Geekly Update - 15 September 2022

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Would you recognize a sneaky Browser-in-the-Browser attack? Security researchers are warning about an "annoyingly simple but surprisingly effective phishing trick" that creates what looks like a popup browser window, but is actually a link to a malicious site. Pay attention to the address bar to avoid this trick.

After winning the Colorado State Art Fair's competition for Emerging Digital Artists, Jason Allen told the New York Times "Art is Dead Dude." Fellow artists were angry that Allen used artificial intelligence software that creates images by responding to text prompts. "Astronaut riding a horse" is one such example. "It's over. A.I. won. Humans lost", Allen told the paper.

But don't get too worried about software that can automate the production of art. Researchers from the University of Oxford who are affiliated with Google DeepMind have published a paper concluding that it’s “likely” that a super-intelligent AI will cause an "existential catastrophe" that will wipe out humanity. In that case, astronauts on horses will have a better chance of survival.

Security researcher Brian Krebs reports that criminals are using super-thin "deep insert" devices designed to fit inside an ATM card slot, to steal card data. The advanced card skimmers are paired with tiny pinhole cameras that watch as you enter your PIN code. Krebs recommends covering the PIN entry pad with one hand while entering your code with the other hand. I prefer the "two-finger method" which requires only one hand. One finger presses the correct number, the other is a decoy.

Cloud storage company Backblaze has many thousands of both HDDs (traditonal magnetic hard drives) and SSDs (digital solid-state drives) in its data centers. They've completed a study showing that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs over the long haul. Short version: things start to look bad for HDDs after five years of use.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/new-words-in-the-dictionary
FWIW, Merriam-Webster added 370 new words to their dictionary this month. So dumbphone, altcoin, shrinkflation, adorkable, and janky are now officially in the dictionary. That's just ICYMI.

Aalyria, a Google spinoff company, announced a way to use space lasers for high-speed internet. THey claim that lasers can move data (even through bad weather conditions) at speeds up to 1.6 Tbps. That's 100 to 1000 times faster than current technologies.

Robots may not take over the world in 2022, but if Nike has their way, your sneakers will be cleaned by a robot named BILL. The sneaker-cleaning robot looks more like Rube Goldberg's car wash, but it can clean your Air Jordans and even make repairs.

How do streaming videos provide a Danish city with hot water? You'll have to stream a video to find out.

Your thoughts on these topics are welcome. Post your comment, question (or witty puchline) below...