Joe Dog Software

Do you have a stalker ex who wants to make your life miserable? Then I have bad news. A critical flaw in Google's Fast Pair protocol can allow nefarious actors to track your movements and eavesdrop on your conversations. Security researchers at Belgium’s KU Leuven University have the details. 

The team found seventeen audio devices sold by ten different companies that are vulnerable to an attack. Hundreds of millions of people are vulnerable, even those who've never owned a Google device. In their tests, the team connected to vulnerable devices within Bluetooth range, then controlled audio, eavesdropped on a conversation, played music, and tracked the victim using Find Hub.

The researchers discovered the flaw in August and notified Google, which alerted all manufacturers. Fixes are available from the OEM. But here's the thing: These are devices. The patch must be installed in the firmware. That requires downloading an installer app to a phone or laptop, then using the app to update the device's firmware. Given the total number of digital clocks blinking "12:00," this flaw will be with us for years to come. 

Is your device vulnerable? Find out after the jump.

As protests mounted in Iran this week, the regime cut its nationwide internet service to stem the flow of information into and out of the country. With power mostly concentrated in the hands of one man, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country is capable of quickly disrupting internet services, a task that's almost impossible in Western-style democracies. 

So how do they do it?

Play JoeDog's Solitaire online for free. You'll need a laptop browser. It doesn't (yet) support mobile.

I'm fixated on who made a tidy profit from operational information that culminated in the capture of Maduro. There are rumors on the Internets that it was Donald Trump. Let's be clear: At the time of this writing, there is no credible evidence tying him to these bets, insinuating that this would be irresponsible without evidence.

What we know so far: Three new accounts were opened on Polymarket days before the Venezuelan invasion. Collectively, they won $630,484.00 on bets that Maduro would be removed from office. The bets were placed hours before the announcement. The timing is essential. It raises three possibilities, one of which is illegal. 1. The bettors traded on non-public government information; 2. They bet on inference from unusual public signals. 3. They were very, very, very, very lucky. 

Number 3 strikes me as out of the realm of possibility. Number 2 is probably legal, and, given the Administration's track record on security, it is also a possibility. Number 1 is illegal and quite disturbing. So what likely happened? After the jump, we'll create a capability map to see which officials had the necessary information at relevant decision points. We'll also assess their risk of legal jeopardy. 

Techxplore summarizes a JAMA Surgery study concluding that by 2035, autonomous vehicles could reduce 1 million road injuries across the US. That's a 3.6% reduction in traffic-related injuries over the next decade.

That seems likely.

In the long run, ten years is a lifetime in tech, so this is probably correct. But I've seen millions of lines of code in my career. And since most programmers don't check their fscking inputs, I won't be an early adopter. And I'll certainly never use Microsoft Autodrive.

In the aftermath of the Venezuelan invasion, the blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain identified three digital wallets that collectively earned $630,484 on Polymarket by betting on Maduro's removal. The bets were placed hours before his arrest. The wallets were created and pre-funded just a few days earlier. 

So how did they do?

Andrew Jackson was a "hard money" guy. He saw "real money" as gold and silver, not ink on paper. To legitimize this judgment, Jackson decreed that all Federal purchases must be made in gold and silver. He also embarked on a crusade -- for it was religious -- to abolish the Second Bank of the United States. His fellow Jacksonian Democrat, Oliver Wolcott Jr., allowed the First Bank's charter to expire in 1795. 

Chinese adversaries hacked your JoeDog. Why? They hate us for our Freedoms™. 

Honestly, it was skiddies from mainland China using a WordPress hack. And that's the problem with using WordPress. It gets attacked relentlessly: brute force attacks, 'sploit attacks, and zero-day attacks. It was never clear how they gained entry, but once they put down a payload, we couldn't trust the server. 

This iteration of JoeDog.org is based on a web services platform I developed years ago. It's now slugified, blogified, and templatized for your pleasure. We're not entirely finished. We need to add an RSS feed. I'll try to match the WordPress functionality, so your existing notifications continue to work.

 

In my opinion, the command-line interfaces for PHP are sadly lacking. To meet expectations for users and programmers, it's best to follow established standards. Whenever possible, a programmer should follow POSIX guidelines. Yet in many cases, GNU extensions are preferred and expected. To meet these expectations, I've ported GNU Getopt to php.

Did you ever want to process a file immediately after it was uploaded via FTP? You could have the upload script execute a remote command after the file is uploaded. That requires shell access that you may or may not be able to grant. On the server, you could run a processing script every minute via cron, but that can get messy. Fido provides an alternative method...