Dose of Paranoia - 2025-02-16
It gets worse before it gets worse...
Good morning - I would like to announce my most recent Executive Order - renaming the Hudson River to the Weehawken River. I am currently awaiting Apple and Google Maps to make the change. And I will ban any (fake) news organizations who continue to refer to the “Hudson River” from my daily press briefings. Now that we have that important business out of the way, on with the Paranoia…
Infosec & Scam Stuff
Those interesting pictures on your phone - No, not those pictures… I know it is tempting to use your phone’s photo roll as a place to store all kinds of miscellaneous information, but it is NOT a good place for storing anything sensitive. Attackers have realized that folks are doing this and are using malware with optical character recognition capabilities to extract sensitive info from pictures. They especially like to target cryptocurrency “investors” with these attacks. Now is a good time to check which apps on your phone have access to your photo library and kill access for anything that doesn’t need it.
Lying liars and their lies - While the results of this study seem to be in the category of “did we really need a scientific study to tell us this?,” it is an important reminder that truth does tend to skew left. We are in a fight to preserve what used to be a shared reality that allowed society to function (if imperfectly). While illegal immigrant Nazi oligarchs and assorted fascist dirtbag politicians (too many links to post here) are using the breakdown in this shared reality for their societal ends, smaller time scammers are also profiting from the post truth society and amoral tech bros continue to work hard to enable them:
ByteDance has not yet released this new product, which can take a single photograph and turn it into a very realistic video, but they or someone else are bound to release it (or something similar) soon.
Here’s another tool - with a demo video that is screaming “use me for fraud!”
And the issue of fake remote IT workers (many of whom are agents of the DPRK) getting real jobs with US companies is getting out of control. I have spoken with people companies you have definitely heard of and heard their tales of hiring multiple remote employees who later turned out to be sending their salaries to the Dear Leader for his nuclear program. It is really bad out there.
And the simple truth of things is that normal people are simply not equipped to defend themselves from this all out assault on reality - as evidenced by the results of elections in the US and elsewhere. And there are signs that generative AI could be making our already pathetic critical thinking skills even worse - and the study that warns of this comes from GenAI pusher Microsoft. Talk about the “Leopards Eating Your Face Party…” I long for the early days of cybercrime… the stakes were nowhere near as high. And now some of the most dangerous cybercriminals are being handed the keys to the US Government infrastructure on a silver platter.
Tech Stuff
Some energizing news out of China - scientists claim to have found a way to rejuvenate lithium ion batteries (the ones found in our phones, laptops, and other gadgets), making it possible for them to be recharged up to 60,000 times, rather than the 500 to 2000 cycles which current batteries can attain. If this can be scaled, we could see lower costs and fewer batteries going into landfills to poison future generations. It would be good to see more stories like this one and fewer like this one coming out of China.
Fun Stuff
In honor of Black History Month (while it is still legal to honor Black History Month), this is an interesting story which I had not come across before - the story of the first home security system and its inventor, a nurse from Queens. A really inventive woman and another example of how nurses totally rock and are some of the hardest working most valuable people in the world.
Amidst all the collapse of what was left of the democratic system in the US, the news isn’t all bad… for example, humanity continues to break new ground in important fields of endeavor. There is hope.
And speaking of hope… the 100 year story of a simple Japanese candy and the epic struggles its maker went through to keep it alive is an inspiring read! I want to go find some of this to support these guys!