What defense companies need to learn from Netflix

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Predator and Reaper drones have been compromised in the field.

A thought occurs. What if, as a defense contractor, you took one of your state-of-the-art unmanned reconnaissance vehicles and flew it over the country for two weeks or so. Have it stream a generic feed of dummy data as if it were sending a live feed. Then, the first person or team to hack this feed receives a hefty ransom.

DARPA made a splash with a similar with their Red Balloon Challenge earlier this year. Before that, there was the Netflix prize, which offered up a million dollar bounty to anyone who could improve their recommendation algorithm beyond their target threshold.

The challenge is simple - steal our data, provide proof, tell us how you did it, receive a million dollars. Considering each unit costs about four and a half times that, I think it would be a reasonable sum. Iterate, upgrade, fix holes, redeploy. If it's just a guy, offer him a job. If you realize that the downlink is completely unencrypted, you should also reevaluate your design process.

Using an unencrypted data stream for military vehicles is unacceptable. Plain and simple. They claim that no missions were compromised by the interception of this data, but it's simple tactics - if your enemy knows where you are, don't be there. Any of the surveillance we acquire by these means is essentially useless.

We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on these crafts - they're supposed to be the future of warfare. We deserve better for our money.

Drummond Bass

Pictionary

Timeasaurus

The Timeasaurus Rex is the guardian of the space-time continuum.

another blog

So my buddy Paul and I just started up a new blog. It's about sports... mostly. http://awwcmon.wordpress.com Check it out.

There's also a Twitter account

I guess I like writing about coffee shops

&emsp &emsp &emsp “Large black coffee”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “Room for cream or sugar?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “No, thanks.” This is coffee shop code for “please leave me alone and don’t offer me anything from the bakery.” I chatted with the barista - something I rarely did, but this guy was in his sixties and had the unnatural ability to be unbearably nice to everybody he met. I used to think it was totally fake and he was actually a bitter prick, but no such luck.
&emsp &emsp &emsp “Dark Roast?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “For sure, it’s a good day for some dark coffee -- cold and rainy”
&emsp &emsp &emsp We talked about the weather, of course. Oscar Wilde would be ashamed.
&emsp &emsp &emsp “Oh is it raining again? I tell ya, it’s just been on and off all day?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp He’d heard that already, he was ready for that. Maybe he just has really nice pre-programmed responses to everything he’s likely to hear in a day. I was going to have to think of something more unusual. “Say, do you remember who won Superbowl 35?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “Hmm, you know I think I wanna say it was the Ravens.”
&emsp &emsp &emsp Damn! “Okay, because I couldn’t remember if it was the Giants or the Ravens.”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “Yeah, I was on the fence too, but then I remembered Ray Lewis getting MVP. Tough one though.”
&emsp &emsp &emsp Aw he knew the whole time. Conciliatory, even in victory. I was gonna have to take him head on. “So how are you so nice all the time?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp “I get asked this all the time,”
&emsp &emsp &emsp Shit, he had me right where he wanted.
&emsp &emsp &emsp “You wanna know the secret?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp The set up. This was gonna be good.
&emsp &emsp &emsp “I’ve already had my coffee.”
&emsp &emsp &emsp He was on to me. Something told me he had done this dance before. You don’t spend that much time in the service industry without learning how to shield your true self from strangers. It does make an odd sort of sense though. If your job was to deal with wave after wave of suburban white-collar junkies who need their Fa-la-Latte to keep their Christmas buzz going, lest they crash before primetime, you would probably want to be thoroughly wired. But before I could really react to this revelation, he was on me again.
&emsp &emsp &emsp “So I bet with the rain and the holidays, traffic’s really stackin up, huh?”
&emsp &emsp &emsp It was the friendly bonding haymaker of the midwestern United States. It’s the one thing we can all relate to: horrendous driving experiences. Bad traffic surrounded by painfully long stretches of heartland. “Yeah, I usually just avoid the highways all together during the day - rain or shine.”

I conceded this round. Live to fight another day.

------------

I caught an older woman giving a longing look at a hot little thing that probably reminded her of her younger self when, in actuality, she had never looked anywhere near that good. Time and the human brain have a funny relationship like that - like stained glass and a boiler room.

------------

I played my new favorite game: “Put on your headphones and pretend any groups of two are meeting in real life for the first time after meeting on an online dating site.” It’s amazing how stiff people really look when you add such an awkward pretense.

-------------

The Brush

This is a little diversion that me and Austin banged out the other day. It's an idea for a screen print we want to do: