Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Equifax compromise and their insecure response
Similar to my own thoughts on the portal Equifax set up for people to check.
Just enter your name and 2/3 of your SSN into this brand new website that you can’t verify actually belongs to Equifax, and we’ll tell you if you’ve been pwned!
It really is Equifax as far as I can tell, but the way it’s set up sets off a ton of red flags and will train people to ignore those flags on actual phishing attacks.
When Disaster Strikes, Flying Cell Towers Could Aid Search and Rescue
Here’s an idea: put cell stations on drones to help coordinate disaster relief & keep lines of communication open.
Slight Street Sign Modifications Can Completely Fool Machine Learning Algorithms
From the still-needs-work department: It’s possible to add noise to an image that the human brain filters out (or doesn’t even notice), but that will cause computers to misclassify it. Amusing when you’re sorting photos of animals, but dangerous when it convinces a self-driving car that a stop sign is simply reporting a speed limit.
Q&A on Allergy Cell Finding: Targeting Therapies and Predicting Symptoms to Foods
This is a potential game changer in allergy research.
Carhenge was in the path of last week’s eclipse. Here’s a nice time lapse of a storm, starry nights, and the day of the eclipse set to music.
Wait, Do People Actually Know Just How Evil This Man Is?
This is a man who routinely abused his authority to violate human rights, civil rights & civil liberties. He defied a court order to stop. That the president approves of his actions, including the defiance of the federal courts, should scare the hell out of you no matter what your politics.
How doctors used virtual reality to save the lives of conjoined twin sisters
Virtual reality used to plan a complicated surgery.
There’s a shopping center in El Segundo that uses the blue butterfly as its logo…because it's built on its former habitat. Nice to see the butterfly is making a comeback.
How an endangered blue butterfly made a surprising return to Redondo Beach
The Orange County Archives have just posted a zillion photos of Tustin from the 1960s. It's weird how it looks so familiar in terms of the *types* of buildings and trees and streets, but in so many of the photos, the only familiar landmarks are the hills in the distance. (This is one of the few where I could recognize anything.) The city changed a lot between the 60s and 80s!
Enjoy the latest silliness from Google Translate Sings
Massive Global Ransomware Attack Underway, Patch Available
It's using a vulnerability in Windows that was patched in March. If you're running an old version of Windows or haven't patched since February or earlier, your system is at risk.
https://www.sfwriter.com/exfr.htm
A few months ago I read Frameshift, Robert J. Sawyer's 1997 novel dealing with eugenics, Neanderthals, Nazis, and health insurance companies doing everything they can to avoid covering people with debilitating pre-existing conditions. Why do I bring it up now? No reason….
“Is science political? We’d like to think it isn’t, but the conclusions of science often run counter to what people want to believe, and that perforce thrusts science into the political arena.”
Kiddo started feeling sick on the way to the March for Science, so we had to turn around & go home. Seems like he's just overheated, so at least he wouldn't have been contagious, but it wouldn't have been good for him to walk 2 miles in that state.
The kiddo was watching me work on coding a WordPress plugin & started reading my exported LiveJournal entries. I'm so glad LJ's heyday coincided with my 20s and not my angsty teen years.