Rest in peace, Flight Lt

Dwight (my go-to guy for obituaries) has one worth your time: the last WWI recipient of the Victoria Cross takes off on his final flight.

For those on this side of the Pond who are unfamiliar with the VC, it is the UK equivalent of the US Medal Of Honor: awarded for bravery above and beyond the call of duty under fire. It (as the HoH) is very often awarded posthumously.  Flight Lt. Cruickshank survived the war to the ripe old age of 105, the oldest WWII VC recipient.

As with many who served - and very, very many of those awarded these decorations - he kept an enormous humility.  I love this quote from Dwight's post: 

…he told The Daily Telegraph, “The citation said ‘showed great courage’ and all that nonsense, but a lot of people would have done that in those circumstances.”

Translation: No, I wasn't a hero in the war.  But I served in a Company of heroes.

Ave atque vale, Flight Lieutenant. May your Final Review be in Glory.

Art Carney and Johnny Carson jam together

I never knew he could play the piano, or that Johnny could play drums.  Or that Sid Caesar could play sax.

Wow

Having grown up during the Cold War, I got used to European leaders who, if not always friendly, were all serious people.  Francois Mitterand was serious.  The Iron Lady Thatcher was serious.  Heck, even pinko Willy Brandt was serious.

Now Donald Trump lines them up like school kids.

It's arguable that the only serious European leader today is Vladimir Putin.  Good Grief.

UPDATE 19 AUGUST 2025 16:46:  HMS Defiant leaves a comment about Hungary's Prime Ministor Viktor Orban as being a serious leader.  I 100% agree. I would also suspect that many of the leaders from Central and Eastern Europe are also serious.  The ones in the photo, not so much.

George Gershwin and DuBose Hayward - "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess (sung by Ella Fitzgerald)

Porgy & Bess was first performed in 1935 and sadly has peaked.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was popular in the Soviet Union during the Cold War as a display of American repression - the 1980s film White Nights showcased this..  It seems that the Usual Suspects who control popular culture are not subtle enough to line this into their repertoire of  anti-American art, but whatever.

This is without doubt the most famous song from that opera, and has been recorded by pretty much everybody - Janis Joplin & The Holding Company may have been the most unexpected of these.  Here's Ella Fitzgerald with what approaches the Platonic Ideal performance of the song. 

Toby Keith - Rum Is the Reason

This is a fun song that could have been by Jimmy Buffett.

Rum Is The Reason (Songwriters: Toby Keith, Bobby Pinson)

I heard Davey Crockett had a pint in his pocket, good whiskey at the Alamo
Now that Pancho Villa had a jug of tequila
When he walked the streets of old Mexico
While Blackbeard was fleecing around the hurricane season
He didn't quit because of a girl
Yeah, rum is the reason pirates never ruled the world

 

While Russia was brawling
I'll bet that old Stalin was calling for a vodka martini
While the world waited in fear
Old Hitler drank beer from a stein, eating sauerkraut and weenies
Yeah, down through the ages, as they're turning their pages
They couldn't drink the diamonds and pearls
No, rum is the reason pirates never ruled the world

 

I ain't getting much done, but I'm having fun sailing on the deep blue sea
My whole body goes numb from a bottle of dark rum, and the sun sinking down on me
My catch of the day is a tall Cuba Libre chasing down with a 12-ounce curl
Yeah, rum is the reason pirates never ruled the world

 

I ain't getting much done, but I'm having fun sailing on the deep blue sea
My whole body goes numb from a bottle of dark rum, and the sun sinking down on me
My catch of the day is a tall Cuba Libre chasing down with a 12-ounce curl
Oh, rum is the reason, I guess
Hey, rum is the reason pirates never ruled the world

Dad Joke CCCLVII

What do you name a dyslexic roman?

Ramon. 

LOL

 

Stolen from B at In The Middle Of The Right, who has some good advice about this.

Dad Joke CCCLVI

Four Norse gods, one Roman god, and two astronomical bodies walk into a bar.

The bartender says Oh, this will be a week joke. 

 

UK.GOV to US Tech Companies: Put an encryption backdoor in your stuff

US.GOV to UK.GOV: Get lost, punk:

The Home Office's war on encryption – its most technically complex and controversial aspect of modern policymaking yet – is starting to look like battlefield failure after more than ten years of skirmishes.

First tabled by former prime minister David Cameron in 2015 following a terrorist shooting at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, vague wording alluded to a potential ban in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.

...

However, it seems Home Office staff are now coming to terms with the fact that the Trump administration will block any attempt to further strongarm Amercia's tech companies.


Insiders told the Financial Times, speaking on condition of anonymity, that the Trump administration's disapproval of the UK's plans, which the president has previously likened to Chinese-style policymaking, is the main obstacle in achieving its encryption-busting ambitions.

Being compared to Red China* has got to hurt.  But you know how not to get compared to Red China?  Don't act like Red China. 

Remember, Government mandated encryption backdoors are a bad idea.   Really.

* I only use the term to bother the Right Sort of people.

CMP Update

The Civilian Marksmanship Program has dropped their price on M1917 Enfields from $1000 to $900. 

When Tom Lehrer pranked NSA

LOL. 

I thought that song was hilarious.  You can listen to it here. Remember to always call it please "research" ...

Cybersecurity jobs in decline?

I've posted often about how to pursue a career in computer security, so often in fact that there is a post category for it.  But there are signs of decline in the field:

"During COVID, there was huge hiring. Then after that, the companies said 'Oh my gosh, we have too many people. We need to do some downsizing.' And what happened then was a lot of very talented tech people were laid off and began flooding the market in all sorts of areas and began trying to reposition themselves."

...

AI agents now routinely make decisions about a person's resume and many applicants lack the skills to game such software and bag an interview.

There's also the problem of ghost jobs bedeviling recruitment websites, she added. The majority of HR people surveyed in multiple studies report filing job adverts for positions that don't exist. Reasons vary from trying to give the impression a business is growing to both insiders and onlookers, and to motivate staff to work harder because "they think they are replaceable."

This is likely a sign that the industry is maturing.

New Viking site discovered in Canada?

If true, this is really cool:

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have used satellite imagery to identify a site in Newfoundland that could be the first new Viking site discovered in North America in over 50 years.

Satellite imagery, magnetometer surveys, and a preliminary excavation of the site at Point Rosee in southern Newfoundland last year could point to a potentially fascinating discovery.

...

Archeologist Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, used high-resolution satellite imagery to spot ruins as small as 11 inches buried below the surface, according to NOVA. Satellites positioned around 478 miles above the Earth enabled Parcak and her team to scan a vast section of America and Canada’s eastern seaboard.

The satellite images, two magnetometer surveys, and preliminary excavations suggest “sub-surface rectilinear features,” according to the experts, who also identified possible evidence of ironworking in the form of roasted iron ore. Radiocarbon technology has dated the site to between 800 and 1300AD.

Excavations are required to confirm the discovery, so we will have to wait and see. Still, we've known for a long time that Vikings were on that island during that time.

Interestingly, The Queen Of The World was born not 40 miles from Point Rosse when her father was stationed at the Air Force Base on Stephenville.

Are we winning the security war?

I was not really expecting this:

The surprising conclusion: there’s a long way to go, but we’re doing better than we think. There are substantial improvements across threat operations, threat ecosystem and organizations, and software vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, we’re still not seeing increases in consequence. And since cost imposition is leading to a survival-of-the-fittest contest, we’re stuck with perhaps fewer but fiercer predators. 

Something that feels different from 10 years ago is a much greater focus on security compliance: SOC2, ISO 27xxx, etc.  There's a lot more of this than there used to be, and this absolutely will help shut out the ankle biters and larval stage Bad Guys.  A second order effect of this is that the lack of success for these types will encourage some of them to drop out of the hacking biz.

Of course, SOC2 won't really help much with the top predators, but I've said for a long long time that you are unlikely to be able to secure yourself from the KGB (OK, OK, FSB). 

But all in all, this was unexpected good news. 

Summer security happenings

The Register has a good article on the security conferences going on in Las Vegas right now: Black Hat, B-Sides, and DEFCON.  The article is very accessible for non-security gurus and gives a really good flavor of what's what in the security research community.

Full Disclosure: I was fingered by SumD00d in the DEFCON "Spot the Fed" contest way back in (IIRC) 2006 when I was at Big Tech Company.  I wasn't a Fed, but the experience was fun enough to be memorable.

If you are at least casually interested in what's happening in the Security community, this is a good 5 minute read. 

Rodgers and Hammerstein - Edelweiss from The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music was an enormous commercial success, not only winning hte best picture Oscar but becoming the highest grossing film of all time for a number of years.

The film has an interesting pedigree.  Maria von Trapp (the person played by Julie Andrews in the film) wrote the story which was originally turned into a pair of films in West Germany (The Trapp Family and The Trapp Family in America) which were the most successful films in West German history.  The story became a very successful stage musical before being filmed.

This song was added almost as an afterthought to the musical.  It was written to sound like an old Austrian folk song but was entirely new.  It was the last song that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together before Hammerstein died from stomach cancer.  It fooled people all over the world: one Austrian gentleman once told Rodgers that he loved the song in the film but of course had learned the lyrics in the original German.

This scene reminds me of the "battle of the anthems" scene in Casablanca, although much more understated.  The audience singing along was a great big middle finger to the Nazis.

One final bit of trivia about this song: The Queen Of The World plays this on her ukulele.  She's really good.

More on Tom Lehrer

The Register (as reigning Nerd-Central) has a really interesting post up about Lehrer's life and music including the NSA, Jello shots, and not one but two Royal Family mentions.  Pretty cool.