Month: June 2014

Johnny Cannabis Seed

Some people in the United Kingdom have taken a page for Germany’s book and begun planting cannabis seeds everywhere:

However, since other places – notably Uruguay and the couple of newly weed-friendly American states – started decriminalising and legalising, British activists have stepped it up, uniting previously fractured groups together under the UK Cannabis Social Clubs banner. The most recent action to come out of the UKCSC camp is an initiative called Feed the Birds, which basically involves people up and down the country planting cannabis seeds in public places in the hope that it will open a dialogue about Britain’s current marijuana laws.

It’s a wonderful way to give the state a gigantic middle finger. But the icing on the cake is this:

Are there any planting spots you’re focusing on in London?

Yup, there are. All sorts of public spaces have been done already, all across London and the UK. I think in the month to come, when the plants start maturing, we’ll start seeing a lot more coverage. Also, to my knowledge, we’ve had a lot of the guerrilla cells targeting politicians’ houses. We’ve also had reports that there’s a grow on property owned by the crown. Hopefully we’ll see something come from that in the next couple of months.

That’s the way to do it. Plant cannabis seeds at the homes of politicians. Sadly they’re more or less immune from the war on drugs otherwise they would get a nice taste of a no-knock paramilitary police raid at two in the morning that ends with their dog getting shot and their newborn baby getting burned by a flashbang grenade. But it still sends a message about the futility of trying to control the spread of a weed.

Not So Heavily Armed

My fellow denizens of the Twin Cities we may be having a guest from Wisconsin in the near future (heck, he could already be here). The dude, who goes by the name Eric “Buck” Hall, is a recently released felon who stole a truck with a couple of guns in it:

On Saturday in the same county, Hall allegedly stole two vehicles, with one of them containing a scoped rifle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a pump-action shotgun. The weapons have yet to be recovered.

On Sunday, Hall is suspected of stealing yet another vehicle in New Auburn, Wis., this one a tan 2000 Chevy Silverado pickup truck owned by a volunteer firefighter. That vehicle remains missing.

Hall is described as 5 feet 10 inches tall, 170 to 190 pounds, with blue eyes. He has numerous tattoos, wears glasses and has a goatee and beard.

The truck has Wisconsin license plate JE7691. It has several pink and hunting-themed stickers, as well as emergency lighting and siren.

Anyone with information about this case is urged to call the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office at 1-715-726-7714.

OK, now that the public service announcement is out of the way I do want to point out the phrasing of the article. It states that Hall is heavily armed:

you-keep-using-that-word

A scoped rifle and a pump-action shotgun aren’t things to laugh at but I don’t think possessing them really qualify as heavily armed either. In my book heavily armed implies the ability to lay down sustained fire for an extended period of time. Doing this generally relies more on the accessories than the weapon. Unless Hall has a good number of magazines and the scoped rifle is a magazine fed weapon I don’t think he’s that heavily armed. If he only has one or two magazines or the rifle is a bolt-action then he can’t really sustain firing for very long before he has to open a box of ammo and insert rounds into the gun’s magazine(s).

Again, neither weapon mentioned in the article are something I’d sneer at. But I think saying he’s armed would be more accurate than heavily armed. Anyways if you see this bloke steer clear of him, it sounds like he may have a few screws loose (oh, and if you’re anti-gun you might want to put one of those “guns banned here” signs around your neck so Hall can’t shoot you).

Minority Gun Owners

The New York Times, of all publications, ran a well balanced article briefly discussing some of the issues minority gun owners run into:

INDIANAPOLIS — Standing in a small booth surrounded by displays for rifles, pistols, holsters and other firearm accouterments, the Rev. Kenn Blanchard signed copies of his book “Black Man With a Gun: Reloaded.” Amid the sea of thousands of white faces that descended on this city for the National Rifle Association convention in late April, Mr. Blanchard, an N.R.A. member since 1991, offered his reasoning for why he was one of the few black visitors.

“We still culturally have a fear that we’re going to be that lone guy out, and you don’t want to be the lone guy out,” he said, estimating that one in 100 people at the convention was black. “The exposed nail gets hammered.”

[…]

At a time when gun issues are volatile nationally and sales are increasing, minority gun owners — whether black, Asian or Latino — may feel that their weighing of the practical pros and cons of gun ownership comes up against the conservatism and unyielding stances of the N.R.A. and some other gun advocates. Mr. Blanchard said it could be a difficult balancing act.

This somewhat touches on the culture issues within the shooting community. Namely that it can be difficult for people who aren’t white male conservative Christians to get involved in the shooting. Some of this pressure comes from the established shooting community itself and some of the pressure comes from other peer groups. Many organizations that focus on issues primarily facing minorities have a tendency to be anti-gun. That makes it difficult for somebody wanting to work with those organizations to also be pro-gun.

Culture is a difficult beast to tackle. Most of us are members of multiple communities. Oftentimes those communities are complimentary. There are a lot of shooters who are involved in their local hunting clubs and churches. Likewise many people involved in the martial arts community are also involved in the defensive firearm community. Fewer people participate in non-complimentary communities not just because of the opposing ideals but also because of the peer pressure to not participate in “false religion”.

US Marshals Auctioning Off 29,656.51306529 Bitcoin

Do you have $200,000? Are you registered to participating in auctions held by the United States Marshals Service? Have you been looking to buy a lot of Bitcoin? If you answered in the affirmative to all three then I have an auction for you:

This auction is for 9 blocks of 3,000 bitcoins (“Series A Blocks”) and 1 block of 2,656.51306529 bitcoins (“Series B Block”).

The Bitcoin were supposedly seized from Silk Road although the auction description specifically states that they are not the Dread Pirate Robert’s. What I find interesting is that no trial has been held regarding the Silk Road so I’m not sure how the seized property is being auctioned off. It’s almost as if the state can just take your shit and sell it without due process. But being the land of the free I know that we couldn’t possibly have some kind of civil forfeiture laws that allow the state to get away with such things.

As of this writing Bitcoin is hovering right around the $600 mark so, assuming the Marshals get around market value for the Bitcoin, the auction is looking to bring in approximately $17,793,907.839174. That’s a nice chunk of change.

Activism Fail

Readers of my blog know that I have a major problem with the way homeless individuals are treated in our society. Various stores and apartment complexes in the United Kingdom have been busy installing spikes designed specially to prevent homeless individuals from sleeping on their property. Libertarians will point out that private property owners have a right to do such things and as a libertarian I concur. But as a decent human being I will also point out that doing so violates the don’t be a dick principle. Therefore it didn’t surprise me when activists decided to vandalize the spikes. However the vandals failed miserably:

They were all carrying buckets, which I soon found out were full of concrete. Tipping the containers all over the spikes, the stuff inside landed with a messy thud on the ledge. The activists then tried to spread the concrete out with some wooden slats, but it looked a little thick and wasn’t really budging.

When they dashed down a side street, I caught up and asked one what exactly they were doing. They explained that they were trying to drown the spikes in concrete, rendering the ledge non-spikey. “These [spikes] are in places where people are trying to find a cosy, less wet place to put their head down,” one said. “These are places that the underclass rely on. We give [Tesco] our money and this is how they treat us.”

[…]

After our chat they prepared themselves for a second round. This time they poured concrete mix directly out of a bag, then mixed it with the water al fresco. This mostly resulted in a powdery mess and a load of concrete-y water running down the pavement.

The lesson from this story is if you’re going to do activism don’t fuck it up. Have a plan and understand the elements that plan relies on. For example, if you’re planning to cover anti-homeless spikes with concrete understand how to work with concrete. Doing so will help you understand that concrete hardens over time, which means mixing it before you’re onsite is risky unless you don’t have far to travel. Likewise dumping concrete mix on a ledge and pouring water over it will simply cause the mix to wash away. What you really need to do is bring concrete mix, water, and a container to combine the two in to the site you’re going to be working at.

Take some damn pride in your work. If you believe something is worth doing then learn how to do it well. Otherwise people are just going to laugh at you.

Less Guns, More Crime

Gun control ninnies constantly claim that more guns equates to more violent crime. On the other hand intelligent people know that the number of guns doesn’t have any effect on the amount of violent crime. Only the number of violent criminals can effect the amount of violent crime. A demonstration of this is Russia. NPR recently ran a piece that likely made a lot of people in the gun control community cry:

There are fewer than 13 million firearms in circulation in Russia, compared with an estimated 300 million in the United States. That works out to about 9 guns per 100 people in Russia and closed to 100 guns per 100 people in America.

The most recent homicide statistics for Russia show that there were 21,603 killings in 2009.

According to the FBI, the United States had 13,636 homicides in 2009 with a population that is more than twice as large. More than 80 percent of those killings were gun-related.

If you give a gun to a saint you have nothing to fear. If you give a gun to a demon you have much to fear. After the fall of the Soviet Union much of Russia was basically up for grabs. As the people lived their entire lives under a brutal regime many of them decided to emulate the fallen union and become brutal overlords themselves (many of them, not surprisingly, were form members of the Soviet government). It’s not surprising to see the violent crime rate in Russia remaining high considering the atmosphere of the country. And it’s not surprising to see the gun control ninnies eating crow once again.

Good Guy Tesla

In a very positive, and unusual, twist of events Tesla Motors has decided to compete on the quality of its electric cars instead of relying on an intellectual monopoly:

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

This move may single handedly do more for electric car development than anything else. Patents are the great barrier between markets and innovation. They prevent inventors from utilizing incremental advancements to create new incremental advancements and stifle innovation as patent holders see no reason to continue improving a product so long as they have a monopoly on it. My hope is that this move will lead other companies to do the same but I’m guessing that won’t be the case.

iOS 8 Adds Interesting Privacy Features

If nothing else came of Edward Snowden’s leaks at least it pushed companies to focus more on privacy and security features. Whether you acknowledge Snowden as a hero or a villain (in which case you’re wrong) you are benefitting from his actions. His actions destroyed the trust people had in both the government and major technology companies. Now companies are scrambling to rebuild that trust and they’re doing so by adding more security and privacy features to their products. Come fall iOS users will be benefitting from this attempted rebuilding of trust in an interesting way as their devices will become harder to track via Wi-Fi:

It wasn’t touted onstage, but a new iOS 8 feature is set to cause havoc for location trackers, and score a major win for privacy. As spotted by Frederic Jacobs, the changes have to do with the MAC address used to identify devices within networks. When iOS 8 devices look for a connection, they randomize that address, effectively disguising any trace of the real device until it decides to connect to a network.

Every network interface has a media access control (MAC) address. In the case of Wi-Fi interfaces this address is plainly visible to anybody watching. That makes tracking devices via Wi-Fi fairly trivial. If you see a MAC address picked up by a cafe at one end of the street and a library at the other end of the street you know where the user is and the direction he or she is traveling. With enough data you can get a pretty good idea of the places a person frequents.

Randomizing this address until a connection has been made to the access point makes tracking a device over time difficult as it doesn’t appear to be the same device every time it passes an access point.

I believe this is a good feature and cannot wait until other manufacturers add it to their products.