A few years ago I was given a technical deep dive into Akamai’s bot detection systems. One area they were quite focused on were bots impersonating mobile devices, and in particular mobile apps. It’s commonplace for attackers to try to mimic the behavior of mobile apps because it often provides more direct access to the data they’re looking for than trying to scrape websites.

To counter this threat Akamai developed a library for their customers to incorporate into their apps. This library collects a bunch of haptic data from the mobile device, such as the tilt sensors, accelerometers, finger taps/swipes on the screen, and other available data. It then encrypts it and sends it along to Akamai along with the data the app sends. Akamai then analyzes that haptic data and uses it as part of their bot detection analysis.

It is VERY difficult for a computer to mimic the truly random way a mobile device moves in space, or the way your fingers tap/swipe on a screen. If you were asked to draw a straight line from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner of your smartphone, not only would it not be perfectly straight but it would be quite fluid in its randomness. Writing a computer program to simulate that would be very tough. You’re far more likely to get lots of short straight lines with jagged angles than something that looks like a human drew it. And computer algorithms can quickly analyze this sort of data and return a confidence score indicating if it appears to have been created artificially or not.

So my guess is that when that QR code is scanned it will launch a Google app that will collect some similar haptic data and send it off to Google along with a unique id for that captcha. Google will then quickly analyze that haptic data to determine if you’re a bot or not.

Soylent Green is people!

Strap a Go-Pro to the dogs for a great FPV of them at work.

I used to work across the street from Boston Dynamics and would regularly see them testing robots in their parking lot & surrounding grassy/hilly areas. At one point they actually gave a bunch of folks in my company a tour of their labs. I still keep tabs on them from time to time because I find what they do absolutely amazing.

From what I’ve seen of the past 15 years or so of watching them I believe that Boston Dynamics is well in front of Tesla when it comes to robotics. Especially when you see gaffes by Tesla like that video that seems to show their robot was actually being controlled by a person wearing a VR headset.

Could have been something similar to Operation Spiderweb where drones were smuggled into Russia and transported across part of Russia before being launched. This seems to be a likely tactic Ukraine has used multiple times.

My employer has been pushing AI as well so I’ve been using Claude to help me when it makes sense. I’ve had it write python scripts to interact with various API’s, had it analyze log files, etc. I might use it two or three times every other day for between 10 to 30 minutes at a time. So while I’m not using it excessively, I’m still using it what I consider to be a reasonable amount.

I checked my Claude account the other day and it said I have used a whopping 1% of my quota for the past month. That really makes me wonder how all these companies are burning through their usage the way they are reporting. Do they have teams of employees now that are doing nothing but interacting with AIs for 8 hours a day? It seems like that would be the only way for me to put a dent in my monthly quota with Claude…

Our solar panels are probably the best investment we ever made. Year to year our electric bill averages out to zero, even with charging our EV. Over the summer our batteries participate in our electric utilities virtual power plant program, which pays us around $2000 each year for the excess electricity we provide. And our state has a renewable energy program that pays us for every megawatt our panels generate, no matter what it’s used for.

I bet Iran will only honor ship insurance sold by Iran.

This has been the norm for high ranking US politicians for decades. About 10 years ago I attended a talk by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She described how, as PM, she would regularly take walks along a river in Perth and talk with the folks she would encounter. She had a couple personal security guards who would be with her, but it was all very informal.

When Hillary Clinton visited as US Secretary of State she came with an escort of a dozen or so Secret Service in her entourage. On a whim Gillard suggested going for a walk like she usually did. The Secret Service freaked out that this hadn’t been planned weeks in advance, that the walking route hadn’t been scouted out ahead of time, that they didn’t have agents pre-positioned along the route, etc.

I recall that Gillard said they actually did go on a short walk, but the entire Secret Service entourage was very nervous the entire time.

Saudi Arabia should build a pipeline similar to the Alaska Pipeline that lets them transport oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. There’s already the Sumed pipeline that gets around the physical size limitations of the Suez Canal. A cross-Saudi one would completely neuter this power grab by Iran…

Same. I have Firefox with ublock Origin on it right next to Chrome. If I need to visit some third party site I use Firefox. Occasionally I forget I’m in chrome and visit a third party site that’s chock full of ads. When that happens I immediately close the page in Chrome and jump to Firefox for a more reasonable experience.

That’s some next level trolling right there. Love it!

🖕

To hell with that. I’m taking Ivermectin. It cures everything!

That’s what usually happens when a fire breaks out and all your firefighting resources are tied up down the street battling fires at the oil refinery…

Governments & militaries regular leak things like this for strategic purposes. This could very well be misinformation to force Russia to try to quickly reinforce Crimea while Ukraine plans and eventually attacks Russia elsewhere.

I think we have all been watching this plan in action for the last year or two…

And also:

According to Fedorov, disabling heavy artillery using standard drone drops or conventional shells is highly difficult, as damaged units can frequently be repaired and returned to the front lines. To overcome this, Ukrainian developers engineered a specific munition that targets and ruptures the artillery barrels entirely, rendering the weapons unserviceable.

So a smart munition that can specifically target the barrel.

If you ever watched the WWII miniseries Band of Brothers you’d recall the allies destroyed German artillery by shoving explosives in the barrels. Sounds like this does the same sort of thing but without a squad of soldiers rushing the artillery.

The fact that Ukraine has developed the ability to create a munition like this is just another notch in their ever expanding expertise caused by the war. So amazed at their achievements like this.

Many years ago I had to try to debug a memory manager written by a really talented software engineer, with an interesting take on naming things…

• He referred to blocks of memory as “cookies”.

• He had a temporary variable named “handy” because it was handy to have around.

• He had a second temporary variable that referenced the first one that he called “son_of_handy”.

• If corruption was detected in a block of memory then it would set the flag “shit_cookie_corrupt”.

• If too many cookies were corrupt then the system would halt by calling the function “oh_shit_oh_shit_oh_shit”.

I’m shocked that the data center required retinal scans but that the employee with access could then just hold the door and let him and others in.

I used to work at a data center with lots of security. To get into the area with the servers you had to go through a man trap. It was a room a little larger than a telephone booth with automatic doors on both sides. To open the first door you needed a physical card key. Once inside the door closed, then to open the inner door you needed to both enter a PIN and have your hand scanned in a biometric scanner. Only after all that could you get inside. The booth also weighed you, and if your weight was off by a certain amount after your last pass through then it wouldn’t let you in. That was to prevent somebody from piggybacking with you.