Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
I have a bunch of half-written posts saved in MarsEdit’s “Local Drafts”. I’m assuming I never posted them, but it could be an error on MarsEdit’s part. I’m too lazy to search to see if these have been previously posted or not, instead I’m just going to hit send.
Another good post by digital forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski, explaining what the FBI is actually pressuring Apple to provide:
With most non-technical people struggling to make sense of the battle between FBI and Apple, Bill Gates introduced an excellent analogy to explain cryptography to the average non-geek. Gates used the analogy of encryption as a “ribbon around a hard drive”. Good encryption is more like a chastity belt, but since Farook decided to use a weak passcode, I think it’s fair here to call it a ribbon. In any case, lets go with Gates’ ribbon analogy.
…
Instead of cutting the ribbon, which would be a much simpler task, FBI is ordering Apple to invent a ribbon cutter – a forensic tool capable of cutting the ribbon for FBI, and is promising to use it on just this one phone. In reality, there’s already a line beginning to form behind Comey should he get his way. NY DA Cy Vance has stated that NYC has 175 iPhones waiting to be unlocked (which translates to roughly 1/10th of 1% of all crime in NYC for an entire year). Documents have also shown DOJ has over a dozen more such requests pending. If FBI’s promise of “just this one phone” were authentic, there would be no need to order Apple to make this ribbon cutter; they’d simply tell them to cut the ribbon.
Why has the government waited this long to order such a thing? Because in spite of all of iOS 8’s security, the Chinese invented a ribbon cutter for it called the IP BOX. IP BOX was capable of brute forcing any numeric passcode in iOS 8, and even though it was junky, Chinese-made hardware with zero forensic credibility (and actually called home to servers in China), our government used it widely to break into iOS devices without Apple’s help. The government has really gone dumpster diving for forensic solutions for iOS. This ribbon cutter was used by both law enforcement and anyone with $200 to break into iOS devices, and is a great example of how such a ribbon cutter is often abused for crime.
So here’s the real question: Why is FBI asking for the invention of a ribbon cutter instead of just asking Apple to cut the ribbon? Well the answer to that comes back to precedent. If FBI can order the existence of this ribbon cutter, Cy Vance’s 175 phones will be much easier to push through the courts without the same level of scrutiny as a terrorism case. If FBI were simply asking for Apple to cut the ribbon, all future AWA orders would have to go through the same legal scrutiny in the courts for justification. Getting the ribbon cutter invented for a terrorism case opens the door for such a tool to then be justified by the DA for weaker cases – such as narcotics, computer crimes, or even simply investigations where the government can’t even prove to the courts that a crime was ever committed. Once it’s a tool, just like a Stingray box or a breathalyzer, the court’s leniency in permitting its use increases dramatically.
(click here to continue reading On Ribbons and Ribbon Cutters | Zdziarski’s Blog of Things.)
Now if I could only mandate that all politicians were required to understand the concepts before opening their speaking holes. I know, I know, zero chance…
Additionally, there is this angle:
Also consider that the courts aren’t about to force Apple to hack into their own customer products. In fact, the customer purchased these products trusting that the manufacturer wouldn’t – even couldn’t – intentionally compromise them; ever since iOS 8, Apple has marketed these devices as so secure that Apple themselves cannot hack them. For Apple to be forced to backdoor their own devices would invite countless lawsuits from their own customers, betray consumer trust, and likely cost Apple millions, if not billions, in sales depending on how big of a PR nightmare it created. The courts, however, appear to be OK with forcing Apple to write what is being portrayed by the FBI as an innocent, fluffy tool for just this one device.
(click here to continue reading On Ribbons and Ribbon Cutters | Zdziarski’s Blog of Things.)
Coal mining, lumber, whale oil extraction: none of these industries are going to be resurrected to save the working classes of the United States, those eras are over, and are not returning. No amount of new regulation or removal of existing regulation is ever going to bring those jobs back.
Sadly for all of us, many Trump voters expect him to be able to magically recommission steel plants, to make coal a cost efficient means to create energy, and so on.
To see where things get more tangled, head into the damp woods of the Cascade Range in central Oregon, and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, where a long economic decline began in the late 1980s as international trade shifted timber markets to places like Canada, and automated mills eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. Those computer-run mills are not going away even if more logs start arriving.
“We really don’t have a clear and easy path to go back to the good old days when natural resource extraction was driving our economy,” said Sean Stevens, the executive director of Oregon Wild, a conservation group. “It is not as easy as just logging more,” he said.
…
But the hopes, and the fears, about how that system might now change are boundless.
“My big hope is that people would be able to go back to work in San Juan County and these rural areas,” said Phil Lyman, a county commissioner in southern Utah, where antigovernment feelings run as deep as the slot canyons. “You just feel like everything has been stifled with regulations.”
Robot, living in the future…
Republicans in Congress have proposed bills weakening federal laws that protect wilderness, water quality, endangered species or that allow presidents to unilaterally name new national monuments. Some conservatives hope Mr. Trump will support their efforts to hand federal land over to states, which could sell it off or speed up drilling approvals.
…
Uranium mines around the Grand Canyon. Oil drilling rigs studding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. New coal and timber leases in the national forests. States divvying up millions of acres of federal land to dispose of as they wish.
To environmental groups, it would be a nightmare. To miners, loggers, ranchers and conservative politicians in resource-dependent areas, it would be about time. Either way, Donald J. Trump’s election presages huge potential change on America’s 640 million acres of federal public lands, from the deep seas east of Maine to the volcanic coasts of Hawaii.
(click here to continue reading Battle Lines Over Trump’s Lands Policy Stretch Across 640 Million Acres – The New York Times.)
This Tree Is Older Than You
and on that topic from D Watkins:
A common theme that’s being tossed around is that Trump’s election was the white working class’ chance way to say “F**k you!” to the political elites who forgot about them, sucked up their factory jobs and left them out to dry. I take issue with this for a number of reasons.
The first and most obvious reason is this: How do you buck a system ruled by elites by electing a billionaire who was born rich, employed the Mexicans he blamed for taking jobs away and could never possibly understand someone else’s struggle? Next, I don’t fully understand the term “hard-working whites.” I come from the blackest community in one of the blackest cities, and I don’t know how not to have 10 jobs. Everybody I know has 10 jobs, even the infants. Black people, Asians and Mexicans alike work their asses off, so why is the “hard-working white” class even a voting bloc?
What’s sad is that these angry, hard-working white people don’t understand that they saw more economic gains under President Obama than they did under George W. Bush. Unemployment went down across the board except among African-Americans — the rate actually doubled for us — so those folks should be praising Obama, not championing Trump or subscribing to all this alt-right B.S.
Then there’s the myth of returning factory jobs. It’s not a real thing! And trust me, I used to subscribe to the same ideas, all caught up in the nostalgia of the old dudes from my neighborhood. My friend Al’s grandpa used to park his Cadillac on Ashland Avenue, hop out and roll up on us nine-year-olds like, “Finish high school, get a job at Bethlehem Steel and your future is set!” He’d spin his Kangol around backwards, pull out a fistful of dollars, give us each a couple and continue, “I made so much money at the steel factory, my lady ain’t worked a day in her life! I bought a house that I paid off and that shiny car right there! Yes sir, life is good!”
Those jobs were long gone by the time we came of age, at Bethlehem Steel and almost every place like it across the country. They weren’t taken by Mexicans or sent overseas — industries changed, new products were made and robots were invented that could do the job of 10 men and work all night without complaining. Those beautiful factory positions for uneducated hard-working whites (or anybody else) aren’t coming back, and I don’t care what Trump says. What’s even weirder is that we have created a generation of people complaining about jobs that they have never had and will not see in their lifetime — and again, for what?
(click here to continue reading Dear hard-working white people: Congratulations, you played yourself – Salon.com.)
Satanic Gift
I keep a file on my iPad of dreams that I recall or that wake me up so that I don’t have to recount them publicly to you my remaining readers. I’m making an exception because this particular dream yielded some art that I am proud of. Sunday morning at 4 AM I woke up, thirsty, and in the middle of a dream.
In my dream gallery, there was an image that included a layer of golden dots. The next evening, I found this beautiful image on one of my Flickr contacts feed:
Does it mean anything? Probably not, but…
Dream notes from Jan, 2018:
I was welcoming family to an art opening of my work (shown in a gallery with some other people). Bigger than Marty’s gallery. And it didn’t seem like photos, seemed like oil paint. One was a study of a man’s face in variations of white – painting was 8 feet tall. Another was a bunch of heads floating on a doorway. “Used real canvas this time” I told George (?). Another had a three dimension component sticking out. Then there was a portrait of a young boy, covered in gold specks. “Not one of mine, but it’s cool”.
I didn’t finish the post in 2018, nor keep my complete thought. I’m pretty sure the art I came up with was this self-portrait collage:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was lucky enough to be born in the international melting pot of Toronto, blessed to spent formative years in liberal university town Austin, and Chicago.1
I’ve met and become friends with immigrants and first generation Americans from every continent: Asia, Africa, North/South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Oceania (well, maybe not Antartica). In my experience, immigrants are not seeking to steal our precious bodily fluids, replace us in the workplace, or murder us in our sleep. Politicians who demonize immigrants are assuming their constituents don’t have human interactions with immigrants, or they’ll have a realization that people are just people.
Sort of like the cliche of the anti-LGBT politician who changes his harsh tune when his daughter comes out as gay.
Footnotes:
The Washington Post reports:
The Department of Justice is investigating potential efforts by AT&T and Verizon to hamstring a technology that could someday make it easier for consumers to seamlessly switch their wireless carriers, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The probe appears to focus on whether those companies — perhaps in a bid to stop their subscribers from jumping ship to rivals — colluded to undermine so-called eSIM cards, a technology that could someday allow the owners of smartphones, smartwatches or other devices to change their service provider on their own, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the probe, which has not been made public.
If the U.S. government ultimately determines that AT&T and Verizon harmed competitors or consumers, it could result in major fines or other penalties.
(click here to continue reading Did AT&T and Verizon collude to keep you from switching cellphone carriers? The Justice Department is investigating. – The Washington Post.)
Operative word being “if”…
In the Trump/GOP era of government, corporations are encouraged to run rampant over any rules or laws they don’t like, all that is needed is a nice campaign contribution, and issues miraculously vanish! Poof!
The Cars were one of the first bands I ever knew. As a 7th grader, I owned a cassette tape of “Shake It Up”, one of about 5 albums I played on my boom box. Rick Ocasek died recently. What does that mean for my solipsism?
Rock stars die all the time, but The Cars lead singer passing away from cardio-vascular complications? Yikes.
Is this going to be a year/decade where the cultural icons of Gen-Xers die? Probably, if human life doesn’t change. I mean, who were the icons of our era?
Another photo of mine made it into Flickr Explore (click to embiggen)
Trump + Ricketts = Don’t Buy Tickets
Formula checks out.
I went to the Trump Tower protest 10/28/19, and took a few snapshots of the crowd and of various signs. Trump was in town to besmirch Chicago, make fun of people who have died of gun violence, and then fundraise with his buddy Todd Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs. Trump wasn’t welcomed as much as he was jeered.
Dahleen Glanton of the Chicago Tribune:
The people outside Trump’s comfort zone were as different as America allows each of us to be. And they were united in a single goal — to let Trump know that he’s not welcome in Chicago. Even if he didn’t see it, maybe, at least, he sensed it.
It is obvious that Trump doesn’t like Chicago. He has no use for voters here. In 2016, Trump won only 38% of the vote in Illinois, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 55%. Buoyed by Chicago, Clinton got a whopping 74% of the vote in Cook County, compared to Trump’s embarrassing 21%.
There is no way he can count on Chicago in 2020, so he’s resigned to making our city a punching bag.
On his first visit to Chicago since becoming president, Trump wasted no time trashing our city. Speaking to a gathering of international chiefs of police, he again compared Chicago to Afghanistan, saying that the war-torn nation is a “safe place by comparison” and declaring that Chicago is “embarrassing to us as a nation.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot struck back, calling his attack “insulting, ignorant buffoonery.”That was mild, though, compared to what other Chicagoans were saying.
The overwhelming sentiment at the rally, which turned into an impromptu march through downtown picking up cheering bystanders along the way, was not only that Trump should be impeached, but also that he needs to be in jail.
The chants were loud and fierce, often accompanied by a drumbeat.
“Lock him up!” “This is what democracy looks like!” “Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” “Democracy is under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
(click here to continue reading Column: Chicago threw a great protest rally for Donald Trump. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to see it. – Chicago Tribune.)
AP reports:
While in Chicago, Trump headlined a campaign luncheon at his hotel in the city, raising approximately $4 million for a joint fundraising committee benefiting Trump’s reelection effort and the Republican National Committee, according to the GOP.
Thousands of demonstrators rallied outside the hotel, waving colorful signs that said “Impeach Trump Now” and “Quid Pro Quo Trump Must Go.” They also shouted chants such as “Lock him up” and “Trump must go.”
Some said they came to protest out of a fear for the country they have never felt before.
“It will take decades to put things back in place,” said Caroline Mooney, a 61-year-old marketing analyst from the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park.
“If something doesn’t happen next November, we may not recover,” said her friend Steve Schaibley, who drove 2-1 / 2 hours from Livingston County.
(click here to continue reading Trump calls Chicago an embarrassment to U.S. | State News | news-gazette.com.)
Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times:
Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, the Republican National Committee finance chair, will oversee fundraising for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign as the two organizations merge their 2020 efforts, the RNC announced Friday.
Ricketts, a Wilmette resident, took over RNC fundraising duties in January 2018. The RNC appointment came after Ricketts withdrew his name to be deputy commerce secretary because it was too complicated to untangle his finances.
Under Trump, the RNC and the Trump bid for a second term will fundraise under a unified joint flag called the Trump Victory Committee.
“I am honored to continue to support President Trump and the Republican Party through the Trump Victory Committee,” Ricketts said in a statement. “As we head toward 2020, I will work to ensure President Trump and his campaign have the resources they need
(click here to continue reading Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts to run President Trump’s re-election fundraising.)
Some other of my photos of the protest:
Trump – Black Lives Matter
Traitor Go Back To Moscow
Great Impeachment, Robin! Batman and Robin showed up to protest the Dotard
Impeach Trump
Get Out Trump
Make America Great Again – Deport Trump
Another photo of mine made it to Flickr’s Explore gallery.
I took the photo a couple years ago in Lincoln Park with some friends, waiting for a solar eclipse. Unfortunately, the only mind altering substances available was a few sips from a cold bottle of saké.
In my digital darkroom, I used a filter to emulate cross-processing, which is an analog darkroom technique where film is developed using chemicals intended for a different type of film.
Wikipedia:
Cross processing (sometimes abbreviated to Xpro) is the deliberate processing of photographic film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film. The effect was discovered independently by many different photographers often by mistake in the days of C-22 and E-4. Color cross processed photographs are often characterized by unnatural colors and high contrast. The results of cross processing differ from case to case, as the results are determined by many factors such as the make and type of the film used, the amount of light exposed onto the film and the chemical used to develop the film. Similar effects can also be achieved with digital filter effects.
(click here to continue reading Cross processing – Wikipedia.)
I’m considering making a large print of this, but we’ll see.
(Click to embiggen)
Photo taken a couple summers ago at some Wicker Park street festival, added to Flickr Explore 10/9/2019.
The woman was playfully teasing her boyfriend because while he hemmed and hawed and tried to line up his perfect shot, I stepped in and took a quick photo, and she gestured at me, saying something, “come on, this guy already took my picture!”
I’m a zen photographer: I see something interesting, snap, and either the photo turns out ok or not. And in fact, this is a flawed photo, my focus was a little off, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tri-X 400 in emulation, using Exposure 5.
The New York Times reports:
The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation’s bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator from extinction.
The changes will make it harder to consider the effects of climate change on wildlife when deciding whether a given species warrants protection. They would most likely shrink critical habitats and, for the first time, would allow economic assessments to be conducted when making determinations.
The rules also make it easier to remove a species from the endangered species list and weaken protections for threatened species, a designation that means they are at risk of becoming endangered.
Overall, the new rules would very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.
(click here to continue reading U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act – The New York Times.)
Totally and utterly disgusting. Enabled by all the lick-spittle Republicans who go along with every abomination Trump births from his spit-speckled maw, and assisted by the idiots who voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016.
In truth, if Ted Cruz had won the nomination in 2016, he might have done this same thing, but he might not have beaten Hillary Clinton either. And what-ifs are pointless.
…where America’s day begins.
A few photos from my recent trip to Guam, if you are curious.
The URL to the Flickr album is here:https://flic.kr/s/aHsmERFABR, and I think this URL takes you directly to the slide show option.
I have processed about 50% of the photos, I expect I’ll finish going through the good and moderate images before the year is over. Who knows, I may feel a burst of energy and add dozens before you happen to look again.
The New York Times reports on the latest slap on the wrist regarding corporate malfeasance and indifference:
The credit bureau Equifax will pay at least $650 million … to end an array of state, federal and consumer claims over a 2017 data breach that exposed the sensitive information of more than 147 million people. The breach was one of the most potentially damaging in an ever-growing list of digital thefts.
The settlement, which was announced on Monday and still needs court approval, would be the largest ever paid by a company over a data breach. The deal requires Equifax to put a minimum of $380.5 million into a restitution fund for American consumers who file claims showing that they were financially harmed.
A portion of that money will pay for lawyers’ fees, but at least $300 million must go to victims, according to settlement documents filed in federal court in Atlanta. If the initial cash is depleted, the company will add up to $125 million more to settle consumers’ claims, bringing the total fund size to more than $500 million.
…
Equifax will pay an additional $175 million in fines to end investigations by 50 attorneys general. Forty-eight states — all except Indiana and Massachusetts, which separately filed their own lawsuits against Equifax — are part of the deal, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico
(click here to continue reading Equifax to Pay at Least $650 Million in Largest Data-Breach Settlement Ever – The New York Times.)
So the government gets a ‘taste’, but individual consumers get spit in their eye. $300,000,000 to be distributed to a portion of 147,000,000 people who Equifax screwed. $2 each. Whooo hooo! Lawyers get plenty of money, average people, not so much.
The fine print is that you have to prove that Equifax harmed you by giving away your social security number, bank info, drivers license, date of birth and whatever else.
Fortune reports:
Equifax will also pay $20,000 to consumers who can prove that they suffered “fraud, identity theft, or other misuse” because of the data breach. Equifax will also pay them $25 per hour for up to 20 hours of time they had spent trying to safeguard their data. Equifax will also reimburse them for out-of-pocket losses and up to 25% of the cost of Equifax credit or identity monitoring. Exactly how Equifax will require consumers verify their costs is unknown.
(click here to continue reading Equifax Settlement: How to Get the Money You’re Owed | Fortune.)
What are the odds that 10% of the consumers who lost their data due to Equifax’s negligence will be able to jump through the proper hoops and reclaim any cash?
Embedded Twitter feed just because
— hmmm, that didn’t do what I wanted. Why aren’t there good tools for embedding Twitter into a WordPress blog? Seems like someone clever should have invented this functionality by now…
The New York Times reports on a topic near and dear to our interests:
No place better illustrates the absurdities of the proliferating use of tax incentives for job creation than the Kansas City metro area, which straddles the Missouri-Kansas state line.
Over the past decade, Missouri and Kansas have offered more than $330 million in tax breaks to lure companies back and forth across State Line Road. More than 100 companies and more than 12,000 workers have moved to new offices, some headed east, some headed west. Missouri poached Swiss Re and Applebee’s; Kansas got JPMorgan Chase and AMC Entertainment.
The net result? No increase in economic activity; no improvement in the lives of workers. Just a few more jobs in Kansas, a few less in Missouri — and a big loss of tax dollars.
Corporate tax incentives are a dubious business. The giveaways frequently serve no higher purpose than rewarding businesses for moving where they already plan to move or creating jobs they already plan to create. And even when incentives prove motivational, there is often reason to question whether governments are getting value for the money.
The black comedy of corporate relocation across State Line Road is an extreme example, but it is by no means unique. Half of the nation’s 10 most populous metropolitan areas — New York, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia and Boston — include portions of multiple states. So do smaller metro areas such as St. Louis; Charlotte, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; Cincinnati; and Memphis. And all are struggling to limit a practice that amounts to paying your furniture to rearrange itself.
(click here to continue reading Opinion | Can States Just Say No to Corporate Giveaways? – The New York Times.)
A variant of the sports ball stadium boondoggle which we’ve also covered ad nauseam, corporate tax giveaways rarely, if ever, make sense in the long term. The politicians who vote for the tax giveaways are usually long gone, but the bill remains, payable by taxpayers. Consultants have raked in their consulting fees, businesses continue doing what they would have done, albeit with a slightly improved quarterly profit for a several years.
Not to mention, sometimes the corporation moves to somewhere else:
But the success stories tend to be celebrated while the failures are forgotten — and studies find that over time, the recipients of tax incentives are no more likely to create jobs or to drive investment than companies that don’t get a break. The plain truth is that governments have no special ability to predict which companies will thrive. Recipients of tax incentives aren’t even guaranteed to stay put. Missouri used $12.9 million in tax breaks to lure Applebee’s corporate headquarters from Kansas in 2011. Four years later, the company moved to California.
Why do politicians still lavish money on corporations for dubious reasons? Who knows, perhaps there should be a study of how many people involved in these sorts of decisions directly benefit from them within a decade.
