Author: David K.

Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work

A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: smartphones dangling from trees. Contract delivery drivers are putting them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Source: Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work

Our country has allowed companies like Amazon to extract and outsource an integral part of their product to individual contractors who are fighting over slivers of scraps. They have the money to hire real people, full-time, with benefits and everything — and pay for the fleet of vehicles — to deliver the products they sell from Whole Foods.

These delivery gig workers, in a lot of cases, aren’t even making enough to cover the mileage on their personal vehicles. Meanwhile, Amazon sits on $71.3B in cash, paid $0 in corporate taxes for the previous 2 years, paid just 1.2% this past year, and execs all laugh their way to the next exercised stock option worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As they say, “It’s good work if you can get it.”

People in Portland continue to protest, loot, and burn the place down, and the media wants us all to think this all about the Presidential race. In my opinion, this sort of inequality that’s really driving the rage behind these “protests.” Large companies in America have broken the implied social contract that a corporate charter implies. Amazon is just one of the handful of extreme examples. There are many others. It think it’s time to get serious about reforming unfettered capitalism, and limiting the size and scope of a company, based on how well they share their success with their employees.

The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into – The Weekly Dish

Yes, we still have an election. But barring a landslide victory for either party, it will be the beginning and not the end of the raw struggle for power in a fast-collapsing republic. In a close race, Trump will never concede, and if he is somehow forced to, he will mount a campaign from the outside to delegitimize the incoming president, backed by street-gangs and propaganda outfits.

Source: The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into – The Weekly Dish

The venerated Andrew Sullivan makes a lot of good points in this article, and seems to run a balanced take between both extremes, “pointing out the illiberalism on both sides,” as he says. However, this argument is something I see repeated a lot from people on the Left: that Trump is literally going to hijack the electoral process, and enshrine himself as a king. The notion is farcical. Why? Because I saw all the exact same arguments during the Obama years from people on the Right.

A big part of the continued problem with increasing polarity in our politics is because both sides are so entrenched in process that they can get away with drifting to the extremes.

Look at how much trouble there is in trying to pass obviously-needed legislation today. There are no policies being enacted. Except for the ACA, I can’t think of a single piece of significant policy law that’s been passed for 12 years. I’m sure people could pile on and tell me all the things I’ve missed, but the fact that I can’t think of them is problem enough. I watch this space more than most, and nothing else is coming to mind. And note that, when I say “policy,” I mean policy that helps people, and not corporations. All that’s been happening is that Congress is ramming through spending bills designed to enrich their campaign donors in the name of “saving” the economy. It’s deleterious and diabolical.

I can’t understand how someone can look at our log-jammed political process, our byzantine structure of state-level election laws, and the legacy institutions of the DNC and RNC, with their crazy parliamentary procedures, and think that any one person — no matter how ill-intentioned and popular — could sweep all that away in some move designed to create the second coming the Third Reich. Our system just doesn’t allow for it. There are too many checks and balances. There is too much paperwork already in place.

If my argument doesn’t persuade you, think of it this way: The people in the highest echelons of our government want to be “next.” They absolutely will not abide someone corrupting the well-worn-if-hopelessly-complex process to get there, including the other Republicans, waiting in the wings for their shot. So none of this talk is realistic, and I can’t consider it anything other than — to use the technical term — FUD. And both sides are doing it.

If someone were actually trying to understand “the illiberalism on both sides,” they would recognize this too.

On Monopolies, Apple, and Epic – iA

Google has built a complete monopoly on search. Amazon uses the sales data of its resellers to continuously expand and solidify market dominance. Facebook copies the competitors that they can’t bully into being bought to keep their dominant market position. Apple is partying in antitrust land forcing its competitors to hand out 30% of its revenue. The game is rigged. And no one is enforcing the rules. Except for Epic, the maker of one of the most successful games of all time.

Source: On Monopolies, Apple, and Epic – iA

Just a good article.

Tesla Will Build ‘GigaTexas’ to Crank Out Cybertrucks | WIRED

The site will be the first to crank out the company’s Cybertruck—the company near-dystopian all-electric pickup announced last fall— and Semi, now both set to debut in 2021. (emphasis mine)

Source: Tesla Will Build ‘GigaTexas’ to Crank Out Cybertrucks | WIRED

A certain Diesel engine manufacturer should be worried. Say whatever you want about Musk and Tesla, and hype versus reality, but there’s enough institutional money behind him and his company now to fix any problem and outspend anyone else in the electrified cargo-hauling space.

‘Wormable’ Flaw Leads July Microsoft Patches

Microsoft today released updates to plug a whopping 123 security holes in Windows and related software, including fixes for a critical, “wormable” flaw in Windows Server versions that Microsoft says is likely to be exploited soon. While this particular weakness mainly affects enterprises, July’s care package from Redmond has a little something for everyone. So…

Source: ‘Wormable’ Flaw Leads July Microsoft Patches

Every time I read a lede like this, I’m struck with the stark difference between Windows and macOS in terms of security posture. Apple releases patches for their operating system once every couple of months, and they contain a dozen or so patches. Microsoft releases hundreds of fixes every month. Sometimes multiple times a month. HUNDREDS! Every month!

Apples fixes are primarily about local privilege escalation. Microsoft? It seems like every patch note is for a “random interweb haxxor can pwn you”-type of problem. I’m sure I’m being overly generous with Apple, and completely unfair to Microsoft, but the difference in the general nature of the two kinds of problems is also starkly different.

The Microsoft fanboys will say that it’s because Windows is still the majority of the desktop market, but Microsoft has lost a lot of ground lately. macOS is around 15% of the market, making it a perfectly viable hacking target. So that can’t be the reason. I say it comes back to Windows having a DOS heritage, and macOS having a BSD heritage. The foundational assumptions these two systems were built on could not possibly be more different, and the ramifications of those differences are still present 30 years later. One is holding up very well. The other… isn’t.

I bring all of this up because the prevailing wisdom in Fortune 500 companies is that we 1) must run Windows, and 2) load it up with all sorts of first- and third-party software to A) “secure” the system, B) guarantee the integrity of the build, and C) lock it down as tightly as the internal staff can understand and manage. All of this approach is a holdover legacy from the 90’s, where we didn’t have much choice. What were we going to do? Run Linux? As much of a Linux zealot as I was — and continue to be — even I know that’s not workable. Now, it’s become a house of cards, with alternating layers of vulnerability mitigation and policy enforcement.

But macOS has matured. Almost all commercial software runs on it now. (The only things I know of that don’t are high-end CAD/FEA systems, but even AutoCAD does now.) And Apple has grown into a behemoth of a company, in terms of support capability. A truly staggering amount of money is being wasted in the Windows-ecosystem-based approach. It’s time for corporate America to stop — really stop — and think about the situation with a fresh set of assumptions. Do we really need to continue as we have for the past 25 years?

And maybe — just maybe — if we didn’t have to load up the corporate desktop image with layer after layer of software, trying to stem the flow of Windows’ suckage, my work laptop wouldn’t run its fans at full blast all the freaking time…

On the Twitter Hack – Schneier on Security

Whether the hackers had access to Twitter direct messages is not known.

Source: On the Twitter Hack – Schneier on Security

It would seem to me that Twitter probably has at least a really good guess right now, and the fact that they haven’t come forward, thumping their chest that the perpetrators did not have access to DM’s strongly implies that they did, in fact, have full access.

On eve of bankruptcy, U.S. firms shower execs with bonuses – Reuters

Source: On eve of bankruptcy, U.S. firms shower execs with bonuses – Reuters

Every time there’s a hiccup now, the government slathers a bunch of money all over all the current-crony companies, when the entire point of a corporation was to bear the risk of the market to reap the rewards of the profit. (Which they then hide in offshored shell companies.) Companies are running this country. We have a corporatocracy. Or maybe just a plain old plutocracy. The older I get, the more this sort of thing makes me nauseous. Let these companies fail, and give smaller companies a chance to get their foot in the door to take up the slack. No matter how much of a fan you may be of capitalism, you have to admit that the “market” is completely broken. Whatever it is we have at this point, it is NOT capitalism.

Twitter DMs of Obama, Musk and Biden Could Have Been Stolen in Hack, Experts Warn

“Absolutely, 100 percent that the DMs could have been compromised,” Jackie Singh, founder of Spyglass Security, told Newsweek. “I mean it looks like they had ‘god mode’ with seemingly few limitations and we don’t know how long they had it for.”

Source: Twitter DMs of Obama, Musk and Biden Could Have Been Stolen in Hack, Experts Warn

So Twitter has an internal backdoor system, which has been exploited by “the bad guys,” including access to people’s private messages. Since politicians are all over the platform, there are now national security concerns in play. Apple should bring this story up the next time the FBI/CIA/NSA demands that they implement a backdoor system that only “they” can use, in the name of the “war on terror.”

My Bizarre Stint As an Amazon Reviewer for Hire

The black market for Amazon reviews makes some sense if you consider how valuable positive reviews can be to sellers on the platform. With more than 2.5 million sellers on the platform, getting seen by customers who might make a purchase is no easy feat. As one friend who has been selling on Amazon Marketplace since 2016 explained to me, on Amazon, “the more reviews you have on an item, the more likely for the item to come up in an algorithmic search. The more customers like the item, with reviews, the more Amazon likes it.”

Source: My Bizarre Stint As an Amazon Reviewer for Hire

For many years, I’ve been complaining that you cannot trust ANY system of review on the internet. Always to deaf ears, of course.