobs, careers, and even lives in jeopardy who were doing nothing illegal, immoral, or wrong. Most of the dumped data was mundane, but still classified.

Embarrassing leaks have happened many times (pentagon papers*, watergate, Iran–Contra affair among others) and the leakers didn't go to jail

Even worse his ego took over and wikileaks became the julian assange show; he reminded me of every cult leader I've ever seen. He's now experiencing FAFO for his arrogance.

*Though the gov't tried to charge Ellsberg with stealing/releasing classified data, the fact that he was highly selective is what saved him from jail time.


The people lives he "put in jeopardy" were OK with spying on every American.

I care for their safety as much as they care for my privacy.


A mid-level diplomat in some authoritarian country writing a blunt opinion/analysis of its government's possibly dangerous leaders is not spying on every American.


Sure that could be the person "at risk".

Could also be the guy behind having US troops guard the opium fields of pedophiles during a opioid epidemic


That's my original point. Assange/Wikileaks made little, if any, distinction between an American mid-level diplomat that's stationed at an embassy sending intel on the mistresses, corruption, or misdeeds of the local leadership and the genuine terrible things that were covered up and arguably should have been leaked.

Leaking government misdeeds is whistle-blowing and has legal and moral justifications (and when wikileaks first arrived on the scene I was 100% supportive of it). Leaking troves of generic government data that's unrelated to any misdeeds, is a crime. Assange, for a host of reasons, decided to do the latter and is now in a FAFO situation.


The leaks Assange provided proved a great deal of willing and intentional illegal activity by the government. It exposed several instances of officials lying to congress, it exposed a spying program that is not only unconstitutional but wiretapping in that manner is itself illegal.

Nobody went to jail. The only people who go to jail for government malfeasance are the people who expose it (Manning, Snowden). That is nonsense, We can all just ignore the "rule of law" if that's how its going to be.


> For the crime of reporting information that embarrassed the US government.

let me fix it:

For reporting on a bunch of war criminals sitting in a shipping container in Nevada drone striking brown combatants.

also let's not forget that what we see here is propaganda at its best. Anyone in InfoSec in the West who has in 2012 been outraged by what Snowden revealed, and by what Wikileaks helped publish, has meanwhile condemned the whistleblowers and sided with the terrorists in Washington.

Americans are the most propagandized[1][2] people on the planet, and compared to Russians living under Putin, or Chinese under Xi, ... they're totally oblivious to it.

As Jacques Ellul says[3], well made propaganda is invisible to the person who are the target of it (while usually visible to everyone else).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act

[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...

[3] https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512


I am on the fence about Assange.

At the very least, I see him now as a warning to others that powerful state actors are happy to use free-information advocates as pawns in their agenda to destabilize their opponents.


Wrecklessly and without simple redaction, in such a way that very well might have resulted in the deaths of US officials. And highly questionable selective publishing.

I think the guy is getting fucked over in this unfairly, but let's not pretend he has released information to a reasonable standard.


All of this is over the Manning leaks, where Assange tried to go over the documents with the US government so he could do a responsible disclosure. The US refused.

He then got a team of journalists together to sift through the documents to make sure things were properly disclosed. Some Guardian journalists then published the encryption keys in a book.


I seem to recall the Journalists had an argument with Assange over the leaking. The Journalists wanted to take their time and carefully filter out any info that was not necessary such as informants identities. Assange wanted to get the stuff out as quickly as possible perhaps out of fear of being stopped before it was released.

Snowden's mistake was revealing himself. He should've done what the Panama Papers leaker did.


>seem to recall the Journalists had an argument with Assange over the leaking.

After the keys had already leaked, there was a disagreement whether Wikileaks should continue their plan of slowly publishing things as they went through them or dump everything since it was already in the public.

But before "the Journalists" leaked the keys, Assange was in charge of a massive undertaking to sort through the documents for responsible disclosure.


> very well might have resulted in the deaths of US officials

US spies that knew the risks of their profession.


> US spies that knew the risks of their profession.

What about their sources?

Multiple human rights organizations criticized the underacted release of information:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39827756


there is something to be said about quoting human rights orgs when the country in question does not agree to hold it's own soldiers and generals accountable under these same orgs

https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_why_america_is_facing_off...

See also the "Invade The Hague Act": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...


It also leaked the identity of informants.

When I served in Afghanistan the locals would tip us off about ambushes or IEDs. Should those people be killed for warning us and potentially saving my life?


I think your point is fully valid. I would balance it with the notion that they (people undertaking huge personal risk) would be better protected - if there was less natural pressure to acquire/release info that gets over-classified to protect political interests.¹

Stated otherwise, if US Gov could be relied on to honor it's ethical obligations to taxpayers and release the entirety of info that it ought, I argue that fewer unqualified people would feel responsibility to take that upon themselves.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Civili...


Are there examples of that?


> Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group which had been maintaining a backup version of the WikiLeaks site, revoked its support for the whistleblowing site in the wake of the decision.

> "Some of the new cables have reportedly not been redacted and show the names of informants in various countries, including Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan," it said in a statement. "While it has not been demonstrated that lives have so far been put in danger by these revelations, the repercussions they could have for informants, such as dismissal, physical attacks and other reprisals, cannot be neglected."

* https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/02/wikileaks-publ...

> The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication.

> The human-rights groups involved are Amnesty International; Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or CIVIC; Open Society Institute, or OSI, the charitable organization funded by George Soros ; Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; and the Kabul office of International Crisis Group, or ICG.

* https://archive.is/XPuki / https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB1000142405274870342860457...

> “We are deeply concerned that WikiLeaks decided to make public the names of diplomatic sources who may face reprisals by oppressive governments,” said Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First, an independent nonprofit organization.

* https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2011-aug-30-la-fg-wiki...

Whether reprisals then occurred I do not know.

> "We fear the names could create new targets", Nader Nadery, the president of the AIHRC, told the French news agency AFP.

> The WikiLeaks editor, Julian Assange, replied to the letter by asking the groups concerned to help WikiLeaks redact the names. He also threatened to expose Amnesty if it refused to provide staff to help with the task, according to the Wall Street Journal.

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-wa...

Assange "threatened to expose Amnesty" International?

To me it seems that Assange was not pursuing some noble cause, but was on some kind of vendetta, given all the (collateral?) damage he was causing to others.

(Generally I knew of him, given he often made headlines, but have never really dug into the details.)


He has also been selective in his releases and timed them to affect political outcomes.

He’s just another biased media source with an agenda.


Of course he wants to affect political outcomes. Is that not the entire point? The US is committing war crimes, why would he _not_ want this to change? Also, how would unbiased reporting on war crimes look like? Lastly, does "having an agenda", whatever that might mean to you, change anything about the facts that were presented? Does it make the crimes the US is committing any less severe?


> The US is committing war crimes

Which? Collateral Murder didn't depict war crimes.


Firstly, your comment makes absolutely no sense at all. Are you genuinely asking whether the US has committed war crimes in Iraq?

The treatment of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison is a war crime. The raping of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi is a war crime. The subsequent killing of her and her family is a war crime. The Haditha massacre is a war crime. And these are just _some_ of the most well-known ones.

Also, Collateral Murder is not any less gruesome, just because it isn't "terrible enough to be a war crime". That is absurd and dangerous thinking. In the very least, the actions shown, especially the attack on the van, can, without a doubt, be classified as murder. Murder is a crime, and the people who commit crimes should be held accountable for them.


"we better hand this guy over to the mafia before they kill him".


It’s amazing how flexible the law can be when powerful people need to to be.


Facebook tried to pull something similar, and it was eventually ruled illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag...


God I love noyb. I wish I lived in Austria so I could contribute.


>They often lack any form of sRGB clamp

And the ones that don't almost universally lock you out of all other color settings when enabling it, often even including brightness. It's ridiculous.

Also, thanks for the shoutout :)


Those slides aren't the only thing they copied: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1511718827083669508


So they cited Ian's 2016 article (which contained the AMD diagrams), then basically rendered those same diagrams in black and white in the patent. Pretty lazy.


You never use StackOverflow or similar?


Obviously most devs will answer yes to this question. However, I don't think the implied conclusion (software devs copy each other, so the legal apparatus applied to software is okay doing so, too) is a valid one.

For one, this is hardware.

And second, even if this was software, that just reinforces the farce that is software patents -- another reason to add to the list of why patents on software shouldn't be a thing.


A lot of people use StackOverflow but people blindly copying StackOverflow is just as dumb. When I use it, I use it to understand the problem. I then write my own logic understanding the issues wrapped around the similar error. But some solutions are too simple to not be similar.


[flagged]


If you don't believe data presented by the guy who was editor for Anandtech for how many years, that's on you.


To be fair not everyone knows who @IanCutress is. The profile description of "Consultant, Chief Analyst, Influencer." doesn't really indicate he's a subject matter expert.


It doesn’t matter who these people are. If you’ve seen patents before, you can cause from the screenshots how similar the diagrams are to the sources.


Books are published in batches of 'n' characters called sentences. Really, Twitter is just another medium.


It's literally quotes from an article he wrote about Zen for Anandtech cribbed in the patent.


Also see dwordle, where you have to guess a function pointer: https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1482175505185095682


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