China is asshole*

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Not just coming our way, they’re already here

Seen on InstaPundit:

BAD DOGGIE: Remote Access Backdoor Discovered in Chinese Robot Dog Unitree Go1.

The discovery of the backdoor was made by cybersecurity specialists Andreas Makris (aka Bin4ry) and Kevin Finisterre (aka d0tslash), who published their findings in a detailed technical report late last week. The duo reverse-engineered firmware and conducted a hands-on analysis of the Unitree Go1 robot dog, revealing that each device ships with a preconfigured tunnel client that initiates a connection to CloudSail — a remote access platform developed by Zhexi Technology, based in China.

The researchers demonstrated that upon gaining access to the CloudSail API, which they did using a recovered API key, they could:

• List all connected devices and their IP addresses
• Establish remote tunnels to those devices
• Access the robot dog’s web interface with no authentication
• Use the robot’s cameras for live surveillance
• Log in via SSH using default credentials (pi/123)
• Move laterally within internal networks to which the robot is connected

Makris and Finisterre identified a total of 1,919 unique Unitree Go1 units that had connected to the CloudSail network. While most connections originated from Chinese IP addresses, a significant number were traced to academic and corporate networks abroad. Notable institutions included MIT, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Waterloo, among others. The researchers even observed some units connecting via Starlink, suggesting use in mobile or remote environments.

Exit quote: “Perhaps most concerning is the implication of deliberate design. The tunnel is not merely an overlooked debug utility; it appears fully integrated into the boot process and enabled by default.”

Robot dogs are just the tip of the Communist Chinese surveillance (or worse) iceberg.

*Headline explained:

“Donald Trump, don’t trust China. China is asshole!”

Normalizing deviant behavior

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It began heating up during the summer of love 2020

Here’s the latest on this phenomenon:

Online fundraiser for Texas track meet stabbing suspect nears $150K

And I’ve yet to hear a liberal actually denounce the firebombings and assaults on Tesla owners without inserting the “but” that negates everything they’ve just said, as in “I deplore violence, and condemn it, but …”

David Strom has his own observations on all this:

55% of Leftists Say Assassinations At Least 'Somewhat' Justified

I've written a number of pieces about how the left has embraced violence, arguing that there is nothing fringe about the riots, assaults, vandalism, and even murder that has been sweeping our country. 

During the George Floyd riots, we saw every Democrat politician in the country literally kneeling in celebration of the riots, egging them on, musing about how the violence was justified, calling the takeover of our cities the "summer of love," and attacking Republicans for not embracing the "mostly peaceful" burning down of our cities. 

Biden supporters poured millions into the Lincoln Project even after Rick Wilson went on TV to call on people to "put a bullet" into Trump, and there were signs emblazoned with 86-47 (kill Trump) all over the protests this weekend. Luigi Mangione merchandise flew off the shelves after his murder of Thompson, and his legal team of the highest-powered lawyers in the country has raised almost a million dollars to fund his defense. 

The modern left began its current incarnation during the French Revolution, which spawned the Terror, and a popular leftist magazine often quoted is called Jacobin--referring to the French leftists who gave us the Terror. 

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, there was a mass movement among the leftists of Twitter to create their own social media company based on the claim that Twitter had become right-wing--despite actual surveys showing that Twitter was the most ideologically diverse and balanced social media platform, divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans. 

Bluesky, which claims to be filled with compassionate leftists, is chock full of calls to violence and assassination, which appears to be the comfortable spot for many "mainstream" journalists and commentators. 

Interestingly, the report finds liberal social media platform BlueSky “plays a significant and predictive role in amplifying radical ideation.” BlueSky has seen its new user numbers surge since November’s election, according to the leftist publication The Guardian. Curiously, the “great X-odus” has been driven by liberals “seeking to escape Elon Musk’s X amid warnings from anti-hate speech campaign groups and the EU about misinformation and extremism on the platform,” The Guardian asserts. 

NCRI also found that users are increasingly tying the “memification” of Mangione with calls for political violence against Trump, Musk and others, “reflecting the growing cyber-social presence of assassination culture.” Mangione supporters have been using a meme of the Luigi character from the Super Mario Brothers video game/movie franchise as a symbol of political violence. Some of the threats echo the “Deny, Defend, Depose” mantra inscribed by Mangione on the shell casing that killed Brian Thompson, according to the report.  

Have you once heard about an EU campaign to shut down BlueSky as happens regularly when talking about X? Talk of extradition of BlueSky liberals? 

No? Well, there is a reason: liberals live in a bubble where such language and emotional outbursts are seen as normal. When an ordinary person "misgenders" a trans person, we hear stark warnings about "genocide." When a liberal says that Luigi Mangione had a good point it is seen as normal discourse. 

And then, of course, we have our poor little rich girl from Greenwich chiming in:

TayTay’s parents, the ones who paid to send her off to Swiss finishing school, belong in the same economic strat that Brian Thompson did; would she also cheer their murders? The Lorenz holiday get-togethers must be cautious affairs.

As the Democrats and their media branch scurry to erase the past five years, a reminder.

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Pending on Edgewood after 5 days

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36 Edgewood Drive, $3.975 million and, presumably, going for more.

An interesting price history here: the 1.43-acre lot with a teardown was purchased for $2.350 in March of 2006, resold that July for $2.5 milion, and this house was built. I’m surprised, I guess, that even at 2007 prices, a house this large at this construction level — slate roofs have never been cheap, for instance — could be profitably sold for $4 million when the land it was built on cost $2.5.

But I guess it can.

Mallard Drive

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47 Mallard Drive reports a contract; 11 days on market. A pretty-much-untouched 1960 original, with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,865 sq. ft.

Even back then, Greenwich homes were larger than the US average; they still are, of course.

Average Size of US Homes, Decade by Decade

It's nearly tripled since 1950

24/7 Wall St has a list that shows how the typical American home has changed from 1920 to 2014. And that mainly means the homes have gotten way bigger. The list tracks various stats year by year, including average square feet. Here's a sample, with the figure referring to the average floor area of a new single-family home:

  • 1920: 1,048 square feet

  • 1930: 1,129

  • 1940: 1,177

  • 1950: 983

  • 1960: 1,289

  • 1970: 1,500

  • 1980: 1,740

  • 1990: 2,080

  • 2000: 2,266

  • 2010: 2,392

  • 2014: 2,657

Click for the full list. (More homes stories.)

It was a nothing burger of a story, quickly fading, but here's an interesting explanation of what happened

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How Goldberg Got Added to the Signal Chat

According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.

Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.

Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.

According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.

The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain named “Houthi PC small group”, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis.

Waltz said in the immediate aftermath of the incident that he had never met or communicated with Goldberg. He also suggested on Fox News that Goldberg’s number had been “sucked” into his phone, seemingly in reference to how his iPhone had saved Goldberg’s number.

….

Waltz also appears to have also engendered some sympathy from inside Trump’s orbit over the group chat because the White House had authorized the use of Signal, largely because there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies, two people familiar with the matter said.

Previous administrations, including the Biden White House, did not develop an alternative platform to Signal, one of the people said. As a temporary solution, the Trump White House told officials to use Signal as they had done during the transition instead of regular text-message chains.

Results (Updated)

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Iranian Military Fleeing Yemen, Abandoning Houthi Allies in Anticipation of U.S. Attack

The Iranian military has been ordered home from Yemen by the government in the wake of massive U.S. attacks on the Houthi terrorist group.

Since March 15, the U.S. bombing campaign has destroyed Houthi infrastructure and crippled its ability to carry out attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Iranian military personnel, including members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have been recalled in anticipation of an expected military confrontation with the United States. 

He’s having the same effect on Democrats and their media wing:

A senior Iranian official told The Telegraph that the move was made to avoid a direct confrontation with the U.S. if an Iranian soldier was killed. The source said Tehran's main concern was “Trump and how to deal with him."

“Every meeting is dominated by discussions about him, and none of the regional groups we previously supported are being discussed,” the source said.

UPDATE:

Iran-backed militias in Iraq are ready to disarm following Trump’s threats

Several of the Iran-backed militia groups operating in Iraq are set to demilitarize for the first time to avoid conflict with the US following President Trump’s threats to Tehran’s proxies, senior Baghdad officials said.

Ten senior commanders and Iraqi officials urged the capital to begin the process of disarming and disbanding the militias operating in Iraq to avoid the worst-case scenario with the US.

“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” a commander of Kataeb Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite militia operating in Iraq, told Reuters.

The commander, along with leaders of the al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Ansar Allah al-Awfiya groups, have all been meeting with each other and officials in Baghdad to discuss the demilitarization efforts.

Izzat al-Shahbandar, a senior Shiite Muslim politician close to Iraq’s governing alliance, confirmed the meetings between the militia chiefs and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, describing the talks as “very advanced.”

“The factions are not acting stubbornly or insisting on continuing in their current form,” he noted, adding that the militants were “fully aware” they could be targeted by US airstrikes like their fellow Iran-backed militants in Yemen.

The militia leaders said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has given them their blessing to make whatever decision needs to be made to avoid conflict with the US.Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has been in talks with militia leaders and is seeking for all militants in the nation to step down.AP

There are some 50,000 militants operating in Iraq under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance.REUTERS

Along with overseeing the militias’ demilitarization, Sudani is also allegedly calling on all the estimated 50,000 militants across the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to put down their weapons and surrender their arsenals, which include long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, according to two security officials who monitor militias’ activities.

The US State Department touted Iraq’s proactive approach as it reins in the militias, calling Baghdad to absorb the forces and keep Tehran’s influence out.

These forces must respond to Iraq’s commander-in-chief and not to Iran,” the department said in a statement.

The demilitarization efforts come as the US seeks to further isolate Iran and it’s so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which has seen major blows following Israel’s destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah’s leadership in Gaza and Lebanon.

…. Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a former political adviser to Sudani, told Iraqi state TV that the US has ramped up its warning since Trump’s return to the White House, warning Baghdad to take the threats seriously.

“If we do not voluntarily comply, it may be forced upon us from the outside, and by force,” he said.