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five
let's get into it elon musk has
augmented a monkey's brain with a
wireless implant so it can play
video games that's coming up but first
did spam cop block your email this past
weekend
you're not alone spamkop a respected
anti-spam service provided by cisco
had a hiccup this past weekend that
resulted in countless emails being
blocked as spam
even though they were perfectly benign
the issue affected users around the
world impacting the flow of email even
for users who have never
heard of or purposefully used spam cop
that's because spamcop is a service used
by many isps email providers and servers
along the way
to check if emails flowing through their
network are untrusted
so if spam cop says this is spam one of
those servers will bounce it back to the
sender and halt delivery
the issue arose when the spamcop.net
domain name expired over the weekend as
cisco's admin team failed to renew it
before the expiry date
having expired spam cop stopped
responding to these queries from mail
servers around the world
thereby making them think that since the
response was not a positive one
it must be negative and the email should
be rejected
fortunately the spam cop.net domain was
renewed pretty quickly
but not before mail servers around the
world received all their email back as
spam
having now been renewed everything is
effectively back to normal and email is
flowing fine
i can't say as i had any emails this
weekend get blocked
no that i'm aware that you know of but
what if someone was emailing you
well that's possible yeah but i did end
up sending an email
come to think of it sunday to a number
of people that i'd normally send
yeah and my wife pointed out to me
yesterday or the day before
she's like oh look it says spam in the
subject line
oh and so even though it delivered to
her it got flagged as possible spam
weird so i don't know if that's related
to it maybe maybe not
i know from my perspective uh in it
um immediately monday morning i started
having
users of our email service saying people
tried to email me on the weekend
and it bounced back and i said well
could you send me the
the damon message so i got that and i
looked it over and i investigated and
sure enough
i saw a spam cop so i replied well looks
like maybe the sender was on the spam
cop list and i ran
a test on their ip address and it was
showing that it was clean
so no it looks like they they maybe were
were flagged but
they didn't uh you know they they got
off the list right
because it's fine now then two days
later
the news breaks that's right that oh
actually
the spam cop domain name that's
administered by cisco
expired how is that like that's an
oversight yeah a huge one
a little bit i've mentioned it before
like come on get an m server to tell you
oh by the way i mean maybe maybe i'm
being a little bit
you know maybe i should back up because
that's
that's a little rude this is a weird
time
and i have to be real okay how could
this possibly happen to cisco and i
think that's
what immediately goes through our heads
right well what was what the heck was
the admin doing
why were they ignoring the emails and
then i'm starting to think here jeff
like we're in the middle of a pretty
serious pandemic
we are is this a case where an
administrator who is supposed to conduct
that renewal
is perhaps working from home and and
or maybe they're there for load or maybe
the
the person who receives those emails is
not available
because of this that could be and so
it's interesting because
for myself you know we talked about it a
little bit ago in the news like i have
my own domains
yeah and one of the things i have done
is when i
uh sign up for particular services i.e
like registering your domain or
something
i create a specific email for my dom for
the domains okay
where all my registrations go to that
email
and then i have it set up as forwarders
so that
if for whatever reason the email that it
would go to i no longer have
access to right i can change the
forwarder okay or something like that
yeah
so it makes me wonder if this is one of
those cases where somebody had
registered under
whatever email address maybe they're no
longer with the company yeah they
weren't available and
so they weren't getting the alerts that
you know even though they're coming in
like hey it's going to expire it's going
to expire because they're going to
expire
and they need to see it it's possible i
take a different approach and what i do
is i set up automatic renewal
and so that way as a domain comes due my
registrar automatically builds my credit
card
and it gets renewed so could this be a
case of
maybe i mean a company like cisco why
would they not
pre-register domain for 10 years is it
possible that maybe it was coming
come and do and the credit card that
they had on file and the contact that
they had on file might have been
somebody that's not with the company now
oh that could be it could be another
there's so many
you know possibilities as to what could
have happened but
i mean this is a big deal because it
knocked out the infrastructure that is
there for email service
around the world so
understanding that so many services
depend on the reporting of services such
as spam comp
so if spam cop stops responding all of a
sudden
they just say oh well reject that email
yeah
which is a you know that's maybe a
little bit of a
flaw in the infrastructure absolutely
it's like a single point of failure
right well
and there should be redundancies in that
case where if that doesn't work
here's your secondary backup yeah you
know but it all it still falls on
cisco to have those backups in place
that's right you know so
so what do you do because as soon as you
put a redundancy in that says if spam
spam cop is not responding reroute it
here now there's something that we can
exploit
right there's something that we can use
to get around spam cop
yeah which is you know concern and what
would have happened
if somebody was wise to the fact that oh
this isn't working why isn't it working
oh the demand's out
i'm gonna buy the domain
amp.net is now owned by jeff weston like
yeah could you imagine the havoc that
would reach because now it's a matter of
i'm the legitimate domain
owner you let it expire i bought it the
whole thing goes down
and what happens if you hold it's like
also luckily luckily
the registrant the whole mechanism
behind
uh how registration works is that
there's a 30-day grace that's right
so um after the 30 day grace period had
they not realized
not renewed then it goes to auction yeah
and auction allows people to buy it up
at a cost
and if it does not sell in auction then
it goes up at regular price right and
people can register it
so never let your domains expire if
they're important to you
set something up that is going to
automatically renew it and make sure
that you keep in touch with your
registrar
in such a way that you've always got an
up-to-date email address on there if you
change your email make sure you update
your registrar
because otherwise someone's going to say
oh well that email doesn't exist anymore
i'm going to register it i'm going to
take over that domain
yep yeah but this is a weird one i mean
these things happen i guess but
so if you had some bounced emails over
the weekend just know that was what the
problem might have been
and so just resend that email and it
will get through at this point
becca on category 5's episode 30 of
season 12
we talked about how elon musk's
neurolink startup
was close to interfacing the brain to
computers well now it sounds like he's
had some success
in a recent clubhouse app chat room the
tesla and spacex ceo
revealed that neurolink has implanted a
wireless chip
in a monkey's brain that enables the
monkey to control a video game using
only its mind oh chimpanzee
this isn't the first time san
francisco-based neuralink has
experimented on animals with brain
implants
as was showcased last year when neural
signals from a wired up pig named
gertrude were displayed before a live
audience
neuralink has now expanded their testing
to simeons
musk explained that the startup's
eventual intention is
um sorry eventual intention
is to create a wireless implantable chip
to be used for human beings with
quadriplegia
or paraplegia the implant will make it
possible for them to use a smartphone
computer mouse or
any handheld device using mind control
musk even has the lofty goal of
eventually using such interfaces to keep
step with advanced
artificial intelligence the process of
connecting such an implant to the human
brain will be a short
non-invasive one hour operation the
device is coin sized and once the
electrodes are installed beneath the
scalp
only a small scar will be left behind
musk says
there are primitive versions of this
device with wires sticking out of your
head
but it's like a fitbit in your skull
with tiny wires that go into your brain
regarding the simeon experiment he said
you can't see where the implant is and
he's a happy monkey
we have the nicest monkey facilities in
the world we want them to play mind pong
with each other
videos of these simeon experiments will
be made available soon
possibly within the next month what are
your thoughts on putting computer chips
into human brains to help those with
disabilities
do you envision a future where human
brains have been altered to compete with
ai robots
how do you feel about musk experimenting
on animals
let us know what your thoughts are in
the comments below planet of the apes
with microchips in their brains that's
right but
yeah this is an interesting story
because it's
not a new concept uh you know
the idea of neural pathways within the
brain being linked up to computers i
mean
we've heard about it all the time and
the idea of using it for quadriplegia or
paraplegia
you know i think is an amazing thing
sure is it's totally
within the realm of you know acceptable
use of technology
to have that link to be able to give
people a better sense of quality of life
which i
absolutely love and i think it's so
amazing you know monkey's playing pong
or i guess it was the pig playing pong
but you know whatever game the monkey
was playing every monkey yeah
you have to you know test it somewhere
but this is
this is an interesting story because if
it does
work in the way that they hope to
advance it's going to change people's
lives for sure it is
yeah if it's used for the good now it
could also power mechs
sure well and i mean that's going to be
you know one of the byproducts of it
it's like we can do this for good but oh
you know how somebody be able to use
this negatively i mean like i was
reading an article the other day that
uh drones are now getting faster than uh
you know we our uh defense mechanisms
can actually
address sure so it's like well
absolutely so now
you know and we're talking like neural
links so neuralink is to
augment the human brain because the
human brain is the fastest computer on
the planet that's right
and possibly in the entire universe so
if we can now augment that
and make it so that it can communicate
in real time with computers
now ai and humans can interact at the
same
speed yeah fear like hey i'm simplifying
right but
so then it it raises the concerns well
what if ai wants to do some
some damage right because that's that's
the
you know the sci-fi future is of course
dystopian
ai has taken over and and humans are now
under their control so there's all these
kinds of crazy concerns
so there have to be things put into
place to protect absolutely the user
but from a perspective of medical uh so
cool
absolutely fantastic and i mean i'm
thinking even um you know you've got
people who
you know have you know degenerative
brain um
you know like uh alzheimer's and
difficulty
lose the ability to talk i mean you
think of als
how you know obviously you know als you
you lose that ability but
your mind is still active how amazing
would it be to be able to have that
neural link
to be able to it's like hey i can't talk
to you personally but here it is through
a computer you know
i'll just think it and it comes through
and you know like all these things
i think it's awesome it could be i think
i mean coma
sure someone who's in a coma comes to
mind he's like can that really be
possible to be able to like it's just
unbelievable technology
like we're living in a sci-fi era oh
absolutely and we're going to see this
just growing by leaps and bounds i mean
if it's if it's working in a monkey
right now
you know you know what's next well for
sure but it does i mean becca brought up
a good question how do you feel about
testing on animals yeah you know and i
have to
i truthfully i struggle this one i i
think i do
too i mean i understand that
we have to be able to do things safely
yes and so
to you know you bridge that gap with
some
animals and it's not a new thing i mean
animals are used for science all the
time yeah
and so i mean by no means am i condoning
you know horrible treatment of animals
please don't take it that way but i
understand you have to have that balance
um you know but i do struggle with this
one going
you know what this one doesn't seem that
invasive here hearing about it like it's
a little chip couple of neurons it's an
hour surgery it's not a big deal and
that's the point in this
and what we're hearing and then the
thing that comes to mind is well what
about the
the first 10 that we tried it on well
yeah which we don't hear about
and i don't want to go there i don't
want to put a negative spin on a really
powerful awesome technology and a story
that is
very possibly going to change lives for
the better for sure but that is a
concern
for sure i mean hey what do you think i
mean becca said comment below post your
comments it doesn't have to be about
the treatment of animals and things like
that but the technology
is just unbelievable like i just feel
like
the the whole the past like five six
years we're seeing this
sci-fi vision of writers
from 25 30 years ago coming to fruition
in a way that it's like this is this is
reality this is our reality
yeah i even saw a working
hovering skateboard so i mean it's it's
here
like marty mcfly back to the future i'll
post the link to the video
that's the description below don't miss
the other stories we're following this
week
first oneplus co-founder carl pay has
revealed next to nothing about his new
company
but we'll tell you all about it plus the
official.com domain for the pearl
programming language was hijacked last
week
subscribe to our youtube channel to make
sure you catch the full stories
from the category 5 tv newsroom i'm
becca ferguson
thanks for watching
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