130 Fear as a Service

Today we go over some evil tech schemes from 2022 and give thanks that most of them fell apart, as all evil things eventually do.

• Yuval Noah Harari warns the next generation that evil organizations could use biometrics to monitor our minds - for years I've called this the Soviet's greatest dream.
• In very related news, Microsoft tried to turn kids into QR codes that require daily validation. They dangled fear in front of people in order to gain their trust - something I've termed Fear as a Service.
• Airyx is/was an attempt to create an operating system that looked and acted like MacOS, but without all the bloat and paranoia. (Sort of like ReactOS did for Windows!)
• The excellent Jeff Johnson explains how Apple is just living off its brand reputation, and Apple is no longer what it was. I concur and people need to know this. He also mentioned that Steve Jobs was NOT an engineer, and instead was an advocate for the USER, and they no longer have that.
• The IRS was duped into giving a company $86 MILLION for a facial verification technology. LUCKILY since they're in the public eye, people caught on to this and shot it down. Two questions remain: When can people shoot down other bad ideas in the tech industry from less visible organizations, and did the American Taxpayers get that $86M back?
• Almost every Big Tech company is an evil monopoly in its own subsector. GoFundMe was caught REDISTRIBUTING funds it raised rather than simply refunding them to users. Luckily this too was a high-visibility case, so they didn't get away with it.
• Finally, we read some fan-mail where one of my clients was almost duped into the Fake Rental WiFi Scandal. I swooped in just in time, but how many millions of others out there were hit by it?

Find these concepts and more in the preview edition of my forthcoming book, now available at thecomputerexorcist.com !