Category: Entertainment

There’s a famous story told in chassidic literature that addresses this very question.

The master teaches the students that God created everything in the world to be appreciated since everything is here to teach us a lesson. One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from the atheists? Why did God create them?”

The master responds “God created the atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he could bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”

This means, the master continued, that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say “I’ll pray that God will help you.” Instead, for that moment you should become an atheist, imagine there is no God who could help, and say “I will help you.”

If there is redemption in religion, I believe it comes when religious people understand this story.

Source: My memory hearing this story countless times in my youth. Chassidic stories are typically transmitted orally, and at times you’ll find the same story attributed to different sources. The classic collection Tales of the Hasidim Volume 2 by Martin Buber (Schocken Press, 1958) has a condensed version of this story (titled “When is it good to deny the existence of God”) attributed to Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, the late 18th century student of Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg and teacher of Rabbi Mendel of Kosov. Other versions of this classic tale are probably found in many anthologies of chassidic tales.

Gil Yehuda

why exposing this personal data?
well we have learnt it seems quite clear nobody pays attention if you just come
and say ‘hey, FBI is using your device details and info and who the fuck knows
what the hell are they experimenting with that’, well sorry, but nobody will care.
FBI will, as usual, deny or ignore this uncomfortable thingie and everybody will
forget the whole thing at amazing speed. so next option, we could have released
mail and a very small extract of the data. some people would eventually pick up
the issue but well, lets be honest, that will be ephemeral too.
So without even being sure if the current choice will guarantee that people
will pay attention to this fucking shouted
‘FUCKING FBI IS USING YOUR DEVICE INFO FOR A TRACKING PEOPLE PROJECT OR SOME
SHIT’ well at least it seems our best bet, and even in this
case we will probably see their damage control teams going hard lobbying media
with bullshits to discredit this, but well, whatever, at least we tried and
eventually, looking at the massive number of devices concerned, someone should
care about it. Also we think it’s the right moment to release this knowing that
Apple is looking for alternatives for those UDID currently and since a while
blocked axx to it, but well, in this case it’s too late for those concerned
owners on the list. we always thought it was a really bad idea. that hardware
coded IDs for devices concept should be erradicated from any device on the
market in the future.

so now candy was delivered.
few words, and just a few, about how the shit came. we don’t like too much
about disclosing this part, we understood it would be needed, so, fuck
whatever. lost asset. Hope it serves for something.

During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by
Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action
Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the
AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files
were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of
“NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS
devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device,
type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone
numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people
appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no
other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.

so…penis.

to journalists: no more interviews to anyone till Adrian Chen get featured in
the front page of Gawker, a whole day, with a huge picture of him dressing a
ballet tutu and shoe on the head, no photoshop. yeah, man. like Keith
Alexander. go, go, go.
(and there you ll get your desired pageviews number too) Until that happens,
this whole statement will be the only thing getting out
directly from us. So no tutu, no sources.

AntiSec on why they dumped this – http://pastebin.com/nfVT7b0Z