Dad Joke CCCLXIIII

Tuna sends in another:

I went to a haunted Bed & Breakfast in France, but checked out early- the place was giving me the crepes. 

Mmmm, Ghost crepes!

Underwater archaeology recovers WWII airman's body

This is from a few years back but is a cool story.  Rest in Peace, Lieutenant.  

Recommended Reading: Empire of the Summer Moon

The most Bad Ass Indian tribe in the old west was not the Lakota that did in the 7th Cavalry, but rather the Comanche.  S. C. Gwynne tells their tale well in The Empire Of The Summer Moon.

Essentially they were ferocious and highly mobile guerillas who thought nothing of raiding a thousand miles (from Kansas into Mexico), often - maybe usually - riding at night by the light of the moon.

To this day a summertime full moon is often referred to (at least in Texas) as a "Comanche Moon).  In fact, that was the title of a miniseries set in the old west not so very long ago. 

The book does a great job describing the rise of the Comanche from obscure beginning to their domination of the central Great Plains.  They were the best horsemen in North America and the masters of the hit-and-run.  They put so much pressure on settled tribes (not to mention Spanish colonists) that they essentially stopped Spanish advancement north of the Rio Grande.  The book makes the case that the Mexican government invited the Americans into Texas to act as a buffer between Mexico and the Comanches.  The Texas border with them was bloody and settlement was slow.

The end of the Civil War and the introduction of repeating firearms (and light horse artillery), combined with the slaughter of the bison herds was a problem that the Comanches could never solve.  Even so, Kit Carson admitted that their chief Quanah Parker (son of a kidnapped Texas girl who went native in the tribe)  almost wiped out his entire command.  The second half of the book is Quanah's story, from the greatest war chief of the Plains to the Reservation, and ultimately to his unlikely friendship with Teddy Roosevelt.

Highly, highly recommended. 

The book left out what I think is perhaps the most unlikely Comanche story, that of David Pendleton Okenhater. Born as O-kun-ha-tuh (Making Medicine) in the 1840s, he was in the thick of the Comanche wars of the 1860s - he was with Quanah at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.  In prison at Ft. Marion in Florida in the 1870s he ended up as First Sergeant of the prisoners (really!) and was noticed by Capt. Pratt for the art he was creating (really!).  Pratt encouraged his art career and one of his pieces came into the collection of Mrs. Alice Key Pendleton, wife of a Senator from Ohio (really!).  The Pendletons paid for Okenhater to be sent to live at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in New York.   He took their name out of respect and gratitude.

He was baptized there in 1878 and ordained a deacon in 1881.  As a Deacon he was sent essentially as a missionary back to the Cheyenne.  He lived out his life as a Deacon and a Cheyenne Chief until his death in 1931.  That was a long way from a taker of scalps.  A long way.

In 1985, the Episcopal Church declared David Pendleton Okenhater a saint.  His feast day is September 1.  That's quite some Medicine for O-Kun-Ha-Tuh to make.

Predictions for AI security

This is interesting even if it follows what we've seen for all security technologies since, well, forever:

Basically whoever can see the most about the target, and can hold that picture in their mind the best, will be best at finding the vulnerabilities the fastest and taking advantage of them. Or, as the defender, applying patches or mitigations the fastest.

And if you’re on the inside you know what the applications do. You know what’s important and what isn’t. And you can use all that internal knowledge to fix things—hopefully before the baddies take advantage.

summary and prediction

1. Attackers will have the advantage for 3-5 years. For less-advanced defender teams, this will take much longer.
2. After that point, AI/SPQA will have the additional internal context to give Defenders the advantage.  

 So basically it will be a shooting gallery for now with sanity restored later.  I'm somewhat optimistic of AI as a back-end tool (i.e. no user input) to run a set of interesting but more or less canned queries.  User input sanitization issues basically disappear at that point.

(via) 

Remember about all that Voice mail spam?

I posted about it a while back.   Lawrence has been following this and has an update linking it to China:

Well, as suspected, it was China’s.

This was in fact my first thought: Smells like a State Actor.

Having thought about it, I suspect it is linked to the PRC, but "outsourced" to US-based Bad Guys.  This seems a business (selling infrastructure to send out floods of voice mail spam).  It looks like the guys who ran this also let people swat folks they didn't like.  In fact, this is how they got caught because one of the victims was a Congressman.

And so a lack of Opsec led to compromise of the whole system.  Cry me a river.

And Lawrence has a great suggestion:

If theses SIM farms are active, there should be ways for telecomms to algorithmically search for mobile call hotspots where too many calls issue from too small an area. Let’s hope they’re doing that and working with various U.S. three letter agencies to shut them down right now. 

Endorsed. 

Dad Joke CCCLXIII

The guy who invented the Ferris Wheel never met the man who invented the Merry-go-round.  They ran in different circles. 

I'm back

The Queen Of The World and I are back from our Son-In-Law's retirement from the US Navy.

25 years, ending as a Senior Chief.  He would have made Master Chief but would have had to have another sea duty, and Abby finally put her foot down.  I don't know that I blame her. 

I must say based on the other Senior and Master Chiefs I met there that these senior NCOs are absolutely the backbone of the fleet.

Bravo Zulu, Steve! 

G'mar tov

The Day of Atonement is a day for reflection.  This is good for all of us, Tribe or not. 

To our Jewish readers, Shanna tovah.