So on Saturday there was a "No Kings" protest at the local library. The Queen Of The World said that they posted pix on Facebook, so there were there in the morning.
But I went by there on my way to the supermarket at 11:00 AM and there was NOBODY there. Nada. Zip.
That's some righteous protest, right there. [rolls eyes]
Country Music has all sorts of songs that connect with every day situations, so it's no surprise that there's a great selection for Father's Day.
This one brings back memories of #2 Son and his best friend, fishing for harbor pollock using scallops as bait. The Queen Of The World remembers her Dad entering her in a fishing tournament and taking her. She won, but I expect he thought he did, too.
The little girl in Trace's video is his daughter.
And The Queen Of The World suggested this one, which is perfect for the day. She's not just a pretty face, but wicked smart, too. If this video doesn't make you smile than we just can't be friends anymore.
The girls in Jackson's video are his daughters. Like they say, three chords and the truth.
Happy Father's Day, y'all.
Don't play in the street at the protests tomorrow. Remember the first rule of winning a gunfight: don't be there. Don't go to stupid places with stupid people doing stupid things.
It's hard to tell what's going to happen here in Western Florida tomorrow. Hopefully things will be more or less orderly. But remember what the Citrus County Sheriff said:
"And if you come to Citrus County to start trouble, I am an equal opportunity arrestor,"
Heh. Got to love Florida sheriffs.
This is my shocked face. I mean who would have seen that coming?
But the cameras are insecure by default, which means that they are insecure forever:
Security researchers managed to access the live feeds of 40,000 internet-connected cameras worldwide and they may have only scratched the surface of what's possible....
Aside from the potential national security implications, cameras were also accessed in hotels, gyms, construction sites, retail premises, and residential areas, which the researchers said could prove useful for petty criminals.
...
"It should be obvious to everyone that leaving a camera exposed on the internet is a bad idea, and yet thousands of them are still accessible," said Bitsight in a report.
Gee, ya think?
There are two problems, both related:
So if you get any of these God forsaken things, look online on how to secure them before you install them. You can get most manuals in PDF - although I expect a lot of them won't go deep into the issue. For example, I can't find a single Youtube video on how to set up a Ring doorbell securely.
Also expect to may more for devices with better security, assuming you can find any.
There's some good ideas on IoT security here. I have posted in the past about having a separate WiFi network that is firewalled off from your home WiFi.
Because nothing says "Father's Day" quite like street barricades and burning cars ...
Big Country points out a nation-wide planned day of fire that's coming this weekend. Check out your locale for places you might want to avoid. After all, the first rule of gunfighting is to not go stupid places with stupid people.
It will be really interesting to see what happens. It looks like the polling on this - illegal aliens waving Mexican flags in front of burning cars - it absolutely terrible for the Democrats. If there are any adults left in that party you'd think they would clamp down on this. This will likely result in lots of blue area police departments being unleashed on the rioters.
And the next time some mouth-breathing gun banner asks you why you need a 30 round magazine, tell them that the Rooftop Koreans had not just 30 round magazines, but (legal) full auto. The LA Riot was in 1992, only six years after the super-sketchy Hughes Amendment, approved by voice vote rather than roll call.
I know that some of you are former Secret Squirrel types, and a bunch more were (shall we say) Secret Squirrel adjacent. I just stumbled across a fairly new podcast called The Rest Is Classified. Really fun, and one of the guys is 100% Secret Squirrel. Former Company man, in fact.
You can get it on your favorite podcast site, or listen on Youtube. I thought that the series on Edward Snowden was very well done.
If this kind of thing was your background (heck, or just an interest) then I recommend this very highly indeed.
Tagged Burn Before Reading because that's kind of hilarious. I crack me up sometimes ...
Except it's not about drones, it's about what NATO is up to:
I see throughout X this morning that an enemy has attacked Russian air bases all over Russia with drones launched from concealed launchers that had been free to roam around the country. If you think about it for just a little bit you understand that there was massive collusion on the parts of the various frontier NATO states that permitted drone operators to fly their drones over the frontiers into Russia where they could be collected, armed and concealed in trucks for a long ride to their launch/distribution point.
The thing is though that just as Churchill was content to let Coventry burn despite knowing of the attack in advance, so too is a KGB man willing to sacrifice a few obsolete weapons to gather incontrovertible truth that NATO is carrying out direct attacks on Russia.
What's weird is that I thought that we just had a chance to vote against thermonuclear war in the last election. That seemed like one of Trump's platform planks. I guess I was just overly optimistic.
Big Country is doing a series of Lee-Enfield restorations which are well worth your time if you (like me) love old Mil-Surp bolties.
By accident I ran across one of Ian McCollum's Forgotten Weapons vids about how the British Army did a mod of the SMLE to make it a semi-automatic rifle. It's cool in a "hey, this really works!" kind of way. Total kludge, but really cool.
My favorites are all here (in order of personal preference):
And my favorite rums (sorry, no fancy chart):
Note that rums #1 and #2 will cost you every bit as much as the good Bourbons.
Tuna sends this in (you're doing all my blogging for me, buddy!):
What did the psychiatrist say to the man wearing nothing but saran wrap?
Clearly I can see you’re nuts.
They have said for years that they are libertarian. That's not true. By their works shall ye know them, and all that.
Rather, they're Washington Establishment, Libertarian Department. Everything is not pro-liberty, it's anti-Trump, all the time. (Speculation Alert) Probably their big donors insist on this, and you can't jeopardize the gravy train.
Case in point: Trump's biggest libertarian action to date (which dwarfs the DOGE spending cuts) is his executive order requiring each Agency to post all the regulations they have promulgated which have criminal penalties, and requiring the Agencies to rescind all that do not have a Mens Rea requirement. Seemingly there are hundreds of thousands of these, and not even the Agencies themselves know exactly how many. Thus, the need for the executive order.
Mens Rea is the legal term that defines knowledge that you are about to commit a crime - regulations with criminal penalties where you don't even have to know that it's a crime are basically the definition of tyranny.
You'd think that libertarians would be cheering this executive order from the rooftops.
[crickets]
I can only find one article on the subject which, despite its reluctance to do so gives credit where it is due. They even say this sort of regulation turns the rule of law into a cruel joke. So where's the celebration of a huge win for freedom? Where's the victory lap for self-proclaimed champions of "Free Minds and Free Markets"?
To ask the questions are to answer them. Donald Trump obviously provides the Wrong Sort of freedom. [rolls eyes]
Tagged Statist Pricks, Hypocrites R Us, and Filthy Lucre because, well, you know.
HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
I was flying to Dad's memorial service back in 2011. This was the view out of my airplane window:
My flight to Detroit just touched down. The flight attendants came on the PA asking everyone to remain seated when we reach the gate, so some soldiers returning back to Afghanistan.
Everyone clapped. Everyone.
Then the Captain came on. He said we were taking a fallen soldier home. You could have heard a pin drop.
God Speed, whoever you are. I can't imagine any thanks can possibly fill the void your family feels.
We're at the gate, and the plane is clapping for the soldiers again. Out the window, you can see the cars lined up on the tarmac for our fallen hero. Everyone' crowded around the windows.
It feels like you're in church - that you're in the presence of something holy.
Maybe Donald Trump is doing something to end the endless wars we've been in these two decades or more. At least we've brought the fallen home.
This weekend I don't think that the fallen would begrudge you your time with family and friends. But remember them.
OK, the post title is intentionally inflammatory, but here's a pointer to a very heterodox view on the subject:
Patch Tuesday has rolled around again, but if you don't rush to implement the feast of fixes it delivered, your security won't be any worse off in the short term – and may improve in the future.
That's the opinion of Craig Lawson, a Research Vice President at analyst Gartner, who on Wednesday told the firm's Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference: "Nobody has ever out-patched threat actors at scale."
Now for some important background. Gartner Group is probably the premier IT market research organization. All the big companies subscribe to their work. Gartner prides themselves on bucking the tide of conventional wisdom (not too often, of course) - this is a great example of this. They also pride themselves on having quotable quotes that will get picked up in the media - this is also a great, classic Gartner quotable quote.
Nobody has ever out-patched threat actors at scale.
Well, yeah. The point of joining vulnerability data with threat exposure data is one we talked about 25 years ago. The concept is a good one, but the devil is (as always) in the details. Quite frankly, a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) who tells his security team to back off patching - and whose company then gets hacked - won't likely be CISO after the next Board meeting. Just sayin'.
But this is pure Gartner Group. Interesting idea, well stated, enticingly attractive for those who see themselves as Six Sigma. I encourage you all to click through and read it. Just keep in mind that this idea has been a non-starter for a quarter century. Nothing has changed here.
But Gartner Security conferences are a lot of fun, and many fine lunches and dinners are enjoyed.
Gerry leave a comment to ASM826's post about Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson becoming eligible for the Hall Of Fame:
So when will the Steroid boyz be allowed in?
Good question. It brought to mind A-Rod, and a comment from Chris Lynch back in the day:
Every time A-Rod comes up to bat in Fenway, they should play Huey Lewis and the News "I want a new drug" ...
Well, okay then. I dunno when he's be eligible, but if they induct him, this should be their bumper music.
The sports news this week is Pete Rose and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson being reinstated by Major League Baseball making them both eligible for the Hall of Fame.
My first thought was, "What are the odds on that?"
Dude, you've been coming around here for a long time asking to get added to the blog roll. And when I do add you, you don't seem to notice: not four months after that first link you're back in the comments asking to get blogrolled even though you were already there.
This has been your unique approach to blogging for 15 years. Weird.
Actually, it's gotten worse. You've left two links in two days about something entirely unrelated to my posts, pointing to a post on your site. That's comment spam. I see that you have ads on your site, so I guess that's why. It doesn't seem that you added me to your blogroll, so reciprocal blog back scratching doesn't seem to be your thing.
Last November I posted about a revelation that the UK weather bureau (the Meteorologic Office) had 113 weather stations in Britain that were reporting daily temperature data, but which actually didn't exist at all:
I've posted many times about how the temperature data is modified after its initial collection, but this takes the cake. One third of UK weather stations simply do not exist
A full third of the database is imaginary. Except not so fast, said the "experts". Those 113 weather stations don't exist, but the data is based on nearby, well-sited (i.e. high quality) different stations.
Hmmmm. So can we get a list of those stations? Well, not really:
Last year the UK Met Office was shown to be inventing long-term temperature data at 103 non-existent weather stations. It was claimed in a later risible ‘fact check’ that the data were estimated from nearby well-correlated neighbouring stations. Citizen super sleuth Ray Sanders issued a number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to learn the identity of these correlating sites but has been told that the information is not held by the Met Office. So the invented figures for the non-existent sites are supposedly provided by stations that the Met Office claims it cannot identify and are presumably not recorded in its copious computer storage and archive. [Bold by me - Borepatch]
I think we've heard something like this before.
Err, the dog ate their homework? Man, and you wonder why people don't trust climate scientists? And remember - most people don't know a tenth of the shenanigans that climate scientists are up to, and they still don't trust them. Quite frankly, the are 100% correct not to trust them.
As I posted last November, this post is tagged "Junk Science" and "Climate Bullshit" because, well, you know.
Linux will remove i486 support:
More than 36 years after the release of the 486 and 18 years after Intel stopped making them, leaders of the Linux kernel believe the project can improve itself by leaving i486 support behind. Ingo Molnar, quoting Linus Torvalds regarding "zero real reason for anybody to waste one second" on 486 support, submitted a patch series to the 6.15 kernel that updates its minimum support features. Those requirements now include TSC (Time Stamp Counter) and CX8 (i.e., "fixed" CMPXCH8B, its own whole thing), features that the 486 lacks (as do some early non-Pentium 586 processors).
It's not the first time Torvalds has suggested dropping support for 32-bit processors and relieving kernel developers from implementing archaic emulation and work-around solutions. "We got rid of i386 support back in 2012. Maybe it's time to get rid of i486 support in 2022," Torvalds wrote in October 2022. Failing major changes to the 6.15 kernel, which will likely arrive late this month, i486 support will be dropped.
The fact that this is news is actually the news. Microsoft dropped 486 support when the released Windows XP (!) in 2001, basically a quarter century ago. Linux has the all time record for backwards compatibility.
Full disclosure: I don't believe that I ever had a computer wit a 486 processor - I'm pretty sure I jumped straight from 386 to Pentium. That said, I bought a used computer to turn into a Linux firewall back around 2000, and that ran until The Queen Of The World and I opened up Castle Borepatch in 2016.
Fare thee well, 486. You've earned a rest after 36 years.
The political story of the West in the 21st Century has been one of devolution of power. Several EU referenda were soundly voted down (e.g. Netherlands and France) although the Powers That Be made the publics there vote again and again until the "got it right". Brexit was a shock to the elites, as was the election (and re-election) of Donald Trump.
All of these are statements of majorities rejecting the Conventional Wisdom of centralized power controlled by credentialed "expert" elites (scare quotes used intentionally).
Now it's Canada's turn. Alberta is making serious noises about leaving Canada and joining the USA. Here is a forceful statement from Alberta's Premier laying out the causes of their unhappiness with Ottawa, and quite frankly making numerous demands of the central government.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
That's what this speech is. And it includes an "or else" after the demands, that next year will see an Alberta referendum.
This seems like it's pretty big news.
Well, Windows for consumers, at least:
The software giant announced the move Thursday, May 1, traditionally known as "World Password Day," with a declaration it had joined forces with the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance to re-name the pseudo-holiday "World Passkey Day."
Redmond’s not just playing with words as the Windows giant has also decided that all new Microsoft accounts will use passkeys by default. Passkeys, which involve the use of biometric identification like a fingerprint or face scan, PIN, and the like, will be the de facto new way to set up an account, and existing Microsoft users are being encouraged to visit their account settings page to delete their passwords and start using passkeys.
(Think of passkeys as a replacement of passwords.)
I'm of two minds here. On the upside, passwords are generally an infinitely renewable source of insecurity. This has been known for decades:
On the downside, there is one negative that can simply never be fixed: you cannot change your biometrics if this somehow gets compromised. You cannot revoke a fingerprint and issue a new one.
My take: hold off on this one. Certainly Microsoft's commercial customers will never go here - password rotation is specifically required by essentially all industry security mandates (ISO 27000, SOC2, etc).
Color me unconvinced. I'm not sure exactly what motivated Microsoft to do this.
Toby Keith raised thoroughbreds. His dream was to have one in the Kentucky Derby. Sadly he died before seeing his horse run in today's Derby.
Run like the wind, Render Judgement.
Well that's your problem, right there:
Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.
CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected “several” hospitals, leading them to activate “downtime procedures.” Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.
The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.
Everything is "cloud" these days. Having worked in cloud for a decade, it's really really hard to get good reliability. The best vendors promise "Five Nines" reliability, i.e. uptime of 99.999%. The very best vendors have compensation clauses in their contracts and pay penalties to customers when they don't meet the uptime agreement.
Five Nines means that you will have no more than five minutes of downtime in a year. Like I said, this is really hard stuff.
Oracle Health had this customer down for five days. This translates to less than 99% uptime - probably 98.5%. Not a good look for a cloud provider.
Even worse, this isn't the first problem for Oracle Health. Oracle Health's Federal cloud went down for a day last month, taking 6 VA Hospitals and 26 clinics with them.
If you're in IT and looking at cloud services (and why wouldn't you?), pay special attention to the Service Level Agreements. SLAs with penalty clauses mean that the vendor is serious about reliability.
Wow:
A remotely operated vehicle exploration of the wreck of the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sunk in the Battle of Midway, has found a 1940-41 Ford automobile on the aft hangar deck. This is remarkable for several reasons, first and foremost that it wasn’t thrown overboard in the crew’s attempts to save the ship after it was disabled by a torpedo attack on the battle’s first day, June 4th 1942. Also, motor vehicles were not typically kept aboard ships at sea, especially ones headed into battle. Furthermore, this was a full-featured Ford Super Deluxe Woody civilian model, not the pared-down military model of this Ford wagon, dubbed the C11, that you’d expect to see in active military use.
That engine will take a bit of work before it turns over ...
US health insurance giant Blue Shield of California handed sensitive health information belonging to as many as 4.7 million members to Google's advertising empire, likely without these individuals' knowledge or consent.
The data shared may have included medical claim dates and providers used, which raises the specter of Google targeting ads based on the fact that you booked an appointment with a certain type of doctor - say, a cancer specialist, fertility clinic, or psychiatrist.
Other info potentially shared with Google ranged from patient names, insurance plan details, city of residence and zip code, gender, family size, and Blue Shield-assigned account identifiers, to financial responsibility info, and search queries and results for the "Find a Doctor" tool — including location, plan type, and provider details.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln - how did you like the play?
Blue Shield declined to answer The Register's questions, including how it discovered this years-long data leak, and what other third-party trackers (if any) are on its websites.
...
"This isn't just a technical misstep. It's a HIPAA compliance failure," Ensar Seker, CISO at threat intel firm SOCRadar, told The Register, referring to America's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that safeguards medical data.
Bingo is his name-o. Just to emphasize that: this wasn't just a "data breach", it was a criminal violation of US law.
High Energy Radio Frequency. Now it seems to be some sort of cigar thing. But the old HERF gun concept is back, to shoot down drones:
British soldiers have successfully taken down drones with a radio-wave weapon.
The demonstrator weapon, a type of Radiofrequency Directed Energy Weapon (RF DEW), uses high-frequency radio waves to disrupt the electronic components inside drones, resulting in the devices malfunctioning.
"RF DEW systems can defeat airborne targets at ranges of up to 1 km and are effective against threats which cannot be jammed using electronic warfare," the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said.However, the nature of the technology means that a wide beam is used, which is effective at disabling multiple drones simultaneously, but lacks target discrimination. Hence, Sgt Mayers, the first British soldier to bring down drones using a radiofrequency weapon, described it as "a great asset to Layered Air Defence."
The MOD believes the system, which it estimates costs 10p per shot fired, "could provide a cost-effective complement to traditional missile-based air defence systems."
This is what you need - as long as drones cost more than 10p, you will win that exchange all day.
Yes, we usually hear this at Christmas. Remember, though, that
Handel wrote this for an Easter performance. I can think of no greater -
more emotionally stirring - music for the Lord's rising than this. The
kettle drum at the end of the Amen never fails to thrill. As a matter
of fact, the opening bars of Worthy Is The Lamb never fail to thrill,
either. If you can read music, you have my permission to do a bit of a
singalong to the score shown here.
The Lord is risen, alleluia, alleluia.
This is a great reflection from the Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land. I hadn't known that today is the only day that the Catholic church does not celebrate the Mass.
There's quite a lot of food for (spiritual) thought and reflection at the link.
Today is Palm Sunday, and what is unique (well, for a bit) about this year's Holy Week is that the Latin Easter, the Orthodox Easter, and Jewish Passover all line up. Usually they don't. So it's kind of a theological alignment of the planets. I hope that the Lord gives us all some extra grace points for this, but have my doubts about whether the Almighty is impressed with our silly calendrical games ...
But this means that the holiday we are celebrating is ancient indeed. In respect to this is an ancient hymn, from the 9th century.
Kassia was a Roman noblewoman living in Constantinople in the first half of the 800s. Both beautiful and intelligent, she was included in what we can call a Medieval beauty pageant. The imperial court would sometimes have "Bride Shows" where noble families could present their daughters as potential brides for Imperial princes. Kassia was included in the bride show for prince Theophilos in 830AD, but the chronicles say that her sharp, sarcastic reply to the prince soured him on her beauty.
But she was the daughter of one of the leading families in the Empire, and so had avenues open to her that were not to most women of the day. She founded a convent in 843AD and became its abbess. Her education allowed her to write first poetry and then music - all of a spiritual bent, as you would imagine.
She wrote many, many hymns of which 50 survive to this day. Unusually, both the text and the musical score have survived. Twenty three of her hymns are included in today's Orthodox liturgy which is astonishing for any figure from the ninth century, let alone a woman. Remember, this is a properly Roman hymn.
This Holy Week you might want to ponder just how ancient our faith is, and the efforts that people have taken to preserve it over the centuries.
This dropped 2 days ago. Highlights:
There's a lot more, particularly about reestablishing a shipbuilding (and container building) industry.
Here's a good overview on Youtube:
Walter emails with a question that probably will have broad interest:
BP -
Long time reader question here:
I need to replace my long-in-tooth NetGear WiFi router and could use a suggestion on what are the best routers to consider; I need both 2.4 and 5 Ghz to support existing equipment. Square footage = ~1.8K, rough footprint 56X32 on one level; the existing (centrally located) NetGear covers all of it well without repeaters or mesh, meets all speed requirements, is currently supported by 100 meg coaxial cable but 1 gig fiber is a month or so away, house is pre-wired to each room with coax in the next couple of weeks, and since the router also supports the security system high security is a strong consideration.
Expert suggestions?
Well, I am not really an expert, but I play one on TV so here goes. I will start with some high level recommendations and then get more specific with some actual device suggestions (note: I do not have any commercial interest with any of these vendors). Lastly, I will end with some generic WiFi security suggestions and pointers to old posts here.
Recommendation #1: Do NOT select any device from TP-Link (which are generally the least expensive options). These are Chinese and there is a nasty habit of Chinese companies putting back doors in their commercial hardware. The US Government is considering banning these because they don't trust them any more than I do.
Recommendation #2: Use open source software on your device. There is a long history of WiFi routers having security bugs that never get fixed because they are end of life (I posted about this ten years back so this is a persistent problem in the industry). Profit margins are razor thin and so you will end up with an orphaned device. I recommend OpenWrt which has been around since forever and has great hardware support. Yes, this means putting new software on your brand new device. You will only go through this pain once and you never have to worry about unpatched security bugs.
Recommendation #3: Look for commercial WiFi routers that come with OpenWRT pre-installed. This will save you a step. Turris Omnia is one option (and they have a pretty interesting Distributed Adaptive Firewall security feature). OpenWrt One is another. There is one from TakTikal but it seems to be out of stock.
Recommendation #4: If you want to go with a more commercial device and flash your own software, I'd recommend Linksys and Netgear because they have great OpenWrt support. Here are some recommended devices. At this point you will be selecting on feature/function. Walter had some specific needs that you might not, so there's something for everyone here.
Recommendation #5: Once you are set up, make sure you have secured the configuration. WiFi encryption is almost certain to be on by default, but change your dang password (duh!). One thing I recommended in that post (and still recommend today) is to write the router password on a piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of the device (note: don't tape it over ventilation holes). Yes, writing down passwords is usually double plus ungood security but face it - anyone who gets physical access to your device can do a factory reset and take it over anyway. Your front door lock now becomes an excellent WiFi security feature and you never have to worry about forgetting the password.
Lastly, read this post from sixteen (!!!) years ago. Secure your damn WiFi router.
I know that a bunch of you are in the tech biz, so if you have anything to add, drop it in the comments.
When did the EU.gov get so, well, stupid?
The EU has issued its plans to keep the continent's denizens secure and among the pages of bureaucratese are a few worrying sections that indicate the political union wants to backdoor encryption by 2026, or even sooner.Well, duh.
While the superstate has made noises about backdooring encryption before the ProtectEU plan [PDF], launched on Monday at the European Parliament, says the European Commission wants to develop a roadmap to allow "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement in 2025" and a technology roadmap to do so by the following year.
...
According to the document, the EC will set up a Security Research & Innovation Campus at its Joint Research Centre in 2026 to work out the technical details. Since it's impossible to backdoor encryption in a way that can't be exploited by others, it seems a very odd move to make if security's your goal.
China, Russia, and the US certainly would spend a huge amount of time and money to find the backdoor. Even American law enforcement has given up on the cause of backdooring, although the UK still seems to be wedded to the idea. [boldface by me - Borepatch]
Now the cynical view of things is that the EU.gov is not being stupid at all, but just think that their adversary is not China and Russia and the USofA but rather their own populations.
Heat, TopGun, TopGun II and Tombstone. My favorite Val Kilmer movies. He's not the leading star in any of them. But all of them would not be the great movies they are without him and Tombstone would be a largely forgotten modern western without his interpretation of Doc Holiday.
In recent years he suffered from cancer, and his small role in TopGun Maverick is compelling even without his voice.
Now he is gone at 65. Here he is in his prime.
I just realized that I don't have a blogroll link to Flares Into Darkness which is really strange since I've been linking to him since forever because he finds all sorts of really interesting (and eclectic) stuff. He has literally been a daily read for me for years and years, and I must have had a massive brain fart in not blogrolling him.
Well, fixed now. Sorry about that, Ambisinistral.
Recommended to everyone. You know what to do.
UPDATE 28 MARCH 2025 15:24: Huh - I see that I did have him on the blogroll.
The passing of George Foreman got me thinking about how boxing has changed from back in the day (1960s/1970s). Back then we used to watch Friday Night Fights pretty regularly - that tailed off in the 1980s as we all lost interest. It just didn't seem as exciting as it had.
There is a great podcast episode on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History about this: Boxing with Ghosts (free download and highly recommended if you ever watch Friday Night Fights). In it Dan interviews longtime sportswriter for Ring magazine Mike Silver about how boxing is really just a shadow of its former self (and why).
But in this episode Dan tells a George Foreman story that illustrates why boxing was so great in those days. The story is from when Foreman was going for his comeback world championship in a bout against a much younger Michael Moorer. Foreman lost each of the first 9 rounds (unanimously). Entering the 10th round it was like a football game with a minute left when he was down 99 to nothing. A friend of Dan's left and went to the bathroom because the "fight was over". Then two quick punches finished Moorer off in a KO and Foreman was champ again.
There is a lot to admire in Foreman's life, but we remember just what a superb fighter he was. Rest in peace.
The Surveillance State is bringing people together. In this case Apple (iOS) and Google (Android). You will now be able to send end-to-end encrypted messages from iPhones to Android devices and vice versa. It's kind of like what Signal and Telegram do.
You already have that capability with Apple devices sending to other Apple devices, and Android to Android. This new capability now makes it a big, happy, (more) secure world.
You will need to go into your device settings and enable Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol. But yay for cross vendor cooperation and interoperability.
If you are at version lower than 128, you need to update Firefox immediately or all sorts of things will break. The crypto certificate it uses to authenticate basically everything is about to expire so pretty much everything will fail authentication.
Bad things will result.
You can find out what version you are running by going into Settings and scrolling down to the Updates section. The current Firefox version looks to be 136, but if you are 128 or higher then you're fine. If your version is lower than this then click on the "Check for Updates" box.
Aye, but not gone.
Today is the Ides of March, the 15th of this month (each month has Ides on various dates). While we look at the Romans as the greatest engineers and organizers until the 18th century, we then jump to the conclusion that they were rational in an Enlightenment kind of way. They weren't. Rather, they were kind of like a combination of Nuclear-Reactor-Brainiac and Management-By-Ouija-Board*.
The Ides themselves are a great example of this second thing. Their months didn't really start at day 1 and count up the same way that our months do. Well, they kind of did, but you need to break out your Ouija Board to really understand things. The Romans didn't count forwards, they counted backwards from three fixed points in the month: the Nones (usually but not always the 5th of the month), the Ides (usually the 13th but was the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (the 1st of the following month).
The Ides were sacred to Jupiter, Greatest and Best, and so this was a solemn day. Thus in Shakespeare we hear Julius Caesar warned to beware the Ides of March. Plutarch wrote that on his last ill-fated journey to the Senate house, Caesar saw the soothsayer who had warned about the day. Caesar joked, "The Ides of March are come;" the soothsayer is said to have replied "Aye, but not gone." Shakespeare cribbed a lot from the ancient authors.
Except that's not what the ancients said about that event. Suetonius says that Caesar spoke in Greek - Kai su, teknon? This was a very common expression among educated Romans, and was often used in various plays but Kai su is generally translated as "You too". That was the formal translation but it was commonly used as "Screw you". "Teknon" is generally translated as "child" but also was understood as "punk".
So Julius Caesar basically was telling Brutus to get bent. At least if you believe Suetonius.
* This is one of the things that make the ancient Romans endlessly fascinating.
I've been thinking this for the last few weeks, but The Smallest Minority has put it to words. I couldn't say it as well, so here's a quote and a link to his recent post.
"We’re now on Week 5 of the second Trump term and things are not slowing down. Outsiders are in charge of the DoJ, FBI, DoD, ICE…. Change is actually happening. Fraud and waste are being exposed. Spending will be curtailed, at least somewhat. The Ruling Class is no longer in control. They remain a serious threat. The Deep State still has hands on some of the levers of power, but that’s being eaten away by the Trump Administration and alternative media exposing it.
And I finally have some small measure of hope. I give a damn."
People seem to dislike the time changes, and so this is maybe another issue where Trump can side with the People against inertia.
So SpaceX Starship test flight 8 had the same kind of Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly as flight 7. This is disappointing, but as The Silicon Graybeard says, space is hard.
What I find interesting is that SpaceX sends up so many Falcon rockets that it's become normal, if not exactly boring. But Starship is exciting, and misunderstood. If you're a SpaceX fan, I encourage you to read that last link.
Last week I posted about the Congressional request that DNI Gabbard look into the UK government's demand that Apple put an encryption backdoor into their products. She has done so:
In a written response to members of Congress, Gabbard said this week that such a demand would violate Americans’ rights and raise concerns about a foreign government pressuring a U.S.-based technology company.
“This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Gabbard told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who had written to express their worries.
...
Gabbard has asked the heads of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to study the U.K. demand and said she will discuss it with her British counterparts. She noted that existing agreements between the two nations prohibit either country from demanding cloud data about citizens or residents of the other.
This seems unprecedented to me - the relationship between the US and UK intelligence communities has been very close for literally decades - I have personal experience of this in the 1990s and it predates that by a lot.
Europe seems really intent on making all sorts of relationships worse.
We shall not see them relit in our lifetimes:
Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker says her company will withdraw from countries that force messaging providers to allow law enforcement officials to access encrypted user data, as Sweden continues to mull such plans.
Whittaker said Signal intends to exit Sweden should its government amend existing legislation essentially mandating the end of end-to-end encryption (E2EE), an identical position it took as the UK considered its Online Safety Bill, which ultimately did pass with a controversial encryption-breaking clause, although it can only be invoked where technically feasible.
Basically the Sweden.Gov is asking Signal to get pregnant, but only a little bit pregnant. But vulnerabilities (and that's exactly what a government mandated encryption backdoor is) don't work that way.
And from the Department of Irony, the Swedish military oppose this:
The Swedish Armed Forces routinely use Signal and are opposing the bill, saying that a backdoor could introduce vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors.I guess this is just Exhibit 14,543,928 that Europe is fundamentally unserious about their own defense.
This follows hard on the heels of Apple turning off encryption in the UK.
Looking at what's going on over there, it makes me think that maybe we should just cut the whole of them loose, to sink or swim on their own. Unwilling to defend themselves, increasingly despotic to their subjects at home, maybe JD Vance is right after all that we no longer have shared values.
A.k.a. David Johansen. He hated this video but I've posted it here a ton of times just because I enjoy it so much.
He was also great as the cabbie in the film Schrooged.
Thanks for all the great stuff, David. I hope you're having a ball driving your cab.
There are some great video shots of the ship under tow in this video.
Maybe there's something in the water in Washington D.C. these days, but this is clearly A Very Good Thing Indeed:
A bipartisan, bicameral pair of lawmakers urged newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to reevaluate U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence-sharing relations with the United Kingdom in response to a report revealing that the UK secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor into encrypted iCloud backups.
The Feb. 7 report from the Washington Post says that the order issued last month demands UK law enforcement and intelligence operatives be granted worldwide, unfettered access to users’ protected cloud data. Apple customers residing in the United States would be cast into that dragnet.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked Gabbard in the Thursday missive if the Trump administration was made aware of the order by stakeholders and whether the White House has understanding of the CLOUD Act, which lets U.S. law enforcement get data stored by American tech companies, even if that data is on servers outside the U.S., by using warrants or subpoenas.
“If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up in Americans’ phones, tablets, and computers, undermining the security of Americans’ data, as well as of the countless federal, state and local government agencies that entrust sensitive data to Apple products,” they wrote in their letter to Gabbard.
Remember, Encryption Backdoors are a Very Bad Idea. It's not just me saying this, it's the former Director of the UK's GCHQ (their NSA equivalent).
And well done to Congresscritters from both parties in both the House and Senate for putting some pressure on the idiots in Blimey.
Representative Brian Mast from Florida has five minutes to make a point and he puts it to use. The best best explanation of how diversity should work I've heard from a politician.
It still looks like a work in progress, but this likely will be pretty interesting.
I've posted this each President's Day for ten years but have found no reason to adjust the rankings.
It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln's was the 12th, Washington's is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today. But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.So happy President's Day.
* I am currently reading A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (recommended). I had not known that the very first First Lady to have Jackie Kennedy style glamor was his wife Frances, whom he wed in the White House itself. Here she is in her salad days (courtesy of Wikipedia):
Apple patched a Zero Day bug that was being actively exploited in the wild. I'm not a big fan of unannounced updates where I don't get a choice to approve it or not, but in this case Apple did exactly the right thing.
Peter brings up a point I've been making for quite a while that is being highlighted by Elon's DOGE:
It doesn't give enough attention, IMHO, to the "poverty industry" of NGO's, consultants, therapists and others who make a good living out of "managing" or "addressing" the causes, effects and reality of poverty, without ever doing anything to resolve the issues they identify - because that would cut off their income, and nobody (at least, from their perspective) wants that.It's Rich People's Leftism:
Rich People's Leftism is one of the clearest explanations I've ever seen for the utter failure of government in Blue States:
With this new approach in mind, let me contrast Rich People’s Leftism (RPL) with Poor People’s Leftism (PPL).
RPL thinks that its goal is to help poor people, while PPL thinks that RPL’s primary goal is to ensure that wealthy leftists dominate and get great jobs.You really should click through to read about Rich People's Leftism, which dates to 2010. We've known about this for a long, long time. A different view is "red pill/blue pill":
... an old post from Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) gives the best introduction to the topic, phrased in explicitly "Blue Pill"/"Red Pill" terminology:
The nature of the state
- The state is established by citizens to serve their needs. Its actions are generally righteous.
- The state is just another giant corporation. Its actions generally advance its own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide with ours, sometimes they don’t.
You should read Isegoria's post as well. Then think about the proposed $3.5T spending bill that is before congress. Who will it help? Who are we told that is is going to help, but won't? To ask the questions is to answer them.
What is interesting about the opening moves of DOGE is that we are now getting names to put next to all the Rich People's Leftism projects.
