With planets and moons, it’s what’s inside that counts. If we want to understand surface features, like volcanoes, or their history, such as how the planet formed or whether it’s suitable for life, we study their interiors. Astronomer Sabine Stanley takes us on a journey to the centers of Venus, Saturn’s large moon Titan, Jupiter’s moon Io, and of course Earth, to help us understand how they, and the solar system, came to be. 

Guest:

Sabine Stanley - Planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of What’s Hidden Inside Planets.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

 

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TORONTO – Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch has come under fire for setting unattainable housing goals for children by TV critic Madeline Wathers. Famously, Oscar the Grouch lives in a metal trash can. “Oscar the Grouch is giving children aspirations that are wholly unrealistic and ultimately unattainable. The impossible dream of owning your own […]

The post Oscar the Grouch criticized for giving children unrealistic housing goals appeared first on The Beaverton.

Summary: Today will be cloudy and cold, but there should be no issues with outdoor activities. That begins to change tonight and especially on Monday morning, as a storm system moves in from the west. Expect on-and-off showers, along with heavy rain and potentially some street flooding through the middle of the week.

Sunday

Most of the region is starting out in the mid- to upper-30s this morning, and we’re going to see overcast skies. This will help to limit highs in the low 50s today, with an easterly breeze, perhaps gusting to 20 mph at times. From there, temperatures aren’t going to fall much tonight, if at all. Any rain showers should hold off until after midnight.

Monday

This is the day we expect the heaviest and most widespread rain to fall in Houston this week. An upper-level system will bring favorable conditions for rainfall, and this should spread into the region during the morning hours. At this point I expect a mass of showers to congeal west of Houston before sunrise, and potentially reach areas such as Katy by around 6 to 8 am. Please understand that these times are approximate, and there is the potential for some messy commuting on Monday morning.

We should see widespread showers and thunderstorms for pretty much all of the daytime hours in Houston, and I expect most of us to pick up 2 to 4 inches of rainfall. That should be mostly manageable, but we have a few concerns. One is that some areas may see bullseyes of 5 inches or more. The second concern is that the ground is hard from our recent freezes, so instead of soaking up a lot of this rainfall, the water will run off. So 4 inches of rain in January will back up much more quickly than 4 inches in August.

For this reason we’re issuing a Stage 1 flood alert for Monday due primarily to the potential for street flooding. It will be a good day to be weather aware before heading out. Certainly not everyone will see impacts, but the potential is there.

Tuesday and Wednesday

After a possible lull on Monday evening, we are likely to see additional rounds of showers from the period of Monday night through Wednesday. It’s a little early to have much confidence in the contours of these additional periods of rainfall, but it’s my hope that they won’t be quite as intense on Monday.

In terms of temperatures, we’re going to be much milder after Sunday. Expect highs in the 60s with lows in the upper 50s. Conditions turn a bit cooler by the weekend, probably.

All told, I expect the Houston region to pick up between 4 and 8 inches this week. Matt and I will be monitoring the situation closely today, and the rest of the week to ensure that you remain on top of conditions. We will update the site, and our flood scale predictions, as warranted.

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SACRAMENTO, CA—As an otherworldly glow emanated from the California governor’s meticulously sculpted coiffure, sources confirmed Friday that the pulsating hair product on Gavin Newsom’s head had taken control of his thoughts. “There will be no bills signed, no presidential campaign—there will only be hair,” said the…

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CUPERTINO, CA—Providing a groundbreaking virtual experience that makes users feel like they aren’t stupid and lame, Apple revealed a new Vision Pro app Friday that features the wearer’s friends and family telling them they look really cool and normal in the VR headset. “Today we push the boundaries in immersive VR…

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A Justice Department report on the police response to the May 24, 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX identified “cascading failures” in the department’s actions, including waiting too long to confront the gunman, failure to establish a command post, and giving inaccurate information to…

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Remember the letter-writer whose boss expected them to respond immediately no matter what they were doing? Here’s the update.

I didn’t get a chance to implement all of your advice right away. Around the time I wrote asking for advice, I was promoted to a new hybrid role that crossed over into another department because I wanted to grow my skills after four years in my current role. To save me from reporting to two managers, they kept me reporting to my supervisor but moved my office into a shared space with the other department, which had zero employees at the time. Her interruptions of my work decreased since we weren’t sharing an office, and she seemed to not need to call me as much.

My annual review in late July was focused on my old position. She referenced my availability via phone again and asked if I needed a new employer-provided phone. I told her it was working fine, and she reminded me to be available. I told her that I try to return calls as soon as possible. In late September, I had a mid-year review for my new position (odd to have two months later, I know) with my supervisor and her boss. In the written review my supervisor once again said I’m difficult to be in touch with, especially when I’m working remotely, and that she expects me to be available via phone or Teams.

We got to the end of the review without discussing it when Supervisor’s boss asked if I had questions. I said something along the lines of, “In this review, it was mentioned that I need to do a better job of being available by phone and on Teams. Supervisor, I can think of two times recently I missed your call. The first time, I was driving and called back as soon as I arrived. The other time, I was on a personal appointment and texted you to let you know when I could call back. I’m also always logged into Teams when working and use it all the time to send quick messages to colleagues. Can you help clarify your expectations on response time?” She stumbled over her words and basically reiterated that she has had trouble getting in touch with me. I asked her for specific examples and what the standard should be so I could make sure that I was meeting expectations. She was tongue-tied. Her boss jumped in and said, “Supervisor, I think that sometimes you think things are urgent because someone higher up in a different division is asking for information. You want to hear from someone as soon as possible to get them what they’re asking for, when maybe in reality, it isn’t an emergency. I’ve found with my own boss that many times it’s quicker to ask for something using a Teams chat that they can respond to as soon as it’s convenient.” I think it was her way of simmering my supervisor down and attempting to set norms.

By the way, the two missed calls I referenced? When I was driving, she called because she couldn’t find an email I sent her two days prior and needed it for a meeting. I had to forward it from my sent items. The personal appointment was a therapy appointment that was marked on my calendar. She was calling because a new colleague looking for a home messaged her on LinkedIn asking about the traffic getting to work from a particular neighborhood. My supervisor knew I had more familiarity with that part of town and wanted me to weigh in. I did mention what kept me from picking up the phone when I called back both times, but that didn’t matter, I guess.

I’ve not had much success with the new job duties of my hybrid role, and my supervisor isn’t able to coach me and support me the way that I need. She has even admitted it. In addition, the department they moved my office to is being rebuilt from the ground up. I just got a new colleague in that department who is brand new to the work and is unable to guide or coach me. There is a lot going on internally and morale is down, so I’m quietly looking for a new position while doing the best that I can for now. I could also probably write in asking advice on whether to tough it out and try to be successful or look for a new position, but that’s for another day. Thanks to you and your readers for your advice!

WASHINGTON—Frustrated by the lengths to which she had to go to enjoy a night out with friends, local woman Signa Ivarsen confirmed Friday she always wore an enchanted ring when she went to bars in order to avoid revealing to men she was actually a 750-year-old crone. “All I have to do is slip this onto my left hand,…

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Employee “works” after playing video games most of the night

My remote employee struggles with attention to detail. He stays up late many nights but has told me he can’t help it and he would prefer to work a later schedule (think log in after 10 am, log off at 5 pm, then log in later). He wasn’t doing very well with those hours and that was getting inconvenient for me, so I asked him to start working more common hours and log in by 8:30 (most people log in between 8 and 8:15 in our small department so he used to really stick out). Our day is officially 8-5 with an hour lunch and most people stick to that pretty closely; being remote, you don’t have varying commutes to deal with. He complied pretty well after I reminded him a couple times.

However, his work has not improved a lot. It’s improved a little. I get the feeling his work suffers because he still routinely stays up until 1 am. (He mentions drinking a lot of coffee and playing video games, which would be my first thought as to what’s keeping him up late.) I have made comments that he needs to review his work more to catch issues, and that if I had his schedule my work product would suffer, but I’m not sure if it’s my business to say directly that he might need to get more sleep if he wants to be effective at his job.

Recently, he mentioned he stayed up until 4 or 5 am for a video game event that lasted really late. Can I tell him that he should be just using a vacation day, or vacation half day, if he finds himself up at 4 am? I am fine with him sending me a note at 4 am that he is taking off that morning. It’s better than him pretending to work and either doing not much or doing something that has very low quality. I plan to tell him so (probably in kinder words) but do you have any advice?

I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. If his work quality isn’t as good as it needs to be, that’s the issue, not his sleep schedule. After all, if he were going to bed at 9 pm and getting a solid 10 hours of sleep every night but his work quality was exactly the same as it is now, it would still be an issue, right? So keep the focus on the problems in his work; be explicit about the bar his work needs to meet, where the gap is, and what needs to change.

In doing that, it’s fine to say something like, “You’re in charge of your own sleeping hours, but when you talk about staying up so late that you’re not getting much sleep and I see your work quality suffering, I hope you’ll look at whether lack of sleep is part of the problem. But whatever you decide there, I do need to see XYZ changes in your work.” You shouldn’t need to spell that out for an adult, but you can note it as a possible contributor if he doesn’t seem to be putting it together himself.

It’s also fine to say, “If you’re up until 4 or 5 am, it’s going to be hard to work at the level we need a few hours later. If you’re up that late, I’d rather you take the morning off and not start work until you’re reasonably rested. Obviously that can’t happen routinely — I need you reliably working the hours we agreed on — but if it’s only occasional, that’s how I’d prefer you handle it. When you start work, the expectation is that you’re rested enough to work at a high level.”

As you talk about this, be open to the idea that this could be rooted in a medical thing that he could end up needing accommodations for; if he does, he needs to raise that, but keep it in your head as something that could be in play. I know it doesn’t sound like that (he’s drinking coffee and playing video games! no wonder he’s not sleeping) but he wouldn’t be the first person to do that because he has a sleep disorder, rather than the other way around. Right now, though, your job is to be very up-front about what needs to change in his work output.

2. Should I drop out of a books-and-wine club now that I manage someone in it?

Two years ago, I started a position at a higher ed institution. I love my job because we’re a pretty casual bunch and we all get along well!

A coworker from a different unit on campus with whom we have very little overlap invited me and someone else in my unit, “Kara,” to a special-interest book club last year. No one else in the book club works at our institution. At meetings, we usually drink wine, chat about our lives and the book, and generally enjoy each other’s company. Some people smoke weed, which is technically illegal where we live. I don’t smoke with them, and nor does Kara (she’s allergic; I don’t want to be high around people I work with). Kara sometimes gets tipsy to mildly drunk, and I usually drive her home. I’m not close enough to anyone in the book club that I’d invite them over outside of this context, but I like our monthly meetings.

A few months ago, I got promoted (yay!), and I’m now Kara’s direct supervisor. Because of this, and because we sometimes discuss things that aren’t usually things I’d talk to a coworker about, should I bow out of book club? I don’t want Kara to feel like I disapprove of her or am uncomfortable with her, but maybe she’d be more comfortable if I wasn’t there? I also don’t want the other person I supervise to feel like Kara and I are closer because we hang out once a month outside of work. This is my first management position and I’m in the dark!

You should bow out. Socializing with one employee but not the other can cause all sorts of problems (even if just the appearance of bias/extra access without the actuality of it), and that’s before we throw in that she’s often tipsy. I’d advise that even if you were a more experienced manager, but trying to navigate it on top of all the challenges of being a new manager is a particularly bad idea.

Ideally you’d develop a scheduling conflict or something like that, but if there’s no plausible excuse available, it’s fine to be up-front with Kara about it: “It’s fairer to you to be able to relax without your boss around, and I don’t want it to be weird for SecondEmployee.”

3. What does mileage cover?

This situation happened a few years ago, but once in a while I remember it and feel bugged. I was on the road with a few colleagues to a work conference, and one of my staff members was driving. Another staff member offered her money for gas (which prompted others in the car to open their wallets), but I asked if the driver was submitting her mileage form. She said she was. The colleague who had first offered money said, “Well, that doesn’t cover gas.” Our company’s mileage rate at that time was 55 cents per mile. She went on to say something like how 55 cents wouldn’t even come close to covering $3.50 per gallon (or whatever gas prices were at that time). I was pretty confused and didn’t want to argue, so I said no more and gave the driver some cash, but I thought that was the point of mileage — to cover gas, plus a bit for wear and tear on a vehicle. Was I off-base?

No, mileage reimbursement is supposed to cover gas and wear and tear on your car, and it typically does. For 55 cents/mile not to cover gas prices of $3.50/gallon, a car would need to get truly terrible mileage (that would mean the car was getting less than seven miles per gallon — and I can’t find a single car with gas mileage that low; the average seems to be 21 miles per gallon).

4. Letting people know of a terminal illness

I’m terminally ill. I don’t know how long I’ve got left, but likely months if I’m lucky rather than years.

I haven’t been working since before Covid, nothing other than I was taking some time off, intention was to travel but Covid came. My question is, I have a fairly wide circle of people who I have worked with in the past. They’re not local to where I live and I wondered if I should update my LinkedIn and what should I say. Occasionally people will reach out and it seems rude to leave them hanging.

I think you get to do whatever you’re comfortable with in a situation like this! That said, if you have other options, LinkedIn isn’t the ideal forum for this sort of announcement; a group email (or individual messages, if you’re up for it) would be better if you have a way to do it. Another option is to deputize someone from each circle (like one person from each job) and ask them to share the news with others in that circle, so that less of the work is on you.

I talked to my terminally ill mom about this because she has done an excellent job of keeping people informed since her diagnosis. She keeps stressing that because she’s been so open with people about what’s going on (she has an enormous email list that she regularly sends candid updates to), she has a ton of support from people from all eras of her life, including from some quarters that I think surprised her. She says most people’s tendency is not to share enough when it’s happening to them, and as a result they don’t get the full benefit of that support. So I am passing that along from her ❤️

HONOLULU—Determined to offset any bias that might cause them to be overlooked on the basis of their stature, the nation’s short guys held a press conference Friday in which they announced plans to dress real snazzy. “We’re definitely breaking out the two-toned wingtips, and who knows, we might even throw a fedora on…

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CHICAGO—Leading the children along their safety rope as if the slightest misstep could result in death or disaster, pre-K teacher Gretchen Silverstone reportedly dragged along a group of 4-year-olds Friday like a prison warden leading a chain gang through the Mojave Desert. According to reports, the 33-year-old…

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RACINE, WI—Saying he couldn’t wait to pop the question to the love of his life, local man Joseph Lefferts told reporters Thursday he had been keeping an engagement ring in his pocket and waiting for the right moment to be publicly humiliated. “Since buying a ring, I’ve been trying to figure out the best time to get…

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Former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was detained attempting to leave Germany without declaring a luxury watch he acquired there, E.U. law stating any valuables must be declared and taxes paid before one can leave their member countries. What do you think?

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UVALDE, TX—Nearly two years after the tragic mass shooting left 19 children and two teachers dead, a Justice Department report released Thursday found Uvalde police waited nearly 77 minutes to enter Robb Elementary School as they debated the many reasons gunshots could be going off in a classroom. “Our findings…

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Also rationality developed entirely to rationalize your own behavior. Its use in mathematics is incidental.

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• Demon-haunted computers are back, baby: Surely no one will ever find a way to abuse this security system that treats the computer's owner as an attacker.
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• This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
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Demon-haunted computers are back, baby (permalink)

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of our computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

(Image: Mike, CC BY-SA 2.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Extracted 1688 Map Images https://zarkonnen.itch.io/extracted-1688-map-images

• Big Tech Won’t Let You Leave. Here's a Way Out https://www.wired.com/story/big-tech-wont-let-you-leave-heres-a-way-out/

• A New Way to Fight Bad Bosses | NYT Opinion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H0tvsz3-pg

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This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago danah boyd’s PhD thesis: Teen sociality online http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf

#10yrsago Appeals court rules bloggers have same speech protections as journalists https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/17/us-usa-blogger-ruling-idUSBREA0G1HI20140117/

#5yrsago AOC’s debut speech as Congresswoman is the most popular Congressional video in C-SPAN history https://twitter.com/HowardMortman/status/1085950970092310528

#5yrsago Regular says she was banned from eating at the bar at Manhattan’s scammy Nello restaurant because she might be a sex-worker https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/will-manhattan-restaurant-nello-let-women-sit-alone-at-bar.html

#1yrago Why the Fed wants to crush workers https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/19/creditors-vs-workers/#finance-colored-glasses

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

• The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

• Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

• Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: The Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton (excerpt) https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/14/the-bezzle-read-by-wil-wheaton-excerpt/
Upcoming appearances:

• Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics)
  https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YsKONp5zRgeF6SVuIOb6hQ#/registration

• Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22
  https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29
  https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

• The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html

Recent appearances:

• The Lost Cause (The Writer's Voice)
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/

• What the Future will Bring (Homeless Romantic)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I

• Talking "The Lost Cause" with Warren Mosler (MMT Podcast)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955

Latest books:

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

MINNEAPOLIS—Showing how the method provided the basis for developments as diverse as the light bulb and the quantum computer, a report released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that the majority of innovations involved hot-gluing one thing onto another thing. “A comprehensive analysis of…

Read more...

OTTAWA, ON ― A group of protesters trying to generate enough chaos to gather national publicity was forced to concede defeat today, after their efforts to impede traffic illegally were foiled by the legal impediment of traffic. “For too long, the government has ignored our peaceful protests, so we decided to ramp it up. But […]

The post Protesters trying to block road frustrated to find every Ottawa road already closed for construction appeared first on The Beaverton.

WINDSOR, ON – In a baffling series of events, drivers in Southwestern Ontario are wondering “WTF is happening today?” as white stuff falls from the skies. The day started as a typical grey and overcast day when local Jamica Ramos went out to run errands. As she entered Costco, there were no signs to prepare […]

The post “WTF is happening today?” wonder drivers as white stuff falls from sky appeared first on The Beaverton.

TORONTO – The Court of Appeal for Ontario has rejected noted psychologist and asshole Jordan Peterson’s attempt to avoid attending an anti-assholery class required by the College of Psychologists of Ontario. “Dr. Peterson has demonstrated on many occasions that he is an asshole, and he has every right to be an asshole,” said a spokesperson […]

The post Court declares Jordan Peterson has to take “how not to be an asshole” class appeared first on The Beaverton.

Former President Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican Caucus on Monday with 51% of the vote, beating out challengers Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Nikki Haley. What do you think?

Read more...

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