Remember Tumblr? The blogging site that was once bought for $1 billion by Yahoo, only to be sold to Automatic the owners of WordPress for a mere $3 million? It’s suddenly become very popular in Brazil thanks to the banning of Twitter in the country. Via Tech Crunch:
According to Tumblr, in the days since the X ban in Brazil, the site saw 222.99% growth in communities and 349.55% growth in users. More specifically, Tumblr’s daily active users in Brazil have shot up by 30% from the 110,000 it was seeing, on average, in the days ahead of the ban.
What’s more, the new users aren’t just visiting the site, they’re creating accounts, too, Tumblr claims. The company says blog creation and community joins have also increased. (The company didn’t provide metrics on this front, however.)
Of those users who joined communities, Tumblr found that the percentage of daily active users in Brazil was also five times higher than those in the rest of the world.
While this isn’t the sort of growth that Bluesky is seeing, it’s not insignificant. The thing is that the longer that Twitter isn’t available in Brazil, the more likely people will seek out alternatives. And if people like those alternatives, the more likely that Twitter will never see those users again. Surely Elon has to know that. Or perhaps he’s not smart enough to know that given some of his more recent behaviour. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
One of the things that I teach people to do when I give my seminars on how not to get scammed is to closely look at any email that you get or any website address that you’re asked to visit. We’re going to focus on the latter today by doing an exercise where I am going to show you two web addresses, and you need to determine which one is fake and why:
The correct answer is the second one. That’s because the technical term for a web address is uniform resource locator or URL for short. And understanding how URL’s work can help you to determine what is real and what is fake.
Here’s how a URL constructed:
A URL starts with a protocol followed by the name of the resource that has to be accessed. In this case https which is a web page with SSL encryption during transport from the server to your web browser.
That is then followed by the domain or host name. For example, itnerd.blog is my domain or host name.
If you look closely at the two examples above, they look the same. But they are not. the first one ends in “.rogers.com” after the “mobile-2fa” part of the web address. Which means that this domain name is the one for Canadian telco Rogers. And it’s going to a specific host that Rogers controls named “mobile-2fa”. That’s why there’s a period between the first part of the web address (“mobile-2fa”) and “rogers.com”
For the record, Rogers doesn’t have a host named mobile-2fa. But I am going to use it for reasons that you’ll see in a moment.
The second one has a domain name of “mobile-2fa-rogers.com” which means that that one is going someplace else other than Rogers because the entire text above is the name of a host that has been set up by a threat actor called “mobile-2fa-rogers”. And what that threat actor is hoping for is that by setting up a web address that looks very close to something that Rogers might use, you might click on it because you’re not paying attention to the details. And that in turn will lead you into all sorts of danger.
So why am I pointing this out? I got this sent to me the other day from someone who had this message pop up on his phone via text message:
The person asked me if this was a scam. And based on what I just explained above, it was. Fortunately they didn’t click on anything. And neither should you. But I did as I wanted to see what the scam was.
This is another one of these scams that uses a CAPTCHA to convince you that you’re going to the real Rogers site. But it’s clearly not the real Rogers site as explained earlier.
Once you get past that, you get to a site that has the feel of something that Rogers might create, and you also get this prompt saying that your account requires two step verification. Two step verification is something that adds security to your online accounts because there’s two factors in play. A password and a one time code that is sent to your phone. But this isn’t how Rogers does this. If you want details on how Rogers does this, click here.
You’ll notice that you as a person is not identified in any way. That should be a major red flag as any communication from Rogers will identify you with an account number or your name. Let’s continue shall we?
Now the threat actors want your name and address details. That’s great for swiping your identity.
Using some fake information to get past that, I now hit this page. I am not sure what handing over your credit card info has to do with two factor verification, but swiping your credit card details is also on the list of things to do for these threat actors.
What this example highlights is that you need to closely look at anything and everything that hits your phone, inbox, etc. Because anything and everything could be a scam. and if you’re not paying attention, you could be a victim.
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on September 21, 2024 by itnerd
Given that Elon Musk is a bit of a sleazy person, I’m not surprised that I am reading this:
Elon Musk’s X faces steep daily fines in Brazil for allegedly evading a ban on the service there, according to a statement from the country’s supreme court Thursday.
The fines imposed by Brazil’s supreme court amount to $5 million in Brazilian reals, about $920,000, a day. The court said it would continue to impose “joint liability” on Starlink, the satellite internet service owned and operated by SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace venture.
The suspension of X in Brazil was initially ordered by the country’s chief justice, Alexandre de Moraes, at the end of August, with orders upheld by a panel of justices in early September. The court found that under Musk, X had violated Brazilian law, which requires social media companies to employ a legal representative in the country and to remove hate speech and other content deemed harmful to democratic institutions. The court also found that X failed to suspend accounts allegedly engaged in doxxing federal officers.
X recently moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare and appeared to be using dynamic internet protocol addresses that constantly change, enabling many users in Brazil to access the site. In a previous setup, the company had used static and specific IP addresses in Brazil, which were more easily blocked by internet service providers at the order of regulators.
Honestly are we surprised that Elon would do this? Although he, or more accurately his talking heads deny that anything nefarious is going onI:
“When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team,” a company spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday. “To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users. While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”
This sounds like one of those answers that you give when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t have. And I am a bit surprised that Cloudflare is going along with this as I would not be surprised if the Brazilians go after them for aiding and abetting this high tech game of hide and seek that Elon is playing. Though they too deny that anything nefarious is going on:
However, Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince tells TechCrunch that X going back online in Brazil this week was all a “coincidence.”
“I don’t think anything about this change was intentional to overcome a block in Brazil,” said Prince in an interview with TechCrunch. “This was literally just [X] switching from one IT vendor to another IT vendor.”
Some months ago, Prince said, Cloudflare won a deal to provide X with cloud computing services in several regions across the globe, including Brazil. X had previously used Fastly, a competitor to Cloudflare, and the social media platform is currently in the process of rolling out that switch. Changing providers also changed IP addresses associated with X, which disrupted how Brazilian internet service providers were blocking the X platform.
“We have never talked with [X] about helping them get around the Brazilian dam,” said Prince. “They happened to transition a bunch of their traffic from Fastly over to us, especially in the Latin American region, over the last week.”
Prince describes this as wild coincidence, where his sales team won a deal, and as a result ended up inadvertently “wading into some geopolitical Elon Musk vortex of craziness” months later.
I personally don’t buy this because this to sounds like the sort of answer that you would give when you’ve been caught doing something that you shouldn’t have. At this point I hope the Brazilians really start to twist the screws on Elon as he honestly needs to pay a price for his actions. And a very steep one.
Posted in Products with tags BenQ on September 20, 2024 by itnerd
BenQ makes great monitors. Every time they send me one for review, I tend to walk away impressed. Then the BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX showed up via FedEx a last week. And I have to say that BenQ came up with a monitor that is almost perfect. Let’s start with the look of the monitor from the front:
This is a plain, black bezeled boring monitor if you look at it from the front. And that is the exact opposite of most gaming monitors that I encounter. The back is white and the monitor comes with a stand that is also white, but has a few orange/copper accents along with being height, swivel and tilt adjustable. I didn’t bother using that stand during my testing and instead mounted it to this monitor arm on my desk as the monitor has a VESA mount on the back. It also is devoid of any RGB lighting. This is a good move on BenQ’s part as they bill this as a gaming monitor, but they clearly designed it to be used in environments other than the basement of some guy who would only use this monitor only to play Call Of Duty Warzone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There are two things that I would like to highlight on the back of the monitor. First is the 100×100 mm VESA mount that allows you to mount the monitor on your own stand as I did. The second is the significant amount of ports on this monitor. Here’s a list:
HDMI v2.1 eARC
2 x HDMI v2.1
DisplayPort v2.1
USB-C with 65W Power Delivery, DisplayPort Alt Mode, data transfer
USB-C upstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, data transfer only)
3 x USB-A downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 4.5W)
USB-C downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 7.5W)
1/8″ headphone jack
That is a healthy selection of ports. But some of you might be noticing that in terms of the ports, the math doesn’t quite add up as you can’t see all of them. That’s because these ports are on the bottom left of the monitor:
This is another good move by BenQ as it makes these ports easy to access should you need them. I would have liked to see all of these USB ports being 10 Gbps ports rather than 5 Gbps ports. But they will work for most use cases. For those who need 10 Gbps or faster speeds, a thunderbolt dock might be your best option.
Pro Tip: I wasn’t getting 5 Gbps a second when I first started testing the ports on this monitor. That was until I noticed this when I was looking through the monitor settings:
Once I set it to USB 3.1 Gen1, I started to get the speeds that I was expecting.
I should note that there are no internal speakers, but the headphone jack has three different sound modes that provide a decent approximation of surround audio. And if you need better sound, you can plug in a soundbar into the eARC HDMI port and get your high quality sound fix that way. As a bonus, there’s KVM support. That means you can hook up a PC and Mac to this monitor for example and use one monitor, keyboard and mouse with both.
Also of note, this monitor comes with a remote control. It provides quick access to picture modes, settings memories, brightness, and the heads-up display with signal and frame rate info. I have to admit though that I took out of the box, fooled around with it to see what it controlled, and put it back into the box. That’s because the joystick at the bottom centre of the monitor does such a good job of allowing you to control the monitor’s features. I should also note that I had to find a CR2032 battery to get the remote up and running as I didn’t find one in the box. Speaking of being in the box, every cable you might need is in the box, along with an external power brick that those who cable manage all the things may not be fond of.
To test this monitor, I set it up with my M1 Pro MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma version 14.6.1. I ran all my USB gear through the monitor and connected the monitor via USB-C to create a one cable setup that would keep my Mac charged as well as provide access to things like my webcam and the like. That worked fine although my Mac was only getting 65W of power which meant it is theoreticallypossible that if I pushed the MacBook Pro hard enough, the monitor would not be able to supply enough power to the laptop. As a result, the laptop battery would start to deplete until the load on the laptop lessens and the monitor can start charging the laptop battery up again. I wasn’t able to get my laptop to exhibit this in my testing. So I guess that’s a non-issue. But it would have been nice if the monitor put out say 90W so that wouldn’t be an issue with any laptop that has high power demands. Gaming laptops for example.
I ended up running this monitor at 2560×1440 with variable refresh rates of 48-144 Hz enabled. Now that sounds like a weird resolution for me to run a 4K monitor in. But this is why I set it up that way. macOS does something called display scaling. That’s where the monitor actually runs at 4K resolution. But the macOS UI is scaled to something less. And given that I am on the wrong side of 40 years old, 4K resolution on a Mac results in text that is too small for me to read comfortably. So I am using a resolution that balances having a lot of screen real estate with the ability to read text. I should also note that I am using this resolution with the “low resolution” option. That’s something else that is unique to macOS where if you pick a resolution that has this option, you turn off the ability to render everything in macOS’s “retina” mode where everything looks super sharp, and instead it renders everything “normally” for lack of a better description. While there is a difference between the “retina” mode and the “low resolution” option when it comes to text sharpness on the screen, the difference is really slight. Likely because this monitor is sharp and clear when it comes to how text looks on it. Also running in “low resolution” mode covers up a bug in macOS and M1 processors where you can’t run certain resolutions with variable refresh rates and HDR turned on. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on that, you can read the details here.
So with that out of the way, how does this monitor perform? Brilliantly for the most part.
From a basic productivity standpoint, this is a great monitor for productivity work. Text is sharp and clear as I mentioned previously. Though one thing that I noted was that when HDR is turned on, the Eye Care functionality which is handy for those who work for eight hours a day in front of a monitor gets turned off. I’m guessing that BenQ is doing this to preserve the quality of how HDR looks on the screen.
To further find out how good this monitor was, I drove the monitor to a client who is a professional photographer and photo editor so that he could use this tool on it in order to compare his results to the calibration report that was in the box. Yes you read that correctly, there was a calibration report in the box of a gaming monitor. I perhaps should not have been surprised by that as that’s how BenQ rolls. But I still was surprised. In any case, here’s what he told me after testing the monitor for about 45 minutes:
sRGB is spot on as he got an average error of just 1.37dE which from a colour accuracy perspective almost perfect. And this result was actually slightly better than the calibration report stated which was 1.38dE.
Display P3 had average error of 1.41dE. Which again is visibly perfect from a colour perspective.
In short, if you do colour accurate work, this monitor is a great option for you.
Now over to HDR. When you have HDR turned on, you get five HDR modes to choose from:
Honestly, your best option is to use the Display HDR option. I found it to be the mode that mostly matched what my MacBook Pro displays, and I was also assured by my client that this was the most colour accurate HDR mode to run the monitor. One thing that I should point out is that the MacBook Pro has a glossy screen that boosts the contrast of what is on your screen, and the BenQ monitor is a matte screen that dulls the contrast slightly as it’s meant to control reflections. It also means that dark areas on the monitor are slightly more dark than they perhaps should be. Which I am fine with because of the fact that I am in a room where controlling light is problematic. Thus I will take a matte screen any day of the week on any monitor that I use. But I can see where that might be a non-starter for some who want a more vibrant picture. You’ll also note that there are sRBG and Display P3 options for colour accurate work. But you’ll need to disable HDR to use those which is a bit of a bummer. I am thinking that BenQ must have felt that enabling HDR in those modes would take away from the colour accuracy that this monitor has. I should also note that this monitor supports FreeSync Premium Pro so anything from a PS5 to a gaming PC can have smooth visuals with this monitor. And by having it on is how I am getting support for variable refresh rates.
As for the HDR performance, let’s touch on some numbers first. The BenQ monitor has a mini LED panel with 1152 dimming zones. My MacBook Pro for comparison purposes has 2554 dimming zones, and the Apple Pro Display XDR has 576 local dimming zones. The BenQ monitor is capable of doing 1000 nits of brightness at its peak. Again for comparison purposes, my MacBook Pro and the Pro Display XDR can do 1000 nits sustained brightness, and 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. The reason why I am pointing all of this out because when it comes to mini LED monitors like this one, the more local dimming zones, the better the HDR performance in theory. While this monitor doesn’t have the same number of dimming zones as the built in display of my MacBook Pro, it has twice as many when compared to the Pro Display XDR. As for the brightness, the 1600 nits of brightness that the Apple monitors are capable of are in “peak” circumstances. Meaning that you mostly won’t see this in your day to day existence. Instead you will see 1000 nits. That makes these monitors somewhat compatible.
After running a number of HDR videos on this monitor, I can say that this BenQ display is outstanding. Fooling around with some games, as well as Blur Busters TestUFO to test the motion clarity, I found that there were no issues that I could find on that front. One big plus is that this is the first monitor that I have encountered where I could control the brightness of the monitor in HDR mode as most monitors outside the Pro Display XDR don’t have such a feature. That’s a very welcome feature and I applaud BenQ for including it. The next thing that I want to point out is blooming. Or rather the lack of it. Blooming is an issue where one local dimming zone will be so bright that it will overwhelm the local dimming zone next to it. For example if you have a really bright local dimming zone and a dark one next to each other, the dark one will look grey rather than black, or you might see what I call a halo effect. I ran a bunch of test videos that I know will generate blooming problems with HDR monitors and didn’t find much if any blooming to speak of. So then I ran some blooming tests which pushed the monitor to its 1000 nits maximum brightness, and I did see that there were some minimal levels of blooming. But it was so minimal that it’s unlikely that anyone would care, assuming that they even noticed at all. I don’t know what magic BenQ put in this monitor to get this result, but I was impressed.
A Few last things that I should mention. BenQ allows you to create profiles and save those so that you can switch between say a colour accurate setup and a gaming setup easily. And for bonus points, you can switch profiles via the joystick controller, or the remote control. You can also use a piece of software called Colour Shuttle to tailor this monitor to specific games if you want to go next level with your gaming experience.
So is this the perfect monitor? Well as I mentioned before, the USB ports could be 10 Gbps rather than 5 Gbps. I also wish you could at least have the option to use HDR in Display P3 and sRGB modes, and I wished that power delivery to a laptop was higher than 65W. But given the performance and capabilities of this monitor, I’m more than willing to let all of that slide. The BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX is an outstanding monitor that allows you to do anything from Microsoft Word to colour accurate work during business hours, to pwning n00bs in your video game of choice after hours. In fact, I think BenQ is selling this monitor short by calling it a gaming monitor for that reason because it’s a great all around monitor that fits a huge number of use cases. Which is why I will be asking BenQ if I could buy this monitor from them as this is the sort of monitor that I have been waiting for to pair with my MacBook Pro with since I got it in 2021. Expect to pay $1599 CAD for one of these monitors which sounds expensive, but I would argue that it’s money well spent given what this monitor brings to the table.
The US Justice Deptment announced that it had taken out a Chinese cyberespionage group known as Flax Typhoon. Here’s the back story:
A global botnet of over 200,000 consumer devices, compromised by People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored hackers, has been dismantled through a court-authorized operation. The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the botnet, managed by Beijing-based Integrity Technology Group—also known in the cybersecurity community as “Flax Typhoon”—infected devices such as SOHO routers, IP cameras, DVRs, and NAS devices. The malware covertly linked these devices into a botnet, facilitating cyberattacks disguised as routine traffic.
The FBI’s operation gained control of the attackers’ infrastructure, sending commands to disable the malware on infected devices. During the takedown, hackers attempted to thwart FBI efforts with a DDoS attack targeting the FBI’s infrastructure, though it failed to stop the operation.
Evan Dornbush, former NSA cybersecurity expert:
“I cannot understate how important Ryan and his team at Black Lotus are to safeguarding our collective security. Kudos to Lumen for being transparent.
“The reason this threat actor goes after SOHO devices like SOHO routers and DVRs and IP cameras is because the owner/operator is neither technical nor interested.
“Network threat detection — inaccessible for most users — is critical. Forward leaning ISP and telecom companies that can advance the reach of NDR (network detection & response) should be praised for sharing their findings and allowing big action, such as a botnet takedown, to occur.
“By disrupting the threat actor’s operations, Black Lotus has made it more costly and challenging for them to carry out future attacks. Making attacks more costly is a critical and often overlooked aspect to protecting our digital infrastructure.”
I applaud the US Justice Department on executing this takedown. But I want to point out that this was consumer and SOHO based devices that this group was targeting. Which means that consumers and SOHO types are now the low hanging fruit for threat actors. And by extension need to step up their game to avoid being targets in the future.
Posted in Commentary with tags CISA on September 19, 2024 by itnerd
As the 2024 election nears, election officials finalize preparations to protect themselves against the most common threats seen targeting voters and campaigns. CISA recently released an Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Readiness and Resilience Checklist, providing guidance on potential security incidents that may impact election infrastructure.
Tom Marsland, VP of Technology for Cloud Range who has personally led live-fire simulation attacks on election infrastructure, including forensic analysis of voting machines and misinformation campaigns, has shared his thoughts on CISA’s checklist:
This checklist by CISA is a great reminder to election officials and participants about the basics – however, with less than two months until the election, many of these will be hard to implement if not at least begun already. That said, it provides a clean slate for officials to take a step back and give their practices of cyber hygiene a holistic overview, and an honest look as they enter the final stages of preparation. I’ll repeat the findings from CISA that our elections are as secure as they’ve ever been. We really have to stay on top of misinformation campaigns and social engineering in that realm, but this is a great product for CISA, and I hope we see it used.
A great way for election officials to test their readiness against the checklist provided by CISA is by conducting hands-on, tabletop exercises that test the organizations policies and playbooks against the very items called out in the checklist. Lessons learned from table top exercises should be incorporated into the organization’s continuous improvement, made actionable, and tracked to completion.
The CISA has put out a number of these sorts of checklists. But checklists aren’t good if they’re not followed. So here’s hoping that this one is followed as this November’s elections are going to be extremely important to the future of the US.
At about this time last week, Donald Trump announced that he wasn’t going to sell any of his stock in Trump Media. That calmed fears that such a sale would tank the stock because he desperately needs cash from all reports, and caused the stock to soar. This was the value of the stock last Friday:
Fast forward to today and reality has set in for Trump and those who hold this stock. Here’s the value of that stock as I type this:
And if you want to see the downward trajectory of this stock over the last week, here you go:
That’s an almost 17% drop in value. And you have to think that this isn’t sustainable over the long term. At this point it’s only a matter of time before this stock crashes and burns. The only question is will it die slowly by losing value day after day, or will it be killed by Donald Trump cashing out his stake to get cash to deal with his various “problems”. But mark my words, this stock will crash.
Posted in Commentary with tags Samsung on September 19, 2024 by itnerd
As more people embrace smaller living spaces—whether you’ve just sent your kid off into student housing or you’re looking to downsize as an empty nester—the demand for smart, space-saving tech has never been greater. Clutter can quickly take over, but with the right innovations, you can make the most of every inch of your home without sacrificing style or functionality.
Samsung offers several innovative products designed to keep things organized and functional, including:
Samsung 500 Series Laundry Hub with Auto Dispenser (Starting at $2,399.99) – This compact yet powerful Laundry Hub™ saves space and simplifies laundry day by allowing you to control both the washer and dryer from a single, centralized control panel—no step stool needed.
Samsung Music Frame (Starting at $599) – A stylish, space-saving photo frame that doubles as a speaker. Easily switch photos or artwork while playing music for study or entertainment. It’s a perfect blend of personal style and powerful sound for any space.
Posted in Commentary with tags HYAS on September 19, 2024 by itnerd
HYAS Infosec has announced its recognition as the Best Threat Intelligence Technology winner at the prestigious 2024 SC Awards. This award underscores HYAS Infosec’s unwavering commitment to innovation, leadership, and excellence in the cybersecurity industry.
Now in its 27th year, the SC Awards recognize top-performing solutions, organizations, and individuals for outstanding contributions to information security. With 33 categories this year, the awards celebrated both established leaders and emerging disruptors across the cybersecurity landscape.
The HYAS Insight threat intelligence solution stood out in a highly competitive category, showcasing its ability to address the evolving threat landscape through unparalleled infrastructure intelligence. The solution focuses on “VRA,” or Verdicts, Related Infrastructure, and Actor Attribution, which enables clients to be proactive against fraud and other threats they face. The win emphasizes HYAS Infosec’s dedication to providing practical, actionable solutions for efficient business outcomes that address today’s most complicated and complex cyber issues.
The SC Awards, hosted by SC Media, are judged by a panel of independent experts. Winners are selected based on their impact on cybersecurity, their capacity for innovation, and their effectiveness in addressing key industry challenges.
Throughout September, the SC Media editorial team will spotlight HYAS Infosec with exclusive interviews, video discussions, and a featured profile on the SC Media website, as well as promotion across LinkedIn and Twitter. To see the full list of this year’s SC Awards winners, visit the SC Awards page: https://www.scmagazine.com/sc-awards.
Horizon3.ai, a global leader in autonomous security, announces that Nicholas Warner has joined its board as an Independent Director. Warner brings over two decades of cybersecurity experience, marked by a proven track record in scaling companies and driving hyper-growth. As COO, he played an instrumental role in propelling SentinelOne from $1 million to over $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and overseeing its public offering in what was the largest cybersecurity IPO in history.
Prior to SentinelOne, Warner served as Worldwide VP of Sales at Cylance, where he was pivotal in growing the company’s sales from zero to over $200 million in under three years. His exceptional leadership in developing go-to-market strategies and operational execution has cemented his reputation as a trusted authority in the cybersecurity industry.
Warner’s extensive career also includes leadership positions at McAfee and Forcepoint, where he drove significant regional and global sales initiatives. His deep operational insight, coupled with his understanding of today’s evolving threat landscape, will further bolster Horizon3.ai’s mission to help organizations proactively manage and mitigate cybersecurity risks.
As companies face growing challenges in staying secure, assessing risk, and maintaining compliance, traditional security methods often fall short. The NodeZero™ platform, with its expanding capabilities now covering cloud and hybrid environments, is transforming how businesses tackle security issues by identifying their most critical risks in real time. With Nick joining Horizon3.ai’s board, his expertise will help drive product innovation and further fuel company growth, empowering organizations to proactively manage their security posture, streamline compliance, and address risks more effectively than ever before.
Warner’s appointment underscores Horizon3.ai’s commitment to strengthening its leadership team with industry veterans who can guide the company’s rapid growth and help shape the future of autonomous cybersecurity solutions.
Bluesky Isn’t The Only Social Network Gaining Users In Brazil At Elon Musk’s Expense… So Is Tumblr
Posted in Commentary with tags Tumblr, Twitter on September 21, 2024 by itnerdRemember Tumblr? The blogging site that was once bought for $1 billion by Yahoo, only to be sold to Automatic the owners of WordPress for a mere $3 million? It’s suddenly become very popular in Brazil thanks to the banning of Twitter in the country. Via Tech Crunch:
According to Tumblr, in the days since the X ban in Brazil, the site saw 222.99% growth in communities and 349.55% growth in users. More specifically, Tumblr’s daily active users in Brazil have shot up by 30% from the 110,000 it was seeing, on average, in the days ahead of the ban.
What’s more, the new users aren’t just visiting the site, they’re creating accounts, too, Tumblr claims. The company says blog creation and community joins have also increased. (The company didn’t provide metrics on this front, however.)
Of those users who joined communities, Tumblr found that the percentage of daily active users in Brazil was also five times higher than those in the rest of the world.
While this isn’t the sort of growth that Bluesky is seeing, it’s not insignificant. The thing is that the longer that Twitter isn’t available in Brazil, the more likely people will seek out alternatives. And if people like those alternatives, the more likely that Twitter will never see those users again. Surely Elon has to know that. Or perhaps he’s not smart enough to know that given some of his more recent behaviour. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
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