Darknet Diaries - EP 139: D3F4ULT

This is the story of D3f4ult from CWA. He was a hacktivist, upset with the state of the way things were, and wanted to make some changes. Changes were made.

Whoa, another fascinating episode of the Darknet Diaries radio show! It’s pretty emotionally intense, or at least it is for me. It’s so interesting and as I’ve said, so fascinating that I am going through my second listen of it.

Inspired by the latest Hemispheric Views pod-radio-show, episode 097 Duel of the Defaults!

So, after listening to what will go down in history as one of my favorite episodes, I thought I would play along and do my own default assessment. I never made sense of Andrew's scoring so I won't be scoring myself.  And all of mine will be iOS, mostly.

Here we go,

📮 Mail Server

• iCloud and HEY

📨 Mail Client

• HEY Email

📝 Notes

• Notes.app, Drafts, and Simplenote

✅ To-Do

• Reminders (personal) and TickTick (Work)

📷 iPhone Photo Shooting

• Long-press on the camera icon/little button

🟦 Photos Management

• Photos App

📆 Calendar

• Fantastical Calendar

📅 Calendar Backend

• iCloud

📁 Cloud File Storage

• iCloud Drive

📖 RSS

• Reeder/NetNewsWire: RSS Reader (backed by Feedbin)

🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts Management

• Contacts (often forget this even exists

  🔎 Browser 

• Safari, and Chrome (Work)

💬 Chat

• iMessage, Signal, Telegram, and Discord?

🔖 Bookmarks

• Omnivore and Instapaper (sometimes)

📑 Read-it-Later

• Omnivore and Instapaper (sometimes)

📜 Word Processing

• Pass

🛒 Shopping List

• Shared Reminder List

🍴 Meal Planning ( as Recipe Management)

• Mela

💰 Budgeting and finance

• Pass

📰 News

When I care to check, News app, and Podcast shows as Today Explained

🎵 Music

• Apple Music

🎤 Podcast

• Currently a battle between Apple Podcasts and Overcast

🔐 Password Management

• iCloud KeyChain

Well, there you have it, This should probably turn into a page for the blog (😂) or should have been a microcast (🙃).

Now, there is one category I would like to add of my own,

📸 Photo Editing

• Darkroom 

What are yours?

Darknet Diaries EP 135: THE D.R. INCIDENT

Omar Avilez worked in the CSIRT of the Dominican Republic when a major cybersecurity incident erupted. Omar walks us through what happened and the incident response procedures that he went through

Of course, like almost every episode of this show, this was a good one, at least to me. And I agree, it is still scary that in this day and age, we are still so vulnerable to cyberattacks and especially at this scale.

It also reminded me that not long ago, in 2022, Puerto Rico also got hacked by this type of attack. And in case you’ve forgotten your geography, PR and DR are neighboring islands. I don’t remember if any other agencies or systems were hacked at all. I just remember that the system known as AutoExpreso, which controls the electronic toll collection, was hacked.

PuertoRicans being PuertoRicans, they were not mad about it, I mean, the government sure was, but not the public. The only thing the public was mad about was why the hackers did not delete all the fines and debts. 🤣

Modern Classics: Seal - Kiss From a Rose — Switched on Pop Podcast-radio-show episode.

If you have never heard of Switched on Pop, you should definitely check it out.

Chatting with leading artists, songwriters, and producers, Switched On Pop breaks down pop songs to figure out what makes a hit and what is its place in culture. Listeners will come away finding “a-ha” moments in their favorite music.

I discovered this one during the pandemic I remember and have been a fan ever since. On this episode though, they chat about one of my favorite songs of all time, Kiss from a Rose by Seal, released in 1994, and featured in the Batman Forever movie ending credits, which according to the podcast, is what made the song a huge hit.

I remember exactly the first time I heard this song, I was on my way to school, most likely elementary, and I was in my dad’s car, we were waiting at a stop sign by Chico’s Pizza when the announcer on the radio said: “here’s Kiss from a Rose by Seal, featured in the Batman’s Forever movie.”

I am not sure what it was that first captured me about it. If it was the oboe and that initial Ba-ya-ya, ba-da-da-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya at the beginning of the song, the sentiment that inspired, there was also some sadness and melancholy to it. Whatever it was, this song has been a favorite of mine ever since, and also a mystery, because the lyrics don’t make much sense but you can’t stop listening to it.

Fans have made all sorts of speculations or have tried to explain the true meaning of it, but that’s all there are speculations and theories. In fact, he has never fully explained it either so it is all up for interpretation.

Anyways, this was a good episode to listen to, I truly enjoyed the conversation and the story behind this tremendous piece of music history.

So, if you all excuse me, I’ll go ahead and listen to it on repeat for a bit.