Full disclosure - I did get conned once - a too good to be online deal for a useless product.
Ten questions total. Some later questions are chosen based on your earlier answers.
From the Economist podcast on the solo Chinese traveler of today:
Joel Budd: And these guides were describing at great length the sort of context of the objects that they could see. It was a very sort of highly informed kind of tourism. Very studious. It was. And that was especially clear in a sold out exhibit that we went to see with famous Chinese painting.
What I did regret is that I wasn’t properly prepared, so I didn’t have my reading glasses with me. And it’s really a very, very dark room because the painting is so fragile. The people who had come to see it were seriously well-prepared. They had good equipment.
Jiehao Chen: Yeah digital cameras. Yeah
Well, luckily I did have my glasses with me and it’s a very beautiful painting. It’s an illustration of a poem written by a Jin dynasty official called Zhang Hua, and it was aimed at correcting the behavior of an empress. So it has all these different frames showing the proper way to dress and behave at court. What’s really interesting is that 40, 50 years ago, a lot of Chinese people would say, oh, this painting showed outdated feudal values that modern women should just do without. But, as we saw, it’s now really popular with visitors. I guess now enough time has passed for people to be able to appreciate traditional art without the baggage.
 |
| One way of saying, you can't have it, but you can buy us for $2T |
WSJ resource : https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/residential-proxy-network-cybersecurity-botnets-03856c7f
https://spur.us/context/me (from the podcast show notes)
If he hadn't taken time off studying for his finals, the internet might have died - so says the WSJ :)
 |
| Bigger than Stuxnet, but KimWolf was no match for Benjamin Brundage of Seattle |
Back to the point : if you're making money off your network, but sharing bandwidth, be warned. Who does that anyway? Are ghetto people that smart? Maybe word gets around
Is it possible to deliberately preserve a small set of files, along with backups of their original versions, so that if a ransomware attack occurs, security researchers could compare the pre-encryption and post-encryption versions and potentially recover the decryption key or otherwise build a decryptor?
If so:
The goal is not to assume you will be able to break the ransomware. The goal is to preserve the kinds of artifacts that are most useful if the ransomware later turns out to have made a cryptographic mistake, or if a public decryptor becomes available.
The most useful pair is often the exact same file before and after encryption: same filename, same original location, and a clean version from backup.
Sometimes, yes — but there is no universal canonical set of files that guarantees recovery.
When ransomware researchers succeed by comparing a clean file to its encrypted version, the real reason is usually not merely the existence of a before/after pair. What they are typically exploiting is a cryptographic or implementation mistake in the ransomware.
Examples of mistakes that can make recovery possible include:
If the ransomware uses sound modern cryptography correctly — for example, a fresh per-file symmetric key or nonce, with those keys then protected using the attacker’s public key — then having both the original and encrypted versions of the same file usually does not let you recover the decryption key.
That is why this approach is best understood as an opportunistic recovery aid, not a primary defense strategy.
The best files for this kind of analysis are those with highly predictable structure or exactly known content.
These are especially valuable:
The strongest possible sample is not just a “good file type,” but a file whose original bytes are known exactly. A standard company logo, a stock image used everywhere, a blank template, an exported form, or a known installer can all be more useful than a random user-created document.
This approach works only under fairly specific conditions. The biggest enabler is usually a real flaw in the ransomware.
The conditions that can make recovery feasible include:
The decisive factor is almost always whether the ransomware made a mistake. The file set only helps researchers exploit that mistake.
Many modern ransomware families cannot be defeated this way.
If the ransomware uses correct modern cryptography with:
then known plaintext is usually not enough to recover the decryption key.
In other words:
There is no magic file set that defeats correctly implemented ransomware.
That is why preserving helpful files is worthwhile as a secondary recovery aid, but attacker-inaccessible backups remain the real defense.
The practical takeaway is straightforward:
The preserved-file approach is best viewed as:
A way to improve your odds in the rare cases where the ransomware is flawed — not a substitute for proper backups.
Yes, you can prepare a useful set of files and artifacts that may help future decryptor efforts. But what makes recovery possible is usually a weakness in the ransomware, not the mere existence of those files.
That's all you need. Don't take my word for it though. It comes from the highest authority on the subject : Dr. Liat Yakir (Weizmann Institute)
 |
| Ensure a guitar is visible in your profile picture on match.com! |
How many would he have had if surrogacy was legal in Zhong-gua and it cost one third what it does in the US?
 |
| The scumbag whose dream is to share grandkids with none other than Elon Musk. Does Musk want the same? My guess - yes. Surprised you, didn't it😊 |
 |
| Judge Amy Pellman who denied Xu's petition in California |
 |
| Pic from cnn.com. The scumbag Dominique Side at Vegan Fashion Week |
Did you know? Surrogacy is illegal in China. That's why a lot of wealthy Chinese want surrogate mothers in the US (considered the highest quality surrogate marketplace)
In the US, surrogacy is illegal in Louisiana and Nebraska
In the US, you should be prepared to spend about $150-200k for a surrogate delivery (as the parent). In Mexico, it's about $80k.
If you're planning to be a surrogate mother or a parent planning to go that route, consider a well-written contract!
Scary one and good journalism. A surprise they (WSJ) delivered (and one they weren't expecting to):
 |
| Keep it up and he can give Kitano a run for his money |
 |
| Grad of Tianjin Foreign Studies U. |
Nia's internal bleeding was bad. The doctors had to remove her uterus and fallopian tubes. She'll never be able to carry a child again. Nia says the doctors moved her to the orthopedic floor to recover so that the parents, St-Fleur and Scott, wouldn't be able to find her. In the end, St-Fleur and Scott went home with the baby, but Nia's nightmare was far from over.
Nia Trent-Wilson: My contract says after I delivered, the full amount is due. And the full amount due to me still with the complications, with the rest of the money owed, was almost like 75,000.
With the escrow account depleted, there wasn't enough money to pay for Nia's health insurance, meaning Nia didn't have coverage during her C-section and roughly six-hour surgery. Ultimately, Nia is now on the hook for all the medical bills, $182,000. What recourse is there for a surrogate who has an experience like this where they're not paid what the contract says they're owed?
The number of attorneys who feel confident practicing surrogacy law is quite small, and often those attorneys are practicing law in such a way that privileges relationships with parents and surrogacy agencies over surrogates.
Eventually, Nia was able to find an attorney to help pursue the surrogacy agency, ACRC. She alleged that the agency breached its contract with her by matching her with unsuitable parents. ACRC denies the allegation.
Nia Trent-Wilson: My perception of it has changed because now if you do wrong, there's nobody to report you to. There's nobody to shut you down. They're just like, "Oh, well." And you can continue to keep ruining people's lives and just pick up shop and go across the street and start it all over again.
Within weeks, the agency approved Nia and matched her with a gay couple in Washington, DC. Their names were Jason St-Fleur and Ricky Lovell Scott, a lawyer and a filmmaker. What were your initial impressions of them?
Nia Trent-Wilson: That they're a nice, normal couple and that they just really long for a child.
...
And Nia had another problem. In her case, the parents weren't even worth suing. Because it turns out, according to Katherine's reporting, Jason St-Fleur and Ricky Scott were broke.
Katherine Long: What I know from legal records is that in the months preceding his contract with ACRC, Ricky Lovell Scott took out a $60,000 loan. He only paid $7,000 without loan. It's not clear to me whether that money was going towards the surrogacy journey, whether he took that $60,000 and put it into Nia's escrow account, but it does speak to a pattern of this couple taking out loans or not paying what they owe and then facing very little judgment.
The lender, SoFi, tried to sue Scott, but had to drop its claim because it couldn't locate him to serve him the complaint.
The surprise - a lawyer can be broke. Someone told me he went into law because he wanted to make a bit of money to retire early. There's a lot of money in law? OMG, are you kidding me. "Is there a lot of money in law"? Are you saying that just to be funny?
Another question - why wouldn't WSJ say more about the ethnicity of this gay couple? Would a white guy behave thus?
Nia Trent-Wilson: At the doctor's appointment, they discovered that only one baby took. And when they discovered that only one baby took as opposed to two, they start calling me a baby killer.
A baby killer. Nia says that one of the intended parents started rolling on the floor, crying. Well, how did you feel in that moment?
Nia Trent-Wilson: A mix of emotions, embarrassed, belittled, ashamed. And I'm already pregnant, so I'm already on all of these IVF medicines, so I'm mentally and emotionally vulnerable right now.
 |
| The dragon hits back at America, by proxy! |
.png){kind=link}