- Apple unveiled its new iPhones yesterday. Their main new feature is that they give the NSA the chance to get your fingerprint, along with everything else. But! Not! To worry! They’ll only get your fingerprint “securely.” Because these phones are secure-secure-secure. (H/T O)
- Bravo, Paul Bonneau: “An appeal to NSA engineers.”
- L.A. sent this article along with the comment that if you have to get government permission to build a doomsday bunker, perhaps you’re in the wrong location for riding doomsday out. (Oh no, tsks the deputy mayor, “Children have been held in bunkers.”)
- This is a great program. Our local group has placed dogs in it. It’s not quite true that most of the dogs would have been euthanized. It is true that nearly all come from very rough circumstances and will have better lives because of their training. And the prison program hasn’t flinched at taking some pretty difficult cases.
- “Kids, go to college or you’ll die alone in misery,” says Matt Walsh with tongue brilliantly in cheek.
- There is one good thing to say about the NSA, FBI, et al. Their shenanigans are forcing innocent privacy lovers and software geeks to become more creative. (H/T AF) And it’s a sure thing government overreach will eventually force all online security measures to become better and smarter. We just happen to be living in the crappy ‘tween times.
- Speaking of smart people vs the Stasi, here’s Cryptohippie’s response to NSA creepery.
And now we definitely need another funny dog video. This one comes from the folks who made the ever-watchable Ultimate Dog Tease a few years back. Here’s Dog Wants a Kitty:
Re: Bonneau- Yeah, been there, done that. Worked for a defense contractor. Before I took the job, I told them that I wouldn’t work on anything related to nuclear programs. They agreed. But I guess they thought I was an idiot.
Part of my job was working up bills of material from program blue prints, schematics and engineering notes. The “nuclear event detector”, and associated circuitry, was a pretty good clue.
On the bright side, that company was lying to the Pentagon even more than they lied to employees. Actually, they lied to everyone. Another part of my job was ordering parts once I had the BoM (NSA alert!). A major issue in ordering anything was finding a supplier that would still do business with the company, due to unpaid bills for orders on previous projects. The suppliers that would still work with them were usually… shady. I still remember the machined aluminum chassis that showed up burnt (from a soldering attempt!).
That company’s stupidity almost killed a man one day. A DoD inspector was coming through, so they faked up a classified QC area for liquid nitrogen cold plate testing. Small, unventilated room. Flooded with nitrogen. Fortunately, the guy made it to the door when his vision started tunneling out.
Oh, the stories I could tell just from the short time I was there. The toaster oven for environmental testing… the door alarms… Thank Bog they didn’t try to do their own g-table testing; I shudder to think what would have happened.
Here’s something cheerful.
Speedcams.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/09/this-is-what-happens-when-citizens-get-fed-up-over-speed-cameras/
I could spend all day watching the funny videos… but it’s probably not a good idea. LOL
I post about an article, and Strike the Root goes down! Perhaps my article was too popular? One can only hope… 🙂
Finally Americans are getting fed up with the looter cams. It’s about time. The Brits are way ahead of us on that (one of my favorite websites):
Woops, the vandalized gatsos site is down, I wonder why? Anyway startpage finds lots of stuff about gatsos. This post, written back in 2007, claimed 1000 speed cams had been destroyed in Britain.
http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=17874
Even Vanderboegh got in on the fun:
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.nl/2010/02/gatso-guerrillas-of-great-britain.html
That cryptohippie article is very helpful, thanks.
Backwoodshome.com has gotten more annoying lately. It goes out and reloads the page (or some part of it) every couple of minute or so. Can’t the damn thing just sit there and be quiet? It is giving me the creeps.
Why does backwoods home have to use all that google crap?
Paul, that’s a question to address to Oliver the webmaster, whose addy appears on the site. FWIW, I’m not seeing those re-loads.
Reloads? Did somebody say reloads? Shoot gooder and you don’t need no darned reloads….
Thanks for the dog video, Claire!!!
The entire internet has become more annoying the last year or so, more or less commensurate with advances in technology and programs to block some of it. Gets tiresome to have all “scripts” blocked, but wind up “allowing” most of it on a lot of sites because you can’t use the site without them. I have automatic reload of pages blocked, along with any auto redirect. Sometimes it gets to be too much bother and I just shut down.
That’s probably the upside to the the whole question. 🙂