The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’ll gonna murder you in your sleep.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Facebook’s fake account detection mechanisms can be defeated 80 percent of the time with the help of automated tools, researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) have found after an eight-week test.

The research team, composed of Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, and Matei Ripeanu, created a network of 102 bots designed to mimic humans on social networks, and released them on Facebook with the intent of befriending as many users as possible and collecting private information.

“Creating a user account on an OSN [online social network] involves three tasks: providing an active email address, creating a user profile, and sometimes solving a CAPTCHA. […] We argue that an adversary can fully automate the account creation process,” the researchers wrote in a research paper which they plan to present at the 27th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference next month.

This is not a new type of attack: malware threats like Koobface have long used automatically created accounts to spam malicious links. This pushed Facebook to develop specialized detection mechanisms over the years.

Unfortunately, these defense systems are not effective enough, according to UBC researchers.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lost an appeal in the U.K.’s High Court on Wednesday that sought to block his extradition to Sweden on potential charges of rape and molestation.

Assange is wanted by Swedish prosecutors for questioning about sexual encounters with two women in August 2010. Both women have told Swedish prosecutors the incidents were not consensual, although Assange’s attorneys have argued the opposite.

The two-judge panel said that European Arrest Warrant issued for Assange was proportionate and valid, and the offenses alleged against him are criminal in both the U.K. and Sweden.

Assange can still appeal Wednesday’s ruling to the U.K. Supreme Court.

Yesterday saw a large general strike take place in Oakland, San Francisco and around the Bay Area. Some reports say the crowd numbered anywhere from 5,000 to over 10,000. Part of the general strike involved a march across the Bay Bridge and then the Port of Oakland was blocked and shut down. Later that night, some protesters clashed with police and attacked corporate property. While these types of actions are normal in most large protests around the world, the minor property damage has prompted some hand-wringing today from parts of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some protesters are saying that these actions don’t reflect the movement, when in fact may people support property destruction aimed at violent corporations.

This is an unfinished work—a snapshot of history as it occurred, experienced by me, reported on social media, or retold by trusted comrades. It will lack the finality of hindsight. Contained within is my account of the Oakland Insurrection as it has unfolded over the past days and weeks. Both the insurrection and this essay are works of hope. I hope that we push forward on the streets of Oakland, the Bay Area, and everywhere else, to the limit of what is possible—beyond occupation and the proposed general strike to “total freedom” for us all.