Month: May 2014

The Difference a Quality Codebase Makes

As I mentioned Tuesday, I rewrote a major chunk of WristCoin, my Bitcoin price checker for the Pebble wristwatch. Now that I’m working with a far more modular design adding exchanges requires almost no effort at all. I to add in Bitfinex support:

added-bitfinex

It took me roughly ten minutes to do so (most of that time was invested in writing the JavaScript code that grabs the current prices and feeds them to the Pebble). So let me iterate a lesson that most developers have pounded into their heads but fail to follow: don’t start with quick and dirty code, start with quality code from the beginning. Mind you in all liklihood I will fail to follow this advice as soon as I start my next project. Getting a prototype up and running quickly is just so tempting and it feels so good.

The USDA Has To Stop Those Raw Milk Criminals

At least that’s what I’m assuming the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is planning on using .40 caliber submachineguns for.

It amazes me how every government agency has a armed teams. Hell, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a webpage featuring their armed response team. At least NASA can claim to need such a team to fight aliens. I’m not sure what the USDA does with armed teams. Is the department now tasked with enforcing Monsanto’s patents? Do raw milk sellers really need to be raided by dudes in riot gear? Maybe farmer Smith is using fertilizer with too much potassium.

Wonderful Drama in the Gun Rights World

If there’s one thing I love it’s Internet drama. And boy do I have a heap of it for you guys. Dudley Brown, the main guy behind the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) rustled Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF), jimmies:

Dudley Brown and his “National Association for Gun Rights” (NAGR) have built a reputation by attacking every other major gun rights organization and even pro-gun politicians, to the detriment of the gun rights movement. His rhetoric has done more to marginalize Second Amendment activism than all of the slanders from gun prohibition lobbying groups combined.Now Dudley has spewed his venom toward Alan Gottlieb, a true champion of Second Amendment advocacy with a proven track record of accomplishment. Gottlieb is founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).

In his latest effort to raise money for his own self-aggrandizement, Dudley Brown has launched a vicious canard against Alan Gottlieb, accusing the veteran gun rights advocate of “Leading the fight for national gun registration.”

Alan Gottlieb has never advocated for gun registration in his life. His legislative efforts have been to prevent that, and Dudley knows it.

Burn! Of course the SAF delivers an onslaught of just retribution:

The Second Amendment Foundation has championed gun rights legal actions and won in federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, it was SAF that took McDonald v. City of Chicago [PDF] to the Supreme Court and won. Where was Dudley?

SAF and CCRKBA have conducted the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference for more than 25 years, bringing together major gun rights leaders with grassroots activists to unify and expand the gun rights movement. Where was Dudley?

When SAF and the National Rifle Association joined forces to stop the unconstitutional gun grab in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, where was Dudley?

When SAF and NRA joined forces to defeat the San Francisco gun ban, where was Dudley?

When SAF, NRA and CCRKBA joined forces to defeat the City of Seattle’s parks gun ban – thus strengthening state preemption in Washington state and providing a lesson for anyone who might challenge other states’ preemption laws, where was Dudley?

When the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR) was created, Alan Gottlieb was there to help bring together an organization that now has member groups from every continent and several nations. Where was Dudley?

When multi-national gun rights organizations gather in Europe to resist global gun control efforts, Alan Gottlieb is there, but where is Dudley?

I have been very critical of Mr. Gottlieb’s recent advocacy of universal background checks but there is one major difference between him and Mr. Brown. Mr. Gottlieb and the SAF actually gets shit down.

The NAGR is only well known for two things: whining about everybody else and taking people’s money. Scratch that, there’s a third thing they’re well known for: leaking the personal information of its members to random people. But as far as victories in the fight for gun rights? The NAGR has done all of jack shit. Sure they’ve cultivated some extremely zealous supporters, a couple of whom are friends of mine (more on that in a bit), but they can’t actually point to any of their victories.

What’s really annoying is that us Minnesotans have to deal with one of the NAGR’s dumb ass affiliate groups called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR). MGR mimics the NAGR very well. It invests a lot of time bitching about the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) and asking for money from people but it hasn’t actually done a damn thing as far as fighting for gun rights in Minnesota is concerned.

Now back to what I said about the NAGR having a track record of cultivating some very zealous supporters. As I mentioned a couple of these zealous supporters are my friends. One actually went so far as to block me on Facebook when he was praising MGR and I asked for a track record of what the organization has accomplished (by the way being blocked was my only answer). This rabid devotion from people who are generally cynical and skeptical of any political organization leads me to believe, although I have no proof, that they’re getting some money from either the NAGR or MGR. Either way they tout both organizations as the greatest thing since sliced bread (and denouncing every other gun rights organization as quislings) but cannot produce any information demonstrating either organization’s effectiveness. When your most devout supporters can’t provide any proof that you’ve actually done something then you’ve almost certainly done nothing.

It amuses me to no end that the individual who runs the NAGR, and presumably its affiliate organizations, is criticizing organizations like the SAF while his organization has absolutely nothing to show for itself. That would be like me criticizing Ludwig von Mises for failing to advance the cause of liberty while being unable to provide any evidence that I have advanced the cause of liberty (the only difference is that I’m pretty certain I have done more to advance gun rights and liberty than the NAGR has, and all I’ve done is help introduce people to the shooting sports and write this blog). As the saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

I really hope this drama spreads (as you can see here I’m doing my part to fan the flames). Watching the NAGR shoot its mouth off is just fucking hilarious and I love watching it made a fool of in public.

Congress is Making the Big Sacrifices

The United States is faced with a several trillion dollar deficit. Truth be told this isn’t a big deal because this country’s debt is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, which is a euphemism for aircraft carriers, drones equipped with Hellfire missiles, and tanks. But Congress needs something to quibble about between their daily circlejerks so the deficit is brought up from time to time.

Every time the issue of the deficit is brought up Congress introduces some meaningless bill that is, at most, a symbolic gesture meant to make it appear as though they’re making major sacrifices. This time around the bill would prevent members of Congress from using tax victim money to buy first class airliner tickets:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation aimed at preventing members of Congress from flying first class using taxpayer funds.

The bill, titled, “If Our Military Has to Fly Coach Then so Should Congress Act,” was introduced by Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Raul Ruiz, D-Calif.; John Barrow, D-Ga.; and Walter Jones, R-N.C., in a bid to end the purchase of first-class flight seats with taxpayer money.

“All it does is prohibit members of Congress from using taxpayer funds to purchase first class airfare,” Gosar said in a statement. “At a time of massive deficits and with a national debt in excess of $17 trillion, members of Congress should not be using taxpayers’ hard-earned money to buy luxury airline seats.”

You have to love how the authors were able to tied a bill restricting the flight arrangements of Congress to the military. Nothing gets people fired up quite like patriotism!

Much like the title the idea behind the bill is absurd for two reasons. First of all making members of Congress fly coach instead of first class isn’t going to put a noticeable dent in the deficit. We’re talking about a bill that could potentially save a couple of hundred dollars per flight per member of Congress. That amount of money isn’t even a blip on the radar when we’re talking about $17 trillion dollars.

But there’s another reason this bill is absurd. It doesn’t prevent members of Congress from utilize its fleet of private jets:

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate jets by companies receiving taxpayer funds.

The purchases will help accommodate growing travel demand by congressional officials. The planes augment a fleet of about two dozen passenger jets maintained by the Air Force for lawmakers, administration officials and military chiefs to fly on government trips in the U.S. and abroad.

Who gives a damn about first class when you have a fleet of private jets? I’d much rather fly on a private jet than a public one anyways and I’m sure members of Congress feel the same way.

Well This Changes Everything

Remember the 7 year-old kid who was suspended from school because he ate his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun? Well new information has come to light that changes everything:

Laurie Pritchard, Anne Arundel’s director of legal services, said that the object central to the case had been misportrayed, as well as the reason for the discipline.

“First of all, it wasn’t a Pop-Tart,” she said. “It was a breakfast pastry. And he was not suspended because he chewed his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun.” He was suspended for “an ongoing classroom disruption,” she said.

Holy shit, why weren’t we informed of this right away? If we had known he had shaped a breakfast pastry into a gun instead of a Pop-Tart we could have demanded the kid’s head!

OK, the actual content of the story isn’t quite that simple. But that quote was gold. The school is now trying to claim that the child was suspended because of a history of behavioral problems:

School officials produced a lengthy log of various types of incidents. They argued that they had made many efforts to address the boy’s behavioral issues. The family said they had not seen the list before and had been unaware of a number of the incidents.

There’s a problem with this narrative though. If he was suspended for a history of behavioral issues why was he not suspended during one of those incidents? Why did they choose an incident where the kid ate a Pop-Tart, sorry, breakfast pastry into a firearm to suspend him? Is eating food into abstract shapes a behavioral issue?

I’m sure the school will go to great extent to justify the suspension. We’ll probably be told that the kid held a black mass in the school cafeteria or something along those lines. School administrators don’t like to admit wrongdoing and will go to absolutely absurd lengths to throw their petty authority around.

Some Basic Rules for Blogging

I’ve been at this blogging thing for a while now (year five, baby). In that time I have learned a thing or two about blogging. Part of what I’ve learned is from direct experience (in other words I screwed up) and other things I learned by experiencing other blogs. I would like to take a moment to discuss a couple of the things I’ve learned. Namely linking to sources.

A site that has become popular with my libertarian friends is The Free Thought Project. One of the topics commonly covered on that site is police brutality. Anybody who has read this blog even for a short while know that I’m not a police apologist and generally despise modern policing practices. Therefore a site discussing police brutality should be right up my ally. But time and again I’ve noticed two issues with The Free Through Project: claims are made without any citation and quoted articles aren’t linked to.

Case in point, this article discussing a woman who was blinded by a police officer who apparently used a JPX Pepper Gun under the minimum recommended range. The article makes the following claim:

The results from firing the gun at such a close proximity were catastrophic.

The blast of pepper gel sliced her right eye in half, fractured her right orbital bone and severed the optic nerve in her left eye.

But no source is given. In fact the only source provided is an article that was merely referred to by “According to the Press Enterprise,”. No link was given to the article. Thankfully Google makes it easy to search for an article with a few simple keywords. Two links come up on Google. The first simply delivers me to a 404 error while the second takes me to an article that covers the story but isn’t the article quoted (but I don’t know if the link that now leads to a 404 error was the originally quote article because no link was provided on The Free Through Project). It’s possible that the description of the woman’s injuries were in the first article as well but no mention of any source was given in regards to that claim.

The problem with failing to link to the originally quote article is that I can’t use The Free Through Project as a source. No claim made within it can be verified. I can’t even look up a cached version of the quoted article to see whether or not it originally stated what is claimed by The Free Thought Project article because I don’t have an actual link.

To put it bluntly, The Free Thought Project article is shit. For all I know the author found the original story and made up a bunch of crap to make it sound even worse in an effort to push an agenda. The headline screams sensationalism as does the graphic description of the damage done to the woman’s face. If the claims made in the headline and the description of the injuries could be verified then the apparent sensationalism would be fact. But they can’t be verified, which makes the entire article worthless for anybody seeking actual facts about the story.

If you’re a blogger, or writing any webpage really, you should link to any articles you reference. Failing to do so not only make you look unprofessional it also makes you look sleazy.

Mozilla Throws in the Towel on DRM

I thought Mozilla releasing its version of Chrome was the most disappointing thing the company could do this year but I was wrong. Yesterday Mozilla announced that it decided to throw in the towel against digital rights management (DRM) technology being included in its browser:

Despite our dislike of DRM, we have come to believe Firefox needs to provide a mechanism for people to watch DRM-controlled content. We will do so in a way that protects the interests of individual users as much as possible, given what the rest of the industry has already put into place. We have selected Adobe to provide the key functionality. Adobe has been doing this in Flash for some time, and Adobe has been building the necessary relationships with the content owners. We believe that Adobe is uniquely able to bring new value to the setting.

Mozilla was the last holdout of the major browser providers to refuse to implement DRM technology. I understand why Mozilla is doing this. The company’s browser marketshare has been diminishing since Google released its Chrome browser. If major video providers start using Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), the new DRM technology that has been settled on, and Firefox is unable to display those videos it will further hurt its marketshare.

But by implementing DRM Mozilla has also abandoned its manifesto:

The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet.

[…]

The Mozilla project uses a community-based approach to create world-class open source software and to develop new types of collaborative activities.

[…]

2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.

[…]

7. Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource.

[…]

build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto’s principles;

Since the beginning Mozilla has touted itself as an open source project meant to support an open Internet. But it cannot do so while implementing DRM technology. As its blog post states:

The industry is on the cusp of a new mechanism for deploying DRM. (Until now, browsers have enabled DRM indirectly via Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight products.) The new version of DRM uses the acronyms “EME” and “CDM.” At Mozilla we think this new implementation contains the same deep flaws as the old system. It doesn’t strike the correct balance between protecting individual people and protecting digital content. The content providers require that a key part of the system be closed source, something that goes against Mozilla’s fundamental approach.

Emphasis mine. In order to implement the DRM technology Mozilla has to rely on a closed source binary provided by none other than Adobe (who, I might add, has a deplorable security record). This goes against its manifesto of working to keep the Internet open and providing a quality open source project.

However I will begrudgingly give Mozilla some credit. The DRM binary will be sandboxed, optional, and not installed by default:

Firefox does not load this module directly. Instead, we wrap it into an open-source sandbox. In our implementation, the CDM will have no access to the user’s hard drive or the network. Instead, the sandbox will provide the CDM only with communication mechanism with Firefox for receiving encrypted data and for displaying the results.

Traditionally, to implement node-locking DRM systems collect identifiable information about the user’s device and will refuse to play back the content if the content or the CDM are moved to a different device.

By contrast, in Firefox the sandbox prohibits the CDM from fingerprinting the user’s device. Instead, the CDM asks the sandbox to supply a per-device unique identifier. This sandbox-generated unique identifier allows the CDM to bind content to a single device as the content industry insists on, but it does so without revealing additional information about the user or the user’s device. In addition, we vary this unique identifier per site (each site is presented a different device identifier) to make it more difficult to track users across sites with this identifier.

As plugins today, the CDM itself will be distributed by Adobe and will not be included in Firefox. The browser will download the CDM from Adobe and activate it based on user consent.

As I said earlier I understand why Mozilla is doing this. I don’t like it but at least the Mozilla development team is being as smart about this implementation as possible. This way people like me who trust Adobe as much as a kleptomaniac can simply not install this crap.

What really worries me about this is that it sends a message to the media production industry and that message is that they can now demand DRM be made an integral part of the web and have their demands met. Make no mistake this is just the beginning of a snowball that will continue to grow in size. The DRM may be primarily geared towards video today but it will expand to include images and eventually text. Before you know it the web will be turned into a wasteland where content providers attempt to tightly control said content.

The only upside is that DRM technology always loses against the hacker community. But due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) bypassing DRM technology now carriers legal risks, at least in the United States. That means taking what steps are necessary to maintain an open web will be a criminal act. Some very bright people will likely end up in a cage for doing the right thing (not that that’s uncommon, especially here in the United States).

Now I Don’t Want the Ability to Remotely Disable My Phone

I live in Minnesota, the state partially made famous for its oddball political atmosphere. This state is both the source of some pretty decent legislation (the legislation regulating our ability to carry a firearm is surprisingly good) and some absolutely atrocious legislation. This is an example of the latter:

A first-in-the nation measure would require smartphone manufacturers to install mandatory “kill switch” technology to deter thefts became law with Gov. Mark Dayton’s signature Wednesday.

“This is a very important step forward for protecting young people and protecting people of all ages,” Dayton said.

The law mandates that smartphone manufacturers equip their phones with the technology by July 1, 2015. The “kill switch” enables a smartphone owner to remotely disable a smartphone or tablet if it is lost or stolen, rendering the devices useless.

I carry an iPhone, which has the ability to be remotely disabled via my provisioning server. For me it’s a desired feature because I would like to render the device unusable should somebody steal it and, due to the fact that I have the feature tied to my provisioning server, the feature is entirely within my control. With that said, I do not want the inclusion of such a capability to be mandatory. There are a lot of legitimate reasons why an individual wouldn’t want such a capability.

First and foremost is that the capability will most commonly be in the hands of the phone manufacturer. Having somebody’s finger on your phone’s kill switch is generally a bad idea. Second if the ability to remotely kill a device exists in any form it’s possible that an unauthorized third-party will find a way to gain access to that feature. Political dissidents performing a protest probably don’t want devices that can be remotely disabled since there is always the possibility that the state they’re protesting against will pressure the manufacturer into disabling the dissidents’ devices.

And because this is a Minnesota bill it had to include an extra heap of stupidity:

The law also prohibits retailers from paying cash for used phones, rather than electronic transfer or check.

In other words if you sell your phone the government wants to know about it. This is just another step in the state’s desire to track all financial transactions. Like every previous step this one is being marketed as a method of help the people. But the first part of this legislation, the mandatory kill switch, renders the second part irrelevant because no retailer is going to buy a useless phone. So this part is entirely unnecessary in regards to protecting people against cell phone thefts.

The Level of Professionalism I Expect From the ATF

Yesterday morning people in Minneapolis who were traversing east on I-94 were in for delays. The police blocked off two lanes as it moved to arrest a man who reportedly brandished a firearm at another driver. As you can guess this headline got a few of the local gun control nuts riled up. This was exactly the event they were waiting for. One of those evil carry permit holders getting into a fit of road rage and threatening a fellow motorist with a firearm. Then the story was updated with information provided by the Minnesota State Patrol:

Police caught up to that driver on I-94 at Olson Hwy. and blocked two of the southbound lanes for a short time while making an arrest. That was enough to cause traffic to jam up back to West Broadway.

The State Patrol took the man with the gun into custody. He was questioned and released after officers learned he was an ATF agent who was carrying proper credentials.

Talk about a bummer. That update really killed the gun control nuts’ mojo (and I mean really killed it, as in the handful of comments I had collected to post here were tossed down the memory hole). But the update didn’t surprise me or any of my other gunnie friends. This is exactly the type of professionalism that we’ve come to expect from agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

But the real icing on the cake, in my opinion, was how quickly the situation was swept under the rug:

His name was not released per Minnesota State Statue 13.82, which states that data would reveal the identity of an undercover law enforcement officer can be kept private.

Had you or I been accused of the same thing we’d be rotting in a cage. But since the suspect is an agent of the ATF he was not only released but his name was kept private. Service to the state has its privileges.

A Strange Coincidence

While I don’t subscribe to most of the zany explanations for it, I don’t believe the idea of synchronicity has something going for it. We often see multiple meaningfully related events that are unlikely to be causally related. Take the recent conflict in Ukraine that has rekindled that good old Cold War animosity between the United States and Russia. While the conflict wages on Ukraine’s biggest gas producer, Burisma Holdings, announced a meaningfully related new appointee to its Board of Directors:

Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, has expanded its Board of Directors by bringing on Mr. R Hunter Biden as a new director.

If Hunter’s last name sounds familiar it should. He’s none other than the son of the current vice presiden. It’s amazing how the son of this country’s vice president was able to get a seat on the Board of Directors of Ukraine’s largest oil producer at the same time as this nasty Cold War-esque conflict. But I’m sure that it’s just a coincidence and the United States’s involvement in Ukraine has nothing to do with this appointment.