Yoga employs more Americans than coal. But compare and contrast 1/2

In an early episode of "Mad Men," the young striver Peggy Olson faces a traumatic experience. The principal character, a man whose life is built upon falsehood and evasion, offers his life advice: "It never happened. It will amaze you how much it never happened." 1/x

With the Tanden nomination, we are watching congressional Republicans put Don Draper's advice into effect.

They supported a profoundly corrupt, cruel, vituperative, and generally immoral and unethical president at the head of an inept and unethical administration. They knew it!

But of course those senators never said so. They were scared and they were shamed. Maybe they stopped some bad things - or at least they tell themselves they did. But the experience had to have been profoundly humiliating for almost all of them. And these are not humble people.

So how do they cope? They follow Don Draper's advice. "It never happened."

The Tanden nomination is the opportunity to rev the pretense loud and fast.

The lady was occasionally indecorous! Even ... sometimes ... untoward. We can't have THAT in the US government!

Hypocritical is not really the word to describe this behavior. It's more a kind of post-traumatic coping mechanism, a denial of the radical abuse that they also suffered, along with US allies worldwide, people of integrity in govt service, and so many bereaved American families

In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x

The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x

Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x

The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x

The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x

You're hearing a lot of talk about "irregularities" in the election of 1876 that led to a "disputed" outcome. What is being referred to in this hazy terms?

Across the state of South Carolina, white conservatives had used terror and massacre to deter former slaves from voting in 1876. Here's the story of an attack upon the small town of Hamburg in July

Hundreds of black South Carolinians were killed by white conservative militias. Blacks fought back in many places, but they were out-gunned.

The killings were not spontaneous outbursts. They were part of planned campaign of anti-black voter

Some of the elements of the conservative plan to suppress black votes in South Carolina in 1876 sound queasily familiar in our own time, adjusting for the antique language and technology.

But back of it all was terror and violence, more violence than could be contained by the limited federal forces in the area - who were anyway constrained by the white conservative Democratic House majority elected in 1874.

Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Pete was in Cairo on the day the war started. He was awoken early by air raid sirens. He turned on Radio Cairo to listen for news. Time passed until an announcer delivered a bulletin. "The Zionists attacked at dawn. We shot down six of their planes and suffered no losses." 2/x

Pete shaved and prepared to go visit the air ministry for himself. The announcer returned to the air. "Update: we shot down TWELVE Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

He understood the Egyptians had suffered a bad defeat. 3/x

He finished dressing, knotted his tie, and the announcer was back.

"Update again. We shot down FIFTY Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

That's when he realized that the entire Egyptian air force had been wiped out.

4/x

(NB I may have the figures wrong in the anecdote, I'm telling the story from memory, but you get the idea.)

5/x

Linux code injection paint-by-numbers.

Can we launch a process that looks one way to (superficial) auditors but is, in fact, entirely different? (Think process hollowing and the like on Windows).

Firstly, how are processes created and what does related auditing look like?

The most common pattern is fork() → execve(). Where the fork() syscall create a duplicate of the running process context and execve() overlays a copy of the target program onto that context.

After calling fork(), we’ll have two processes, the original one and a new - duplicated - one (with a new pid).

Control will return from fork() to both process instances. In the child process, the return value will simply by 0, in the parent it will hold the pid of the child.

Thus we can determine whether we are running in the child context and call execv() accordingly, while allowing the parent to continue.

Now, let’s take a look at where the auditing hooks lie. From calling execve(), we’ll eventually land up in exec_binrpm().

Only 1 / 67 antivirus engines list SUNBURST backdoor as malicious - SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll https://t.co/taaiUtSJzR #SUNBURST #UNC2452

SolarWinds' digital certificate hasn't been revoked yet.

The full compromised package is still being hosted online as well 😓 hxxps://downloads.solarwinds[.]com/solarwinds/CatalogResources/Core/2019.4/2019.4.5220.20574/SolarWinds-Core-v2019.4.5220-Hotfix5.msp

Job class within the backdoored #Sunburst DLL is pretty straight forward and aligns with @FireEye's analysis. CollectSystemDescription:

DeleteFile

A thread on teaching live lessons using @MicrosoftTeams Meet Now function where students follow their normal timetable except online - will go into more detail on every point in a blog post later. Have used Teams for live teaching have supported over 100 live lessons since March

1. If you are using the desktop app, check you have the latest version of Teams so that you should have Breakout rooms enabled. Check by clicking your profile picture, then About - I have version 1.3.00.28779. If you have 1.2..., click on check for updates to get the latest

2. Set your entry routine. I get my students to enter with their microphone muted - you can also not allow attendees to unmute by opening the participants list, clicking the ellipsis and selecting that option.

3. Make sure students arrive as attendees - some organisations have this set up to automatically happen that only meeting organizer is the presenter and others are attendees. Can change this in the manage permissions menu to only me if not already set (opens in a web browser).

4. Classroom routine and expectations - first lesson I share my screen and show the students the raise hand function for when they want to ask questions, how to access the chat function and how to react to questions as opposed to typing answers

Facebook -- having taken out full-page ads in the NYT, Washington Post, and WSJ -- is generally seen as the primary victim of the new app privacy controls coming in iOS14. But Google is perhaps even more vulnerable to ATT. Why has Google remained silent? (1/X)

2/ First, background: here's a high-level overview of how ATT / IDFA deprecation impacts advertisers and ad networks, and why this whole ordeal has put advertisers and ad networks into a state of panic:

3/ Google is equally as susceptible to harm from ATT as Facebook. Google's UAC product -- esp its tROAS and tCPA campaign objectives -- relies as much on IDFA-indexed monetization and engagement data as FB's mobile product does. But Google has one big weakness wrt ATT: YouTube

4/ Broadly, view-through attribution accounts for a disproportionate % of conversions from YouTube app install impressions. This means: user sees the YT ad, doesnt click, downloads app later, & Google is able to claim it by reconciling IDFA seen at impression to IDFA seen in app

5/ View-through attribution is nonexistent in the ATT paradigm as it relies on the IDFA; some significant portion of YT's attributed conversions will evaporate. So why isnt Google vocally opposing ATT? Two reasons: consumer optics and its duality as ad network / mobile platform

I'll touch upon few different types of cyber frauds and few possible ways in which we can avoid ourselves to be duped of money, time & energy.

Will also attach few real registered FIRs showing that most of the times such crimes happen with educated & learned people.

1/16

Cyber Fraud type 1 - Facebook/Instagram

Profile cloning -Fraudster will make exact same profile like yours - using pictures from your own profile. They will then message to your contacts asking for money immediately for the surgery of mother or similar emotional lie

2/16

Always verify before sending money.
Don't verify by calling that person, instead, call a common friend or family member of that person. Don't think you can't be fooled - I know at least 20 people working in Top IT MNCs becoming victim of this fraud. Lock your FB/Insta.

3/16

Cyber Fraud type 2 -OLX/Quikr
This generally happens while selling something on OLX/Quikr & similar platforms. In such cases, people will fraud in the name of paying money by asking to scan the QR code or click a link.
NEVER scan the QR code to receive money, give your UPI

4/16

Cyber Fraud type 3 - Fake SMS & Call from unknown numbers
Fraudster will send fake SMS showing amount credited to the account - with correct account number in SMS. Then they will call from unknown numbers asking for money.

ALWAYS check your bank account first via bank app.

5/16