Prologue

Our Motto:


"All the analysis you want; none of the anal you don't."


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Thursday, February 23, 2012

YouPorn: Up To 1 Million Adult Chat Users' Email Addresses And Passwords Exposed

Oh there is guaranteed to be some fun from this.  Can you say "Caligula"?

I recommend a deep dive into the list of these names for top-level donors and operatives in the Santorum, and Romney camps, as well as that of embattled Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.
 
You're invited to have a go at any Dems, too, but I'd be dubious about the payoff.  Since they're all professed perverts and homosexuals, I can't imagine getting much mileage over that lot downloading some pics from a foot fetish site.

Nothing brings out the kink like a vigorous dose of self-righteous Puritan denial, however, so I expect quite a few high level Repubs showing up as a clients of "Trannytown.com".  From the Huffington Post's Timothy Stenovec:


Unsecured login information for a chat feature on YouPorn, one of the most popular pornography sites on the Internet, has revealed the email addresses and passwords for some of its users, the Associated Press reports.


While the AP could not confirm the number of accounts that had been compromised, Anders Nilsson of the security solutions company EuroSecure, wrote on his blog that login information for more than one million accounts was made public on Tuesday.

Kate Miller, a spokesperson for Manwin Holding SARL, YouPorn's parent company, emphasized in an email to The Huffington Post that YouPorn was not hacked, but that its third-party chat service "failed to take the appropriate precautions in securing its user data" and has since been taken offline pending an investigation.

"Until then, YouPorn continues to ensure that all appropriate measures and tools are in place to maintain the security of its infrastructure, and to safeguard the privacy of its users," Miller said in a statement to HuffPost.
She added in a phone call that "YouPorn is operating the way it should."

Still, many email addresses and associated passwords have now been made available online.

Sophos's Graham Cluley notes on the serendipitously named blog "Naked Security" that beyond the potential humiliation of having one's email address associated with YouPorn, the users' other accounts that share this login information could be compromised.
From Naked Security:
So, if your YouPorn password is now known, hackers might try that same password against your email address, your PayPal account, your Amazon account, and all many of other online resources.
Writing for Forbes, Kashmir Hill references a tag cloud created by Ashkan Soltani, an independent researcher and consultant who focuses on privacy and security, that shows some of the most popular passwords seen in a sample of the leaked data.

According to Nilsson, the leak was probably caused by a programming error that made a debugging log -- which collected usernames and passwords, among other data -- publicly viewable.
YouPorn is the 98th most popular site in the U.S. and the 96th most popular website in the world, according to Alexa.

Miller said that Luxembourg-based Manwin, which acquired YouPorn in May 2011, is the world's largest network of adult websites, with more than 60 million visitors to its sites each day.

Earlier this month, a person claiming to be a 17-year-old hacker in Morocco said he had accessed the personal information of users of a Brazzers-operated adult site, which Manwin also owns.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Could a 16 Hour Work Week Save Civilization?


The question is:  If Americans wanted to retain compensation and employment gains between 1987 and 2009, how long would the average American be required to work each week?  Answer:  16 Hours.





I was a little reticent to publish this one at first, since it does rather smack of classical Libertarianism (i.e., in the sense of being concerned with "free" time, ergo "liberty"). 

But then I thought, "What the Hell?"  It's only a thought.  If I give the reader access to all the underlying data they could do whatever they wanted with it and make their own decisons.

Would you spend more time at Church?  The average employed American only seems to spend about 45 minutes per week on religious activities.  Imagine how many more God points you could rack up if you had another 23 to play with?

Would you take courses in civics or constitutional history?  Again, the current weekly average spent on education is only 38 minutes, supposedly.  You could probably get a doctorate in the subject in a couple of years.

Then again, maybe that's not your bag.  Maybe you're a non-sectarian family type.  If so, you're only spending a little more than 4 hours per week on year nearest and dearest.  Aren't they worth at least 10?  The numbers suggest you can easily spare them--if you're willing to plan properly.

What's YOUR personal priority?

Monday, February 6, 2012

Don't Know Much About History . . .

Yeah, volatility is usually considered a "bad thing" in economics.  It's basically the chance that the dollar you leave in your wallet tonight will be worth $0.50 or $1.50 when you wake up in the morning.  Makes decision making difficult.  Like living on a roulette table.






* Conversion of the U.S. dollar to silver and gold was suspended during the Civil War and discontinued entirely by 1972.  Covers the years for which full data are available (i.e., 1820 through 2009).

This analysis excludes, for what I hope are obvious reasons, the years covering America's wars of existential crisis, i.e., the Civil War, World War I, World War II, when military spending as a % of GDP reached anamolous heights, ranging from over 3% and up to nearly 37% in 1942.  See details of calculations and source citations at the linked workbook.