Tag: You’re Doing it Right

Open Textbooks

I enjoy helping individuals educate themselves. In pursuit of this goal I try to find sources of free educational material and share them with as many people as possible. Recently I stumbled across the Open Culture website, which has a page listing freely available textbooks.

I haven’t had an opportunity to dig through all of the listed textbooks nor am I qualified to determine the accuracy of the material in many of the listed books. However, of the few textbooks I have perused, they appear to be good quality and were written by credentialed professors.

Feel free to go through the list and download anything that piques your interest.

The Leaders of North and South Korea Actually Talked

We witnessed a historic moment yesterday. For the first time since 1953 a leader from one Korea crossed the demilitarized zone to the other Korea:

The leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to work to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons after holding a historic summit.

The announcement was made by the North’s Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea after talks at the border.

The two also agreed to push towards turning the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty this year.

This is great news. I’m actually surprised that Kim Jong-un is even discussing denuclearization since his nuclear weaponry is likely the only thing that has dissuaded the United States from invading his country. But then this agreement could act as similar agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union did. While both sides paid lip service to denuclearization, neither actually denuclearized. However, the talks about denuclearization opened a dialogue between the two countries, which helped greatly ease tensions.

Perhaps both North and South Korea are interested in denuclearization, perhaps not. But the mere willingness to discuss the matter will likely ease tensions between the two nations enough to allow for further progress on the road to peaceful coexistence.

Nobody Gets Fired for Doing Their Job

In the latest chapter that is the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica drama, people are upset because Mark Zuckerberg said that he didn’t make any heads roll:

Facebook has been ramping up its damage control as outrage continues over the Cambridge Analytica mess. But it seems nobody at the social media company has been let go as a consequence. On a media conference call, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that no employee was fired in the wake of the scandal because, in his words, it’s his fault: “At the end of the day this is my responsibility,” he said.

While many people are asking why nobody was fired over this, I’m asking why people are expecting somebody to be fired for doing their job. The beginning of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica drama started with a business transaction. Cambridge Analytica purchased the personal information of Facebook users, which is the product that Facebook sells. From there Cambridge Analytica provided analysis of the data to political campaigns, which is what has irked everybody. But as far as I can tell there was no contractual agreement between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica that prohibited the latter from using the data it purchased for political purposes.

There is no reason to expect somebody at Facebook to be fired because everybody at Facebook did their job correctly.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Cellular interceptors like the Stingray have received a lot of press in recent years. By imitating a cellular tower, interceptors can convince cellular phones to connect to it instead of a legitimate cellular tower. This allows the person operating the interceptor to surveil communications being transmitted or received by a connected phone. Government agents have been dismissive of questions about the warrant requirements of deploying a device that is capable of surveilling everybody in an area, which has lead to several court battles. However, it appears that government agents don’t appreciate turnabout because they’re upset that an unauthorized cellular interceptor was deployed in Washington DC:

The Associated Press reports today that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed that it found what appear to be unauthorized cell-site simulators, also known as Stingrays, in Washington DC last year. The agency told Senator Ron Wyden in a letter that it had found “anomalous activity” consistent with these sorts of devices in the Washington area and a DHS official told the AP that the findings were obtained through a 90-day trial that began in January of last year. Senator Wyden sent the DHS a letter last November requesting information on the use of cell-site simulators by foreign intelligence services.

That’s a shame.

I’m always amused by the hypocritical nature of government agents. They have no problem spying on all of us and even justify doing so. But when somebody spies on them it’s a fucking tragedy that needs immediate attention. I hope whoever was operating that interceptor acquired some good dirt on some high ranking politicians and leaks that information to the public.

Effective Protesting

The Vermont legislature recently decided that its subjects no longer deserve the privilege of owning standard capacity magazines. While the subjects were unable to convince many of their rulers to not take away their privilege, they did throw one hell of a protest:

Protesters were giving away 1,200 30-round magazines. The legislation would ban high-capacity magazines and rapid-fire devices known as bump stocks, in addition to raising the legal age. It also would expand background checks for private gun sales.

Political protests in modern times tend to be worthless outside of creating some public relations. This is because most protests don’t involve any meaningful action. However, this protest was effective because it not only involved holding signs and yelling but also involved the action of distributing the soon to be prohibited items. Now more standard capacity magazines are in the hands of the subjects of Vermont, which directly violated the law approved by the legislature.

Officer Noor Charged

Against all odds, the grand jury for the case of Justine Damond’s death decided that there were grounds for charging Officer Noor:

A Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed an Australian woman in July has been booked on charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

This decision is somewhat surprising considering how biased grand juries tend to be in favor of law enforcers. I can only imagine that the evidence provided by Officer Noor’s defense was nonexistent. However, now the case goes to a jury, which also tend to be heavily biased in favor of law enforcers, so there’s still a very good chance that Officer Noor walks away from this unpunished.

Arm the Homeless

One of the rarest things in politics is a politician who advocates for actual solutions to actual problems. Brian Ellison is one of those rare politicians:

Brian Ellison, who is running against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow, says homeless people are “constantly victims of violent crime” and providing them with firearms would provide a deterrent.

Ellison, a Libertarian who is expected to be the party’s candidate in the November midterm election, said he had settled on pump-action shotguns for practicality purposes.

“Frankly I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol,” he told the Guardian, “but due to the licensing requirements in the state we’re going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is.

“Getting them pistols is probably next to impossible. The pistols need to be registered, people have to have addresses.”

Carrying a concealed pistol is illegal without a permit, Ellison said, “whereas open-carrying a long gun is completely legal”.

It’s too bad that he’s running as a Libertarian Party candidate and therefore has pretty no chance whatsoever of actually being elected. But I’m glad to see he’s at least throwing a good idea out there. The war being waged by most municipal governments against their homeless population is currently one-sided.

I also like how this policy points out the discriminatory nature of Michigan’s pistol laws. If you don’t have an address, you don’t have a right to defend yourself. Although I’d call this a flaw, I’m fairly certain that the politicians who wrote the law consider it a feature.

You Can’t Take the Sky from Me

Swarm Technologies applied to the Federal Communications Commission Fascist Communications Club (FCC) for permission to launch a handful of satellites. The FCC denied the company’s application. But the United States doesn’t have a monopoly on spaceflight so Swarm Technologies shopped around and was able to get its satellites into the air thanks to India. Now the FCC is claiming that it owns all of space:

One company might not have been willing to take “no” for an answer, however. IEEE Spectrum has discovered that the FCC accused startup Swarm Technologies of launching four of its tiny SpaceBEE (Basic Electronic Elements) communication cubesats without obtaining the necessary approvals — in effect, it would be the first satellite maker to go rogue.

The FCC denied Swarm’s application to launch its satellites in December 2017 on the grounds that they posed a safety hazard to other spacecraft orbiting Earth. That apparently wasn’t a deterrent, as the SpaceBEEs appear to have launched aboard one of India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles on January 12th (you’re looking at the rocket above). Needless to say, that left officials fuming. The FCC revoked Swarm’s approval for a subsequent mission that would have taken place this April, citing an “apparent unauthorized launch and operation” of the four satellites.

The fact that the FCC revoked Swarm Technology’s approval for future missions is especially funny since the company demonstrated that it didn’t need FCC approval to get its satellites into space. But doing so probably fed some petty bureaucrat’s power trip and that’s all government approval is capable of doing in a global economy.

The world has become more connected. It’s trivial to communication with people on the other side of the globe in real time. Traveling across oceans takes a matter of hours, not days or weeks. If the government of a region is standing in your way, you can shop around for a region that will allow you to do what you want to do and transport whatever you need to that region. If worst comes to worst, a company can move itself entirely to a friendlier region.

Chipping Away at the Drug War

The public sale of cannabis has been legal in Colorado since January 1, 2014. Three years later and none of the doom and gloom predictions of the prohibitionists have come to pass. Now Colorado is planning to step up its game of chipping away at the drug war by considering lowering the severity of psilocybin possession:

The group calls itself Colorado for Psilocybin after the fungi’s scientific name. Their proposed measure would do away with felony charges for people caught with mushrooms, and make them the lowest enforcement priority for Denver police.

Anyone caught with more than two ounces of dried mushrooms, or two pounds of uncured “wet” mushrooms, would be subject to a citation: less than $99 for the first offense, increased by increments of $100 for subsequent offenses, and never more than $999 per citation.

If this is passed, the prohibitionists will once again predict doom and gloom and their predictions will once again fail to manifest. Despite what prohibitions believe, consuming psilocybin doesn’t turn an individual into a killing machine. What is can do though is help those suffering from depression and, of course, offer those looking for a good psychedelic trip what they want.

I really hope that this is the beginning of the next chapter of an individual state telling the feds where to stick their drug war.

The Beginning of the End for Unsecured Websites

Chrome looks to be the first browser that is going to call a spade a spade. Starting in July 2018, Chrome will list all websites that aren’t utilizing HTTPS as unsecured:

For the past several years, we’ve moved toward a more secure web by strongly advocating that sites adopt HTTPS encryption. And within the last year, we’ve also helped users understand that HTTP sites are not secure by gradually marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as “not secure”. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.

I think Let’s Encrypt was the catalyst that made this decision possible. Before Let’s Encrypt was released, acquiring and managing TLS certificates could be a painful experience. What made matters worse is that the entire process had to be redone whenever the acquired TLS certificates expired. Let’s Encrypt turned that oftentimes annoying and expensive process into an easy command. This made it feasible for even amateur website administrators to implement HTTPS.

The Internet is slowly moving to a more secure model. HTTPS not only prevents third parties from seeing your web traffic but, maybe even more importantly, it also prevents third parties from altering your web traffic.