Linked List: April 3, 2019

Wednesday, 3 April 2019

‘Heaven or High Water’ 

Sarah Miller, writing for Popula:

“Sunny day flooding” is flooding where water comes right up from the ground, hence the name, and yes, it can certainly rain during sunny day flooding, and yes, that makes it worse. Sunny day flooding happens in many parts of Miami, but it is especially bad in Sunset Harbour, the low-lying area on Miami Beach’s west side.

The sea level in Miami has risen ten inches since 1900; in the 2000 years prior, it did not really change. The consensus among informed observers is that the sea will rise in Miami Beach somewhere between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. By 2100, it is extremely likely to be closer to six feet, which means, unless you own a yacht and a helicopter, sayonara. Sunset Harbour is expected to fare slightly worse, and to do so more quickly.

Thus, I felt the Sunset Harbour area was a good place to start pretending to buy a home here. Amazingly, in the face of these incontrovertible facts about the climate the business of luxury real estate is chugging along just fine, and I wanted to see the cognitive dissonance up close.

Just a terrific (but terrifying) piece of writing.

Millions of Facebook Records Found on Amazon Cloud Servers 

Bloomberg*:

Researchers at UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, found troves of Facebook user information hiding in plain sight, inadvertently posted publicly on Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing servers.

Mark Zuckerberg, one year ago:

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.

I agree with Zuckerberg.

* You know.

Facebook Demanding Some New Users’ Email Passwords 

Kevin Poulsen, writing for The Daily Beast:

Facebook users are being interrupted by an interstitial demanding they provide the password for the email account they gave to Facebook when signing up. “To continue using Facebook, you’ll need to confirm your email,” the message demands. “Since you signed up with [email address], you can do that automatically …”

A form below the message asked for the users’ “email password.” […]

The additional login step was noticed over the weekend by a cybersecurity watcher on Twitter called “e-sushi.” The Daily Beast tested the claim by establishing a new Facebook account under circumstances the company’s system might flag as suspicious, using a disposable webmail address and connecting through a VPN in Romania. A reporter was taken to the same screen demanding the email password.

They’re just fucking with us now.