- Unsupervised Learning
- Posts
- Unsupervised Learning: No. 245
STANDARD EDITION | EP. 245 | September 8, 2021
MY ESSAYS
Is Anxiety Freedom Without Direction? More
The Original Meaning of Begging the Question More
SECURITY NEWS
Microsoft has released a tool to help identify deepfake videos to help counteract disinformation. More
Facebook is taking some pretty extreme steps to limit their blame for any upcoming election drama. They've removed new accounts linked to Russian propaganda and they're now going to ban all political ads for the week leading up to the election. I can't help but feel like they already know it's going to look bad for them, no matter what, and they're just trying to build a case that they did what they could. More
The FCC says it's going to cost around $1.8 billion to replace Huawei/ZTE wireless gear in the US. That seems low, but what do I know. More
Tensions are increasing between India and China, and India has now banned over 100 China-related apps, including PUBG and Baidu. More
The Pentagon has once again awarded the JEDI contract to Oracle over AWS. Amazon is extremely upset about this because they believe they're way better at cloud than Oracle, and that the only reason Oracle is getting the contract is that Larry Ellison is a big Trump fan. Like, host fundraisers at his house type of fan. I can see their point. More
There's a text-message scam going around saying "You, we came across a package from June pending for you. Kindly assume ownership and confirm for delivery here". Yes, it's a scam. If you're reading this you probably already knew that, but tell your loved ones. More
Vulnerabilities:
Cisco fixes a huge flaw in Cisco Jabber for Windows. More
There are around 450 thousand QNAP devices that are vulnerable to three RCE vulnerabilities in QNAP's Photo Station app, which comes pre-installed. More
Millions of sites are being attacked to look for a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin called "File Manager". More
Breaches:
Atrium Health, who used Blackbaud software, reported a breach of patient data between Feb 7 and May 20th related to the Blackbaud breach. As it turns out, Blackbaud's breach was really tens of thousands of smaller breaches. More
Millions of US voter details have been leaked onto a Russian Dark Web forum. More
Ransomware:
Disinformation:
Facebook and Twitter have been warned by the FBI that Russia's Internet Research Agency is active once again around election disinformation. They've created a new network of fake accounts and a fake left-wing news website. They also hired US-based writers to help with the believability of the language. More
Graphika published a 120-page report on a new Russian Information Warfare campaign that goes back to 2014. More
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Amazon gig drivers are putting phones in trees to try to catch more incoming work. More
Amazon is adding 10,000 more jobs in the Seattle area, and 7,000 more in the UK. More More
Walmart is launching Walmart Plus to compete with Amazon Prime. It's $98 instead of $119, but doesn't have as many advantages. More
Reed Hastings says remote work has been bad for Netflix, and that they'll be going back to onsite work as soon as they can. More
Zoom and enhance technology has finally arrived, thanks to the rapid improvement of camera tech. More
Facebook is working a wearable that will allow you to hear inaudible sounds in the real world, including enhancing the speech of someone talking to you in a loud place. More
Amazon has a new line of security cameras that can last up to four years on a single charge. More
Companies:
HUMAN NEWS
More than half of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US are living with their parents. More
Solar and Wind energy reached 67% of new power capacity added globally in 2019, with fossil fuels making up just 25%. More
Divorce rates are up 34% during COVID. More
Economists are getting more concerned that there will be a quick economic recovery—but only for people already doing well. More
Netflix is making a series based on Three-Body Problem. More
In Japan there are companies that help people disappear out of their lives that are so burdened with visibility, expectation, and responsibility. More
Chess is getting big on Twitch. More
IDEAS, TRENDS, & ANALYSIS
What Happened When I Went Full Stoic — I really enjoyed this piece, and I like how it found what I did during my journey with it, i.e., that it's a lot more like some Eastern teachings that tell you to maintain distance from the world so that it cannot harm you. More
What Will You Do if Trump Doesn't Leave? More
Riot Porn is making the violence worse. More
UPDATES
Bruce Schneier is moving his blog to Wordpress, and the trolling started immediately. Why are you moving to something so insecure! This is wisdom as old as "firewalls keep you safe". WordPress Core is quite secure (for a blogging platform). It's the plugins that get you. More
Well, I tried and failed again to create a shorter show this week. This one took me around six hours to assemble. I think I need to raise the bar for what I send to the review queue during the week.
DISCOVERY
A Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List More
Analyzing Senators' Stock Picks Using ML More
The Criteria for 10x Content More
My Thoughts on Editors in 2020 More
The Most Favorited Hacker News Posts More
Things I Learned From a Senior Software Engineer More
The origin of obscure UNIX commands. More
Someone fed Nassim Taleb aphorisms to GPT-3 to see if it could make more of them. More
Lessons Learned from Running SSH Honeypots More
Using VirusTotal's API to Detect Malicious Activity More
Red Team Village CTF Writeup More
RECOMMENDATIONS
There are an increasing number of studies (including this new one) that shows that vitamin D can be helpful with COVID-19. I'm being very cautious about how I word this because 1) I'm not a doctor, and 2) even doctors are still confused about this stuff. But here's one thing I can tell you for sure: it's probably a really good idea to make sure your vitamin D levels are not below where they should be. That's true whether this research turns out to be strong or not. TL:DR: Make sure you're not deficient. More
APHORISMS
“True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.”
~ Baltasar Gracian