Dose of Paranoia - 2025-11-21
It gets worse before it gets worse...
Important Stuff
Kash is watching you (creepily intently) - If you don’t think we here in the US are living in an authoritarian surveillance state, I have news for you. Well really, The Guardian has news for you. I don’t know why this story is not getting more airtime… when the FBI and NYPD are “gaining access” to a private Signal chat group meant for people who are monitoring the immigration (kangaroo) courts, doing nothing illegal, we have crossed a line. Now more than ever, law enforcement is not your friend even if (especially if?) you are a law abiding citizen… follow this advice from the National Lawyers Guild in all interactions with them. I mean, when the head of the FBI looks like every guy your parents told you not to take candy from, you know we are in trouble.
InfoSec/Scam Stuff
This article is a long read, but it gives an interesting view into the world of scammers based in India who target both their compatriots and victims in Western nations. Many of these people see fraud and scams as the only “good” work available to them and see scamming “wealthy foreigners” as fair payback in an economy which is becoming more and more unequal. Given the direction that the US economy is taking with corporations laying off thousands to drive stock prices higher, what looks like a monstrous AI bubble, and the seeming evaporation of opportunities for white collar workers, could this be a preview of our future? Going to be reading this author’s book when it is available in the US.
As a cat owner, this particular scam really makes me mad (although not as mad as the cat above)… yet another place where AI is helping the bad guys extract money from emotionally distraught victims and continues to lower the trust level of our society… if there is an afterlife, I hope these guys spend it being forced to eat used kitty litter.
Clickfix scams like the one shown above are really insidious - by getting the user to copy and paste some text from a browser window to a command prompt on their computer, the attacker is able to install malicious software on the victim’s computer. If you are interested in the technical details of this attack, which can be waged against any type of computer, this article has a good explanation. The key thing to watch out for in these attacks is the instruction to open a “Powershell,” “Command",” or “Terminal” window or the “Windows Run” command or being told to press the Windows+R keys. These are all things that a legitimate web site will NEVER ask you to do.
Tech Stuff
If you want a story that sort of sums up where we are in the whole AI/tech startup world, well here it is. Sort of reminds me of another story…
And in other AI news, the Trump administration seems to be having second thoughts about an executive order aimed at preventing US states from passing laws to protect citizens from AI abuses. Trump and his oligarch cronies really want a free hand in using AI to consolidate their hold on society and extract as much of your money as possible, but even our spineless legislative branch seems to know that this is a bad idea in a world where the Federal government is for sale to the highest bidder. In a saner timeline, our Federal government would be busy writing regulations to protect us from the predations of Big Tech and its AI products, but that’s not the timeline we are in, thanks to the mouth breathing, hateful, garbage humans who voted for the current administration. Not that I hold a grudge.
Fun Stuff
Remember “Management By Walking Around?” Well, that was nowhere near good enough for this 1930s Czech shoe magnate, who built his executive office in a giant freaking elevator so that he could move it to every one of the 16 floors of his headquarters building. I definitely recommend taking 4 minutes to watch this video about it.
We cybersecurity folks are not to be messed with - even if you are a raccoon. Maybe especially if you are a raccoon. We take our approach to APTs (Advanced Persistent Trashpandas) waaaay too seriously sometimes.
This three minute video made out of thousands of scans of Japanese newspaper clippings is hypnotic - and when you think about the attention to detail required to make it, uniquely Japanese. Like this hidden burger joint, which is definitely on the itinerary for my next trip to Tokyo.
Books of the Week
1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin - An interesting look at the people and events surrounding the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression. While many analysts are predicting bad times ahead when what certainly appears to be the current “AI bubble” inevitably pops, it is important to note that there were a few things about the 1929 unpleasantness that were different than our current predicament. The main one (IMHO) was the relative newness of widespread consumer credit and its wide application as a way for normal folks to jump in to the stock market, which was also very new to them. The levels of market speculation in the 1920s seem pretty insane, especially when you consider that many of the people doing the speculating were really not well informed about how markets work. Add to that an almost total lack of laws and regulations to protect the small investor and the ususal predatory behavior of financial moguls and the crash was inevitable. If we get a crash this time, it will be different, but it will be painful for us all, nonetheless. Anyway, a very readable and thought provoking book.
The Machine Stops by EM Forster (available for download as a PDF here) - it is amazing that this novella was published in 1909 - it is eerily prescient of our society today - from Zoom calls, to social media, to social isolation, to short attention spans, to the worship of technology. Things don’t end well for the people of the Machine. Also worth a read - maybe even scarier than “1929.”
I'm still waiting for the crypto/blockchain bubble to collapse.