Flutterby™! From 2013-08-01 to 2013-08-31

So walk me through this: Verisign is a Certificate Authority that also depends on US DOJ & Commerce sanction for the .com registry, right?

Google "pressure cookers" and "backpacks", get a visit from the government.

[ related topics: moron ]

Best. Headline. Evarrr! "Local Newspaper Delivery Trucks Carry Nothing Of Value, Reports Local Newspaper" (Via)

[ related topics: Weblogs Journalism and Media Automobiles Machinery ]

RT ‏@brennen re the @whump tweet that I mentioned:

@whump the dystopia is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed. (They're working on that part.)

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Archival ]

Augh! Referential integrity is important people! You put these checks in your database for a reason! I need to go LARTing now...

[ related topics: Databases ]

U.S. Department of Justice challenges the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel ethics committee's censure of assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Kline over withholding evidence that could have helped clear a defendant.

"Prior to (Kline's) misconduct, the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, as well as the training provided by the United States Attorney's Office, had repeatedly reminded prosecutors to err on the side of disclosure," Herman wrote.

Kline, Herman said, "failed to heed those warnings. A public censure is the type of discipline that recognizes such a failure, while also making the public and the Bar aware of the necessity of following this ethical requirement."

[ related topics: Ethics Law Law Enforcement ]

News: things that happen infrequently. When police or prosecutorial misconduct starts making national headlines, then we're making progress.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Sometime I go to the breakroom to blow off steam and manage to get some focus

Gear Sketch.

With Yahoo closing down Astrid, I'm looking for a new Android To-Do app. Wants:

• Templates ("Copy in all the stuff I need to load in the car from the last time I want camping")
• Geo-awareness ("While you're at the lumberyard")
• Desktop or web interface (so I can type stuff in from a computer)
• Hierarchical (I'm in the shop, don't show me work tasks, and vice-versa)

Niceties:

• Shared (so Charlene can add things my my list)

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Automobiles ]

If you've been following the XKCD Time saga, Wired has a little bit more teaser about some of the stuff embedded in it

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Wow, I've worked with some of the smarter RFID systems, but I had no idea that the ones that most card key systems are based on are so easily cloned: Hacking RFID Tags Is Easier Than You Think: Black Hat

[ related topics: RFID ]

Bruce Schneier in Bloomberg: The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership:

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Cryptography ]

Ya know, with so many of these things my complaint is not that the data is collected, it's the asymmetry of the collection. I wouldn't be nearly as disturbed by the fact that your license plate location history is getting recorded and collated if we didn't see so many instances of police hassling civilians for taking pictures.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Law Enforcement Automobiles Salon magazine Archival ]

Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI can remotely activate microphones in your Android devices (Via Gizmodo).

I have installed Open WhisperSystems TextSecure and RedPhone, and am using TextSecure as my primary messaging system even though I don't think anyone else is using those tools yet, but if I can't trust that the basic hardware isn't exploited...

Well, maybe it is time to throw down with the Ubuntu Edge phone IndioeGoGo purchase...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Consumerism and advertising Law Enforcement Economics ]

Freakonomics: How Does Stop-and-Frisk Change Attitudes?. Looks at The Effect of Police Contact: Does Official Intervention Result in Deviance Amplification? Stephanie A. Wiley, Finn-Aage Esbensen. Conclusion: Not in a good direction.

BPS Research Digest: Does police contact increase or decrease the likelihood that youths will offend in the future?

The key finding is that with participants matched for propensity, those who had contact with the police at time two (compared with those who didn't) said at time three that they'd feel less guilt if they committed various offences from theft to violence; they expressed more agreement with various "neutralisation" scenarios (e.g. it's OK to lie to keep yourself out of trouble); they were more committed to their deviant peers (e.g. they planned to continue hanging out with friends who'd been arrested); and finally, they said they'd engaged in more offending behaviour, from skipping classes to taking drugs or being violent. This pattern of results differed little whether police contact involved being arrested or merely being stopped.

How's your local police department doing?

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Health Political Correctness Law Enforcement ]

Reuters: Manning undid part of secret U.S. intelligence sharing: testimony.

Tightening access to the system undid the very benefits the system was meant to provide, according to Susan Swart, a former U.S. State Department official who was responsible for the movement of diplomatic cables when they were leaked and published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in 2010.

To which I have two immediate knee-jerk reactions:

• So I guess we should be thanking the NSA for demonstrating to us why we should be using more end-to-end encryption and be less trusting the manufacturers of our hardware and software.
• The problem that Manning was exposing was that most of the secrecy was split between covering up criminal behavior and claiming as secret things that should never have been secret in the first place.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Cryptography ]

So we've long known that 2d printers encode identifying information in their output, how long until the same thing starts to happen with 3d printers? And will we know when it does?

[ related topics: Free Speech Graphics ]

Discussion on the Chugalug mailing list about finding duplicated files, I thought for a moment, whipped up this, and then realized it'd be generally useful when I got home.

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | perl -nale 'print "$lastfile is the same as $F[1]" if ($F[0] eq $lastmd5); ($lastmd5, $lastfile) = @F;'

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Community hubris ]

Ramin Shokrizade on Gamasutra: The Top F2P Monetization Tricks. A little thinking about Candy Crush and monetizing games by way of in-game purchases.

[ related topics: Games ]

Whoah! Fellow guide Karin dug out this image of me guiding at Broken Nose on the Ocoee, 2 decades ago:

[ related topics: Photography Chattanooga Douglas Adams ]

Tee hee hee: Don't Worry Government, I Got This Porn Filter Sorted.

So i hear the UK government wants to make a porn filter. About bloody time i reckon. I’m fed up of happily browsing the Internet for boobs, only to have non-porn related subject matter thrust down my face hole.

On whipping up a Python+twisted library to build a filter that presents only porn.

[ related topics: Language Books Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs moron Monty Python Net Culture Python ]

Which should you eat: trout or bass? State Environmental Protection Agency says that you should prefer small trout over bass, carp, or large trout, because of concerns about mercury.

I'm just linking to it because I'm trying to figure out how to get a crack about heavy metals and dropping the bass in here.

[ related topics: Music Food Astronomy ]

Johannes Ernst just bought a new Belkin web cam, and discovered a few security concerns.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Invention and Design LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Dancing with Bears: even in the context of a pie eating contest, "whipped topping" is ambiguous.

And at the "Lazy Bear Weekend", this is some badly targeted marketing...

[ related topics: Photography Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Baboons are running amuck, and perceive themselves superior to unarmed humans, with wildlife protection making it even harder.

Note the comment about "paintball guns", white S. African's use serious paintball guns with paint, hard rubber balls and ball bearings, sometimes with "broken" pressure regulators, as a form of painful but non-lethal home defense. In S.A., if a white person shoots/kills a black intruder inside their own home, the shooter is the "bad guy".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Sports Guns Race Real Estate ]

New York Times: Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

"Get off my lawn"ism as a service. (Yes, I read one too many pundits on social media and privacy... sigh)

[ related topics: Privacy Journalism and Media ]

FBI posts fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects. Oooh, I see a fantastic iframes application...

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Dove - Photoshop Action Deceiveware, malware, advertware... While I really like the stance Dove soap has taken, I'm not sure how I feel about this troll. I'm afraid we'll see a lot more similar things. Of course, people whom download plugins often get more than they thought they got.

What I don't like about Dove (and most typical soap), is it seems to be an experiment to see how much air they can inject in a bar that is already curved and shaped to be half worn out.

[ related topics: virus ]

US DEA is gathering data through questionable means, and then reverse-engineering evidence to hide those data collection mechanisms.

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."

Not a new practice, here's my "routine traffic stop" story, in which a friend and I saw tens of police cars chase down a specific vehicle, which was later reported as "a routine traffic stop".

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement Machinery Fabrication Archival Model Building Woodworking ]

New York Post: Stop the killing:

Bloomberg also ought to direct the police to enforce smaller traffic crimes before they cause deaths. Thursday morning, not 12 hours after Renee died, 34 cars and seven big rigs ran the intersection’s two red lights over just 15 minutes.

Good thing that, unlike cyclists, those motor vehicle drivers obey the signals, hey?

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement New York ]

That Tor exploit (which occurs when you browse Tor with JavaScript turned on and then use that same browser for non-Tor browsing) that's been making the rounds? Here's a claim that it's got a hardcoded IP address that points to the NSA.

Cell phones (and most systems) need a "roll back all the configuration changes but the one that actually did what I wanted to do" switch.

This says some interesting things about the relationship between the modern media and political parties: GOP threatens to pull access to presidential primary debates from networks which broadcast a Hillary Clinton documentary.

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media Salon magazine ]

so Bezos buys WaPo: for just $80 a year you'll be able to buy your news 2 days later, shipped from a sweatshop warehouse...

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Whoah: In a Sygate press release, Rebecca "Becky" Bace lets slip that the NSA had a part in capturing Kevin Mitnick.

... Prior to Infidel, Bace spent 12 years at the National Security Agency (NSA). She built the NSA's intrusion detection research program, an accomplishment that earned her the agency's Distinguished Leadership Award in 1995. While at NSA she played a pivotal role in the 1995 detection, trace back, and apprehension of Kevin Mitnick, the FBI's most wanted computer criminal at that time.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Qoted For Truth: "They don't need to be open, all they need to be is free to the consumer." Peter Cranstone on the ProjectVRM mailing list

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Must read: The New Yorker on the stripping of due process that is civil forfeiture http://www.newyorker.com/repor...fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=all

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

47 State Attorneys General have asked Congress to gut the protections in the Communications Decency Act which protect online service providers

[ related topics: Politics Free Speech ]

NY Times: T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security:

T.S.A. officials would not say if the VIPR teams had ever foiled a terrorist plot or thwarted any major threat to public safety, saying the information is classified. But they argue that the random searches and presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent that bolsters the public confidence.

Yeah. Given that the FBI crows wildly every time they manage to set up a developmentally disabled competent to take the fall for a fabricated bombing plot, I'm pretty confident that the TSA is spending our tax dollars on toys from military contractors.

I guess that's "public confidence".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Aviation Law Enforcement Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Shadow forwarded along this video of a cyclist cramping up. Yeah, it's like that. And: Ouch.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Sense About Science is a U.K. organization that wants "... to change public discussions about science and evidence."

Their "Ask for evidence" campaign has some interesting examples of evidence hunting that might inspire.

SCUM Certified Agile Master (SCAM) Certification Training:

This course overviews the Huddle agile process framework, a very small part of the overall system delivery process which through clever rhetoric and playing to the prejudices of the developers und program engineers (DUPEs) who attend the course we've made it out to be the only thing that you need to understand about software process. The course also inculcates you to the SCUM Alliance's definitive organizational general mastery of agile (DOGMA).

(See also: Agility@Scale: Strategies for Scaling Agile Software Development: Our integrity debt continues to grow.

[ related topics: Software Engineering moron ]

Xerox scanners using JBIG2 compression appear to be changing numbers in copies.

MeFi user plinth breaks it down.

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python ]

Yesterday, there was a pushed "AMBER" alert SMS message that went to, apparently, all cell phones in California. I FaceTweeted:

847 cell phones per 1k ppl in the U.S. 3M ppl in San Diego area. 15 seconds to check your phone. Amber Alert last night cost >10k hours.

At that time I thought it was just to the San Diego area, but if it went to all California phones that's more like 38 million people with a cell phone penetration of .847, so 32 million phones, and 134108 hours. California's per-capita income is $45k/year, with overhead we'll call it $25/hr, which means that AMBER Alert cost $3.35M. Not counting tourists.

And they haven't caught the guy yet. From http://www.amberalert.gov/statistics.htm in 2011 there were 158 AMBER Alerts, with 28 recoveries based on those alerts, which means we can multiply that number by 5.6. So that AMBER Alert really cost $18.9M.

The EPA uses $6.6M $7.4M in 2006 dollars as the statistical value of a human life, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator tells me is $7.64M $8.57M. At a cost of well over $9M (remember that we predicated this message that woke many people from sleep only cost 15 seconds to respond to), this text message was really bad policy.

Especially since most everyone I know has complained about this being crying wolf, and now figured out how to turn off those notifications in their phones.

[Edit: Corrected numbers for statistical value of human life. Don't know how I'd gotten them wrong before.]

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Mathematics California Culture Economics ]

From the Firefox version 23 release notes:

Dropped blink effect from text-decoration: blink; and completely removed <blink> element

John Boker's jQuery Blink plugin can do it anyway.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

I have been complaining for years now that if all of this big data mining were actually worthwhile, then various advertising networks would give me ads for things I'm actually interested in. For the most part, however, they just give me ads for things I've already bought. The trend continues, and the only thing I can figure is that somehow they managed to pull these shoes out of the photo of us in drag at the Weave Your Heart in San Francisco 2013 IAGSDC square dancing convention. Because, yeah, these look an awful lot like those shoes.

(Note to those who'd question my masculinity: These shoes are part of the "Steve Madden" line. Because, you know, football and 6" glittery gold heels go together so well.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Bay Area Current Events Consumerism and advertising California Culture Sports Shoes Archival ]

Schneier on Security: Restoring trust in our government

[ related topics: Weblogs moron Cryptography Archival ]

Bike Portland: Man attacked with blow dart while cycling on Sauvie Island. Yeesh, the big scary white pickup truck owners are no longer content with just running us off the road... Or, as Matt Haughey ‏@mathowie Tweeted:

Portland, where even senseless violent attacks are carefully done with blow guns instead of factory-produced firearms http://bikeportland.org/2013/0...e-cycling-on-sauvie-island-91835

[ related topics: Sports Machinery Guns Pedal Power Race Bicycling ]

Shark found on New York subway, specifically, a 4' long shark was found on the "N" train headed to Queens.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Monty Python Machinery Trains New York Public Transportation ]

I will consider getting cable TV again when Discovery Channel does manatee week.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, denies on video that the 4th Amendment mentions "probable cause". A little review, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Hayden also confirmed the XKEYSCORE program.

The Atlantic asks why the NSA didn't have a plan in place for when news of these programs leaked, especially in light of the pushback from other countries we're seeing.

[ related topics: Privacy Movies Software Engineering Law Current Events Civil Liberties Video Archival Real Estate ]

Uh oh. Could be that the @USPS tracking page was misleading and that PhonepartsUSA didn't actually give them the part. Now I'm pissed twice.

Flying bike (YouTube video). Remote control with a dummy passenger, looks like a quad copter with two superior fans and two stabilizing ones, claims of 5 minutes of flight time, electric.

This may be cooler than the flying car...

[ related topics: Aviation Automobiles Video Bicycling ]

I was poor when I was reading Omni, and it was a major splurge to buy it. I'm hoping the attempts at: Omni Reboot stick and give me something worth reading and thinking about as much as the old Omni magazine did. In many ways the world, and my role and perception of it have changed. I'm hoping it is more revolution/evolution than reboot.

As I just typed 'fdisk' into skype, which turned it into 'frisk' and I am thinking modern spell correction should have a setting for what I am/do. ie: Geek words get added to the vernacular/disctionary and have priority.

If I were law enforcement, 'frisk' should replace 'fdisk' but as a geek, fdisk is also valid.

Or do I just not know where to look for such things?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

http://lavabit.com/ (Shutdown message quoted in the comments)

[ related topics: Quotes ]

Okay, people, I now have way too many books written by social media contacts queued up on my tablet. I love ya, but y'all gotta slow down!

[ related topics: Books Journalism and Media ]

Talking on the phone while driving doesn't influence crash rates: http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sd...ava/BhargavaPathania2013_AEJ.pdf

Now can we get Sanjay Gupta to apologize to the medical community for having damaged evidence-based medicine? http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/...hanged-mind-marijuana/index.html

[ related topics: Drugs Health Community ]

I really wish Google would get a basic clue on this identity thing. It's 2013, not 1993, y'all can do better than this.

Via Shadow, cool woodworking, and science!: Magnetic Coaster-reactive Compass Table! I took over 1,000 mini-compasses and a trashed table and made my roommates a killer wedding present. Reddit thread. Video of moving the coasters around.

[ related topics: Video Marriage Furniture Woodworking ]

Also via Shadow, I haven't had a chance to delve in yet, but: Maps. Specifically Uncharted Territory: The Power of Amateur Cartographers.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

• A warning to college professors from a high school teacher - Washington Post — on how the emphasis on testing, and the form of testing, has impacted curriculum. And not in good ways.
• A CNN blog pointing out that those "children" "rescued" from "trafficking" by the FBI last week shouldn't be in handcuffs. Someone on Twitter suggested Children of the Night as an organization that's actually doing good in cases like these. I'm usually super skeptical, but they're saying the right things.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Law Enforcement Education ]

The NSA customer appreciation page: http://watchingover.us/

NSA to cut 90% of sysadmins. Because you know what makes me trust an organization even more? Concentrating the power into the hands of a few. Via /., which notes:

Alluding to an issue of mistrust, Alexander further clarified: 'At the end of the day it's about people and trust ... if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.' Apparently, breaking the law and lying about it leaves one without a sense of irony when speaking in public."

Snerk.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Heinlein ]

Reddit: Explain C++ like I am A programmer from 1979 who only knows BASIC and you are Mufasa.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

The Bike Shelf - by Knife & Saw

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

Package in the mail from my sister Sara today!

[ related topics: Photography ]

http://www.wimp.com/innovationloneliness/

Good video and simple effective graphics on social media, human interaction and loneliness. It makes me feel guilty for sharing this as it makes fun of the "I share, therefore I am" mentality. I recently started to make an effort to be more "sociable", posting some things on G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc... which is not sociable. While I might continue to do those things, I need to get out more and so some silly fun inane things with friends, in real time.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Graphics Video ]

Burning Blog - And then the rain came. On dealing with a storm during Burning Man set-up this year.

[ related topics: Burning Man Weblogs ]

Interesting fluff piece: Lena Dunham wants Brooklyn to be Chattanooga, shout out to Nate Hill.

[ related topics: Chattanooga New York Economics ]

Geez: Reports of interspecies pedophilic necrophilia rape in sea otters attributed to lower availability of females. I guess ducks aren't the only ones.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

I hate painting. And my neighbors aren't as gullible as Tom Sawyer's (take 2)

[ related topics: Photography ]

After I banned tipping at my restaurant, the service got better and we made more money

[ related topics: Food Currency ]

The Stranger's Dominic Holden follows up on the processes of fixing the system following up on the threats of the police officer who threatened to come visit him at work after threatening him physically for taking pictures from public property.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Seattle ]

Starting to accumulate parts for the new kitchen. Super heavy. Appliances arrive tomorrow, cabinets not yet built.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Home Improvement ]

A story about Filipino "Do It Yourself" Penile Implants just needed to be on Flutterby. I'd never heard of such things (like these).

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

RT Adrienne LaFrance ‏@AdrienneLaF

NPR ombudsman re-reports award-winning story, says it shouldn't have aired. http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombud...0_e3bf78af04-59b686accb-31701789 … NPR response: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombud...09/210615253/editors-note?live=1 …

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

I put this down in the comments to the NSA firing sysadmins, but from the people I've talked to who've worked in intelligence, and the various ass-covering and public statements made in the work of Edward Snowden's release (and, to be fair, a lot of previous leaks), Adam Curtis talking about MI5 in the BBC absolutely nails it:

But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.

It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.

On the long history of MI5 being just batshit bizarre. Via Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Archival ]

A Father's Love: Dads take their daughters to a One Direction concert. A small, heartwarming, photo essay.

[ related topics: Photography Writing ]

Love that the new feature in (mobile) browsers, "Reader" mode, is essentially Lynx. #mostwebdesignerssuck #troll

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Monster boondoggle: Network World: US to standardize car app/communication device components is a bit of a fluff piece on US DOT: RITA: Request for Information Connected Vehicle - Next Stage Certification Environment.

(And I call it a boondoggle knowing that friends of mine will profit from this... Mostly because said friends have shared with me the silliness of the thinking behind it.)

[ related topics: Weblogs broadband Nature and environment Automobiles Community ]

https://gnunet.org/ - You broke the Internet. We're making ourselves a GNU one.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Just as jailing are going up while crime decreases, in Los Angeles Firemen make more as fires decrease.

[ related topics: Current Events California Culture Community ]

Elon Musk and crowd are pitching us on the Hyperloop. We could snark, like @YApplebaum did: "This is either Elon Musk's Hyperloop, or Alfred Ely Beach's 1867 Pneumatic Railway. I get confused.", or we could run some numbers.

Much of the handwaving that happens in the PDF uses the tiny diameter of the vehicles as the selling point. Lines like "The small diameter of the Hyperloop tube should keep tunneling costs to a far more reasonable level than traditional automotive and rail tunnels." are easy ways to say "your objections are invalid because you're making an apples to oranges comparison" when we pull out the easy numbers.

Which is the only way one can keep a straight face reading statements like "Tunneling cost estimations are estimated at $50 million per mile."

So, what's smaller? Well, this sounds a lot like a gas pipeline. Huh. The Underground Construction Magazine 2012 Pipeline Construction Report says that they're running $200K-300K/inch-mile for pipes in the 24" to 36" range, so let's assume that scales, and we get $17.6M to $26.4M/mile.

But that's for trench buried pipeline, we have to put this in the air, so let's look at prices for infrastructure in the air... looks like $2.6M-4M per mile (PDF), with five pylons per mile. The Hyperloop PDF claims 100' spacing, so 10x denser. But they're shorter. So I suspect we're looking at $13M-20M per mile additional.

So I'm looking at, call it $20M-45M/mile, they're claiming a bit under $16M (cost of tube only)/mile. Oooookay. And this thing's gonna power itself with photovoltaic cells on the top of the tube...

These prices also don't include the "Linear accelerators".

And that includes the aforementioned "Tunneling cost estimations are estimated at $50 million per mile ($31 million per km)" for 15.2 miles of the 382 or so that we're talking about less. But let's drill into that tunnelling price a bit: What other prices can we compare to? Devil's Slide... naw, that's a car tunnel, we have to throw that out, but there's a proposed Delta water tunnel. $23B for 35 miles, $657M/mile. Man, I'd like to know what their tunnelling technology is.

I suspect that, like most rail projects, this is going to result in some horrendously huge consulting/construction fees paid to contractors, with the public stuck with some huge debt defaults. Even if it doesn't get built.

And I'd let North Haverbrook build it first...

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Nature and environment Robotics Current Events California Culture Sports Automobiles Machinery Embedded Devices Trains Fabrication Public Transportation Model Building Photovoltaics ]

Cleveland, Tennessee, is building a new elementary school with safe rooms in each classroom. The safe rooms will be used for storage when not in emergency use. Does anyone else see an inherent flaw in this plan?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Bay Area Chattanooga ]

President Obama appoints the guy who lied to Congress about NSA surveillance to head oversight. Uh. Yeah.

The Atlantic: The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama's Presidency is a good look at... well... let's be frank... all the lies in that speech.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Two from Shadow:

• Cyclists in São Paulo awake to find the city had built a wall in their bike lane.
• Battleshots - Battleship with shot glasses. Interesting little woodworking project...

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

Dear Daughter, I Hope You Have Some Fucking Awesome Sex.

There’s a piece of twaddle going around FetLife called 10 Rules For Dating My Daughter, which is packed with “funny” threats like this ...

In which Ferrett Steinmetz takes apart the "boyfriends need to be run off" trope.

(alt link)

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

That thing where the release notes should have had a big "THE SOAP API IS GOING TO BREAK!", but didn't. And new documentation is silent.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Fuck the flying car, this is definitely the future: We have glow in the dark rabbits.

(Thinking about watching owls hunt at night, I'm thinkin' this is a trait that'd never have evolved in the wild...)

[ related topics: Aviation Food Current Events Automobiles Birds ]

Foreign Policy: Exclusive: After Multiple Denials, CIA Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky, but though they can find memos referring to Chomsky's file, they can't seem to find his file. Went missing, I guess.

I think it makes sense that somewhere in the upper echelons of the CIA there's a mole who's secretly a Chomsky sympathizer.

Square dancing caller tonight was the infamous Sandie Bryant. Brain is now tied in bizarre asymmetric knots.

Why I have far less of a problem with symmetric surveillance than surveillance asymmetry: Oregon's Malheur County Sheriff's Deputies admit on their own surveillance tapes that they were involved in an illegal stop (YouTube). The commentary on the video is way over the top, but...

"Damn it, I was still recording."

... is priceless.

[ related topics: Video ]

Okay, this is funny: Christina Bianco does "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as 19 different divas

[ related topics: Astronomy Java ]

Forbes: NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor, in which Jennifer Granick connects the dots on how NSA mission creep has gone from "foreign terrorists" to monitoring U.S. citizens.

If you've been following the NSA revelations there's nothing new here, but given the legislative state of this country, it's really only a matter of time before we can point to specific instances where people were targeted for prosecution based on their political views, and the surveillance dragnet was used to find some charge to bring against them.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design moron ]

Julian Sanchez in the LA Times: Wiretapping's true danger: History says we should worry less about privacy and more about political spying.

Exactly. The concern isn't that I'm going to get snooped, it's that Clapper or someone else with that power becomes the next J. Edgar Hoover.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy moron Fashion ]

The Amazing Adventures of Bill: Orientation Police.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Comics ]

Courtesy of Research Buzz: New York Times web site goes down, they continue to publish on Twitter and Facebook, and ignore Google+. Yep, this is what happens when you don't have a viable API for producing content into your walled silo.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Shadow forwarded along this animated GIF of those scanning bike wheel lights doing rasters of a dog chasing a cat. I won a set of those sparkly spoke-mounted bike lights at a company shindig a few months ago, been meaning to put 'em on my commuter bike. Must see if they can do this...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Animation Bicycling Dogs ]

This is interesting: Spoon in underwear saving youths from forced marriage. The Karma Nirvana charity is promoting carrying a spoon in your underwear through airport security as a way for teens to be isolated away from parents taking them out of the country against their will in order to be able to talk privately with law enforcement.

[ related topics: Aviation Sociology Law Enforcement Clothing Marriage ]

"I've never seen someone generate over I've never seen someone generate over 700 milli-Wakemans on a single Moog before!"

"Let's see if we can divert some of that to the stacks. Can we get the guitarist to lay down some power chords to dissipate it?"

"I'll try."

"Damn it, where'd that diminished 7th come from? This is an emergency! We've got to get the progosity down, try adding some autotune!"

I'm seeing that the story escalates 'til they decide that to stabilize the performance they've got to drop the bass.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Theater & Plays ]

Interesting: Kickstarter for Pixy CMUcam, a fast, easy to use, easy to interface to a microcontroller vision sensor.

[ related topics: Embedded Devices ]

"Not one single cop in Metro’s entire history has been charged after shooting someone. Even if that person was unarmed and/or innocent." Protestors charged with writing that in chalk on a Las Vegas sidewalk face up to a year in jail for doing so. The Las Vegas Review-Journal is not above a little editorializing:

Detailed police reports said the city crew cost $1,550 to clean both crime scenes.

The reports did not include the cost of the coffee used to clean one of the statements. It’s unclear whether it was a small, medium or large coffee.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Writing Current Events Law Enforcement Gambling Real Estate ]

Oh, this is excellent. Apparently the NCAA is coming down on Texas A&M Quarterback Johnny Manziel for allegedly charging for autographs. They don't have subpoena power, so they're doing this based on the allegations of fans who claim they were charged for autographs. Texas law says that "a person who violates a rule of a national collegiate athletic association adopted by this chapter is liable for damages in an action brought by an institution", which means that Texas A&M might very well be able to sue those fans for remedy for things like lost ticket sales should Manziel be suspended.

I'm a huge skeptic of anything NCAA, I think they're vicious exploiters of indentured labor, and I'm also not a fan of football, so I cackle at this all the way around.

[ related topics: Weblogs Sports Education ]

Really, autocorrect: 'add "ass" to dictionary' because you didn't already have it?

Riding a wood mountain bike in the Leadville 100

Direct link to the Wood Bike Project page.

[ related topics: Content Management Sports Bicycling Woodworking ]

SF Chronicle tears down its paywall after 4 months.

I'm still adamant that I'd pay for local news, but I haven't found local news that's actually worth paying for.

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events ]

NSA internal audit finds that it broke its own privacy rules thousands of times a year.

FISA court says its abilities to police U.S. spying programs is limited and they have to depend on the NSA to police itself.

Bradley Manning apologizes for harm everyone admits he didn't actually cause.

Edward Snowden says the media is being misled about his situation and his relationship with his legal team and the journalists he leaked to.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Software Engineering Law Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

U.S. funded ally Egypt has killed 638 protesters, a death toll of this sort not seen since the Tiananmen Square protest crackdowns.

Our foreign policy is not making us more secure.

Tons more links at this MeFi entry, if you really needed a double-facepalm moment today.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Civil Liberties ]

Interesting, especially in light of that longstanding that we really should resolve sometime network vs broadcast bet with TC: Netflix and Amazon don’t have enough content to replace cable TV.

[ related topics: Books Technology and Culture broadband Television ]

NBC is reporting that U.S. Attorney James Trump may bring charges against encrypted email provider Lavabit.com owner Ladar Levison for shutting down rather than allowing blanket spying on customers.

Part of the fallout from this surveillance is that various service providers are now having to carefully weigh customer convenience and debugging information against having capabilities which could be exploited. Logs now need to get purged regularly, or not kept at all.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Cryptography ]

Careful when traveling out of the country, if you allow your ebook app on your phone or tablet net access it might "un-download" your books, screwing you over for the plane flight back.

... I must return to the US to be allowed to spend a few hours redownloading "my" books before I can read them again. ...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Aviation Woodworking ]

Video of a Perseid meteor exploding.

[ related topics: Astronomy Television Video ]

The genius of Whisper, the massively popular app you haven't heard of hooked me at "If this is the future, I'll take my chances with cholera and paper books".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Huh. "Fair fight" means that the outcome is essentially random.

An evening of trying to sit on my hands and letting the kids figure out the mechanical engineering. So cool when they did.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

I may have to get one of these "20 years of September" T-shirts (H/T @Hexmode): http://ingebrigtsen.no/twenty.php

[ related topics: Clothing ]

That thing where you buy your plywood from a place that sells to cabinet shops and discover that it's actually 48.5"x96.5" #awesome

[ related topics: Home Improvement ]

A good run-down on various Whitehouse statements on the NSA which have been shown to be false: CNN Analysis: NSA revelations undermine government's assurances of privacy.

EFF: Key Takeaways From the Washington Post Report Detailing Thousands of Privacy Violations by the NSA.

Salon: Hey, Washington Post, print the NSA interview.

And <ahref="http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/15/all-three-branches-conduct-vaunted-nsa-oversight/">Emptywheel looks at what the NSA oversight from all three branches really looks like: foiled or impossible.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Free Speech moron Salon magazine ]

Amazon has decided to step on BoingBoing's territory: Amazon's official "funniest reviews" page.

You've likely seen these all before (Banana slicer, three wolf moon T-shirt, etc), but it's interesting that Amazon is embracing this.

[ related topics: Books Clothing ]

Everyone's been passing around the Polygon article about harassment of game developers and designers, but one thing that I haven't seen much about is the tie-in to SWATting and prosecutorial discretion:

"Even the swatting thing, only now that Justin Bieber gets swatted, do prosecutors go, 'Oh, we should probably do something about this'," he said. "I couldn't get the Seattle police interested to save their lives, in prosecuting the kids who were doing this. I'm like, 'Come on, guys, they're sending your SWAT team out. What if you shot somebody. Don't you have an interest in going after these kids?' And they're like, 'No, because they are kids and at the end of the day it will be a juvenile sentence in juvenile court and that doesn't give prosecutors headlines.'"

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Games Law Enforcement Seattle ]

Been using PGP/GPG at work, and am letting GPG Tools sign my work email by default. I'm having to explain what and why I am using it a lot, even though most of my email is to/from IT professionals and most are in other countries. After explaining and linking to the relevant websites I have a single line that I think explains it well:

"I love my country. I trust most people. Stupid people in powerful positions scare me."

Just got a big "ME TOO!" from an IT Admin whom normally speaks French, but whose English is pretty good and it made me smile. Then he sent me his public key from using: GPG4Win.org.

I've also started a process with StartSSL, and am: https://meuon.startssl.com. Am going through steps for the Stage 2 and hopefully "Notary" status. I'm intrigued by their concepts of a digital identify and using it for signing certs, OpenID and more...

The good things about the Snowden fiasco is more people are thinking about things we should have been taking seriously for many years. Including me.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment hubris ]

Shelf pin holes, second set...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained at Heathrow for 9 hours, under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000. As Andrew Sullivan points out, if we were looking for abuse of "terrorism" powers, we just found it.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Interactive Drama Guns ]

Interesting... A theory that the reason that Germany and France didn't sign on to the Iraq war was that they had independent satellite imagery and had independent intelligence, where the British depended on U.S. propaganda.

Via Metafilter.

And while we're looking for historical ways that the CIA has fucked up big-time, this MeFi entry runs down the recent de-classification that the CIA was behind the 1953 coup in Iran.

Meanwhile, we watch Egypt and Syria...

[ related topics: History ]

McAfee CTO Mike Fey regrets regrets ‘flawed’ trillion dollar cybercrime claims.

I guess now that we've discovered that the NSA is behind most of it, everyone's feeling pressure to cover things up...

[ related topics: virus Currency ]

At the Asiana crash, video from a helmet camera helped show some issues in communications and situation management practices that could potentially lead to improvements. So it makes sense that as a result of that video and information, San Francisco's Fire Chief has banned helmet cams.

"Departments in general are careful about how information is handled, and for good reason," Pace said. "I think a lot of them would prefer we didn't have Facebook and YouTube. For so long, they were able to feed the media what they wanted to feed them. I think a lot of them view the helmet cam thing as kind of scary."

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Photography Bay Area Journalism and Media California Culture Pyrotechnics Video ]

4 U.S. Representatives, Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Walter Jones (R-NC) and Jeff Denham (R-CA) wrote a letter to Mozilla asking them to not block third party cookies (PDF). Yes, they break out the "For the children" card, along with talking about how privacy is antithetical to corporate interests:

... This technology enables national brand-name companies to serve relevant advertisements on mom-and-pop websites that would otherwise be unable to compete with giant internet companies for jobs-creating ad dollars. In addition, third-party cookies enable internet advertising networks to replace their ads with hundres of milluions of real-time AMBER alerts and tornado warnings. ...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Privacy Open Source Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Education ]

Family in Ohio is giving me a front seat view of some of the messed up politics. My sister's book documents a bunch of instances of lying and misbehavior by police officers, confirmation for all of which is available in the public record. My visits there are fantastic reminders of the way that we, collectively, subsidize the living daylights out of semi-rural living, the big box sprawl, and driving everywhere. Anyway, some transportation related snark:

RT Angie Schmitt @schmangee, 2, 3:

"During the two-year period ending in late July, about 33,000 people moved to Ohio, while about 84,500 moved out." http://www.cleveland.com/opini...ying_ohio_risks_a_populatio.html …

"The number of Ohioans age 65 and above is nearly 10 percent higher than the national average." http://www.cleveland.com/opini...ying_ohio_risks_a_populatio.html …

Don't worry, guys. Once young people hear about Ohio is sinking $3 billion in borrowed funds into highways, they'll come running.

[ related topics: Politics Books Sociology Law Enforcement Sports ]

David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

...The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

[ related topics: Guns ]

Every time I see someone post a link from Jezebel, I think "you have been trolled". Come to think of it, the New York Times, too...

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Forced Exposure

"I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure. " ...... "So this is the last Groklaw article."

It's gone down before.. but this is quite different than "Nothing to talk about" reasons.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Cryptography ]

Al Jazeera kills its live stream, goes back to cable-tv only in the U.S..

Might have implications for Dan & TC's bandwidth bet...

Duh: Science News: LSD and Other Psychedelics Not Linked With Mental Health Problems, Analysis Suggests.

"After adjusting for other risk factors, lifetime use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline or peyote, or past year use of LSD was not associated with a higher rate of mental health problems or receiving mental health treatment," says Johansen.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Current Events ]

It's interesting that I'm so opposed to the NSA spying on the net, but I'm actually not as outraged over the news that the U.S. Secret Service asking that the Virginia State Police used automated license plate readers to record attendees at 2008 and 2009 political rallies.

But on the other hand, databases like this have a long history of being abused. For instance: 1, 2.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Law Enforcement Databases ]

So you may have seen the report that Federal agents are attempting to suppress information that may help people change the results of polygraph tests.

Ignoring the First Amendment issues surrounding this, this means that our national security is in the hands of people who think that suppressing evidence about "e-readers" (hellooo scientology!) and cold-reading will improve said security. It's worth reading the "Conclusions and Recommendations" chapter of the 2003 National Academy of Sciences The Polygraph and Lie Detection report:

Polygraph Accuracy Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy. The physiological responses measured by the polygraph are not uniquely related to deception. ...

Trimmed there for space reasons, but it's worth reading the chapter.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Scientology Space & Astronomy ]

MeFi user jenkinsEar:

You don't hire a tax lawyer because you want to pay more taxes, and you don't hire an environmental lawyer because you want your business to find more regulations to obey.

We hired a constitutional lawyer.

[ related topics: Politics Law Government ]

WSJ: LinkedIn's Minimum Age Drops to 14 in U.S.. So "like totally making out with some girl" is now going to become a heavily endorsed skill.

"US Doesn't know what data Snowden took", but trust us, we only use the data we collect in authorized ways... http://investigations.nbcnews....at-snowden-took-sources-say?lite

[ related topics: Current Events ]

USA Today points out an interesting little tidbit that they say came from this subscription only WSJ article:

For the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, officials say, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NSA arranged with Qwest Communications International Inc. to use intercept equipment for a period of less than six months around the time of the event. It monitored the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City area.

It's so good that they've got a long track record of using restraint, even as they can't keep track of who has access to what data...

[ related topics: Sports ]

Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Just for comparison, for releases which documented military crimes and which everyone agrees didn't compromise operational security or assets, Manning got a year more than a guy who sold secrets to Iraq for $1,300, 5 years more than one convicted for “passing sophisticated defense secrets to communist East Germany”, and the guy who gave blueprints of the U.S Moscow embassy and revealed the identities of working U.S. agents to the Soviets. That last guy also later got his sentence cut in half.

So, yeah: Give operational security details to the Soviets which compromises U.S. agents and safety? Get a shorter sentence than disclosing war crimes.

[ related topics: History Law Work, productivity and environment ]

October 3, 2011 FISC Opinion Holding NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional. Footnote 14 reads:

The Court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding the NSA's acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program.

In March, 2009, the Court concluded that its authorization of NSA's bulk acquisition of telephone call detail records from [REDACTED] in the so called "big business records" matter "ha[d] been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses [the acquired] metadata," and that "[t]his misperception by the FISC existed from the inception of its authorized collection in May 2006, buttressed by the repeated inaccurate statements made in the government's submissions, and despite a government-devised and Court-mandated oversight regime." Docket [REDACTED] Contrary to the government's repeated assurances, the NSA had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard for querying. The court concluded that this requirement had been "so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall ... regime has never functioned effectively."

(Hat tip to Trevor Timm for calling that out)

[ related topics: Photography Free Speech Software Engineering moron Sports Net Culture Phreaking ]

S.F. Police Department officer endangers cyclists to make a point about bicycle safety (YouTube)

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Bay Area Law Enforcement Embedded Devices Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Anyone else remember when the marketing weenies were trying to get us to pronounce SCSI as "sexy" rather than "scuzzy"?

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

German Government warns key agencies to not use Windows 8 because of potential back-doors. http://www.testosteronepit.com...y-entities-not-to-use-windo.html

No time today to decipher the German, but pulls from https://netzpolitik.org/2013/i...-stimmt-geheimdienste-froehlich/ and http://www.zeit.de/digital/dat...-microsoft-windows-8-nsa/seite-1

Google automatic translation of the Zeit.de link.

[ related topics: Microsoft moron Gambling ]

More for Dan & TC's bandwidth bet: Web's there, but millions in U.S. not plugging in.

Griffin is among the roughly 20 percent of American adults who do not use the Internet at home, work and school, or by mobile device, a figure essentially unchanged since Barack Obama took office as president in 2009 and initiated a $7 billion effort to expand access, chiefly through grants to build wired and wireless systems in neglected areas of the country.

Woohoo! Large subsidies for the sprawl lifestyle and the telecommunications monopolies that have served us so poorly.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Wireless broadband Work, productivity and environment Net Culture ]

ABC News: New Study Slams Processed Meat, apparently riffs on BMC Medicine: Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.

The results of our analysis support a moderate positive association between processed meat consumption and mortality, in particular due to cardiovascular diseases, but also to cancer.

So, assuming that like me you've passed the age when accident is a large risk factor, unless you want to die of dementia eat more bacon.

Although I haven't read either thoroughly, and the article says that:

In addition to diet, lifestyle factors also came into play, researchers found. The data showed that people who ate processed meat the most were also more likely to live unhealthy lifestyles, such as not exercising and smoking. They also ate the fewest fruit and vegetables and drank more alcohol.

So eat more veggies with your bacon, and run more, too.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Invention and Design Food Theater & Plays Current Events Food - Bacon ]

James Temple in the SF Chronicle: Let’s remember the value of Manning’s leaks.

A good run-down of some of the things we've learned, and at least one horrendous foreign policy blunder that we've avoided, because of Manning's sacrifices.

[ related topics: Religion Weblogs Bay Area ]

Aditya Mukerjee: Don't fly during Ramadan, in which a hapless Hindu man flying to hang out with his family gets caught up in a perfect storm of TSA, NYPD and JetBlue screw-ups.

[ related topics: Religion Aviation Sociology ]

The plot thickens. This morning, we get this article: The Independent: Exclusive: UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks.

And shortly thereafter, at The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald quotes Edward Snowden as denying that he has talked to The Independent or leaking that information:

"It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that the Guardian and Washington Post's disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others. The UK government should explain the reasoning behind this decision to disclose information that, were it released by a private citizen, they would argue is a criminal act."

[ related topics: Quotes Politics moron Current Events Net Culture Guns ]

So interesting little bit from last night's Personal Clouds gathering (and there will be more, it was a fascinating night): Priv.ly is a browser plug-in that embeds linked data in-line.

Why is this a big deal? The use-case is that you comment on your favorite social media site, and rather than putting the comment there, the field gets a link to your content. Clearly there are some issues to be worked out here, but... right now when I make an image post, my FaceTwit updater puts that image on Flutterby.net and tosses links on Facebook and Twitter (and here).

This could be a way for me to make those updates, and more, and have richer content show up in-line in whatever aggregator/stream system people are using. I'm not sure the whole thing has come together yet, but it's an intriguing concept...

[ related topics: Content Management Law Journalism and Media ]

RT Steve Worona ‏@SLWorona:

No spying. Well, spying, but legal. Well, a few illegal, but unintentional. Well, a few intentional, but not many. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...pying-powers-multiple-times.html

Note particularly some of the contortions that spokespeople for Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI) are having to go through:

The lawmakers’ staffs since have parsed the comments by their bosses, distinguishing between violations of the law governing electronic surveillance and the deliberate violations of the 1981 executive order.

[ related topics: Law Current Events ]

Next time your favorite mega-successful rock star goes whining on about internet piracy... Steve Aoki and Linkin Park Still Can’t Afford Sylenth:

A video preview of the single, presumably put forth so we can all bask in the glory of these apparent super powers as they come together to unite EDM and whatever it is you call what Linkin Park does, clearly shows the song being built using the Team Arcade crack of the plug-in.

[ related topics: Music Weblogs Space & Astronomy Television Net Culture Video Aviation - Helicopters ]

Been listening to Petaluma meetings with my MP3 player on "fast". Thinking of council and city staff as "Alvin", "Simon", and "Theodore"

[ related topics: Music Pop Culture ]

Tor: Determistic Builds Part One: Cyberwar and Global Compromise.

The short answer is: to protect against targeted attacks. Current popular software development practices simply cannot survive targeted attacks of the scale and scope that we are seeing today. In fact, I believe we're just about to witness the first examples of large scale "watering hole" attacks. This would be malware that attacks the software development and build processes themselves to distribute copies of itself to tens or even hundreds of millions of machines in a single, officially signed, instantaneous update.

See also Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust.

[ related topics: Weblogs Software Engineering ]

Yeah, maybe I'm just frustrated this afternoon, but this exchange had me giggling: RT: Kieran Healy ‏@kjhealy

.@GabrielRossman In John 2:7 the pitchers are clearly filled with water, but in the next scene they are full of wine. #bibviz

RT: Kieran Healy ‏@kjhealy

In Mark 15:37 Jesus dies on the cross, but a few scenes later in Mark 16:9 he is seen alive again. #bibviz #continuity #goofs

RT: Gabriel Rossman ‏@GabrielRossman

@kjhealy Crew or Equipment Visible: In Luke 3:22 we see the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus

RT: Kieran Healy ‏@kjhealy

Audio/visual unsynchronised: In Mark 1:11 a voice says "This is my Son, the beloved" but no character is seen speaking. #bibviz #goofs

[ related topics: Religion Humor Music Wines and Spirits ]

Just in case you're getting deluged with those "OMG! Fukushima is gonna make the world end!" articles:

• New Scientist: Should Fukushima's radioactive water be dumped at sea?
• The EPA RadNet lets you search a U.S. network of radiation detector data. If the article makes claims about, say, milk, you can search the simple query interface for "State" "CA", "Media" "PASTEURIZED MILK", "Nuclides/Radiation" "Cesium-137".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama broadband Invention and Design Law Journalism and Media ]

Shadow forwarded along another one of those exercises in drafting: Custom-Engineered Bicycle Hits 80 Miles per Hour. Because pictures of monstrously different sized chain rings are always cool.

[ related topics: Photography Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Attention Bob Filner: If you're male and accused of sexual harassment, "hysteria" is probably a term to avoid.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

What Diane Feinstein hasn't said: "Keith Alexander is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."

NSA Director Keith Alexander told the Black Hat conference:

The systems were "100 percent auditable" and the general claimed that there had been "Zero abuses of NSA PRISM, and that's no bullshit."

Well, turns out that was bullshit. At least one NSA analyst has been disciplined for stalking an ex-spouse. More analysts have admitted to stalking.

Via this MeFi entry on the NSA paying millions to various Internet companies to compensate them for PRISM.

And oh, look, it looks like the New Zealand police can directly access PRISM data...

Also, as many people are starting to observe: If you want to make Snowden look irresponsible, you can make your own leaks and attribute them to Snowden... which sounds like what the GCHQ is doing.

Bonus: Intelligence official says he was fired for not lying to Congress, says that Rogers and Feinstein are misinformed.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement Net Culture Conferences Marriage ]

Because I'm always good with ragging on bad sociology: Why the number 2.9013 will go down in the history of bad science

Finally had a nice weekend and I was able to finish painting the hardest part of the house to paint. I build the extra supports for the lower part of the ladder, and the rail the ladder sits on is both anchored to the deck, and bolted to the rocks. I bought a Graco ProX7 paint sprayer that I've painted the underside and garage area of the house with. Awesome tool. Nancy was the photographer.

[ related topics: Photography Fabrication Archival Real Estate Furniture ]

When every web result ends "...so I took it to the factory service center", but Charlene and I managed to fix & re-assemble it easily...

So, I've been a little lax in taunting Dan about our media bet and I'm not ready to get all facts and numbersy(boring). So I think I'll let the Great Kevin Spacey twist the dagger a wee bit for giggles.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...embrace-Netflix-and-YouTube.html

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Journalism and Media Television ]

Washington Post: 40 maps that explain the world. A fascinating little tour around the globe. (Via).

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Two stolen from Violet Impudence:

The Truth About Cars: Inside GM: Mystery of Crap Interiors Solved:

Our agent says that all the vehicles the execs drove were “ringers.” More specifically, the engineers would tweak the test vehicles to remove any hint of imperfection. “They use a rolling radius machine to choose the best tires, fix the headliner, tighten panel and interior gaps, remove shakes and rattles, repair bodywork—everything and anything.”

Did the execs know this? “Nope. And nobody was going to tell them . . . As far as they knew, the cars were exactly as they would be coming off the line. That’s why Bob Lutz thinks GM’s products are world-class. The ones he’s driven are.”

Which is referenced from Benedict Evans: Nexus phones are ringers. This article tries to draw the analogy that the stock Android experience, running straight Android rather than crapware infested vendor tweaked Android, is the same experience as those tweaked and polished cars. I'm not sure the comparison totally holds up, but in my experience with this Samsung Galaxy S4 vs my older HTC MyTouch Slide, there's a lot of cruft and fail that's been added on that needs to be removed to make the user experience better.

It's amazing how much testing isn't being done on these modern billion dollar products, how many little rough edges still exist.

[ related topics: Sports Currency Economics ]

My FaceTwit feed today is filled with all sorts of pearl clutching about Miley Cyrus at the VMA event. Dr. Jen Gunter: Criticism of Miley Cyrus at the VMAs reflects the double standard in rock and everywhere else

If you don’t like what Miley Cyrus does turn the channel or don’t buy her music, but don’t tell her she’s too raunchy because that’s just a double standard. And if there’s a double standard in rock, well, that’s just a sad comment on our society.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music ]

In before Shadow emails me about it: http://bsgbikes.com/woodb/duomatic.html is another wood bike, this one's plywood.

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

Linux trojan "hand of thief" ungloved. Disassembling a "trojan horse" exploit pointed at Linux.

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs virus Open Source ]

I prefer encrypted email. We should confirm key fingerprints over a second channel. Key at http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke#h2:PGP_Key

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

UPS: "enter the length, width, and height in whole numbers without the unit of measurement". So what unit of measurement is UPS using? #sigh

Next it'll be mushrooms! And Snakes! Britain begins badger cull amid bovine TB fears: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Ne...vine-tb-fears.ashx#axzz2dBz40fG5

[ related topics: Health Current Events Guns ]

Maybe it's just one of those mornings where I need to see massive mountain bike carnage, but I laughed until I cried at Alpine Gravity Megavalanche Start 2013 (YouTube), a mountain bike "race" down an icy ski slope that looks more like a pachinko game than anything.

Thanks, Shadow. I needed a big dose of absurdity.

[ related topics: Games Sports Bicycling ]

NYTimes: "Obama Weighs 'Limited' Strikes Against Syrian Forces", Democrats.com email warns "neocon war criminals ... demanding a Syria War"

[ related topics: History ]

Video Game Violence Use Among ‘‘Vulnerable’’ Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms, Ferguson & Olson (2013) (PDF) (Journal source), published in Youth and Adolescence.

Our results suggest that the association between violent video games and aggression related outcomes in children, even those with clinically elevated mental health symp- toms, may be minimal. Our research contributes to the field of youth and media by providing evidence that a timely, policy-relevant, and seemingly reasonable hypothesis— that mentally vulnerable children may be particularly influenced by violent video games—does not appear to be well supported.

The press release is Video games do not make vulnerable teens more violent, which notes that:

... On the contrary, the researchers found that the playing of such games actually had a very slight calming effect on youths with attention deficit symptoms and helped to reduce their aggressive and bullying behavior.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Journalism and Media Video ]

"But the only official stand that the NDAA has taken with regards to "prosecutorial misconduct" is to object to the use of that term." http://www.thecrimereport.org/...8-the-pinstriped-wall-of-silence

Shadow forwarded along this promo video for ShopBot/HandiBot CNC cutters (YouTube). There's a vision here that I haven't seen for CNC yet, I'm still not sold that I need one in my shop, but I'm fascinated especially since this shows a lot of carpentry, rather than woodworking, applications.

[ related topics: Movies Television Video Woodworking ]

So this bet with Dan reminded me that I don't watch broadcast TV anymore. My main stream sources for content seem to be Amazon,Netflix and HBOgo. YouTube and indy content could be a whole other thread, but, like everyone else broadcast/on- demand, I'm looking for more content(the good stuff).Here are TV shows I currently watch,like and would recommend.

HBO Game Of Thrones http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=sr_2

True Blood http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844441/?ref_=sr_1

Netflix House of Cards http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/?ref_=sr_1

Orange is the New Black http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2372162/?ref_=sr_1

AMC Breaking Bad http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/?ref_=sr_1

Hell on Wheels http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699748/?ref_=sr_1

SO Flutterby watercooler....suggestions? news shows? old?

[ related topics: Books Games Technology and Culture Movies Invention and Design Current Events Television Real Estate ]

I have long been a right-shoulder hugger in my bicycling habits, but this demonstration of how visible cyclists are in different lane positions is striking. More middle of the lane will be happening. Wow.

[ related topics: Photography Sports Pedal Power Bicycling Archival ]

EFF: An Illustration of How the NSA Misleads the Public Without Technically Lying.

[ related topics: Free Speech ]

Linking to NY Daily News: U.S. Monument to ‘god of chaos’ mysteriously appears in front of Oklahoma City restaurant for this line:

The three-foot-high monument to the fictional deity Azathoth is rough to the touch. It appears as if it has been chipped loose from a base.

Emphasis mine. Now I'm itching to put together a "יהוה" monument to see how the Daily News reports on that...

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Food Current Events ]

Hey mobile app developers: If the app store doesn't charge for it, I want a good explanation of why. #customernotproduct

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

But... but... I thought that's what those little buildings outside the home improvement stores were for! Duo caught having sex in Home Depot display shed.

(Hat tip to Tara Calishain)

Edit: I'd have thought they'd be more receptive to this sort of thing given the slogan "You can do it, we can help."

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Architecture ]

Some cool computer cases courtesy of woodworker Jeffrey Stephenson.

Hat tip to Larry.

[ related topics: Weblogs Woodworking ]

You don't grok the power of Twitter until you deal with it through their API and see how they associate everything together. http://geeklabs.com/widget/category/Tweets now grabs/archives my Tweets, and images I post that way for my own website. Next on the list is to do this for Google+ - My goal is to make "Social Media" work for me as well as it works for them.

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Via Shadow, an open tab I haven't had time to watch: Make: 10 most popular make videos of all time

[ related topics: Movies ]

I was not terribly fond of Norman Solomon's War Made Easy, but having seen it, and having watched the past decade of U.S. military adventuring in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's hard to not view foreign policy in the context of excuses to keep the military industrial complex running.

So if you've got some questions on foreign policy and how the U.S. should move forward given the current events in the Middle East, may I recommend listenting to Planet Money Episode 482: Why the U.S. keeps sending weapons to Egypt, and then you can read Myth-Busting the Looming War With Syria and Before You Conclude That 'Precision' Bombing Makes Sense With Syria ...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama User Interface Movies History Space & Astronomy Sports Guns Currency ]