PewCrypt Ransomware Locks Users' Files and Won't Offer a Decryption Key Until - and Unless - PewDiePie's YouTube Channel Beats T-Series To Hit 100M Subscribers (zdnet.com) 237
The battle between PewDiePie, currently the most subscribed channel on YouTube, and T-Series, an Indian music label, continues to have strange repercussions. In recent months, as T-Series closes in on the gap to beat PewDiePie for the crown of the most subscribers on YouTube, alleged supporters of PewDiePie, in an unusual show of love, have hacked Chromecasts and printers to persuade victims to subscribe to PewDiePie's channel. Now ZDNet reports about a second strain of ransomware that is linked to PewDiePie. From the report: A second one appeared in January, and this was actually a fully functional ransomware strain. Called PewCrypt, this ransomware was coded in Java, and it encrypted users' files in the "proper" way, with a method of recovering files at a later date. The catch --you couldn't buy a decryption key, but instead, victims had to wait until PewDiePie gained over 100 million followers before being allowed to decrypt any of the encrypted files. At the time of writing, PewDiePie had around 90 million fans, meaning any victim would be in for a long wait before they could regain access to any of their files. Making matters worse, if T-Series got to 100 million subscribers before PewDiePie, then PewCrypt would delete the user's encryption key for good, leaving users without a way to recover their data.
While the ransomware was put together as a joke, sadly, it did infect a few users, ZDNet has learned. Its author eventually realized the world of trouble he'd get into if any of those victims filed complaints with authorities, and released the ransomware's source code on GitHub, along with a command-line-based decryption tool.
While the ransomware was put together as a joke, sadly, it did infect a few users, ZDNet has learned. Its author eventually realized the world of trouble he'd get into if any of those victims filed complaints with authorities, and released the ransomware's source code on GitHub, along with a command-line-based decryption tool.
What the *bleep* happened to PDP (Score:2, Interesting)
No he did not (Score:3, Insightful)
I have seen on Twitter recently that PewDiePie is "alt-right", but as is usual with anything labeled "alt-right" that is Fake News.
What the hell have you seen that would make him alt-right? I don't watch his videos much but in the few I have seen there is zero political content of any kind. He does meme reviews for crying out loud!
I am pretty sure he has irked some people, these days anyone who is mad at you for anything simply labels you "alt-right". Don't propagate slander and lies.
P.S. if you don't re
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What the hell have you seen that would make him alt-right?
It's objectively easy to find. In the first 60 seconds of the latest PewDiePie video; "Shane vs Cat," which appeared two hours ago there is a graphic of the "NPC Wojak" meme. There is simply no way a meme lord like PewDiePie doesn't know that symbol is hated by SJW groupthinkers. This appears in the context of a "meme review" where he riffs on J.K. Rowling and the history of her various sops to 'progressive inclusivity.'
Personally I don't believe PewDiePie is particularly "Alt Right." He makes his liv
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There is simply no way a meme lord like PewDiePie doesn't know that symbol is hated by SJW groupthinkers.
Just because he wants to make fun of extremists bigots doesn't make him alt right.
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I think his point was that from the SJW crowd, anything other than fealty to SJW values, mores and speech codes is definitionally alt-right.
So poking fun at PC culture is alt-right. Even if you are a democratic socialist from a democratic socialist country. Like all who's primary motivation in life is political affiliation, they will brook no dissent.
Therefore, if you are of the "SJW groupthinkers" Highdude702 is describing, then yes, "just because he wants to make fun of extremists bigots" does in fact
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I guess it's a good thing I don't even like people then. O.o
PDP also just removed 500 of his twitter follows (Score:2)
I don't think he himself is a white supremacist, but I also don't think he put any effort into avoiding them. For someone as visible as he is that's just bad all around.
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He did that because the shitheads that follow people like Cult of Dusty were sending PewDiePie's follows death threats, so PewDiePie replaced his list with a single link to K-Pop band BTS as a half joke, half attempt to sic millions of teenage fangirls onto said shitheads.
Before this, PewDiePie also followed plenty of people who are not right wing, including Laci Green, Boogie2988, James Charles, and the aforementioned BTS. It's almost like he was using Twitter to follow interesting people regardless of wh
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I'll speculate that it was more of a "follow me and I'll follow you" tit-for-tat strategy that is employed by "influencers". It is the famous people crowd's currency. You go on someone's podcast and say how great they are, and they say how great you are. It is all just advertising, paid for by in-kind contributions.
If you violate the contract, then they retaliate in kind. Hence the celebrity twitter wars of hate. It is simple tit-for-tat game theory.
So if someone with a big list of followers follows yo
Re:No he did not (Score:4, Insightful)
This poster is correct.
PDP, is quite harmless, but the media have it in for him since he's a nice big target and they hate steamers/ bloggers generally because they're eating the lunch of traditional gaming media.
PewDiePie encompass typical childish and nerds humour, taking the piss and messing around. There's very very little bad stuff here.
Man did the sjw types get a hard on for him and will not drop it. It's foolishness like this, when they're so blatantly wrong which actually weakens their cause as people start to question "if they're wrong about PDP, who else are they misrepresentating?"
Ultimately resulting in genuine bad actors getting less need criticism and or general distrust of the gaming and eventually, regular media.
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Man did the sjw types get a hard on for him and will not drop it. It's foolishness like this, when they're so blatantly wrong which actually weakens their cause as people start to question "if they're wrong about PDP, who else are they misrepresentating?"
Absolutely everything. That was an easy question. Any other questions?
Feminism and astrology have multiple things in common. One of them is that they started with a general good idea ("women should be equal" or "stars are pretty interesting") and ended up in in the land of total nonsense.
PewDiePie encompass typical childish and nerds humour, taking the piss and messing around. There's very very little bad stuff here.
Except, again, by those who took the harmless basic idea and then went with it until they were way over the cliff.
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This is another contradictory bit of doublethink. Can't talk about PDP flirting with the far right because that's what they want. On the other hand, the way to defeat the far right is to win the argument by debating their ideas directly and preserving free speech.
Anyway, I don't suppose you can actually cite something he said that makes what you claim seem believable, can you?
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You can read his manifesto. I am not going to link to it here. I am sure you have the ability to find it. I read it once and that was enough for me. I do not want to waste any more time looking for it just so you can ignore it and still act in a way the killer wanted by pointing the finger at people he named dropped to cause division.
" flirting with the far right"
making jokes are bad mmmkay. Was Monty Python flirting with the far right as well? Everything is "far right" when you are an extreme leftist.
"defe
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Monty Python was mocking the far right, not flirting with it. They didn't promote people on the far right like PDP did.
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Oh, so you are the comedy and joke police. Whatever you think must be true.
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Oh, so only the police are allowed be have an opinion? Opinions are oppression now?
You really are very silly.
Sure, here you go (Score:2, Insightful)
For those who don't want to be bothered watching the video (or can't stand Cult of Dusty, which I can't really blame you for), PDP had a large number of alt-right personalities he was following and after the New Zealand shooter he emptied his followers list.
PDP may or may not actually believe any of the things the alt-right does. But he absolutely uses the movement and it's fans to his advantage. The controversial things he's done have almost exclusively appealed to the alt-right. [theverge.com]
Lik
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As someone who subscribed to T-Series - you are part of the problem. PewDiePie's base is the young generation. YOU are the one is out of sync.
No buddy, you are. Literally, when you say "angry, bitter, jobless young men" as if that is not a problem or you don't get a sadistic pleasure in it. You DID when you gave your quite consent to far-left.
If only the joble
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There's an entire engine on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook dedicated to exploiting angry, bitter, jobless young men for ad revenue and Pateron donations. I'm bloody sick of it. It's dangerous as fuck. Eventually a real demagogue will come along and organize them into brown shirts.
Given how much easier it is to bleed them and buy yourself a yacht and a villa, most of them will be content with that. One of the (rare) advantages of the social media revolution is that the vast majority of people these days don't have enough attention span to attend an actual revolution anymore.
Re:Sure, here you go (Score:5, Informative)
hbomberguy did a video specifically about PewDiePie: https://youtu.be/GjNILjFters [youtu.be]
Shaun is also very good, producing a lot of debunking videos.
Just waiting for the wave of videos about Lauren Southern to hit now, given that the Christchurch terrorist cited her "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory prominently in his manifesto, even using it as the title.
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Just waiting for the wave of videos about Lauren Southern to hit now, given that the Christchurch terrorist cited her "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory prominently in his manifesto, even using it as the title.
Why would you do exactly what that guy wants you to do ? Sow discord and create unrest. Like do you enjoy being a pawn ?
I think the goal is to call the Alt-Right out (Score:3)
What I'm saying is this: The Alt-Right are not your friends. They're a friendly face on the same Authoritarian arm of the right wing that's been around since the 20s. They exist specifically to legitimize and normalize something that was rightly recognized as horrific post W
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I love how you always talk about "dog whistles" you know how those work right? You sure do hear them a lot. Maybe you're the "alt-right" nazi.
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Nah! It is way simpler than that. Alt-right is, by name, not the traditional right. So from a far-left perspective, anything that is not traditional right is alt-right. This enables them to invariably call centrists "alt-right".
Couple this with traditional journalism becoming unprofitable in the new tech-age, mainstream media is hell-bent on getting more clickbait by promoting extremism - wether you are on the right or on the left.
If OP doesn't were a avid reader of breitbart or fox news he would have consi
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My personal favourite of his alt-right credentials was when he wore the British home guard uniform, which is the uniform worn by British officers who's job was to warn and rescue people after Nazi bombing raids, after which your compatriots at mainstream media called him a nazi.
It was almost as excellent as your desperate lying across this thread.
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Did David Duke switch parties? *checks* Nope. Still a republican.
"Almost" meaning forget about Charlottesville and "Jews will not replace us," activities held by "very fine people" according to Trump.
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Just one act and you forget Trump's not-so-in-the-past antisemitism.
See the Times of Israel [timesofisrael.com] for the embodiment of an anti-semite.
Israel != Jewish (Score:3)
The right does not support Jews or Israel, _Evangelicals_ support Israel because their reading of their holy books is that Jesus will take them to paradise when all the Jews are brought to Israel. Eva
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One can be opposed to Zionism without being anti-semitic, and I imagine, if albeit unlikely, that even the converse is true.
You of course are not alone in this but most Jewish Americans are not die hard supporters of Zionism unlike right-wing Christians, Trump included.
sarcasm on
Yeah, I mean really, what were people thinking- those glatzkoepfig jack-booted thugs wearing Nazi tattoes in Charlottesville were like
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Good argument, you've almost win me over. Got anything else to say?
Time to give up (Score:2)
It's not the loonies killing in the name of religion. It's not the fact that people are willing to do long term damage to the public, the environment, or even themselves in the search for short term gains.
It's shit like this that makes me say sod it. Let the meerkats have a go. Or squid, they're pretty smart.
Blackmail and extortion are quite illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
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Moron Central (Score:2)
Amazing. Just look at all these fucking goobers desperate to tie their completely uninteresting little lives and egos to a Youtube 'star' who wouldn't piss on them even if they begged him to.
I'm convinced more than ever that what this world needs is a damn good plague.
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Don't be surprised to see language used such as "icky and gross" "problematic" "toxic" and so on and so forth.
Forget all that shit, he's just uncreative and boring. I can get that anywhere. Hell, I can get that for free and without any hardware by just talking to people in public.
Bad crypto (Score:4, Informative)
Sigh, /. is dead. It's like none of the posters even looked at the code [github.com].
For anyone who's interested, the encryption used here is very poor. He leaves the mode and padding unspecified for both the asymmetric (RSA) and symmetric (AES) encryption operations. That causes the provider defaults to be used. In the case of the RSA step that's not terrible, since every provider I'm aware of uses PKCS#1 v1.5 padding. This isn't great, since PKCS#1 v1.5 is vulnerable to an adaptive chosen ciphertext attack, but in this usage that doesn't really matter.
The bigger problem is that AES typically defaults to ECB mode. Using ECB means that any repeated 16-byte blocks of plaintext will encrypt to identical 16-byte blocks of ciphertext. This can often expose enough structure to allow the file contents to be partially recovered. It's particularly bad in this case since the same key is used to encrypt all of the files. If AES were in any way vulnerable to brute force, this would almost certainly provide many "cribs" (known plaintext/ciphertext pairs) which could be used to discover the key and decrypt everything else. AES-256 is not, however, vulnerable to brute force, and won't be until computers are made of something other than matter and occupy something other than space (anyone catch the reference?).
Overall, I suppose the chosen encryption was adequate to the task, but it was very sloppy.
Do you think he'd accept a pull request to fix it up?
The minimum required changes are small. I'd use "RSA/ECB/OAEPWithSHA-256AndMGF1Padding" for the RSA operation, just because, and "AES/GCM/NoPadding" for the AES op. It would also be necessary to get the IV (let the provider generate it) and prepend it to each encrypted file. The files would be 28 bytes larger (12 for IV, 16 for tag), but secure.
Also, I'd process files in chunks rather than reading a whole file into memory and then encrypting and writing it back out. It could then handle files of any size. His code just skips any files larger than 20 MB. That's actually the biggest flaw in the implementation; given file sizes today, lots of stuff would just be skipped. All of my RAW photos would be safe, for example. The JPEGs would get encrypted, but who cares about them?
Oh, one more problem: Most systems these days don't overwrite in place, so the plaintext file will be left on the drive, available for recovery. Granted that recovery is not trivial, but still, the data will be there. Fixing this would require doing something like filling the drive with garbage files, forcing the drive to overwrite all free blocks. Overwriting multiple times might be a good idea, too, though that's probably not necessary. Some systems offer free space shredding as a feature; on those that could be used to ensure destruction of the plaintext.
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Now that is a Slashdot response!
Well done!
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I only peek in from time to time these days. They really left the nerd site stuff way behind. It is a shame, because it was a great community. There was a time where you might find yourself arguing the merits of a protocol with the guy who actually wrote it.
On the other hand..... much, much less goat sex.
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WTF is a "Pewdepie"?
I"m sure I'd better shout at kids to get off my lawn at this point....
Re:Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a Youtube star who is famous for being an empty-headed asshole.
And by 'star', I mean a racist, talentless hack, similar to Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton.
And by 'famous', I mean that some people within the dysfunctional 'community' known as Youtube recognize his name.
And by 'community', I mean a group of losers who clicked a button with his name by it.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
I don't normally agree with mych you day, but this is right on the money. Also made me laugh. MOD ARENT UP!
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WTF is a "Pewdepie"?
Everything I have learned about Pewdepie has been against my will. Consider yourself lucky.
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Ok I give.
WTF is a "Pewdepie"?
I believe they are a popular beat combo, m'lud.
Re: Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, nobody has managed to figure that out. h
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what does he/she do that garners such a large following?
He talks a lot of shit like a super jackhole. Apparently that's all it takes.
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Famous for being famous, like the Kardashians, or Zsa Zsa Gabor, or...a lot of "celebrities"?
The only thing I know about him is that he paid people to make Nazi salutes and read off anti-Semitic statements. For that reason alone he sounds like a real asshole.
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PewDiePie is this generation's Dustin "Screech" Diamond
Er, who's Dustin "Screech" Diamond?
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Not PewDiePie's fault. My kids don't watch his channel, still they are unbearable.
Re: Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie. (Score:5, Funny)
That's just the gov't you see (Score:2)
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Perhaps I've missed it (and it's a good chance I have as I don't follow him) but I don't recall seeing where he's spoken out about the illegal activities being done in his name (hacking, encrypting, murder, etc)
You've only scratched the surface. Armed robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting, extortion, racketeering, stock manipulation, global financial manipulation, tanking currencies, falsifying documents, purposefully accelerating global climate change, drug dealing, redlining, gaslighting, forming destructive cults, cheating on tax returns, election manipulation, writing fraudulent yelp reviews, providing sub-prime mortgages, tearing off mattress tags, driving 1MPH over the speed limit, griefing, trolling, spawnkil
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>spawnkilling
Public floggings. Anything less is inconsumerate.
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Let’s not forget the New Zealand shooter promoted the asshole.
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Smuggling, forgery, sailing under false colours, looting, poaching, brigandage, depravity, vandalism, impersonating a Royal Navy and other British and Spanish officers and a Clergyman, arson, kidnapping, piracy in the Caribbean Sea, perjury, theft and ransacking a rum shipment.
Re:Curiosity (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point, if any, do we start holding PDP responsible for the actions of his fans?
Blame someone for the actions of others...? Should we blame Tide for the idiots that ate their Tide-pods?
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I ate one of those Tide Pods you insensitive clod!
I'd argue that a public figure at a certain level (Score:3)
I haven't watched PDP, but he's had a mess of nasty controversies around racial themes. Ones he was pretty obviously doing on purpose because, as the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. And he was right. The backlashes have all blow over and he's kept the dough rolling in. But at a cost. That cost is normalizing a ce
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I think that where there's a 'social responsibility', there's a very 'socially responsible' person that decided what it was.
We ALL decide what socially responsible is (Score:2)
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"That cost is normalizing a certain form of behavior. "
making edgy jokes? Uh oh. The Joke Nazi's are out goose stepping their way into normalizing fascist behavior again. Let's round up all the comedians and put them in camps where they can concentrate on Correct Funny Jokes that are approved by the Central Committee of Approved Comedians and Jokes. They have cookies!
"He's not starting an honest discussion of racial issues"
Obviously. Was Monty Python? Was CK Louis? Was Dave Chapelle? Does everything have t
No, Normalizing Nazis (Score:2)
Making fun of Nazis ala Monty Python is old hat. If PDP tried that folks would shrug and go watch Monty Python. If they wanted blue humor CK & Chapelle both do it better. So he just flies Nazi flags and waits for the views to roll in from the controversy. Meanwhile
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In this case, yes, because hes not doing anything reasonable to stop the issue, as he is directly benefitting from the acts - he could reasonably say "the crown of largest number of subscribers on Youtube is not worth being advertised by a mass murdering gunman during a live stream of a shooting" and ask Youtube to either remove any mention of number of subscribers from his public facing account.
Or he could shut down his Youtube account.
But no, he does nothing, and basks in the glory of the attention he rec
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the crown of largest number of subscribers on Youtube is not worth being advertised by a mass murdering gunman during a live stream of a shooting" and ask Youtube to either remove any mention of number of subscribers from his public facing account.
The entire subscriber count between PDP and TSeries is a meme and is about what YouTube is and whether it is more for corporations or for people like how it started out. People that don't even care about PDP subscribe to him just because of that. Hell, even Blizzard comedy fanfic [youtube.com] is jumping on because as they say "As the whole event has been happening, I thought it was pretty cool how so many of us have came together for a common cause, for the YouTube community; For creators not corporations. " T-Series is
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Should we blame Tide for the idiots that ate their Tide-pods?
Maybe? Funny thing about the Tide Pod Challenge: people doing that fad were a tiny fraction of the total number who have eaten Tide Pods. They were introduced in 2012, and just in that first year more than 7,000 children ate them. Age five and under.
Sure we can blame the children, I don't have a problem with that. Children are awful. 7,000 in one year sure seems like a lot though.
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Children aren't awful. Why wouldn't you consider the parents the reason the kids were able to eat the tide pods?
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"Funny thing about the Tide Pod"
They look delicious.
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So, over half the people think its a witch hunt, because... well... yeah..
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Don't forget about bernie while you're at it.
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Let's just hope none of his fans is a psychopathic biochemist... 'When his hits 100mil subscribers, you can have the antidote, until then bleed from all orifices!'
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At what point, if any, do we start holding PDP responsible for the actions of his fans?
So if I state that I am your biggest fan, you'll take the fall with the authorities for anything bad I do?
Sweet! I've always wanted a willing scapegoat. I should go make a naughty todo list...
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If I don't decry what you are doing, then perhaps.
That's the point I'm trying to make that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle.
Although to be perfectly amusing, PDP himself should get the encryption virus...
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What is good enough for you to denounce a tragedy in your name?
Is this [twitter.com]? This [youtube.com]?
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You post gave me cancer. You defended Pewdiepie in your post. Therefore Pewdiepie gave me cancer and I should sue him.
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Isn't that the official hashtag for Hawaii?
https://www.thehawaiiplan.com/why-do-hawaiians-love-spam/
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Only if fried with shoyu and onions, or in a musubi.
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Yup, this is the kind of shit that should get him booted off the service.
It should not, and will not. Like all ad-supported online services, all YouTube cares about is views. If he's not actually committing a crime himself, he gets to stay.
If he endorses this kind of activity, he might get booted. But not just for it happening.
Re:Format and reinstall (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh no, you're mistaken. There is a group of people who feel that individuals are responsible for actions of somebody else, whom they don't even know.
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Apparently quite a few of them have taken to posting on Slashdot.
Oh, how my Slashdot has fallen.
Once upon a time, free speech was the be-all end-all value of the Slashdot crowd. Now we can't even get a decent technical discussion going on a nerd site, let alone agree that people who disagree with us should be allowed to publish their ideas.
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Yes, I miss the days of the early 2000's when I first started reading slashdot. I used to learn a lot of shit in the comment section. Now I just learn what the extremists refer to their political foe by this month.
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Unfortunately, someone trying to promote the other guy could just do stuff like this to 'help' PDP and get him banned. If anything, at this point, youtube should suspend them both, put em in timeout and let them think about things for a month.
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PewDiePie is a decade old game streamer/video short maker, a real business. Their youtube channel hosts things that they own the rights to, so there is little legal mechanism for that treatment. Besides, the illusion of fairness isn't justice, in this case it is this character driving his foes to shame him in a game that they created. That makes you responsible.
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I was trying to decide if that was a parody.
It isn't really written in a heightened parody style... but does anyone really think like that? And do they have Slashdot accounts, where we all believe that "information wants to be free" and wear T-Shirts with the RSA code to protest the declaration of that code as a "munition"?
Surely nobody who has been posting on slashdot for 20 years would ever seriously entertain those thoughts, beyond parody... right?
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So because the creator of this ransomware is also a troll, you're going to say "fuck your data, my ego is more important" to the people who's data is locked until further notice... That's real human decency right there.
False Flag Success (Score:2)
I'm going to subscribe to T-Series now because of the retards that did this.
How do you know this was not the intent of the people that made the malware?
Think about it, who benefits most from malware like this... most people would think as you do.
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Fucking +2.
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He probably has no part or knowledge in it, but if he saw your comment I'm sure he would try to find out who was doing it.. To support them obviously.