Kolek planning to go pro
I know most of you guys are DOGE value investors but hear me out:I'd be buying the $NET dip today if it is wasn't already such a large part of my portfolio. I've been a happy customer of theirs for years.NET is already trading at ~50x sales right now, so you should be prepared for price volatility. They're a long-term hold, imo.
Is anybody else concerned about how easy it is for hackers -- be they ransom-seekers or geopolitical enemies -- to severely hurt our economy?Is it impossible to design computer systems that are impervious to these kinds of attacks? If not, then why haven't hackers made off with trillions of dollars from Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab brokerage accounts?
I'm reading a book at the moment and they talked about an "air gapped" computer, i.e. not online, as part of the storyline. Is it possible to have a system for the gas pipeline for example that is to itself and not online where outside hackers can attempt to access? I thought I've read somewhere that some government agency sites are not connected to the outside world so the outside world doesn't have access to them.
Yes, it is very difficult to design something that is impenetrable. But the best way to gain access is via the weakest link... which is almost always humans. Look into the human element being the number one way of exploitation. There are a ton of internet videos that deal with this topic. Here is a decent one.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpdcVfq2dB8Changed the link. This one is much better.
We paid for 3rd party penetration testing (har har) a few years back. We got owned on day 1 when a guy followed an employee into one of our buildings, set up in a conference room, and plugged into the network. When asked who he was, he said he was waiting for an interview.A second anecdote: I work closely with an HFT firm here in Chicago that has an extensive crypto team. The challenge there is that there are physical wallets on site. They were discussing with another friend of mine about adding more physical security (hardened walls, windows, ceilings, floors, ducts, etc) to protect their assets and employees. All that it takes is for one employee with a gun to their heads to walk the bad guys through security, there's just not an easy way around it without turning your downtown office building into fort knox. If a bad guy wants in, they get in. God, if I gave you $30k today would you give me your work laptop & RSA token and tell your work people it got stolen? $100k? People are the problem with security.
which would be extremely expensive.
Pretty scary stuff.It's actually amazing somebody truly nefarious hasn't poisoned water supplies, killed power to a huge percentage of the country, etc.Some believe China "weaponized" COVID-19, and who knows, maybe that will eventually have been proven true. But imagine weaponizing attacks on pretty much everything we need to function as a nation.Sorry for the alarmist stuff, but here we had hackers bring an entire pipeline to its knees.What will be extremely expensive -- probably in American lives, as well as capital -- is if the wrong people get control of our grid.
Ain't happening. You need to come to terms with the human element of all of this. Nothing is unhackable, nothing is truly safe, and there are easily exploitable, destructive things that are very low tech and impossible to quickly replace. Hell, if we get a large enough solar flare to fry the transformers in the power grid, the time to repair them is in the order of years. Meaning, reduced or no power... for years.Society is a fragile construct. We've been fortunate to make it this far.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-flare-this-week-illluminated-power-grid-vulnerability/
https://youtu.be/x2xIgseFCpc
And how all the eXPerTs were surprised to see the inflation in today’s report is beyond me. From what I’m reading this is going to be a wild ride of a summer. Glad I got all my summer project pricing locked in to already higher then normal pricing but I have a feeling it’ll get worse.
If a dumbass like me could see it coming, I can't fathom how these nerds couldn't!
Inflation has arrived
He further adds that Tesla won't be selling any of its Bitcoin stash until they need to avoid missing earnings again at which time they'll sell enough for a comfortable beat, and plans to begin re-using for transactions once mining transitions to more sustainable energy. He also says Tesla is looking into other cryptos that use only a fraction of Bitcoin's energy.
The question is what will be worse: the actual inflation or the public panic to it?Similar to the toilet paper shortage last spring.