Yeah, I think there is a lot of potential for code analysis. There’s a limited cross section of ways malware can do interesting things, but many permutations of ways to do that.

So look for the interesting things, like:

• accessing other programs’ address spaces
• reading/writing files
• deleting/moving files
• sending/receiving network traffic
• os system calls and console commands
• interacting with hardware
• spawning new processes
• displaying things on the screen
• accessing timing information

Obviously there’s legitimate uses for each of these, so that’s just the first step.

Next, analyze the data that is being used for that:

• what’s the source?
• what’s the destination?
• what kind of transformations are being applied to the data?

Then you can watch out for things like:

• is it systematically going through directories and doing some operation to all files? (Maybe ransomware, data scrubbing, or just maliciously deleting stuff?)
• is it grabbing data from somewhere and sending it somewhere else on the internet? (Stealing data?)
• is it using timing information to build data? (Timing attacks to figure out kernel data that should be hidden?)
• is it changing OS settings/setup?

Then generate a report of everything it is doing and see if it aligns with what the code is supposed to do. Or you could even build some kind of permissions system around that with more sophistication than the basic “can this app access files? How about the internet?”

Computer programs can be complex, but are ultimately made up of a series of simple operations and it’s possible to build an interpreter that can do those operations and then follow everything through to see exactly what is included in the massive amount of data it sends over the network so that you can tell your file sharing program is also for some reason sending /etc/passwords to a random address or listening for something to access a sequence of closed ports and then will do x, y, z, if that ever happens. Back doors could be obvious with the right analysis tools, especially if it’s being built from source code (though I believe it’s still possible with binaries, just maybe a bit harder).

If it hasn’t happened already, it wouldn’t surprise me if useful instrumentation space is reallocated to advertisement space at some point. Though hopefully the consumer rage in response would end whatever company tries that first.

Yeah, realizing I was an idiot implies I’m a bit less of one than I was before I realized.

I want to see some videos of salesmen trying to sell touchscreens like they are cars of the future and so great. Followed by the same salesman selling the return to tactile buttons as a big step forward because of how bad of an idea the touchscreens are.

Most likely the first one will be older, but I bet there’s many that could be lead to do both in the same day by two different people showing interest in the same model but different year of a vehicle.

Now I want to see a full-size keyboard with a special place to mount a phone and a shoulder strap. Maybe some wheels so it could double as a skateboard and you’ll be an 80s/90s image of a hacker.

Touch screen should have maintenance/status display and diagnostics and settings for things you’d take care of while the vehicle isn’t moving. Like seat/mirror positioning presets, ride height, towing mode, etc.

I use my four way hazard lights when there’s heavy braking on the freeway to make sure people behind me are paying attention. It’s a button on my dash and pretty easy to toggle.

Though is that something that touch screen cars really put into the touch screen!?

Yeah I hate it when information is hidden in the name of minimalism. I’d rather have a plane cockpit UI than a bicycle UI, even if it means I feel like an idiot at various points when I discover new things I could have been doing the whole time.

Thanks for the detail!

And I agree that maybe they should be using something else. Though one risk with using something that few others are using is that it can also be used for targeting and tracking. Like if someone knows the bodyguards use shortwave communicators and that there’s an event at some location, they could have drones set up to just target those frequencies when they see them.

It’ll always be an arms race, at least if the players realize they are in an arms race and don’t just willingly carry tracking devices.

Infinite monkeys would produce everything in the time that it would take to type it out as fast as anyone can type, infinite times. There would also be infinite variations of slower versions, including an infinite number of versions where everything but the final period is written, but it never gets added (same with every other permutation of missing characters and extra ones added).

There would be infinite monkeys that only type one of Shakespeare’s plays or poems, and infinite monkeys that type some number greater than that, and even infinite monkeys that type out plays Shakespeare wanted to write but never got around to, plus infinite fan fictions about one or more of his plays.

Like infinite variations of plays where Juliette kills Hamlet, Ceasar puts on a miraculous defense and then divides Europe into the modern countries it’s made up of today, Romeo falls in love with King Lear, and Transformers save the Thundercats from the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles who were brainwashed to think they were ancient normal samurai lizards. Some variations having all of that in the same play.

That’s the thing about infinity. If there’s any chance of something happening at all, it happens infinite times.

Even meta variants would all happen. Like if there’s any chance a group of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters could form a computer, there would be infinite variations of that computer in that infinite field of monkeys, including infinite ones that are trying to stimulate infinite monkeys making up a computer to verify that those monkeys make up a valid computer worth building and don’t have some bug where the temperature gets too high and melts some of the monkeys or the food delivery system isn’t fast enough to keep up and breaks down because monkeys get too tired to keep up with necessary timings.

BUT, even though all of these would exist in that infinite sea of monkeys, there would be far more monkeys just doing monkey things. So many more that you could spend your whole lifetime jumping to random locations within that sea of monkeys and never see any of the random organization popping out, despite an infinite number of monkeys and societies of monkeys dedicating their whole existence to making sure you, specifically, can find them (they might be too busy fighting off the infinite number of monkeys and societies of monkeys dedicating their lives to prevent you from ever finding non-noise in the sea of monkeys).

Ah, I haven’t used it so didn’t realize there was a social aspect to it, that makes sense, though I don’t think the social nonsense is worth giving that kind of data to the parent company. Though I suppose the leaks in this case were just from people looking up the bodyguards on the service? Is there an option to set your profile to private?

But yeah, I’d agree that anyone who doesn’t want their location to be shared shouldn’t be using that, especially when there’s security concerns.

Though just carrying a cell phone at all gives some people access to your full location information, if they care to track it.

I’d prefer if that information was stored locally and wasn’t usable by anyone at Strava to just look up where someone is and/or has been.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. I’m baffled as to how Apple won their version of this lawsuit when their system is arguably more of a monopoly than Google’s, since there were still ways to use 3rd party app stores on Android but not in Apple’s ecosystem.

Does it just come down to how connected Apple’s lawyers were vs Google’s? How about an investigation of all involved, assuming things don’t go to complete shit over the next few months?

Haven’t read down yet, but I bet odds are a bit better if you let go of the brake just before impact, to raise the front up a bit.

I’d give the moose the top spot. Maybe not in sheer numbers of deaths, but I’d much rather have an encounter with a deer than a moose.

Though for sheer number, I also wouldn’t give that to deer, that spot would go to humans, though I can admit it’s a bit pedantic.

I just picked the one that lets me decide when to download the updates instead of when MS decides it’s time for me to download the updates. And I paid for the pro version just to get that.

It’ll be the last time I pay anything for Windows, and no, I don’t mean I’m going to switch to the ad supported version next. I’m hoping the last xbox game pass subscription payment I made before finally cancelling it is the last money they ever get from me.

And to add insult to injury, one of the last things I did before cancelling was scroll through their list of games and add the interesting looking ones to my steam wishlist, as well as the ones I uninstalled and enjoyed playing.

And yes, I realize I could have looked at that game list without a sub, but I had been delaying cancelling for a while because I always saw more games that I wanted to try when I looked through what they had and needed to do that to let go.

They didn’t realize that his “joke” on SNL was actually him being honest.

Maybe, having worked closely enough with Trump to have an even better idea of who he is than most, it was a choice rather than incompetence.

It goes both ways. Companies are able to track way more data than they should be able to and users are bad at avoiding or even being aware of it, including many who should have security concerns at the top of their mind.

I used chatGPT to help make looking up some syntax on a niche scripting language over the weekend to speed up the time I spent working so I could get back to the weekend.

Then, yesterday, I spent time talking to a colleague who was familiar with the language to find the real syntax because chatGPT just made shit up and doesn’t seem to have been accurate about any of the details I asked about.

Though it did help me realize that this whole time when I thought I was frying things, I was often actually steaming them, so I guess it balances out a bit?