Tim Draper’s Poor Ethical Standards

Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of college at the age of 19 to start Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize blood testing but was, in fact, one giant fraud. In June 2018, Holmes was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against Theranos investors; conspiracy to commit wire fraud against doctors and Theranos patients, and nine separate counts of actual wire fraud (read the full indictment – 4mb PDF).

And yet when asked if, given all he knows now, if he would still back a company she founded, early Theranos investor Tim Draper said yes, he would,

Bloomberg reporter Sarah McBride asked Tim Draper — a venture capitalist, enthusiastic Bitcoin supporter, and one of Theranos’ first investors — whether he would back Holmes again. Draper responded to the question by saying, “I’d back her as chief science officer, not CEO. Good question,” according to a short Twitter thread from L.A. Times reporter Sam Dean.

Draper would still back a fraud who put people’s health at risk through bogus blood tests as a chief science officer.

Draper is either a moron, a moral monster, or both.

Supergirl #28 Variant Cover by Stanley Lau

This artwork has been around since 2016 and DC keeps recycling it for different projects. Not a fan. The pose is very awkward, Supergirl’s neck is ridiculously long and WTF is going on with her lower right torso?

Supergirl #28 Alternative Cover by Stanley Lau
Supergirl #28 Alternative Cover by Stanley Lau

The Citrix Hack and Password Spraying

Somebody made off with terabytes of data from Citrix, and one of the interesting tidbits from Citrix’s press release about the breach is speculation that the hackers used “password spraying,”

While not confirmed, the FBI has advised that the hackers likely used a tactic known as password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords. Once they gained a foothold with limited access, they worked to circumvent additional layers of security.

The Secret Security Wiki provides additional information about how password spraying attacks work,

Traditional brute-force attacks attempt to gain unauthorized access to a single account by guessing the password. This can quickly result in the targeted account getting locked-out, as commonly used account-lockout policies allow for a limited number of failed attempts (typically three to five) during a set period of time. During a password-spray attack (also known as the “low-and-slow” method), the malicious actor attempts a single commonly used password (such as ‘Password1’ or ‘Summer2017’) against many accounts before moving on to attempt a second password, and so on. This technique allows the actor to remain undetected by avoiding rapid or frequent account lockouts.

Clever. With access to enough account usernames, somebody somewhere in an organization is likely to have practiced poor password hygiene.

UNICEF Highlights Global Increase In Measles Cases

From a March 1, 2019 press release,


NEW YORK, 1 March 2019 — UNICEF warned today that global cases of measles are surging to alarmingly high levels, led by ten countries accounting for more than 74 per cent of the total increase, and several others that had previously been declared measles free.

Globally, 98 countries reported more cases of measles in 2018 compared to 2017, eroding progress against this highly preventable, but potentially deadly disease.

Ukraine, the Philippines and Brazil saw the largest increases in measles cases from 2017 to 2018. In Ukraine alone, there were 35,120 cases of measles in 2018. According to the government, another 24,042 people were infected just in the first two months of 2019. In the Philippines so far this year, there have been 12,736 measles cases and 203 deaths, compared to 15,599 cases in the whole of 2018.

. . .


Poor health infrastructure, civil strife, low community awareness, complacency and vaccine hesitancy in some cases have led to these outbreaks in both developed and developing countries. For example, in the United States, the number of measles cases increased six-fold between 2017 and 2018, reaching 791 cases. More recently, the U.S. has seen outbreaks in New York and Washington state.

“Almost all of these cases are preventable, and yet children are getting infected even in places where there is simply no excuse,” said Fore. “Measles may be the disease, but, all too often, the real infection is misinformation, mistrust and complacency. We must do more to accurately inform every parent, to help us safely vaccinate every child.”

SanDisk announces 1TB MicroSD Card

At MWC 2019, SanDisk announced that it will be releasing a 1TB MicroSD card in April 2019. The 1TB card will retail for $449.99.

I thought I had a lot of storage with my 512gb Note9 with a Samsung 400gb MicroSD card, but with the Note 10 likely to offer a 1TB storage option (as the S10+ does), 2TB of phone storage is right around the corner.

(And just in the nick of time in my case.)

SanDisk 1TB MicroSD
SanDisk 1TB MicroSD