The Flock: A System Meant to Track Individuals, but Often Collects Batches Instead

The concept of "flock" has been introduced by companies such as Apple and Facebook, aiming to track individuals' online activities. However, it seems that these systems often end up collecting batches of people with similar interests, rather than focusing on individual preferences. For instance, if you're an apple enthusiast, you might find yourself grouped with others who share the same passion, rather than being recognized as a unique individual.

This phenomenon raises concerns about data collection and personalization. Instead of catering to individual tastes, flock-based systems often rely on broad categorizations that can be misleading. The fact that these systems are designed to collect batches of people with similar interests makes them less effective in understanding individual preferences. As a result, individuals may feel like they're part of a larger group, rather than being recognized as unique entities.

WordPress and the Battle Against Flock

WordPress, one of the most popular content management systems, has recently implemented measures to resist flock-based tracking. The platform has disabled Google Flock on websites, allowing users to opt out of these systems. This move is seen as a victory for individual privacy and autonomy. While it's unclear whether this will have a significant impact on the widespread use of flock-based systems, it marks an important step in the fight against mass surveillance.

The Power of WordPress

Interestingly, WordPress accounts for approximately 55% of all web pages, making it a formidable force in the digital landscape. This power can be both a blessing and a curse, as it raises concerns about data collection and online control. As individuals and organizations navigate the complexities of online presence, they must consider the implications of being part of this dominant platform.

Parental Software: A Lesson Learned

Throughout history, companies have attempted to introduce parental software to limit children's access to the internet. However, these efforts have consistently failed due to the inherent difficulties in filtering out unwanted content. The solution lies in creating an "allow list" and a "block list," where parents can explicitly grant or deny access to specific websites.

Microsoft's Latest Attempt

In a significant development, Microsoft has introduced a "Kids Mode" for parents concerned about their shared devices. This feature aims to provide a safer browsing experience for children by limiting access to content deemed unsuitable. By adopting an allow-list approach, Microsoft acknowledges that filtering out bad content is challenging and instead focuses on ensuring that users have access to safe and suitable websites.

A List of 70 Websites

When it comes to creating a list of websites suitable for children, the answer is surprisingly low: 70. According to Microsoft, any website with user-generated content or social features should be avoided, as individuals can post terrible things online. This approach prioritizes caution over accessibility, acknowledging that people can be cruel and hurtful online.

The Reality of Nuclear War

In a stark contrast to flock-based systems, the threat of nuclear war has become increasingly relevant in recent years. The U.S. Strategic Command has issued a statement warning about the possibility of conflict leading to rapid escalation and potentially even nuclear use. This highlights the complexities of global politics and the need for caution when dealing with sensitive topics.

Nuclear War: A Matter of Population Density

When it comes to nuclear war, population density becomes a crucial factor in determining potential outcomes. Theoretically, a major country's ability to launch a full-scale volley could be hampered by the geographical distribution of its population. However, this assumes that the missile defense systems would be effective, which is not always the case.

A Nuclear War Scenario

Imagine a scenario where a nuclear war breaks out, with devastating consequences for humanity. The thought of radiation and destruction can evoke fear and anxiety. However, it's essential to acknowledge that even in such a worst-case scenario, there might be some level of survival possible if one could "pattern" the missile trajectory correctly.

Conclusion

The concept of flock-based systems has raised concerns about data collection and personalization. WordPress accounts for a significant portion of the internet, making its impact on online presence substantial. Parental software, while well-intentioned, often fails due to the complexity of filtering out unwanted content. In contrast, Microsoft's Kids Mode takes a cautious approach by focusing on providing safe access to websites.

As we navigate the complexities of online life, it's essential to recognize both the benefits and drawbacks of flock-based systems. The threat of nuclear war serves as a stark reminder of the importance of caution and diplomacy in global politics. Ultimately, understanding the intricacies of data collection and personalization will help us create more effective solutions for a safer digital landscape.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everybody i don't know my hands are up like this it's april 27th and we're doing government and security news today i can't even see your hands yeah we can't your box is too small some people have complained that you need a bigger presence here but that just encourages you not to come to the office yeah it's getting to be talking i gotta get my vaccine and then i can do it vaccinated attitude yeah that's something i'm like i know i should but at the same time anyway let's not think about bad things because i've got an exciting new segment for the level one news and these two don't know anything about it but you're gonna love it it is the level one diet orange soda review oh my gosh that's so kind this week is your favorite here oh no it was in the car i drive erratically oh it's doing the frozen thing i tried to keep it cold during the trip you didn't even check the bouquet you could smell it first no exactly you don't like it so your baseline is crush orange crush yeah so where does this rank so it has it has hints of orange crush but it's very watery um it definitely doesn't taste as carbonated as uh i feel that way about their cola as orange crush yeah i mean there's a little bit of carbonation there but i mean obviously because it sprayed me but um it's not it's not at this level of orange i would expect it to you know peg the orange taste i mean this is basically nuclear waste levels of orange and uh it's not wow a big failure from the faygo brand it's been a long time since i've had uh orange crush so i'm actually i'm gonna finish it now you're part of the family uh i would like to say that we'd do another one next week but sunkist is the only one i think i can reliably find that one is uh sugary but yeah you mentioned you've had that yeah maybe we still review it yeah orange lacroix do you want to see another it might be worth revisiting because remember they changed the formula and all that stuff i don't remember because i don't keep up with orange soda news like you do i have a bot to notify me when they change the formula but i do try to keep up with the government news and that's we're going to be looking at today and here's one that just makes absolutely no sense because now remind me are they not going out of business they're doing very well but also simultaneously going out of business and yet they have all this money to throw at a program like this the postal service is running a covert operations program that monitors american social media now i'm just gonna go ahead and like the article writer didn't do the homework here this is part of some convoluted federal grant program where somebody said we need you to do this in order to get money and the postal service was like we need to monitor people's social media that doesn't that doesn't make sense now they are not an enforcement arm obviously so all they do when they find something on social media is hand it over to the real authorities yes so again was it the the postal service was allowed to do something a normal federal agency wouldn't be allowed to do because that's what it smells like that could be a big part of it and it could also help them correlate people to physical addresses maybe yeah isn't it crazy how um there's always a convoluted reason for this kind of thing and it takes us to suss it out by just thinking about it i don't think we found it i still have no idea why they would do this yeah i was imagining the scenario of like you order something online and then they check your social media the post office says and they're like oh attack another day on here's a here's a dark timeline for you uh all of a sudden the postal service employees are all asked to carry these black box phones that they never ring and they never actually turn on what those actually are are uh devices that are running linux capturing all of the wireless data around you it's getting your mac address the name of your ssid and a lot of other information as well as like the geo location what an incredible database that would be for federal agencies to have of literally everything and it would only take overnight um and if you could pull an ip from that social post somehow yes you could tie that right in yeah isn't that neat see how that would work or if you could run a piece of javascript to get the mac address which is a thing that's allowed that's why apple obscures it that would be tough for them to do because they're looking at after the fact but if they found some sort of like database that facebook was keeping that they could correlate from the dark web yeah there's a lot they could do there so that's disgusting we've been talking a lot lately about the corporate tax and a lot of the big names are weighing in and they're saying you know what yeah maybe go ahead in taxes because you know what we deserve it but what they know is that the corporate tax that's being talked about right now wouldn't touch most of their money because most of their money is not in this country and thus big tech 100 billion foreign profit horde targeted by tax plan uh this also includes the capital gains thing doesn't it this is uh offshore stuff yeah yeah so well uh the we've got the story on the uh the double irish sandwich later that kind of thing is the kind of thing that they're targeting and the saint kitts and nevis thing if only this had been sorted to accentuate that immediately afterwards oh yeah google used the double irish to shift 75.4 billion in profits out of ireland so our lawmakers are looking at this and they're saying what is going on why why is this happening now this is not our labor lawmakers obviously the irish lawmakers love this because they end up getting a ton of money not personally although probably somehow yeah remember when the irish government actually went to bat on apple's behalf to say no please don't make apple leave our country because they give us a lot of money yeah the eu doesn't like this but ireland's like bro that's all we got come on and potatoes irish engagement challenge so uh figo could do some iris engagement challenge it was a joke about alcoholism oh you know what i thought maybe that was like you know improve the carbonation somehow but anyway uh if you really want to get at the big tech company's money you have to get it from bermuda or wherever because they ain't keeping it here saint kitts and nevis and one of the the government organizations that stri has been striking out recently and extracting money from these monsters is the ftc and here's a real weird one from the supreme court the supreme court slashes the ftc's power to seek monetary awards so you know how the ftc has been doling out record stuff lately and yeah you know all of a sudden ajit pai he wasn't around to see his plan but that was all i could think about as i was reading this was like holy crap that was the other side of ajit pai's plan it's like oh the ftc can enforce this blah blah but he knew he knew this was coming down the pike do you think somebody walked into his corner office at the verizon or wherever he is now and just like put an envelope good job buddy it was he got a note to go to a seedy hotel at sundown and there was just a guy sitting in a chair who's not illuminated all you can see was this cigarette and he's like this is the plan and it's like oh thank you lord sir so yeah that's a weird one um they tried to give some reasons as to why and the supreme court it was kind of a technicality they thought they were overreaching based on the wording of the old law that enabled them to do this and they said that congress should act to change the law but i don't know if there's much chance of that i don't know we'll see but to go from a terrible terrible ruling to one that is probably at least has the heart in the right place i don't know if it'll actually accomplish anything we really need something like this fourth amendment is not for sale would ban clearview and warrantless location purchases i looked into the meat of this it's not actually going to do that but it's called that it sounds good everybody should pass it but there's a lot of loopholes in it as it as it is right now so obvious this has to do with uh ice and border protection and you know the driver's license data and all that stuff we just see so much of that now they're just buying all their data which is crazy because why are we paying them they should be able to just get a warrant get it for free it's like oh no then we really do have fourth amendment things it's a technicality but if we're gonna buy it all let's hire a software company to do that not a bunch of bureaucrats or you know the aforementioned you know postal service that'll cut the costs nationwide with my orders of magnitude you just ask them to carry a rooted phone with a custom distro and then you've got this incredible surveillance apparatus maybe we should hire them to correlate all this data as well let's just put everything under the post office the dark i really feel qualified for this guys and it's like you'll be fine we need the dystopian novel where it's like the postal service becomes the ministry of truth they probably do a better job well perhaps we could give the postal service the job of protecting our infrastructure because one thing we know for sure our infrastructure is at risk and we need a plan to save it the us unveils a plan to protect the power grid from foreign hackers and if you dive into that plan you'll be very sad i'm unfortunately we have the the good old bloomberg paywall because i was gonna accentuate i think in the second paragraph how are they gonna do this by putting government software on all the electrical monitoring stations uh there there are some good things in there that they're gonna try to encourage and offer grants for the things that i've said like offering money to basically have third party experts come in the problem is that a lot of the third party experts are not equipped currently to deal with the um insanity and bureaucracy of government contracting there are a few but not a lot mostly you're down to companies like palantir and it's like oh yeah poland here extend your reach into the u.s power grid that seems like a good idea i don't like that so the nsa will be monitoring your smart meter very soon congratulations and we know one thing about our audience you're not going to live without power you'll live but not well you'll not thrive nah they'd take their own lives within months they couldn't live with it uh china is being blamed for a massive hack just as we talk about all these threats but this time it has to do with getting inside the security apparatus to prevent this kind of thing brilliant move china behind another hack is u.s cyber security issues mount oh no uh this was a pulse secure vpn so anybody that's using pulse secure vpns they got a zero day which means that if you have that and you haven't updated in like the last week you are already it's already very bad for you you're going to have to do a lot more work it may have already been too late yikes really it's it really adds insult to injury that the name secure is in the product uh you know i forgot to add the story for this but uh cisco is it'll probably be next week's story because there's a zero day out for it as a result of this and that'll be the story but uh cisco was facing something similar and in some of their obsolete gear um they're not offering a patch unless they backpedaled uh initially they were just like oh yeah you got the i was like rv 310 or something so yeah you got that uh look that's been the end of life for a while we're not fixing it buy a new one there's an upgrade incentive yeah uh away from cisco in new york of course the economy has shifted from restaurants to delivery and the entire workforce i was kind of surprised to learn this but it seems like all of the uh you know mostly south american descent restaurant workforce shifted completely into delivery almost except for the ones that were still cooking the food and this wave of new delivery drivers has created a new opportunity for one part of the population to exploit the other part of the population that's the joke right new york city gig workers are organizing against rampant e-bike theft and assault and also murder there were some people that have been they were carjacked and somebody else got stabbed and died and the new york police are just like they are really uh de-prioritizing those kinds of crimes yeah which is a little bit terrifying yeah so yeah they get their e-box stolen a lot they get mugged a lot um they get hit by cars once in a while and murdered the occasional murder i don't think the murder is because they're a delivery driver i think that's just an opportunity attack right well it's like i wouldn't steal the bike or whatever yeah yeah so they're uh they're saying that they need the government to protect them i don't know exactly if they have a plan on how that works but no they are terrified concealed carry is legal in new york that would put a stop to it don't you think you have to i would say there is nobody in new york carrying a gun who isn't doing it because of a security or law enforcement job who has a net worth of less than a million dollars because the tape that you have to go through to get it requires like six lawyers wow yeah terrifying so probably not the delivery drivers then probably not probably non-english-speaking delivery drivers can you get the assassin's creed thing is that legal like where you like somebody like i mean it's an automatic knife nope what about like pepper spray i think they have in the city you can have almost nothing yeah really on this upstate you can get away with a little bit more it's crazy it's ridiculous and uh they lost the case because they sued i think the supreme court ruled on that right yeah yeah a little bit further up from new york and like over that way a little bit it's fox uh yeah the new foxconn plant in minnesota if you'll remember when trump came into office this was one of his big talking points he's like we're bringing in jobs and look at the jobs i'm bringing into this day and i was like you know what that's a lot of jobs you got to give it up for everything else he says that wasn't true that came true but wait foxconn mostly abandons 10 billion wisconsin project touted by trump so they're still going to have 1400 employees it's still going to be a foxconn factory there that's down from what 10 000 yeah and that's probably just so they don't have to pay back the tax incentives they got which i think were up front weren't they and it was supposed to make state-of-the-art screens and then they were like well maybe we'll just make some other screens there and now i don't even know if they know what they're going to make there no probably just people sitting around getting a check right you know 1400 and then army 1400 employees a couple billion dollars the math works wow and if that is a cautionary tale on letting big tech come into your country and make promises perhaps this makes a little bit more sense although i would say to everybody suffering from the chip shortage and everybody excited about the m1 and where we might be going hates to see this headline because it's just going to slow everything down uk invokes national security to investigate nvidia's arm deal uh i think jensen was anticipating this because some of his comments at gdc last week uh he said that this is probably going to be complete by like 2023 which is probably enough to satisfy uh the uk i really don't think what nvidia has in mind for arm as it exists in the uk is going to be all that disruptive initially so they'll probably get through these regulatory hurdles uh but probably not without a few concessions yeah a couple of more people want to taste yeah that's what that headline should be yeah so you know figure out who it is and figure out how much you got to give them and then go forward that's how it works it is crazy that that's how it works how it works when the government gets power over business also in the bank of england following china's move they have announced and yet don't have any plan or actual service they had a couple of sound bites they just they just wanted to talk about this i guess the bank of england considered digital money plan and they said a 10 pound note is equal to 10 pounds of our cryptocurrency and it will always be the case so why bother the half the fun of cryptocurrency is it's a wild roller coaster of emotion as it swings wildly 20 of the day right now we're swinging low sweet chariot back up the truck load it up that's what they tell you to do in times like these i'm not telling you that in space it doesn't matter where you're from we all live as the human race in space and no one can hear you scream and we love each other and we totally don't poke holes in the space station just to try to stir up international controversy right russian moles withdrawing from the international space station after 2024 but don't worry they're going to have their own space station with blackjack and hookers it sounds like i can't wait for like space nationalism that's going to be so much fun oh yeah and you know who's going to be at the front and center of that and probably it's going to motivate him to make even more unsafe decisions elon musk he's going to spend the lives of astronauts to gain superiority it's like well you want to be an amazon warehouse worker or take a chance with elon musk you think the skill set will transfer over it's a it's a real life kerbal space program i mean you know he's just gonna strap you in and you know if you survive you might come back well big tech is obviously under the crosshairs and for a long time they've been saying we got to do something but the question is what and now maybe we have a little bit more of an idea of what that something is u.s house committee approves blueprint for big tech crackdown uh there is a little bit of talk in this about section 230 and attacking section 230. well the republican every time the democrats are like we must split them up the republicans are like yeah we need to repeal 230. yeah and it's like what there's not a lot of agreements you guys aren't talking about the same thing here you're just spitting out talking points yeah so so who knows i'm sure that uh there will be something that happens i don't know if it'll be good for the people well jeff bezos is super on board as long as he's steering it so yeah he's been you know on board for that yeah which is that's the big if the worst possible situation so basically what you're describing then and that seems to be where we're going lex luthor is uh working with politicians directly and he is orders of magnitude smarter than the collection of them didn't in the superman comics didn't that hat when that happened it drove superman to the brink of insanity lex luthor became president and then superman was just like what do i do i don't remember exactly how he react i'm sure he had some problems with it he organized at the grassroots level and uh protested and that did nothing procter does your brain string replace proctoria with factorio while you're reading these no uh it keeps replacing it with proctologists i was kind of going like wendell's direction as well if you put the word proctologist in there that'd be a much more hilarious headline but proxorio is the software if you're in the university right now you're probably doing online classes proctorio is what they it's a browser extension that is supposed to be anti-cheat and for test taking it it maintains that you're staring at the screen and not doing anything fishy a lot of people have claimed that it has some big shortfalls so big that one person actually looked it up looked into the code because it is a browser plugin and said hey look what it does and they said oh my god you're right we're going to fix this we're going to make this better i'm kidding of course they would never do that proctorio sued for using dmca to take down a student's critical tweets they of course said that you know looking at the source code of a browser extension which is just javascript is a violation of their copyright not looking at it tweeting it well it's little tiny pieces and then commentary even though it's publicly available yeah now they do that with videos too there's somebody in canada that they're suing for posting links to their own youtube channel or the links that they sent they sent the links in email to people that were considering buying the software it really does seem like it seems to me like a lot of uh really really shady behavior on that company's part and why as a company would you be so embarrassed of that code well because the things that he lays out it kind of supports so yeah yeah it seems like a lot of universities are dropping the software because of these things and especially because of the racism angle yeah and i think they're desperately trying to stop that bleeding well it's probably gonna work out for them ultimately and uh do you remember back in the the wild west of the internet when squatting on domains was actually lucrative yeah typo domains and stuff or just you know you sit around and be like what is the next thing somebody's going to try to invent and just put some ads on that domain just let me go get that domain oh you just try to sell it to them they get it and that practice has not ended but it's much more difficult these days because so many people are trying to do it however if you're lucky you could get a really big fish in the domain squatting world argentine version of google falls into the wrong hands leading to search engines temporary collapse oh whoops is this a preview of what's going to happen when regulators get their hands on google well we gave away icann didn't we did you i did not quite understand i don't think they went into to enough details here they said that they took it back and then it had not actually expired it was the registrar that made the mistake yeah but what did they do for the guy who bought it uh nothing did he just get a refund for the also we're overpaying for domains in argentina a domain registration even for google.ar or whatever their thing is three dollars wow it's probably a lot of money in argentina that's like 4 000 whatever their currency is but i still think it's a lot of money it's just a big number so yeah that's embarrassing and it shows you how like the structure of the world if a giant tech company versus an individual it's not even a contest the rules don't matter there's the aspartame headache well i mean what's uh crush sweetened with oh yeah uh not as much probably carbonated water citric acid aspartame it's ingredient number three will you tell me oranges isn't the number one ingredient potassium benzoate potassium citrate there it is modified corn starch natural flavor glycerol albedorate i love that stuff can't you like cook steaks can you get that organic free range free range albuterate cage free moving on to the security section there is a new tactic from ransomware games games gangs that's what i'm looking for they uh you know one thing they know is that they can infect you and they know that they can extort you but they don't know if you'll pay and what happens if you don't pay they don't gain anything from it they might screw you over and encrypt everything but they don't get anything so how can you find another way to monetize this ransomware gang wants to short the stock price of their victims a bold new strategy this is actually like there's a lot of ransomware news this week it's a lot of really interesting stuff yeah big security sections organized i think um i think we're seeing a bigger trend here and i don't know if it's google or russia or china that's driving it but it seems like um organized crime is becoming kind of a wing of the intelligence services and maybe this is true of america maybe this is always this way with the cia because you look at the iran contra affair and it's like it was kind of this but not for malware and so it's basically a deal it's like you know the you know the russian uh intelligence service will work with the criminals as long as the criminals avoid targeting russian businesses seems like a good deal i've often thought and i'm sure i'm not alone here that if you just break it down into like study the anatomy of a criminal organization like organized crime or street gang or something like that and then compare that to a breakdown of the anatomy of a police force or a an alphabet agency there's not a lot of difference yeah you know uh freakonomics they had that with the the guy that kept meticulous records of his crack dealing and it was fascinating yeah so not surprising that every once in a while they might work together remember when he-man and skeletor sometimes have worked together no that was just for christmas no they had to work together against king hiss as well oh okay yeah oh skeletor wanted just mild chaos but king hiss actually wanted to end the world and then there would be nothing something like that no he wanted skeletor's spot oh okay totally self-serve excellent storyline in masters universe check that out we did a live action movie with dwayne of the rock johnson he would be a good man actually i thought he was considering political office he could easily be president at this point that's the world we're living in that's crazy well cell phone hacking we know is big business and celebrite is probably at the forefront of it they have contracts with all these governments all these law enforcement agencies and they make these big claims like hey any iphone bring it to us or just buy our device you'll get right into it so you would think a company that is that aware of security and the risks of poor security would themselves take security very seriously no this is the most delightful story of the entire week this is uh you'd be wrong about that and oh my god this is such a fun read single ceo hack celebrate uh iphone hacking device used by cops you gotta go you gotta go watch the video the video is amazing but this is the thing that you know he's like oh we don't have the iphone password you plug this in this thing like figures out and copies your phone the problem is that this software has a lot of stuff in it to index and analyze and process the data in your phone what happens if you turn your data in your phone into a malicious payload i'm not talking about like putting a virus on your phone i'm actually talking about like constructing a movie to exploit uh bugs that were in old ffmpeg libraries which could then take over the system well that's exactly what the ceo of uh of signal has done here which is really interesting and so if they use if you have one of these files on your phone and they slurp it up it's going to do very naughty things to them to the machine so i have a feeling that that a lot of files are going to make their way to the internet which is going to uh create a lot of interesting issues and if you were able to get a hold of one of these units then you could do a lot of testing and you could probably craft a file but instead of just destroying it which i think is what his does it could just return false yeah so it looks good phone's clean can't get anything off of it this guy definitely paid his taxes so uh he also said well he said two hilarious things in the story the first one was they asked him they were like well do you have one of these and he was like oh it's the craziest thing i saw one fall off a truck it was just a box that fell off a truck we opened it up it's like oh my god it's a stingray or whatever the celebrity thing is called that hacks the iphone so uh that's probably a lie the other hilarious thing he said is like well you know this is totally unrelated to anything we talked about today but in the future who knows what kind of files might be in the signal file system so he's basically saying eventually signal will destroy celebrities yeah that guy he should get the nobel prize for that that's fantastic the story is weird did you get the impression that they put toshiba in the headline yes just to click yes come on bloomberg yeah you're supposed to be better we're not not paying for the subscription for that it's quality journalism that's what you can pay for hackers target iconic japanese brands like toshiba but actually get rival horror i don't know is like holy or something like that uh uh so a lot of ransomware gangs are targeting these big electronics companies because they'll pay and their stuff is you know dependent on just-in-time manufacturing and with the current global situation they're probably not doing well financially so yeah there's some some security holes there and i they have not yet i think uh reported whether or not they're going to pay it right right yeah toshiba was uh able to contain the issue if you want some ransomware investing maybe buy toshiba right although they did point out in the ransomware investing thing that ransomware rarely affects the stock price for very long if at all yeah um i don't know it's interesting when it comes to security research it's a topic we talk about a lot and there's this big argument that if you're doing security research you are often violating policies and terms of service and a lot of people who run the software companies are like no this is too much of a risk we can't allow this now the research community is saying no you must allow it because how else are we going to point out all the terrible things that you're doing wrong and it's a big debate i would mostly agree with the research side what do you think i don't i don't agree with their methodology well because you're you're previewing as usual but i in this case this was terrible this was absolutely a stupid thing to do and the linux people are right in this case i would say linux bans the university of minnesota for sending buggy patches in the name of research so uh some researchers created a bunch of patches and said hey we ran our tool on this source code and it found some potential like null pointer vulnerabilities blah blah blah and so here are the fixes from the tool and in some cases the maintainers were like okay and some of the patches were accepted i guess well the researchers say that none of the patches were accepted but some of the linux kernel mailing list traffic seems to suggest that some of them were accepted but all of the patches were reverted after the researchers published a paper that was like uh global linux kernel maintainers will accept anything even stuff that introduces buggy code see like the benefits you get from identifying that failure how does that compare to the damage you do by putting bad code in the linux kernel yeah the the damage is the university of minnesota will no longer be allowed to contribute any code to the linux kernel now you can follow the email back and forth and the guy from you know the linux side of things he seemed to be pretty level-headed about it yeah he was just like listen we know what you're up to now so obviously we're not gonna let you keep doing it okay you made your point but now you're out uh there's also the the you know the fact that it was an educational institution you know theoretically there's an ethics review board on this kind of thing so if you get patches from some random person on the internet that's a little different than this is the department of computer engineering at the university of minnesota yeah universities should be we should have a system where that trust is never threatened on purpose come on yeah well the ethics review board exists for this reason so but uh by banning the entire university the colonel will ensure that the deviants will be dealt with unless they transfer what if you keep popping universities think of all the good press for the university now think of enrollment yeah i don't think this is going to bring a lot maybe a couple of people but not a whole lot did you see any new information in this one no i'm cutting it i'm cutting this one krista yeah and here is a you know there was a lot of security stories this week and i thought about cutting this one because there are no details did you find any more details there's no details no one knows anything so just be afraid i guess google chrome hit by another mysterious zero day attack it's patched in 90.0.4430.85 uh and we know that there's a zero day because there's zero day going around but if you don't have that version you need to patch it the problem is that downstream things also need to be updated they describe it only as type confusion in a v8 javascript engine who knows just be afraid the uh spying that we talked about earlier in terms of like criminal organization or government agency that could be like one of those remember those old web games we had to choose between two things that looked similar like a croissant or a cat curled up we could have the same thing here was this done by a ransomware gang or was it done by a government agency you know i5 warns of spies using linkedin to trick staff into spilling secrets the idea with this is basically you got your resume on linkedin it's like oh i see you work for so-and-so company hey so what do you do there and people will happily tell you all about it because you know you're the hiring manager for another company you know about confidentiality and in fact it's not krista write this photoshop i was going to say this is a horrific image and i reacted viscerally when i saw it it's a it's a pretty good photoshop they could have done a little bit better job with the healing brush on the terrifying blank face but wow i feel like the blank face should have some more like moles and blemishes and stuff to make it more believable yeah still i'll give her the seven out of ten i could have put a shadow too to like indicate that the face was in front of the blank spot but first image i'm cutting this next one because it's the pulse story again it's a weird sort this week chat and as we were saying ransomware teams not only are they trying to find a way in but they're trying to find the best way to present their case to their victims to ensure payment and timing can be a big part of that red smart gangs try to extort apple's uh apple hours ahead of the spring loaded event this is because their one of their partners quanta was hacked quantum makes a lot of stuff like a that's a crazy amount of stuff and quanta did not play ball they did not so what do you do you go up you have to speak to the manager and tim cook's like we're looking into it but this is going to cost them dearly because apple is very vindictive so they have the schematics and they're going to release them and i don't think apple's going to pay them quantum is usually pretty good about leaking the repair manuals to repair organizations too which is nice it annoys apple but guantana's really good at their job which is another reason apple's been looking to replace them we have been hearing a lot about you know the sale of driver's license information if you get a driver's license and we all pretty much have to you can bet that some government organization is selling your information to some shady tech company but that is not the only way that your driver's license is threatened geico admits uh fraudsters stole customers driver's license numbers four months it was scraping geico is like ah they're just scraping it's like did you get that facebook memo about scraping because we're trying to like make scraping not a thing but it's totally vain but why are drivers licenses available to be scraped because they were sold we bought them fair and square in a database they point out that driver's license is the number one resource you need in order to steal unemployment from somebody and that's an easy thing to get right now yeah it's like if you've gotten mysterious correspondence from the government uh you might want to check google's flock is now a reality we covered that before that is google's replacement for uh like cohort cross domain third party cookie tracking federated list of cohorts or something like that yeah and it's supposed to protect you and it's supposed to make everything better and of course it's supposed to defeat the kind of tracking that apple and facebook love to do instead of tracking that you individually are an apple enthusiast you're put in the apple enthusiast bucket with all other apple enthusiasts and that bucket is disgusting but i think that they planned for the world to be a little more accepting of the flock which is ironic because it's called flock and that's a group but there's no group wordpress may automatically disable google flock on websites so you can opt out right now i mean google is probably just going to ignore this as a result of this but you know wordpress's power sadly interestingly powers like 55-ish percent of the internet for web pages which is scary the lower 55 agreed so yeah we'll also have some future stories about how popular flock is spoiler yeah not at all one company really likes it hey guys can we get all this everywhere we're opening the standard so everybody can support it everybody's just like do we do we need this i don't think we need this and finally throughout the years that the internet has existed we've always had companies who have tried to introduce parental software to limit your children to only the safe parts of the internet and that has always been a very stupid idea because it's impossible to filter that list unless you go in the other direction you have to do what what is it it's an allow list and a block list yeah an allow list an allow list so the only way you can do it is to say yes and not say no and microsoft seems to have finally realized this now here's the engagement challenge you already know but they don't if you're gonna make a list of websites that are okay for kids how many would you put on that list microsoft edge adds a kids mode for parents worried about their shared devices if i were doing it it would probably be like two the answer is 70 yeah really yeah it's only 70. 70 sites anything that you have access to like other people anything that's sort of social it's not safe because people can be terrible and post terrible things you can't trust other people it would have been 71 if club penguin was still around club penguin well you got banned pretty quick from club penguins if you post anything bad but how do you think that uh other websites are lobbying hard to get on the list yeah yeah sure definitely krista i completely forgot we have to go back and do another government story oh yeah christa added this one at the end and krista i'll just throw it to you this is just a tweet that uh you know sent my anxiety into overdrive earlier this week this is from u.s strategic command posture statement preview the spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable we must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option i assume this is in response to the stuff going on in the middle east right now i assumed russia could could definitely be china you know we had a there was a bunch of our boats in the middle of the the sea there in the philippines and then you know there was some stuff that happened with that that wasn't reported anywhere although when it comes to nuclear war i i don't know what the current belief system is in terms of like how many would get through in a full-scale volley from both from you know a major country but their population density versus ours seems like there would be a huge disadvantage there yeah because there would be people the old quote about a rifle behind every blade of grass you know until biden gets his way and we would be out you know in the middle of montana somewhere you're not going to nuke that that's not efficient uh the radiation will get us though if you patterned it correctly but again that's how many get through the missile shield what missile shield you can't count that's a pr thing that does that's not real well we know that works because israel's been testing it for the last three decades i don't think it's going to work against the missile that uh what was it it's like six times the speed of sound and it might be a zigzag pattern the russian one the one that goes into space yeah yeah that would be tough what krista the the comments on this are uh pretty fantastic as well we're like is this like the toddler tweeting again what what's happening why are you posting this also some people were like what are my chances of surviving if a nuke falls on me and it's like there is there is no survival you're not you're not going to make it you don't want to think about survival in that case you want to think about quality of life which would be near zero be some very unhappy people so stare directly into the uh into the nuclear fire krista give us an unbridled nuclear fear goodbye you\n"