2.9 Billion Person Data Leak

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Programming Note

HOWDY. I'M BACK. TIME FOR CHANGES. Kinda.

I'm going to experiment a bit with the format of the SKH newsletter and general production. Expect a bit more variety in the shape of the newsletter week-to-week as STUFF continues to ebb and flow.

ONWARDS.

Near Record-Breaking Data Breach

Alright so one of the biggest data breaches ever was from Yahoo back in 2013, where a data breach outed the personal information of 3 BILLION users.

We're looking at a close runner-up, as 2.9 billion people have had their data breached via National Public Data (actually called Jerico Pictures Inc.), which is a background check company that scrapes data from non-public sources.

Which is, and I mean this sincerely: FUCKING WILD, WHAT?

This company's business model is: "scrape data that people didn't give us permission to use, then store it and sell it as a part of a background check product." I beg your unbelievable pardon? (To be clear, this is not the only company that does this. Not by a mile.)

A hacker group posted a 2.9 billion row database of all this data for sale for just a few million dollarinos. So if you've got the inclination and a small fortune, you could be the proud new owner of nearly 3 billion people's sensitive information.

National Public Data is being sued by a person affected by the breach who was notified by a leak monitoring service. The lawsuit is demanding for National Public Data to stop fucking doing that, as well as asking them to implement meaningful security updates, such as not storing all this stolen data in one unencrypted location. I mean we're talking names, social security, the whole shebang.

There's nothing anyone could have really done here to protect themselves, aside from just not being on the online. Again, this data was slurped up through whatever channels they could muster, without your permission.

That said, there do exist services which can do a fairly capable job of tracking down where your information may be found online and getting it removed. One such service is DeleteMe (disclaimer: referral link), which I use to help monitor my personal info as a somewhat public figure. By no means are these services mandatory as an Internet Person, but they can help depending on your needs.

An X-odus from San Francisco

Dear reader, I have been to the city of San Francisco a bunch of times for both work and leisure, but I must admit: I have to double check the spelling literally every time. The S's and C's fuck me right up.

Uh. That's not the story tho, that's just me. So:

San Francisco is continuing to see an exodus of tech headquarters as they deal with the fallout of having catered to tech bros a bit too hard. I want to be clear up front: SF is a rad city with fun people and some really beautiful spaces and culture. Also, SF let tech companies absolutely tear through their social structures and get nice and comfortable before ultimately needing to like, tax them… at all… at which point the tech bros suddenly didn't like SF anymore.

Elon Musk has already said he wants to move everything to Texas, and now is saying that the Twitter HQ in San Francisco will be closing up entirely (but just moving to San Jose, which is not Texas).

This is not particularly shocking from Musk, who makes a habit of yelling loudly that he will do some kind of thing to fly in the face of THE LIBS, but it does follow an ongoing pattern of companies looking to move either just outside city limits, or nominally moving their HQ somewhere else entirely.

Lemme put it this way: as someone who worked in tech for a long time, and worked at multiple SF-based tech companies (though always as a remote employee), one of the big things that these huge tech companies groaned at was a new rule that they couldn't put tons of in-house cafeteria space in their offices, so that people who were going into the city would patron the businesses there. WILD CONCEPT! Tech companies much prefer to keep their employees in the office as long as possible, often providing gourmet-level breakfast, lunch, and dinner "free of charge" so long as you are in the office for like, 12+ hours a day.

New Merch!

Now is an excellent time to check out the Endeavorance Merch Store as I have just launched a bunch of new designs and products! Each purchase helps me keep this going, and also funds additional kibble for Flynn to munch on.

My personal favorite is the new Stuff Still Happened Tee, of which the design is available as a mug, sticker, and more!

The Heart of the Beast

YouTube extraordinaire MrBeast is truly going through it right now. Just as he reclaimed the #1 spot on the list of most subscribed YouTube channels, he is facing an onslaught of seemingly credible allegations that range from featuring a literal child predator on his channel while hiding their identify, to truly horrendous working conditions, to borderline international law violations within the "challenge" videos that made him so famous. Throw all those on top of the obvious reality that MrBeast's primary schtick is to essentially sell lottery-style concepts to children, and its a bit of a mess.

Okay, its a lot of a mess. At first it was primarily just going around that one of the mainstays of MrBeast's channel, Ava, was seemingly grooming children and being generally un-okay in Discord servers with underage kids. That spiraled out multiple hour-long videos from former employees coming out and sharing the stories of how horribly they were treated, and the abhorrent shit they saw while working with him.

In addition to whats listed above, there's also been hundreds of people coming out with stories about horrific conditions in a recent recording for a massive 2,000-person challenge video, where people were denied food, medicine, and medical attention even as people had seizures, broken bones, and more. MrBeast's response, you ask? A spokesperson said:

[The video] was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues

Bruh. 2,000 people. Logistical and communication issues are a given.

This is all still ongoing and stuffs still coming out, so we'll see where it all lands. But as of right now, it seems to only be getting worse for the Beastie Boy.

Here's the Weather

⚡️ Lightning Round ⚡️

Disney announced a bunch of new sequels because everything is a sequel now. The announcements include the Incredibles 3, Toy Story 5, and Avatar 3 (which, hilariously, is called "Fire and Ash" to continue the trend of making "Avatar" as confusing as possible when juxtaposed with "The Last Airbender")

A woman died after getting tangled up in a luggage conveyor belt at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Investigations ongoing, but seems like she possibly wandered into a restricted area before she was found.

The viral image of the sharp shooter from Turkey at the Olympics gets even more awesome, as the man is now quoted in saying "storms were raging inside me."

A Russian chess player may receive a lifetime ban after being caught seemingly spraying a mercury-based poison onto her opponents board ahead of a match.

We got a new Banksy piece in south-west London.

Just before the closing ceremonies for the Paris Olympics, a man began to climb the Eiffel Tower, causing a panic and evacuation of the area. He's fine.

A house exploded in Maryland, killing 1 person, injuring several others, and causing damage to many other nearby homes. Please, y'all, if you have a gas line, get it inspected with some sort of regularity. Thanks.

Finally for today, Jack Black has clarified that Tenacious D will eventually return after their sudden breakup the day after Kyle Gass had joked about Trump's assassination on stage.

Fin.

Thank you so much for reading today's issue of Stuff Keeps Happening! Consider sharing this newsletter with your friends so that they too may be just a bit more confused about everything.

~ Endeavorance