- built a script to automatically organise folders. Download it here:
- description is as follows:
# The point of this script is to organise folders which are a mess and which
# can be (within reasonable bounds) automatically organised.
#
# As this is the very first version of the program it may be VERY buggy.
# Please test prior to deployment in a production environment.
#
Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
- latest in science and technology
Fatih Ozavci
https://www.itwire.com/government-tech-policy/84562-encryption-bill-endorsed-by-govt-party-room.html
- latest in finance and politics
https://www.dw.com/en/pro-putin-vote-rigging-claims-void-regional-russian-election-result/a-45572653
- latest in defense and intelligence
- latest in animal news
- latest in music and entertainment
Random Quotes:
- (Newser) – Tesla's stock was dropping Monday, but this time it had nothing to do with a controversial tweet from CEO Elon Musk. Instead, the Wall Street Journal got its hands on a memo that suggests the company's cash troubles remain significant. In the memo, sent by an unnamed global supply manager to an unnamed parts supplier, Tesla asks for money back on deals struck as far back as 2016. The pitch is that Tesla needs the cash to become profitable and that the supplier should see the give-back as an investment in a long-term partnership. The memo says other suppliers were getting the same message. The Journal notes that while it's not unusual for car companies to seek discounts, it is unusual to seek a discount on past deals.
"This is troubling for us to hear," a Morningstar analyst wrote in a note to clients, per the Guardian. Shares in the company dropped about 5% after the story broke. Tesla confirmed it was seeking price cuts on old deals but said it was a standard business practice. Not everyone agrees. "It's simply ludicrous and it just shows that Tesla is desperate right now," a manufacturing consultant tells the Journal. "They're worried about their profitability but they don't care about their suppliers' profitability." Tesla hit a manufacturing milestone on the Model 3 earlier this month, prompting Musk to say it had "become a real car company." But Tesla is burning through about $1 billion in cash per quarter, and the San Jose Mercury News notes that it just slashed 9% of its workforce to cut costs.
http://www.newser.com/story/262333/new-tesla-trouble-a-leaked-memo.html
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is under no illusions about the catastrophe that would befall his nation if Israel let its guard down for one second. He once insightfully observed that “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.” As a result, the Netanyahu-led government has invested heavily in defense. Nearly 6 percent of Israel’s GDP, or $19.6b was allocated toward defense spending in 2017.
- "There is no need to release this," said Richard Bejtlich, founder of Tao Security, via Twitter. "The tie to Shodan puts it over the edge. There is no legitimate reason to put mass exploitation of public systems within the reach of script kiddies. Just because you can do something doesn't make it wise to do so. This will end in tears."
At the same time, there may be some value in explicitly connecting the dots between vulnerability scanning and vulnerability exploitation. The exercise makes it clear that automation defeats security through obscurity.
Vector, reached via Twitter, told The Register that the code has been received fairly well in the security community.
"I have seen comments critical of the tool for sure as well, but what they say can be said for every other attack tool that implements automation to some end," Vector said.
"As with anything, it can be used for good or bad," the security researcher added. "The responsibility is with the person using it. I am not going to play gatekeeper to information. I believe information should be free and I am a fan of open source in general."
- "Peace through power is the unwavering security strategy of this government."
- Amazon.com Inc. is conducting an investigation into employees that are said to offer sellers on its e-commerce program with an advantage by providing confidential internal data and other services in exchange for a fee.
Employees are allegedly selling information on sales and searches to the independent merchants that operate on the site and providing a way to delete negative reviews, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. These practices may help sellers' products appear higher in search results, bettering their chances of attracting customers. The newspaper cited brokers who act as intermediaries between employees and merchants, individuals who bought the services, and people familiar with the investigations.
- Faith helps us deal with life and death, and the Anglican Communion, for all its wounds, remains a repository of culture and ethics. Remember: it is beauty and kindness that keep us from sliding into barbarism.
- Technology is all about helping people. However, technology development is not driven to maximise all of society's goals. Applications that make money get built, while application that don't make money don't get built. Bridging the gap between the possible and the profitable in socially beneficial application of technology is crucial, and it is an important effort that require the attention of the technology community.
The opportunities are many and the needs are great. Technologist love to solve problems and that's what we do best. We need to provide new models for how to accomplish great things with technology. How many inventors have placed back their ideas on the shelf when it became apparent that their great social idea might not have been a great business idea? When you solve a billion dollar problem then you will at least worth a third of that value. The possible market failure is not the final answer: just because something isn't financially lucrative is no reason not to do it.
https://au.linkedin.com/in/taphafaye
My family is Jewish, Buddhist, Baptist and Catholic. I don't believe in man-made religions.[73]
— Whoopi Goldberg
- Honesty might be the best policy, but that doesn't stop jobseekers from stretching the truth. According to Ron Friedman, an award-winning social psychologist and author of "The Best Place to Work, a whopping 81 percent of people lie during interviews.
That's likely why SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk asks one simple interview question to catch a candidate's bluff: What were the most difficult problems you faced and how did you solve them?
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, the tech billionaire said that this "very important" question reveals the role an applicant had at a project or company. From this question, Musk says he can tell whether the applicant was truly the one who took ownership and found solutions to a problem as opposed to simply being a member on a team that did so.
"People [who] really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it," Musk explained. "They know the little details." These candidates are able to talk in-depth about the struggles that they faced and the strategies they used. Says Musk, great candidates can answer this question on "multiple levels."
Conversely, those who "pretend" that they were the problem-solvers can "maybe go one level and then they get stuck," said the billionaire.
When candidates can't talk at length, he knows they weren't really the one to work on the challenge. "Anyone who struggles hard with a problem never forgets it," Musk said, touching on this topic at a separate conference.
- It is possible that one of the reasons for such unprofessional behaviour of Russian military intelligence officers is that they do not feel the need to cover up their trail.
The Russian government has always denied any allegations of its agents being involved in special operations abroad, even when the facts were clear. Yet, it very much enjoys all the publicity it gets with each new spy scandal.
After all, if your aim is to scare off other countries, then the more hysteria there is about your special ops abroad, the better, even if they are failed ones.
- Tech billionaire Elon Musk has had a big week, and it’s only Tuesday.
In a bizarre speech, delivered to a crowd gathered beside his commercial space ship, known as BFR, Musk warned his guests that Earth needed to become a “multi-planet civilisation”, and we need to do it right now.
“There could be some natural event or some man-made event that ends civilization as we know it, and ends life as we know it,?” Musk rambled into a microphone.
“And so it’s important that we try to become a multi-planet civilization, extend life beyond earth and to do so as quickly as we can.”
His strange comments came during an opening address at an event hosted by his company SpaceX, in which he announced the very first “paying customer of BFR” selected for a journey to the Moon and back.
The event, called #dearMoon, revealed that the commercial site seeing expedition would take about a week to travel the 480,000 mile round trip to the moon and back and would take place in 2023.
Throughout the speech the Tesla chief appeared jittery and would look off into the distance, often leaving sentences unfinished and sweating before having to remove his jacket.
“We want … to ultimately have life on Mars, the Moon, maybe Venus, the Moons Jupiter, throughout the solar system, and then ultimately extend life beyond the solar system to other star systems,” he said.
