SPYWARE ON WHEELS: Your Car Reports on Your Activities, Even Those in the Back Seat.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 8, 2023
September 7, 2023
FINGERS CROSSED! Joe Biden Is Really Screwed Now. “Those who are advocating for Trump or another Republican are asking the wrong questions. It’s not about if Trump can beat Biden, if DeSantis can beat Biden, or even if Trump is too toxic to win; it’s about whether Biden can beat any of the Republicans running for the nomination.”
SPOILER: DEMS ARE HAVING A PSYCHIC MELTDOWN, NOT THAT THAT’S NEWS: How not to have a psychic meltdown when you see new Trump-Biden poll numbers. “In The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll of the 2024 election, President Biden and former president Donald Trump are locked at 46% each. Other recent polls have shown essentially the same thing. While there will be many twists and turns before next November, at this point the race is a toss-up.”
PRIVACY [VIP]: It’s Been a Good Week for Keeping Bossy Busybodies From Spying on Your Phone. “Hi, Apple? This is Jerry from the FBI. Yeah, we’re going to need you to scan everybody’s photo libraries for MAGA hats near the Capitol building on or around January 6, 2021. And next month we’re going to have you start sending us location data from gun stores. Kthnxbi.”
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: How China Demands Tech Firms Reveal Hackable Flaws in Their Products.
For state-sponsored hacking operations, unpatched vulnerabilities are valuable ammunition. Intelligence agencies and militaries seize on hackable bugs when they’re revealed—exploiting them to carry out their campaigns of espionage or cyberwar—or spend millions to dig up new ones or to buy them in secret from the hacker gray market.
But for the past two years, China has added another approach to obtaining information about those vulnerabilities: a law that simply demands that any network technology business operating in the country hand it over. When tech companies learn of a hackable flaw in their products, they’re now required to tell a Chinese government agency—which, in some cases, then shares that information with China’s state-sponsored hackers, according to a new investigation. And some evidence suggests foreign firms with China-based operations are complying with the law, indirectly giving Chinese authorities hints about potential new ways to hack their own customers.
Today, the Atlantic Council released a report—whose findings the authors shared in advance with WIRED—that investigates the fallout of a Chinese law passed in 2021, designed to reform how companies and security researchers operating in China handle the discovery of security vulnerabilities in tech products. The law requires, among other things, that tech companies that discover or learn of a hackable flaw in their products must share information about it within two days with a Chinese agency known as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The agency then adds the flaw to a database whose name translates from Mandarin as the Cybersecurity Threat and Vulnerability Information Sharing Platform but is often called by a simpler English name, the National Vulnerability Database.
For the last few years, I thought maybe I was being too paranoid, checking the national origin of apps before downloading. But is there such a thing as too paranoid anymore?
This story doesn’t just apply to apps developed in China but it certainly applies to all apps developed in China.
THIS IS NOT THE HANDMAID’S TALE I WAS PROMISED: Despite Curbs, Abortion Rose in Most States This Year.
SOME VICTORY: Russian general warns Putin will ‘inevitably’ fire ‘nuclear weapons’ to claim victory in Ukraine.
Major-General Alexander Vladimirov, 78, who is the author of the “war bible” and also wrote the General Theory of War said in an interview that a nuclear bomb will be dropped.
He told pro-war pundit Vladislav Shurygin on the VK social media platform that “only one thing is needed” and that is to press the button which will be a “political decision by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief,” Putin.
The Kremlin official said, “The goals of Russia and the goals of the West are their survival and historical eternity.
“And this means that in the name of this, all means of armed struggle available to them will be used, including such a tool as their nuclear weapons.”
General Vladimirov added, “I am sure that nuclear weapons will be used in this war – inevitably, and from this neither we nor the enemy have anywhere to go.
Russia has a stable of ultra-nationalists who go on TV to drum up war support but it isn’t clear how many Russians still care.
“SHOCKING?” YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD. I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS: A Shocking Number of Illegal Aliens Flagged as National Security Risks.
ONE WIN AT A TIME: One Soros DA Gone, Another Targeted. “One Soros-backed DA resigned rather than face a recall vote.”
ASHLEY MCCULLY: Exploiting Transgender Kids as Emotional Support Animals. “If the criminal justice system is inclined to ‘follow the science’ and apply the law differently for those who have been proven to make bad decisions based on a scientifically immature brain, then why are we not applying the same logic to the kabuki theater that is prevalent with gender dysphoria?”
Read the whole thing, and give Ashley a nice welcome to PJ Media.
NICE, BUT IT NEEDS TWO MORE ZEROS: Mother, Daughter to Receive $100,000 Settlement in Landmark Secret Gender-Transition Case.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: New Rules Bite Brass in the Backside. “At long last, Republicans have begun to embrace the New Rules bestowed upon our society by the Marxist Left. Just yesterday, my colleague Chris Queen reported on Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr following the example recently set by Fulton County DA Fani Willis and wielding the state’s RICO laws. But unlike Willis’s acrobatic interpretation of the statutes to go after Orange Man Bad, Carr is using them to bust up the passel of actual domestic terrorists who have been terrorizing Atlanta over its plans to build a public safety training center.”
A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Would-be STEM majors can’t add 1/2 + 1/3.
After a year of remote algebra, Diego Fonseca struggled with advanced algebra. Despite a week at George Mason University’s Math Boot Camp, the would-be computer science major failed the math placement test to qualify for calculus four times. He didn’t know the basics.
Across the country, more students are placing into pre-college math, reports AP’s Collin Binkley. “At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents.”
At George Mason in Northern Virginia, fewer would-be STEM majors are getting into calculus and more are failing, he writes.
“We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third,” said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason’s math department.
More at the link.
TAKE OFF AND NUKE IT FROM ORBIT? The Real Problem With DEI and How to Fix It.
CAROL ROTH: Climate extremists want to help China by hurting the US economy.
The move away from traditional energy also threatens the U.S.’s top exports. As of 2022, the U.S. was exporting around 3.6 million barrels per day of oil.
Arguably, our biggest export is U.S. dollars, which provides cheap financing for the U.S., particularly for the government and its unwieldy expansion. In 2022, the BIS (Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, so to speak) said, “The average turnover per day with the USD on one side of the transaction was $6.6 trillion.”
Moving away from traditional energy is weakening the dollar’s role in terms of global oil trading, meaning potentially less oil traded in U.S. dollars and fewer “petrodollars” to be plowed back into the U.S. Treasury market.
China is trying to capitalize on this as well, working to form stronger alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The hope is that this will move even more global trade away from the US’s highly entrenched position.
Having given up our manufacturing and wage edge to China, giving up our energy advantage is fiscally and otherwise irresponsible.
And China is counting on the short-sightedness of U.S. central planners to repeat their mistakes again.
Shortsighted or on Beijing’s payroll? You make the call.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN):
The aliens never visit China to warn about climate change because China already has a communist government.
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) July 31, 2023
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Laser-Focused Trump FINALLY Ready to Debate…Meghan Markle. “What’s bothering me now — and I’ve written about this a lot — is that the Donald Trump running around this year is not the same guy I would have walked through fire to vote for just three short years ago.”
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS STUCK LIKE THAT: Biden’s Green Energy Inflation Reduction Act Needs a Big Bailout Already.
According to a report late last month by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda), large offshore wind developers are asking for an average 48% price adjustment in their contracts to cover rising costs. The Alliance for Clean Energy NY is also requesting an average 64% price increase on 86 solar and wind projects.
The IRA includes federal tax credits that can offset 50% of a project’s costs. But renewable developers say their costs are increasing faster than inflation and that the projects will “not be economically viable and would be unable to proceed to construction and operation under their existing pricing,” says Nyserda.
Irony alert: One reason is that the government-forced green energy transition is driving up demand for equipment, material and labor. “Growing demand for renewable energy projects nationwide ‘has exacerbated inflation for renewable project cost components relative to broader inflation levels,’” Nyserda says, citing the Alliance for Clean Energy NY.
More:
The speed at which these projects blew up seems stunning. But it really isn’t.
EVs, solar, and wind projects don’t scale. Heck, they don’t scale even with subsidies. I have been saying this for months.
Needed minerals and and skilled labor are in short supply. The US is still dependent on China and other foreign countries for materials.
Biden has escalated trade wars with China, but China hasn’t even retaliated much yet. It can with rare earth elements.
Bidenomics is inflation necessitating bailouts for the subsidized.
I wonder how long before price controls get added to the equation.
I WOULD TUNE INTO THIS: Trump ‘Would Love’ to Debate Meghan Markle for Some Reason.
September 6, 2023
CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Promised Land’ Star, Director Stumped by Insane Diversity Question.
The star and director behind “The Promised Land,” which just screened at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, must have drawn the short straw. They were both presented with a question about their film’s lack of diversity, at least by American standards.
The historical drama follows an 18th century army captain (Mikkelsen) struggling to raise his social status and maintain his values in an increasingly hostile climate. The film is based on a novel inspired by a real person, Captain Ludvig Kahlen.
An unnamed journalist from Denmark quizzed Mikkelsen and Arcel about the film’s alleged dearth of diversity. It’s set in a Nordic country circa the 1700s.
Much more at the link.
LAUGH, CRY, OR DRINK — YOU MAKE THE CALL: I Can’t Stop Laughing: Biden Thinks He’s Treated Like a Toddler.
THERE HE GOES AGAIN, REBUILDING OUR TATTERED FOREIGN RELATIONS: Biden’s Absence at ASEAN Summit Seen as Snub to Southeast Asia.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Meet the Avowed Marxist Who Decides What Books Go in Your School Library.
WELL, YEAH — WE SQUANDERED OUR MILITARY AND POLITICAL CAPITAL: U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working.