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Weekend Edition 49

by admin FOSS News, Linux, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 49: Malware, Autistic Hackers, AI & More

Weekend Edition 49: Malware, Big Tech, AI, and More

Smoke Loader Malware

Danish Cloud Companies Smashed by Ransomware Attack

Google Adding MFA to Sensitive Settings

Windows 11 Update Causes Instability (yawn)

Good Guy Apple?

GPT-4 Could Moderate Your Content on Social Media…

SBF on “Bread & Water”

Lapsus$ Cybergang Ringleader in Prison Again

WE 1: Say Hello to Whiffy Recon, the Latest Smoke Loader Payload

Before I get into the new payload, which while creepy enough, is not a common type of attack vector, let’s cover what Smoke Loader is. It is a vehicle which can be used to install other malicious code onto targeted machines. Whiffy Recon, a new payload for the venerable Smoke Loader program, can tap into Google’s geolocation API to triangulate a machine’s approximate location via wifi triangulation. It can poll WiFi networks in range every 60 seconds on Windows machines to give attackers that info. On its own, this is not that big of a deal, but in conjunction with other attack vectors, it could be quite something in terms of monetization for bad actors. It has been spotted in the wild, in the US, UK, Germany, and France. It often comes through phishing attacks, and the payload shows up as wlan.lnk in your user’s startup folder. It is safe to delete if you come across it there.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-malware-component-can-use-wi-fi-triangulation-to-determine-pcs-location

WE 2: Ransomware Attack Levels Two Danish Cloud Providers

CloudNordic and Azero Cloud got obliterated by a ransomware attack on both of their datacenters. It appears that one system which was recently (sometime last week) physically transferred from one facility to the other had a dormant piece of malware, and when they reconnected the system, the piece of malware activated and set to work in both datacenters, encrypting all of the data on all of those servers and in their infrastructure as well. Ouch. They expect that they won’t have any clients left after this, and understandably so. They should have had better security practices in place to prevent such a horrible breach. It almost makes me wonder if it was something of an inside job, because how would the attackers have breached the server(s) they did initially without some help? Perhaps I’m missing something here, but this doesn’t sit right with me, you guys. What do you think?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ransomware-wipes-out-data-access-for-majority-of-cloud-providers-customers

WE 3: Google Beefing Up Security Around Email Settings

Gmail looks to be getting more MFA rolled out, now the focus is potentially forcing users to verify themselves when tweaking filtering, forwarding, and IMAP access. This feels invasive, but then Google owns your emails in gmail anyway, so yeah… It makes sense to me that they would want to protect their data from others’ eyes. Forwarding could leave your inbox empty moving forward, if an attacker gets overzealous. Filtering could make it less visible to you in your own account, by setting up folders, and or archiving which obscures your access to your emails… IMAP allows third party apps to retrieve your emails, so an attacker, if this deep in your business, could also set that up and snoop that way, similarly to forwarding. I guess this is a “Good on you, Google” kind of situation. At the same time, my cynic alarms are blaring and my spidey sense is more than tingling. I want to bash Google whenever possible, after all, that is part of my schtick, but I’m torn here. These MFA prompts can be quite irritating, but could help keep you safe from a nosy neighbor, or from a legitimately bad actor snooping on your gmail account.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-to-protect-sensitive-gmail-settings-with-a-multi-factor-challenge

WE 4: MS Bones Windows 11 Update, Causes BSODs

To be clear this isn’t ENTIRELY Microsoft’s fault… MSI seems to have released a firmware update bungling Intel 14th-gen support. If you guys haven’t been keeping track, Microsoft recently weeded out a bunch of old, entry-level server chips from the “supported processors” list in Windows 11. The error with these motherboards pops up as a BSOD claiming that your processor is no longer supported in Windows. At this point, the solution is to rollback your updates to before you installed that one for Windows, and Microsoft has pulled those updates from circulation pending further investigation. That was surprisingly quick, since the update in question was just rolled out on August 22. I will update with more info as it is available, for those of you with MSI based 12th or 13th generation Intel systems.

Well, well, well… Good job, Microsoft. You managed to roll out an update that directly caused BSODs for some of your users, given, only a small segment of the user base, but then you quickly did the right thing. Perhaps due to the negative press they’ve been getting lately in the face of terrible security policies which have finally affected the wrong people? What do you guys think? Are they feeling as though they are on the hot seat, here?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-released-a-windows-11-update-thats-causing-pcs-to-bsod

WE 5: Good Guy Apple?

Wait a minute… Did I just write that? Yes I did. Apple is finally starting to cave to the right-to-repair movement after having loudly opposed it in every possible way for 10 years. They fought hard against this in California and in other places, but now, as other states have passed similar consumer rights legislation, California is poised to do the same, and even the trillion dollar behemoth with the damaged fruit on its products is realizing that it is no longer worth fighting it. Wow. This is a HUGE feather in the caps of people like Louis Rossmann and so many others who have advocated and lobbied for these sorts of bills around the country and the world. Right to repair is fundamental, as I see it, and is why I so strongly encourage everyone to learn Linux and move away from the Big Tech options. I believe that everyone should be able to do basic repair on their computers and phones without needing someone like Rossmann or even myself to help them. But I digress, let’s take a look at this bill, shall we? (if you’s like to do so, here is a link to the Bill itself: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB244 and to analysis of it: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB244) It sounds like a solid step in the right direction to me, but I’m no lawyer. Is it perfect? No. Too many fingers are in the pie, here, including Apple’s. Some basics on it run like so: if your device is worth between $50 and $99.99, those tools, parts, and documents would need to be available for three years. If it is worth $99.99 or more, then tools, parts, and docs would need to be available for seven years. Aside from that, Apple is requiring some slightly shady things be included:

The bill does not require security features to be disabled on devices.

The issue I have with this bit is that sometimes, such as in situations involving something like TPM, where there are moments when the security measures actually prevent repair attempts for devices in question.

The focus remains on manufacturers to supply the tools, parts, and documentation to enable repairs by authorized repair channels.

Ok, this works, but still keeps too much control in the hands of these mega corporations. I understand that they are concerned about things like corporate espionage and the like, but if an outlet like iFixit is able to produce parts which allow more people to service their phones more readily because the price isn’t so high, it seems like this is an all around win for consumers.

Repair providers must disclose if they are using non-genuine or used parts.

Makes perfect sense. I want to know what kind of parts are being put into my device, not just the bottom line. I want to have options, rather than being forced into something.

Prospective application that allows manufacturers to build new products that comply with the proposal.

I get why they want this. I do, however, this strikes me as too much control, after all, we consumers BOUGHT these devices, didn’t we? I also am uncomfortable with empowering the government to police much more than they already do, otherwise I would say that like the EU, we should FORCE compliance. There is a part of me that wants to say that anyway, though, just out of spite toward Apple et al. What do you guys think? Am I off base, here, or right on target?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-pledges-support-for-californias-right-to-repair-act

WE 6: They’re Finally Telling Us About This…

Tell me we haven’t had some sort of short-bus quality AI moderating leftist social media for a while now. I’m waiting… Convince me. Well, now we are supposed to look, and gasp, and wonder, and fear this new Frankenstein’s monster we have created. GPT4 will be put to work parsing and enforcing content moderation policies very soon. Who knows, maybe this will actually be a reasonable usecase for this generative AI. I doubt it. Too much bias and too much snowflakitis, as my wife would say.

First, the moderation policies are draconian in many places. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the dynamics of these being ostensibly private enterprises, and the owners/operators have the right to refuse service to anyone (thank you, Apu) , but then they shouldn’t bill themselves as “public squares” or say ANYTHING about freedom of speech in their literature, marketing, or policies, other than qualifying what they mean by freedom of speech. If they make it painfully clear what they consider “ok” speech, then adhere to their standards, no matter who is availing themselves of the provided platform, then fine. They can do whatever they want. They have not done that in the least. Their rules and policies are almost always so full of legalese that no average human being could read and comprehend them fully without something like a Black’s Law Dictionary at hand… Not only that, but these rules seem to change with the wind, so they don’t dare to spell it out fully at any given time, for the public to see. This, as I have said in the past, is unfair and capricious of them. I don’t know that I would want them to become like a utility, with that much more government oversight and embeddedness. The truth is that I do not have a solid solution for the problem, but will shout from the rooftops until the world hears and starts to work it out.

Second, I do not trust OpenAI and their overlords at Microsoft and Blackrock & Vanguard group (remember that together, those firms/ funds own about 1/4 of Microsoft, and Microsoft bought OpenAI last year, not long before ChatGPT was unleashed on the world). I think that their biases are hard to the Left, which is not what we need right now. I do not think that it is possible for a human to exist without biases, therefore anything we create will wind up inherently biased in some way, shape, or form. Chasing the holy grail of “neutrality” or “objectivity” is laudable, but is unobtainable, just as perfection is, this side of heaven. That said, do you think that it is reasonable to expect either of those things?

For these reasons, I do not see a bright future for AI moderation of internet content. It is a nice, fluffy thought for about 10 seconds, until we realize how ugly we have a tendency to be as humans, and how that has to affect any LLM we may create to power something like GPT-4. What do you guys think?

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3704618/openai-to-use-gpt-4-llm-for-content-moderation-warns-against-bias.html

WE 7: SBF on “Bread & Water” in Jail

The former “king of crypto” has found himself in prison once again after violating the terms of his bail agreement by tampering with witnesses, among other things. His lawyer is claiming that lack of adequate food is limiting his ability to prepare for his October court date. They are claiming that the bureau of prisons is not providing appropriate vegan food for him, but not only that, they are not staying on top of his Adderall and Emsam to treat his ADHD and depression, respectively. I shouldn’t laugh at this, but it is hard not to. All he would have had to do was keep his nose clean until the trials, but he couldn’t manage that, so now he’s in jail again, and whining about conditions. Poor baby. If you can’t handle doing the time, you shouldn’t have done the crime(s) you’ve been accused of. True, our justice system is allegedly based on the notion of, “Innocent until proven guilty”, but only if you are an elite or an ally or brownnoser of the elite. However, if you stand up to them, you seem to get run out on a rail. See: Donald J. Trump. I digress, though, health, whether physical or mental, is crucial to maintain, and is a human right for inmates. We cannot go back to how it was back in the old days, when prisoners got next to nothing, starved, and did not get adequate care. I could launch into a big tirade on this issue, but I won’t.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66589797

WE 8: Lapsus$ Cyber Gang *Mostly* Behind Bars

These autistic kids went on a few hacking sprees and were really good. Makes sense that autists would be excellent at pattern recognition, as that is most of what is necessary to be a good hacker or developer. These kids hacked some really huge companies, like Nvidia, Uber, and Rockstar Games. These were the ones who leaked all of that stuff on GTA 6 a couple of years ago. They even hit Microsoft itself. Their first attack was more or less a ransom attack on a couple of British telco providers, who did not give them the $4 million they requested, but the kids did make about $100k through stealing crypto from the crypto accounts they breached via stealing sim card data. They were arrested, but continued hacking away, hitting Nvidia in February of 2022, they spammed, phished, and managed to get access to the company’s data. The main kid even got doxxed and had to be moved into a motel to keep him and his family safe. Later, he broke his bail conditions by buying a Fire Stick, smart phone, keyboard, and mouse. Can’t seem to help himself at this point. During that time was when he/they (the gang) hit the rest of the bigger US based companies mentioned earlier. I’m sorry, as wrong as this is, it makes me laugh. These mega-corporations, with their billions, if not trillions of dollars in revenue can’t manage to defend themselves against some determined, autistic kids. That is sad. Pitiful, really. We need to do better. Digital hygiene and a little discernment go a long way to limiting attack surfaces, but as long as people assume that they are safe and wouldn’t be targeted in an attack, they won’t change their practices, and will continue being “low-hanging fruit”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66549159

Romans Road 5

by admin Devotions, Spirituality & Tech

Romans Road 5: Romans 8:30-34

Papa,

Thank you that You and all of Heaven are pulling for those of us who you knew would choose to become one with You once again. Thank you that You do not accuse us. Thank You that You have chosen to cover our sins with the blood of Jesus. Jesus, thank You that You shed Your blood for us. Thank You that You constantly intercede on our behalf, along with the Holy Spirit. Help us to learn to ask for the help we need and to recognize when it comes. In Jesus’ name,

Amen

Romans 8:30-34

Having determined our destiny ahead of time, he called us to himself and transferred his perfect righteousness to everyone he called. And those who possess his perfect righteousness he co-glorified with his Son!

So, what does all this mean? If God has determined to stand with us, tell me, who then could ever stand against us? For God has proved his love by giving us his greatest treasure, the gift of his Son. And since God freely offered him up as the sacrifice for us all, he certainly won’t withhold from us anything else he has to give.

Who then would dare to accuse those whom God has chosen in love to be his? God himself is the judge who has issued his final verdict over them—“Not guilty!”

Who then is left to condemn us? Certainly not Jesus, the Anointed One! For he gave his life for us, and even more than that, he has conquered death and is now risen, exalted, and enthroned by God at his right hand. So how could he possibly condemn us since he is continually praying for our triumph?

Ok, so what does that mean? We are righteous because God called us righteous in Jesus, and He is in the process of producing righteousness in us, now. God, and all of heaven is for us. There is no one who currently belongs in heaven to accuse us of being unworthy or sinful. The enemy exists, don’t miss that point, but He is no match for Jesus (as we saw on the cross and in the empty tomb). God is so far in our corner that He gave us Jesus. Let that sink in, God’s own son came and gave Himself for us. If God didn’t hold Jesus back in order to bring us into alignment with His original design for us, then how could we think that He might hold anything else back from us that we need? That is futile thinking, straight from the enemy, who is the accuser. Do not heed it. He isn’t worth listening to. Why does he seek to waylay us? It is the job that fell to him, since he hates God and we bear His image, so the enemy does his best to hurt God the only way he can, by preventing His children and image bearers from reuniting with Him. What do you think about that? Tell me that isn’t wild. Does the Father leave us without help? No, or as Paul would say “me genita” or “hell no”. We have all of Heaven on our side and in our corner. We simply need to learn how to ask for help, then receive it.

Memesplanation Shorts – Romans Road 5

by admin memesplanation, Spirituality & Tech

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:30

Romans 8:30
Having determined our destiny ahead of time, he called us to himself and transferred his perfect righteousness to everyone he called. And those who possess his perfect righteousness he co-glorified with his Son!
Since He is working all things out for the best, and knew that we would choose to be with Him, then He called us whom He knew would accept the call and imputed righteousness to us. We get to be glorified with Jesus, changed into Him, provided we choose to live empty of ourselves rather than full of ourselves.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:31-32

Romans 8:31-32

Since we are being reformed into Jesus, God does not abandon His son, so will not abandon us. If God never loses a fight, then how can we? If God loved us so much that He did not keep Jesus back from us, then why would He withhold anything else we need in order to be more fully a part of Him, if that is the goal of salvation in the first place? Paul says that He will not. I believe it, so if we are in need of something, then all we need do is ask. He will provide it freely.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:33-34

Romans 8:33-34

Who then would dare to accuse those whom God has chosen in love to be his? God himself is the judge who has issued his final verdict over them—“Not guilty!” Who then is left to condemn us? Certainly not Jesus, the Anointed One! For he gave his life for us, and even more than that, he has conquered death and is now risen, exalted, and enthroned by God at his right hand. So how could he possibly condemn us since he is continually praying for our triumph?

Who, then accuses us? Does God? Does Jesus? No. There is an enemy, whom we must be daily prepared to do battle with. This passage does not name him, though. Jesus is constantly pulling for us, interceding for us along with the Holy Spirit before the Father. All of heaven is for you. Grab that today.

Weekend Edition 47: AI Is Stupid and More

by admin Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 47: AI Is Stupid & More

MS 365 Accounts Hacked… Again

Zoom: “Trust us, Bro.”

ChatGPT Sucks as a Knowledgebase

GPTBot to Scrape Your Website: Here’s How to Block It.

AI Steals Passwords? Knowledge Is Power

OSS Moq Temporarily Included Extra Tracking Tools in Its Codebase… Oops…

Hear About Trump’s Twitter Subpoena?

WE 1 – Massive Phishing Campaign Against C-Level Execs

Filed under the category of “Microsoft Sucks”, a bad actor has been attempting to take control of a plethora of C-level executives’ accounts at various large companies, again. It appears to have a Turkish origin and uses a known tool, called EvilProxy to send about 120,000 emails to similar accounts over the last few months. It costs about $400 per month, and is being used to steal MFA codes, login credentials, and other things through a labyrinthine series of redirects until they land on a very carefully crafted, specialized landing page for each organization they target. How do they know that it is related to Turkey? If a targeted person uses a VPN with a Turkish endpoint, they don’t actually get phished.

Ok, I guess this isn’t really MS’s issue, but I still want to take whatever chance I can to bash them. Not sure that they could legitimately make reasonable changes to make their platforms and services un-phishable. That kind of social engineering attack has been a “thing” since the early days of networking, back in the late 70’s, it was how Kevin Mitnick gained access to that DEC server system in 1979, as well as the Pac Bell voicemail system in the early 90s. We do, however, need to raise awareness and observational skills for people in positions of power. If we effectively train people to only trust those sorts of emails from their own IT personnel, then I think we would make a big step toward defeating these kinds of attacks in the future. Unfortunately, this is likely a nearly insurmountable problem at this point. For those of you who work in corporate America, always check random emails asking for credentials with your IT department before you just blindly offer up your sign-in to some bad actor. Practice better digital hygiene. This will save everybody involved many unnecessary headaches.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-365-users-targeted-by-major-phishing-campaign

WE 2 – Zoom: Private, or a Giant AI Nightmare?

Recently, Zoom did a rewrite on their terms of service and privacy policies. By recently, I mean that they were rolled out in March 2023. They were recently uncovered by a hawkeyed researcher. There was a justifiable uproar about these changes across the interwebz. They appeared to give Zoom blanket permission to use every call, every chat to train AIs and associated algorithms. After the fracas. The Chief Product Officer issued a blog as well as some quick edits to the documents in question. Sections 10.2 and 10.4 seem to give the platform carte blanche rights to grab any user interaction with the platform as a source of data for its AI models and algorithms. The company clarified their position with a rather tepid, “Trust us, bro. We would NEVER do that WITHOUT permission from our users. Your user data (voice, video, and chat inputs) is safe and private, unless you opt into this.” Right. I believe them. Thanks to Microsoft’s purchase of the Lion’s Share of OpenAI last year and forcing chatGPT out before the fledgling chat bot was ready to fly, we have this wide open, anything goes situation around so called AI. Truth is that there isn’t much that is intelligent about AI, right now. It’s kind of like T9 predictive texting on steroids, right now. Auto-correct run amok. We will talk about that in the next story, though.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/zoom-revises-terms-after-changes-spark-fears-of-ai-learning-from-video

WE 3 – ChatGPT Sucks as a Knowledgebase

ChatGPT was recently set up with a series of 517 programming related questions and limited to looking within StackOverflow for answers, and 52% of the time, it came up with the wrong answer. Yikes. Next week, we’ll talk more about this, once my co-host has a chance to get home and digest all that he learned at Black Hat this week. All I’m saying here is that we can’t trust these tools for anything mission-critical. Connor will weigh in more heavily on this issue next week. As I said above, think of these tools as glorified T9 texting. Remember that predictive texting algorithm from the time before touchscreens and full keyboards on phones? Remember how messed up some of those predictions were, especially when you first got a new phone, back in the day? That is chatGPT, right now. Given, the more input we give it, the theoretically better it will get, but is it worth being a guinea pig for Big Tech? Personally, I say, “No.” What about you? Is a little bit of convenience (which is not really convenient) worth giving up digital sovereignty and your own brain power in order to use? These tools are meant to eventually create a WALL-E situation in us, where we never really use the ol’ gray matter between our ears because, well, why should we, if we have all this info at our fingertips through AI tools? Aside from that, there are massive privacy and security issues, which are not going away anytime soon. Seems like a crapshoot, and I’m not a gambling man. No, thanks, I’ll pass.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/chatgpt-is-a-bad-knowledge-base-confirms-new-study

WE 4 – Speaking of AI and Security…

We have a new hole to be concerned with. An infected smartphone could funnel the sounds of your keystrokes to an AI tool, which can interpret them and discern, within a keystroke, what your passwords are. Uhhh, yikes. One can also use Zoom to the same end, though it is less accurate than a separate, but nearby device. The training involved was 25 keystrokes per key on a given keyboard, so on a 105 key, that is over 2500 keystrokes. These capture methods were 95 and 93% accurate, respectively, which means that an average, strong password would have a single wrong or missing character. In the words of Nigel Ng’s character, Uncle Roger, “Haiyahhh!!”

This article provides a few mitigation steps: 1. Use a noise filter to filter out the sound of your keyboard or 2. Vary your typing style to confuse the AI. These seem like stop gaps, not real solutions, to me. The noise filter is better than trying to remember to type like fremen walking across the desert… With no rhythm. I don’t know, you guys. I am not into fearporn. However, I really don’t like AI as it is. That is where I am at with the whole thing. Next week, we’ll have more concrete reasons to distrust it, and perhaps stop using it if you can. Remember the Sarah Silverman lawsuit I mentioned in the last couple of weeks? We are going to talk about the chatgpt web crawler bot and how to deny it access to your site and its content, next.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ai-can-now-steal-your-passwords-by-listening-to-your-keystrokes

WE 5 – Want to Deny ChatGPT Access to Your Website & Its Content?

Of course you do, if you value privacy and intellectual property. Here’s how you handle that: either open up your cpanel for your website (or ask your hosting provider to do the following) and go to the file manager, then edit the robots.txt file, which should be in your site’s root directory.

If doing this yourself, scroll to the file manager in cpanel, open it, then use the search function to find robots.txt.

Once you establish connection to it, open the file editor and add the following to the end of the file, then save it:

User-agent: GPTBot

Disallow: /

However, if you want to limit, but not entirely deny its access, paste in the following, and adjust to reflect your desired level of permission for the bot:

User-agent: GPTBot

Allow: /directory-1/

Disallow: /directory-2/

I’m all about providing solutions to problems posed by big tech, y’all. That is what my FYI (Free Your Internet) service is about, giving you solid options to help you get away from Google, MS, and Apple, in particular. You should check it out over at: https://techfreedom.pro/internet-freedom/ . You can also peruse the blogs on that page to check out some options for yourself before you bite the bullet. I want as many people and businesses to break free from the convenience-spying trap that is Big Tech, as possible. If you want to check out what I was referencing earlier, here are the articles I culled the info from:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/openais-gptbot-will-scrape-your-website-to-train-its-ai-unless-you-opt

https://platform.openai.com/docs/gptbot

WE 6 – MOQ, the Popular FOSS .net Mocking Library, Not-So-Private?

In one recent version, the lead developer, who also works on the proprietary software he incorporated into v 4.20.0, put SponsorLink into the codebase to collect hashes of user email addresses. This was uncovered by BleepingComputer earlier this month, and upon its discovery and publication, the offending code was removed (as of v 4.20.2). Lol, he started including extra, closed source tracking DLLs in v 4.20, was he high? It was double-obfuscated, but come on, man. You don’t drop proprietary blobs into FOSS projects, particularly not when you don’t notify your users that you are doing it and why you are doing it beforehand. What is a .net mocking library? It allows you to more easily test .net calls in your codebases and projects, rather than writing all of it out long-form. More or less, it helps developers to save time in creating their programs and apps which use .net objects (which are legion). Why is it a big deal that this FOSS project suddenly (until caught red-handed) started using a closed-source tracker in its codebase? Well, ideologically, FOSS/Libre and proprietary things are like oil and water. They don’t mix well. Functionally, you could do whatever you want, however, as I said above, if you do something like that, I strongly suggest that you choose to inform your userbase of such changes and why you want to incorporate them before you include them, if you want to keep your users around in the future. That was a huge fauxpas. Time will tell if the project starts to die from this, but it was a huge, but avoidable misstep, if you ask me.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/top-open-source-project-moq-slammed-for-secretly-collecting-user-data

WE 7 – Trump’s Twitter Account Subpoenaed…

Jack Smith, special prosecutor, went on a fresh round of fishing excursions with this subpoena. This is surprisingly old news, in that the events actually took place about 6 months ago now, but had been under a gag order from the court. Smith requested these “data and records” from Mr. Trump’s Twitter account in regard to both of his investigations, about the documents stored at Mar-A-Lago, and relative to January 6. Twitter complied, but 3 days late, so were slapped with a $350,000 fine for contempt of court. Their team did not object to the request itself, but the secrecy of it. They argued that they should be able to notify users when their accounts are subject to warrants (which seems to be in line with the constitution, as I understand it, so right on, there, Twitter/X). The court rejected their arguments and enforced the gag order. I don’t care that Trump is a former president, here, this judicial overreach must be remedied, and soon. I can’t wrap my head around the banana republic ness of this whole series of events. The fact that they can do this to someone as high profile as Trump is should make any sane person sick to their stomach.

What have they already done to “little” people, the John & Jane Q. Public’s of Main St, USA? What will they push to do more of in the future, to keep us in line with their mind control efforts? (Remember, that is literally what govern-ment means, y’all, ment = mind, and to govern something is to control it)… Become un-governable. Reject their narratives, question everything, and encourage those around you to do the same. Choose to stop using tools which exist to spy on you. Twitter/ X, Meta (and its products), Microsoft products, Apple products, Google products and services. Reject it all. Go Open Source. Become more privacy-aware. Not paranoid, mind you, but privacy-aware. Regain your digital sovereignty. Tech Freedom can help you do just that. Mark37 and Altha Tech can help you as well. There are alternatives, sure, they are less convenient, but you also aren’t volunteering your data (privacy) to mega-corporations who are bent on running the world.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66365643

https://techfreedom.pro

https://Mark37.com

https://althatech.com

Memesplanation Shorts – Romans Road 4

by admin memesplanation, Spirituality & Tech

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:24-25

Romans 8:24-25

For this is the hope of our salvation.

But hope means that we must trust and wait for what is still unseen. For why would we need to hope for something we already have? So because our hope is set on what is yet to be seen, we patiently keep on waiting for its fulfillment.

Hope. What is our hope? Our hope is to realize being the full glory of being mature children of God. We get a taste of it now, but if we do not do our part and die to ourselves, then we will never achieve our hope. Hope can fuel us and spur us on to overcome fear and do our part. That is not to say that “God helps those who help themselves” either. God enables us to trust Him, He strengthens our willingness to die to ourselves and obey Him. We simply have to do as directed, and we will see our hope fulfilled.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:26-27

Romans 8:26-27

And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words.

God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings, yet he also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, his holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny.

The Holy Spirit will pray through us when we lack the words or understanding to pray for ourselves, this is part of what Pentecostals and charismatics call a prayer language, or praying in tongues. God knows what each of us desire, and also what God desires for us and has planned for us, so we can trust Him to pray on our behalf in those moments when words fail us. He is The Intercessor. He constantly brings our requests before the Father and harmonizes them with the will of God.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:28-29

Romans 8:28-29

So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose. For he knew all about us before we were born and he destined us from the beginning to share the likeness of his Son. This means the Son is the oldest among a vast family of brothers and sisters who will become just like him.

For this reason, we can trust and be convinced that EVERYTHING in our lives will work together for our good. This seems like something of an allusion to Jeremiah 29:11 to me… Remember, though, it hinges on our being conformed into the likeness of Jesus through faith and obedience to the will of God, rather than trying to force our own way. When we give our way up, God will give us His way, His desires, and His plan for us, and fulfill it all in His way. That is what this whole chapter has been about so far.

Memesplanation Shorts – Romans Road 3

by admin Devotions, Spirituality & Tech

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:17

Romans 8:17

And since we are his true children, we qualify to share all his treasures, for indeed, we are heirs of God himself. And since we are joined to Christ, we also inherit all that he is and all that he has. We will experience being co-glorified with him provided that we accept his sufferings as our own.

I know too well how broken fathers can be. That makes it hard to believe that the Father would actually fully accept us, but He does, in Christ. There is a condition on receiving all His treasures, though. We have to die to ourselves and allow Jesus to remake and rule us. Those are the sufferings we must accept.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:18-21

Romans 8:18-21

Do you want to see the glorious revelation of the fully mature children of God? Is there a part of you that wants to see what this really means on a personal level? Let’s see what this glory is, what will happen to and in those of us who take this journey and go through this process of refinement through suffering as Jesus did. Not an easy thing, but also not a call to seek physical suffering, either.

Memesplanation Short - Romans 8:22-23

Romans 8:22-23

To this day we are aware of the universal agony and groaning of creation, as if it were in the contractions of labor for childbirth. And it’s not just creation. We who have already experienced the firstfruits of the Spirit also inwardly groan as we passionately long to experience our full status as God’s sons and daughters—including our physical bodies being transformed.

Quite the vivid image if you are a parent or have ever witnessed a birth in person. The crazy part is that this is still true. The universe has been in labor to deliver the children of God for 2,000 years. Physical transformation to match the interior and spiritual side of things which we are already beginning to sense and experience. What does that mean? How might we be transformed?

Weekend Edition 46

by admin FOSS News, Linux, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 46 – LK99, MS Lazy, and More

FTC Slams Robo-dialing Scammers
FCC Rural Broadband In Trouble?
Tenable Slams MS for Unethical, Slow, and Lazy Handling of Security Concerns
X Tries to Shut Down Critics
Undersea Cables? What About Them?
Incandescent Bulb Ban
LK-99: Worth Getting Worked Up Over?

WE 1 – Remember Those Robo-Calls About Your Auto Warranty?
The tandem behind this scheme, Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, orchestrated more than 5 billion calls to about 500 million phone numbers in the course of 3 months in 2021. That is about 643 calls per second, if it was exactly 90 days. Holy crap. I’m struggling to wrap my head around the sheer volume, here. Because this is not the first time they have been caught doing similar things, the FTC laid the smack down on them, to the tune of a $299,997,000 fine. I suppose with robocalling via VOIP, it is really only a matter of 1’s and 0’s and bandwidth. Even still, to have it “just work” for that long. I have to wonder what the investment was up front, in order to access the phone number database, and the servers to host the files for the robot system. They also masked their caller ID to encourage people to pick up. These clowns sound like they ran a pretty tight ship. Hats off. Shoot, I think my wife and I got something like a couple calls a day from these jokers. I wonder if we can get a piece of that fine action, once they pay it.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/pair-of-scammers-hit-with-fccs-biggest-robocalling-fine-300-million-dollars

WE 2 – ISPs Underbid Themselves To Get Contracts
The FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund looks to be in trouble after several of their ISP partners did not estimate their costs properly when they sought to drive their bids down to get the contracts for providing 100MBs broadband service to much of rural America. This would be HUGE, once completed. However, Biden-flation has hit all of us hard, and demand, on top of that, shot the construction and material costs for these new Fiber lines through the roof. They are complaining that they couldn’t possibly have foreseen that costs would skyrocket so high. This has led a significant group of them to send a letter as a coalition, to the FCC, who manages the RDOF. That is one thing that you can always count on with the government, an ever-growing proliferation of stupid acronyms. The FCC has stated that they will hold these ISPs to the bids they submitted and will not give them an easy way out, at least not automatically. These businesses need to sort things out better for themselves when they put forth their bids. My uncle ran a general contracting company for something like 30 years (it was done in by some bad deals, coupled with the 2008 crash), and I remember hearing about the bidding process from time to time. You had to be really on point in order to give a good, accurate bid so that there weren’t cut-rate shenanigans happening in order to actually make money for the company and their sub-contractors. I do not pity these ISPs who zealously under-bid themselves chasing these contracts.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fccs-rural-broadband-fund-faces-trouble-isps-want-more-money

WE 3 – Cybersecurity Firm Tenable Slams Microsoft
Just a few days after Sen. Wyden’s letter last week, Amit Yoran, the CEO of cybersecurity firm, Tenable, released a blog excoriating the giant for its practices. One of his researchers discovered a critical vulnerability in the Azure cloud infrastructure which “could allow a hacker to access applications and sensitive data, including authentication secrets, from enterprise customers that use Azure.” Using this exploit, they were able to easily and quickly discover the authentication secrets to a bank which uses the Azure Cloud. They uncovered this and reported it back in March. Now, more than 90 days later, it has yet to be fully patched. We are looking at more than 4 months after it was discovered, and any client whose applications were launched before the partial patch are still vulnerable, including the bank which was used as a test case. MS, of course, claims that it has fully taken care of the problem for everybody, now. However, the patching process was incredibly slow, allegedly because they wanted to develop a “quality patch”. I’m sorry, the FOSS community would take care of something like this with a minimum of fuss, in probably half the time. Microsoft’s excuses are as poor as their ethics appear to be around this issue. Yes, I will make hay on this issue for as long as it exists. This is still more reason why everyone needs to get as far away from Microsoft products as quickly as they can. Linux is the best option, though unfortunately is still not a 100% thing for many, as certain software simply will not function on Linux, because developers are stubborn and publishers are unwilling to take a chance on the scrappy underdog of the desktop space, though most of them run their cloud services on Linux servers. That, at least, is the best excuse I can come up with, from outside the halls of these institutions. If you want to learn more about switching, take a look at my website: https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/
https://www.pcmag.com/news/cybersecurity-firm-blasts-microsoft-for-slow-incomplete-bug-patches

WE 4 – Undersea Cables: The Unsung Heroes of the Information Age
What are they? How do they work? Why can you watch a concert live from overseas with minimal lag? These are the backbone of the internet. There are over 500 undersea fiber optic cables which crisscross our oceans, each handles a different batch of throughput. The average one is about as thick as a garden hose, and can handle anywhere from 50-400 terabits per second of data per cable, and companies who are working to improve the underlying tech see a potential path forward to creating cables which could handle up to 5 petabits of data per second (10x more bandwidth than today’s best cables). This is based on multiplying the number of cores per cable, and moving toward hollow core cables, as the speed of light is up to 47% faster in air vs glass, which would reduce latency and increase the overall speed of transfers.
This article observes that these cables, while vulnerable to breakages and intentional attacks, can not only bring faster internet speeds, and lower prices, but a 3% to 4% boost in employment and a 5% to 7% boost to economic activity in areas where they are installed but hadn’t been present before. The most frequent causes for breakages are unintentional, via anchor dragging during storms, or fishing-related incidents. However, other natural disasters, such as major storms and earthquakes are also common causes for breakage in these fragile cables which enable so much of the modern world to be as it is. You might be thinking, “well what about Starlink and other satellite-based communications?” Those only handle perhaps 1% of the world’s traffic right now. It makes far more sense to further improve and perfect the undersea cable network we have than it does to throw too much more effort into satellite communications, which can be interfered with by weather, and have far greater latency than the cable-based options which currently exist.
About 2/3 of the traffic comes from and through the hyperscalers. These are companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. Ones whom I have a tendency to hate on whenever possible. However, their investments in laying, maintaining, and developing the new forms of these undersea fiber optic cables is immense, as data is their business. A new transatlantic cable costs between $250-300 million to install. They operate something like 400 of the 552 extant or planned cables, spanning 870,000 miles. There is a slated $10 billion in cables planned to be laid in the next couple of years as well. As you can imagine, it is a big deal to have a cut cable, but with around 500 active at any given time, the load sharing is not that big of a deal. At any given time there are 10 cables in need of repair. These repairs involve fishing out a damaged end of a cable, splicing in a new length, then running it to the other damaged end and splicing it all together. This is costly, as you need a similar craft to those which do the installs to actually fix these cables. Those ships house multiple mega-spools of the cable, and depending on the thickness of a given cable, that could mean up to 600 miles of the cable per spool. The thicker cables, which are being developed now, house multiple fiber optic cores, and this cuts down on the length which will fit on one of these massive spools for obvious reasons. With conventional fiber optic cables, one of these ships can handle up to 1800 miles of cable per trip.
What makes these so expensive, other than the fact that you’re talking about several hundred miles of fine, optically perfect glass tubes at the core of these cables? Every 30-60 miles, a repeater, has to be included in the cable, so that the signal doesn’t get lost, as with any other kind of cable. The law of entropy says that every signal, whether photons or electrons, will lose cohesion if pushed too far at a shot. This loss of cohesion will cause loss of data, so is unacceptable. If you want more information, just read the article linked below.

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/features/the-secret-life-of-the-500-cables-that-run-the-internet/

WE 5 – Elon and X Using Lawfare to Shut Down Critics
Mr. Free Speech Absolutist himself can’t take the heat. A small non profit which exists to combat online hate speech (whatever the hell that actually means, since so much seems to change almost daily in the definition of that term). Musk & company is suing the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of “unlawful acts” to “improperly gain access” to its data. What unlawful acts do they allege? More or less committing libel against the tech company through multiple reports published which state that X (formerly Twitter) has seen an explosion in what is categorized as “hate speech” because according to the data it gathered, the platform has been ignoring up to 99% of complaints against Blue Check accounts. The platform alleges that CCDH illegally scraped data from it, and improperly had access to a Brandwatch (a tool which allows companies to keep tabs on the conversations around them, their products, and services) account. These are big deal issues, and perhaps Elon & Co are right to sue for damages, as many advertisers paused spending when these reports were released, hurting the profitability of the platform. On the other hand, this is a really bad look for him. We’ll see what happens here, will the billionaire Goliath be vindicated, or will the David in this story win out? Do we want the David to win here? Is Hate Speech a valid concern, or do we simply need to grow some thicker skin and disconnect from the programming that tells us that outrage = rightness? What do you guys think?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66376988

WE 6 – No More Glowy-Glowy Hot Lightbulbs
This is DUMB. Incandescent bulbs just work. They may not last as long as some other more recent tech, but at least they aren’t toxic (usually). They are inefficient and can be dangerous, but they don’t flicker, are easily adjusted, and generally have a more pleasant color temperature than many other options. Now, retailers are no longer allowed to sell regular, old incandescent bulbs any more. The primary concern here is energy usage, and the authorities, in their infinite wisdom, and likely well-lined pockets, courtesy of companies who make LED light fixtures and others in that space. I can understand banning CFLs, those things are terrible. But incandescent bulbs are classic and cozy, even if they are inefficient and wear out more quickly than alternatives do, because they are so simple and literally have a burning filament in the middle of a glass enclosure. So your general purpose lamp bulbs have been banned (those you would put in most lighting fixtures), but “specialty bulbs, three-way bulbs, chandelier bulbs, refrigerator bulbs, plant grow lights and others” have not been. This all reeks of special interest money from the mega corps who manufacture LED fixtures and “bulbs”, as well as government overreach. Trump was right to pause this piece of crap back in 2019. Say I’m just wanting to live in the past, but LED tech is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve never seen an LED bulb that didn’t flicker, and that can cause eye strain and headaches to be exasperated. There has to be a better way to do this. Besides, many people already made the switch to LED for the most part, years ago, right? Many were brainwashed by the Eco-cult into valuing the environment more than their own health and pocketbooks. There have not been enough studies done on the effects of LED on health and well being.
https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/incandescent-lightbulb-ban-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

WE 7 – Heard About LK-99 Yet?
It is alleged to be a room-temperature superconductor. This is a holy grail for materials science. Something that scientists have been trying to discover and develop for 50 years. What’s the big deal? Right now, in order for something to offer next to no electrical resistance (thus the term “super” conductor) it has to be supercooled to near absolute zero, or -473º Kelvin. This is a VERY expensive proposition, if/when we figure out a material which can function similarly at ambient temperatures would save a whole lot of energy and effort to achieve things like faster, more stable computers, including quantum computers, as well as maglev trains, and the like. Now conductors have to be constantly super cooled with something like liquid helium in order to achieve this electron-pairing property which greatly improves efficiency for those materials. A South Korean team claims they have found just such a combination of materials, which they have dubbed “LK-99”. There is a problem, though, no one has been successful in replicating their results. We will see what happens with this substance and if it is found to be this holy grail, or perhaps it might lead to it. This would change the world in a big way, you guys. That is why X has been on fire with speculations about it since it was announced. The team has uploaded a pair of related papers to arXIV, which is one database used by scientists to get their work peer-reviewed before it is published elsewhere. What do you guys think about this? Epic? Lame? Huh?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/lk-99-superconductor-maybe-a-breakthrough-maybe-not-so-much/

Romans Road 4

by admin Devotions, Spirituality & Tech

Romans Road 4: Romans 8:24-29

Papa,

Thank you that we have this hope. This hope that we will be made one with You as we walk out submission to Your will and ways, just as Jesus did when He was walking the dusty roads and paths of the Middle East, 2,000 years ago. Help us to be the generation that sees that hope fulfilled because we shed the religious trappings of the past and clung to the Truth of our relationship with You. Jesus, help us to walk as You did. Holy Spirit, guide us and help us to grow in trust with the Father, that we might get to the point where we become mature children of God. In Jesus’ name,

Amen

Romans 8:24-29

For this is the hope of our salvation.

This week, this was the section of Romans 8 we discussed. Becoming the fully realized children of God, resplendent in His Glory is the hope which Paul is referring to here. When we have achieved the fullness of that hope, then we will be changed. We will have been fully saved. We will be perfect image-bearers of Jesus Christ. We will be so identified with Him that people will have trouble seeing where we start and He ends, and vice-versa. Even as humans, we often don’t have the words to pray, so the Holy Spirit, knowing that, our situations, and God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will, will intercede with and for us through sighs and groans too deep for words. he takes our requests, our feelings, and desires to the Father for us, and harmonizes them with the Father’s will for us. Let that sink in for just a moment. Because of that, we can cling to the fact that God is always working all aspects of our lives together for the best in keeping with His plans for us. Because He knows all things, He knew which of us would choose to be with Him by becoming like Jesus, taking on His very way of life, His very image. This makes Jesus our older brother, our savior, and our exemplar. That is huge. Far bigger than I have time to unpack in this brief devotion. That is what it means to be a child of God, to live as Jesus showed us to live, in loving abandon to the will of the Father. It is not simply asking God to “bless our mess”, but submitting ourselves and our mess to Him, and letting Him guide us through sorting the mess out.

Romans Road 3

by admin Devotions, Spirituality & Tech

Romans Road 3: Romans 8:17-23

Romans Road 3

Papa,

Thank you that you are so good. Thank you that you know what is best for us, and that you give us your glory, but simply ask for loving obedience in return. Holy Spirit, help us to trust the Father to do what He says He will do. Help us to die to ourselves today.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

Romans 8:17-23

I am convinced that any suffering we endure is less than nothing compared to the magnitude of glory that is about to be unveiled within us. The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious sons and daughters! For against its will the universe itself has had to endure the empty futility resulting from the consequences of human sin. But now, with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children. To this day we are aware of the universal agony and groaning of creation, as if it were in the contractions of labor for childbirth. And it’s not just creation. We who have already experienced the firstfruits of the Spirit also inwardly groan as we passionately long to experience our full status as God’s sons and daughters—including our physical bodies being transformed.

In our brief thoughts about vs 17, we learned more about how as beloved children, we get access to all that God has. Even at that, though, there is something in the way on that path. We must accept the suffering of Jesus. To me this means that the suffering is that of giving up our ways, desires, and ambitions in order to obey God. We must allow the Lord to refill and rebuild us. Once He does, then we must obey Him. On the other side of that, we will receive all His treasures. It can be hard to trust that God will follow through for us, I know this because I know too well how broken fathers can be. However, we have to learn to trust Him if we want all he has.

Next, in verses 18-21, we asked ourselves a question: Do you want to see the glorious revelation of the fully mature children of God? Is there a part of you that wants to see what this really means on a personal level? Let’s see what this glory is, what will happen to and in those of us who take this journey and go through this process of refinement through suffering as Jesus did. Jesus submitted Himself fully to the Father’s will, and now He has been glorified, raised up to the Father’s right hand. He has shown us the way to join Him. All of creation, including our own souls, have been standing on tiptoe to see what will come to bring freedom from the fallout of human sin. It is well worth becoming what Jesus paved the way for us to be. This suffering could be physical, but this is not a call to some sort of asceticism, as I said earlier, it is really about dying to ourselves.

Finally, we talked briefly about vs 22-23. Quite the vivid image if you are a parent or have ever witnessed a birth in person. The crazy part is that this is still true. The universe has been in labor to deliver the children of God for 2,000 years. Physical transformation to match the interior and spiritual side of things which we are already beginning to sense and experience. What does that mean? How might we be transformed?

Romans Road 2 – Chapter 8:10-16

by admin Devotions, Spirituality & Tech, Tech Freedom

Romans Road 2: Romans 8:10-16

Romans Road 2

Papa,

Thank you that we can call you “Papa”. Thank you that you loved us enough to send Jesus to make a way for us to be with you, to be in full communion with you. Jesus, thank you that you showed us the way, and opened the way for us to be sons and daughters of God. Holy Spirit, help us to hear you more clearly guiding us and reminding us that we are indeed the beloved children of God. In Jesus’ name,

Amen

This week we covered about 7 verses in Romans 8. Sin kills, Christ brings life and restoration. Flesh is an ally of sin, and cannot submit to God. We must learn to live loved, and become mature children of God, moved about by the impulses of the Holy Spirit, fully aware and accepting of the truth that we have been adopted by Him.

Romans 8:10-16

Now Christ lives his life in you! And even though your body may be dead because of the effects of sin, his life-giving Spirit imparts life to you because you are fully accepted by God. Yes, God raised Jesus to life! And since God’s Spirit of Resurrection lives in you, he will also raise your dying body to life by the same Spirit that breathes life into you!

So then, beloved ones, the flesh has no claims on us at all, and we have no further obligation to live in obedience to it. For when you live controlled by the flesh, you are about to die. But if the life of the Spirit puts to death the corrupt ways of the flesh, we then taste his abundant life.

The mature children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit. And you did not receive the “spirit of religious duty,” leading you back into the fear of never being good enough. But you have received the “Spirit of full acceptance,” enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as he rises up within us, our spirits join him in saying the words of tender affection, “Beloved Father!” For the Holy Spirit makes God’s fatherhood real to us as he whispers into our innermost being, “You are God’s beloved child!”

First, we talked about Romans 8:10-11. We learned how when we are in Christ, we are no longer dead to Christ and alive in sin. Yet, now, we are alive in Christ, and are being brought to life in Him.Not only in terms of spiritual life, but even our physical bodies can be restored to life and healed from the effects of our previous life. This is through the presence of the Holy Spirit, who also makes us fully acceptable to and accepted by God. You are fully accepted by God. Let that sink in. You are fully accepted by God. This acceptance brings healing, even to your natural body. It can begin to undo the consequences of your old sin patterns and family baggage and wounds. Let it.

In verses 12-13, we saw how because we are in Christ, that old nature which is purely focused on what feels good in the moment, no longer has to control us. You no longer have to follow its dictates, and it is a dictator. Abundant life is yours when you choose to go where the way of the Spirit leads you. When you develop a relationship with the person of the Holy Spirit, He will help, guide, and protect you, if you listen to Him. That is Wisdom, y’all. What is this “way of the Spirit”? The way of the Spirit means living with a focus on how we can bless God and others. It is living in keeping with Torah, which, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can do.

In verses 14-16, we saw how when you are fully accepted by God, you are His beloved child, in Christ. If you want to progress in getting closer to our Father, then you must empty yourself of your drive and desires and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you fully. That is far easier said than done. Let’s get on the path, or take another step on the path toward maturity today. Let’s hear the Spirit confirm in us that we are indeed beloved children of God.

What did we learn this week? That we are the beloved children of God, fully accepted by the Father, because of the work of the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We hopefully had that reality driven home afresh, that sin, guilt, and shame need have no sway over us now. We have healing and restoration from the inside out. Can you believe all that? That is the abundance of life that the cross and empty tomb promise us who live in keeping with Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit. You are a beloved child of God. Let that truth shape your life.