One Man Bandwidth

The Man Who Saved the Internet.

(Scheduling Note: NextDraft will be off on Friday.)

Andres Freund is a engineer at Microsoft who describes himself in a way that will sound familiar to anyone who has spent time hanging out with people who work on software: "I’m a fairly private person who just sits in front of the computer and hacks on code." That, as it turns out, is also the self-description of the guy who may have just saved the internet. One of the thousands of times Freund privately sat in front of his computer, he noticed what looked like a backdoor hidden in the Linux operating system, one complex enough to have been deployed by "a nation with formidable hacking chops" in a multiyear effort, that if exploited by whoever planted it there, could have damaged a huge chunk of the internet—because Linux runs "a vast majority of the world’s servers — including those used by banks, hospitals, governments and Fortune 500 companies." It all makes for an entertaining story. But it's also pretty scary that the modern world's operating system depended on one somewhat lucky discovery by a single individual. At this point, my whole family goes into meltdown mode if our Netflix buffers for a couple seconds. Kevin Roose in the NYT (Gift Article): Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? The internet is "a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and is held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum. Much of it relies on open-source software that is thanklessly maintained by a small army of volunteer programmers who fix the bugs, patch the holes and ensure the whole rickety contraption, which is responsible for trillions of dollars in global G.D.P., keeps chugging along. Last week, one of those programmers may have saved the internet from huge trouble." (I guess that's what Freunds are for.)

+ It's an exaggeration to say one guy could control the internet. There are actually two guys. Here's a story about the other one. "A little over two years have passed since the online vigilante who would call himself P4x fired the first shot in his own one-man cyberwar. Working alone in his coastal Florida home in late January of 2022, wearing slippers and pajama pants and periodically munching on Takis corn snacks, he spun up a set of custom-built programs on his laptop and a collection of cloud-based servers that intermittently tore offline every publicly visible website in North Korea and would ultimately keep them down for more than a week." Wired: A Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea’s Internet. Now He’s Taking Off His Mask. "Alejandro Caceres single-handedly disrupted the internet of an entire country. Then he tried to show the US military how it can—and should—adopt his methods."

2

Lessen Plans

The politically motivated culture wars have made their way to our school boards. And now they're having a serious impact on curriculums. "Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19." WaPo (Gift Article): America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education. (I'd avoid schools run by the side banning books and forbidding kids from learning about things.)

3

Machine Guns

"According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine 'as if it were a human decision.'" This story is a lot bigger than Israel and Hamas. It's about the future of war. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza.

+ "He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps." Biden tells Israel’s Netanyahu future US support for war depends on new steps to protect civilians.

4

Cruise Liner Notes

"My first glimpse of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optical nerve to try again. The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots." When the biggest cruise ship ever sets sail, it calls for a certain type of coverage; even if that coverage is provided by a writer who seems like he'd be happier going overboard than being trapped on a boat created by designers who did. Gary Shteyngart The Atlantic (Gift Article): Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever. "I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger." When it comes Shteyngart on the seas, even the largest cruise ship in history leaves one thinking, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

5

Extra, Extra

Swing Shift: "Suspended from 92 thick cables between the 87th and 92nd floors, the golden steel sphere can move about 5 feet in any direction. As a result, it acts like a pendulum that counteracts (or 'dampens') swaying motions." How Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper withstands earthquakes.

+ No Nothing: There's a certain symmetry to this. No Labels has no candidate.

+ Canceling Disney Plus One: The latest Disney blockbuster took place in the boardroom. Or just outside it, with Bob Iger rallying the troops to make sure activist investor Nelson Peltz didn't get a seat at the table. How Disney’s Bob Iger Vanquished Wall Street Agitator Nelson Peltz. (Disney hopes there's not a sequel.)

+ A Kick in the A's: The Raiders are in Vegas. The Warriors are in SF. And now the A's are officially departing Oakland, too. Athletics to play at minor league park in Sacramento before Vegas residency. (A minor league park is an upgrade from today's Oakland Coliseum, not that current ownership cares.) The Ringer: The Long, Sad Story of the Stealing of the Oakland A’s.

+ Reese Out: LSU women's basketball star Angel Reese has announced that, like Caitlyn Clark, she's headed to the WNBA. Notably, she made the announcement in Vogue.

+ Money Heist: Police said "that the thieves were able to breach the building, as well as the safe where the money was stored. The operators of the business did not discover the massive theft until they opened the vault Monday." This Los Angeles heist sounds like it came from a thriller novel. Thieves stole $30 million in cash. (Sound a lot more like a Netflix series.)

6

Bottom of the News

"But as their population has grown, they have started to venture down into residential areas where, as well as ruining gardens, they have reportedly also knocked down parts of walls, and even entered people's homes." The goat population on a remote Italian island is six times the human population of 100. Hence: Italian island offers goats up for adoption.

+ Rare photos from when the NYC Subway was just a dirt trench.

+ The White House tells NASA to create a new time zone for the Moon.