SDxCentral: FCC bans all foreign-produced routers over ‘unacceptable risks to national security’

FCC bans all foreign-produced routers over ‘unacceptable risks to national security’
March 24, 2026 By Ben Wodecki

Imports of consumer-grade foreign-made routers subject to Covered List over cybersecurity and supply chain vulnerabilities

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved to ban imports of all foreign-produced routers over “unacceptable risks to national security.”

A public notice dated March 23 extends the import ban to consumer-grade devices produced outside the U.S. The move does not impact any previously-purchased consumer-grade routers, the FCC confirmed, with consumers still able to use devices they’ve already acquired.

I'm glad, and surprised it took our government so long.

But are there any US router manufacturers left to buy from?

Robots in restaurants? No thanks.

These two articles appeared right next to each other in my RSS feed this morning:

From the New York post:

McDonald’s experimenting with robot employees that look like humans — and even dress in uniform
By Zoe Hussain. Published March 22, 2026, Updated March 23, 2026, 1:34 p.m. ET

Videos posted on social media captured the myriad of lifelike robots at a McDonald’s in Shanghai performing routine tasks typically completed by human workers, such as greeting customers and delivering food.

Diners were seen interacting with the robots dressed in the fast-food joint’s iconic red-and-yellow uniforms behind counters, while children chased more of the moving machinery disguised as cute animals.

And then from Breitbart:

Robot Goes Berserk in California Restaurant Until Restrained by Staff
by Lucas Nolan. 22 Mar 2026

Staff members at a restaurant in Cupertino, California, were forced to physically restrain a humanoid robot after it began wildly flailing its arms and smashing dishware during a performance.

TechCrunch reports that a humanoid robot performing at a hot pot restaurant in Cupertino, California, created a chaotic scene when it began moving erratically, breaking plates and scattering chopsticks across the dining area. The incident required at least three employees to physically restrain the machine as it continued to swing its arms unpredictably.

Just sayin'....

NY Post: Gun thug busted for peddling stolen Glock to Old Dominion killer for measly $100 profit: feds

Gun thug busted for peddling stolen Glock to Old Dominion killer for measly $100 profit: feds
By Ben Kochman, Published March 13, 2026, 6:41 p.m. ET

A Virginia man was busted Friday for swiping a gun from a car and peddling it for a measly $100 profit to Mohamed Jalloh — who then used it in the Old Dominion University terror shooting, authorities said.

And this is one (of many) reasons why gun-control laws don't work. This murderer didn't buy his gun from a licensed firearms dealer. He bought a stolen gun on the black market which, by definition, is not going to obey any laws.

Gun control laws prevent law-abiding citizens (including, possibly the instructor and students in the ROTC class where the shooting occurred) from having the means to shoot back. Fortunately, some of the students had the ability to defend themselves with bare hands and a knife, preventing this from turning into a mass-killing, but it shouldn't have had to come to that.

My sports ignorance rears its ugly head

Today, I read the following article on my RSS feed:

WATCH: Vanderbilt Hit with $100K Fine After Fans Rush Field, Tear Down Goal Posts
by Warner Todd Huston 7 Oct 2024

The SEC has fined Vanderbilt University $100,000 after fans rushed the field and tore down the goal posts following the team’s win against Alabama on Saturday.

But me, in my complete ignorance of sports, especially at the college level, read this headline and thought "why would the US Securities & Exchange Commission care about a football riot?"

Just The News: Officials investigate death of Wells Fargo worker found in cubicle 4 days after last coming to work

Officials investigate death of Wells Fargo worker found in cubicle 4 days after last coming to work
By Nicholas Ballasy. Published: August 30, 2024 10:58am. Updated: August 30, 2024 11:04am

A preliminary investigation did not reveal signs of foul play, according to police.

Someone dying in their office cubicle is sad, but not particularly newsworthy - it happens. But the fact that nobody noticed for four days is sick.

Federalist: Daylight Savings Is A Scam

Daylight Savings Is A Scam
By: Nathan Stone, March 11, 2024

Americans don’t get more daylight. Plants don’t enjoy an extra hour of sunshine. The only difference it makes is to harm our health.

A great summary about the origin of Daylight Saving time, what people claim it accomplishes, and references to the inconvenient truth that is doesn't accomplish anything, but does significantly impact our health an well-being.

National Pulse: Native Americans Demand DC Football Team Reinstate 'Redskins' Moniker.

Native Americans Demand DC Football Team Reinstate 'Redskins' Moniker.
10-August-2023. Jake Welch

The non-profit Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) has threatened the newly renamed "Washington Commanders" with a boycott similar to that of Bud Light's parent company Anheuser-Busch unless the American Football team reverts to its historic name, the 'Washington Redskins.'

The organization has written a letter to the team's new ownership demanding the opportunity to discuss reinstating the team's name in a face-to-face meeting, citing lawsuits, polls, and general sentiment to suggest that Native Americans are not offended by the name, 'Redskin.' The organization has also launched a "Reclaim The Name" online petition that has attracted over 70,000 signatories so far. However, it has been routinely ignored.

I don't think I need to comment about this one. But I'm both laughing and not (very) surprised.

The UN's two-faced policies

This morning, I heard about this incredible news:

43 countries pledge to combat antisemitism at UNHRC session
i24NEWS. October 04, 2021, 04:41 PM

Statement led by Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia in coordination with World Jewish Congress

At least 43 countries signed a statement pledging to combat antisemitism that was issued at the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on Monday.

The statement was led by Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia with the coordination of the World Jewish Congress.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg warned of the dangers of antisemitism in a video statement, saying that "we will remain steadfast in our pledge, never again."

Which was a very welcome surprise. Then I saw the following article, posted only a few hours later:

UN Cuts Off UN Watch Director for Highlighting UNRWA Antisemitism
Aaron Bandler. October 4, 2021

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) cut off UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer as he was highlighting antisemitic social media posts from various United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Speaking virtually at the October 2 UNHRC session, Neuer cited UN Watch’s recent report about two UNRWA teachers in the Gaza Strip, one who posted an Adolf Hitler video to Facebook “with quotes to ‘enrich and enlighten your minds’” and another who posted “conspiracy theories” about Jews controlling the world, starting the COVID-19 pandemic aiming “to destroy Islam.” At that point, UNHRC President Nazhat Shameem Khan cut off Neuer’s video feed, accusing Neuer of making “insulting and inflammatory remarks.”

So, apparently, the Human Rights Council opposes Jew hatred, but not when it's coming from other UN agencies. Why am I not the least bit surprised?

Netflix acquires Roald Dahl's estate

Netflix Acquires Prominent Anti-Semite’s Estate, Announces Epic Content Dump
Andrew Stiles • September 22, 2021 6:30 pm

Netflix, a media conglomerate with ties to former president Barack Obama, announced on Wednesday its acquisition of British author Roald Dahl's estate and promised to produce "a unique universe across animated and live action films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theatre, consumer products and more."

In addition to authoring such classics as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl was a virulent anti-Semite who would have already been ruthlessly canceled by woke scolds if his bigotry had been directed at any other vulnerable minority.

I completely understand the desire to censor all of Dahl's work from history because of his anti-semitism.

On the other hand, with Netflix buying Dahl's estate, I no longer feel uncomfortable buying his famous children's books because the money will no longer be going to his family (which seems to have taken a conspicuously long time to publicly disagree with Roald's statements).

Of course, I don't approve of Netflix's politics very much either, but that's another discussion.

Just The News: Drunk 19-year-old breaks into Airbnb that was 'loaded with cops'

Drunk 19-year-old breaks into Airbnb that was 'loaded with cops'
By Nicholas Sherman, Updated: June 1, 2021 - 3:50pm

A drunken 19-year-old accidentally broke into an Airbnb in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, only to find the house filled with police officers.
...
The officers heard noises during the night, assuming it was each other. In the morning, they found the person asleep in one of their beds after noticing one of the doors to the house was open.

"He woke up in handcuffs," Pesola said on the video, which went viral over the weekend.

The intruder was taken into custody by the Milwaukee police but wasn't cited or charged, with officers saying he drunkenly stumbled into the wrong house by accident, according to KMOV4.

All I can say is "d'Oh!".

Fierce Telecom: Learn the No. 1 reason some Americans don't use the internet

Learn the No. 1 reason some Americans don't use the internet
By Roger Entner May 19, 2021 10:02am

The U.S. Government, through the NTIA, has been surveying internet usage since 2001. Since 2009, it has also been surveying reasons for not using the internet. Of all the studies that are currently under consideration to be used to justify the broadband stimulus plan, the government’s own NTIA Internet Use Survey, which was done before the conception of the plan, is the most unbiased and insightful. As universal internet access is a foregone conclusion in the current debate, the reasons why people are not using the internet have been reduced to just two factors — lack of availability and cost — when there is a lot more to the story.
...
What is the number one reason why Americans are not connected to the internet?

I know it is hard to believe that 13% of Americans are just not interested or do not need to use the internet, especially to those of us who live and die by the internet and are ultra-connected. No matter how much we spend on a national broadband plan to provide access to broadband internet or how much we subsidize internet access, when people don’t see the need or are just not interested, adoption numbers are not going to go up substantially.

Almost half of the 13% of Americans who are not interested in the internet are age 65 or older. A third is between 45 and 65 years of age, a surprising 1/6th is between 25 and 44 and an unsurprisingly low 2% is age 15 to 24. Another remarkable finding from the NTIA survey is that there is no significant ethnic or gender difference among people who are not interested in using the internet. There is also no statistically significant difference between people in urban and rural areas who don’t see a point in using the internet.

13% of Americans are not using the Internet because they see no need for it or just don't want to.

RCR Wireless: FCC continues its robocall fight with fines, warnings and a new response team

FCC continues its robocall fight with fines, warnings and a new response team
By Kelly Hill on March 19, 2021

The Federal Communications Commission this week levied its largest-ever fine against a robocalling operation: $225 million, against two companies which the agency says transmitted around 1 billion robocalls shilling short-term health insurance.

The FCC said that many of the calls made in the first half of 2019 by John C. Spiller and Jakob A. Mears (who used business names including Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom) were illegally spoofed, and that the companies lied to consumers, falsely claiming to offer health insurance plans from companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna. In at least one case, the agency added, the spoofing led to an unassociated company being overwhelmed with call-backs from angry customers.

“Mr. Spiller admitted to the USTelecom Industry Traceback Group that he made millions of spoofed calls per day and knowingly called consumers on the Do Not Call list as he believed that it was more profitable to target these consumers. Rising Eagle made the calls on behalf of clients, the largest of which, Health Advisors of America, was sued by the Missouri Attorney General for telemarketing violations in February 2019,” the FCC added.

“The individuals involved didn’t just lie about who they were when they made their calls—they said they were calling on behalf of well-known health insurance companies on more than a billion calls. That’s fraud on an enormous scale,” said Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

These people don't just need a fine. They need their entire corporation to be shut down with all the assets confiscated and all the responsible individuals sentenced to years in prison.

RIP, Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh, Radio Legend, Dies at 70.
The National Pulse, February 17, 2021

One of the world’s most studious and influential broadcast personalities that has ever lived – Rush Limbaugh – has passed away aged 70.

Love him or hate him, all can agree that Rush almost single-handedly defined modern conservative talk radio. My lunch-time radio listening will forever be less interesting without his voice giving me his opinions and analysis of current events.

Bleeping Computer: Researcher hacks over 35 tech firms in novel supply chain attack

Researcher hacks over 35 tech firms in novel supply chain attack
By Ax Sharma. February 9, 2021, 01:04 PM

A researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies' internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, in a novel software supply chain attack.

The attack comprised uploading malware to open source repositories including PyPI, npm, and RubyGems, which then got distributed downstream automatically into the company's internal applications.

Unlike traditional typosquatting attacks that rely on social engineering tactics or the victim misspelling a package name, this particular supply chain attack is more sophisticated as it needed no action by the victim, who automatically received the malicious packages.

This is because the attack leveraged a unique design flaw of the open-source ecosystems called dependency confusion.

For his ethical research efforts, the researcher has earned well over $130,000 in bug bounties.

A remarkably simple attack revealing serious problems in corporations' open source package distribution systems.

Like most companies using open source software, they develop applications containing both public packages (which come from well-known and trusted Internet repositories) and private packages (developed in-house). In order to maximize reuse of private packages, they are deployed using an internal repository system, which automatically installs and an application's dependent packages, regardless of where they come from.

The problem happens because the internal repository system doesn't seem to distinguish between private and public packages. So if your application is using a private package, and later one a public repository adds a new package with the same name, the system may end up replacing your internal package with the one from the public server. And because automatic updates are common (in order to quickly incorporate bug fixes and security patches), these replacement packages may automatically get installed into publicly accessible applications.

Well that's not right.

Fortunately, this test was from a security researcher, who promptly reported the bugs, but this could just as easily been malware.

I don't think this should be hard to fix. Internal package management systems need to distinguish between public and private packages. When a given package name exists as both a public and a private package, the system *must* always give priority to the private package. It must also alert administrators and owners of affected applications to alert them to the conflics, so appropriate action may be taken. This action may be one or more of:

• Block the public package
• Rename the private package and update all applications using it so they use the renamed package
• Allow application developers to explicitly state in their package manifests if they want to use the public or the private version

Krebs on Security: Ransomware Group Turns to Facebook Ads

Ransomware Group Turns to Facebook Ads
Brian Krebs. November 10, 2020

It’s bad enough that many ransomware gangs now have blogs where they publish data stolen from companies that refuse to make an extortion payment. Now, one crime group has started using hacked Facebook accounts to run ads publicly pressuring their ransomware victims into paying up.

Just when you thought Facebook had hit rock bottom. Now their adware network is being used for criminal extortion. And they're not even refunding the money to the victims who had their accounts hijacked in the process.

So glad I drop-kicked them to the curb many years ago.

How to deal with a patent troll

Lawsuit accusing entire computer industry of patent infringement fails on missed deadline
By Mike Peterson, Apple Insider. September 1, 2020

A lawsuit that accused essentially the entire computer industry of patent infringement has been dismissed because an opening brief wasn't filed by the deadline.

In September 2019, plaintiff Mers Kutt filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. It alleged $350 billion in damages against more than 40 technology companies, telecom providers, and financial firms, among others. Apple was included at the top of the list.

After a majority of those companies filed opposing orders, a judge in March 2020 dismissed the case with prejudice. Kutt appealed that decision, but apparently failed to file an opening brief by a July 2 deadline. The lawsuit was tossed on Sept. 1.

In other words:

• Patent troll sues everybody in the universe for a quarter of a trillion dollars
• Everybody in the universe tells him to get bent and a judge agrees
• Patent troll claims he will appeal, but instead slinks off to his cave, not even bothering to file the paperwork to continue his suit

This is the only way to handle a bully. Don't settle out of court. Don't pay a penny. Force him to defend his idiocy and watch him back down. The last thing a troll wants is an actual fight.

Just The News: KFC to temporarily suspend use of slogan 'It's Finger Lickin' Good' amid pandemic

KFC to temporarily suspend use of slogan 'It's Finger Lickin' Good' amid pandemic
By Alex Nitzberg. Updated: August 24, 2020 - 8:09pm

The Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food chain on Monday announced that it will temporarily stop using its decades-old slogan, "It's Finger Lickin' Good," in advertising because the slogan does not seem appropriate amid the ongoing public health crisis.

Ummmm.... Are people aware of the fact that you're only supposed to be licking your own fingers?

Just The News: Russian cosmonaut wonders if he saw UFO's while aboard International Space Station

Russian cosmonaut wonders if he saw UFO's while aboard International Space Station
By Alex Nitzberg. Updated: August 20, 2020 - 6:37pm

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner on Thursday posted a video from the International Space Showing showing a time-lapse of the aurora borealis, but he also highlighted the presence of other points of interest in the footage.

In the video, a row of what appears to be several small dots of light briefly appear and then vanish again.

Vagner asked people on Twitter what they thought it could be: "At 9-12 seconds, 5 objects appear flying alongside with the same distance. What do you think those are? Meteors, satellites or…?"

Space guests, or how I filmed the new time-lapse.

The peak of aurora borealis when passing over the Antarctic in Australia’s longitude, meaning in between them. However, in the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora. pic.twitter.com/Hdiej7IbLU

— Ivan Vagner (@ivan_mks63) August 19, 2020

P.P.S. The information was brought to the notice of Roscosmos management, the materials were sent to TsNIIMash and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for further analysis.

— Ivan Vagner (@ivan_mks63) August 19, 2020

He definitely saw a UFO - whatever it was was flying and is (so far) unidentified. Probably not an alien spacecraft, but some kind of natural phenomenon, but definitely unidentified and flying.

Horowitz: Coronavirus hospitalizations down to lowest levels of pandemic. So where is our exit strategy?

Coronavirus hospitalizations down to lowest levels of pandemic. So where is our exit strategy?
Daniel Horowitz, Conservative Review. August 18, 2020

It’s now becoming clear, from every state and country that has reached saturation levels of the virus, that the virus burns out roughly around the 20% seroprevalence benchmark, not at the 80% threshold the fearmongers predicted. Whether it’s Sweden, New York, or Arizona, the virus is going to do what it does – meaning it spreads for about six weeks in a given region and then moves on. The only question is whether we will continue to destroy our society, mental health, and economy or achieve herd immunity without adding the man-made death toll. Herd immunity is going to happen, whether we aim for it or not.

Please read the entire article. It's full of hard facts and statistics that the media has been actively suppressing in order to keep you panicked and afraid.

New York City: It will cost you $10,000 to visit our city

NYC Mayor de Blasio sets up COVID-19 quarantine checkpoints at city's bridges and tunnels, threatens violators with $10,000 fines
Chris Field, The Blaze. August 05, 2020

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would be seriously cracking down on anyone coming from the nearly three dozen states that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has placed on a must-quarantine list.

The mayor's crackdown includes randomized checks at bridges and tunnels into the city as well as fines of up to $10,000 for failing to follow quarantine orders.

The mayor declared during a press briefing Wednesday that New York would be immediately instituting a number of checkpoints at major city entry points, WINS-AM reported. The goal is to make sure that people traveling into the city from Cuomo's travel advisory list understand that they must quarantine themselves for 14 days.

Does anyone else think that this is the first step on the road permanently sealing off New York City from the rest of the world a-la that dumb 80's movie, Escape From new York?