heracles
Regarding established: I might be wrong! I willingly admit that I knew nothing about verkada some days ago. Seems to be relatively new (5 year-ish) and "classic" Silicon Valley in that they push hard for growth to get their valuation up and try to "disrupt" by running everything in the cloud. More sales people than R&D, which I think is uncommon.
Verkada runs full lock-in, so if you buy a camera from them you have to buy their services. This is again relatively uncommon. Most of the industry supports the ONVIF standard, so you can run the hardware you bought with different software solutions. If you want encryption at rest, no problem. You just make an on-premise solution with full encryption. With verkada you can't do that (incidentally verkada have mocked ONVIF due to alleged security concerns, but obviously it undermines their business model with full lock-in).
Since combining verkada and other hardware would require parallel systems I made an educated guess that most customers would be places without previous hardware and/or less concern for the long run. Most large and high value targets have previous hardware, but certainly there are exceptions. And as stated earlier, I might be wrong:)
And lastly, you should be suspicious! Last time I bought a car I was very suspicious. I like the car I did buy very much, but next time I will be just as suspicious again. That's how things should be when it's about trust and high impact.
“We did not exploit any flaws or vulnerabilities. The cameras have a built-in maintenance backdoor, which allows anyone with super admin privileges to access a root shell on any camera of any customer at the click of a button.”
In the industry in general you have producers of the equipment and you have buyers, but in between there you have integrators. The integrators plays a crucial role when installing big systems. They win the bid for an installation and carries out the work. This means that there is seldomly any direct path between camera producer and the customer. For the producer to get access to footage they must go through the integrator, so the friction is non-trivial.
Direct contact producer <=> buyer might happen in the small case, like a store with a single camera or you placing one at home.
My guess (!) is that verkada tries to pry away the integrators with a simpler model for installation.
Most larger producers now have cloud offerings, which could have some similar vulnerabilities to those mentioned in the article. However, my impression is that security is taken VERY seriously. Not just lipservice, but in practice. This makes sense as it is a key selling point and the larger buyers are competent judges of this. This is in stark contrast to the "typical" hacked target, which seems to be autoshops and hospitals (I am generalising to get through a point, I am not sure what the most common victim is).
I do NOT want to sound smug, but there is a little bit of amateur hour going on here both from buyer and seller. High value and large targets (like airports) and more established sellers usually don't work like this, and that's for a reason.
I can tell you why I love his essays: because of the way he argues. It is very transparent. I seldomly agree with his conclusion(s), but since he is so honest (he is not trying to deceive) in listing his arguments it is just a matter for me to find where he is wrong... or where I am wrong. I find this style so uncommon and stimulating that I hardly can stand the regular "opinion" held by most people. At least it is hard to be intrigued by arguments that doesn't even try to be precise.
When PG writes something I pay attention to the words, because I know they were chosen with some care. If I can force open a crack in his arguments I get wiser, and if I don't... the same thing happens.
I wish more people wrote like him, but preferably less about startups. They don't interest me as much as attempts at honest discourse.
It seems to me that Sweden's strategy is attracting more attention (in form of primarily criticism) than f.x. Belgium's, despite the latters deathrate being ~2x that of Sweden's. To me that indicates that the issue is the strategy in itself, and not the magnitude of the failure of it. Other countries have failed worse (although thankfully the vast majority of countries are currently doing better than Sweden, hopefully forever). Why would people care about 4000 dead in a small country far away, when many don't give a damn when 4000 people die from starvation or malnurishment?
Because it says something about _your_ country and _your_ strategy.
For me that is the simplest and not at all cynical interpretation of this. I will admit this is speculation, but I don't think I claimed certainty.
PS. I'm _guessing_ our Achilles tendon is certain organisational deficiancies in the care of the elderly. How it's done and at what stages of life one is moved between different kinds of care. Even if I'm right (big if) I fear that the outfall from this might be "me caveman gruk, weak restrictions bad for COVID19, dum-dum-donut", or the equivalent opposit. That would be sad. PS.
PSS. Belgium seems to be the most "liberal" country in terms of including suspected COVID19-related deaths in the official statistics, but those are the numbers at our disposal. DSS.
I think there is at least two things going on: - The long-run approach being taken makes it seem like nothing is going on, since there isn't much action. Slow and steady easily registers and stillness. - Tons of misreporting, in all directions. I get newsclips from friends in the UK that are just out wrongwrongwrong, and they are wrong in different ways and directions!
With this being said, I hope that Sweden's approach is in't the best! Why? Well, that would mean that large parts of the rest of the world is doing something better (if we simplify it into "lockdown" vs "limited restrictions"). That would cost us here in Sweden 1000's of unnecessary death, but perhaps spare millions in the rest of the world.
That part about recklessly endangering Europe (!) is hyperbole, UK, Spain and Italy has more deaths capita but apparently the EU can handle them, so...
* Source for death per capita is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries. I've heard something about them not being fully reliable, but the death statistics should be comparatively easy to aggregate, so I'll use that number unless obviously wrong.
Of course, in the long run we are all dead anyway, so I'm not certain what's best!
The point I was trying to make, which I don't at all think is based on fear, uncertainly and/or doubt, is that any two countries will differ on so many variables that one can almost freely pick what correlation one thinks is the important one. To do something akin to that and the go "shame on you" feels wrong.
It might still be true, but the actual support for it seems to just be cherry-picking.
The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.
Compare this to for example ego depletion, and I would say that the analogy is not apt.
I'd consider "it is like a muscle" a red flag when reading news/science.
And packages. I thought I was just stupid, but thankfully there was more to it.
I have failed twice the last year to be offered a DS position after going through all the interviews, references and HR personality tests. I would say that ~50% of the issue was me (0 not nailing every question) and the other 50% was the employer not understanding how to screen for the right people (= them lacking answers to questions they didn't ask).
I think there are two distinct skills: the skills you need for the job, and the skills you need to get the job. Maybe these guides cater to latter.
That point aside, EU /is/ a peace project and will continue to serve that purpose as long as it is standing. I do not dare think too much of how fractured western Europe would be at this point in time if we had to rely on Russia and USA for our peace.
EDIT: switched ""rely"" to "rely". Not sure why I quoted it in the first place.
We can prosecute equally for jaywalking, but anti-competitive behavior gets worse the bigger the offender is and/or the worse offense they commit. So in that way it makes sense to prosecute "top-down", that is go after the biggest ones first.
That's at least what I prefer as an EU member state citizen and consumer.
Most members in the EU also completely lacks the "personal branding" of judges, they usually aren't elected and politics and law intertwine less so in EU than in USA (again, as I understand USA).
I don't see why EU should "work with google" to make them follow regulations (EDIT: beyond the threat of punishment).
I have limited personal experience with it, but it seems good and I have read good things about it, written by free users.