How Much?

Republicans Will Hurt Predicting The Weather

The Republican budget will prevent the government from sending up weather satellites. This will hamper predicting the weather. This will hamper giving enough time to warn people to evacuate. Scare tactics? Gimme a break.

When a hurricane is coming we know about it days ahead of time. If you don't evacuate it is your own fault.

What about ground Doppler radar? That is used a lot. NEWS stations will boast about having better or more of these. Sounds like we have a lot of private sector investment in weather prediction.

But back to the satellites. How about private sector solutions, like say, Geo Optics Inc.? Their business model is to sell data so that it is affordable. They already have plans for a 2013 system. How about since a private industry has plans and a budget we just buy the data?

If scraping the space shuttle program in favor of private industry, which is not there yet, we scrap the government program for an already operational private program? Problem? Probably because it takes away a talking whining point.

Do Not Try This!

Again. Do not actually try this. If the video is real and you try this, you are knowingly involving yourself in fraud!

Let the proper authorities investigate this situation.

[Click for Fraud Video]
The video never did confirm that money was actually charged to the credit card. This could mean that there was never any actual fraud. There could be an after-transaction confirmation from the credit card company. I do not know if there is such a thing, but I will not actually say that fraud has been committed.

If the video does demonstrate a true security weakness you might be thinking "So what. I can use incorrect information to make a donation with my credit card." The truth is so can anyone else.

The following is for informational purposes only. It is intended to describe how criminals think and why you need to secure your websites and transactions.

You can not steal money for yourself, but you could donate someone else's money to Obama.

What you need and what to do:

1. A scriptable browser
2. A proxy or set of proxies in the cloud to surf the web with
3. Use a script to scrape the web and harvest email addresses
4. ( optional step ) Use a script to scrape the web and harvest real addresses
5. Run a script to use this information to automatically fill out and submit donations. Script will need:
   • Credit Card number generator
   • Cookie clearing between donations
   • ( optional ) Proxy switching
   • Access to the data harvested

Basically, someone might guess your credit card number and successfully make a donation using it.

I know there are other methods that can be used and the above method does not guarantee you will not get caught. This is just a simple glossed over explanation of how it is done.

NOTE: If any comments are submitted on better trade craft, "how to," tools, etc., I will have to deny the comment.

Twitter Trending to Announce Release of Private Information

!!CORRECTION!!

Ancestory.com is paying for the hash tag! I was wrong when I said the government paid for it!

Ancestory.com is highlighting the release of personal information from the government.

---

I was totally going to ignore this blog posting on the Dept. of Commerce blog because I thought it would be bad to highlight this. Unfortunately I was on twitter and saw something that became a "wtf" moment. It was in the trending box when I saw this:

Can you see that promoted hashtag? #1940census

What is this about? Releasing private information from the 1940 census.

Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves gushes on what a treasure trove of information this is for genealogy. He is the genealogist of the family and only has family history ranging from 1670 through 1930. He can't wait to get his hands on the information to help complete the family tree.

What? A lot of families have their family tree recorded in a Bible. Many families track this in some way as people are born. Limited family trees usually go from the present back 100 years, not back 300 years with a gap from the present to 70 years back. I'm sure he must know who his parents and grandparents are, but his post says he doesn't. The post is just disingenuous.

Is it possible that something bad can happen from releasing this information? That is unknown. Information by itself can be harmless, but tying together bits of information becomes intelligence. What's the worst that could happen? Paranoia at the tilt here, someone distantly related to you in a "blood feud" has a nut job foe that tracks you down. Fantasize your own nightmare scenario. Maybe even identity theft can get involved.

So why is this a "wtf" moment? A promoted hashtag is an advertisement. A hope for viral marketing paid for by your tax dollars in hopes that everyone will know the government is releasing personal data. Aren't you glad the government taxes you?

Will it be a Scam?

Back on March 22nd, 2012, the Department of Energy launched a contest. There is $100,000 in cash prizes for software developers who come up with an app that uses "Green Button" technology.

The thing that disturbs me is that you can submit ideas now, but the rules will not be posted till April 5th, 2012. Depending on the rules, a developer might have a full forfeiture of their idea. But I need to be careful since there is no evidence of that yet. I am just looking back on the scam of a contest Obama ran against artists.

Another disturbing aspect is the government has programmers that could write apps. Maybe this is a cheap way to get many apps for the price of a single software developer. If the rules are like the Obama artist contest, they might even be able to use apps that do not win. Maybe the prices are in $100 increments and they are "buying" 1000 apps this way.

We'll know in 2 days when the rules are posted. Right now I am just speculating.

Well over an hour ago I did submit an email address to get updates on the contest. As of yet I have not received a "Welcome" email. Hmmmm...

You Call This Financial Literacy?

The Department of Education is celebrating "National Financial Literacy Month." This is a very thin post without much information, but yet it is fairly disturbing.

There is only one specific source given to get financial information, and that is the twitter account for FAFSA, FREE Application for Federal Student Aid. Here is their citing and list of topics:

Over the course of April, you can follow @FAFSA for information and resources on being financially savvy at all stages of your education.
Here are some topics we’ll discuss:
PREPARING

• Types of financial aid
• Comparing financial aid packages

APPLYING FOR AID

• Completing the FAFSA
• IRS Data Retrieval Tool

RECEIVING AID

• Maintaining your financial aid
• Keeping track of your student loans

REPAYMENT

• Know what you owe
• Flexible repayment options

The only specifics that the Department of Education mention is how to get financial aid ( loan )? Teaching someone how to go into hock is NOT a responsible thing to do.

I do hope that there will be some additional information to come. I hope there will be some promotion of going to school part time while working so that you pay as you go. You know, completing a degree without owing any money. Maybe information about investing money or setting up a retirement fund. But please, let us hope that their idea of financial literacy is not how to fill out a form to get a loan.

This is not an Internet Hoax

Arizona will make it possible to prosecute you for posting something offensive on the net.

A.  It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a telephone any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.  It is also unlawful to otherwise disturb by repeated anonymous telephone calls electronic or digital communications the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person at the place where the telephone call or calls communications were received.

Get it directly from the horse's mouth and click here.

Sorry. No commentary. Not necessary. We all know what everyone else thinks about this.

Arizona State Legislature

Almost Right on Oil Subsidies

MoveOn.org almost gets it right. Their gripe is that the oil companies are getting subsidies because they gave Senators "dirty money." Now I know this is a propaganda poster, but what is "dirty money?" Are they talking about legal campaign contributions? Or is this straight up back room suitcases of money that you hide in your freezer?

Campaign contributions. Yes. Campaign contributions are now "dirty money" as 350.org describes it and made this graphic.

So how did MoveOn.org and 350.org almost get it right?

Subsidies. We need to stop giving oil companies subsidies. But that is only partially correct. We need to stop giving ALL companies subsidies.

How they get it wrong is their motivation. They are just against using fossil fuels. How do they feel about renewable energy subsidies?

Subsidies need to stop for ALL companies and industries. It is not up to the government to decide what companies succeed by giving them money. That is up to the consumers with their purchasing power.

In relation to subsidies are niche taxes : gas taxes, phone taxes, tobacco taxes, et cetera. Those punish a product. That is not for the government to decide either.

See what I did there?

The government gives oil companies subsidies. Then a special gas tax is paid at the pump. What!? Really!? How much money is lost in administrative costs distributing the money and collecting the taxes. How much money is spent on accountants to track this? ( Nothing against accountants. I just think this is an absurd reason to NEED an accountant. )

In case you are curious, here is a break down of where your money at the pump goes according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

More Geek Corn

how to make afternoon tea (for nerds)

from bionerd23

Recipe is available in the description of the video.

Geek Corn

Yes. The geeks got their April Fool's joke this year.

The NULL Packet