What I would like to know is why are we only now hearing about it even though it has now been two years since the 2014 state actor hack. Some sites are now recommending Yahoo users need to change their Yahoo passwords & other details ASAP, but while that still needs to be done it seems a little late for that if two years have gone by since that hack. (By that I mean the aim of changing passwords is to prevent damage or further compromises or thefts.)

A number of years ago I was doing a significant amount of intercontinental emailing.  Because of its international presence I was using Yahoo! email for a substantial portion.  Nothing I emailed was politically or economically significant, but I tended (or tend) to comment on amusing (to me) topics of the day, usually making amusing (to me) comments or critiques.  In some of these, before The Age of Panic, meaning before 09/11/01, I commented in regard to atomic science and what is called “depleted uranium” munitions (in which the depleted uranium is an inert ingredient whose function is to control the reaction-rate of live isotopes, to produce a nuclear “flame-front” sufficient to maintain combustion in metalic armor [vaporizing it to plasma] for the duration of a penetration [until the remnant exits, running out of metal fuel, or the reactive nuclear isotope maintaining the atomic “flame” is exhausted).  The slowing of the nuclear combustion from free chain-reaction to a kinetic energy maintained “flame-front”, effected by the depleted uranium in “depleted uranium penetrators” that makes them effective as penetrators, as they are penetrating , like all slowing of al combustions from free full-speed to slower with lower temperatures, results in less complete combustion, and, therefore, more not fully converted (burned to final ‘clean’ form, pure ash) byproduct (soot, creosote, charcoal/coke, gas in chemical combustion, hot fall-out pollution, plutonium et al, in nuclear combustion), wherefore, although “depleted uranium munitions” work great, smoking straight through steel and depleted uranium (yes, the stuff is metal, like lead but slightly denser, and is used for armor, too, [tank turrets and such] being soft and kinetic-energy absorbent, hard to penetrate, except by combustion, and resistant to fracturing) and blows plasma (metal vapor, rather than liquid, meaning much higher temperature) out the other side where it exits, because of the nuclear “creosote” and “gas” being highly radioactive, and deadly for an extensive half-life, and widely dispersible as dust and particle in an extended, and extending, environmental area, use of the munitions needs to be banned.  They work so well, however, that those who use them (the U.S. and its allies, Britain, NATO, perhaps some others) not only do not want them banned, they want them to remain NOT classified ‘Nuclear Weapons”, which would bring them under all kinds of pesky rules and regulations and controls.

For this those who want to use the munitions dismiss those who question the use of them and roll their eyes heaving great sighs when the questioners suggest the munitions may produce more radiation, radiation damage and radiation sickness than the “old lead-based house-paint” that the munitions are regularly compared to for ‘radiation level’ (which is correct for the munitions in storage and magazines, and even after they are shot, before they hit something their active isotope component can set on fire and so, itself, burn).  These defenders get really pissed-off when someone explains how the munitions work and how they are able to do what they do, which I do, since it seems to me somebody needs to.  Which is one reason you had to slog through the preceding mini-essay to get to here.

Here is where I return to Yahoo! and Yahoo! mail and my use of Yahoo! Mail for international email, and shortly after I emailed some off-hand explanation, similar to the above using Yahoo! Mail.  My Yahoo! email provider suddenly changed, almost imperceptibly.  It changed from Yahoo! dot com to Yahoo! dot co.

The reason was, of course, that United States law, which The Powers, back then, were not yet sure they were in power securely enough they could simply blow off, prohibited getting into people’s private communication properties.  But British law did not…  Isn’t that cool?  Good ol’ Michael Hayden, at, if not in charge of the NSA back in those days, could keep his hands clean, and remain legal, not digging through my emails, by having Yahoo! switch my account to a .co, and so Britain-based account and having the friendly folk at GCHQ vac the account, legally, and send him, and everyone else in the U.S.A. copies, legally…

I suspect that in 2012 and ’14 it began to look to Yahoo! as if this practice might be coming up to scrutiny, and the open access to hundreds of millions of Yahoo! accounts by GCHQ, a “State Actor”, might require some arse-covering explanation.

As for me, if anyone is interested, I still have a couple of Yahoo! accounts, I think, but I no longer use email for any non pin-it-on-the=bulletin-board communicating, I am still a pain in the arse, covered or uncovered, to those who find me so, and I still, as demonstrated above, gratuitously explain depleted uranium penetrator munitions, and why they are nuclear weapons.