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ZDZIARSKI'S BLOG OF THINGS

DFIR, security, reverse engineering, photography, funky bass guitar. All
opinions are my own.

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Posted on November 4, 2021November 9, 2021


AUDITING A VGA GRADED VIDEO GAME

Anyone who’s read my blog knows that I am not a fan of video game grading.
Grading companies, in my experience, do marginal quality work, and at a
superficial level that cannot be audited once an item has been sealed. The holy
plastic WATA box is all too often used to convince sellers that their item
somehow has more value than it actually does, and buyers the frustration of
passing over finds because of greedy sellers who drank the kool-aid. Overall,
video game grading has done more harm to the hobby than good.

I was lucky enough to find one seller who must have been frustrated that their
VGA graded game hadn’t sold for the inflated prices they were led to believe
they could get for it, and so I made a reasonable offer on it based on what an
ungraded sealed copy would cost me. They accepted. I decided to use this as an
experiment to crack open the enclosure and audit VGA’s work, and thought I’d
share my findings so that the community would know what to expect a graded game
actually looks like behind the plastic.

Continue reading “Auditing a VGA Graded Video Game”

Posted on September 9, 2021November 7, 2021


THE RETRO BUBBLE: AUTHENTICATING EARLY NINTENDO SYSTEMS AND GAMES

“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces
anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know.” “If you would allow me to
continue.. .” Ford nodded dejectedly. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks
ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely
rich.” Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively
at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits
were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into
a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability,
which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three
deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.” Murmurs of alarm came from the
crowd. The management consultant waved them down. “So in order to obviate this
problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to
embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests.
I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.” The
crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone
pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their
pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management
consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a
profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

 

Ask any frustrated retro-gamer, and they’ll tell you the past couple of years
have seen a fake market bubble to jack up game prices. What appear to be
credible allegations of fraud and collusion between WATA Games and Heritage
Auctions have surfaced, which hopefully will mean fair prices will start to
return to a hobby that was previously only frequented by hardcore nerds, rather
than investors. But along with this fake gaming bubble came another new
phenomenon: fake, high dollar “premium” Nintendo collections. One particular
peeve of mine is the introduction of fake “test market” NES sets appearing on
auction sites. A “test market” system is a reference to the first hundred
thousand units sold as part of a limited release in 1985, before Nintendo knew
whether the consoles would be viable. Nobody wanted to carry video games after
Atari crashed the market in 1983, and so Nintendo USA, without telling their
Japanese parent company, promised retail stores a refund for any unsold systems
and a 90 day line of credit. They ended up selling nearly 62 million consoles.
Those first 100,000 trial market systems are now considered by collectors to be
the Holy Grail.

They’re also fraught with fraud, due to the prices they can fetch, especially if
you find one graded. Many fraudulent test market systems include a few genuine
components from the original box, but were either missing parts or pieced
together. Because they came with the full caboodle – the Zapper, R.O.B.,
controllers, and two games – a lot of pieces can get lost or broken over time.
The replacement parts included at auction often include retail parts from after
Nintendo’s worldwide release, severely diminishing their value. Any test market
system today could easily include post-release cartridges, light guns, robots,
controllers, manuals, boxes, or even circuit boards; buyers and sellers
generally believe there’s no way to tell the difference. All too often, someone
will buy just a test market box and throw something together with junk from
eBay, selling a $200 system for thousands. In some extreme cases, even the
original NES main board would be swapped out for a release board, leaving the
only authentic parts the plastic shell! Such fraud can happen with individual
games sold too. These shenanigans ruin the legitimacy and the value of the
asset. Fakes have always existed, but with the inflated prices sellers think
they can get these days, hobbyists and collectors stand to lose a lot more money
than ever thought. Up until recently, test market systems have been considered
“a real treat” when found in great condition, but thanks to a manufactured
gaming bubble, they’re now fetching big money – and with that comes a lot of
people looking to rip you off. Continue reading “The Retro Bubble:
Authenticating Early Nintendo Systems and Games”

Posted on July 8, 2021August 2, 2021


THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY

Little fanfare has been given to the story of a glitch in an experimental AI
game from 2019, but the results seem rather poignant to me. To summarize, the AI
decided that committing suicide at the beginning of the game was the best
strategy because the game was too hard, and it meant fewer points off. For any
kid growing up in the 80s, the idea of a computer learning the concept of
futility should seem a rather significant accomplishment. The characteristic of
learning futility had seemed exclusively a human trait to me that computers
would never grasp, at least until I read this story. As the author of the piece
put it, “it’s hard to predict what conditions matter and what doesn’t to a
neural network”. Its implications in computer science are quite fascinating,
though, and a good object lesson for those contemplating the Trolley Dilemma in
technology.

Posted on June 15, 2021August 16, 2021


QANON, VACCINES, AND EVANGELICALS: MODERN CHRISTIANITY AND END-TIMES CONSPIRACY
THEORIES

What more is there for their Expected One to do when he comes? To call the
heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and king and
vision? But this too has already happened. To expose the God-denyingness of
idols? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? It is already
destroyed. What then has not come to pass that the Christ must do?

Athanasius, On the Incarnation

 

As a typical secular teenager, Christianity introduced me to a God who’d
interacted with humanity to offer a life greater than myself. This made a lot of
sense to seventeen-year-old me. It still does. Christianity in America comes
with a lot of baggage, though. Along with the powerful message of the gospel
were a lot of strange ideas about the creation and destruction of the world.
Depictions of a violent and terrifying end are often portrayed both in Hollywood
fiction and from the pulpits of American churches. Christianity seems to, at
some point, have conflated faith with magic. Interpretations of end times
prophecy became increasingly more embellished over time, incorporating themes
from current events into a sort of theological composite that could explain
present-day unrest. This ultimately divorced the pattern of a historical Jesus
who advocated non-violence with one now seemingly the perpetrator of pointless
violence, judgment, and terrifying death.

The concept of a violent and militant Jesus probably had its origins in the
medieval period, a thousand years after Christ and hundreds of years after most
early church writings to the contrary. Such a notion was first codified at the
Council of Nablus in 1120, where Canon 20 permitted a clergyman to take up arms
in self-defense without bearing any guilt; this was during turbulent times when
Christian pilgrims were often massacred by the hundreds along their journey,
leaving their rotting corpses along the roads from Jaffa into the Holy Land.
This one concession, intended to be a temporary measure, seeded and ultimately
fueled militant movements in Christianity starting with the Papal legitimization
of the Templars movement (“God’s Holy Knights”), extremist groups such as
Alfonso I’s Brotherhood of Belchite, and eventually spanned a thousand years
into modern militant Christian ideals today.

The end times scenarios that play out in many modern churches today attract
fringe groups with similar mindsets, and conspiracy groups like QAnon for
similar reasons. By providing a foundation for oracle-sourced conspiracy
theories that lead to violent, anti-establishment outcomes, today’s end-times
theology follows the concept of a violent and militant second coming, abandoning
the teachings of Christ and hundreds of years of church fathers about martyrdom,
pacifism, and government non-involvement. The obvious contradiction of a
Christianity asserting a struggle that is “not against flesh and blood” somehow
ending up with a literal war against flesh and blood is the result of a
historical evolution that biased how the church interprets scripture and forms
doctrine even today. Yet to not have faith in a brutal and imminent end times
means, in many churches, that you don’t have a Christian faith at all. This left
many Christians of my generation to either go along with the weirdness and
ignore the obvious oddities of Christian doctrine, or – worse, to fully embrace
them and make one’s Christian identity based on the willingness to blindly
accept such dramatic interpretations as fact. The latter was often socially
rewarded as “faith”. This was a package deal, though, for many young Christians
– who are now adults with a literal end times engrained in them.

Many Christians are still stuck here, as a violent and imminent end of the world
is still the only thing many American churches teach today, and in increasingly
bizarre and political ways. End-times theories evolve periodically within
evangelical churches to reinterpret components of new and significant current
events. They are woven together as signs of the times, into the bigger narrative
to “decipher” the book of Revelation which, to the average evangelical is a key
to understanding God’s future plans. In recent times, theories about masks,
vaccines, the World Health Organization, and a new president are constant topics
of end-times discussion within churches. Yet a vast majority of church going
Christians lack any academic training in interpretation of scripture, nor want
it. The idea that anyone can speculate on end-times prophecies has attracted
groups like QAnon, which now consumes up to 25% of white American evangelicals.
Denominationalism, while having some benefits, has also become a significant
enabler of confirmation bias in the church, allowing for tribal systems of
beliefs to flourish and go unquestioned, whether it’s a movement within the
church or a radical idea taught by a church leader. Beliefs have become more
extreme as a result of the social dysfunction created by COVID and the social
unrest caused by deep divisions in politics. Ideas about masks, vaccines,
W.H.O., and other current topics are now loosely joined to end-times themes of
one world government, the mark of the beast, eternal punishment, or any number
of other themes in Revelation. Conspiracy theories within the church’s walls
have had very real consequences. Extremist groups spent several months planning
– on public message boards – to assassinate the incoming president to usher in a
new heaven and earth, based on many of these same beliefs about Revelation.
While the most extreme of these ideals may belong in small fringe churches,
common end-times theories about masks, vaccines, and the Antichrist run deep
throughout mainstream evangelical Christianity. As one evangelical pastor put
it, “Right now QAnon is still on the fringes of evangelicalism… but we have a
pretty big fringe.”

This end-times posture can be walked back to theological origins of the
mid-1800s. The interpretive biases that make this theology work have altered
Christianity in many significant ways. Yet visions of four horsemen riding
across the world, a sudden secret rapture, and seven years of hell on Earth rest
upon theological pillars of highly questionable origin, which this post will
explore. Such end-times concepts have no support in historic Christianity, and
could be dissociated from Christianity altogether; many evangelical Christians,
however, don’t realize there are earlier and more supported forms of
interpretation. By failing to challenge the incorrect assumptions this belief
system relies on, many Christians will deny vaccines and literally die on the
basis of the theological system under which they were taught, firmly believing
that they are honoring God in doing so. It is a flawed and unfalsifiable system
of theology – not Christianity itself – that is to blame. This post will attempt
to tease those two concepts apart.

Continue reading “QAnon, Vaccines, and Evangelicals: Modern Christianity and
End-Times Conspiracy Theories”

Posted on June 4, 2021July 19, 2021


RECLASSIFYING SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLES UNDER THE NATIONAL FIREARMS ACT

I originally published this in 2016, and dust it off every time there’s a mass
shooting in the news. This post has seen the top of my feed year after year, as
politicians continue to offer nothing but thoughts and prayers.

I’ve been a long time responsible gun owner, by the old definition of what that
used to mean. Like a majority of them, I’ve wanted more controls on
semi-automatic rifles – particularly, assault rifles, for a long time. There’s
idiocy on both sides of this debate, and both have some questionable notions
about them. The extreme left seems to have developed an irrational fear and
hatred of all guns and the extreme right believes the only solution to guns are
more guns. Consider this more realistic perspective from someone who spent over
a decade shooting and working on guns, held NRA certifications to supervise
ranges and carry concealed weapons, and up until some years ago – when I sold
the rights to it – produced the #1 ballistics computer in the App Store.

What much of the nation does not realize is that there is already a system in
place to perform strict checks of individuals looking to own firearms
categorized as highly lethal – but it isn’t being used to control most assault
rifles. Introduced in the National Firearms Act legislation, this system was
applied to machine guns, short barrel rifles, silencers, sawed off shotguns, and
other types of firearms that individuals can still legally own today, but with
more than the casual regulation of AR-15s and other such firearms. It could be
changed to include semi-automatic rifles. In my opinion, it should be, and in
this post I’ll argue why I’d like to see the President and legislators push for
this.

Continue reading “Reclassifying Semi-Automatic Rifles under the National
Firearms Act”
Posted on January 6, 2021August 11, 2021


EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY HAS BECOME ALIEN TO ME

All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who
does good, not even one.

Psalm 14:2-3

 

I’ve devoted much of the past 30 years as an evangelical Christian “layperson”
to Christian studies to try and become an educated one. Greek, theology,
patristic authors, and Christian history should be in the wheelhouse of every
Christian, yet many never study their own religion. Sadly, it’s of little
surprise that what Christianity has become in America is entirely alien to
historical Christianity and lately, basic human decency. I don’t recognize the
church in the midst of the racism, hostility, and lies that Christians
proliferate today. I’m frankly ashamed and embarrassed to have to share the
label. Last year brought some of the worst out in us. I’m referring to the
mainstream evangelical church – relatives, friends, and people I’ve grown up
with – who were once a much-needed example of Christianity to me – have severely
disappointed in how they’ve conducted themselves, causing me to question if they
ever truly understood their own faith.

Every Christian’s example par excellence – Jesus – was abundantly clear in
having nothing to do with the wicked. He literally turned tables on those whose
agenda didn’t align with his. Scripture is chock full of warnings about the
dangers of aligning with wicked people, or compromising one’s values to an end.
Christianity teaches of a savior who demonstrated sheer disinterest in politics,
from “Render unto Caesar” to his markedly uninterested appearance before an
irrelevant Pontius Pilate. Early Christians wielded no political clout for over
three hundred years, and were still victims of massacre and martyrdom for
centuries beyond that. Yet today, we’re obsessed with having power – even to the
degree of aligning with white nationalists who condone hate and murder, or
expressing blind, cult-like loyalty to demagogues. The mere fact that any
Christian would fervently support an administration that backed policies
amounting to thinly veiled modern-day genocide, sowed racism and division
throughout the country, and willfully left the congress of the United States to
be murdered by insurrectionists – is the epitome of hypocrisy, a stain on
Christianity, and yet sadly, a perfectly concise example of the new face of
radicalized evangelicalism in America. Many Christians have, in the short span
of a few years, become enablers of hate, violence, racism, immorality, and
division through their alliances, their crowd funding, and trafficking in
misinformation to rationalize it into a manufactured “Christian” reality. The
church sacrificed her reputation and laid in bed with the devils of our
generation, all for the kind of influence and power that Jesus would yawn at.

This cannot be reconciled with Christianity, which celebrates a meek savior who
saw intrinsic value in people regardless of their race, their past, or their
status. He called for the lifting up of those who were downcast and mistreated
by society. He called for sacrificial love of the disenfranchised. To reflect
compassion. Generosity. Selflessness. He thought mankind was valuable enough to
sacrifice for. Christianity should be, by definition, a mirror image of Christ’s
sacrificial love for humanity, and an example of integrity and truth, even to
one’s own detriment. I don’t see the character of Jesus Christ in today’s
American Christians. Christians couldn’t even bother wearing a mask to save the
life of someone sitting next to them.

In retrospect, this has been a long time coming. It is of little surprise that
Christians support racist leaders, as the church has become the most segregated
institution in the country. White Christians have spent generations basking in
the privilege of not having to think or preach about racism and inequality,
while black and brown Christians in churches down the road are haunted by it
daily. The ability to remain blissfully ignorant of racism has been the darling
sin of every white suburban Christian church since history was first tormented
to create a white Jesus. And is it any surprise that Christians have become
extreme anti-science in the wake of infectious disease? The church’s historical
inability to grasp our own God as chief architect with any tools other than
magic has caused otherwise intelligent people to become modern-day imbeciles –
even in the broad daylight of mass graves and outdoor crematoriums resembling
hell on Earth. 

Christians, we are called to be innocent of evil, not to align ourselves with
it. How can we support the immorality of those we elect to govern us, or crowd
fund for murderers and white supremacists when it so clearly has borne the fruit
of evil? As Christians and human beings, this should grieve us, not excite us.
This manufactured reality doesn’t represent the God that I worship, study, and
aspire to be more like. If it resembles your god, I suggest you examine what you
are worshipping.

Our actions are not without accountability in the next life, I fear, much to the
pains of those who don’t care who they align themselves with, who they infect,
or what atrocities they help fund. God knows every hair we’ve harmed through our
indifference. Church leaders will be held to an even higher accounting when they
face God. The famous words Jesus uttered, “I stand at the door and knock” in
Revelation was not directed at the lost, but at the church, who often left their
own savior out in the cold. The behavior many Christians and Christian leaders
today have exhibited more closely resembles mob rule under oppressive
dictatorships than it does the meek and sacrificial historical Jesus. I do not
believe most of the church could even recognize their own savior anymore. This
grieves me immeasurably.

Posted on December 23, 2020July 18, 2021


BIDEN SHOULD TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE OFF OF TWITTER

The Biden administration is having a little Twitter fight about whether or not
to reset the followers of the @potus account. While followers were rolled over
from the Obama administration to Trump’s, the Trump administration, who views
Twitter followers as if they represented actual voters-who-love-Donald, doesn’t
think the incoming president should get to inherit all of those bots and
disenfranchised twelve-year olds. Let us stop and reflect on the stupidity and
pettiness of this argument. What the Biden administration really should be
thinking about is whether to close @potus and get the White House off of Twitter
completely.

Social media, especially Twitter, has year after year been on a steady course of
devolving into one of the most toxic and unpleasant public gatherings on the
Internet. Long before Trump took office, social media was the leading source of
disinformation, threats, harassment, toxicity, and division. Combined with a
platform that adopts thought-terminating loaded language hash tags (e.g.
#StopTheSteal) and abbreviated messaging that lacks critical thought, Twitter
has long been a platform designed to capitalize on the cult phenomenon. Twitter
has been not only markedly complicit, but in a position to profit off of the
toxicity, disinformation, and abuse it allows by the Trump administration and
other public officials who’ve started emulating the behavior.

Continue reading “Biden Should Take the White House off of Twitter”
Posted on December 9, 2020December 23, 2020


PSA: SOMEONE IS IMPERSONATING ME ONLINE

Over the past few months, a small group of individuals have been impersonating
me online using fake email addresses, shell accounts, and other mediums. These
individuals are skilled at social engineering, and are also criminally
dangerous. So far, the purpose seems to be attempts to gain access to
confidential information, and to create proxied (MiTM’d) trust relationships
between parties. They have also created fake websites to intentionally spread
technical disinformation for their own purposes, falsely claiming to be authored
by other respected researchers.

If you receive any unexpected communication from me, especially from an unknown
email address, phone number, or another medium, please reach out to me on a
trusted form of communication to verify if it is me. Please note, I do not
presently have any social media accounts.

I have been working with an attorney and with the district attorney’s office. We
do know who the individuals are, and the situation is being closely monitored.
Please reach out to the Riverside County, CA District Attorney’s Office at (951)
955-5400 with any information if you suspect you have been contacted by someone
falsely claiming to be me.

Posted on November 18, 2020January 16, 2021


TRUTH IS NOT PARTISAN

If you watched yesterday’s senate judiciary hearings with CEOs from Twitter and
Facebook, two things would have stuck out to you. First, why is Jack Dorsey
addressing the senate from the kitchen department at an IKEA? Second, how did a
judiciary hearing about misinformation campaigns somehow turn into a
misinformation campaign itself? At the heart of this hearing were social media
companies making tools and information available to users to combat
misinformation through the use of labels and interstitials; why weren’t any
senators interested in examining the facts surrounding such policies, I wonder?
Rather, senators demonstrated an eye-rolling indifference to truth and instead
took the opportunity to peddle their own conspiracy theories, including partisan
bias and mind control by robber barons using project management software. The
entire thing ended up one big partisan temper tantrum, and was an embarrassment
to the American people, frankly.

Truth and facts – regardless of topic, have never been, and never will be a
matter of partisan perspective, and anyone who tells you differently is a
politician. Truth doesn’t work in reverse – it is impossible to start with a
narrative, and then create facts to accommodate it, yet that’s how our terribly
dysfunctional political system has worked for the past four years. One can only
draw a perspective out of an interpretation of truth based on the facts,
wherever they fall. Without accurate facts, narrative ends up where it is today
– anything you want it to be, if you’re willing to torture truth to be what you
wish it was. But facts don’t change just because you “believe” something
different, and when genuine facts disagree with your narrative, you just look
like an ass trying to wage war against it.

Alas, politicians aren’t known for operating in truth. Quite the contrary,
politicians are known throughout history to excel at lying. Were this not true,
there would be little need for fact checkers in this country. It was quite
ironic to see the people doing the fact checking getting roasted by the very
reason we need fact checking in the first place. What hubris there must be, in
those who govern by our consent to consider themselves ones to lord over the
watchers.

Posted on March 22, 2020September 25, 2020


ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEMANDS OF WORKING FROM HOME

As the angst and stir-craziness start to set in from the world suddenly being
forced into lockdown, I’ve seen a lot of articles about working from home, by
people in all walks of life, from programmers to astronauts. Most of them offer
practical beginner advice, like go outside, plan a schedule, etc. etc. That’s
all good advice to take in, but after a few weeks, you’re probably realizing
there’s a lot more to making this work well. As the reality of our predicament
is starting to sink in, it’s important to start thinking about the psychological
demands of working from home. I’ve spent the better part of my 25 year career
working from home, and when I started thinking about what, if any, wisdom I
could share on how to make it work well, found that I’d come up with a lot of
the same things I’d already shared in a post two years ago, Living With
Depression in Tech. Working at home has some fantastic benefits, but also
challenges that go far beyond basic discipline development. Being productive and
successful at home comes down to changing your perspective – focusing on the
impacts you’re having, believing in what you’re doing, and finding ways to grow
and thrive on your own so that you can maintain your drive over the long haul.

Continue reading “On the Psychological Demands of Working From Home”

Posted on September 26, 2019September 25, 2020


PRESIDENTIAL POLICY DIRECTIVE 19

Is anyone surprised the Obama-era whistleblower directive put into place
actually worked? I bet Edward Snowden is. Not only did it work, but Congress
wouldn’t have given it such weight had the information been otherwise leaked in
a Snowden or Manning-esque style, nor would the IG have had the chance to
acknowledge the information as “credible and urgent”. Historical treatment of
whistleblowers has been deplorable, but we also didn’t have these protections in
the 70s, when Ellsberg or others could have used them, so the comparison is also
irrelevant. Congress, the IC, and the press are taking “extreme measures” to
protect the anonymity (and safety) of the whistleblower, and most acknowledge
how crucial it is to do so in order to keep a democracy. This is a very
different outcome than what Snowden predicted would happen if he’d made an
attempt at the proper channels first. While the jury is still out on the hero
vs. traitor debate, the fact that these whistleblower procedures undeniably
succeeded in bringing things to light can’t be helping Snowden’s image.

Posted on August 1, 2019July 18, 2021


CHRISTIANITY AND THE CULT PHENOMENON

Joshua Harris, the author of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, recently renounced his
faith and apologized for his awful book. I remember when it came out in the late
90’s, and still see the lasting damage it inflicted on two generations of young
men and women. Harris ended up creating a toxic culture inside the mainstream
church that would take two generations of Christian men back into the dark ages
of devaluing women based on their level of sexual indiscretion, and helped fan
the flames of homophobia and exclusion. His “sexual prosperity gospel”, as it’s
been called, led to a life of guilt and shame for many, and created lasting
scars that caused some to abandon their faith or their marriages later on in
life.

Christianity teaches that a person’s worth has nothing to do with their sexual
history (or orientation), but from Jesus, who was willing to die to reconcile
humanity to God. We’re not defined by our sins, and we’re not defined by our
past; we are defined by Christ. This is a far cry from the cultish
fundamentalist legalism that Harris’s church taught for decades; the purity
movement amounted to nothing more than a way for Christians to measure
themselves and others up. It’s no surprise that Harris renounced his faith; if
the faith he was practicing was grounded in such a flawed understanding of grace
and intrinsic human worth, then by any measurement it was not Christianity. The
truly sad part is that he convinced millions of Christians to adopt this same
world view for more than 20 years, allowing it to hurt a lot of people before it
became popular for leaders to finally speak out against it. Sorry, Josh, but an
apology doesn’t let you off the hook.

But this failure wasn’t just of Harris’s own making: It was the complete failure
of church leaders everywhere in elevating Harris’s status to a Christian leader.
Harris was a mere 21 years old, and hadn’t even been to seminary yet when he
wrote the book. Rather than rightfully dismissing his book as yet more of the
trash writing of that era, the inexperienced youth leaders of that time (many of
whom also lacked formal training) saw a way to get kids to act responsibly,
without considering the consequences of his legalism. From piecing together
accounts online, Harris’s own church reeked of a world of deep-seated problems,
including sexual abuse coverup, abuses of power, control and manipulation of
their congregation, and legalism running rampant. The church had become so
damaging, much of his congregation ended up leaving, and there’s an entire blog
dedicated to victims trying to recover from Harris and the rest of his church’s
leaders. Indeed, it’s very telling to see the kind of culture his book came out
of, and the horrifying fruits of it. When you read that Josh Harris has departed
Christianity, this appears by all accounts to be a very good thing for
Christianity.

Continue reading “Christianity and the Cult Phenomenon”

Posted on November 10, 2018September 25, 2020


ICELAND’S OVER-TOURISM IS CHANGING THE COUNTRY

There’s a long held belief in the concept of “leave no trace” when visiting a
place, but there’s one very noticeable artifact western tourists have been
leaving on Iceland that you unfortunately can’t simply pick up and throw away.
With tourism growing 500% in Iceland over the past decade, western tourists have
placed higher demands on the country than it’s been capable of adsorbing without
affecting the country’s foundations. While the economy in Reykjavik has no doubt
experienced a boost, this has come at the expense of cultural and geographical
changes that are not necessarily welcome by many Icelanders.

In 2010, the number of international visitors to Iceland was 488,600. As of
2017, that number swelled to 2,224,600. As a result, Iceland built out
infrastructure. Significant infrastructure including large excavation efforts to
build attractions, tour bus companies, and expansion of roads and bridges.
During this period, local economies also adapted by building out their own
tourist infrastructure within previously rural, untouched cities. The end result
has been a very large tourist industry that has both changed the culture and the
face of Iceland to conform more closely to western tourist ideals. Much of this
change has been driven from the western sense of tourist entitlement which has
changed local economies in many ways that are foreign to Icelanders. Money is a
powerful thing, and because the economy has become so dependent on tourism,
rather than the fishing and farming industry that Iceland used to depend on,
it’s become easy to manipulate a country into change that many otherwise
wouldn’t want.

Continue reading “Iceland’s Over-Tourism is Changing The Country”

Posted on October 21, 2018October 21, 2020


ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIAL: NORTHERN LIGHTS CHASING IN ICELAND

There’s nothing quite as magical as seeing a bright green and pink Aurora
Borealis dancing in the sky. One of the world’s most dazzling natural light
displays, the Aurora is produced when charged particles from solar winds
encounter our atmosphere, penetrating the Earth’s magnetic field, exciting
Oxygen and Nitrogen to produce green and pink Auroras, respectively. It’s not
only amazing to look at, but occasionally you can even hear it’s static-like
pulses. There’s nothing quite like observing the Northern Lights in person, so
of course you’re going to want to capture some amazing memories of it. One of
the neat things about Aurora photography is that it’s always changing; there’s
always a new dance to capture, and plenty of foregrounds to shoot from. My wife
and I have been Aurora chasing for several years now, and have captured her over
many trips to Norway, Iceland, and New England, with trips to Labrador, Finland,
and more of the world on our short list. Along the way, we’ve picked up a few
tricks, and gotten some practice in taking astrophotography in between.

We’ve spent the past two years raising our little girl, Lily, so we hadn’t been
traveling internationally for while. This past October, we got back out chasing
again (with a junior explorer), so I’ve been brushing up on my skills including
my skills at developing these photos, which I’ve updated.

 

Continue reading “Astrophotography Tutorial: Northern Lights Chasing in Iceland”

Posted on August 22, 2018September 1, 2018


LIVING WITH DEPRESSION IN TECH

I’ve been trying to avoid writing about depression for a while now. Almost
nobody in tech wants to talk about things like this. A stigma still very much
exists around mental illness, and in tech with all its flaming, trolling, and
fragile manhood egos, people have learned to be thick-skinned. It’s taken me
years to realize that I never stopped struggling with depression throughout my
dysfunctional childhood, and I’ve carried it through my teens and adult life
with me. I was diagnosed and medicated as a teen, but didn’t fully understand
that it still haunted me, playing the same old record grooves in my brain in
adulthood. As my thyroid disease began accelerating, I needed to work even
harder to maintain balance or the world would come crashing in. Struggling
through my career and relationships, things became easier after I understood
what was going on inside of me. I feel a certain responsibility to bring to
light what is likely a widespread issue in the tech community.

Depression can manifest itself in various forms for different people, and my
story isn’t “everyone’s” story. I can only write from my own personal
experiences. Most of this has had lifelong personal struggles unrelated to work,
and while one can probably deduce this, the focus of this post is handling
professional challenges. You might identify with some of these issues, and
that’s great if this post helps, but it also shouldn’t be used for
self-diagnosis. Depression has been far worse than the details I’m willing to
share publicly, and if you think you may be depressed, you should seek
professional counseling.

I have no background in psychology; I’m just sharing what works for me. I have
no background in medicine either, and having been on and off medication, I can’t
recommend one way or the other. I do know that all medication has its limits, so
learning how to cope is an important part to having a complete life plan. At the
end of the day, I can’t solve your depression (or mine), but I can share how
I’ve coped with it, and won some victories. This is a survival story that
hopefully might have some meaningful advice for others.

Continue reading “Living with Depression in Tech”

Posted on March 23, 2018September 25, 2020


HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED US

The current young generation will soon have grown up without ever knowing what
it’s like to not have social media. They’re also growing up without a sense of
how society was before social media came into play. Whether you use social media
or not, it’s likely affected your life because it’s changed how people relate to
one another – including you. While there are many good aspects of social media
and the concept of bringing people together, there are also many negative
changes it’s had on how we relate to one another.

I’ve spent a lot of time observing others and how social media has affected them
online over time, and seen the problems it can create. For me personally, I’ve
never been happier to be off of social media than the past year or so when I
finally ditched Twitter for good. Twitter is a creepy and toxic place, which
seems to be exactly what their CEO wants it to be. I found that I didn’t like
the person I had to become in order to stay on it. Most social media is a
dumpster fire, but Twitter was a particularly awful experience. It simply isn’t
worth the stress and distraction in order to relate to a bunch of randos on the
Internet whose only goal in life is to cause misery. Social media doesn’t
deserve to have the power to change you, but they do. Getting back to the
humanity of relationships is almost like waking up from a bad dream: you’d
almost forgotten the goodness in what normal relationships with others
(professional, friendships, etc.) feels like.

So at the risk of the next generation never knowing what it’s like to have a
normal relationship with others, I’ve written down  just a few of the things
that are important in building friendships and other types of relationships –
things social media seems to have endangered… at least, from the perspective of
this old Gen-X’er. Writing all of this makes me really miss how people were
before social media existed.

Continue reading “How Social Media Changed Us”

Posted on March 14, 2017June 18, 2019


JOINING APPLE

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a position with Apple’s Security
Engineering and Architecture team, and am very excited to be working with a
group of like minded individuals so passionate about protecting the security and
privacy of others.

This decision marks the conclusion of what I feel has been a matter of
conscience for me over time. Privacy is sacred; our digital lives can reveal so
much about us – our interests, our deepest thoughts, and even who we love. I am
thrilled to be working with such an exceptional group of people who share a
passion to protect that.

Posted on February 16, 2017February 16, 2017


ATTACKING THE PHISHING EPIDEMIC

As long as people can be tricked, there will always be phishing (or social
engineering) on some level or another, but there’s a lot more that we can do
with technology to reduce the effectiveness of phishing, and the number of
people falling victim to common theft. Making phishing less effective ultimately
increases the cost to the criminal, and reduces the total payoff. Few will argue
that our existing authentication technologies are stuck in a time warp, with
some websites still using standards that date back to the 1990s. Browser design
hasn’t changed very much since the Netscape days either, so it’s no wonder many
people are so easily fooled by website counterfeits.

You may have heard of a term called the line of death. This is used to describe
the separation between the trusted components of a web browser (such as the
address bar and toolbars) and the untrusted components of a browser, namely the
browser window. Phishing is easy because this is a farce. We allow untrusted
elements in the trusted windows (such as a favicon, which can display a fake
lock icon), tolerate financial institutions that teach users to accept any
variation of their domain, and use a tiny monochrome font that can make URLs
easily mistakable, even if users were paying attention to them. Worse even, it’s
the untrusted space that we’re telling users to conduct the trusted operations
of authentication and credit card transactions – the untrusted website portion
of the web browser!.

Our browsers are so awful today that the very best advice we can offer everyday
people is to try and memorize all the domains their bank uses, and get a pair of
glasses to look at the address bar. We’re teaching users to perform trusted
transactions in a piece of software that has no clear demarcation of trust.

The authentication systems we use these days were designed to be able to conduct
secure transactions with anyone online, not knowing who they are, but most users
today know exactly who they’re doing business with; they do business with the
same organizations over and over; yet to the average user, a URL or an SSL
certificate with a slightly different name or fingerprint means nothing. The
average user relies on the one thing we have no control over: What the content
looks like.

I propose we flip this on its head.

Continue reading “Attacking the Phishing Epidemic”

Posted on February 9, 2017February 13, 2017


PROTECTING YOUR DATA AT A BORDER CROSSING

With the current US administration pondering the possibility of forcing
foreign travelers to give up their social media passwords at the border, a lot
of recent and justifiable concern has been raised about data privacy. The first
mistake you could make is presuming that such a policy won’t affect US citizens.
 For decades, JTTFs (Joint Terrorism Task Forces) have engaged in intelligence
sharing around the world, allowing foreign governments to spy on you on behalf
of your home country, passing that information along through various databases.
What few protections citizens have in their home countries end at the border,
and when an ally spies on you, that data is usually fair game to share back to
your home country. Think of it as a backdoor built into your constitutional
rights. To underscore the significance of this, consider that the president
signed an executive order just today stepping up efforts at fighting
international crime, which will likely result in the strengthening of resources
to a JTTFs to expand this practice of “spying on my brother’s brother for him”.
With this, the president also counted the most common crimes – drugs, gangs,
racketeering, etc – as matters of “national security”.

Once policies that require surrendering passwords (I’ll call them password
policies from now on) are adopted, the obvious intelligence benefit will no
doubt inspire other countries to establish reciprocity in order to leverage
receiving better intelligence about their own citizens traveling abroad. It’s
likely the US will inspire many countries, including oppressive nations, to
institute the same password policies at the border. This will ultimately be used
to skirt search and seizure laws by opening up your data to forensic collection.
In other words, you don’t need Microsoft to service a warrant, nor will the soil
your data sits on matter, because it will be a border agent connecting
directly your account with special software throug the front door.

I am not a lawyer, and I can’t provide you with legal advice about your rights,
or what you can do at a border crossing to protect yourself legally, but I can
explain the technical implications of this, as well as provide some steps you
can take to protect your data regardless of what country you’re entering.
Disclaimer: You accept full responsibility and liability for taking any of this
information and using it.

Continue reading “Protecting Your Data at a Border Crossing”

Posted on February 2, 2017September 25, 2020


SLIDES: CRAFTING MACOS ROOT KITS

Here are the slides from my talk at Dartmouth College this week; this was a
basic introduction / overview of the macOS kernel and how root kits often have
fun with the kernel. There’s not much new here, but the deck might be a good
introduction for anyone looking to get into develop security tools or conduct
security research in macOS. Note: Root kits aren’t exploits; there’s no exploit
code in this deck. Sorry!

Crafting macOS Root Kits


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