Dose of Paranoia - May 26, 2025
It gets worse before it gets worse...
Important Stuff
Today is Memorial Day here in the States - and while the holiday has become more of an “official start of Summer” and excuse for more consumerism, this year it is even more important than usual to remember the sacrifices made by veterans across the years to preserve freedom and democracy in spite of the current administration’s continuing assault on everything that makes (made?) America a beacon to the world. I hope that their sacrifice has not been in vain.
InfoSec/Scam Stuff
Trust me - I’m (or at least I look like look like) Google - Scammers love to use "trusted” services/brands like Google and Microsoft to make their scams look more legit. One increasingly popular way that they do this is via Google Forms, with surveys and other forms which ask for personal information. People see “google.com” and the lock icon in the URL and think that the site must be trustworthy. In reality, the information entered into these sites goes directly to whomever set them up - including scammers. Google Forms can be used for legitimate purposes as well, but you gotta stop and think about whether any particular form is actually legit - and don’t enter personal information into them.
Safe(r) file conversions - One way that the bad guys get hold of personal/sensitive information from victims is to offer “free file conversion” sites which convert between formats like JPG and PDF, or which allow you to append files together or do other operations. To use these sites, you need to upload the files, and the operator of the site can now look through them for juicy tidbits of personal or corporate info. The FBI has even taken time out from investigating Trump’s enemies and flying its Director to Vegas to post a warning about this. Here is a site which allows you to do all sorts of file conversions without having to upload your files to the cloud (except for video files, which need to be uploaded due to the processing power needed).
Unsafe transcription - Here is a tool which at first glance looks really cool… install this free Mac app and you can take advantage of various AI services to speak text to your computer and have it automagically turned into typewritten text. But convenience comes at a cost - all that text gets sent up to someone else’s computer in the cloud for processing - and who knows what else. Your text might be deleted afterwards, but then again, it might not. It might not be used to train the AI models, but then again it might. Your text might be regurgitated back to some other random user as part of an AI response, or not. This is the problem with AI applications which leverage public models like OpenAI, Gemini, Copilot - we have basically no visibility into what gets done with (and who profits from) the data we put in. We just have to trust corporations who have repeatedly shown themselves not trustworthy and who are less and less regulated as time goes on.
Scammers read the news - Scammers always take advantage of current events - and the Trump administration’s targeting of health care coverage is no exception. The FBI is warning of an increase in the number of frauds involving “discount medical insurance” which, shockingly, don’t provide anything other than a walletectomy. Scammer scum are also using tensions over Social Security to trick users into downloading malware. This one is especially bad since many well meaning people are telling folks to “be sure to download their Social Security statement” as if that will protect their future benefits from a government run by criminals who think the law does not apply to them.
Tech Stuff
Skynet is our friend! - Google is working with Hollywood to promote films which depict a “less nightmarish future” for AI, presumably so that we will be more accepting of our new idiot robot overlords - I have a suggestion for them. Maybe put some of that cash and effort into actually BUILDING a less nightmarish AI future for us. Now that the federal government is in the hands of shitty amoral tech bros, maybe the States can legislate some AI limits to protect us. Oh, wait…. Time to call your Senator if you don’t want this to pass.
Good news everyone! - Wireless telegraphy will make war obsolete! - Ok, well that didn’t work out quite the way Marconi thought it would.
These nine rules for evaluating new technology, written when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (1987), seem like something we should have given a bit more consideration to in hindsight…
Fun Stuff
Want to make your home or office feel like the Situation Room with TV monitors showing live news from all over the world? Here’s how. This looks like it could be useful for getting a variety of views when there is something big going on. And it just looks cool.
Before there was Google, there were library information phone lines to answer our questions, and in Alabama, Auburn University Library’s information desk has been picking up the phone for 70 years and giving human answers to human questions.
Apparently, most people believe that the Universe has good Karma in their futures while others are gonna get whats coming to them for their bad actions - “even when it isn’t clear exactly what they did to create the good outcome” - this explains a LOT about where we are at the moment.