It’s Crises All the Way Down

I assume that the people who watch and believe what passes for news today feel hopeless. Why? Because all news is bad news and crises never end, they merely turn into new crises.

Take the overpopulation crisis as an example. For most of my life I have been hearing about it. Even when I was in elementary school, teachers were warning us kids that too many people were consuming too many resources and we faced a bleak future because of it. The narrative continued throughout my high school and college careers. Today the news is reporting about the worldwide drop in fertility rates. This must mean that the population crisis has been averted and the future is looking brighter than it was, right? Wrong! The overpopulation crisis has turned into the baby bust crisis:

The U.S. is already below the so-called “replacement level” by some measures, meaning fewer young people to support the country’s otherwise aging population.

Myers said of the decline, “That’s a crisis.”

“We need to have enough working-age people to carry the load of these seniors, who deserve their retirement, they deserve all their entitlements, and they’re gonna live out another 30 years,” he said. “Nobody in the history of the globe has had so many older people to deal with.”

What the fuck? How did we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? We did exactly what the experts told us to do! We had fewer babies! How did we end up facing yet another crisis? To answer that I will turn to George Orwell:

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

The crises you hear about in the news are not meant to be solved. They’re meant to be continuous. They exist to keep the masses in a constant state of fear because so long as the masses are afraid, they will seek a savior. When they find somebody who promises to be their savior, they will give him anything he demands. If he demands soldiers to fight a war against the enemy, they will gladly surrender their sons to him. If he demands broader surveillance powers, they will gladly surrender their privacy. If he demands wealth so he can fund the fight against the enemy, they will gladly surrender their income and assets. And his demands won’t stop even when the crisis abates. Instead he’ll come to them with new demands to fight a new crisis.

Social Media Services Assume You’re an Idiot

Last year I finally gave up entirely on social media (if you came here due to a Twitter link, those posts are automated and I haven’t logged into the account in some years). I won’t bore you with every reason, but I would like to take a moment to highlight one in particular.

I don’t care if somebody assumes I’m an idiot. I don’t care if somebody calls me an idiot. But if somebody assumes I’m an idiot or calls me one, I’m not going to contribute to their welfare. When you post content to a social media service, you contribute to its welfare. Without user generated content a social media service is a barren wastelands. It has nothing with which to entice people to sign up. Social media services by and large rely on having large numbers of users since user interactions are their product. No users, no user interactions. No user interactions, no income.

This brings me to the reason I want to highlight. Every mainstream social media service assumes that its users are idiots. Not only do they assume that their users are idiots, they call their users idiots. Every time a social media service “fact checks” a post or comment it’s saying that its users are too stupid and gullible to discern fact from fiction.

Rather than contribute to the welfare of services that assume I’m an idiot, I’m contributing to the welfare of services that don’t insult my intelligence.

Ignorance of the Law Should Be an Excuse

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse” and “I’m a law abiding citizen” rank towards the top on my list of hated phrases. Law enforcers and prosecutors like to claim that ignorance of the law is no excuse when they’re arresting and taking you to court respectively. Judges are even in on the game. They tell jurors, while wearing a straight face no less, that their verdict must be based on the letter of the law. Then there’s the defendant. Up until he found himself in court he very well may have said that he was a law abiding citizen. He might even compound his ignorance by saying he looked forward to his day in court so he could prove his innocence. The lawyers, prosecutors, and judges are demanding that people be held to an impossible standard. The person who calls himself a law abiding citizen is a fool.

I’m sure there’s at least one person who considers themselves a law abiding citizen scoffing at my previous sentence. If that person is you, there’s an exercise that you can perform to prove me wrong. The only thing you need for this exercise is a pen and paper. Without looking any up write down every law for the municipality, county, and state in which you live. Then write down every federal law. When you’ve finished writing down all of the laws you know, look up all of the laws you missed.

You’ll find that you missed most of them. I know this for certain because if you did start writing down every law under which you live, you would die of old age before you finished. Maybe you think you could do so if you had enough time. If you believe that, begin reading through the laws under which you live and only write down the ones you didn’t know. Since legal professionals like lawmakers, judges, and lawyers don’t know the entirely of the law, I have my doubts that you do.

The bottom line is the everybody is ignorant of the law. Since everybody is ignorant of the law, it’s impossible for anybody to know that they’re a law abiding citizen.

This situation is even more dire when you stop to consider that the body of law is in a constant state of change. City council members, senators, congressmen, and other lawmakers are constantly tweaking existing laws and creating new ones. Even if you did manage to learn every law under which you live, your knowledge would quickly be outdated. Then you have to take into account the rulings made by various judges. Their rulings ultimately decide what the letter of the law actually means. And they frequently invalidate each others’ rulings so their rulings too are in a constant state of flux.

I’m left with a question that should seem obvious at this point. Why isn’t ignorance of the law an excuse? If legal professionals who attend specialized schooling can’t comprehend the entirety of the law, why are laymen expected to do so? Why is a system built on a practically uncountable number of laws that are frequently conflicting and always changing considered just?

I call bullshit on the entire concept. Ignorance of the laws should be an excuse.

Subzero Temperatures Are Fun

You have two options when living in the Upper Midwest: become friend with winter or at least come to terms with it. I fall into the latter category. Winter is my favorite season. Perhaps by necessity I have developed a fascination with cold weather and the effects it has on everyday thing.

Consider the electronics we take for granted every day. Do you know what the lowest temperature at which your mobile phone or laptop will function? Such information often doesn’t make it into consumer product specifications. I did some digging and it seems most laptops are designed to function in temperatures as low as 50 °F. That’s adequate for environments where the climate is usually controlled such as a home or office. It’s not adequate for the -30 °F temperature to which I work up yesterday morning.

This topic becomes much more interesting on a large scale. Take Texas for example. The state is experiencing a typical Upper Midwestern winter right now. That’s a problem because a typical Upper Midwestern winter there extremely rare so nothing is designed with such conditions in mind. Many people in the state are experiencing blackouts. A lot of people, myself included, have asked why the power grid was so severely impacted by this weather since the same power generation technology is used in environments that get just as cold. Why would a wind turbine in Texas freeze when one in Minnesota that regularly experiences even colder temperatures doesn’t? There are many possibilities. The first that comes to mind is lubricant. It’s quite possible that the lubricants being using in wind turbines in Texas turn into a gel at subzero temperatures. Since Texas so seldomly experiencing subzero temperatures nobody likely stopped to consider the possibility.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) event notification report for today notes that a nuclear reactor in Texas was taken offline because two of its feedwater pumps failed. Could cold weather interfere with a feedwater pump? Quite possibly. Depending on the design of the pump, the source of the water, and other factors it’s quite feasibly that a feedwater pump could fail if the water source or intake froze. Water freezing inside of a pump is even feasible (although flowing water doesn’t freeze as easily as standing water).

Backup diesel generators could also be troublesome in Texas at the moment. There are two types of diesel. #1 diesel tends to work better at lower temperatures whereas #2 diesel tends to work better at higher temperatures. Because #2 diesel tends to turn into gel at cold temperatures, here in the Upper Midwest during winter months we mix #1 and #2 diesel or include additives in our diesel to prevent it from gelling up. I’m guessing the same isn’t done in Texas since there normally isn’t a need. That means backup diesel generators, which are needed now because mains power is unreliable, could also be unavailable.

I wish I had more to offer than observations that I find interesting, but truth be told there likely isn’t anything anybody can do for Texas until the temperature goes up. The fixes necessary to make a state like Texas capable of weathering (pun intentional) these conditions require redesigning almost everything, which is likely too tall of a task for anybody to undertake and too costly for how rare these conditions do occur.

Dissoi Logio

Greek rhetoricians had a practice called Dissoi Logio. The practice involved arguing both sides of an issue in order to obtain a deeper understanding of it. I enjoy practicing this because it not only helps develop a deeper understanding of an issue, but it also helps demonstrate that truth isn’t as absolute as commonly assumed.

One of the best tools available to assist in this practice is statistics. If you follow any online argument long enough, you get to the point where both sides are throwing statistics at each other. A good example of this is the debate around gun restrictions. Those in favor of gun restrictions will toss around comparisons of violent crime statistics between countries with strict and loose gun control laws. People opposed to gun restrictions will then rebut by throwing around statistics involving defensive uses of guns and point out that since the definition of violent crimes differ from country to country, comparing said statistics isn’t an apples to apples comparison. Your perception of which side is telling the truth is usually decided by your personal biases.

This is also common with economic arguments. For example, any argument about minimum wage laws inevitably involves supporters citing statistics that predict economic benefits from doing so and opponents citing statistics that predict economic problems from doing so. Which set of statistics you decide to cite as truth will likely depend on your economic biases.

Statistics aren’t the only tools available to assist you with this exercise, but I cite them because they are becoming one of the most common foundations upon which arguments are built. Starting this exercise by wielding statistics provides a lot of bang for your buck. Once you’ve done that, you can start looking at other argumentative foundations and master their uses too.

Even if you don’t decide to start with using statistics, I urge you to practice Dissoi Logio. Your initial attempts will likely be half hearted because most people aren’t taught the practice and the act of successfully arguing against your own position can be disturbing. However, practice makes perfect. The more you practice it, the better you will become. Eventually you should be able to make very strong arguments for and against any position. This will give you a leg up when debating because you will likely enjoy a better understanding of both your position and your opponent’s position than they do. It will also hopefully help you realize that truth and lies aren’t as black and white as most people mistakenly believe, which should make you far less susceptible to propaganda.

Maybe Connecting Everything to the Internet Isn’t a Great Idea

I’ve made my feelings about the so-called Internet of things (IoT) abundantly clear over the years. While I won’t dismiss the advantages that come with making devices Internet accessible, I’m put off by industry’s general apathy towards security. This is especially true when critical infrastructure is connected to the Internet. Doing so can leads to stories like this:

Someone broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida and tried to poison drinking water for a Florida municipality’s roughly 15,000 residents, officials said on Monday.

The intrusion occurred on Friday evening, when an unknown person remotely accessed the computer interface used to adjust the chemicals that treat drinking water for Oldsmar, a small city that’s about 16 miles northwest of Tampa. The intruder changed the level of sodium hydroxide to 11,100 parts per million, a significant increase from the normal amount of 100 ppm, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a Monday morning press conference.

The individuals involved with the water treatment plant have been surprisingly dismissive about this. They’ve pointed out that there was never any danger to the people of Oldsmar because treated water doesn’t hit the supply system for 24 to 36 hours and there procedures in place that would have caught the dangerous levels of sodium hydroxide in the water before it could be release. I believe both claims. I’m certain there are a number of water quality sensors involved in verifying that treated water is safe before it is released into the supply system. However, they’re not mentioning other dangers.

Poisoning isn’t the only danger of this kind of attack. What happens when treated water can’t be released into the supply system? If an attacker poisons some of the treated water, is there isolated surplus that can be released into the supply system instead? If not, this kind of attack is can work as a denial of service against the city’s water supply. What can be done with poisoned water? It can’t be released into the supply system and I doubt environmental regulations will allow it to be dumped into the ground. Even if it could be dumped into the ground, doing so would risk poisoning groundwater supplies. It’s possible that a percentage of the plant’s treatment capacity becomes unavailable for an extended period of time while the poisoned water is purified.

What’s even more concerning is that this attack wasn’t detected by an intrusion detection system. It was detected by dumb luck:

Then, around 1:30 that same day, the operator watched as someone remotely accessed the system again. The operator could see the mouse on his screen being moved to open various functions that controlled the treatment process. The unknown person then opened the function that controls the input of sodium hydroxide and increased it by 111-fold. The intrusion lasted from three to five minutes.

This indicates that the plant’s network security isn’t adequate for the task at hand. Had the operator not been at the console at the time, it’s quite possible that the attacker would have been able to poison the water. There is also a valid question about the user interface. Why does it apparently allow raising the levels of sodium hydroxide to a dangerous amount? If there are valid reasons for doing so (which there absolutely could be), why doesn’t doing so at least require some kind of supervisory approval?

It’s not uncommon for people involved in industries to cite the lack of budget necessary to address the issues I’ve raised. But if there isn’t a sufficient budget to address important security concerns when connecting critical infrastructure to the Internet, I will argue that it shouldn’t be done at all. The risks of introducing remote access to a system aren’t insignificant and the probability of an attack occurring are extremely high.

Whenever somebody discussing connecting a device to the Internet, I immediately ask what benefits doing so will provide. I then ask which of those benefits can be realized with a local automation system. For example, a Nest thermostat offers some convenient features, but many of those features can be realized with a local Home Assistant controller.

Google Suspends Element from Its Play Store

The developers of Element; a decentralized, federated, and secure messaging client; were just informed that their application has been suspended from the Google Play Store, which means Android users cannot currently install Element unless they do it through F-Droid or side loading. Why did Google suspend the app? At first Element’s developers weren’t given a reason but they were eventually informed the suspension was because of abusive content. Both the lack of transparency and citing abusive content have become staples of application store suspensions, which are two of many things that make centralized application stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play Store so frustrating for both users and developers.

The abusive content justification is bullshit because Element is no different than any other messaging application in that all content is user created. If Element is removed due to showing abusive content then by that very same justification Signal, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Google’s own Gmail should be removed. Furthermore, Element actually has a pretty complete set of moderation tools so Google can’t even argue that the lack of moderation is the culprit. But this doesn’t matter because there are no consequences for Google if it suspends an application for incorrect reasons. Agreements between developers and Google (and Apple for that matter) are one-sided. The only option for developers when their applications are suspended is to beg for clemency.

The suspension of Element is yet another example on the already extensive list that shows why centralized application stores and closed platforms are bad ideas. Without prior notice or (initially) any reason Google made it so Android users can no longer install Element unless they jump through some hoops (fortunately, unlike with iOS, Android generally gives you some options for installing applications that aren’t in the Play Store). Google might decide to be magnanimous and change its mind. Or it might not. In any case there’s very little that Element’s developers or Android users can do about it.

The Revolution Won’t Be Tweeted

Comparing the civil unrest at the Capitol to the 9/11 attacks seems to be the trendy thing to do. Doing so is idiotic, but most trendy things are. However, there is a noteworthy characteristic they share: they preceded crackdowns on heterodox ideas.

This crackdown has been more obvious because it follows the popularization of social media. We get to witness Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube ban users. The posts and videos made by politicians and orthodox thinkers calling for the suppression, oftentimes through violent means, of heterodox thinkers are shared far and wide. What makes it even worse is that there are quisling everywhere. Numerous people are bragging about having reported friends of family members to authorities and administrators for the crime of expressing wrongthink.

Social media sites have made it clear that they will not host heterodox ideas. The revolution won’t be tweeted. So what’s a heterodox thinker to do?

The first thing you need to do, if you haven’t already, is establish additional means of contacting your fellow heterodox thinkers. Secure means of communication are preferable. My tribe and I have make extensive use of Signal and Element. But even e-mail is enough to notify your tribe that you were purged.

The second thing is tidy up your tribe. In an environment where friends and family members are bragging about selling each other out, it pays to raise some walls between your social circles. Take a page from the freedom fighter book and establish cells. Despite what social media encourages, not all of your friends have to know all of your other friends. Not every person with whom you sleep needs to meet your parents. It makes sense to separate your social circles into cells. Treat your family as one group. If you’re a Linux enthusiast, treat your Linux enthusiast friends as another group. If you’re also an anarchist, treat your anarchist friends as a third group. You may have friends who fall into multiple groups, which is fine. The purpose of tidying up your tribe isn’t to separate all of your friends from one another, it’s to separate those who ideologically opposes one another. Having family members is great. Having fellow anarchists is great. But some of your family members may be orthodox thinkers and thus ideologically oppose your heterodox thinking anarchist friends. If those family members know who your anarchist friends are, they may choose to report them (possibly to the authorities, possibly to the service administrators, or possibly to both).

The third thing is to establish appropriate long-term methods of communicating with your cells of friends. If your family are mostly orthodox thinkers then phone calls, standard text messages, e-mail, and even social media sites (if you haven’t already been banned) may be appropriate. Your Linux cell is likely more technologically savvy but still mostly on the up and up in the eyes of orthodox thinkers so tools like Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Discord may be appropriate. Your anarchist cell will be populated by heterodox thinkers so secure communications, preferably using decentralized and even more preferably self-hosted tools, will be appropriate.

The final thing only applies to cells with an external mission. You and your cell need to determine appropriate ways of publishing your propaganda. The more orthodox the thinking of a cell is, the easier this is. Your Linux cell is still mostly free to post its propaganda on social media sites. But your heterodox thinking cells need to put more effort into this. Anarchists, for example, can’t rely on social media platforms. They need to consider setting up self-hosted websites, establishing mailing lists, etc. Distributing local propaganda may require resorting to old-fashion pamphlets.

Mainstream acceptance of free expression ebbs and flows. We are currently in an ebb, but just because acceptance of free expression is moving back out to sea doesn’t mean it won’t return. It also doesn’t mean we can’t express ourselves. We just need to practice more caution and exercise more creativity.

One-Sided Contracts

Yesterday I once again reiterated the fact that if you don’t own your infrastructure, you’re at the mercy of whoever does. Today I want to discuss why third-party providers can so easily pull the rug out from underneath you.

Businesses all over the world rely on third-party providers for any number of goods and services. They do so without too much concern that those third-parties are going to suddenly kneecap them. How do they accomplish such a feat? The answer is contracts. Large business deals aren’t made by one business clicking the accept button on a provider’s terms of service of end user license agreement. They’re made by lawyers on both sides negotiating terms. If one party only offers a deal where they can do whatever they want and the other party simply has to accept it, the other party will likely walk away. But such one-sided deals are common with online service providers.

If you sign up for an account on Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, GoDaddy, or any other hosting provider, you are presented with terms of service that you have to accept in order to use the service. There is no opportunity for you to negotiate. If you bother to read the terms of services, you’ll realize that they tend to put a lot of obligations on you as the paying customer but almost none of them as the provider. The terms of service usually allow the provider to cut you off for any reason without notice. But do you get any guarantees in return? Do they guarantee you uptime, reliability, or anything along those lines? If they do, do they agree to pay a financial penalty if they fail to provide what they guarantee? Do they offer a concise list of specific terms that are the only terms under which they are allowed to terminate the agreement without paying a financial penalty to you? They don’t.

I’ve been fortunate enough to observe contract negotiations between businesses. It’s both an interesting and painstaking process. They can take weeks, months, and even years. During that time both parties will strive to ensure every detail that could impact them is hammered out. Neither party wants to be in a position where the other can screw them.

Every end user license agreement and terms of service you’ve accepted over the years was likely entirely one-sided. The company you’re paying probably reserved all of the power for themselves. It’s likely that they dictated who will arbitrate any disagreement between them and you (if any disagreement is even allowed to you under the terms). This is one reason, perhaps the biggest reason, you can’t rely on a third-party service provider. If you decide to host your site on Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, GoDaddy, etc., they can remove your site for any reason without any advanced warning. In return you get to take it and ask for more.

No competent business would knowingly enter a one-sided contract. Take a page from their book. If you’re looking to purchase a good or service and the only offer is a one-sided agreement where the provider gets all of the power, walk away.

Silence!

The 2020 presidential election turned out exactly as I and anybody else who has witnessed two children fighting over a toy expected. The only thing missing was Biden giving Trump a wedgie and calling him a poophead after his victory was certified.

What has been far more interesting to me is the response by our technology overlords. It seems that online service providers are participating in a competition to see who can best signal their hatred of Trump and the Republican Party. MSN is acting as the high score record keeper and listing every online service that has banned Trump or anything related to the Republican Party. Some of the entries were predictable. For example, Facebook and Twitter both banned Trump and Reddit announce that it banned /r/DonaldTrump.

Some of the entries are a bit more interesting (although still not surprising). Apple and Google both banned Parler (basically a shittier Facebook marketed at Republicans) from their respective app stores. Then Amazon, not wanting to be shown up, announced it had banned Parler from using its AWS services (which Parler stupidly chose as its hosting provider). For over a decade I’ve been telling anybody who will listen about the dangers of relying on tightly controlled platforms and other people’s infrastructure (often referred to as “the cloud”). These announcements by Apple, Google, and Amazon are why.

If you use an iOS device, you are stuck playing by Apple’s rules. If Apple says you’re no longer allowed to install an app to access an online service, then you’re no longer allowed to install an app that accesses that online service. The same is true, although to a lesser extent (for now), with Android. Although Android is open source Google exercises control over the platform through access to its proprietary apps. If a device manufacturer wants to include Gmail, Google Maps, and other proprietary Google apps on their Android devices, they need to agree to Google’s terms of service. The saving grace with Android is that its open source nature allows unrestricted images such as LineageOS to be released, but they generally only work on a small list of available Android devices and installing them is sometimes challenging. I’ve specifically mentioned iOS and Android, but the same is true for any proprietary platform including Windows and macOS. If Microsoft and Apple want to prohibit an app from running on Windows and macOS, they have a number of options available to them including adding the app to their operating systems’ build-in anti-malware tools. The bottom line is if you’re running a proprietary platform, you don’t own your system.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I self-host my online services. This blog for instance is running on a computer in my basement. Self-hosting comes with a lot of downsides, but one significant upside is that the only person who can erase my online presence is me. If you’re relying on a third-party service provider such as Amazon, Digital Ocean, GoDaddy, etc., your online service is entirely at their mercy. Parler wasn’t the first service to learn this lesson the hard way and certainly won’t be the last.

I’ve had to think about these things for most of my life because my philosophical views have almost always been outside the list of acceptable ideas. I developed absolutist views on gun rights, free speech, and the concept of an accused individual being innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in school and continue to maintain those views today. Opposing all forms of gun and speech restrictions doesn’t make you popular in K-12 and especially doesn’t make you popular in college. Being the person who wants a thorough investigation to determine guilt during a witch hunt generally only results in you being called a witch too. However, that list of acceptable ideas has continuously shortened throughout my life. Absolutist or near absolutist views on free speech were common when I was young. They became less common when I was in college, but the general principle of free speech was still espoused by the majority. Today it seems more common to find people who actually believe words can be dangerous and demand rigid controls on speech. It also seems that any political views slightly right of Leninism have been removed from the list.

If you hold views that are outside of the list of acceptable ideas or are in danger of being removed from the list, you need to think about censorship avoidance. If you haven’t already started a plan to migrate away from proprietary platforms, now is a good time to start. Likewise, if you administer any online services and haven’t already developed a plan to migrate to self-hosted infrastructure, now is actually at least a year too late, but still a better time to start than tomorrow. Our technology overlords have made it abundantly clear that they will not allow wrongthink to be produced or hosted on their platforms.