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• Computers were a mistake.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, it appears that Chinese data heist story is not only true, but even better than it seemed at first glance. The database maintained by the Shanghai police was properly secured but then some random intern added a maintenance dashboard connected to the public internet and accessible without a password. (CNN)
  
  (There's additional reporting at the Wall Street Journal but it's behind a paywall.)

  A CNN analysis of the database sample found police records of cases spanning nearly two decades from 2001 to 2019. While the majority of the entries are civil disputes, there are also records of criminal cases ranging from fraud to rape.
  In one case, a Shanghai resident was summoned by police in 2018 for using a virtual private network (VPN​) to ​evade China's firewall and access Twitter​, allegedly retweeting "reactionary remarks involving the (Communist) Party, politics and leaders."

  Genocidal fascist nightmare state meets radical transparency. What could go wrong?
  
  It gets better:

  Bob Diachenko, a security researcher based in Ukraine, first came upon the database in April. In mid-June, his company detected that the database was attacked by an unknown malicious actor, who destroyed and copied the data and left a ransom note demanding 10 bitcoin for its recovery, Diachenko said.
  
  It is not clear if this was the work of the same person who advertised the sale of the database information last week.
  
  By July 1, the ransom note had disappeared, according to Diachenko, but only 7 gigabytes (GB) of data was available -- instead of the 23 TB originally advertised.
  
  Diachenko said it suggested the ransom had been resolved, but the database owners had continued to use the exposed database for storing, until it was shut down over the weekend.

  One thing Orwell never contemplated was Big Brother accidentally losing control over all the telescreens to a bored 14-year-old in Missouri.
  
  Never mistake authoritarianism for competence.

  Shanghai Police did not respond to CNN's request for comments on the ransom note.

  Quelle surprise.
  

Tech News

• Drobo - maker of some interesting if seriously non-standard direct-attach storage devices - has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (Apple Insider)
  
  In theory that means they're restructuring and plan to return but as far as I can tell they stopped doing any product development years ago and it's hard to even find their products for sale, so it's not clear exactly what they have left to restructure.
  
  
  
• Britain is no longer part of the EU so Apple is facing an entirely separate case there seeking $1.8 billion in damages over anticompetitive behaviour. (The Register)
  
  At issue is once again the App Store, which was designed from day one to be as anticompetitive as possible. Not as anticompetitive as possible within the law; as anticompetitive as possible mathematically.
  
  
  
• Systemd creator Lennart Poettering has taken up a position at Microsoft after fifteen years at RedHat giving Linux cancer. (Phoronix)
  
  Fuck systemd.
  
  
  
• Never mind, I read the chart wrong. That's not interesting at all.

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