Post-Truth is Pre-Fascism

- 3 mins read
Notes, Quotes, and Paraphrases from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century - Timothy Snyder “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case…As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes: 1) Open hostility to verifiable reality. Presenting Inventions and lies as if they were facts. The “Great Leader” lies frequently and without reason.

Disillusioned with the Church™

- 3 mins read
I have had a continuously growing unease about the churches in America. Setting aside the current political climate, it seems to be increasingly difficult to find a man or woman in a pulpit or a pew who believes in, much less advocates for Jesus’ teachings. They may pay lip service to the Sermon on the Mount, but their lives will tell you a much different story. And as much as I had become dismayed at this fact, I was excited to see that scripture already offered an answer for it.
Intro This book was recommended to me by one of the most intentional managers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Matt R. brought me in as a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Cradlepoint and oversaw my transition to Manager of that same engineering team. Throughout my time with Matt, he worked diligently to hold me to the tenets laid about by Ms. Fournier in this book and to encourage me to be a better leader for my team.

2025.01.07.News You Should Know

- 4 mins read
Apple Apple offers 95MsettlementinSiriprivacylawsuitTheRegisterSomethingassimpleasazipperoranindividualraisingtheirarmswouldcauseSiritostartrecording.Lopez,etalv.AppleIncwillbesettledfor95M settlement in Siri privacy lawsuit • The Register - Something as simple as a zipper or an individual raising their arms would cause Siri to start recording. Lopez, et al v. Apple Inc will be settled for 95 million if the N. California District Court approves. Apple CEO Tim Cook had previously told Congress that Siri’s recording features required a “clear, unambiguous trigger”, i.e.; “Hey Siri” Siri-enabled Apple users from 2011-to an unknown date will likely be eligible diluting individual payouts.

2024.12.31.News You Should Know

- 13 mins read
One Offs Microsoft flags Windows 11 24H2 install media issue • The Register - If you used a USB stick with October or November’s updates installed, your system won’t accept any additional updates. Make sure to re-write your USB stick using December 24’s Critical Apache Struts bug under active exploit • The Register - Guess who’s back, back again. Apache Struts, in-famous for being the source of the Equifax breach in 2017, is back with CVE-2024-53677 a rehash of a vulnerability discovered in Dec 2023.

2024.11.12.News You Should Know

- 5 mins read

Series: News You Should Know

GeoPolitics China’s Volt Typhoon breached Singtel, reports say • The Register - Volt Typhoon reportedly breached Singapore Telecom over the summer. Highlighting why Cyber Threat Intelligence can at times be beneficial for more advanced orgs. N Korea may receive tech in exchange for military support • The Register - DPRK has provided around 10,000 troops to Putin’s war in Ukraine. After DPRK successfully conducted a 90 minute missile flight the US and its allies are starting to wonder exactly what Pyongyang got in exchange for those troops.

Capacity

- 4 mins read

Series: Management

No one likes the sappy I’m such a good manager look at me manage with my great insights post. But every now and then I learn something and I think other people who are moving from a technical resource to a leader may gain insight or value from it. So I share here. Civilian corporate leadership has been a whole different bag than military leadership. In the Army, most of my unit was planned out months or even years in advance.

2024.10.29.News You Should Know

- 6 mins read

Series: News You Should Know

Breaches ‘Satanic’ data thief hits 350M Hot Topic shoppers • The Register - HotTopic, Torrid, and Lunchbox shoppers (around 350m) of them have had a few bits of info stolen; names, emails, physical addresses, dates of birth, last four digits of customers’ credit cards, card types, hashed expiration dates, and account holder names. Likely just watch out for My Neighbor Totoro-themed phishes and you’ll be ok. Skyscraper-high sewage plume erupts in Moscow • The Register - A Ukranian hacker group claims to have disrupted 87k alarms, destroyed 70 servers, and wiped 90TBs of data to pull off the hack.

2024.10.22.News You Should Know

- 7 mins read

Series: News You Should Know

Politics World Iran U.S. and Allies Warn of Iranian Cyberattacks on Critical Infrastructure in Year-Long Campaign Iranian hackers act as brokers selling critical infrastructure access - US and Allies are warning that Iran has ran a year long campaign to break into water, waste-water, electrical plants, government, healthcare, and telecom systems to serve as an Initial Access Broker, selling credentials to other nations, threat actors, etc… These IAB’s aren’t damaging the networks, simply staging an maintaining a presence on the network until it can be sold or made useful.

RSS

- 9 mins read
What Is RSS? RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a protocol left over from the early days of the second internet. Adopted widely in the early 2000s, RSS became a privacy conscious way for users to get updated information from disparate news sources, blogs, content creators, and the like without having to visit individual sites. An interested reader could simply drop an RSS link into an aggregator and curate an “OPML” file of interesting blogs, video content creators, news channels, and other interesting content.