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[hpshelton]

Blog Migration

This blog is moving to a new hosting provider. Look for new content only at https://hpshelton.com from here on out.

The historical content will continue to be hosted here so that links like https://www.tumblr.com/hpshelton/359137099/hello-world will continue to work while permalinks like https://hpshelton.com/post/359137099/hello-world will redirect to the new hosting provider.

Goodbye, tumblr, and thanks for all the fish!

[hpshelton]

I’ve really been enjoying this series walking up the stack from Windows functions to tactics to attack graphs.

[hpshelton]

Rather than betrayal, Hosseini was the victim of CIA negligence, a year-long Reuters investigation into the agency's handling of its informants found. A faulty CIA covert communications system made it easy for Iranian intelligence to identify and capture him.

[...]

Hosseini's experience of sloppy handling and abandonment was not unique. In interviews with six Iranian former CIA informants, Reuters found that the agency was careless in other ways amid its intense drive to gather intelligence in Iran, putting in peril those risking their lives to help the United States.

[hpshelton]

Earlier this month, a photo [David Welly Sombra Rodrigues] took in Ireland for his more than 7,000 Instagram followers went viral. But he didn't realize it until a friend messaged him, pointing him to a news article about "The Follower,," a digital art project that showed just how much can be captured by webcams broadcasting from public spaces — and how surprising it can be for those who are unwittingly filmed by them.

The artist had paired Instagram photos with video footage that showed the process of taking them.

[hpshelton]

It turns out that transferring cyber arms, while technically easy, is actually a lot more complicated than delivering conventional weapons.

Selling fighter jets to an ally doesn't make the planes in your own fleet dramatically less effective. But when an exploit or tool is shared with a country and then used, its usefulness is reduced for everyone. This means that governments are more likely to help other states develop their own offensive capabilities by providing the expertise to find exploits, develop tools, and innovate themselves.

Discovery of a exploit, attribution, and deconfliction are all attributes that influcence this dynamic.

[hpshelton]

On Thursday, a few Twitter users discovered how to hijack an automated tweet bot, dedicated to remote jobs, running on the GPT-3 language model by OpenAI. Using a newly discovered technique called a "prompt injection attack," they redirected the bot to repeat embarrassing and ridiculous phrases.

Who could have known that this could be an issue? Oh, wait.

[hpshelton]

Counterintuitively, businesses, customers, and society prefer having fraud to what they'd need to do to not have it.

An interesting discussion of payment card fraud, trust, liability, and society.

[hpshelton]

James Brown loves building weird displays. Like animatronic skulls, or mechanical bit-flipping cellular automatons. Or, in this case, an entire computer inside a mock Lego brick.

Computers and Legos were pretty much my entire childhood. I want one.

[hpshelton]

Mind boggling. What a huge leap for science.

[hpshelton]

There was a moment not so long ago when I thought, "What if I've had this crypto thing all wrong?" I'm a doubting normie who, if I'm being honest, hasn't always understood this alternate universe that's been percolating and expanding for more than a decade now. If you're a disciple, this new dimension is the future. If you're a skeptic, this upside-down world is just a modern Ponzi scheme that's going to end badly — and the recent "crypto winter" is evidence of its long-overdue ending. But crypto has dug itself into finance, into technology, and into our heads. And if crypto isn't going away, we'd better attempt to understand it. Which is why we asked the finest finance writer around, Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion, to write a cover-to-cover issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, something a single author has done only one other time in the magazine's 93-year history ("What Is Code?," by Paul Ford). What follows is his brilliant explanation of what this maddening, often absurd, and always fascinating technology means, and where it might go.

A thorough and entertaining look at crypto and its (possible) future role in finance from Matt Levin.

[hpshelton]

Transcript of President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

October 3, 1789.

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go. Washington

[hpshelton]

When spaces have meaning and purpose, they become places. That comes from people gathering, bonding, and sharing an experience together. It's what makes a house a home — and an office worth coming into.

Today I'm excited to introduce Microsoft Places, our new connected workplace platform that will reimagine hybrid and in-person work. This platform delivers solutions that coordinate where work happens, modernize the office with intelligent technology, and optimize the workplace for changing needs.

They lay the marketing speak on thick for this announcement, but if you assume this vaporware will ship, I could be excited to use something like this. My co-workers and I tend to communicate ad-hoc and naturally choose in-person days with fewer scheduled meetings. It'd be cool to see that happen more automatically while giving management a sense of trends and insight into workplace usage. Hopefully it would also allow our facilities team to stock more Coca-Cola on busier days.

[hpshelton]

Over two and a half weeks from late last October into November, federal prosecutors in a courtroom in Cincinnati drew on the wealth of digital material the 41-year-old Xu had stockpiled to lay out a portrait of him — his training, methods, and ambitions, his vices and private doubts and grievances. Translated from the original Mandarin, it's an unprecedentedly intimate portrait of how China's economic espionage machine works, and what life is like for its cogs.

[hpshelton]

Huge (pun intended)! Making a standard design constructed off-site will lead to huge cost benefits for licensing, construction, operation, and maintenance of future nuclear plants.

NuScale has more details on their website but the goal is that power plant facilities house 12 self-contained reactors that can provide "154 MWe to a mission critical facility micro-grid for 12 years without new fuel following a catastrophic loss of offsite grid and transportation infrastructure."

They estimate the cost of production for the n-th plant to be in the range "approximately $40/MWh to $65/MWh" and their first project has a contractual cap on costs at $58/MWh, all of which is price-competitive with large, established reactors like Diablo Canyon, though their small plant footprint generates a tenth of the electricity output.

They also support air-cooled designs, "which can reduce plant water consumption to as little as 1.1 gal/MWh" and the "high-temperature heat can be directly used to produce hydrogen through electrolysis, thus reducing efficiency losses". "Hydrogen produced by a NuScale HTSE system is forecasted to be cost competitive with high capacity factor renewable hydrogen cost estimates while also providing continuous, controlled hydrogen production."

Used fuel will be stored on-site:

NuScale reactor building and VOYGR plant design incorporates a proven safe, secure and effective used fuel management system. A stainless steel lined concrete pool holds used fuel for at least 5 years under 60 feet of water. The used fuel is protected both by the ground and the Seismic Category 1 reinforced concrete reactor building designed to withstand an aircraft impact, and a variety of natural and man-made phenomena.

After cooling in the spent fuel pool, spent fuel is placed into certified casks, steel containers with concrete shells, on site of the plant. The NRC Waste Confidence Rule states that this is a safe and acceptable way to store used fuel for an interim period at the plant up to 100 years. The NuScale's standard facility design includes an area for the dry storage of all of the spent fuel for the 60-year life of the VOYGR plant.

The plant also supports recycled fuel, or mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel, helping to reduce nuclear waste.

[hpshelton]

An all inclusive guide to ETW, from what it is to how we can use it.

I've used ETW a lot and I still learned things from this walkthrough.

[hpshelton]

The technology giant will stop offering automated tools that predict a person's gender, age and emotional state and will restrict the use of its facial recognition tool.

Microsoft will also put new controls on its face recognition feature, which can be used to perform identity checks or search for a particular person. Uber, for example, uses the software in its app to verify that a driver's face matches the ID on file for that driver's account. Software developers who want to use Microsoft's facial recognition tool will need to apply for access and explain how they plan to deploy it.