Monday, January 28, 2008

Administrators for 711chan.org, one of the websites responsible for starting Project Chanology, a “raid” or attack against the Church of Scientology and their website, slowed down their “attack”.

In an exclusive interview with Wikinews, an administrator of 711chan states that they will “probably stay away from the CoS [Church of Scientology].”

“We’re probably just going to stay away from the CoS raid. It was poorly managed. We could’ve brought down a lot more if we weren’t just a bunch of unorganized brats,” said ‘Plasma’, an administrator on 711chan.org.

“Many people from 711chan still want to raid, but the administration is sick of it,” added Plasma who also stated that “Partyvan IRC actually has decided to remove the raid.”

Much of the reason stems from the fact that the attack on the Church was meant to stay within 711chan and that users were to stay “anonymous.” An e-mail was leaked on the internet when the attack began exposing the script used to attack the Church’s website.

“This is not what the raid originally started as. Partyvan declares this as a threat to the network, and Anonymous alike. We have been under constant botnet attacks, 711chan hacked, and tons of drama over this. You guys did a very poor job of staying Anonymous. It’s obvious that a lot of you broke rules 1, and 2,” said a statement on 711chan’s website.

The rules they refer to, according to Plasma, mean the “Rules of the Internet” and are:

Both key rules were broken by users, according to Plasma.

The attack on Scientology was launched on Wednesday January 16 by a group labelled “Anonymous”, on the website “Insurgency Wiki”, a spinoff of 4chan which is also affiliated with 711chan. The “History” section of the site explains, in a satirical fashion, that the incident was prompted by the Church of Scientology’s attempts to remove a promotional video featuring Scientologist Tom Cruise from YouTube. Though YouTube complied with the Church of Scientology’s requests to take down the video, other sites such as Gawker.com stated that they will keep hosting the video.

One poster admitted to being a part of the effort, writing in a blog post “I have myself, as per instructions, loaded up Gigaloader and started bombarding the Scientology homepage. Theres [sic] something in the hilarious anarchy of the net that produces these ‘events’ every now and again.” The poster wrote that “Prompted I think by the Tom Cruise video, a new obsession is taking hold on the internet. An insurgency against The Church of Scientology.”

Not long after their attack, a previously unknown group called The Regime used keylogging to gain an administrator password to 711chan.org.

“I was actually away from home when I noticed my personal dedi was compromised (my bash_history file had lots of strange entries), so I informed Partyvan IRC staff (the CoS raid room as well as 711chan’s IRC room are there) and minutes later, 711chan’s machine was also compromised. I arrived home around an hour later, and immediately restored the contents of the 711 machine back to a previous state. I also got the passwords reset on my dedi and that was back in order. I went to bed shortly after that,” said Plasma in regards to The Regime’s attack on 711chan.

“The next morning I wake up to hundreds of MSN windows and emails telling me both servers have been compromised again, and our backups for 711 have been removed. The software we use to run 711chan’s machine got bugged up somehow and make it difficult for me to fix things, which is why the site didn’t respond at all for most of the day. At the time of writing this I still haven’t got the backups reloaded onto the machine,” added Plasma.

Plasma states that 711chan.org will be off line at least until the end of January, possibly longer, but the site is not expected to change.

“I shut down our server to prevent any more damage. Right now, our plan is to lay low and get stuff started up on a more secure machine. We’ll be back up by the end of the month, hopefully. 711chan will probably be staying the same it is, however,” said Plasma.

But they didn’t go down without a fight adds Plasma.

“As who the “Regime” is? I took a look at one of the things they planted on my machine, which lead me to #!!regime on GameSurge IRC. `immortal’ and about 30 drones were in that channel. Members of the g00ns community (allies of 711, also linked to Partyvan IRC) found out they had dox (documents such as phone numbers, addresses, SSN numbers, names, that sort of thing) on `immortal’ and his wife. I actually have these details and attempted to call him, but it went unanswered,” said Plasma.

The information that 711chan.org obtained was later posted on the website operated by The Regime. Wikinews has attempted to contact The Regime a second time regarding the incident, and they have only replied with “your articles are bullshit.”

Friday, March 18, 2011

At 9:00 p.m. PDT Monday (0400 UTC Tuesday), Microsoft rolled out the first stable Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) release, available in 39 languages, for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Internet Explorer is the most used web browser, responsible for 56% of webpage hits. The new version adds support for new technologies with relation to the HTML5 specification and several feature changes. The browser was released as a beta with a campaign promoting the benefits of HTML5.

It includes support for SVG and the HTML5 canvas, audio, and video tags. It has a failing Acid3 score of 95/100, below Mozilla Firefox 4.0’s 97/100, rating and the 100/100 in Google Chrome 10. The program is the first of its series not to run on Microsoft Windows XP. It includes a redesigned layout of the address bar and the ability to pin sites to the taskbar on Windows 7, along with several minor improvements.

The browser received mixed reviews. “IE9 as a Consumer Browser — Not Worth It,” Jason Mick, DailyTech, concluded. A study by Which? on Tuesday showed that IE9’s Tracking Protection Lists, an optional anti-tracking feature, may mislead users. “We’re disappointed with the way these lists work, and feel consumers who install multiple lists could be left with a false sense of security.” Dr. Rob Reid, Which? Policy senior advisor, said.

In a more positive review, a PC Magazine reviewer said that the positives of the new browser outweighed the negatives, and it is “a major improvement over its predecessor.”

The announcement comes after the company launched a campaign to get Internet Explorer 6 usage down to 1%. Microsoft delayed the Japanese release “to reduce load on network bandwidth at such a critical time” with reference to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan this past Friday.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

In February 2017, the Iranian Chess Federation announced two teenage chess players, Dorsa Derakhshani and her younger brother Borna Derakhshani, were banned from representing the national team. The federation announced their decision although Dorsa Derakhshani had previously decided and informed the chess federation she did not wish to play for Iran.

Dorsa Derakhshani is currently 21 years old and holds the International Master (IM) as well as Woman Grand Master (WGM) titles. Her brother, Borna, plays for the English Federation and holds the FIDE Master title.

Dorsa Derakhshani was banned since she did not wear a hijab, an Islamic headscarf, while competing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival in January 2017. Under the laws of Islamic Republic of Iran, hijab is a mandatory dress code. Her brother Borna Deraskhsani was banned for playing against Israeli Grand Master (GM) Alexander Huzman at the same tournament. Iran does not recognise the existence of Israel, and previously, Irani athletes have avoided playing against Israeli athletes.

Mehrdad Pahlavanzadeh, the president of the country’s chess federation, explained the decision to ban the players saying, “As a first step, these two will be denied entry to all tournaments taking place in Iran and in the name of Iran, they will no longer be allowed the opportunity to be present on the national team.” ^{((fa))Farsi language: ?????? ????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ????? ?? ?? ???? ???????? ?? ?? ????? ? ?? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ????? ??????? ? ???? ???? ???? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ????.} He further stated, “Unfortunately, something that should not have happened has happened and our national interest is paramount and we have reported this position to the Ministry of Sports.” ^{((fa))Farsi language: ????????? ?????? ?? ????? ????????? ?????? ??? ? ????? ??? ?? ?? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ? ?? ??? ???? ?? ?? ????? ???? ?? ????? ?????.}

IM Dorsa Derakhshani, who currently studies at Saint Louis University in the United States and plays for the United States Chess Federation, discussed her chess career, time in Iran and the 2017 controversy, and her life in Saint Louis with a Wikinews correspondent.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Buffalo, New York —The Buffalo Fire Department and Police were called to a hazmat situation at Canisius College on Main Street after security reported that a one gallon glass container containing chloroform broke, spilling about a pint onto the floor of the college’s science building.

According to communications by firefighters, who arrived at around 8:20 a.m. (eastern time), the glass container spilled on the third floor in room 318. As a precaution the building was evacuated and East Delevan road between Main Street and Jefferson Avenues was closed to all vehicle and pedestrian traffic while crews worked to clean up the spill.

At about 9:15 hazmat crews entered the room and began to clean up the chemical “using kitty litter” and fans to air out the room. They then sealed the material in a five gallon container. At 9:23 a.m. firefighters stated that they no longer detected the chemical in the air and began to pack up their gear.

Officials for the college assessed the situation and decided to keep the building closed for the day. “At 8:22am this morning the Public Safety Department and Buffalo Fire Department responded to a report of a chemical spill on the third floor of the Health Science Center. As the building is cleaned, the Health Science Building will remain closed today and reopen tomorrow morning,” a college official said to Wikinews, adding they could not confirm the firefighter reports.

Firefighters believe the container containing the chemical was knocked over while someone working with maintenance was cleaning the floors.

There are no reports of injuries, but WKBW reports that the maintenance worker was taken to Sister’s of Saint Mercy’s hospital not far from the college for observation.

Chloroform is a common solvent used in chemistry laboratories. Minimal exposure can cause dizziness, headaches and fainting while prolonged exposure can cause liver and kidney damage. It is considered a hazardous material and environmentally unsafe. Banned as a consumer product since 1976 in the U.S., it was previously used in toothpaste, cough medicines and pharmaceuticals.