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Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
@ErrataRob
Feb 16 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
This is an incredibly important article and Charlotte Cowles (@charlottecowles) should be praised for writing it. Everybody should read it.


People laughing at her for getting scammed are missing the point, such as what the following picture does. thecut.com/author/charlot…
Image
No, I wouldn't have gotten scammed like her. For one thing, I believe every phone call is a scam, either a criminal one, or some vendor trying to waste my time getting me to pay for things.

But I hate to think what I might fall victim to.
The only real defense is reading articles like the one above. Forget advice about what you should/shouldn't do told to you in a vacuum, instead, read about such stories about what sorts of scams actually happen in the real world.
For example, I can tell you that one CERTAIN way to tell if something is a scam is if they tell you not to tell anybody else (which you can trigger by telling them you are going to talk it over with somebody). A second person can easily see the scam you are falling for.
And that's what happened in the story above.

But telling people this without context doesn't help. They'll just forget about it. You need to educate them on the entirety of the story, not just one part.

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More from @ErrataRob

Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Sep 17
By the way, the energy density of C4 is 6.7 megajoules/kilogram.
The energy density of lithium-ion batteries is about 0.5 megajoules/kilogram.
C4 will "detonate" with a bang.
Lithium-ion batteries will go "woosh" with a fireball, if you can get them to explode. They conflagrate rather than detonate. They don't even deflagrate like gun powder.
To get a lithium-ion battery to explode (in a fireball) at all, you have to cause physical damage, overcharge it, or heat it up.
Causing heat is the only way a hacker could remotely cause such an event.
Read 8 tweets
Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Jul 21
I don't want to get into it, but I don't think Travis is quite right. I mean, the original 25million view tweet is full of fail and you should always assume Tavis is right ....

...but I'm seeing things a little differently.
🧵1/n
2/n
 DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

I'm a professional, so I can take the risk of disagreeing with Tavis. But this is just too dangerous for non-professionals, you'll crash and burn. Even I am not likely to get out of this without some scrapes.
3/n
 To be fair, we are all being lazy here. We haven't put the work in to fully reverse engineer this thing. We are just sifting the tea leaves. We aren't looking further than just these few lines of code. Image
Read 14 tweets
Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Jun 18
The reason IT support people are so bitter is that YOU (I mean YOU) cannot rationally describe the problem:

You: The Internet is down
IT: How do you know the Internet is down?
You: I can't get email.
IT: Is it possible that the email servers are down and the Internet is working just fine? Can you visit Twitter on your browser?
You: Yes, I can visit the twitter website.
IT: Is there any reason other than email to believe the Internet is down?
You: The last time I couldn't get email it was because the Internet was down.

The fact that IT doesn't call you a blithering idiot on every support call demonstrates saintly restraint, even if a little bit of their frustration leaks through.
A lot of good replies to my tweet, but so far this is the best:
I very much like this rebuttal. I was think of "driving a car" analogy, but this tweet says it much better.
Read 5 tweets
Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Apr 12
Uh, no, by any rational measure, only Trump has had respect for the forum.

Televised debates aren't about "debate" but charisma and media training, where they craft an answer regardless of whether they believe it.

Trump is the only candidate who gives sincere answers.
Trump is pure evil, the brutality of his answers appeals to ignorant brutes who reject all civilized norms.

But the yang to Trump's yin is a liberal elite like Rosen whose comfortable with the civilized norm of lying politicians who play this game of deceitful debates.
To be fair, Biden (and Obama and Bush before him) have stood up for important democratic principles, the ones that Trump flatly reject. But still, the system has gotten crusty. There's no reason to take presidential debates seriously as Rosen does.
Read 4 tweets
Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Mar 21
I've read through it.

It's the same as all Ben Cotton's analysis's, looking for things he doesn't understand and insisting these are evidence of something bad, that the only explanation is his conspiracy-theory.

I can't explain the anomalies he finds, either, but in my experience as a forensics expert, I know that just because I can't explain it doesn't mean there isn't a simple explanation.

For example, he points to log messages about mismatched versions. I know from experience that such messages are very common, I even see them in software that I write. It's the norm that when you build something from a lot of different software components, that they will not be perfectly synchronized.

That he would make such claims based solely on log messages of mismatched versions proves that he's really not competent -- or at least, very partisan willing to be misrepresent things.
In particular, I disagree with his description of these files. In the C#/.NET environments, creationg of new executables is common. In particular, these are represent web server files. It's quite plausible that as the user reconfigures the website, that these executables will be recreated.

I don't know for certain. I'd have to look at Dominion in more detail. I just know that if any new C#/.NET executables appear in the system that they are not automatically new software.Image
The certification process looks haphazard and sloppy to me, so it's easy for me to believe that uncertified machines were used in elections.

But nothing in Ben Cotton's report suggests to me that this happened. He's not looking for an explanation for the anomalies he finds, he already has an explanation, and is looking for things that the ignorant will believe is proof of that explanation.
Read 4 tweets
Robert Graham 𝕏 Profile picture
Jul 5, 2023
🧵1/n
I'm trolled by this thread. So here's my response.

But before that, I want to point out that it's by questions that we come to understand the world. There are no stupid questions. Well, there are, but it's by asking them that we get smarter.

Also, there is a lot of disagreement among economists and bankers about the cause of post-pandemic inflation and what best to do about it.

There is also a lot of disagreement among the podcaster/pundit classes. Most answers to this question come from people regurgitating their favorite podcaster/pundit.
2/n The thing that trolls me is this tweet in that thread. They say "Understood", but I don't understand, because they mention two largely unrelated concepts: short-term inflation and long-term inflation.

It's been know since Roman times that creating money causes long-term inflation. They didn't have the sophisticated understanding we have now, but they did notice that when they debased their coins (reducing gold content, putting more coins in circulation) that the value of the coin went down and consequently, the number of coins need to pay for the same good increased.

Short-term inflation can be caused by a number of things, such as the business cycle overheating, or economic shocks, both of which we've seen post-pandemic.

Such short-term inflation is then followed by short-term deflation, as it needs to bounce back to the long-term rate. For example, in 1932 we saw 10% deflation. This is considered more damaging than inflation, because it causes people to hoard cash under their mattresses, because they know that a year later, it'll be worth 10% more. In other words, deflation causes what's essentially a Ponzi scheme.

Since then, we've largely "tamed" the business cycle. Raising interest rates at the peak prevents short-term inflation, lowering interest rates after the recession prevents short-term deflation. But raising interest rates can trigger recessions, so people

So this tweet below seems to confuse two different concepts, raising interest rates to lower short-term inflation, and the cause of long-term inflation (printing money). By "Understood" I think they mean they've heard of such things, not that they understand such things.
3/n This tweet continues the confusion. The central-bank doesn't raise interest rates to combat long-term inflation (increases in money supply), primarily short-term inflation (overheating, shocks).

With that said, the money supply has increased. The major economies printed money during the pandemic to avoid a collapse of the economy, and that's going to result in long-term inflation.

This is seen in the two graphs below for the UK and the US.

The rough consensus among economists is that three things contribute to the current inflation: this increase in money supply, economic shocks caused by the pandemic, and the post-pandemic pent-up-demand overheating the economy. I say "rough" because I haven't found any good papers proving this. I suspect they don't really know and are just guessing.

Raising interest rates should deal with the two short-term contributors to inflation.

The point is: the person confuses long-term inflation (where historically, interest rate manipulation isn't used to deal with it) and short-term inflation (handled by interest-rate hikes).



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Read 8 tweets

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