Downsizing Book Begins, Black Friday Paranoia

Root Canal Tuesday leads to Coast-to-Coast Wednesday night which then segues into Turkey Thursday around here. But before we roll, some important housekeeping items for even our non-subscribers to the $40/year Peoplenomics site.

Safe Computing Reminders:  We are at “peak hacking” between now and early January.  Don’t open emails you aren’t expecting.

Next, make sure all of your software is up to date.  This can be a bit daunting since Microsoft is “slow-rolling” the Win11 release of 24H2.  As a result, many Win11 users are still on 23H2.

Similarly, make sure your browser(s) are up to date and set your security preferences.

Finally – and now we’re into the “Paranoia can be useful” part:  There is a small, but nevertheless non-Zero chance that one of America’s “un-friends” could use the long holiday weekend to wreak havoc on us – as in the U.S.

Put yourself in the position of, oh, China and you want Taiwan.  What better weekend than to take down DNS servers and go for a massive cyber-attack than Black Friday, eh?

Most people don’t realize how the Domain Name System works.  But, the short version is that when you type a website name into your browser address line, that name is send to what’s called a DNS server.  The name is then routed to a specific numerical Internet address.

One simple way to wreck e-commerce, therefore, is to attack these DNS servers.

Should something like this ever happen, you would not be able to use banking or online shopping.  Because of security concerns, the IP addresses of secure institutions is seldom shared.

A few sites, like this one (since one of my books, Broken Web that was written in 2012 warned of it) understand the risks of DNS and denial of service attacks.

In the event of an actual (computing) emergency, we have paid the extra dough to have a “static IP address.”  Please make a note of it:

http://190.92.156.129

You (verging on becoming a compu-geek) will notice that this is NOT a secure website.  Because the SSL (secure socket layer) involves still more computery things.

Should anything go terribly wrong with the web, we plan to continue posting and with tons of radio and satellite video downlink capacity we can bring up if need be, meaning we may be able to get a handle on things, we might still be here….

Yes, of course this is paranoia and we pray nothing happens.  BUT foreign governments, a world full of crooks, and even factions within our own country (think false flag ops) have different than Constitutional agendas.

Safe clickings and pass the gravy!

For ham radio ops: 7.299 MHz lower sideband at:15 and :45 past the hour. Recognition code “business model”.  With a hat-tip to William of the Radio Ranch for quantifying some of these plans.

Now, for Peoplenomics subscribers, the rest of the morning’s news and the financial ChartPack.

All others are returned to their “regularly scheduled programming.”

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