Badger badger badger

The best defensive against hiring a fake remote worker from North Korea is a good offensive question.

There are allegedly thousands of North Koreans who have successfully disguised themselves as Americans and landed remote work jobs at Fortune 500 businesses and crypto firms. And while their techniques for getting in are sophisticated, catching them apparently just requires asking one kinda crude question:

“How fat is Kim Jong Un?”

According to Adam Meyers, the Senior Vice President of Counter Adversary Operations at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, asking that question during the interview process stops the North Korean workers in their tracks. While speaking at the RSA Conference earlier this week, Meyers explained that asking a question like that will cause the prospective worker to abort. “They terminate the call instantly, because it’s not worth it to say something negative about that,” he said, according to a report from The Register.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/27070284

A little background information, as I've recounted a few times on Lemmy: Back in the '90s, UW-Madison professor Joel Rogers co-founded an aspirational new political party—creatively named the New Party—that tried to revive fusion voting. They endorsed a Democratic candidate for the Minnesota House in 1994, and the Minnesota DFL objected. They took the case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban on fusion voting. The New Party lost momentum and fell apart soon afterwards. Progressive Dane, based in Madison, is the only remaining New Party affiliate.

It's not surprising to see the Wisconsin Republican Party objecting to the practice; it will be interesting to see what the Wisconsin Democratic Party thinks. (I recently learned from the Wikipedia page on fusion voting that the Republicans and Democrats used to run fusion candidates to defeat socialists in Milwaukee.)

I wish United Wisconsin all the luck.

Further reading on this historic attraction near the Wisconsin Dells

Oops

The linked ROC site is broken but worth reading on how wind turbines can affect Doppler returns.

https://www.roc.noaa.gov/windfarms.php

Now, our feature presentation of "Schadenfreude"

Oh no, not again....

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/36722321

Don Coombs, mayor of Harbour Grace, N.L., says he got a call early this morning saying the cherished bronze statue commemorating Earhart’s successful 1932 transatlantic flight was gone.

Though he hasn’t seen it yet himself, he says his staff saw surveillance video indicating two people were dropped off in the park just after midnight and were picked up nearly three hours later in a red SUV.

Coombs says Earhart fans and flight enthusiasts from across the globe have been calling him to express their concern and condolences.

Fort McCoy's commander has been relieved of her duties.

In a short statement, the Army posted, "Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez has been suspended as Garrison Commander at Fort McCoy. This suspension is not related to any misconduct. We have no further details to provide at this time while this matter is under review."

Ramirez assumed her duties as commander July 19, 2024.

While the Army didn't give a reason for Ramirez's dismissal, the Daily Beast reports that portraits of President Donald Trump, Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were flipped to face the wall instead of the hallway. The portraits were part of a grouping illustrating the post's chain of command.

Prior to arriving at Fort McCoy, Ramirez served as chief Reserve Program, United States Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

She became the first female to lead the post, located between Tomah and Sparta in Monroe County. In her first interview with the media, she described her appointment as "a great milestone." She said it shows "we that we have diversity in every part of our society."

Her military service dates back to 1999, when she earned her commission as a military intelligence officer through the Reserve Officer Training Corps. She is a native of Puerto Rico.

She succeeded Col. Stephen Messenger at Fort McCoy.

Nobody from Fort McCoy was available late Tuesday afternoon for immediate comment.

On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a "native-AI newsroom." Worried he's missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling that washed over him upon seeing the computer created headshot an "embarrassing moment." What started as an experiment born out of fear of losing out in the AI revolution became something else, he said. "When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote.

If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess."

"That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."