This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Archive for August, 2013
TMQ Watch: August 20, 2013.
Tuesday, August 20th, 2013Insert very bad words here.
Tuesday, August 20th, 2013The Detroit News is reporting the death of Elmore Leonard, one of America’s greatest novelists.
Damn it.
Edited to add: I’m not sure if I’m going to write more about Leonard. I’ve read, and enjoyed, some of his work (and am glad that there’s more left that I haven’t read) but I don’t feel the same personal connection to Leonard’s work that I felt to Robert Parker’s.
However, in honor of the late Mr. Leonard, here’s his rules for writing from the NYT website.
Random notes: August 20, 2013.
Tuesday, August 20th, 2013NYT headline:
(Edited to add: I am willing to offer karma points and gratitude for a photoshop of Admiral Ackbar in a Yankees uniform.)
At least Richard Cohen is consistent. Here’s a man who’s never met a totalitarian initiative he doesn’t like.
Speaking of NYC and guns…
Say what?
So let’s see. NYC has strict gun control. So crooks are stealing weapons (already illegal) or engaging in “straw purchases” (also illegal, and rarely prosecuted by the Feds). So what we need is more gun control, and also stop and frisk.
I would laugh at these guys, but…I’ve got my own embarrassing gun related issue (which I will write more about at some time in the future; no, it wasn’t a negligent discharge, I’m just having problems getting something to run right), so I’m withholding the laughter for now.
A small handful of DEFCON 21 (and related) notes: August 19, 2013.
Monday, August 19th, 2013- Bruce Schneier has a post up at the Schneier on Security blog that serves as sort of a response to the famous Black Hat 2013 Cryptopocalypse paper. Again, this is one of those subject areas where my skills are weak; I don’t know who is right or wrong here (or if both sides are both part right and part wrong) but I wanted to point out Schneier’s post in the interest of giving equal time to the other side.
- Here’s a link to Justin Engler’s GitHub repo, which includes build info for R2B2 (the PIN cracking robot), the control software, presentation slides (though I’m not sure if these are from DEFCON 21) and some interesting material related to PINs. (By way of the presentation slides, here’s another interesting bit of PIN related statistical information.)
- If you’re interested in the “Android master key” bug, here’s a link to Jeff Forristal’s BlackHat 2013 presentation. (If you don’t know what that is, “The vulnerability involves discrepancies in how Android applications are cryptographically verified & installed, allowing for APK code modification without breaking the cryptographic signature; that in turn is a simple step away from system access & control.”)
- Two interesting and related things from Daniel Crowley: “The Way of the Cryptologist” and cribdrag, a tool for cryptanalysis of “ciphertext encrypted using an XOR operation with a predictable key” (for example, ciphertexts encrypted with a one-time pad, where somebody reused the one-time pad. Bad mojo. Don’t do that).
- Hoorah! Hoorah! The Doug DePerry/Tom Ritter/Andrew Rahimi “Traffic Interception and Remote Mobile Phone Cloning with a Compromised CDMA Femtocell” presentation just went up. This link takes you to the iSEC Partners website, where you can find both slides and video.
- Nicholas Baldanos has been updating his blog with more information on the ccTalk protocol. Part 1: details of the protocol. Part 2: coin acceptor handling.
This brings a smile to my face.
Monday, August 19th, 2013The Post Office is issuing an Inverted Jenny stamp.
The 2013 Inverted Jenny has a face value of $2 (13 cents in 1918 money) instead of the 24 cent face value of the original. I’ll be interested in seeing what else the USPS changes.
And here’s an old article from Smithsonian about the Inverted Jenny, for those unfamiliar with the story.
(I’m not a big stamp collector; I dabbled in it a little when I was young, with the help of my mother, and somewhere I think I have a Bicentennial first day cover. As I get older, though, I’ve started purchasing USPS first day covers for people and subjects that interest me. See also: the Battle of Lake Erie.)
(And, yes, somewhere I have a copy of George Amick’s book, The Inverted Jenny: Money, Mystery, Mania
(Of course, the Inverted Jenny story touches on another subject of interest to me: the Green family.)
Paging Charles Willeford….
Saturday, August 17th, 2013…white courtesy phone, please.
(I apologize for linking to the Statesman, but it is a non-paywalled AP story. I also apologize for the stupid auto-play video; if you prefer, “princess cockfighting” in the Google will bring up other versions of this story.)
(I have a sneaking suspicion Willeford would say, “Come on, you can’t put that in a novel! People won’t believe it, even if it is true!”)
Missing the boat here.
Saturday, August 17th, 2013How can you write a travel article about Tacoma and not mention the Silver Cloud Inn and its luxurious Crazy Apple Rumors suite? For crying out loud, the Silver Cloud Inn is right on the waterfront! Instead, the LAT recommends staying at some hipster hotel with a “stunning glass collection”.
And what does the paper recommend you eat? Tacos. Vuelve a la Vida may be great, but I live in Austin; if I’m going to Tacoma, I’m going to get away from tacos.
(I’m still hoping to get up to Tacoma one of these days, before John Moltz becomes the famous Internet personality he deserves to be and starts spending all of his time cavorting with SI swimsuit models and professional drifers.)
Ubuntu blues.
Saturday, August 17th, 2013Documenting this here for the record.
I think I have finally resolved the “the system is running in low graphics mode” error I’ve been getting on Project e (which, I will remind you, is an Asus 1005HA with an integrated Intel 950 graphics adapter) since upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04.
This particular document is comprehensive and ultimately useless. I tried every suggestion in it, with no success at all.
What finally seems to have resolved the problem was a suggestion in this thread. Specifically, brucey99’s suggestion to edit /etc/init/lightdm.conf and add
sleep 10
above
exec lightdm
seems to have done the trick. (I used “sleep 20” instead of “sleep 10”. What’s the harm, 10 seconds more boot time? I can always change it later.)
It also seems like the
sudo service lightdm restart
command from a terminal window works to get things back to normal if the machine does start in low graphics mode.
And I’m not sure it made any difference, but just to document: I also created a xorg.conf file (from xorg.conf.failsafe) and edited the “Device” section:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "UXA"
EndSection
After restarting about a half-dozen times, it hasn’t come up in low graphics mode yet. I’ll see how it goes.
As David Brin once said, “Let the next guy know what killed you.” And thanks, brucey99.
Your art fraud followup: August 17, 2013.
Saturday, August 17th, 2013Phanatic no more.
Friday, August 16th, 2013Charlie Manuel gone as manager of the Phillies. And replaced by Ryne Sandberg.
I lost track: is this the first firing of the baseball season?
TMQ Watch: August 13, 2013.
Friday, August 16th, 2013We were trying to come up with a clever introduction to the return of Tuesday Morning Quarterback (and, thus, the TMQ Watch) but we couldn’t. On the other hand, we were also suffering from a bad case of 70s nostalgia (brought about by many things, but exacerbated by the death of Bert Lance). So we thought we’d throw some vintage music your way before cracking open this week’s TMQ after the jump. Oddly enough, it turns out to be fitting for reasons we’ll see later on…
Random notes: August 16, 2013.
Friday, August 16th, 2013Mark Sutton, best known as “that guy dressed as James Bond who parachuted out of a helicopter during the 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies”, died yesterday while piloting a wingsuit in Switzerland.
Also among the dead: Barbara Mertz, noted author, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, and Egyptologist. You may perhaps know her better as “Elizabeth Peters” and “Barbara Michaels”. (Oddly enough, I don’t own any Peters or Michaels books, but I think I have a copy of Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs.)
And Bert Lance. Remember Bert Lance? Remember the Carter administration? Bank of Credit and Commerce International?
That sounds like something out of a Ross Thomas novel.
The punchline: all of those paintings were done by one guy in a garage in Queens.
(Speaking of art, this has already been on FARK, but I do want to note it here for the “Art, damn it! art watch”:
I also want to make note of it because that’s one of the rare FARK headlines that’s pretty much accurate. If you have any doubts, click through to the article and look at the photo.)
(“a dictatorship of art”?)
That time of year.
Thursday, August 15th, 2013New NFL season. New Tuesday Morning Quarterback. TMQ Watch to resume soonish.
Noted.
Thursday, August 15th, 2013The 5th edition of Learning Python
Since I am not an idiot, I bought the ebook; doing so is easier both on my wallet and on my back. I started reading it and working through the examples last night.
Quoth Chapter 1, under “Who uses Python today?”:
The IronPort email server product uses more than 1 million lines of Python code to do its job.
I can only smile and say “No. Comment.”
And a few bullet points later:
The NSA uses Python for cryptography and intelligence analysis.
So remember, folks: the NSA is spying on you, but they’re doing it with open source software. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
(Yes, yes, I’m sure the NSA also uses Perl and Java and Visual Basic and FORTH and even internally developed languages that are still classified. I just found it funny, is all.)
Random notes: August 14, 2013.
Wednesday, August 14th, 2013Ford stopped making the police variant of the Crown Victoria in 2011. We’re now in 2013, and police departments are starting to retire the last of the Crown Vics.
I have flirted from time to time with the idea of purchasing a former cop car as a backup vehicle. (“It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks.”) Problem is, the state surplus store wants nearly $6K for used DPS cars; at that price, I could go get a used Miata or Outback instead.
The 1933 double eagle is on display at the New York Historical Society. I’ve written previously about the strange history of the 1933 double eagle, and the linked NYT article contains a good summary, too.