More notes on what's been stealing my attention across the interwebnets

This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.

I’m slowly working on another rambling blog post, this time about real-time bidding over your web browsing habits. It’s about how in spite of all the sophisticated spyware and NSA data harvesting tools we get freaked out over, the mundane reality is that a good chunk of state (and non-state actor) surveillance is often just about having a budget line and a credit card, and doesn’t require anything more sophisticated than knowing where to buy commercially available data much in the way any company wanting to target their online advertising would. The real story is automated, boring and yet more crap-your-pants serious. Everyone’s worried about 0days and sophisticated exploits. Vast troves of data for fairly targeted campaigns are collected by your devices and software running as intended. Don’t give me any “I got nothing to hide” business. Yes you do. Especially you… whoever you are.

A few spoilers for the next in-progress blog post:

• Woman Sues Sex Toy Retailer Adam and Eve, Claims It Shared Data About Her Dildos
• Data broker allegedly selling de-anonymized info to face FTC lawsuit after all
• Web Browsing Data Is ‘Serious Security Threat’ To U.S. And EU, New Reports Show

Read these and you can likely provide the “tl;dr” of my next post.

Meanwhile, for the romantics…

The true meaning of February the 14th.

Forget Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re celebrating the 245th anniversary of the day when native Hawaiians stabbed their nemesis Captain Cook to death in warm lapping surf of Kealakekua Bay with someone you love.

News of the cybers snd such…

Canada wants to ban Flipper Zero. I just put in an order for one of these the other day having wanted to play around with them for a few years now. Canada reminded me I should put in the order before UK does something similarly dim considering our own policymakers often tech illiterate approach to legislation. Dan Goodin asks: “How do you ban a device built with open source hardware and software anyway?”

Israel uses iStock photo from Moldova to whitewash treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. It’s not just gross, it’s lazy. In a short videos clip, the state of Israel’s official Twitter (x.com, whatevs) account repurposed an image of a refugee camp in Moldova taken in 2022 to try to peddle disinformation about show how it’s bringing “life-saving humanitarian aid” into Gaza. “Israel will continue to facilitate the transfer of life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza,” the Feb. 4 post lied. The image was actually of a refugee camp for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country. There’s a certain brashness to this level of sloth. Either whomever runs the government’s x.com account is especially dim, or just doesn’t feel like there’s a need to give a shit about it. Either way, it’s easy to confuse Netanyahu for Putin.

Hate groups are turning to decentralised tech to stay online. We often think of decentralised, peer-to-peer tech in cool, free internet terms. It’s the tools that help keep marginalised voices on the internet, developed by activists usually with good, anti-fascist ethos. Research by Emmi Bevensee shows how hate groups are employing these systems in ways that make them harder to combat. It’s a good reminder that all technology is inherently duel use at a minimum. Arguably they have more than two functions. Make any tool and users will let you know what it’s for.

Russia is using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite devices in Ukraine, sources say. Speaking of unintended use cases, DefenseOne has a report on how it’s starting to become noticeable that U.S. tax-subsidised Startlink service in Ukraine — which as been keeping the internet available in many areas under assault by Russia — is being utilised by Putin’s invading army. Elon’s company has been really careful about monitoring Ukrainian use of Starlink, once even shutting off access to prevent a Ukrainian operation against Kremlin occupation forces in Crimea, but it seems to prove harder to unmask military applications of it by Russia in other areas of Ukraine.

Chernobyl may have created cancer-resistant wolves. Wolves living in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone over the last 30 years may have developed a resistance to cancer due to radiation exposure. An evolutionary biologist tracked wolves with radio collars and measured their radiation exposure levels, which exceeded safety limits for humans. The wolves developed an altered immune systems over the generations of their packs having undergone a kind of radiation treatment. This could be investigated further except Russia is doing a war crime at the moment.

A fake version of the LastPass app made it onto the Apple Store. The story is how Apple removed a bogus LastPass password management app from it’s iPhone store. To me the story is that it was able to get there in the first place. LastPass is well beyond its prime, and I am not sure who’s actually opting for this one in this day and age (for simplicity, this blog currently only recommends Bitwarden as a cloud solution and KeePassXC as an offline option, I don’t care if others are any good don’t @ me about 1password), but it shows the Apple Store’s walled garden has cracks.

Social media just wouldn’t exist or be a viable business model without the shitposters. “The development of trolls appears to be the internet’s version of carcinization,” muses Elizabeth Lopatto, a writer on technology, money and human behaviour (the mix of elements that makes Silicon Valley go “whrrrr.”) Every social platform promises it’s got mechanisms to cultivate positive interactions, but more often than not, these are not why people aren’t checking in. “Someone has to kick it off and usually that someone is the person with the least inhibitions,” Lopatto says. This is basically true of any house party or the better pub crawls. If anything, platforms create tools that play to these kinds of people’s motivations. It’s not healthy, but we like it.

No, your electronic toothbrush is not part of a DDoS botnet of crime. I use an old-school manual toothbrush. Electric ones are annoying and I can’t see why anyone would want to put one on the internet, but it’s the age of the internet of things. Every so often a boo-scary comes out about how some IoT botnet has been used for crime. Last week some news outlets ran with the story that some 3 million internet connected toothbrushes were diverting some processing power from battling cavities to knocking web services offline. It wasn’t true.

Other very good reading on the web…

• Debunking the conquest narrative by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
• Israel’s assault on Gaza is exposing the holes in everything liberal politicians claim to believe, by Nesrine Malik
• Putin’s genocidal myth, by Timothy Snyder
• Enough is enough—it’s time to set Julian Assange free, by Alan Rusbridger