This is what is called the Internet of Sound, the speakernet. Using sound to send links to remote networks is one thing, but local lookup tables on-device obviate the need for another network: the sound is the network. Today’s technology is sufficient at present only to send tiny amounts of data through or above audible ranges, but good enough to…
Archives for July 2015
On the Doge Meme
If you’ve been around tech for some time, you’ve likely seen the Doge meme somewhere. It goes something like this: So wow. Such treat. Very amaze. This fascinates me for some reason, which I suppose is the universal ingredient in all memes. It instantly captures the attention, and makes you want to see more examples of it. In…
The Moral Cowardice of Liberalism
A poisonous hypocrisy exists within liberal thinking that threatens to undermine its credibility and usefulness. The issue is the chasm between its ability to empathize with suffering and its unwillingness to admonish the beliefs that cause it. Liberal canon requires one to maintain two opposing thoughts simultaneously, which I call the first and second laws of Liberalism. The…
Government and Mental Health
People are once again panicking about mass shootings. Let me try to simplify the problem: Society is currently built so that maximum pressure exists on normal Americans. They make too little money. They cannot pay their bills. They work too many hours. They have no savings, little if any retirement, and they are in constant fear of losing…
Uncommon Things Often Seem Uncommon to People
I just read a piece over on Hacker News titled, “No, I am not lost.” written by a black girl in Stanford’s computer science program. She wrote about how frustrating it is to constantly be asked if she’s in the right place, which makes a lot of sense. Let’s try to take another perspective on this, though. One…
The Dark Side of the Internet of Things
We’ve all heard the terrible stories about how the Internet of Things will be insecure, or how it’ll enable despots to watch our every move, or how it’ll enable insurance providers to charge us more money if we don’t provide them adequate information. Well, that last one just came true, courtesy of a program called Humana Vitality. The…
Mr. Robot Episode 3 Review
[ NOTE: There are spoilers below, not just for this episode but for the show in general. ] Enough people have asked me to start doing reviews of Mr. Robot episodes that I’m going to have a go at it. The deciding factor was the fact that I had such a strong desire to write during the third…
Insect Drone Swarms
I think the future of assassination and surveillance will be small armies of tiny drones. There will be people/entities with the big Predator types, but those will be so conspicuous and easy to shoot down. But what happens when any mob boss, or terror cell, or government can unleash 1,000 little mini-drones, like the size of giant beetles,…
Take 1 Security Podcast: Episode 17
Topics for this episode: Announcements [ ] New desk, new mic setup News [ ] SSL vuln spoofing issue, requires mitm [ ] Sleepy puppy XSS Payload Management Framework [ ] Troy Hunt on tech presentations [ ] Stock market attacked and taken down. Anonymous warned about it beforehand [ ] OPM goes to 21.5 million cards; director…
The Sleepy Puppy XSS Payload Management Framework
I am one of the leaders of the OWASP Bay Area group, and we’ve had some great local meetups recently—one at Twitter and another at Netflix. At the Netflix one last Thursday there were a few talks, including one by Scott Behrens on a tool called Sleepy Puppy. It is a great project, but it was pitched as…
Parsing Troy Hunt’s Presentation Recommendations
If you’re in Information Security and you’ve not heard of Troy Hunt, you need to get on the Internet more. Troy started as a developer, got some fame as a Microsoft MVP helping people out in forums, and then stumbled upon security. He started helping people out with securing their Microsoft websites, and suddenly realized there was a…
Rolling Interests
I have a lot of personal interests, and it’s strange and sometimes stressful to realize that I am usually focusing on one at the expense of the others. Here are some examples: Reading (fiction) Reading (philosophy) Reading (infosec) Reading (future / tech) Vim Web server optimization Security data analysis Creating security tools Internet of Things research Web security…
Data Lake + Analysis Algorithm + Unified GUI = Future of InfoSec Products
Splunk announced this evening it had purchase Caspida, a Palo Alto startup that uses machine learning techniques to help identify cyber-secruity threats from inside and outside the company, for $190 million. The deal has already closed, the company reported. Source: Splunk Buys Security Startup Caspida For $190M | TechCrunch This is interesting, and it supports my view of where things are…
I am a Lucky Bundle of Molecules
I am a lucky bundle of molecules. I received this form after the big bang happened, for reasons nobody really understand. Things blew up and there were laws that governed how they interacted with each other. Smaller things joined to become bigger small things. We got a few small molecules and started making stars, which in turn made…
Take 1 Security Podcast: Episode 16
Topics for this episode: [ ] Hacking Team Hacked, show which oppressive governments bought their software [ ] No exploits for non-jailbroken iPhone [ ] The FBI spent 775K on Hacking Team software [ ] Citi creating a digital currency, called Citicoin [ ] Clinton attacking China on hacking, “Said they’re trying to hack into everything that doesn’t…
On Curation and Quality
Apple has always had a poor reputation among hardcore Android and other high-choice users. Their main narrative goes something like this: I don’t need someone to tell me what’s best for me. I’m quite capable of thinking for myself, thank you. Just give me the maximum number of options, and I’ll build my own optimal experience. It’s a…
Lotteries Are Immoral
Lotteries are successful because they promote and market the idea—to the uneducated—that they generate income. They trick the poor and superstitious into believing that they are investing or making making money (via periodic, small payouts and regular massive payouts) when they are actually dumping it into the toilet. Just like Casino’s, they are designed to, and are very…
Where Libertarianism and Conservatism Collide
Conservatives like to think of themselves as Libertarians. They’re all about freedom and not having government tell people what to do. So they claim. But gay marriage and polygamy are perfect examples of where they don’t actually believe that. If they were Libertarians they wouldn’t be in favor of laws that make gay marriage illegal. They would be…
Why is Polygamy Illegal?
One of the Christian right’s objections to gay marriage was to say that if it’s ok for the same sex to marry, then why not allow people to marry multiple people? The classic liberal response to this is to scoff and dismiss the argument without consideration, but I personally think there’s something to it. So, from one progressive…
Apple’s Plans for the iPhone 6S and iOS 9
Let me tell you Apple’s plans for iOS 9 and the iPhone 6 Plus. This isn’t a spoiler post. It’s strategy prediction post, and I’d like to think I’m good at those. iOS 9 iOS 9 is all about stability and performance. They’re basically just making the system perform faster and more smoothly. This isn’t a secret; Apple…
Sesame Street Losing Maria
The block is losing one of its most beloved citizens: Sonia Manzano, who has played shop owner Maria on the PBS series for almost 45 years, has announced that she is retiring. Source: ‘Sesame Street’ losing Sonia Manzano – CNN.com This is significant to me. The last time I saw my mother she told me that the reason…