MEMBER EDITION | Episode 302 | Monday: October 11, 2021
SECURITY NEWS
Twitch got hacked real bad. 135GB of data, including source code, internal tools, and streamer income data. More More
Facebook and most of its properties went down on Monday and stayed down for a long time. The problem turned out to be BGP, which is like the only way to fail harder than DNS (since it also broke DNS). It was so bad that badge readers broke, leaving people stranded outside buildings, and the internet saw a significant dip in traffic. More
The CIA is creating a major working group focused on countering China's influence. More
A Bank of America insider has been charged with money laundering via BEC scams. More
Yubico has new YubiKeys called YubiKey Bio that have fingerprint readers. More
Firefox now sends address bar keystrokes to Mozilla. More
90% of the Navy is fully vaccinated, but only 72% of Marines are, and hundreds of thousands of military personnel are running up on deadlines to get fully vaccinated before facing repercussions. More
Our supply chain problems aren't going away any time soon. The Port of Savannah is at 150% of its normal container count, and it's the highest load they've ever seen. It's not just a scarcity problem, but a kinked-hose problem with things stuck in various places messing up the chain elsewhere. What it's showing us is that the whole system is sensitive to cascading disruption. More
Vulnerabilities:
Companies:
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
You can now find your AirPods Pro and AirPods Max using FindMy. More
Analysis by the WSJ showed that the top 1% of Twitch streamers made over half of the money in 2021. A few streamers made seven figures while over three-quarters of streamers made less than $120. Only 5% made more than $1,000. But the most devastating stat was that only .06% percent made over the median household income of $67,521. More
HP has an iMac competitor that looks pretty rad, if you are a Windows person. And it's built around a 34-inch 5K display! More
Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, CA to Austin, TX. More
West Coast companies are expanding their search for tech talent outside of the big cities. More
HUMAN NEWS
Around 23% of the US doesn't have household internet. More
The first Malaria vaccine has been approved by the WHO. More
50% of the US believes the GOP is better at ensuring prosperity, vs. 41% for Democrats. And 54% think the GOP is better at managing terrorism and security, vs. 39% thinking Democrats are the better option. More
Norway is going to hit 100% electric car sales in 2022, which is three years early. More
Andrew Yang has formed a new political party, called Forward, and he's released a book of the same name. I'm going to get him on the podcast to talk about it. More
CONTENT, IDEAS & ANALYSIS
My Thoughts on NFTs — A lot of people have asked me my opinion on NFTs, and the answer is that I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm bullish. Why? I have a simple reason: I think there are many more types of value in the real world than are currently captured using traditional contracts and currency. And I think that once we have a mechanism for articulating those additional types of value—like maybe via smart contracts on a blockchain—we'll see more of those types of value. To me it's not about a particular item: it's about a mechanism for capturing, displaying, and sharing value. This TED talk captures it well as the phrase, "Digital Certificates of Ownership". More
NOTES
I purchased a Tonal exercise machine. So far I'm impressed. The way it applies resistance does feel superior, and the variation you get from the arm positioning gives tons of different workout types. I probably won't do a full review but I'll keep everyone updated on whether I'm a thumbs-up or down overall.
I just bought one of these knives. I tried to stop myself, but was unsuccessful. Note: Remove your credit card from your person before browsing this site. More
Just a reminder: I'm no longer putting the whole show in the podcast on non-member weeks. Only members (like you!) will get the full show via podcast, through the member feed, and of course there's no free version of the newsletter at all on member weeks (like this week). Just trying to make it fairer to members; it always seemed weird that the full show was available if you just listened to it. So we fixed that.
DISCOVERY
20 Things I've Learned in 20 Years as a Software Engineer More
The CEO of Y Combinator Core says if you aren't drowning in demand, you don't have product-market fit. More
An argument for using Terraform over CloudFormation. More
Retired Husband Syndrome — Where older women start getting sick when their husbands spend more time at home. More
My Logging Best Practices More
An argument that we're not in a real estate bubble that will pop. More
The Most-favorited Hacker News Posts More
Protect your GitHub Actions with Semgrep. More
Phrack No. 70 More
"Universities are turning into ideology mills." More
How a guy went from a Chess rating of 1200-1800 in 6 months. More
Why Curiosity is Better Than Being Smart? More
Andrew Yang talking about micromobility, which reminded me a lot of Sam Harris's chat with Balaji. More
Hugo themes ranked by Github stars. More
The New York Times arguing that you should set up your own VPN using Algo, which I've been advocating for years. More My Pitch
OSINT/Passive Recon — A Gitbook on OSINT and Recon. More
RECOMMENDATIONS
Make a list of the people you tell yourself you're on Facebook to see
Add their phone numbers to your phone
Set a calendar invite to call them every once in a while
Delete Facebook
Your life will drastically improve. Really.
APHORISMS
"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
Franz Kafka