Exploring the intersection of security, technology, and society—and what might be coming next...
Standard Web Edition | Ep. 303 | October 17, 2021
| SECURITY NEWS CIA Director William Burns says the agency is creating a new China Mission Center to counter to the overall threat from Beijing. “CMC will further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government.” More CISA has issued warnings on threats targeting water and wastewater systems. More Moscow metro has rolled out Face Pay at 240 train stations, which is a way for passengers to pay for their ride by just having their faces scanned. The tech requires no phone, no metro card, and no credit card, and privacy groups are worried it’s a mechanism for controlling the population. More Havana Syndrom has hit at least five US families connected to our Columbian embassy. “People experience different things. Some hear grinding sounds. Some hear vibrations in their head. The whole situation is very bizarre.” More Israel has developed a technology that can see live objects behind walls from over 50 meters away. It’s called the Xaver LR40, and it’s a portable system that can see how many objects are moving behind walls in real time. More The Pentagon is looking to leverage AI to crunch and analyze massive numbers of data feeds in order to predict enemy action hours or days in advance. The names being used for this type of capability include, “information dominance” and “decision superiority”. I love the idea here, and it reminds me a lot of skin cancer diagnoses. It’s great to have this type of analysis happening constantly, in tandem with human analysts who can’t review as much, or as fast. At first the tech will be a low-signal data point, and then over time it might become the primary source with the human being the final check and filter. Exciting and scary stuff. More Vulnerabilities: Companies:
TECHNOLOGY NEWS Facebook is hiring 10,000 people in the EU to work on the metaverse, which is basically their branded version of VR. More A Similar-ish Idea I Had From 2006 Coinbase is launching an NFT product later this year. The space is heating up for sure, and half the stories you read are either telling you its the next big thing or the biggest scam in the world. I’m 80% bullish, but still not sure if we’re too early. More More Twitter now allows you to “soft-block” people by clicking on them and selecting “Remove this follower”. More The US has taken the spot of top Bitcoin miner from China. More Tesla has a new insurance policy that adjusts your premium using real-time driving behavior. But it’s only available in Texas. You still pay monthly, but what you pay is based on how you drive instead of your demographics. More Sony is partnering with TSMC to build a new $7 billion chip plant in Japan. More Magic Leap raised $500 million to build a new headset, even though the last one fell through completely. It’s supposed to come out in 2022. More HUMAN NEWS The US inflation rate is at 4.3%, which is a 13-year high. More Around 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, which is the highest number since December of 2000. That includes over half a million healthcare workers. More This article is about just one startup, but I think the startup activity around the combination of psychedelics and therapy is going to be massive if/when substances like psilocybin and MDMA are approved. More CONTENT, IDEAS & ANALYSIS Opiates and Social Media Are Symptoms, Not Causes — A short essay on how I believe addiction problems often come down to a lack of direction and meaning. More Lifecasting: What It Is, and How It’ll Change Society (2002) — My essay from 2002 on how everyone would be streaming their lives using phones/peripherals. I, um, got the timing a bit off I’d say, but I think some of the piece is still pretty good. More Honest Signaling — I like this article’s approach to discussing NFTs, and especially this idea of “honest signaling”. Tons of people wear fake luxury products and there’s no way to tell at a glance which are real or fake. Imagine your eventual AR glasses being able to show that to you in realtime. As I talked about in my book, that is functionality we can guarantee will arrive because it’s been useful for thousands of years of our evolution. Few things matter more than being able to differentiate true and false signals of fitness/beauty. More NOTES I bought the new Apple Watch on opening day (I short-camped for it), and I would simply say this: if you’re 1) a watch enthusiast, 2) an Apple fanboy, or 3) you don’t have an Apple Watch yet and you’re thinking about getting one—I’d go ahead and get it. It does present as really large, clear, and bright. But if you’re not in those categories, I’d skip this upgrade. I finally got my sound diffusers from GIK Acoustics that I ordered about 6 months ago. They look pretty great, and I think they’ll help a lot with reverb in the studio. Image I finally did what I’ve been talking about for a while and got rid of the monthly subscription plan. Not many subscribers were left on it, but if you were on it you’ve been migrated over to annual. The cost over a year will be less than half the cost ($8 vs. 20 per month). I watched Squid Game with my girl this weekend. Not because I wanted to, but because it’s such a huge cultural phenomenon that I felt compelled. It was worth it, if only for that reason. I find all the Korean discussion of class warfare fascinating (see Parasite, Squid Game). I need to find some good analysis on everything that was being claimed or stated about society in the show. If you see any good writeups, let me know. DISCOVERY Remote Ham Radio More NFT use cases that could go mainstream. More OpenSea — An NFT marketplace. More The Great Re-evaluation More Sam Harris was interviewed by Scott Galloway at the Code Conference. More DDOSify — A high-performance load testing tool. More Building an end-to-end Kubernetes-based DevSecOps software factory on AWS (HT @ClintGibler for multiple links this week) More The OSINT Treasure Trove More ChangeMe — A default credential scanner. More RECOMMENDATIONS How to Take Over the World — One of the best podcasts out there right now, especially if you’re reading or listening to these words. It’s a combination of Hardcore History with extracted productivity tips from the world’s smartest and most productive people. More APHORISMS “If you are everywhere, you are nowhere.” ~ Seneca |
