The globe just experienced the hottest May in recorded history, according to reports from multiple organizations. Ocean and land temperatures rose 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) over the 20th Century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That makes May 2014 the warmest May since the agency started tracking those figures in 1880. Both NASA and Japan Meteorological Agency came to the same conclusion — this was the warmest May ever recorded. Overall, this was the second warmest spring ever, trailing only the March-May period in 2010, according to the NOAA.

On Tuesday the 17th of June 2014 we received a well orchestrated DDOS against our servers, this happens quite often and we normally overcome them in a way that is transparent to the Code Spaces community. On this occasion however the DDOS was just the start.

An unauthorised person who at this point who is still unknown (All we can say is that we have no reason to think its anyone who is or was employed with Code Spaces) had gained access to our Amazon EC2 control panel and had left a number of messages for us to contact them using a hotmail address

Reaching out to the address started a chain of events that revolved arount the person trying to extort a large fee in order to resolve the DDOS.

Upon realisation that somebody had access to our control panel we started to investigate how access had been gained and what access that person had to the data in our systems, it became clear that so far no machine access had been achieved due to the intruder not having our Private Keys.

At this point we took action to take control back of our panel by changing passwords, however the intruder had prepared for this and had already created a number of backup logins to the panel and upon seeing us make the attempted recovery of the account he proceeded to randomly delete artifacts from the panel. We finally managed to get our panel access back but not before he had removed all EBS snapshots, S3 buckets, all AMI's, some EBS instances and several machine instances.

In summary, most of our data, backups, machine configurations and offsite backups were either partially or completely deleted.

(bold in original)

I truly feel for the people who lost their data. And I'd hate to be a Code Spaces employee today. But, I'm also somewhat less than surprised: using "the cloud" is, at heart, simply putting your data on someone else's computer. You get to share their resources, but you also get to share their problems.

After she died, a couple of weeks back, our local NPR station started changing the way announcers would pronounce Maya Angelou's last name. After decades of hearing it pronounced as it's spelled, An-jel-oo (or Ahnjel-oo), they've started pronouncing it "An-jel-oh". Turns out, they are right.

And about that same time, they started changing the way they pronounce the name of local Marine base, Camp Lejeune. I've always heard it pronounced Camp Le-zhoon, but they started pronouncing it Camp Le-zhurn. Some invisible 'r' had snuck its way in there. Turns out, they were right, too.

This week in random music shuffling...

1. King Kahn & The Shrines - Born To Die. New garage revival, with horns.
2. The Pharcyde - Oh Shit. Giddy old-school hip-hop.
3. Guru - La Bien, La Mal. Old-school hip-hop, partiellement en Français.
4. Junior Wells & Buddy Guy - Hoodoo Man Blues. Awesome tune. Legend is that Guy had to run his guitar through an organ because he didn't have an amp.
5. John Pizzarelli - Be My Baby Tonight. Can't find that one on YouTube, so here's a link to a live "I Got Rhythm" on his 7-string guitar.

You?

But in Trance the burglar (played by James McAvoy) didn’t have to take a test, I thought. His hypnotherapist (played by Rosario) only had to say a few lines and the thief was immediately torpedoed back to the day that he’d stolen the painting, seeing the details as clearly as if it were really happening to him. As if reading my mind, Guzy explained that the movie simplified the hetero hypnotic process, and for good reason. “We can’t show hypnotic inductions on TV or in movies because people [watching the movie] will go into a hypnotic state.” She said it’s happened before.

Dark yellow / brown.

You?

Mail Online

It's time, once again, and for the 35th time this year, to update The List.

A shooter fatally shot one student at a suburban Portland, Oregon, high school Tuesday morning, authorities said. The gunman is also dead.

Freedom.

USA PATRIOT 802 (c):

`(5) the term `domestic terrorism' means activities that--

    `(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal 
           laws of the United States or of any State;

    `(B) appear to be intended--

        `(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

        `(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

        `(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, 
          assassination, or kidnapping; and

   `(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.'.

The couple who shot to death two Las Vegas police officers, a third person and then themselves delivered an ominous message as they left their home before the ambush with a shopping cart of weapons, a neighbor said.

"We gotta do what we gotta do," the husband told Kelly Fielder, adding that he and his wife were leaving for an "underground world."

The wife then embraced the neighbor and said, "I am so sorry."

Fielder said she had heard the couple make anti-government statements in the past — including a desire to overthrow the government and President Obama and kill police officers — but did not think they were serious.

But as the duo left their home on Sunday, they were deadly serious.

They barged into CiCi's Pizza, yelled “This is the start of a revolution!” and started firing, witnesses told police. Authorities said they stripped the dead officers of their weapons and ammunition

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the shooters covered the dead officers with the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden flag, which depicts a coiled snake and the words “Don’t Tread On Me.”

They were also among the dipshits who hung around with professional welfare cheat, Cliven Bundy.

Clark County assistant sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters at a press conference that the shooters placed a swastika on one of the two Las Vegas police officers they shot and killed Sunday at a local restaurant. The pair went on to shoot and kill another person before killing themselves.

But McMahill cautioned against presuming that the couple were neo-Nazis or white supremacists.

"One of the things that we believe at this point with the swastika is that we don't necessarily believe that they are white supremacists or associated with the Nazi movement," he said.

"We believe they equate government and law enforcement with fascism and those that support with Nazis," he continued. "They believe that law enforcement is the oppressor and they are associated with the Nazi movement."

Someday, maybe, the radical "conservative" mullahs who spread these messages of hate and death will be held responsible for the actions of their followers.

There were books in our hotel room this past weekend. I assume for decoration, but I read some of them anyway. Here's an excerpt from the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version of "The Japanese", Jack Seward, 1972.

A major difference between Japanese and American social attitudes is seen in what could be called the curve of freedom. In Japan this curve would be plotted in a way precisely opposite to ours. There, childhood and old age are the years of greatest freedom, while adult years are those most restricted by the pressures and demands of society. Imperceptibly at first, and very gently, young adults are pushed into the mold which will prepare them for foreordained roles in their country's society. It is inevitable that the college student will rebel. When he does, his tantrums are tolerated, for he is on the very threshold of adulthood, the most trying stage of his life. Although under increasing pressure to repress his individuality, he still enjoys a few freedoms, which will soon be denied him. After graduation he must enter a business world that still functions largely on feudal principles. He must accept such a future, but he resents the necessity.

It is in this frame of mind that Japanese students demonstrate, protest, riot and confront. It is their one last despairing plea for the larger social justice of an ideal world before they are molded firmly into the real one.

Oh those crazy Japanese - so different from Americans! American adulthood is just a playground of irresponsibility and disregard for societal demands.