Guess who's back with the Fyre? đŸ”„

Just admit it - you know you missed me đŸ„ș

Author

Yemi Davis
August 29, 2023

Remember me? Your not-so-consistent newsletter sender? - Yeah, guilty as charged 😭.

Apologies for the radio silence – I know I kind of pulled a Houdini and my newsletter hiatus turned into an unintended sabbatical; as life served me lemon cocktails sprinkled with a lack of motivation, but luckily, I've escaped its clutches and I’m back babayy!

I’m here with an even better newsletter, armed with fresh stories and awesome content! You’ll find a couple of new sections where I’ll be sharing a few cool bits I come across on the interwebs that I think you might find handy. Without further ado, let’s get to it!

Here’s what’s been happening

Fyre Festival is Back!

Yup, you read that right - Fyre Festival – the notoriously disastrous festival from 2017 – is back.

The first batch of tickets went on sale last week and has already sold out. Prices start at $499 and go all the way up to $7,999.

Just like me, you’re probably wondering, "Why on earth would they bring back something that was such a mess the first time around?" And that's a good question. Despite the chaos of the original festival – that ended up with the founder, Billy McFarland, serving 4 out of a 6 year jail sentence for scamming investors – they're planning to go for round two. The new festival is set to happen in the Caribbean, sometime around December 2024.

McFarland himself announced the revival on his YouTube and TikTok pages. And get this, he's also talking about creating a Broadway musical, featuring some big music names.

Thankfully though, McFarland is supposedly taking a backseat this go-around – he's apparently on "cheese sandwich duty,". And believe it or not, he's somehow roped in the legendary Andy King to join him again. You remember Andy, right? The guy who became famous for that whole um
water situation in the original documentary.

So yeah, Fyre Festival 2 is in the works. Let's see if they can turn things around this time.

If you’re feeling adventurous enough to attend Fyre Festival 2, you can get a ticket HERE

Watch the announcement in the video posted below.

The Idol is on the chopping block

According to a HBO spokesperson (via Entertainment Weekly) "'The Idol' was one of HBO's most provocative original programs, and we're pleased by the strong audience response. After much thought and consideration, HBO, as well as the creators and producers have decided not to move forward with a second season. We're grateful to the creators, cast, and crew for their incredible work."

I mean that’s nice and all but, the streets help provide more context. A lot of people were genuinely excited to see Sam Levinson’s new show after absolutely killing it with Euphoria, but to put it in the words of a CNN review, "Despite the controversy, 'The Idol' is mostly guilty of being just plain boring."

One potential reason is that 'The Idol' had some really
.odd sex scenes. For example, the show started off with a leaked photo of Jocelyn with umm
.“fluids” on her face, and it just gets worse from then onwards.

Issues within the cast and crew of the production were also revealed by some members in a Rolling Stone interview back in March that uncovered allegations of a toxic work environment, as well as violent and disturbing themes on the show, and a complete flip on the show's original vision after the exit of director Amy Seimetz.

WinRAR got exploted!

RARLABS, the makers of WinRAR (a file unzipping/extraction tool we’ve all probably used at some point – especially if you’re a Windows user) have patched a zero-day vulnerability in the program. This vulnerability codenamed CVE-2023-38831 was a flaw in the way WinRAR processes the .ZIP file format which granted the hackers access to victims' cryptocurrency and stock trading accounts.

What is a Zero-Day you might ask?

You can use this secret passage to get an advantage in the game no one else knows about. In the same way, a "zero-day exploit" is like finding a secret passage in computer software, like a computer program or an app, that even the people who made the software don't know about.

Imagine you're playing a video game, and you've just discovered a secret passage that the game's creators didn't know about. You’d be able to use this secret path to get ahead in the game more easily than other players would. Well, a "zero-day exploit" is kind of like that secret path, but for computer stuff like apps or programs.

Hackers sometimes discover these “secret paths” in these apps and use them to get into computers to deploy a host of attacks. Now, the tricky part is that the developers don't always have any time - like literally zero days - to fix it before the hackers start using these exploits. That's why it's called a "zero-day exploit" – because there's no time to prepare before it's used.

Using the exploit, the hackers created malicious RAR and ZIP files containing seemingly harmless PDFs and JPG files disguised as “bitcoin trading tips“ which they distributed across a host of crypto trading forums.

The security flaw, which was brought to light by Group-IB, a cybersecurity company headquartered in Singapore, is believed to have been operational for approximately four months. The firm also substantiated that this breach propagated through openly accessible trading forums, ultimately infiltrating at least 130 devices.

RARLABS have now released WinRAR version 6.23, which fixes this issue. So make sure you update yours if you have it installed.

Titbits

I discovered FlightArrow which is a Chrome Extension that comes in handy when booking flight tickets online. It will basically take your flight itinerary from Google Flights and run that across various aggregators such as Skyscanner, Kayak, etc. to find you the best deals. It will even scour the interwebs to find you promo codes that get you even more off your final booking fee

Bluesky is a new social media platform supported by ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that’s (interestingly enough) a similar concept to Twitter/X. It’s still in the invite-only phase and I’ve finally got a few extra invite codes available if anyone wants to give it a go:

bsky-social-5tg2g-6fkqn

bsky-social-odbay-hkcrg

bsky-social-a6puw-lpr5o

bsky-social-tabva-leoh6

bsky-social-mbrea-qd5q2

✹ Interesting Opportunities

🎧 I’m Currently listening to


NIGHTTIME

CLAVIS 7EVEN · Song · 2023

open.spotify.com/track/6hybNTJZlwbL8Uk9PyWxYL?si=be1980d5e30648ee

Whew! - That was a long one, but that’s it for today gang. See you in the next one!

- Yemi đŸ’„

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