George Mari @GeorgeMari@qoto.org

If I tell you a politician called the US a "FAILING NATION" as part of an Easter rant after selling Bibles & golden shoes to pay legal fees while awaiting trial for 88 felonies, but the party of "family values" & "law & order" stands by him, it is sadly not an April Fools prank.

The editor of Ohio's most essential news organization felt compelled to tell readers that the paper's "north star" in the Trump era is truth, period.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html

What's demoralizing is that almost no other top editors in the business are willing to say this so plainly -- to make clear that their organizations will refuse to give any ink, much less equal ink, to the relentless liars who are poisoning our public discourse.

Big Journalism needs to find its spine, pronto.

Comprehensive, terrifying account of the Russian agents and technology behind Havana syndrome, a brain disease caused deliberately by acoustic/pulsed microwave radiation attacks

https://theins.ru/en/politics/270425

My obit for Ross Anderson, who died a few days ago: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2024/03/31/rip-ross-j-anderson/

The T-Mobile Sidekick’s Jump button made mobile multitasking easy https://www.theverge.com/24115039/danger-hiptop-t-mobile-sidekick-jump-button

The price we pay to participate in public society cannot be the loss of Fourth Amendment rights. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/eff-asks-oregon-supreme-court-not-limit-fourth-amendemtn-rights-based-terms

"Political science scholar Tim Hogan said that, if the Secret Service "does nothing about Trump's violation of federal law making a threats against the POTUS [the Department of Homeland Security] head should fire the director of Secret Service and refer the matter to the DOJ for charges. Because Trump is out on bail, he should likely be held pending trial."

"Trump should be in custody," he added."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-biden-imagery-revoke-bail/

No versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are affected by xz-utils backdoor (liblzma5) https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/urgent-security-alert-fedora-41-and-rawhide-users However, Fedora Linux 40 users may have received. Fuck. Stop using Fedora 40. I hope you kept verified backups.

The FTC has confirmed what we suspected: During the pandemic supply chain disruptions, big grocery chains pressured food suppliers to favor them over smaller competitors and hiked food prices to rake in record profits.

Those prices have stayed high even as disruptions eased.

It's Friday, so that means time to hang with some friends and talk EVs. Lots of electric truck and towing talk in this one. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/nrkxW8bcP9M

This is so badass: Ukraine is using a network of thousands of mobile phones deployed across the country to track incoming drones and missiles.

h/t to @riskybusiness which notes on this week's podcast that Iranian drones apparently are really loud. So they use these network of phones to hear when lawn-mower drones trundle on by, and then shoot them down with small arms fire.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/how-ukraine-is-using-mobile-phones-on-6ft-poles-to-stop-drones/ar-BB1kzCIL

https://risky.biz/RB742/

After nearly three decades in Hong Kong, VOA's sister outlet Radio Free Asia has closed its physical bureau in the city and no longer has full-time staff there due to the declining press freedom landscape, the outlet announced in a statement Friday.

https://www.voanews.com/a/rfa-departs-hong-kong-citing-press-freedom-concerns/7548666.html #voanews

Sam Bankman-Fried is still gambling https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/29/24114864/sam-bankman-fried-trial-sentencing-lessons-ftx

This is insane! And they say this will make shared governance better lol

#HigherEd
@academicchatter

Kentucky president proposes to strip faculty body’s power
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/shared-governance/2024/03/28/kentucky-president-proposes-strip-faculty-bodys

Well, my financial situation just abruptly changed for the scary. Lotta bad news at once.

I mention I have a patreon about once every 5 years and I've been redirecting the handful of donations to various radicals for a long while, but I could really use more stability rn. Definitely do not donate if you're just a poor punk; there are myriad prisoner support projects and radical spaces that could use cash too. But if you're a reader with extra sitting around...

https://www.patreon.com/williamgillis

A new project to resume development on the formerly open-source Redis project. This project was forked from the open source Redis project right before the transition to their new source available licenses. https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey Linux Foundation is behind this project. #opensource #unix #linux

OMG 😧 Playing doom using windows task manager
https://youtu.be/hSoCmAoIMOU?si=mvZ3YrFtRziyjw-A

Apple is an innovative company that is widely emulated around the world. But the advanced security of its products and their associated user accounts remain highly vulnerable to compromise because AFAICT Apple will not let you remove a mobile phone number from your account.

I've long advised readers to move away from relying on phone numbers for ANY form of authentication, and I've written time again about how many companies require a mobile number on signup, but allow you to remove the number from your profile after the account is set up. This is advisable if you have the option for more robust forms of 2FA, like security keys, app-based or OTP/push authentication.

The reason for this advice is that phone numbers are not great for security or authentication (they are transient and not property you control) and your phone company will not help you if one of their employees is tricked into navigating to a phishing page and giving away credentials that allow thieves to sim-swap your number to a device they control, and then request password reset links via SMS to all your important accounts.

But it doesn't seem like you can do that with Apple. And it's leading to stuff like this, without giving victims much in the way of anything they can do about it -- except maybe change their number to another number that isn't already tied to their identity.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/recent-mfa-bombing-attacks-targeting-apple-users/

As a heavy Apple user, I hope I am wrong about this and that someone will set me straight. Because this is really bothering me right now.