Amazon’s Quick Order Buttons

Posted on July 27, 2020 by David K.

You know, for when you run out of VOIP phones, and you need to quickly order some more. Truly, Amazon’s AI/ML is on-point.

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

Posted on July 23, 2020 by David K.

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.

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‘Wormable’ Flaw Leads July Microsoft Patches

Posted on July 22, 2020 by David K.

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…

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On the Twitter Hack – Schneier on Security

Posted on July 21, 2020 by David K.

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.

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

Posted on July 17, 2020 by David K.

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

Posted on July 16, 2020 by David K.

“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.”

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My Bizarre Stint As an Amazon Reviewer for Hire

Posted on July 15, 2020 by David K.

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.

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U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation – Reuters

Posted on July 15, 2020 by David K.

McGirt, 71, has served more than two decades in prison after being convicted in 1997 in Wagoner County in eastern Oklahoma of rape, lewd molestation and forcible sodomy of a 4-year-old girl. McGirt, who did not contest his guilt in the case before the justices, had appealed a 2019 ruling by a state appeals court in favor of Oklahoma.

Source: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation – Reuters

Who continues to argue a 20-year-old case, at 71 years old, with a 1,000-year sentence, for raping a toddler, when you plead guilty to the charge?! A puppet, that’s who. People behind the scenes are using this case to wrest control of a large chunk of land away from the state of Oklahoma, and the power that will come with it. That is the real story. Who are the protagonists here? What’s their agenda? What have they been doing for the past 20 years?

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PhRMA sues to stop state’s new insulin affordability program – StarTribune.com

Posted on July 5, 2020 by David K.

“A state cannot simply commandeer private property to achieve its public policy goals,” said PhRMA’s complaint, filed Tuesday in district court. “The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from attempting to solve societal problems in this draconian manner.”

Source: PhRMA sues to stop state’s new insulin affordability program – StarTribune.com

If their “alternatives” were working, people wouldn’t be dying from rationing insulin. The only thing “draconian” about this situation is the feudalistic caste system we seem to have recreated in modern America.

This country was started so that we wouldn’t have to live under the regime of a bunch of wealthy landowners who controlled the lives of those who worked their land. The large corporations — who don’t just control the means of production — but use the courts to prevent competition — get to unilaterally dictate their will to us serfs. This move is a complete abrogation of the implied social contract of a corporation. We wouldn’t even be in this position if they hadn’t been so greedy, and extracted so much from society for the past 5 decades.

Go ahead, I dare you to read up on how much money pharmaceutical companies have taken from the US government to develop all those medicines they advertise constantly on television, how much it costs to make them, and then how much they charge for them. The insurance companies have allowed this situation to develop, and get so bad that society cannot bear the weight of it any longer.

When the US finally adopts socialized medicine, the capitalism-lovers who wring their hands and call it communism will have nothing to blame except the corporatocracy that made it inevitable, and no one to blame except themselves for continuing to support a system that is leaving more and more people to fall through the cracks, and fend for themselves when they are the most vulnerable, until they become the majority, and vote with their pocketbooks to rebalance the equation.

Don’t tell me horror stories about health care systems in Canada or England. I hear horror stories from our own stupid system every single week, from rich and poor alike, and you do too, even if you ignore them.

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Crafting in Elder Scrolls Online

Posted on June 22, 2020 by David K.

Naturally, crafting in ESO is a very MMO-grindy type of thing. Since the start, I had been intending that my main character would be able to craft all the gear that I’d want to use on him. The best set of craftable gear for a light-gear magicka user seems to be the New Moon Acolyte equipment. It requires knowing all 9 traits to craft, and the 9th trait — nirnhoned — is a rabbit hole in and of itself, which I won’t even bother going into here.

Even after solving the nirnhoned rabbit hole problem, there’s the simple issue of time. Researching the 9th trait on any single piece of light gear takes 64 days. Sixty-four in-real-life days, though you can do 3 pieces at a time.

Now, you only need 5 pieces to make a set, so the natural thing to do is to create shoes, pants, chest, belt, and gloves, and finish your armor with a head-and-shoulders monster set. So, at a minimum, there’s something like 8 months required to research enough traits to break into this end-game build-out.

So, for grins, I just searched around on Tamriel Trade Center, and found New Moon Acolyte gear in a guild store. Turns out some master crafter had the same idea. I found all 5 pieces, with the divines trait, and magicka enchantment, just like I intend to create. It costs, like, $6K per item. So it only cost me like 30,000 gold to just buy the stuff, and anyone can afford that.

I guess I’m going to be playing the game, and time will be passing, so I can keep researching, and eventually be able to do this myself, but this experience has really slowed my roll on bothering with the whole thing. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of upside to solving the nirnhoned puzzle to get to the point of being able to create 9-trait gear.

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