Flu Simulations, Amazon Thermal Cameras, Facebook Bad Info Tracing, 5G Gates Conspiracies, Google Slows Hiring, Amazon Hires More, Technology News, Human News, Ideas Trends & Analysis, Discovery, Recommendations, and the Weekly Aphorism…
All right welcome to episode two twenty five starting of security news in coronavirus the US Department of Health and Human Services ran a flu pandemic simulation in 2019 called the Crimson contagion.
And the key findings from the report. Sound awfully familiar. It was basically things like we are prepared we aren't communicating well enough we don't have enough supplies.
So all the standard fare Amazon has deployed thermal cameras to detect fevers faster than with thermometers.
Facebook will start telling users if they've interacted with harmful misinformation around covered 19 it's kind of like contact tracing for better information.
Over fifty three mobile phone towers have been attacked in the UK by 5G. Conspiracy theorists and by the way I got an email from one of these people and they were like Yeah you're wrong about the Facebook story wrong about the 5G thing because it's really dangerous and it just went down the list of conspiracy theories and said I was wrong about them because they're all true.
So definitely tested out my spam future my mail client.
India has instituted mandatory checks on Chinese investments during the crisis in order to avoid China basically buying the country while nobody is looking got a cool story here on visualizing the occupations with the highest who virus risk Google is slowing hiring for the rest of 2020 Amazon is hiring 75000 more workers to keep up with demand.
There are multiple conspiracy groups spreading the narrative that Bill Gates wants to use his vaccine research as a cover to microchip people.
Oh by the way this this reader also sent me that and said that was incorrect and said that Bill Gates wants to kill everyone on the planet. Facebook has canceled all large events through June of 2021. And frame is a mental health gateway out of Los Angeles that connects patients and mental health professionals. It's kind of a two sided portal. Pretty cool idea.
Riot Games is offering up to one hundred thousand dollars to people who can find vulnerabilities in their VA Laurent anti cheat system great team over there at Riot Games.
Know a bunch of bunch of them. It's a really really solid team.
Zoom has hired Kate my sources Luda security to revamp their bug bounty program congrats to Katy for that rapid 7 has launched something called attacker K.B. which is a service for crowdsourcing vulnerability assessments.
It's an interesting entry into the quasi bounty market where you're using collections of experts to solve tedious problems. And yeah this is really interesting it's different than the standard. Standard approach they're what they seem to be doing is reading a vulnerability by how practical it is to actually attack it in the real world and using a group of actual attackers to do that reading they might be doing more than that but seems pretty interesting. Attacker QB. Advisories Patch Tuesday address 3 0 days and 15 credit goals for one hundred and thirteen and total there's a DNS Hijacking attack going around targeting links this router users and links this is notifying customers to reset their passwords. As AP patch five critical volumes. And there's a nasty bug in VM or center view Center which allows you to grab sensitive data and also add admin users. If you're on the network without credentials. Companies are weak. Security has raised 36 million to identify threats on the network interface look pretty cool but knows how good it is.
Similar interesting technology news left is pivoting to delivering groceries and other essential items while people were locked down. Stripe continues to do well and they just raised six hundred million at a nearly thirty six billion dollar valuation github is now free for teams really strong power move here by GitHub. I think everyone else is freaking out who competing against them. For rising has purchased blue jeans to get in on the video conferencing hype house party has had 50 million sign ups in the last month. Human News.
San Francisco is experimenting with the relaxation of laws as a pandemic coping mechanism crowds are gathering around the country to protest social distancing hilarious ideas trends and analysis coded will accelerate trends that were already coming. This is the piece I wrote.
I know.
Within the last week or so a vaccine won't return us to normal basic concept here's another essay I wrote. It's basically that the way people were sick before like getting the common flu or being constantly surrounded by people who are sneezing and coughing at work and people sneezing coughing on public transportation basically all around us people were sick all the time. We had the flu vaccine because people got the flu all the time which means cold symptoms flu symptoms coughing and sneezing and just generally being sick. Was just kind of normal. And it was the type of dangerous that people ignore when they're exposed to it. And suddenly when we get back to whatever. That is not an old normal anymore that is going to look super crazy. No one's going to know if that's a cold. If it's the flu. If it's cover 19 or if it's cover 20 no one is you'll know and that I think is going to cause more friction than people realize right now.
So I don't think the vaccine by itself is really going to help with that.
Colm how C.G. ping new era should have ended US debate on Beijing's ambitions sharp pronounced that wrong. The leader of China basically yeah.
His new era should have ended US debate on Beijing's ambitions. This is a deep level analysis on what China's actually trying to do and so is the next paper which is China's vision for a new world order. So these two papers basically a deep view into what China's actually trying to do on the world stage.
So really good reading and forget the time Marc Andreessen says it's time to build. This is a really popular essay. He just went around the Internet last week or so. And he's basically saying that builders matter right. And builders should be prioritized and we should just you know nose to the grindstone and build stuff make stuff pretty compelling. Although I did see on Hacker News already a pretty strong like counter response to it. So we'll see what happens.
Probably nothing.
You know how the main characters in spy movies are always changing identities. And like they just walked through another checkpoint and they give a different passport. That's always confused me and annoyed me for like the last 15 years. But it's definitely becoming hard to do in real life because the technology of facial recognition and identity tracking have advanced so much so you could basically subscribe to I'm probably a very cheap service and be able to identify people by their faces. Updates. So this is really cool really excited about this. I'm releasing a new podcast interview episode this week and the guest this time is Renee de Resta. She's my absolute favorite researcher in the space of misinformation campaigns. We had a really great conversation on multiple topics and you will get an email with a direct link later in the week when it goes live. Discovery jumping Fox notebooks. So one of my passions which probably now is her world of writing pens notebooks and of course typography. And my partner and I took a calligraphy class with brown fox calligraphy which no relation brown fox vs. jumping Fox to foxes but it was a really cool class we got to learn calligraphy and everything was right here in San Francisco. That was a couple of years ago and she just saw her doing like an unboxing and a talk through of this notebook which is called Jumping Fox notebooks and they're super nice. The best way to describe me I would say is they're like most keen plus plus they're just just higher quality. Most teens just much better. We got ours in the mail today and it's extremely high quality all around. Cover paper bookmarks. So if you have a fetish for writing in pens and pencils and notebooks should definitely have a look download networks. This is a script to download shown and data for a list of networks and a text file and this was released by John himself.
The opening eye microscope how to massively overengineered a WordPress install and NWS thing is hilarious PR is a vulnerability prioritization scheme from tenable that uses machine learning to forecast how bad the actual threat will be for a given vulnerability.
Interesting approach and recommendations if you absolutely must learn everything about this virus that's going around. I highly recommend with TRW Ivy to podcast with nothing but virus experts and doctors discussing everything about the situation. It's so refreshing to hear actual experts talking about it amongst themselves in a conversational sort of just open and friendly way. It's a really really good podcast and it didn't just start like to jump on this train or whatever it's there are like episode six whatever 600 something so it's a regular thing for them. They're all experts you get the latest possible news you get conjecture but it's informed educated conjecture because it's you know actual experts. And the aphorism for the week. Had a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute true.
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth. Eric Hoffer.