Damn

The weather at Castle Borepatch: 18° with 20+ mph winds.  And single digits tonight: that means there are so few degrees that we're just about out of them.

I'm going through withdrawal for Georgia winters ...

Watch out for those special snow flakes

Same song, different voices

The Grammy winning singer/songwriter Delbert McClinton:



The poet  Edna St. Vincent Millay (one of Mom's favorite poets):

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

My co-blogger ASM826:

We mark the beginnings of things, but very often there is no way to mark the last times. 

When was the last time:...I read one of them a bedtime story...We all went to the beach together...One of them sat in my lap...One of them held my hand to cross the street...I helped one of them with his homework...and so on... I dunno. Those kinds of things fade away and you don't even notice.

The music of these three voices is ancient.  It is, in fact, the voice of every person who has ever lived.

Things I did not know

Eric S. Raymond (computer guru and gun nut) has a Gun Nut web page.  There's an interesting collection of links there for gunnies.

There's quite a strong correlation between people who work in tech (and especially in computer/network security) and people who shoot.  I haven't seen data on this but it is quite striking.  My guess is that people in these fields are focused on assessing and managing risk, and are used to using tools to help manage those risks.

How TOR users get busted

Here is a presentation from last year's DEFCON conference that contains a number of examples of TOR users who got de-anonymized.  The common theme?  Bad OPSEC.



If you're interested in anonymity on the 'net, this is useful information.

Over-reliance on spellcheck

Just because the word is spelled right doesn't mean it's the word you want.

How Venture Capital works in the Internet Security market

Interesting article over at Robert Graham's blog, using a recent startup flameout as an example of how the VC work works.  My track record has been sort of all over the map - at a successful IPO, at a successful acquisition, at a long, protracted zombie existence.  Robert lays it out the way it is.

If you're interested in how capital fuels Internet Security, this is a great article.

Truth

Apparently the Lord does not have favorites ....

Now that's a pie chart

An Officer and a Gentleman

This guy gave up his shot at the Hall Of Fame to serve his country:

Mitch Harris pitches for the St. Louis Cardinals. But he was in Boston last week to receive the Tony Conigliaro award, given by the Red Sox at the Boston baseball writers dinner to someone who exemplified the determination, grace and will with which Tony C. dealt with adversity in his all-too-short life. We think after you hear about Mitch Harris, you’ll be glad we shared his story, and you’ll perhaps understand why Richie Conigliaro, Tony’s brother, was in tears when he presented Harris with his award, and a banquet hall full of people were moved to rise to their feet. 

Unlike most recipients of the Tony C. award, Harris did not face a physical challenge he had to overcome. His test was of another sort, one that he elected to take on voluntarily, despite an awareness of the near-impossible odds he was facing. Mitch Harris burned with the desire to play big-league baseball, and had the talent to do so. But as a member of the Naval Academy, he had embraced another calling, one he renewed after his sophomore year. Midshipman Harris had the option after two years at the Academy to walk away. Instead, he signed a 2-7 commitment: two more years in the academy, five years of service as an office in the Navy.

Bravo Zulu.  This brings to mind what Ted Williams and Bob Feller did.

Hat tip: Chris Lynch, who also has a video of Archer as Magnum P.I.  Awesome.

Careful who you put in charge of sales

Things seem kind of fishy here.

Climate Change as a political proxy measure

Rick emails to point out that the population simply isn't much interested in Climate Change:

A YouGov poll of 18,000 people in 17 countries found only 9.2 percent of Americans rank global warming as their biggest concern. Only Saudi Arabians were less concerned about global warming at 5.7 percent. The biggest concern for Americans was global terrorism — 28 percent of Americans polled listed this as their top issue.

Despite a big PR push by President Barack Obama to tout his administration’s global warming agenda, most Americans have been unconvinced it’s the country’s most pressing issue. A Fox News poll from November found only 3 percent of Americans list global warming as their top concern.

So why the intense focus by the political establishment?  Partly it's so that Democrats have an issue to run on this year that isn't their terrible track record of governance screw ups.  Partly it's about political donations from "Big Green" environmental movements.  Partly it's a desire (by both parties) for higher revenue from Carbon taxes and the like.

But the real message to take away from this is that it reflects the profound anti-democratic views of the entire governing class.  The concerns and desires of the governed are quite irrelevant - only the concerns and desires of the elite matter.

It's another example of the anarchy-tyranny in which we find ourselves: the anarchy (lack of effective approach to terrorism) is mixed in equal measure with tyranny (a continued push for Carbon Taxes, and damn the polls).

Heh

Well played, Netflix:

Dude. You had one job.

Did they blow the architecture, or the design?

But this is my new favoritist Twitter feed.  Via Chris Lynch, who finds the coolest stuff.

Support our snoops!

Heh:

(via)

Star Wars Episode 8 (spoiler alert)

HAHAHAHA!

(via)

It pains me to say this

The Internet can't match the local pub:

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has perhaps merely confirmed what all right-minded people already know: that those who have a local boozer in which to quaff ale and chew the fat with mates are "significantly happier" than wretched souls who do not. 

CAMRA asked Oxford Uni's Professor Robin Dunbar to look into the link between pub-based social interaction and personal wellbeing. He concluded that "having a strong social network significantly improves both your happiness and your overall health".

So much as I love all y'all, get out to your local and have a pint with your mates.  Because SCIENCE®!

Is the NSA making friends and influencing people at other agencies?

Because Congress is grilling those other agencies over their use of equipment containing backdoors probably put there by NSA:

A bunch of US government departments and agencies – from the military to NASA – are being grilled over their use of backdoored Juniper firewalls. 

The House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform fired off letters to top officials over the weekend, demanding to know if any of the dodgy NetScreen devices were used in federal systems. 

Juniper's ScreenOS software – the firmware that powers in its firewalls – was tampered with by mystery hackers a few years ago to introduce two vulnerabilities: one was an administrator-level backdooraccessible via Telnet or SSH using a hardcoded password, and the other allowed eavesdroppers to decrypt intercepted VPN traffic. The flaws, which were smuggled into the source code of the firmware, were discovered on December 17 by Juniper, and patches were issued three days later to correct the faults.

The speculation is that there aren't many other actors other than the NSA who could have pulled this off.  Speculation, of course - there's no smoking gun, as you'd expect.

But everyone suspects them, which means they're incompetent: either they did this and got caught, or they didn't do this but have made everyone distrust them anyway.  Way to go!

"Nannycam" security so bad, there's a search engine for bedroom video monitors

I keep talking about how when it comes to the new "Internet Of Things", security wasn't an afterthought.  It wasn't thought of at all. Internet of Things security is so bad, there’s a search engine for sleeping kids:

Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things (IoT), recently launched a new section that lets users easily browse vulnerable webcams.

The feed includes images of marijuana plantations, back rooms of banks, children, kitchens, living rooms, garages, front gardens, back gardens, ski slopes, swimming pools, colleges and schools, laboratories, and cash register cameras in retail stores, according to Dan Tentler, a security researcher who has spent several years investigating webcam security.

We've seen Shodan here before.  It's the All Seeing Eye to identify which devices are connected to the 'net.  As you see here, there are a whole lot of devices that should not be connected to the 'net, at least without better security.  And for an easily understandable reason:

Tentler told Ars that webcam manufacturers are in a race to bottom. Consumers do not perceive value in security and privacy. As a rule, many have not shown a willingness to pay for such things. As a result, webcam manufacturers slash costs to maximize their profit, often on narrow margins. Many webcams now sell for as little as £15 or $20.

"The consumers are saying 'we're not supposed to know anything about this stuff [cybersecurity]," he said. "The vendors don't want to lift a finger to help users because it costs them money."

So what do you do?  One thing is simply not to get any of this sort of thing.  No Internet-connected webcams, security systems, light bulbs, refrigerators, TVs, etc.  Some of these products are frivolous, like Philips' Internet controllable light bulbs that change color via command from your iPhone app.

But others are not.  The Queen Of The World likes her Netflix and Amazon Fire TV, and we have a new TV that will give her than.  What's the risk?  I guess I need to figure that out.  What I'm thinking is to block outbound traffic at the Internet router.  Probably to do this I will need to build a box to put in front of that, with appropriate tools and logging.

That takes a pretty high skill set, and a lot of time.  That's not something that, say, Mom could do.  I'm thinking more and more that I should have gone to Law school.  This might make a good class action suit.

What's all this cold white stuff, Boss?

I guess we're not in Georgia anymore, Wolfgang ...