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Space Radios and Cyber Crimes

While the United States continues to embarrass itself, science and medical research marches on.

Endeavorance

01 Sep 2025 — 10 min read

Labor Day

It is Labor Day, dear reader. A day which is meaningful, but a day I will truly never remember ahead of time. Seriously: Memorial Day and Labor Day simply do not exist in my head until they happen each year.

It's pretty wild to think that it's already September. This year has been uh, unique among a stretch of obnoxiously unique years. We've still got a few months to go, so hey: hang in there. I'll keep on keepin' on. You do the same.

Stateside

The Head Boy of data management at the Social Security administration has resigned, citing moves made by DOGE with Social Security data which rendered the job "untenable" and made ensuring data security an impossibility.

When the Elon Musk-backed DOGE team arrived at the Social Security office, they wanted access to all the data in their systems. This is obviously not normal, especially given that many of the guys who wanted access to the secure systems were random nerds hand picked by Musk to… do… something…

For non-US folk, Social Security is the closest thing we have to a national ID number, and it's literally just a number.

According to now-resigned data officer Charles Borges, the DOGE boys got ahold of all the data in the Social Security systems and made a copy of the database which undermines oversight and security using a cloud provider.

Although this shouldn't need to be written, I'm gonna write it anyway: It is generally frowned upon to copy and re-host sensitive government information about every single citizen in the country to a third party cloud provider behind the backs of the officials in charge of securing that data.

Center for Disease Control? Meh.

Robert F Kennedy, Jr—a well documented anti-vaccination activist—is the current leader of public health in the United States of America. So far, he has been laser focused on undermining leading scientific research while restricting what choices US citizens have for their own healthcare.

Recently, the FDA announced new restrictions for this year's COVID vaccine booster. While the FDA is approving the vaccine for people 65 and older, those of us who happen to be under 65 (which is at least a few people) are only approved for the vaccine if we meet a secondary underlying condition.

So what does that functionally mean? Will you still be able to get a booster? Maybe:

If you are over 65 years of age and have insurance, you can get the booster at any pharmacy at no charge
If you are under 65, have insurance, and present with a pre-approved condition such as asthma, you can also get the booster at pretty much any pharmacy with no charge
If you do not meet these conditions but have insurance, you might be able to get the vaccine at some pharmacies at either no charge or a lower cost, but it depends on your insurance, the pharmacy, and your state
Otherwise, it is likely that you will need to pay out of pocket for the vaccine if you wanted one, which may be up to $250 per dose without insurance

Meanwhile, the White House has fired the director of the CDC who refused to go along with bullshit pushed by RFK. The White House said the director was "not aligned with the President's agenda of Making America Healthy Again" and so they fired her. After her termination, several other high ranking officials resigned in protest.

When I say "high ranking officials," I am not talking about shadowy government figures in some shady room pulling strings. I am talking about the biggest nerds imaginable whose life's work has been studying things. Infectious disease experts and top medical researchers, all of whom point to the "weaponization of public health" by conspiracy theorists as their reason for resigning.

I would like for the "stop controlling our decisions" party to stop enacting policy which removes my ability to make my own health decisions.

Trump's Tariffs Deemed Illegal, But Pay Them Regardless!

An appeals court found that Trump's signature tariffs are unconstitutional, though left them in place for now. Given the absolute chaos of the tariffs so far, it seems they want to not add to the confusion. So that's nice, we've got a court saying, "hey, so the government is illegally taxing its citizens, but we're gonna let that ride for now."

Trump responded by saying this court decision about import taxes could, "literally destroy the United States of America."

The Tariffs have been a centerpiece of Trump's agenda, as he hopes to establish a new economic world order through them. Unfortunately for him, tariffs don't work how he thinks they do, and congress is supposed to control them. Just a couple annoying details, y'know?

Ultimately this sets up what will likely be an appeal up to the Supreme Court about—yet again—the extent of the reach of the executive branch.

All I can say is that I really hope they strike down the tariffs, because I just had to pay $62 on a package from the UK, so all y'all Trump voters have officially cost me $62. You can pay me back through PayPal: paypal@endeavorance.camp

I Guess FEMA Was Hacked??

So this is fucking WILD and is being reported like it's some lil' side note.

Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security, fired 24 employees of FEMA's IT department, citing that they allowed a massive cyberattack to occur which, "threaten the entire department and the nation as a whole."

We don't have a ton of information on this yet. What we know is that some cyberattack occurred which was severe enough to trigger the termination of dozens of IT professionals and "threatens the nation as a whole," and all we got was like, "oh yeah this happened btw."

According to government representatives, no actual citizen data was stolen, and the threat was mitigated. Though, it's worth noting that as the current administration is trying to completely dismantle FEMA. Hell, Trump fired the FEMA director for suggesting that FEMA should continue to exist). So what that means is we've got an agency that was hit with a cyberattack which now has 24 fewer IT professionals, a hiring freeze, and absolutely trashed morale.

Hm, I wonder why their systems were targeted?

Want a Break?

Do you need a break from reality, as I often do? Do you like spending some time just kinda being silly? Do you like video games? I got you covered.

I'm excited to announce the return of my dormant Gaming channel on YouTube, along with the launch of Season 3 of Minecraft: Sisyphus Edition, a video series in which I throw myself into an attempt to beat Minecraft on it's permadeath mode despite not really knowing how to do that.

I am growing this second channel, so if you're a fan of my work and like games n such (video or tabletop!) I'd super appreciate if you considered subscribing and sharing.

Elsewhere

Israel Kills Yemen's Prime Minister

Israel has killed the Prime Minister of Yemen's Houthi government from a targeted airstrike against the nation in a massive escalation in the ongoing Israeli aggression in the region.

Following the attack, Yemeni cities saw demonstrations from citizens seeking retaliation against Israel and standing in support with Palestinians. Israeli officials hailed the attack as a success and a step towards preventing attacks originating from Yemen.

This is still pretty new. The international response right now can be summarized as, "what in the fuck you guys?" as Israel continues to bomb virtually every other nation in the area in the name of "eradicating terrorist threats," which is pretty rich at this point.

Israel's justification for the attack is a claim that a strike against Israel originated from Yemen and used cluster munitions. I have not been able to locate a source outside of Israeli media and military statements that supports this claim.

mRNA Vaccine Movement in Africa

mRNA vaccines are most well known right now for their role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite conspiratorial firestorms against the technology, mRNA vaccines have proven to be safe, effective, and offer strong options to rapidly create and update vaccines to respond to evolving viral threats. Neat!

Across several African nations, there is ongoing research for mRNA vaccines for Ebola and other illnesses which could be categorized as a, "major drag."

One of the issues with vaccine distribution in Africa is refrigeration. Some vaccine formulations require being stored at very low temperatures. Meanwhile, Africa is—brace yourself—big. Like, real big. Big enough that it's pretty dang hard to get vaccines everywhere they need to go while keeping them cold.

mRNA vaccines are advancing as research continues, with trends towards shelf-stability when compared to traditional vaccines. Combine that with the aforementioned ease of tailoring vaccines to evolving strains, and you've got some serious interest.

While progress is slow, its still happening. Improved vaccine production chains in the region combined with better ease of distribution could save countless lives. So, keep at that. Thanks.

Science & Tech

Editing The Cancer Away

Scientists have successfully used gene editing to supercharge immune system cells to fight what is otherwise considered "incurable cancer."

University of Minnesota researchers used CRISPR gene editing to modify genes in late stage gastrointestinal cancer patients to better equip them to target tumors. These 12 patients were all late stage, at a point considered generally incurable. After the treatment, several patients saw the cancer recede, while one saw a complete disappearance of their tumors.

That is undeniably fucking rad.

Gene editing is spooky for sure. We don't have a super strong grasp of the downstream effects until we try it, and the process is invasive, complex, and expensive. It's not a thing you'll be able to get as a part of a spa day any time soon. But this advancement shows that we may have more options available to improve people's quality of life than we did yesterday. I like that.

Space Making Waves

Earlier this year, researchers in Canada using big ol' equipment to listen to radio waves from space encountered a massive spike in waves unlike anything they had seen before. The sudden burst of radio waves was so significant that it was dubbed the "Radio Brightest Flash of All Time."

This was of course exciting, because when you listen to Radio Free Space, it's usually a whole lot of boring background radiation.

So for a while, we (as a species, I'm not a space listener) had no idea what caused the burst. Was it aliens? Was it a battle from a planet in a galaxy far, far away? Neither—turns out it was far cooler.

With the help of a few telescopes such as the Jimbo Wimbo Simbo Timbo, the space people were able to identify the source of the radio wave burst: a star-forming field of gas where either the formation of a star, collapse of a star, merger of stars, or maybe all of the above happened. We may not know the very specifics, but we now know we can quickly find the specific origin location of incoming burst of radio waves using modern tools, opening up much more opportunity to research future occurrences.

The identification of the origin has been described as "like spotting a quarter from 100km away."

Google's Apple Era

Google will soon start restricting the ability to side load unverified apps onto Android devices next year.

If you use Android, you may be aware of the stark differences between how Android and iOS apps are managed. iOS is a much more locked-down system, where apps must be approved and audited by Apple before listing in the App Store. While this generally means that iOS apps have a minimum quality bar, it also means there's a whole lot of apps you can't install, and there's a whole lot of weirdness with Apple being the gatekeeper.

Android has long been considered more insecure due to the lack of this auditing process in combination with the fact that you can just kinda install whatever apps from whatever source. You don't actually need to go through the Google Play store to install an app on Android right now. You can download the app as a file and install it directly no problem.

But that's now changing, as Google is planning to move towards Apple's model in the coming year for any Android phone that runs Google services, which is basically all of them. Functionally, it means that Android is about to get a lot more walled-gardeny.

Of course, specifically installing an alternative version of Android or disabling verification systems will still allow bypassing this feature, just as jailbreaking an iPhone allows for installing whatever you'd like.

Automated Cyber Crime

One of the most lucrative, expansive cyber crime sprees happened recently at the hands of a single person, thanks to AI tools.

Anthropic's Claude AI was leveraged by a user to identify vulnerable corporations and extort them.

The user left the heavy lifting up to the AI. After identifying the targets, the AI was asked to build malicious software, steal information, identify the best stolen information for extortion, and generate emails to send to the companies demanding payment.

We don't know how much money the hacker was paid, or who the companies were, but we know at least one was a defense contractor.

A single person vibe coded one of the largest cyber extortion schemes ever, and as far as I can tell, they're still out there somewhere. What a timeline.

Space Radios and Cyber Crimes

Endeavorance

Labor Day