Interesting multifaceted cyber tool. I'm afraid this is over my head but I think Joe might like to tinker with it.


https://open.substack.com/pub/onsurv...-and-these-add

 

The Flipper has been around for a couple of years at this point. Made a big splash within the infosec community when it first came out.

It seems like a neat toy, but I've been unable to come up with a valid reason for buying one. The RFID/NFC capabilities have sadly already been made obsolete by the current generation of RFID products which incorporate some intelligence into the keycard, sort of like how rolling-code transmitters for garage door openers and keyless-entry fobs work.

I've actually become oddly anti-gadget since the days when I brought my NA with its built-in touchscreen tablet to the AutoX event where you drove it. My home is completely free of things with "smart" or "connected" in their name.

At work, I tend to design user-interfaces which feature physical buttons and switches and discrete indicators rather than touchscreens and software. Example:



Simple. Unambiguous. You need to flip one of those switches in an emergency? They're always right there in the same place, and you can get to them without even looking down. I designed every bit of that, including the switchguards themselves. And yes, they are countersunk into the panel.

That design language carries throughout the facility, as well as my own life.

 

I wish wish wish that dedicated mechanical switches would return to things like automotive air conditioning systems.

Tangentially, I am fascinated with Carrington Events and Miyake Events and what effects they will have when the next one occurs. Much of our world of tech is unshielded and fragile. Most people wouldn't know what happened because there would be no phone or TV news. Tens, if not hundreds of millions, would likely die.

 

Why did you change the font color at "RFIT/NFC"?

 

I have no idea. Sometimes weird **** happens when I copy/paste in this editor.

It has been corrected.

Also, wow, I did not realize that this thread had been languishing since January.

We need a new kook, like Hustler or JasonC SBB, to make fun of in here.

 

Yes, yes it has.

 

 

I just noticed the furnace fan seemed to be louder than I remembered. Go down to check on it and decided to look at the filter. When I change them, I write the date on the end. 10/2023. Forgot to change it last year. Oops. At least the fan slowed down to a quieter level.

 

I don't normally drive during the day, but today I had a doctor's appointment. I am simply appalled by the number of people, especially older drivers, who don't know how to properly adjust their side mirrors. Hell, it's even in the name!

If you don't have proper situational awareness, how can you possibly be a safe driver?

 

Apparently, a memo was sent out long ago instructing everyone to monitor their door handles while driving or else thieves might steal them while underway.

 

I heard that's why Elon Musk designed the Tesla with disappearing door handles.

 

 

BMW - Blinkers Maliciously Withheld

 

Hypothetically, if there was a bad person out there in the world and someone absolutely didn't want to sign them up for things that might notify their electronic devices through phone or email, what sort of thing would a person absolutely not ever want to do because it would be very wrong and we are all above that sort of thing? Asking for a friend who's absolutely not going to do anything bad with that information, even though it would be for the betterment of mankind.

 

Nothing?

 

 

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library." -Frank Zappa

 

Many of these are new to me. More than this at:

https://open.substack.com/pub/cardca...reference-desk

Google is constantly interpreting you. It swaps in synonyms, personalizes results based on your history, and decides what you probably meant rather than returning what you typed. Most of the time that interpretation is invisible. These tools are how you override it.

site:
limits your search to a single website. Try: site:nytimes.com climate to search only the Times, or site:gov vaccine to pull results exclusively from government domains.

Number ranges
let you set hard boundaries on any numerical search. Put two periods between two numbers with no spaces: laptop $500..$800 returns results mentioning prices in that range. The same syntax works for years (civil rights legislation 1964..1968) or any other measurement.

Verbatim mode
is the most powerful feature most people have never used. After any search, click Tools (just below the search bar), then the "All Results" dropdown, then select "Verbatim." Google stops paraphrasing you entirely and returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping.

Quotation marks
work the same way at the phrase level. Try: "the medium is the message". Wrapping a phrase in quotation marks forces Google to find pages where those exact words appear in that exact order.

The minus sign
removes a word from your results entirely. Put it directly before the word with no space: jaguar -car returns the animal, mercury -planet returns the element or the musician depending on your other terms.

AROUND(#)
is an undocumented proximity operator that tells Google how many words apart your two search terms can be. Try: climate AROUND(3) policy. The intent is that only pages where those terms appear in genuine proximity show up, rather than a page that mentions "climate" in the introduction and "policy" ten paragraphs later.

filetype:
returns only a specific kind of file. filetypedf remote work productivity returns only PDFs. Swap pdf for ppt to find slide decks, or doc for Word documents.

intitle: "index of"
surfaces something most people don't know exists: open file directories on the internet. Try: intitle: "index of" /pdf "media literacy". These are servers running with directory listing enabled, a default setting in Apache that displays all files in a directory when no index page exists. Most administrators never turned it off. The result is publicly accessible file systems, packed with documents, datasets, and files that don't appear in regular search results.

before: and after:
set a date boundary on your results. mental health social media research after:2023 filters out everything published before that year. Use before: to find what was known or written at a particular point in time, useful for confirming a source predates an event or for tracing how a conversation has shifted over time. Combine them with site: for a targeted archive search: site:theatlantic.com AI after:2023

intitle: and inurl:
let you filter by the structure of a page rather than just its content. intitle:"media literacy" returns only pages where that phrase appears in the actual title, not just mentioned once in passing. inurl:gov intitle:"AI policy" finds government pages where AI policy is the stated subject. Combined, they're considerably more precise than keyword searching alone.

"can anyone recommend"
exploits a quirk in how people write when they're asking for help without a commercial motive. Try: "can anyone recommend" noise-canceling headphones under $100. Because the phrase is in quotation marks, Google surfaces only pages where those exact words appear, which means forum threads, community posts, and real conversations where people asked the same question you're asking. Instead of a sponsored listicle, you get someone's firsthand experience choosing between two specific products. Swap in "does anyone know a good" or "what's the best" for variations on the same trick.

The omitted results link
When Google adds a note at the bottom of a results page saying some results were hidden because they're too similar to others, there's a small link to include them anyway. The results Google omits tend to be less trafficked and less search-optimized, which frequently means they're more substantive and written for readers rather than algorithms. When doing real research rather than a quick lookup, that's exactly where to look.

The asterisk *
works as a wildcard for any missing word or phrase. Try: "the * of artificial intelligence". The asterisk stands in for whatever word you can't remember or want to explore.

Paste a flight number
like UA 2157 and Google returns the live gate, departure and arrival times, current delay status, and a real-time position tracker without opening an app or an airline website. This works for any major commercial flight.

Paste any package tracking number
Google recognizes the format automatically, whether it's UPS, FedEx, or USPS, and shows live delivery status directly on the results page. If you've been opening carrier websites every time you get a shipping confirmation, you didn't need to be.

Type run speed test
Google measures your download and upload speed directly in the browser, without sending you to a third-party site like Speedtest.net.

Type [thing] vs. [thing]
like oat milk vs almond milk, Notion vs Obsidian, ibuprofen vs acetaminophen, and Google pulls a side-by-side comparison panel with key differences.

define: [word]
how to pronounce [word]
sunrise [city] or sunset [city]
[amount] [currency] to [currency]

tip for $[amount] opens a tip calculator you can adjust by percentage and split by number of people

translate [phrase] to [language]

what is my IP returns your IP address immediately