Author: Christopher Burg

Monday Metal: Stargazer by Rainbow

This week I’m trying something new. Until now I’ve been embedding YouTube videos for each week’s Monday Metal entry. This practice worked well for quite a while but an increasing number of videos, especially old songs that remain in the iron grip of ancient authoritarian record labels, cannot be embedded on third-party websites. This made placed continuous restrictions on the metal that I can present and those restrictions have reached a point that I find detrimental. In the hopes of being able to bring you a wider variety of metal again, I’m going to experiment with Vimeo.

This week’s entry is a class, Stargazer by Rainbow. I couldn’t embed this song via YouTube but ran into no issues embedding it via Vimeo. Hopefully it works for all of you. If not, let me know what issues you’re experiencing and I’ll see if I can fix it.

Stupid Shit Politicians Say

The Australian government is once again pushing to make effective cryptography illegal by demanding that companies that utilize cryptography compromise their security model by implementing some kind of government backdoor. If you have any familiarity with cryptography, you know that what the Australian government wants, a backdoor that ensures only law enforcers and authorized individuals can access the encrypted information, is impossible. Once you compromise a cryptographic protocol, anybody who discovers the compromise can bypass the encryption as well.

However, that fact is merely a mathematical law. As the Australian prime minister noted, the laws of mathematics don’t apply in his country:

“Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” he said.

This realization will put Australia decades if not centuries ahead of other nations. Imagine how quickly Australia’s space program will advance when the politicians prohibit gravity and therefore eliminate the need for expensive rockets to reach space! Imagine how quickly the country’s electronics manufacturing market will advance when the politicians rule the laws of energy illegal and all of their electronics can run indefinitely without needing to be recharged! Now that Australia can simply render natural laws null and void with the stroke of a pen, there’s nothing the country can’t achieve!

If You Shoot Somebody, Perform CPR and You Can’t Be Charged

I’m sure you’ve heard a number of legal urban legends. A prevalent one from my youth was that a law enforcer had to stop following your vehicle after you took a third right turn. Another similar urban legend is that the ruling of a court is illegal if the flag in the courtroom has a gold border because that makes it a maritime flag and the court a maritime court. I now have another one to add to the list: you cannot be charged with murder if you perform CPR on the person you shot:

Attorneys for the former Minneapolis police officer say his attempts to revive victim with CPR vindicate him.

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of desperation. It’s the sound of a lawyer who has a client that is so irredeemable that he doesn’t believe that he can make a valid argument in a court of law. Would it surprise you to know that the lawyer who made this argument is the Officer Noor’s lawyer? I didn’t think so.

You Can Just Say Any Old Shit These Days

One of the “wonders” of the modern United States is that you can just say any old shit and get away with it:

Bonafide patriot woman and “Fox & Friends” middle-seat host Ainsley Earhardt made an oopsie during a Thursday morning rallying cry for America when she made reference to the never-existent “communist Japan.”

[…]

“You know, we defeated communist Japan, radical Islamists. We ask our men and women to go overseas to fight for our country and sacrifice so much for our country so we can be the land of the free, the land of the brave,” the host said.

This is an example of a very prevalent phenomenon here in the United States, and from what I’ve seen the rest of the world, where people feel free to talk authoritatively about shit they know nothing about.

I’m currently reading a book on the history of Japan from the Meiji Restoration to modern times. I just got to the beginning of World War II. Although I was vaguely familiar with this aspect of Japanese history, after reading the chapters dealing with the 1920s through the 1930s I now understand just how anti-communist the Japanese government was at that time (and that attitude didn’t stop in the 1940s). This doesn’t surprise me since the Japanese government at the time was strongly focused on the emperor and communists hate emperors (the name specifically, they prefer the term chairman or premier).

Now that I’ve read that part of the book and have familiarity with the topic, I won’t shy away from talking about it. However, before that I would have shied away from talking about the Japanese government at that time because I wasn’t very familiar with it and I try to avoid talking authoritatively about things that I’m not familiar with. I also feel that I’m in the minority when it comes to that.

Living in the Freest Country on Earth

A lot of people living here in the United States remain adamant that it is the freest country on Earth. Even those who don’t believe that it is the freest country on Earth are skittish about calling it a police state. However, I can’t think of any other term that describes the state of a nation where this kind of nonsense takes place:

Los Angeles will be the first US city to start equipping its subways with body scanners. But the Southern California metropolis isn’t using the bulky, slow-operating models that populate US airports: Instead, LA’s Metropolitan Transit Authority will deploy portable trunk-sized scanners that can survey people from 30 feet away at a rate of 2,000 individuals an hour.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody. When the Transportation Security Administration installed body scanners at airports, there was a short period where people expressed outrage at the idea. After that short period almost everybody rolled over and accepted it. Now that practice is coming to subways in Los Angeles and I predict a similar result. There will be a short period of outrage but everybody will roll over like the good little slaves they are in short order. Then this system will come to trains (including municipal light rail) and buses and eventually you won’t be able to go anywhere without being subjected to a full body scan.

Suing the Baker: Episode Two

Remember when advocates for religious liberty were cheering the Supreme Court when it ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, the baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding due his religious beliefs? Remember when I pointed out that the ruling had nothing to do with religious liberty because the court ruling related to a technicality, the arguments being put forth by either the defendant or prosecutor? That minor detail that so many people skipped over ensured that this was inevitable:

The Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple and was vindicated by the Supreme Court earlier this year is mounting another legal challenge this week after refusing to bake a gender-transitioning cake.

Shortly after the Supreme Court agreed to hear baker Jack Phillips‘ case, an attorney requested he create a cake that was pink on the inside and blue on the outside to represent a gender transition from male to female.

As a Christian, Mr. Phillips would not make the cake since it conflicted with his beliefs, which was his same reasoning for refusing to bake the same-sex couple’s wedding cake.

The state of Colorado has come after Mr. Phillips again, suggesting state law requires him to bake the gender change cake.

Since the Supreme Court didn’t make a ruling on the arguments presented, the issue was never legally resolved, which pretty much guaranteed that somebody else would take Phillips back to court for the same reason.

It’ll be interesting to see how this case turns out. Will it reach the Supreme Court again? If so, will the Supreme Court once again rule on a technicality to dodge the controversy that will be the result of any ruling based on the arguments presented? If it rules on a technicality again, will we see a third episode (hint: we will)?

Don’t Believe Everything You Read on the Internet… or in a Book

The Internet is a platform for everybody, and I mean everybody. From scientists to conspiracy theorists. From medical professionals to witch doctors. From professional chefs to idiots who don’t know that the ingredients they’re recommending are toxic:

Holmgren’s idealized Little House lifestyle led to online fame and eventually helped her land a book deal. Which is fine. Holmgren’s Tales from a Forager’s Kitchen: The Ultimate Field Guide to Evoke Curiosity and Wonderment with More Than 80 Recipes and Foraging Tips hit shelves earlier this year. And amazingly, she had more to say than would fit in that subtitle—upon its release, Holmgren and her forest-find-decorated home were featured in publications like the Star Tribune.

Here’s the problem: Forager’s Kitchen also includes recipes that use raw morel mushrooms. There’s a smoothie in there made with raw elderberries.

Both of which are toxic if served uncooked.

The Internet gave Holmgren a platform and according to Shitty Pages she has risen through the ranks and is now an “Instagram influencer” (whatever the fuck that is). Thanks to fame that the Internet enabled her to accrue, she was able to publish a physical book. It just so happens that following the advice in her book could lead to some discomfort. So, yeah, thanks Internet!

I’m rather sad that this book is being recalled. I think a lot of people would benefit from direct experience in not believing every idiot thing that they read.

Another Day, Another Exploit Discovered in Intel Processors

The last couple of years have not been kind to processor manufacturers. Ever since the Meltdown and Specter attacks were discovered, the speculative execution feature that is present on most modern processors has opened the door to a world of new exploits. However, Intel has been hit especially hard. The latest attack, given the fancy name Foreshadow, exploits the speculative execution feature on Intel processors to bypass security features meant to keep sensitive data out of the hands of unauthorized processes:

Foreshadow is a speculative execution attack on Intel processors which allows an attacker to steal sensitive information stored inside personal computers or third party clouds. Foreshadow has two versions, the original attack designed to extract data from SGX enclaves and a Next-Generation version which affects Virtual Machines (VMs), hypervisors (VMM), operating system (OS) kernel memory, and System Management Mode (SMM) memory.

It should be noted that, as the site says, this exploit is not known to work against ARM or AMD processors. However, it would be wise to keep an eye on this site. The researchers are still performing research on other processors and it may turn out that this attack works on processors not made by Intel as well.

As annoying as these hardware attacks are, I’m glad that the security industry is focusing more heavily on hardware. Software exploits can be devastating but if you can’t trust the hardware that the software is running on, no amount of effort to secure the software matters.

Dream Job

I never thought that I’d say this but I may be moving to Venezuela. It turns out that the socialist government there has brought back my dream profession:

Political and economic crises are exploding from Venezuela to Nicaragua to Haiti, sparking anarchy and criminality. As the rule of law breaks down, certain spots in the Caribbean, experts say, are becoming more dangerous than they’ve been in years.

Often, observers say, the acts of villainy appear to be happening with the complicity or direct involvement of corrupt officials — particularly in the waters off collapsing Venezuela.

“It’s criminal chaos, a free-for-all, along the Venezuelan coast,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-director of Insight Crime, a nonprofit organization that studies organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While I’m sure these pirates are being condemned by the Venezuelan government, the two groups are actually doing the exact same thing except the former doesn’t have as much pomp or as many rituals.