David Agranovich

View from an airplane of the California coast and bring yellow mustard fields

View from an airplane of the California coast

It’s green season in the Bay! And the mustard is flowering in Half Moon Bay. Sometimes when world events have you down it’s good to get above it for a bit.

Holy shit sayyadina neuberger

How dare you

For those unfamiliar with the US intelligence community, this is the Discount Intelligence Agency

Huge improvement over how I used to get the homies to their Newark United connection

Getting ready to take my new couch from Hoboken to Brooklyn

Combating Global Abuse of Commercial Spyware The Biden administration this year launched an initiative to combat the global abuses of commercial spyware. What exactly is commercial spyware and how pervasive is its use? On this episode of Zoom...

In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out on TaiwanPlus, The Citizen Lab’s senior researcher Rebekah Brown talks about the commercial spyware industry, its misuse by governments, and the urgent need for regulation.
#spyware
Watch it here: www.taiwanplus.com/news/shows/z...

Wrote a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on some of the lessons that Meta’s Q3 threat report brings back to the surface in online IO:

1. Tension between virality & opsec
2. Experimentation is ongoing
3. Variation in defenses creates arbitrage dynamics
4. Line btwn overt & covert is blurry

Text and images from Meta's quarterly Adversarial Threat Report discussing "peculiar croissant-obsessed attempts to iterate and probe our ad defenses"

To quote @hayesbrown.bsky.social, "this is going to be [is already] the dumbest dystopia

During a 1994 blackout, L.A. residents called 911 when they saw the Milky Way for the first time More like the City of Too Much Light…

6/ You might not normally notice satellites streaking by, star link microsats trailing in a line, or starlight twinkling through an inversion layer - but you definitely will when all your neighbors think the Iranians are invading with help from ET. And it wouldn’t be the first time:

5/ people notice things more when they’re pointed out. You might live your whole life in NJ without appreciating just how much helicopter, airplane, and other air traffic exists.

4.5/ The position of the lights can create confusing visual illusions when the aircraft passes or turns, and can look like they’re moving erratically or impossibly.

4/ people (even pilots) are pretty bad at identifying lights in the sky at night. Airplanes that would be 20-30 miles away and invisible during the day are easy to see at night, especially below 10k ft where their landing lights are on.

3.5/ It’s a mass hysteria self-licking ice cream cone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people with hobby drones are flying around at night in NJ just to mess with people at this point

3/ maybe something weird was going on in NJ when this kicked off. But at this point you’ve WSJ and NYPost reporters posting videos of MD-80s and C17s flying over as if they’re alien spacecraft and hobbyists launching drones in NJ to try to take pics, causing more people to see real drones and panic

2.5/ and they are often flown by some guy that just bought a DJIPhantom at Walmart and has no idea what he’s doing. IG is full of videos by drone owners flagrantly violating these rules

2/ The vast majority of American airspace from the ground up to between 700-1200 feet is uncontrolled entirely. Hobby drones and larger agricultural drones generally don’t have transponders, don’t show up on radar (radar needs line of sight and stuff really close to the ground won’t often show up

1/ basically anybody can buy a range of drones at Walmart or online from companies like DJI. They can be pretty big, including some agricultural models. There are regulations around where you can fly them and when you need a license, but there aren’t great ways to enforce them

DRONE THREAD (I’m sorry)

Context: I used to be a commercial drone operator in DC before becoming a real airplane pilot. I’ve seen a lot of people confused about this “drone” story. Some important things to understand:

Unfortunately @aaron.bsky.team seems to be doing a good job otherwise we could have some fun with the crypto wallet scam bots like over on X

yes right away mr zuckerbok sir

And check out @racheltobac.bsky.social's video outlining how to spot scams in the wild /end

Holiday Hoaxes Unwrapped: Fake Trees, Freebies, & Shopping Sprees Scammers Orchestrate Cross-Internet Campaigns to Deceive and Defraud Holiday Shoppers of their Money and Personal Information

Read more about common holiday-themed scams here: graphika.com/reports/holi...
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Finally, we constantly work to disrupt phishing domains impersonating our brands across the internet. This year, we got over 24K URLs hosting phishing content in Vietnam and Singapore removed from the internet.
/7

We’ve also continued to expand our pilot program to share information about scams directly with banks and financial services partners to disrupt scammers across the internet /6

A interstitial on Facebook Marketplace that warns of a potential scam

A interstitial on Facebook Marketplace that warns of a potential scam

On Marketplace, we rolled out warnings to alert you if we detect messages that follow the patterns of known scam scenarios. /5

An Instagram interstitial warning of a possible scam

An Instagram interstitial warning of a possible scam

On Instagram, if an account we suspect to be engaging in potentially scammy activities requests to follow you, we will remind you to be aware of potentially suspicious interactions. /4

A WhatsApp context card describing a user and Group

On WhatsApp, if someone you don’t know messages you or adds you to a group, you’ll now see a context card giving you more information about the user or the group. /3

In addition to enforcement, teams across Meta are constantly rolling out new product features to help protect people on our apps from known scam tactics at scale. Here are a few relevant anti-scam tools we’ve launched this year: /2

How to Avoid Scams Online This Holiday Season | Meta We’re launching a global anti-scam awareness campaign in collaboration with researchers and safety experts to help people avoid scams this holiday season.

As the holiday season approaches, we’re taking steps to disrupt scammers operating across the internet, including on Meta platforms, and partnering with researchers and experts to raise awareness about scams - read more below! /1