Episodes

The Federal Trade Commission has finalized an order against General Motors and OnStar for collecting and selling consumers' precise geolocation and driving behavior data without informed consent. This action prohibits GM from sharing certain consumer data with reporting agencies for five years, mandating greater transparency and choice for consumers regarding connected vehicle data. Iran initiated plans on January 8th to permanently disconnect from the global internet, aiming to restrict messaging apps and identify Starlink traffic to counter Western influence. DRAM memory chip prices have surged by 60-70% since last year, with an additional 50% increase expected in Q1, impacting enterprise networking equipment from Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, and Checkpoint. Anthropic invested $1.5 million in the Python Software Foundation to enhance Python ecosystem security, funding advances for CPython and PyPy and new tools for PyPi package review. Germany is considering legislation granting its intelligence agency, the BND, extensive hacking and surveillance powers, while Grubhub confirmed a data breach and faces extortion demands from the Shiny Hunters cybercrime group. Let's Encrypt now offers six-day TLS certificates, and the DHS is replacing CIPAC with ANCHOR for critical infrastructure security. Listener Don Edwards shared HD Tune Pro charts demonstrating SpinRite 6.1's ability to restore SSD performance, while Jeff Ekstrand revealed secret Roku menus to access advertising IDs for privacy control. Rob Sherman praised Claude AI's impact on programming productivity, developing an alpha application in an hour. The episode also humorously touched on the absurdity of a "DVD rewinder" and the return of GhostPoster, malicious browser extensions using steganography to deliver JavaScript payloads.