TL;DR: all photos that were cropped on Google Pixel Android phones from 2018 until this month didn't actually delete the cropped data which can be recovered. If the cropping was done for purpose of privacy or redaction, then the photos (which very well may have been shared on social media) are not secure at all.
Details: security is a subtle thing - one day you can be secure and the next day not. This problem came from a change in the Android OS. The way one of the OS functions worked in Android 9 changed with Android 10. But the implications of this were subtle and app developers didn't realize the implications, so the Markup app that functioned securely under Android 9 suddenly functioned insecurely under Android 10. We've actually seen this before (note: this is one of my favorite posts here).
So what do you do if you have one of these phones, and pictures that you've cropped? Well, the new Android updates fixes the bug, so you don't need to worry about new pictures that you've cropped.
But every one of your pix that you cropped between 2018 and this month can expose cropped data. You'll have to decide if this is a problem for any particular picture. If it is, you should display the picture in full screen mode and then take a screenshot - and then delete the original picture.
Google security analysts have warned Android device users that several zero-day vulnerabilities in some Samsung chipsets could allow an attacker to completely hijack and remote-control their handsets knowing just the phone number.
Between late 2022 and early this year, Google's Project Zero found and reported 18 of these bugs in Samsung's Exynos cellular modem firmware, according to Tim Willis, who heads the bug-hunting team.
Four of the 18 zero-day flaws can allow internet-to-baseband remote code execution. The baseband, or modem, portion of a device typically has privileged low-level access to all the hardware, and so exploiting bugs within its code can give an intruder full control over the phone or device. Technical details of these holes have been withheld for now to protect users of vulnerable gear.
It's actually normal to withhold details until there's a fix. The researchers contact the manufacturer and give them details so they can create a fix. Releasing details before the fix is ready will just help the Bad Guys develop an attack.
So if you have one of these things, here's what you need to do:
According to Google, the following devices use potentially vulnerable Exynos modems: Samsung's S22, M33, M13, M12, A71, A53, A33, A21s, A13, A12, and A04 products; Vivo mobile devices including the S16, S15, S6, X70, X60 and X30 series; the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series of devices from Google; and vehicles that use the Exynos Auto T5123 chipset.
Google issued a fix for CVE-2023-24033 affecting Pixel devices in its March security update. Until the other manufacturers plug the holes, Willis suggests turning off Wi-Fi calling and Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) to protect against baseband remote code execution, if you're using a vulnerable device powered by Samsung's silicon.
I don't use Android so can't really help with how to turn off WiFi calling and VoLTE, but it should be in the Settings.
We are told that the reason that we don't see new record high temperatures despite the global climate getting hotter is that the winters are getting warmer while the summers are not. Unfortunately for this explanation, this doesn't seem to be the case. Tokyo winters have been getting colder for 40 years:
Tokyo winters have been cooling since 1984
With all the news about global warming, surely the decades long winter-trend for the city of Tokyo must be one of strong warming. Yet, looking at the mean DJF winter temperature trend for Tokyo going back 39 years using the untampered data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), we see a trend that has to surprise the global warming bedwetting dolts:
Chinatown may be the ne plus ultra of Film Noir. Scoring 11 Oscar nominations (including for best Score), it has memorable quotes ("Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.") and great acting. Uan Rasey's haunting trumpet on this piece mostly exceeds our ability to describe it: "lush" and "romantic" are both true but fall far short.
Long time readers will know my dislike of "modern" Country music. But The Queen Of The World told me that I had to listen to this song. You see, she had been an Atlanta Braves fan but she started wearing Red Sox shirts for me. Remember, all you need is three chords and the truth.
Tennessee Orange (Songwriters: Paul Jenkins, David Fanning, Ben Williams, Megan Moroney)
Mama, I'm calling, I've got some news Don't you tell Daddy, he'll blow a fuse Don't worry I'm doing okay
I know you raised me to know right from wrong It ain't what you think And I'm still writing songs Just never thought I'd see the day I've never felt this way
I met somebody, and he's got blue eyes He opens the door, and he don't make me cry He ain't from where we're from, but he feels like home He's got me doing things I've never done In Georgia they'd call it a sin I'm wearing Tennessee orange for him
He took me to Knoxville last Saturday And I wore the hat on his dash to the game Sure wasn't Athens, but I Fell for him under those Neyland lights
I met somebody, and he's got blue eyes He opens the door, and he don't make me cry He ain't from where we're from, but he feels like home He's got me doing things I've never done In Georgia they'd call it a sin I'm wearing Tennessee orange for him
Mama, forgive me I like him a lot Hell, I'm learning the words to "Ol' Rocky Top And he's got a smile that makes me forget I've always looked better in red
But I met somebody, and he's got blue eyes He opens the door, and he don't make me cry He ain't from where we're from, but he feels like home He's got me doing things I've never done
I met somebody, and he's got blue eyes He opens the door, and he don't make me cry He ain't from where we're from, but he feels like home He's got me doing things I've never done In Georgia they'd call it a sin And I still want the Dawgs to win But I'm wearing Tennessee orange for him
A few months ago our vet recommended we put Wolfgang on Adequan. This is a medication originally developed for race horses that helps with arthritis and joint pain. Since his back is basically nothing but arthritis and his hip joints are all jagged, the joint lubrication that Adequan seems to provide makes a big, big difference.
So big, in fact, that I don't think that he'd still be with us if we weren't giving him these shots. Generally he, feels a lot better the day after getting the shot and it lasts for a week.
Except it's not taking longer for us to see the effect, and it's not lasting a week. Sigh. And it's $150 a month. Double sigh.
But every day is a gift. We're going out of our way to spoil him some each day.
In this day of cancel culture it is possible that this film might not get made today. In this day of Hollywood decline (billion dollar comic book extravaganzas to the exclusion of most everything else) is is possible that this film might not get made today. That's a shame, because it's a great story with great actors giving great performances. More to the point of today's post, John Barry won the Oscar for Best Original Score.
You've heard his music before. He wrote the James Bond theme, and scored eleven Bond films. He wrote the music to Dances With Wolves, Lion In Winter (one of my favorite films ever), and Born Free. In 1999 Queen Elizabeth appointed him OBE.
Out Of Africa is about the opposite of Bond music. Rather than exciting and with an edge of danger, it is lush and lyrical. I quite like this - it's good music for a Sunday morning.
So it seems that the Silicon Valley Bank has failed. This doesn't effect any fish out there in San Francisco Bay. They keep their money in the River Bank.
Last year, around the Thanksgiving holiday, Ohio businessman Michael Larkin received a request for video from his Amazon Ring security system from Hamilton city police.
He complied, providing video from his doorbell camera that was stored on Ring's servers. After balking at further demands, he subsequently learned that authorities had bypassed the need to get his consent by presenting Ring with a search warrant for video from several of his Ring cameras, including one that covered an indoor area of his home.
According to Politico, Larkin received a notice from Ring that the tech biz had received a warrant and was required to turn over video from numerous cameras, without giving the owner with any say in the matter.
I expect that this won't just happen with Ring video devices. If you have these sorts of cameras, you might want to make sure they're only recording video of outdoors.
The Biden administration’s new National Cybersecurity Strategy takes on the third rail of cybersecurity policy: software liability. For decades, scholars and litigators have been talking about imposing legal liability on the makers of insecure software. But the objections of manufacturers were too strong, concerns about impeding innovation were too great, and the conceptual difficulties of the issue were just too complex. So today software licenses and user agreements continue to disclaim liability, whether the end user is a consumer or an operator of critical infrastructure. With this new strategy, the administration proposes changing that.
The strategy’s discussion of the issue starts with an incontrovertible point: “[M]arket forces alone have not been enough to drive broad adoption of best practices in cybersecurity and resilience.” Indeed, the strategy goes on to note, market forces often reward those entities that rush to introduce vulnerable products or services into our digital ecosystem. Problems include the shipping of products with insecure default configurations or known vulnerabilities and the integration of third-party software with unvetted or unknown features. End users are left holding the bag, and the entire ecosystem suffers, with U.S. citizens ultimately bearing the cost.
We must begin, the administration says, to shift liability onto those who should be taking reasonable precautions to secure their software. This will require three elements, according to the strategy: preventing manufacturers and service providers from disclaiming liability by contract, establishing a standard of care, and providing a safe harbor to shield from liability those companies that do take reasonable measurable measures to secure their products and services. Together, the three points are based on a recognition that the goal is not perfect security but, rather, reasonable security.
The Devil is in the details, of course, but conceptually this seems pretty reasonable. Whether this will be used by big software companies lobbying Congress to hobble dangerous competitors, or to squash Open Source software remains to be seen.
RSA is the encryption that underpins secure Internet messages. Without it, there would basically be no commercial Internet. So it was concerning to see a paper published saying that Chinese researchers have a quantum encryption technique that cracks RSA. Except, not so fast:
The paper from 24 researchers in China might have remained a matter for those well-versed in advanced mathematics, cryptography, and quantum computing – a fairly small set of people – but for the fact that it got noticed by cryptographer Bruce Schneier.
"This is something to take seriously," he wrote in his blog on January 3rd, 2023. "It might not be correct, but it’s not obviously wrong."
Schneier did not take a position on the paper, but the following day The Financial Times took notice in an article titled, "Chinese researchers claim to find way to break encryption using quantum computers."
Evidently they haven't.
Late that day, on January 4, Scott Aaronson, chair of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center, offered a rebuttal with a succinct three word review of the paper: "No. Just No."
Crypto mathematics is notoriously hard to do right, and deceptively easy to screw up. It looks like this paper made an unwarranted assumption that a particular algorithm is much faster when using quantum cryptography. It's actually no faster than plain jane cryptography.
So secure Internet messages are safe, at least for now.
Wolfgang's dog buddies came by for a couple hours yesterday. Not too much running around (he doesn't get around very well anymore) but lots of rolling in the grass and hanging out. I think they realize that he's not his old self, and that's OK with them.
Got to love dogs.
Wolfgang loved it. He's good about not whining very much, but he got so excited and happy that he was whining when they all showed up.
Got to love dogs.
He's paying for it - he crashed pretty hard last night and is a little slow and creaky today, but I'm really glad we did this.
We're giving Wolfgang a party today, where his doggie friends will come by. Hopefully it's not a "Goodbye, Wolfgang" party (he's dome somewhat better this week) but we know that he's living on borrowed time.
And so his buddies are coming by to play and lie on the grass with him.
Every day is a gift. Seize the day.
Ask not ('tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years, Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers. Far better to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past, Whether God has many winters yet to give, or this our last; This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore. Be wise, strain your wine. Life is short, should we hope for more? Even now, envious time has fled. Seize the day; put little faith in tomorrow.
Not a law yet, but a bill. Here's the pertinent section:
Section 3. Section 286.31, Florida Statutes, is created to
137 read:
138 286.31 Blogger registration and reporting.—
139 (1)As used in this section, the term:
140 (a)“Blog” means a website or webpage that hosts any
141 blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or
142 business content. The term does not include the website of a
143 newspaper or other similar publication.
144 (b)“Blogger” means any person as defined in s. 1.01(3)
145 that submits a blog post to a blog which is subsequently
146 published.
147 (c)“Blog post” is an individual webpage on a blog which
148 contains an article, a story, or a series of stories.
149 (d)“Compensation” includes anything of value provided to a
150 blogger in exchange for a blog post or series of blog posts. If
151 not provided in currency, it must be the fair-market value of
152 the item or service exchanged.
153 (e)“Elected state officer” means the Governor, the
154 Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the
155 Legislature.
156 (f)“Office” means, in the context of a blog post about a
157 member of the Legislature, the Office of Legislative Services
158 or, in the context of a blog post about a member of the
159 executive branch, the Commission on Ethics, as applicable.
160 (2)If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state
161 officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that
162 post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office, as
163 identified in paragraph (1)(f), within 5 days after the first
164 post by the blogger which mentions an elected state officer.
165 (3)(a)Upon registering with the appropriate office, a
166 blogger must file monthly reports on the 10th day following the
167 end of each calendar month from the time a blog post is added to
168 the blog, except that, if the 10th day following the end of a
169 calendar month occurs on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday,
170 the report must be filed on the next day that is not a Saturday,
171 Sunday, or legal holiday.
172 (b)If the blogger does not have a blog post on a blog
173 during a given month, the monthly report for that month does not
174 need to be filed.
175 (c)The blogger must file reports with the appropriate
176 office using the electronic filing system:
177 1.As provided in s. 11.0455 if the blog post concerns an
178 elected member of the Legislature; or
179 2.As provided in s. 112.32155 if the blog post concerns an
180 officer of the executive branch.
181 (d)The reports must include all of the following:
182 1.The individual or entity that compensated the blogger
183 for the blog post.
184 2.The amount of compensation received from the individual
185 or entity, regardless of how the compensation was structured.
186 a.The amount must be rounded to the nearest $10 increment.
187 b.If the compensation is for a series of blog posts or for
188 a defined period of time, the blogger must disclose the total
189 amount to be received upon the first blog post being published.
190 Thereafter, the blogger must disclose the date or dates
191 additional compensation is received, if any, for the series of
192 blog posts.
193 3.The date the blog post was published. If the blog post
194 is part of a series, the date each blog post is published must
195 be included in the applicable report.
196 4.The website and website address where the blog post can
197 be found.
198 (4)Notwithstanding any other law, a magistrate is
199 authorized to enter a final order in determination of the
200 reasonableness of circumstances for an untimely filing of a
201 required report and the amount of a fine, if any.
202 (5)Each house of the Legislature and the Commission on
203 Ethics shall adopt by rule, for application to bloggers, the
204 same procedure by which lobbyists are notified of the failure to
205 timely file a report and the amount of the assessed fines. The
206 rule must also provide for, but need not be limited to, the
207 following provisions:
208 (a)A fine of $25 per day per report for each day late, not
209 to exceed $2,500 per report.
210 (b)Upon receipt of an untimely filed report, the amount of
211 the fine must be based upon the earlier of the following:
212 1.The date and time that the untimely report is actually
213 received by the office.
214 2.The date and time on the electronic receipt issued
215 pursuant to s. 11.0455 or s. 112.32155.
216 (c)The fine must be paid within 30 days after the notice
217 of payment due is transmitted, unless an appeal is filed with
218 the office. The fine amount must be deposited into:
219 1.If the report in question relates to a post about a
220 member of the Legislature, the Legislative Lobbyist Registration
221 Trust Fund;
222 2.If the report in question relates to a post about a
223 member of the executive branch, the Executive Branch Lobby
224 Registration Trust Fund; or
225 3.If the report in question relates to a post about
226 members of both the Legislature and the executive branch, the
227 lobbyist registration trust fundsidentified in subparagraphs 1.
228 and 2., in equal amounts.
229 (d)A fine may not be assessed against a blogger the first
230 time a report for which the blogger is responsible is not timely
231 filed. However, to receive this one-time fine waiver, all
232 untimely filed reports for which the blogger remains responsible
233 for filing must be filed with the office within 30 days after
234 the notice of untimely filing was transmitted to the blogger. A
235 fine must be assessed for any subsequent late-filed reports.
236 (e)The blogger is entitled to appeal a fine, based upon
237 reasonable circumstances surrounding the failure to file by the
238 designated date, by making a written request to the office for a
239 hearing before the magistrate from the Second Judicial Circuit.
240 Any such request must be made within 30 days after the notice of
241 payment due is transmitted to the blogger. The office shall
242 transmit all such timely, written requests to the chief judge of
243 the Second Judicial Circuit along with the evidence the office
244 relied on in assessing the fine. The magistrate, after holding a
245 hearing, shall render a final order, upholding the fine or
246 waiving it in full or in part.
247 (f)A blogger may request that the filing of a report be
248 waived upon good cause shown based on reasonable circumstances.
249 The request must be filed with the office, which may grant or
250 deny the request.
251 (g)Fines that remain unpaid for a period in excess of 100
252 days after final determination are eligible for recovery through
253 the courts of this state.
254 Section 4. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law.
There are plans to build a GPS and data network, and it no workee (very well) without a reference time. The Moon doesn't have that. Yet.
Time being one of the fundamental parts of determining position using satellites, interoperability standards had to be agreed upon after the launches of the various GNSS constellations.
That has meant making up for slight timing differences between GPS, Galileo and other GNSS systems by introducing fixed offsets – something that everyone involved would prefer to avoid in building out LunaNet and similar systems.
ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said a joint international effort to create some form of Lunar standard time began after a November meeting of ESA's Space Research and Technology Centre.
I must say, this is very much the 21st Century that I was promised.
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.
- William Shakespeare, Othello
I'm with Mike from Cold Fury: Trump has to go. The only thing I would add is that he has to go because he's too stupid to realize that his idiotic attacks on Ron DeSantis are trivially falsified by watching the video he posted. Dumbass.
All that one gains by falsehood is, not to be believed when he speaks the truth.
Matter is the first attempt to bring together the biggest names in smart home to develop a standard for secure, reliable interoperability for connected devices. However, Matter matters because it could go much further than just smart homes — it could be applied to all connected devices.
Up until now, device-to-device communication across brands has been lacking. But when Matter is widely available for smart home consumers, it means more compatibility with more devices, making it easier to purchase a secure and seamless connected smart home, no matter the brand. But the benefits of seamless connected devices could expand far beyond smart home. It could enable smart cities and connected buildings to interoperate reliably and securely, connected health devices of various brands to work together natively and even reliably connect devices in space.
Makers of “internet of things” products, such as smart kettles and fridges, and software developers will face heavy fines if they do not meet tough rules aimed at averting cyber attacks, according to draft EU legislation to be unveiled next week.
Companies will have to obtain mandatory certificates that show they are meeting the basic requirements of cyber safety that minimise the risk of attacks, according to a confidential document seen by the Financial Times.
Those that fail to comply will be fined up to €15mn or 2.5 per cent of the previous year’s global turnover, whichever is higher.
New sheriff in town, it seems. And the MATTER effort is encouraging. Maybe I'll have to stop saying that security wasn't an afterthought, it wasn't thought of at all. Good.
Glen Filthie asked for an update on Wolfgang, and so here we go. His back legs have been getting increasingly tangled up. Yesterday he fell twice as I was taking him out when he woke up. You can tell that it frustrates him, but increasingly he wakes up hurting at night (we hear him panting) and every now and then he whimpers. It's intermittent, but increasing.
He's still alert, although he's sleeping more. The Queen Of The World says it's because that's the time he doesn't hurt. I think she's ready to let him go. I'm not, but as I see him in pain more often, I'm getting closer.
TQOTW's daughter said recently that when it's time, he'll let us know. I expect that's right. For now, he hasn't let me know.
But he can't run with the dogs at the dog park, which frustrates him. He's a very social dog, one who likes and gets along with almost all dogs and people. I have to say that I did a much better job socializing him than my old shepherd, Jack.
And so we're planning a doggie party, with his neighborhood dog friends coming over to lay out with him on the grass. He loved to do that back at Camp Borepatch in Georgia, and he still likes to do this today. It's not a "time to say goodbye to Wolfgang" party, but I don't know how he will be in 2 weeks at the rate he's going. So we're having the party this weekend.
In a way, it looks kind of like when Dad was in hospice. You know the trajectory, but not the timetable. Every day is a gift. Turn up the music, and dance with your wife.
You wonder what other music he would have made if he hadn't been found hanged in a jail cell in the '80s. He's "the best guitarist most people have never heard of".
Well, they new about him, but thought he was fake. It turns out he was real:
For three centuries, the Roman leader Sponsian, who was first discovered on a set of coins found in Transylvania, was believed to be fake. Unearthed in 1713, the coins depicted him as an emperor — but in the absence of other information, the unconventional coins were widely dismissed as forgeries.
However, a new study on four ancient gold coins from The Hunterian collection at the University of Glasgow and the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania, has revealed that not only were the coins authentic, but they shed light on an obscure figure, and his role in the Crisis of the Third Century.
The Roman Empire very nearly fell apart during the Crisis of the Third Century. It did temporarily split into three pieces: western, central, and eastern. Our histories may need to be updated to make that four pieces, with Sponsian leading the province of Dacia. We have so few historical sources from this period that it is (to me) endlessly fascinating.
The Crisis started to come to a close with Aurelian who united the three parts (for which feat the grateful Senate gave him the title "Restitutor Orbis" or "Restorer of the World"). We've seen Aurelianhere before, but never Sponsian. You have to wonder if Aurelian had to campaign in Dacia to bring that back into the Empire.
Glen Filthie doesn't seem to think too highly of the cult classic film Army Of Darkness. Just how much of a cult classic? People make crazy good homage films to it.
Wirecutter (you do read him every day, right? I thought so.) posts a complete concert of Allison Krauss and Union Station, which includes this song. Listening, it made me think on the weakness of Music Criticism, the dissection of songs. It made me think on the saying "All you need are three chords and the truth." This song is not sophisticated, musically speaking. But it speaks directly to the heart, with the volume turned up to eleven.
It made me ponder that it's been a while since I've posted a love letter to The Queen Of The World, and shame on me. But the lyrics here speak the truth: she literally caught me when I fell.
Allison Krauss and Union Station need no introduction; if you've never heard of them just listen to this. And listen to how how when the band first starts to play the song the crowd starts to cheer, and then settles down to "quiet as a church mouse". And at the end the applause goes on, and on, and on. That's Allison Krauss and Union Station. Oh, and this bit from her Wikipedia bio kind of sums up the phenomenon that is Allison Krauss:
It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart Without saying a word, you can light up the dark Try as I may I could never explain What I hear when you don't say a thing
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me The touch of our hands say you'll catch me if ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
All day long I can hear people talking aloud But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd Old Mr. Webster could never define What's being said between your heart and mine
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me The touch of our hands say you'll catch me if ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me The touch of our hands say you'll catch me if ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the band, especially Ron Block (guitar) and Jerry Douglass (perhaps the world's greatest dobro player).
Thanks, Wirecutter. And double thanks to my sweetheart.
The cost of a current Sidewinder missile is about $440,000. The cost per hour to operate an F-22 is approximately $70,000. This is what was used to shoot down the latest balloon over Alaska.
Turns out, the likeliest explanation of what they shot down is that it is a balloon launched by a hobby group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. They regularly and legally launch small balloons carrying transmitters broadcasting on HAM radio frequencies. The balloons cost between $12 and $150 depending on size. The limit is 4 pounds and the amount of helium used is carefully calculated to put the balloon at an altitude in the jet stream.
The transmitters broadcast every 10 minutes and hobbyists track them on HAM radios. This particular balloon had already been around the world several times when it went off-line at a time and location that corresponds with the shoot down.
Consider the white supremecy of keeping guns "off the streets." I've never seen a gun lying on "the streets." Seems like "the streets" is just a euphemism for some kind of people. But what kind of people do "the streets" describe?
White supremecy only matters when they say it matters. Which is the ultimate privilege when you think about it. You can just flip your concern switch off and on when it suits you.
These days "I believe the science" really means "I believe the science that my team endorses". I've mostly stopped posting much about climate science because people don't care about the actual, you know, science. It's devolved into tribal posturing.
But here is a grab bag from the past few months of actual, you know, climate science.
While we all know that urban areas are warmer than rural areas, especially at night and during the summer, does an increase in urbanization lead to spurious warming at the GHCN stations that experienced growth (which is the majority of them)?
And, even if it did, does the homogenization procedure NOAA uses to correct for spurious temperature effects remove (even partially) urban heat island (UHI) effects on reported temperature trends?
John Christy and I have been examining these questions by comparing the GHCN temperature dataset (both unadjusted and adjusted [homogenized] versions) to these Landsat-based measurements of human settlement structures, which I will just call “urbanization”.
...
NOAA’s homogenization produces a change in most of the station temperature trends. If I compute the average homogenization-induced change in trends in various categories of station growth in urbanization, we should see a negative trend adjustment associated with positive urbanization growth, right?
But just the opposite happens.
[Borepatch comments] So the science as performed today takes a known problem of urbanization induced (false) temperature rise and corrects it so that it rises even more. But remember, kids - the arctic will be ice-free by 2013. Just ask Al Gore.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) regularly claims new record hot days, and Australian scientist report that heat records are now 12 times more likely than cold ones. But how reliable – how verifiable – are the new records?
I have been trying for five years to verify the claim that the 23 September 2017 at Mildura was the hottest September day ever recorded in Victoria. According to media reporting at that time, it was the hottest September day all the way-back to 1889 when records first began. Except that back then, back in September 1889, maximum temperatures were recorded at Mildura with a mercury thermometer. Now they are recorded with a temperature probe that is more sensitive to fluctuations in temperature and can thus potentially record warmer for the same weather.
In the absence of any other influences, an instrument with a faster response time [temperature probe] will tend to record higher maximum and lower minimum temperatures than an instrument with a slower response time [mercury thermometer]. This is most clearly manifested as an increase in the mean diurnal range. At most locations, particularly in arid regions, it will also result in a slight increase in mean temperatures, as short-term fluctuations oftemperature are generally larger during the day than overnight.” Research Report No. 032, by Blair Trewin, BoM, October 2018, page 21.
To standardise recordings from temperature probes with mercury thermometers, one-second readings from probes are normally averaged over one minute – or batches of ten second readings are averaged and then averaged again over one minute. That is the world-wide standard to ensure recordings from temperature probes are comparable with recordings from mercury thermometers. But the Australian Bureau of Meteorology do not do this, instead they take one-second instantaneous readings and then enter the highest of these one-second spot readings for any given 24-hour period as the official maximum temperature for that day.
I posted this two years ago but it highlights just how lost I would be without The Queen Of The World.
This is arguably the most famous romantic music ever written and since this is the Feast of St. Valentine here's something to share with your sweetheart. Relax, even if she's not a classical music aficionado , she knows this. You do too. I mean, it's been in literally everything, from Sesame Street to Wayne's World.
What's surprising is that Tchaikovsky's masterpiece was initially poorly received and he had to re-write it. But the effort was worth it - this really made his reputation and as I said, this is the most famous piece of romantic classical music ever written.
If you want to cheat, skip ahead to around 8:50. You should find yourself humming right along.
And now for a confession: I had searched for this for literallyyears, but to my shame didn't know who the composer was and didn't think about Tchaikovsky. I mentioned this to The Queen Of The World and she found it in literally 5 minutes. She's not just a pretty face, she's wicked smart.
Valentine's Day is next week, so it's time to think of music for your sweetheart. The Queen Of The World and I both love this song - the motorcycle accident that really brought us together is perhaps a literal version of the song.
My problem (as long time readers will remember) is that I really don't care much for Rascal Flatts. So what to do? Well, as it turns out the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded this twenty years before Rascal Flatts.
The Broken Road (Songwriters: Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd, Jeff Hanna)
I set out on a narrow way many years ago Hoping I would find true love along the broken road But I got lost a time or two Wiped my brow and kept pushin' through I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream led me to where you are Others who broke my heart They were like northern stars Pointing me on my way into your loving arms This much I know is true That God blessed the broken road That led me straight to you Yes, He did
I think about the years I spent just passin' through I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you But you just smile and take my hand You've been there, you understand It's all part of a grander plan that is comin' true
Every long lost dream led me to where you are Others who broke my heart They were like northern stars Pointing me on my way into your loving arms This much I know is true That God blessed the broken road That led me straight to you
And now I'm just a rollin' home into my lover's arms
This much I know is true That God blessed the broken road That led me straight to you
That God blessed the broken road That led me straight to you
ChatGPT is an online artificial intelligence program that will answer many questions and actually create content on request - it's what's come closest to passing the "Turing Test". The program's creators built in some guardrails to prevent abuse via the chat bot; controversially these seem to be biased in some ways (e.g. it will not write a poem about Donald Trump but will write one about Kamala Harris).
But ChatGPT is software, and it's online. So it's not really surprising that people have figured out a hack to break these guardrails:
Users have already found a way to work around ChatGPT's programming controls that restricts it from creating certain content deemed too violent, illegal, and more.
The prompt, called DAN (Do Anything Now), uses ChatGPT's token system against it, according to a report by CNBC. The command creates a scenario for ChatGPT it can't resolve, allowing DAN to bypass content restrictions in ChatGPT.
Although DAN isn't successful all of the time, a subreddit devoted to the DAN prompt's ability to work around ChatGPT's content policies has already racked up more than 200,000 subscribers.
It's software. Of course there are security holes.
My take: this is funny in the typical (and indeed classical) hacker "you're not the boss of me" rebelliousness. What will be less funny is something that malicious attackers will be able to do to subvert the system. Impossible to say what those might be, but they will be found, and exploited. It's software. Of course there are security holes. With 200,00 subscribers to the subreddit, we're fixin' to see a bunch of them.
1 engine was shut down by Mission Control and one shut itself down after ignition, so this was 31 engines burning for 6 seconds. Looks like it's being considered a success.
Roberta X weighs in on the beating death of Tyre Nichols and says what I was thinking far better than I would have.
"Nobody has a beating coming from the police -- not the most
innocent of drivers pulled over on vague suspicion or the worst violent
offender caught bloody-handed. Nobody should ever fear getting kicked
by an arresting officer while his peers hold them down. The police are
not a street gang and shouldn't get away with acting like one."
Big Country muses on the war in Ukraine and how Russia is refurbishing mothballed tanks. Quantity, he says, has a quality of its own, and it seems that it's surprisingly easy to refurbish old armor.
That got me pondering. Last light Dopey Joe gave his State Of The Union address and called for an Assault Weapons ban. Vlad seems to be thinking that the future is now, and an old tank tomorrow is worth much more than a bunch of new stuff next year. In this very same vein, doesn't that suggest that anyone who hasn't already bought an AR-15 should go out right now and get one?
And ammunition should be bought by the hundreds (or thousands) of rounds. Remember, a US Army combat load of ammo is around 200 rounds per soldier, and they get resupplied. A thousand rounds today is better than more next year.
America looked like this 5060 70 years ago. The video below is just a series of stills, but to those of us old enough to remember, it evokes a time of promise and energy, shared purpose, and hope. Some of these look like my town, some of the people look like my parents.
A long-standing cliche in theater is the "Play within the Play" motif. This goes way back (remember Hamlet? "The Play's the thing."), and generally is hard to pull off. A related genre is the "Movie about a movie" which is similarly hard to pull off. An exception to this was the 1952 film The Bad And The Beautiful, starring Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner. It scored five Oscars which is a record of sorts (well, for a film that wasn't nominated for either Best Picture or Best Director; but hey, a record is a record).
The film spawned a whole mini industry of speculation as to just which real life Hollywood people were characterized in the film. It's said that David Selznick had his lawyer review the film to see if it was libelous, which is pretty fun. Hey, the play's the thing, amirite?
David Raksin composed the theme song (and the entire soundtrack). The producer wanted lyrics to the song but Raksin was pretty steamed about having to split the royalties of his previous hit song "Laura" and so insisted that it would be instrumental only. It also became a hit, presumably much to Raksin's satisfaction. Sadly, this bit of Hollywood drama wasn't depicted in the film.
But the music is quite nice. Not exactly film noir (which Raksin also composed for), but from a Hollywood at the height of its musical power.
Tom Brady is the greatest football player in history, but did this last disastrous season hurt his reputation? Or is his career so impressive that it really didn't hurt him?
He originally retired a year ago, and then came back for one more season. If he had stayed retired then everyone would have thought "Of course he could have played longer; he went out at the top." Now it's pretty clear that while he is still a great quarterback, he's not what he was a couple years ago.
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