How Bloomberg Just Edited an Agricultural Newspaper.

History tends to repeats itself, its lessons not having been learned.

Sometimes the new does start to resemble the dystopian visions of the future of old, which our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had nightmares about and/or read about in the caustic satirical works of the day. O tempora, o mores: nightmares, satire and dystopia – sure, they’re becoming reality, but guess where in particular – in journalism.

More than 85 percent of the company’s revenue comes from outside of Russia, so why would we ever put all of that at risk?

Since childhood there’s been a story I’ve never been able to forget – and wouldn’t want to. It’s Mark Twain’s short tale called How I Edited an Agricultural Paper (Once). Remember it? If you’ve read it’s a  silly question – it’s impossible to forget. Not read it? Spend five minutes doing so now. Why? Well… it’ll save me having to explain something of importance and… you’ll never forget it! Though written nearly 150 years ago, it will open your eyes to the levels of competency, the motivations and the methods applied by a handful of modern-day headline-chasing journalists. And after that prestigious intro to today’s topic, we’ll go through Bloomberg’s latest fictional tale and dissect some of its false accusations, much as we did with its earlier volley of banya journalism.

Inaccuracy One.

To get a turnip It is better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.

Just as a fish rots from the head down, so too here – the rot set in with the article’s heading:

Here, folks, we have: lies, with a sprinkling of manipulated information based on misconstrued facts to serve an agenda. Yes, seriously!

Read on: When geopilitics kill common sense…

Torrentismo in Sardegna.

I’d heard so many good things from different people about Sardinia, the magical Italian island in the Mediterranean, but never been there myself. The sun always shining, clear blue sea, the tastiest grapes, cool cliffs, incredible islands along the shore… I should have made it here long ago, but it was never to be – until last week. So after we were done with business we had did a spot of tourism…

The sun is hot here, but you get an occasional and very welcome respite therefrom in the form of white cotton-wool-ball fluffy clouds floating by overhead…

Read on: Picture-postcard villages and rocky outcrops dotting the hillsides…

Meanwhile in St. Pete…

A bit like with Manchester or Scotland, folks will often tell you the weather in St. Petersburg is normally terrible. In Manchester and Scotland it normally is. But not in St. Pete!

I’ve visited Russia’s ‘second capital’ plenty of times – and the sun’s been out on every single trip! This visit was no exception.

In fact, the sun’s not just shining, it’s beaming it’s intense heat down on this corner of the globe without mercy. Sat in a traffic jam upon roasting asphalt wasn’t the nicest of experiences, I have to say.

Read on: The sun is out!…

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In Azerbaijan, Yes You Can (Find the First Ever Oil Well and Oil Rig).

A bit like how English and Russian sources give differing data on carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, so too do English and Russian sources regarding who first thought of boring into the ground to extract oil. For example, the Russian Wikipedia page for ‘oil well’ states that the first oil well ever was drilled in the Russian Empire – in Bibiheibet, in what is now Azerbaijan, in 1846. Whereas sources in English on the net state it was Drake Well in Pennsylvania that was first – in 1859. But if you dig deeper, it turns out oil was drilled in the USA a little earlier – in 1857; and three years before that – in Poland. While in ancient China (several centuries BC) they used bamboo to extract oil. However, concerning the modern industrial method of oil extraction, it was in fact Russian engineers here in Bibiheibet who were ahead of the others.

And here’s that very oil well:

I don’t think every wooden or metal part that makes up the whole of the installation today is an original from back in the day – not all would have been preserved so well, surely – but apparently some of them are the original items. Others clearly were replaced several decades after the well was first commissioned in 1846, like this piece:

~’Mechanical Factory … Baku, year 1900′

Read on: ‘First ever’ standings when it comes to oil extraction…->

Keeping Cybersecurity Separate from Geopolitics.

Last week, Kaspersky Lab was in the spotlight again in another ‘sensational’ news stream.

I say ‘again’ as this isn’t the first time we’ve been faced with allegations, ungrounded speculation and all sorts of other made-up things since the change of the geopolitical situation a few years ago. With the U.S. and Russia at odds, somehow, my company, its innovative and proven products as well as our amazing employees are repeatedly being defamed, given that I started the company in Russia 20 years ago. While this wasn’t really a problem before, I get it– it’s definitely not popular to be Russian right now in some countries.

For some reason the assumption continues to resonate that since we’re Russian, we must also be tied to the Russian government. But really, as a global company, does anyone seriously think we could survive this long if we were a pawn of ANY government? Our whole business is based on one thing – besides expertise – and that’s trust. Would we really risk our whole business by undermining our trustworthiness?

Especially given that the best non-Kaspersky Lab security researchers (hackers) are constantly scouring our code/products to find and report vulnerabilities. In fact, we even have a public bug bounty program, where we pay researchers to examine our products and search for any issues or possible security concerns. If there was anything suspicious or nefarious to find, they would have publicly shouted it to the roof tops by now.

Read on: Five destructive repercussions of a technology sanctions game…

F1 Fun in the Azeri Sun.

I’ll cut to the (car) chase: it was a real fun race.

No one was expecting such mad twists and turns on Sunday. Especially me after the fairly dull race in Sochi a few weeks back – and also since last year’s Grand Prix in Baku was very boring too (so I’ve been told). This year – oh my gravel trap! No one could have foreseen such a lineup on the podium. But I’ll get to that a bit later…

So here we were, in the Azerbaijani capital. Salam Baku, say the teams and spectators…

Peace be upon you too, says Baku, after having prepared the track and its bends on the city’s roads à la Monaco Grand Prix ahead of the race…

Read on: And they’re off!…

Sun in Trondheim – It’s All Mine.

No, not Fog on the Tyne, but Sun in Trondheim! I could hardly believe it either!…

And, in anticipation of the ‘inevitable’ rain before getting here I’d gone and prepared a quote from my fave authors about the stuff! Oh well, you might at well still hear it…:

 “It was getting dark, and still pouring with rain. Large, heavy droplets of unhurried rain, in no rush at all. The rain will fall on an empty city, washing pavements and trickling through rotten roofs… Then it will wash everything away, dissolving the city to reveal virgin land again. While the rain keeps falling, falling.

All over the world it’s raining. Over steepled roofs – rain. Down hills and ravines – rain. One day it will wash everything away, but not soon…”

So, like I say – the sun came out to play that day :)…:

When I looked out the window of my hotel room after waking up I had little trouble noticing this temporary guest in the port. It had more than double the number of floors of our hotel (in the pic after it):

Read on: Impressive from all angles…

Stars, Strings, Exoplanets, Apollos, and Now Politics – Starmus 2017.

Hi folks!

Time to tell you all about this year’s Starmus. Last year the conference took place in sunny Tenerife. This year – just the opposite: it was in rainy Trondheim in Norway. Not that the rain made the experience any worse. Mere weather cannot dull something so otherworldly as Starmus…

Here’s the audience slowly filling up the venue just before kick-off:

This year 2,500 folks attended (at least, that’s how many tickets were sold), plus there’d have been untold numbers watching the proceedings via the Internet. And judging by the fact that the large hall was packed, I reckon all those who purchased tickets were in fact there.

Read on: Norwegian armed chess forces…

Happy Birthday to Us – 20 Years Old – to the Day!

Whoosh!

What was that?

That, boys and girls, was the history of cybersecurity passing by!

28 years ago, somewhere around the fall of 1989, my Olivetti M24 was attacked by a virus. That fateful event changed my – and many others’! – lives. If only that virus had known precisely whose comp it attacked that day, and how many malicious descendants would be wiped out over the next decades both by my hand and later by the hands of KLers, I’m pretty sure it’d have about-turned in a jiffy and gotten the hell out of there!

26 years ago, in the summer of 1991, a group of like-minded computer geeks enthusiasts launched the great grandfather of what is today one of the top antiviruses in the world.

Precisely 20 years ago today – on June 26, 1997 – ‘Me Lab‘ was founded.

But it’s fairly quiet in the office today. No party, no champagne, no nothing. On our 20th birthday? Don’t worry – we’ll get to that. We’ll be celebrating, in usual crazy fashion, but just a little later. Today it’s business as usual. All the same, tonight – NOW!, if you’d raise a glass of something tasty and utter a few kind words, please do. You will be repaid in good vibes and positive karma or some such – for sure!

Whoah – we just received congrats from Scuderia. Grazie mille! (the photos arrived with a note: ‘Kimi is smiling!’ Well, so are we:).

The icing on the cake birthday cake:

Now back to those drinkies :)…