Toby Keith

The good die young.

How David Niven won the Iron Cross in Normandy

Cool story.

This seems like a wedge issue for Donald Trump to use

Via The Queen Of The World we see this:

Illegal immigrants in the Big Apple will soon start receiving pre-paid debit cards that they must pledge to use only to buy food, according to New York City records and media reports.

Records indicate that New York City has awarded a $53 million contract to a company called Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi), which will create and distribute the pre-paid cards, called immediate response cards.

The question is whether the traditional members of the Democratic Party's coalition will resent that illegal aliens get government largess that they think should go to them.

Another veteran reports for the final muster

The last survivor of the British Army surrender at Singapore. 

Ave atque vale.

CMP .30-06 ammo deal alert

$392. 400 rounds M2 Ball, 150 grain Full Metal Jacket, Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. Packed in 20 round boxes mid 60's to early 70's manufacture. Non corrosive. Limit 1 can per customer/year. **FREE SHIPPING DOES NOT APPLY TO SURPLUS AMMO. 

$1/round for .30-06 isn't bad.

A winter doldrums public service post

Over at Flares Into Darkness, there is a bunch of beach paintings.  Yeah, it looks exactly like that here right now.  Here's an example:

Go check them out.  This is a daily read for me.

Interesting Security News

Item the first: follow the money:

Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) held its first-ever automotive-focused Pwn2Own event in Tokyo last week, and awarded over $1.3 million to the discoverers of 49 vehicle-related zero day vulnerabilities.

Researchers from French security outfit Synacktiv took home $450,000 after demonstrating six successful exploits, one of which saw the company’s crew gain root access to a Tesla Modem. Another effort found a sandbox escape in the Musk-mobiles’ infotainment system.

Other popular targets at the three day event included after-market infotainment systems and, more troublingly, a whole host of successful hacks on EV chargers.

This is a good strategy - show me the hack, I'll show you the money.  More, please.  Plus, good on them picking automotive computing as the target.  Long time readers will recall that this is something I've been harping on for quite some time.

Item the second: SEC gets pwned (same link as above): 

We had our suspicions when Twitter/X blamed the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the account takeover that led to the premature release of news the regulator would allow Bitcoin exchange-traded funds– and those suspicions have been confirmed.

"The SEC determined that the unauthorized party obtained control of the SEC cell phone number associated with the account in an apparent 'SIM swap' attack," the Commission admitted last week.

For those unfamiliar with this form of attack, SIM swaps involve convincing a telecom carrier to transfer a phone number to a new SIM card (a shift for which there are a variety of legitimate reasons), giving an attacker control over communications going to and from that number – like a second authentication factor.

That didn't matter, of course, because the SEC also admitted it disabled multi-factor authentication with Twitter support in July last year "due to issues accessing the account," but no one bothered to turn it back on.

"It made security too hard and then we forgot all about it" is an excuse that I suspect that SEC investigators wouldn't accept.  Top. Men.

Notre Dame de Paris on track for complete restoration later this year

This video is somewhat light on details but it's impressive just how many people are involved in the project.

This video is more in depth on what has happened over the last 90 days or so.

The dangerous side of IT security

Security researcher fined for revealing insecure system:

After discovering and reporting a vulnerability in an e-commerce database that was putting customers and their personal information at risk, a security researcher in Germany was fined €3,000 for doing so.

In 2021, a contractor, known as Hendrik H., said he was troubleshooting software for Modern Solution GmbH when he realized that password access to the remote server was stored in plain text in MSConnext.exe. This easy access would make the password simple for many to find, and a threat actor could access data to everything stored on the database server, including customer information.

There is a lot of back and forth on this between the company and the researcher, with court appeals (and more planned).  But this seems odd to me.  If the researcher was working for the company (as stated) then why did he not have a "get out of jail free" card from company management for what he was doing?  This is basically a letter (typically from the Chief Information Security Officer) saying the researcher is authorized to poke around and that the company will hold him harmless.  It also will have non-disclosure and other restrictions so that the researcher won't up and publish embarrassing info.

 It doesn't seem that any of this was in place, so I'm wondering what sort of "research" this guy was up to.

Dad Joke CCCVI

Singing in the shower is great until you get shampoo in your mouth.  The it becomes a soap opera.

Constitutional Crisis

The bustard's a fortunate fowl
with almost no reason to growl.
Saved from what would be
illegitimacy
by the grace of a fortunate vowel

Via Aesop comes news that the Republic is now in a full fledged constitutional crisis.  The short version: Texas put up razor wire along the border, the Federales cut it down, Texas sued to stop the Fed interference, and the Supreme Court sided with the Feds.  Now Texas has told SCOTUS to pound sand and the Texas National Guard is putting up more razor wire.

It is unreported whether Texas Gov Abbot echoed Andy Jackson's famous words that the SCOTUS has issued its ruling, now let them enforce it.

This is an enormous blow to the prestige and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and demonstrates just how fragile that sense of legitimacy is.  Good grief, what an unholy mess.

May God save this honorable Republic.

Dad Joke CCCV

It's been a month since my last Dad Joke, where I promised to do better (after a month long joke hiatus).  The Spirit is willing, but the Flesh is weak ...

But Tuna left a comment to that post with a new Dad Joke!  Reproduced here in full:

Good God, it's been a month since this month late dad joke!

Here's one: Do you want a brief explanation of an acorn?
In a nutshell, it's an Oak tree.

Thanks, Tuna!

R.I.P. Peter Schickele

"Professor"* Peter Schickele has passed away at the fine old age of 88.  Dwight has the obit.  I ran across his music back at State U, and have enjoyed its very clever music inside baseball ever since.

I hadn't known that he orchestrated Joan Baez's Noel album.  I also hadn't known that he won four Grammys.

Schickele, of course, created the P.D.Q. Bach character.  One of my favorites is here, "The Art Of The Ground Round".  I had this album, Back In The Day.

Rest in peace.

* It seems that he taught at Julliard, so the term isn't clearly wrong.

Big 2A gun decision

Lawrence has a good post up about the recent win (for the Good Guys) striking down firearms prohibitions in Post Offices.  This bit is they key:

The big difference here is that previous anti-gun laws overturned in the wake of Bruen have been state laws, but this one is a federal law. Perhaps one slipped by while I wasn’t looking, but I believe that this is the first federal law overturned in the wake of Bruen.

Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is slowly being restored to its proper place in American jurisprudence.

Sure looks that way.

 

Schadenfreude

 

 The cold weather in the midwest is stranding some Tesla drivers. This article is from Chicago, but reports are coming from other cities affected by the current cold snap. The issues include not having enough charge to properly preheat the battery so it will take a charge, not being able to charge at all, and getting only a partial charge that limits the available range. 

"Tesla owners in Chicago were left in dire straits as they were unable to charge their cars because of freezing weather temperatures.

Fox Chicago reported that charging stations have become "car graveyards" as temperatures drop into negative double digits. It comes as drivers also discovered the Tesla Cybertruck has less than 80% of its advertised range in cold weather.

Tyler Bears, who had tried to charge his Tesla at a charging station in Oak Brook, Illinois, was stuck for hours. He said: "Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent. And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday.""

 Tesla has some helpful information under their Cold Weather Best Practices. Among the tips is the suggestion to not use the cabin heater while driving to save battery power. 

10 War movie actors who served in combat

This is pretty cool:

Lots that's predictable, but a lot that's new.  Christopher Lee makes the list, but as we all know he was a badass.  I hadn't known that Clark Gable flew combat missions.  Oh, and Jimmy Stewart wasn't on the list but should have been.

But interesting.

Bavid Bowe - Space Oddity

(See what I did there?)

 

It's a little out of place to tag something Modern Monday when it was recorded over half a century ago, but this still sounds like nothing on the radio today*.

* Unless you listen to "Classic Rock" ...

Information Security is hiring

The World Economic Forum (I know, I know) released a report of the fastest growing and fastest declining job fields.  Information Security is their 4th fastest growing job field. 

And it's cheap to get into the field.

Introducing The Queen Of The World

Michael left a comment to last night's post where I was off to sack Rome and TQOTW was a mermaid:

Show us your ugly mug but keep the mermaid for yourself?

Sigh, so uncivilized. LOL

Touche, Michael.  So with her permission, here she is as the Queen of the World:

And here is the mermaid:

Man, this web site has made us waste a lot of time on a Sunday morning.

Excuse me, I'm off to sack Rome

OldAFSarge finds a fun site.  It clearly has an AI back end because there's no way I'm this good looking.

Oh, and how do we get to the bottom of who sacked Rome?  Better get a 1930s Gumshoe:

Yeah, I did The Queen Of The World as the Queen of the World.  And as a mermaid.  It's awesome.

Highly recommended.