If you’ve not seen it yet, there’s a meme going around saying DEFCON is cancelled. It seemed to be purely a good fun troll, but it’s been gaining in popularity over the last couple of weeks. Then this morning I found what appears to be the official meme manifesto, and it made me wince a bit. Kind of…
Archives for July 2017
When Do You Step in to Stop Poor Countries Destroying The World’s Rain Forest?
Brazil just opened 860,000 acres of the Amazon rain forest to pilfering by big corporations. It’s been happening for a long time, but the speed has dramatically increased in recent years. This will be unpopular, but the Amazon is not a national treasure that Brazil has the right to destroy. It’s not like we in the U.S. decided…
Universal Income and Population Control Are Inexorably Tied
A lot of people—me included—are excited about the concept of Universal Basic Income. This is the idea of eliminating all or most of the need for someone to struggle to survive, thus giving them time to dedicate to higher-level efforts like art, science, etc. A basic example would be someone who wishes they could be a painter, or…
The Universal Arc
I’m creating an EDM album. Well, designing one. I’m creating the concept, the theme, the title, the song titles, the feel of each song, the type of music I want for each, the type of lyrics, etc. But I’m likely going to get someone else to create the music because it’s not something I have time to learn…
Good App Features Become OS Features
People are really upset that 1Password appears to be forcing users to store their password data in the cloud. Whenever stories like this come around I get asked what I use for passwords, and since I use lots of different things I simply respond with what I believe to be a truth about tech features. If something is…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 85
This week’s topics: The future of security testing, nuclear plant hacks, Android malware, satellite decryption, wildcard certs, military encryption, gsuite protections, WWE S3, tesla 3, jawbone, drone hacking, mental aging, millionare GPAs, discovery, recommendations, the weekly aphorism, and more… This is Episode No. 85 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec,…
Calligraphy Class
We did a calligraphy class today, and I feel an obsession coming on. Typography, calligraphy, writing utensils—these are pure beauty to me. This was a short beginner course, and we’re going to sign up for the intermediate one as well, which covers things like building your own “font”, using digital tools like Adobe Procreate to practice, etc. It’s…
If Putin Ran Against Obama in Middle America
I think if Putin ran for President against Obama, and the only electorate was white, christian, middle America, Putin would win easily. Here are some reasons. At least Putin wouldn’t sell out America At least Putin is a god-fearing Christian We need strength, not weakness We need someone who can make us respected again Putin might be bad,…
The Ransomware Trinity
There are three things that industries ravaged by ransomware tend to have in common. They have data that is sensitive enough to be protected. The industry lacks mature defenses. Someone in the victim ecosystem is willing and able to pay. Where we’ve seen this so far are places like: Hospitals Schools Small businesses Home users (to a lesser…
The Future of Pentests, Bug Bounties, and Security Testing
People are very confused about the bounty vs. penetration test debate. They see fundamental differences that don’t actually exist, and they’re blind to what’s actually coming. The reality of testing needs can be reduced to a few key variables, which exist on a spectrum. Good vs. bad testers Many testers vs. few testers High vs. low business context…