
The Persistence of Chaos - $1M for malware infected laptop - phprecovery
https://thepersistenceofchaos.com/
======
chriselles
Use a Bedazzler to put rhinestones on it, get Damien Hirst to sign it, name it
"For the Love of Technology", and it should sell for $50 million.

Get Banksy to light it on fire and the molten slag should sell for at least
$100 million. :)

~~~
beautifulfreak
Richard Prince could take a photo of a photo of it too:
[https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-
in...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-instagram-
photos-copyright-law-fair-use)

------
skrebbel
Would be cool if the ILOVEYOU worm author sues for copyright breach.

~~~
shshhdhs
Did that author actually copyright it though? Isn’t that a prerequisite?

~~~
NikkiA
Copyright is automatic in almost all of the world except america, and even in
america most forms of copyright do not _require_ registration.

~~~
code_duck
It is automatic in the US.

[https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/software/](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/software/)

"Even if you don’t put that little © on your work, you automatically get
copyright protection the instant your work of expression becomes fixed in a
tangible medium. Theoretically, this means that you own the copyright, and no
one may copy, distribute, display or make adaptations of the work without your
permission."

The difference is it must be registered for the creator to sue for monetary
damages.

[https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/registration-
and-...](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/registration-and-
enforcement/)

"You must register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office before you
are legally permitted to bring a lawsuit to enforce it."

~~~
repiret
A couple of additional points:

* Registration is also needed to get the longest available copyright term. * There's no need for the registration to happen anytime near when the work is created or published. If I needed to sue someone for copyright infringement for a piece of software I wrote and published in 1998 and stopped maintaining in 1999, I could file the registration on Tuesday and the lawsuit on Wednesday.

------
isoprophlex
I guess if a room full of blenders filled with goldfish can be classified as
art, this can be too.

Whoever thinks of buying this: I'll get you one for half the price.

It won't be "a work of art" but it will functionally be the same. I even
promise I wont neuter it's LAN port.

~~~
Quenty
Art pricing is weird

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/705278696/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/705278696/episode-189-why-
a-dead-shark-costs-12-million)

------
grepballsoffire
Perhaps the actual "artwork" is the auction itself, and we are all unwitting
participants. Or it's just someone hoping to make some easy money.

~~~
downandout
That would be interesting. Save all the comments saying it’s a scam and maybe
put them on constant scroll on the laptop’s screen. Name it _Art of the Scam_.

Edit: Looking at it now, this appears to actually just be a somewhat clever
way to get attention for “Deep Instinct” - a company that does some sort of
malware threat detection.

------
ineedasername
Sure, I know it's not a contender for significant monetary damages, but I was
disappointed not to see the Happy Birthday Shankar virus on the list. [0]

In my early tech days riding the helpdesk in college, I'd heard about it and
half thought it an urban legend. Then it hit campus, and I had to clean about
a half dozen systems. Not a complex process, and more fun than most given that
I could admonish the user, "You really should have wished Shankar a happy
birthday."

[0][https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/marker.shtml](https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/marker.shtml)

------
klingonopera
When reading through the list of malware, I would've really appreciated to see
in which year they were discovered. That data allows me to put everything into
context.

I wish more people would be aware of the importance of dates.

------
areoform
Comments so far have been focused on a reductive analysis of the piece that
reduces the work to its base components. Reducing Jeff Koons' One Ball Total
Equilibrium to a tank of salt water and a basketball
[https://whitney.org/Education/EducationBlog/OnViewOneBallTot...](https://whitney.org/Education/EducationBlog/OnViewOneBallTotalEquilibrium)
. Marco Evaristti's Helena to a goldfish in a blender
[http://artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/helena-by-marco-
evaris...](http://artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/helena-by-marco-evaristti) .
Or (more classically) Duchamp's fountain into a urinal. As modern art is meant
to be bizarre, this reductio ad absurdum feels true but it isn't accurate in
capturing the spirit and nature of these pieces.

We have been trained to see most works on canvas as art first, layers of
pigments second. Through education, the skill used to create them has become
evident to all of us - thereby sanctifying them from these criticisms. Yet all
art was subject to such criticism at one time or another. Some even going so
far to call Munch's paintings "An abortion, a failure like those Zola
described so well D'Oeuvre. Here is no longer a question of nature, only a
bizarre madness, delirious moods, feverish hallucinations" and "Are those
meant to be hands or are they blobs of fish mousse smeared in lobster sauce?"

Sounds familiar?

Art goes beyond the technicalities of the creation of the work itself. Art is
a form of communication. An attempt to have a conversation with a society. Or
an expression of the artist’s uniqueness. It can be that and so much more. The
point of art does not have to be linear technical accomplishment, it can be
the exploration of the bizarre and the strangeness of our world. The fish in a
blender were put there as an invitation to kill a being. The point of the
piece was the question, will a human being push the button? In a world where
cruelty exists at a push of a button that is a valid and fascinating social
experiment.

This work is original and creative in the sense that it packs what wreaks our
world into havoc into one device and puts it on the pedestal. Our world is
increasingly governed by blips of code. Bad blips of code have caused billions
of dollars in damage. In that laptop lies the power of immense destruction,
contained in a cheap plastic container. What does it say about us when we look
at it and the world we have wrought? Those are the questions that pop into my
mind when I look at the work. That’s what I feel the artist is trying to
communicate.

We will at some point recognize the audacity of this piece as art as well. But
we haven’t matured to that point yet. We still look at it as “blobs of fish
mousse smeared in lobster sauce”

Art is an ever-evolving conversation. All we have to do to appreciate it is…
listen more closely and relax the preconceptions that cloud our mind. Let them
all fall away to hear what the artist might have to say.

It is far more interesting to look at art this way than the common, reductive
lens.

~~~
outworlder
> Art is a form of communication.

There has to be more to it than that. Otherwise, this very message would be
classified as "art". If everything is art, then the term becomes meaningless.

> This work is original and creative in the sense that it packs what wreaks
> our world into havoc into one device and puts it on the pedestal

Works of art have historically required some effort. This is very low effort.
I could take a potato battery from a kid's science fair, give it some
fashionable title (something something society something technology mumble
energy from nature) and it would become a piece of modern art.

There has to be some standard, and these pieces should be amenable to
criticism. Otherwise, how would one distinguish someone's garbage dumb from a
piece of art? You can't.

From your link (Jeff Koon's ball):

> However, this state of perfection is fragile and impermanent. Temperature
> fluctuations and vibrations blend the solutions of water, causing the ball
> to move off-center and eventually to sink. The improbability of this
> sculpture underscores its metaphorical associations with life, death, and
> ambition that Koons carefully considered when he made a series of works for
> Equilibrium

That sounds to me like an excuse. "I'm unable to perfect this and account for
the required variables, so I'll concoct some story on how this is done by
design".

As for the goldfish in a blender...that is also low effort and provides no
real insight on human nature.

> The fish in a blender were put there as an invitation to kill a being.

Yes, and we know people will do that, by observation. A single fish and a
single blender would have been enough to prove the point. But then, it would
look like a 5 minute job.

In fact, it would take just as much to drop a pair of glasses against the
wall. This would be art by the above definition, and people actually though
so:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/arts/sfmoma-glasses-
prank...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/arts/sfmoma-glasses-prank.html)

It could be argued that it was a piece of art challenging art itself.

> In that laptop lies the power of immense destruction, contained in a cheap
> plastic container.

As a modern day's pandora's box, it's not too bad. Still. there must be a way
to convey this in a more profound way. Which way is that? I don't know, but I
only dedicated 5 minutes trying to come up with an answer. Maybe we could come
up with something better in a month.

Or we could place a MicroSD card in a pedestal with a couple of viruses, in 5
minutes and be done with it.

~~~
dahart
> There has to be more to it than that.

Why? What is it?

> Works of art have historically required some effort.

Effort is not a reliable or particularly good metric at all. Conceptual art as
a genre is not based on effort, sometimes intentionally eschews effort, and
there are many famous conceptual artists in the last century that have been
accused of low effort yet still changed the world.

> There has to be some standard, and these pieces should be amenable to
> criticism. Otherwise, how would one distinguish someone’s garbage dumb [sic]
> from a piece of art? You can’t.

Correct. You can’t, and you never could. There is no such standard, and there
does not have to be a standard. This is art, not logic. The questions “what is
art?” and “is this piece art or garbage?” has always existed and always will.

> As for the goldfish in a blender...that is also low effort and provides no
> real insight on human nature.

Goldfish in a blender as a piece of art tautologically says something about
human nature. To do something like that is human. To think it’s silly is
human. To write it off as low effort is human. To be concerned for the fish
while we’re blind to the animal and environmental destruction our economy
brings is human. The only way to deny that it’s making any statement on human
nature is to not put any effort into it and not think about it.

------
downandout
I don’t get it. How could the reserve already be met for an old laptop with
some malware on it? Current bid is $1,200,750. Is the “artist” very famous or
something?

~~~
edoo
Yes I'd like to know how he is getting over $1M for this. I have an old laptop
that would likely hold at least 7 pieces of malware.

~~~
larrybeck
Pure scam in operation here, no one is actually paying over $1M for this piece
of junk chock full of viruses.

------
system2
How is this even art? We literally have dozens of similar laptops with all
those viruses.

~~~
HenryBemis
I was curiours to read the 'terms & conditions', and I get a message:

AccessDeniedAccess
Denied9C4B36E7FC7ACA7FKsCbHsWgxW247njRoi1yEzHzhhyN26vG9Gf8OjWQPyLMf2/hVXnvQqZzGBuAxpBjMN0pReNJDYI=

For the hell of it I will bid with a throwaway and see what are the next
steps.

~~~
HenryBemis
22 hours later and no email from that website. I think it is a very nicely
spoof setup, perhaps they are harvesting names, surnames and emails of
potentially rich and stupid people (in which case enjoy one of my fake
accounts) *or" this is just part of the 'art' that leads to nowhere.

------
theturtletalks
Relevant XKCD:

[https://xkcd.com/350/](https://xkcd.com/350/)

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
And here's another one:

[https://xkcd.com/670/](https://xkcd.com/670/)

~~~
zzo38computer
I disagree with all of them. Maybe they have their own units, and a new model
may have a louder setting than before but they want to keep ten the same as it
was before, so they will put in eleven. If they make ten louder and make ten
the highest, then the setting might be too coarse.

~~~
justinclift
Amp knobs are analogue. ;)

~~~
klingonopera
That actually makes his original argument more valid, as that implies that the
volume setting is infinitesimal, and thus a finer scale actually makes sense
as it makes finer, more accurate adjustments easier.

~~~
justinclift
Really not seeing how that makes it more valid. ;)

