I mean... it's a good product and all, but can you integrate AI into it? Then it would check ALL the boxes.

Safety of drivers and passengers of vehicles has gone up. Deaths in those categories have gone down.

BUT the safety of everybody outside the vehicle has gone down. Deaths are up, injuries are up. Damage to vehicles, infrastructure, stuff along the side of the road and everything else has gone through the roof.

As we've made cars feel safer, they've become extremely dangerous for everybody but the driver. The driver will feel safe and will do more and risker driving.

Stringray and the SS7 protocol provide hooks in very different ways and different places.

As you mentioned the Stingray is essentially a MIM attack. Unfortunately, it's become much less useful recently as cell vendors are making their cells smaller and smaller and with a ton more available. Also, with VoLTE/5G it's become even less useful since these are all encrypted VoIP conversations anymore. You could still, in theory capture unencrypted IP traffic across the link, but there isn't a ton of that anymore. And in the last 5-10 years, you have to get closer and closer to your target to capture their data (and you better hope that their cell isn't talking to other towers, or it will certainly raise flags with the carrier that something is going on.) Rather than Stringray equipment, spooks have been using in-building DAS systems to capture the data. Within buildings a lot of companies (and public entities) have been installing antennas systems to provide cell service where there wasn't any. This means they can lower the protocol to older 3G or "4G" that still has the voice B channel for calls and capture calls that way. They can also make sure that the target's "real" cell service won't get connected either.

The issues with SS7 was that it trusted anybody connected to it. Back when it was only AT&T that owned the network within the United States and we didn't have LNP this wasn't as much of a problem because they could tightly control who interconnected with it. However, since they opened up their core network to CLECs and other RBOCs to directly participate in the network (including mobile carriers), they don't have that tight control. 1,000ft view, the protocol does all the control aspects of the phone network -- mostly setting up calls, doing special features with calls, clearing channels and billing records. The protocol itself allows for setting up calls with any caller-id or bill-to number (spoofing), for mobile carriers it allows anybody to "reside" a number -- meaning I could temporarily route calls or text messages to my node versus the ones that they actually are on, and a bunch more.. Re-routing calls or setting up are traceable (unlike Stingrays which were pretty much transparent man-in-the-middle), but they could be done from anywhere in the country -- as long as you had a connection to the network.

VirtualBox is really only good for single workloads. The power of vmware/proxmarx/kvm is really the resource sharing and ability to move loads between networked machines for better resource utilization. E.g. buy a larger server and have 8-10 "machines" running on it, instead of a single load. And if a machine in your enviroment becomes unhealthy, you can move those running loads elsewhere.

In my area, you have to file federal, state and city taxes separately. In my case, I work in one city and live in another (only about 1km away) and get to file taxes in two cities!

Our local Macy's -- which was super small to begin with (only one floor, at the smaller end of a dying mall), has a single 'room' for the Men's section. Maybe 100' by 100', and includes the suits, teens, underwear, colognes, etc.

Oh, you wanted a pair of shoes? Hope you like one of the four they have at the store. Looking for a spring jacket? They sell one -- and it's the same one they sell at Dick's Sporting goods.

They got rid of the home, kitchen and bedding sections and turned it into what I can only describe as a dumping group of stuff K-Mart left behind -- complete with white flooring and bright lights.

Unless you are a teen girl or a women looking to buy shoes or perfume, there is little reason to step in there anymore. Marshal Field's / Macy's used to be a destination where you knew there would at least be some sort of fashion -- even if you didn't live in NYC or Chicago. I can't say that has been the case for at least a decade, if not more.

The strength of the AM transmitter would be within the license. They would have to output between X and Y watts of power, and report their coverage area on a regular basis. The transmitter itself is tied to a tower and would have the be at Z feet as well, making this an even harder "quick fix".

Transmitters take a long time to source. Probably a good half of the ones in service today are running on repaired or backup equipment.

Towers take a long time to permit and build. Months, if not years. And even then, it can take just as long to wait for the 1-2 qualified folks that do this thing to get to you.

Would you rather them claim it's blockchain, NFT or VR driven?

Cisco is great if you live completely in a Cisco environment. Out of all the major players, they tend to be the least compatible with other vendors -- mostly because they like to invent their own protocols (or Cisco versions of standard protocols) and use them as default. You can also turn on the standards version of what you are trying to do -- but the tooling will fight you, and often times those are the first to have bugs.

Cisco also retires their platforms very quickly as well. Some of their switch platforms might only be in the market for 4-5 years (and support for no more than 5 years), so they like to forklift a LOT more than other vendors. Juniper usually gets about 6-7 years out of their platforms, Extreme gets about 10, and HP closer to 10 as well.

Smartnet is also something people complain about a lot as well. The hardware is cheap (or if you ask nicely, the sales guy will give it away), BUT the maintenance will cost more than the others. When other vendors do firmware + hardware support for life, Cisco still socks you to keep support, even if you don't call in.

I teach networking as well and deploy networks. I certainly teach on Cisco gear (and base a lot of my class on the ICND) because that is what employers still want -- even if they aren't a Cisco shop.

My loan was through a local bank who had a record of holding onto mortgages for over 50 years. The bank got purchased by Chase and then the mortgages were sold off to a company that sold it to Mr. Cooper.

Evidence is in the pudding. There should be no scenario where customer data would be in the same place as bank routing information. EVER. Save a smash-and-grab where Carmen Santiago grabbed every server in their data center, the data would need to be segmented. While PCI-DSS does not cover ACH withdraws, they do accept credit cards in their org, and PCI-DSS dictates how this is supposed to happen, and if they followed it there would almost no chance of getting that data, unencrypted in one swoop.

The thing about this one is -- most of their customers never chose them. Mr. Cooper (NationStar) bought all those loans from the places that these customers DID want to do business with. Customers sign up with a mortgage lender they have a relationship with (or at least chose for some reason or another), and those banks package up those loans and send them off to hucksters like Mr. Cooper who don't secure their data. And getting a new mortgage just because yours got sold costs a LOT of money -- to refinance can cost 10's of thousands of dollars.

It sounds like you are painting a picture where roads in Michigan last one season or something.

Roads that don't get much heavy truck traffic regularly last 30 years before having to be redone, and roads that have heavy truck traffic last 20. Residential roads typically don't get redone for 40-50. That is plenty of usable time for a demonstration system and even a good amount of time before electronics fail.

Highways are being redone every 20 years because they allow super heavy traffic constantly. Michigan also has lower standards for concrete in highways (and up to recently they rarely check on what contractors were putting in, and the substandard stuff was falling apart in 5-8 years).

In my mind, the right solution would be for the contractors to be trained in basic firefighting skills and be able to take care of the issues before they become big issues requiring a call out to the department.

I mean, there are hundreds of remediation projects going on at any given moment (particularly in the NE where buildings are older), and those projects tend to span /years/ if not decades.

The reason why firefighters stay at firehouses is because they are strategically located within a municipality and have the best coverage. It also allows them to be on the ready, get proper tone-outs and have the ability to have all their gear ready for calls. If they are remote, they may not be on the ready for calls.

VDSL (U-Verse) has an end date in my state of Jan 9th. If you have fiber deployed, that becomes an option. If not, LTE becomes the only option (from AT&T). All the CLEC copper deployments, even if they are under contract, go away on Jan 9th as well. They haven't accepted new orders for copper services since 2020, with all new orders being completely LTE based in my part of the city (fiber for other parts of the city).