Alex Eckelberry

CEO @BetterCarPeople.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

LFG

[Better Car People @BetterCarPeople]

Today marks an exciting new chapter for Better Car People as we are proud to name Alex Eckelberry as our new Chief Executive Officer! Read the full press release here: https://t.co/5S2TC0P9Q7

[André @oracles]

Today Instagram had this massive exploit where hackers were just stealing rare handles left and right. Hundreds of accounts gone.

People losing handles they’ve owned since 2010, some worth hundreds of thousands.

I own a few rare ones so I was actually stressed watching this happen in real time, which I haven’t been in years.

Obama White House account got hit.

These aren’t some random new accounts, these are verified, locked down accounts and they still got compromised.

The thing is the exploit is so simple it’s almost funny. Attacker goes to Forgot Password, says their account is hacked, turns on a VPN to match the target’s location (which now you can find on the about section of the page).

Instagram’s AI support flow asks them to verify with a selfie.

They grab a photo from the target’s profile, run it through an AI video generator to make an animation of the person’s face moving around, upload that to Meta’s AI as proof.

And Meta’s AI just accepts it because it can’t tell the difference between a real selfie and an AI-generated video of someone’s face
.
Once verified they change the email to theirs. Password reset link goes to their email. They own it now. 2FA gets bypassed somehow in the process but honestly I don’t know exactly how, just that it did.

Point is even locked down accounts went down.

Then you try to recover your account and you’re talking to a chatbot that has zero ability to help.

You can’t escalate to a human. You’re just stuck. Your asset is gone and there’s no one to call.

The whole thing just highlighted how stupid it is to automate account security without any human in the loop.

One AI fooling another AI while there’s literally no person anywhere to catch it.

Meta took hours to even acknowledge it while accounts were getting stolen every minute.

Now thankfully it’s patched but I don’t think it will be the last one. Stay safe!

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@RaminNasibov Doom

[jacky @jjacky]

if you still have the facebook app

please check if you have this setting turned on

absolutely crazy

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@the_chart_life Not really. @grok explain why and give context for the rest of us. Make it brief.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@Hedgeye @grok explain why and give context for the rest of us. Make it brief.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@mmt_lvt @johnloeber @grok is this true or is there context

[Hardeep @hardeep_gambhir]

I read this every week for 3 years and had it pasted on my dorm room's wall.

Best writing is not literary or PhD-esque.

It is persuasive. It is simple. It's humorous. It has short sentences.

That is more valuable, than any other type of writing.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@hardeep_gambhir @grok transcribe

[OddStats @OddStats]

Because I am a man of science and because I love you, I took an Extremely Scientific Survey two days ago and asked three people, completely unrelated, to tell me about the attitudes of the SpaceX IPO in their daily lives. This is a true story, and this is what I learned.

I asked:
• A FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR IN SEATTLE, who routinely works with exactly the sort of people who would be interested in both SpaceX and IPOs;
• An ACCOUNTANT FOR A WEED COMPANY IN CALIFORNIA, who routinely works with exactly the sort of people who would be disgusted in both SpaceX and IPOs; and
• A NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING HOUSEKEEPER IN LATIN AMERICA, who routinely was very polite about having no idea what I was trying to ask her

These questions:
❶ How many times a day do you hear people in your daily life mention the SpaceX IPO?
❷ How many times, total, has someone suggested to you that you personally take part in it?

The accountant laughed at me and said "literally not one human being" had mentioned it to them until I just asked this question. They asked me what planet I was from and asked if I thought everyone *off* the internet was as stupid as "your dumb little friends" *on* it. I assured this person that, absolutely, I *did* think that, yes. I was informed that my idea of "extremely urgent" did not match their definition and that they needed to get back to work and to not bother them with this again.

The housekeeper politely pretended for a solid minute to understand what I was asking her before smiling and saying she wasn't sure what either of those things were. Then she repeated the sounds "Spay-Sex" about 4 times, each time giggling louder and louder (not because "sex" was in there, she just thought it sounded stupid). She said she would ask if any of her family had heard of it and let me know. I am not hopeful.

But to me, the real surprise was the flight instructor in Seattle, whom I was *certain* was inundated with SpaceX stories and mentions. He told me that only two sets of people had ever uttered the words so far in his presence: one was a student of his who is a day trader and an engineer. He brings up the SpaceX IPO every time they see each other. But, apparently, he's the kind of guy who does this with any big tech IPO and this isn't special. The other set of people who mentioned it to him are his 44 and 42 year old half-brothers. The flight instructor then proceeded to tell me a story to illustrate the kind of people his half-brothers are. He asked if I remembered the PS5 Christmas release in 2020. He told me that his half-brothers secured the purchase of an entire pallet of them, which they intended to sell on eBay at a huge markup. When the units arrived at the freight warehouse, they threw up a picture and description of the giant cube of PS5s and waited for bids to come in. Unimpressed with the speed and magnitude of the offers, and completely unaware that the other one had come up with the exact same brilliant idea at their own homes, both brothers set up new eBay accounts and placed fake bids to drive up the price of the pallet. In the end, certain they had sold it for a boatload of cash to some unsuspecting third party, they managed to outbid each other and win their own pallet of PS5s, owing eBay hundreds of dollars in fees while remaining the proud owners of enough PlayStations to entertain a small village. "THOSE are the sort of geniuses," the flight instructor told me, "that are getting excited about the SpaceX IPO."

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

Ooof

[Dan Hightower @Danhightower]

How to ragebait a VC

- Which podcast gave you that opinion?
- How would you add value if you found a way to be valuable?
- You look like you make all of the 2 but none of the 20.
- Sorry, we aren't raising from you right now.
- Which AI model did you use to vibe code your firm's website?
- What startup role would you take if they'd have you?

[Eric Nuttall @ericnuttall]

Neil Chapman, SVP of Exxon this morning at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference perhaps going a little off corporate script:

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

This is a rational view of Ferrari‘s latest by a professional.

[Adrian Clarke @adrianfclarke]

I promised you all post gathering my thoughts on the Ferrari Luce and now I’ve had a couple of days to digest and think, plus several glasses of cold Tizer, here it is.

Let me say straight off that it’s bad, both objectively and subjectively. I’ll get into what’s wrong with ithe design but at the moment all I have are more questions than answers. A thread 1/n

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@justin_garson Reading Dr Szasz many years ago completely changed my perspective. It’s shocking how terrible the science is here.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

It’s a mistake to compare Windows versus Mac. I use both extensively. Windows has become an extremely stable, very powerful operating system. The hardware is decent. But nothing matches Apples hardware engineering. So I run windows in parallels on a Mac. I get the best of both worlds.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@ChillCandace Really? Have you compared a new model MacBook Air with a comparable windows laptop? I got my Air for $900 and it’s unbelievable.

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

You do know satire when you see it, right?

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

Nah he’s wrong. I’m a hardcore windows user who recently transitioned to Mac. Still run windows apps using parallels. But what got me was a) iMessage integration and b) the mind blowing quality of Apple products. There is no PC manufacturer that can hold a candle to Apples engineering. And it’s not 5x the price.

[Yonan @yonann]

Kevin O'Leary says Apple's genius is making people pay 5x more for a laptop they could buy for $350

"you can buy an Apple laptop, average price about $1,800, or you can buy the same functionality for $350 on a Windows laptop"

"but you still pay $1,800. Why? Brand"

"you're paying a 5x multiple in some cases for something that is exactly like a Windows machine"

"I put that out to people, they say, yeah, but it's not an Apple. So there is the genius of Jobs"

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

Nah he’s wrong. I’m a hardcore windows user who recently transitioned to Mac. Still run windows apps using parallels. But what got me was a) iMessage integration and b) the mind blowing quality of Apple products. There is no PC manufacturer that can hold a candle to Apples engineering. And it’s not 5x the price. It’s probably 20% more, well worth it with the strong aftermarket values and trade-in programs from Apple

[Alex Eckelberry @alexeck]

@emkwan This is nothing about EV. Porsche came out with a beautiful EV. This thing is just hideously ugly.