The Hiya app lets you block calls that start with a particular string. It looks like the app allows for blocking just an area code. The only downside is that numbers being blocked by Hiya will sometimes start to ring for like a quarter of a second before the blocking takes effect - still better than having them ring through. I have the area code and exchange for both of the numbers that ring to my phone automatically blocked in Hiya (so, first six numbers) and it makes a big difference. My LG G7 has a call blocking feature, as well, but trying to block only the initial string of numbers for the area code and exchange didn't work. I'd recommend Hiya.
The thing that pisses me off is that the numbers are either faked or stolen. The people actually making the call on those numbers need to be arrested and charged with a felony. I don't care if they are some low level telemarketing drone. They are already scammers and are committing hundreds of felonies a day. Put them in prison.
Replying to cbr/muro - those are emails about specific people that you have allowed to see your location data. The NC police are getting warrants for everyone in an area's location data. It doesn't matter if you've shared it - GPS, cell-tower data is passively collected by Google and then provided en masse to the police when subpoenaed. Nobody receives periodic emails from Google saying "you have your location services turned on [which we will nag the shit out of you about if you don't] and thus Google has a running log of everywhere you go [and if you happen to be in a jurisdiction that wipes it ass with the Fourth Amendment we'll also turn over all the data we've collected to the police]."
You can go into your account settings under Personal Info and Privacy\Manage Your Google Activity and toggle your location history if you want to turn it off, but I've never had them update me via email. Given how much information is in that, I'd be surprised if they prompted anyone to go review it since most folks would likely feel like it's creepy to see a map of everywhere they went.
I've known a couple of folks who worked in gaming and it sounds pretty hellish.
I would second thrownaway954's comment about finding jobs that take advantage of your programming background, and especially in security. Being able to understand the deeper technical aspects of systems and to troubleshoot issues that you spot can be a real differentiator over people who have some technical knowledge but can't really do much drilling down past running security scans.
If you're not hostile to federal employment or have personal hobbies that could cause obstacles to such employment, there is a lot of handwringing about finding good cybersecurity people. That is going to be a kinder work week, too.
I'd say my higher level comment though is to echo that short stints of employment aren't dealbreakers, and don't get stuck thinking too negatively about your experience or your resume. Get a second and/or third opinion from other people who can give you an impartial impression of your resume and talk through how you address those experiences in interviews. I've been involved in the hiring process recently for several positions and especially for younger people I actually expect them to be moving from company to company pretty often, if for no other reason than it can be hard to make meaningful salary gains without doing so. If you don't hate the day-to-day activities of the work, don't give up on it - just put more research into finding better environments.
Not according to TFA. Do you have a source for your counterassertion? I doubt Tyler Rogoway would get such a point of fact incorrect - even when I've disagreed with his analysis I've never found him to be dishonest.
I have prior training as both aero and nuclear engineer and there are obvious design space solutions? NERVA was an open cycle reactor meaning the propulsive intake air made direct contact with the core, and ablation is what caused radioactive exhaust. Closed cycle designs are more typical in production systems in which a high temperature conventional radiator would transfer heat from the core to the jet reaction chamber. The article is flat out wrong/misinformed.
The US, Israelis, and Saudis, among plenty of others, have engaged in campaigns to influence foreign elections, no doubt. I think lumping them all in as information warfare campaigns with the most recent Russian activity is misleading, though - information warfare is more about seeking advantage and spreading disinformation. I doubt the Israelis are both lobbying for their interests with US policy as well as simultaneously running campaigns advocating for Palestinian or Iranian support. Likewise with the Saudis. America has no doubt influenced foreign elections- I've read an autobiography of a CIA case officer describing in detail such activity in the Philippines prior to Marcos' ascendence. Again, though, we were not also simultaneously running campaigns stoking advocacy for Philippine communist groups.
The Russian campaign here is as much about increasing chaos and discord in our civic sphere as it is about trying to push specific positions that favor Russia. Their goal appears less at getting our government to take specific pro-Russian stances as it is to weaken our society as a whole so that we are less able to act as foils to whatever Putin wants to do.
How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
I'd also wonder why an intelligent person might think this is worse than, say, Saudis and Israelis formenting US wars in the middle east, which we know they have actually done in the corporeal world, rather than the fever dreams of conspiracy theorists.
> How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
In the latter, superficially opposing strands of propaganda wouldn't trace back to the same actors.
> I'd also wonder why an intelligent person might think this is worse than, say, Saudis and Israelis formenting US wars in the middle east,
Because it's worse—for Americans—to have foreign powers trying to manipulate America into tearing itself apart than to have them trying to manipulate America to use its power on behalf of those foreign powers.
>> How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
>In the latter, superficially opposing strands of propaganda wouldn't trace back to the same actors.
You mean like "propornot," a cia affiliated group of "Ukrainian nationalists" who published enemy lists of American media sources as being Russian agents of influence ... via establishment mouthpiece Washington Post?
BTW does this foreign interference in the US political process, possibly with CIA aid concern you at all?
> Because it's worse—for Americans—to have foreign powers trying to manipulate America into tearing itself apart ...
Citations needed. When in the history of the human race has anything like this ever been effective? Let alone something like this which seems to have more or less completely taken place ... on twitter.
Meanwhile, the Saudis and Israelis have fomented actual wars, where people, including American people, actually die, interfering with the US electoral process, and limiting the Overton window of acceptable discourse to basically be "some wars" or "more wars." They continue to do so. Seems more dangerous to me than some silly conspiracy theory about "sowing chaos." The only chaos sown is that people like me are off the reservation.
Russia has been doing information warfare very effectively since the Czars, and this seems like one more place where they've outmaneuvered us. I've found it frustrating how little discussion and coverage of Russian activity addresses that they weren't just pushing Trump as a candidate or pro-Trump agenda issues, they were pushing issues that they knew were polarizing Americans, simultaneously "Clinton is Satan's Candidate" and "Black Lives Matter" (setting aside the difference in the stridency between simply organizing a fake Black Lives Matter protest vs. the more paranoid baiting of right-wingers, which in itself would be an interesting conversation). The narrative continues to be "Putin tried to help Trump get elected" (which isn't completely false) rather than "Putin shrewdly exploited America's polarized political atmosphere of closed identity affiliations to weaken our core institutions".
Not implying that the West can't successfully withstand Russia's disinformation efforts, but it's worth saying that when you have fewer moral restrictions it becomes significantly easier to "outmaneuver" your high-ethics peers.
Not in competence, but in political systems. Western countries have more societal control over government which leaves less room for low-ethics decisions.
A number of folks have asked if anyone knows more details on how a false alert could have been issued. I had some exposure to conversations about these alerts a few years ago, so a few thoughts. This isn't based on extensive experience, but provides a bit more background than you'll get from the news stories I've seen, and if you're burning with curiosity this should give you some jumping off points to research it further.
Although FEMA is actively developing more robust controls for their IPAWS system, the controls on user behavior and what functions can be triggered in the system have limited capabilities to enforce restrictions (one would be the requirement for a digital signature to accept a CAP message as valid). If you listen to the press conference [2] Hawaii says they will now be using a 'two person rule' which indicates that the most significant controls they have are manual/behavioral (not automated in the system by user roles or automated workflows based on state policies). Few information systems do much more than have a few coarsely-permissioned user roles, though, so it's not like FEMA or Hawaii has tried to cheap out on the functionality - it's just not a very common capability and emergency alerts isn't a mission where you want to be using 'interesting new tools' that aren't well tested.
There are several alerting systems - the Emergency Alert System (EAS), the Wireless Alert System (WEA), and Non-Weather Emergency Alerts (NWEM). States use FEMA's IPAWS system for sending alerts, which [1] this one seems to have been sent through (localities don't necessarily participate in IPAWS, which is voluntary, but the Hawaii EMA was the one that sent this). Some questions I would have about this would be:
- IPAWS messages must have a digital signature to be accepted by the system, however based the Hawaii EMA press conference and articles which say 'an employee made an error' I would guess that the digital signature is not used in a way that is actually tied to the official authorized to declare the alert but to is accessible to their whole emergency Operations Group.
- Are they sending test messages with that signature? With a 'two-person rule', it sounds from the press conference that it isn't enforced by the machine (not like having two keys which both have to be turned to send the message) but by the first person stepping away from the machine and letting the other person push the "are you sure you want to send this?" button. That doesn't seem much better, but changing the system to do that gets away from the basic CAP architecture and isn't likely to happen soon.
The FCC is currently working on a proceeding regarding updating WEA to allow more geographic targeting of alerts, the way the other alerts can be targeted at specific locales. The current system dates back to 2011 or 2012, and is pretty coarsely-targeted, which is probably why you're getting Amber Alerts on your phone for a town that is 6 hours away just because it's in your state. You can find it at Proceeding Numbers 15-91 and 15-94 [3].
I bought a license for this after having a series of problems with the Google Drive app, which was quite buggy and unreliable on syncing. Problems went away as soon as I switched to InSync, and it has been rocksolid for over a year and a half. It's definitely worth the cost of the license.
If you're using Linux for work, be careful with AMD - I had no end of trouble with the video drivers. Everytime the kernel updated the screen would only be black with the drivers installed. I had to go through an elaborate process of uninstalling the drivers, booting in safe mode so the video settings wouldn't also black out, run updates, and then make several attempts to get the drivers back in. Happened for both Debian and Red Hat distro variants, and I never found a fix despite a lot of forum research. I'll never try an AMD with Linux again.
Lawyers in most jurisdictions are required to take Continuing Legal Education courses, but my experience was they were of limited use and the ongoing practice of law kept me far more current about legal trends than the courses did. They seemed more geared toward keeping the lowest common denominator from dropping into the realm of malpractice than teaching you anything that would be 'cutting edge'.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webascende...