Cyber pain

Not -- although the timing might have had you jump from my subject line to a mis-impression -- a comment on Russian Internet trolls, the 2016 election, ballot-infrastructure hacking, and/or the Mueller report. (I don't discuss anything remotely akin to  politics in this venue.) Different cyber pain ....

Not, IMO, a currency

Are you still mystically drawn to the faddish non-money "asset" that is cryptocurrency? Perhaps this will give you pause: "Crypto Mystery: Quadriga's Wallets Are Empty, Putting Fate Of $137 Million In Doubt." (Who's Quadriga? you ask. Until recently, Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Not that I live in Canada, but if I did I'd rather trust my assets to the currency issued by the Canadian finance ministry.) A key article snippet:

The money was there — it was just locked away. At least that's what the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange had been saying, before an auditor revealed it had finally accessed digital wallets set up by Quadriga's late CEO Gerald Cotten — and that instead of holding $137 million, the wallets were empty, drained in 2018.

Six "cold wallets" Quadriga used to securely store cryptocurrency offline were expected to hold millions. But they were emptied out in April, months before Cotten's death was reported, "bringing the balances down to nil," audit firm Ernst & Young says.

Counting on ten left thumbs?

Software is incredibly important. It's essential to everything from managing power and communication networks, to the routine operation of vehicles and industrial processes, to the record-keeping that underlies pretty much all modern finance, to enabling blogs like this one. Which is why bad and/or over-hyped software is so problematical.

I've commented (vented? harangued? ranted?) often enough about privacy violations and security breaches in major software-based systems. Think: the OPM hack, or the compromise of every user account at Yahoo!, or the Starwood Hotel data breach. But today's post deals with other ways for software get us into trouble ....

It's too often like this. Right?

Are you one of the millions (billions?) who depends on Windows for at least part of the day? Have you noticed that not until January did we read "Windows 10 October 2018 Update is at last being pushed automatically." So what's been the delay? Try this: "Worst Windows 10 version ever? Microsoft's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad October." Which concludes with the bone-chilling prediction:

... come next April, when the 19H1 version is approaching public release, a lot of people will be holding their breath.