Summer is here? Slow news day? Your editor wants you to come up with something to fill space?
No worries, mate: you can always do a slideshow of weird crap you can buy from Amazon.
The Lazy Journalist’s Friend.
August 3rd, 2012Random roundup, August 3, 2012.
August 3rd, 2012We’ve got wrongful convictions, we’ve got banana republicans, and we’ve got pizza. Something for everyone: a comedy tonight. (Dammit, I miss Zero Mostel.)
In 2004, Omar Bradley, then mayor of Compton, was convicted of misappropriation of public funds. Also convicted with Mr. Bradley were Amen Rahh, a former council member, and John D. Johnson II, the former city manager.
Bradley’s conviction was on a felony charge: he served three years, could not hold public office, and lost his teaching credentials.
However, in another case last year, the California Supreme Court held:
The punchline?
(Rahh’s and Johnson’s convictions were not overturned.)
I’ve previously alluded to the police shootings in Anaheim, and observed that I don’t have a clear grasp of what’s going on. The NYT ran this story while I was on vacation, which I think gives a decent overview, and follows-up today with this story, which is more about the political and cultural divisions in Anaheim. (Note the correction at the bottom.)
As long as we’re on the NYT site, there’s another interesting story to talk about. Baithe Diop was a cab driver who was killed in 1995. Five men were convicted of his murder as part of “an elaborate plot to distract the police from the intended crime: the theft of $50,000 worth of cocaine from a passenger in Mr. Diop’s car”.
More:
It now appears that the murder was actually committed by members of the “Sex Money Murder” gang.
So. Pizza. Mangia Pizza. As we have previously noted, Mangia went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010. Mangia’s founder has proposed a plan to get them out of Chapter 11. However, another creditor has proposed a counter plan. The founder’s plan would (in theory) pay back unsecured creditors 100% of what they’re owed over the next ten years; the competing plan would give that creditor control of the company, and pay back the unsecured creditors 22 cents on the dollar. The founders have since modified their plan so that the unsecured creditors will get 22 cents on the dollar immediately,”with assurances to pay the remainder of the amount owed in coming years”.
(If I was a creditor, given the situation, I wouldn’t count on getting 100% of my money back in ten years, or ever. I’d take my 22 cents on the dollar and consider anything after that found money.)
What makes this even more interesting is that the competing creditor, “Cloud Cap LLC, a subsidiary of Austin-based management and investment firm Pileus Group LLC” became a creditor by buying a claim from a place called Knife Sharpist, which (duh) sells knives and does knife sharpening. (I’ve been there a couple of times. They do good work.) The total amount of Knife Sharpist’s claim was $244.66.
(For Austin residents who might be confused, the Mangia at Gracy Farms (which the Statesman constantly calls The Domain: it isn’t) and the one on Lake Austin are owned by another company and aren’t involved in the Chapter 11 proceeding. The Chapter 11 proceedings only involve the location on Mesa and the one at the airport. But it does make me wonder: if Cloud Cap takes control, will they force those two locations to change the name?)
Mangia, according to the article, owes “more than $750,000”. (How much more?)
DEFCON 20 updates (round 2).
August 2nd, 2012- Here’s a link to the slides from Terrence Gareau’s “HF Skiddies Suck, Don’t Be One. Learn Some Basic Python” presentation. I’m not complaining, but be advised that this is a large download (620 MB ZIP file) with video and code examples. Also be advised that, based on a very brief preliminary skim of the file, there may be some NSFW material in the presentation. (Also not a complaint, but an observation.) I’d like to thank Mr. Gareau for making this available: his presentation is the only one in the “DEFCON 101” track that I’ve found so far.
- Added a link to Renderman‘s presentation on ADS-B hacking, “Hacker + Airplanes = No Good Can Come Of This” to the day 2 notes.
- Josh Brashars (who is a heck of a nice guy) and I have exchanged emails, and he’s graciously allowed me to temporarily host the version of his “Exploit Archaeology: Raiders of the Lost Payphones” presentation from the DEFCON 20 DVD. Of course, iDisk no longer exists (NOT that I’m BITTER or anything) and WCD’s hosting provider/WordPress implementation has a 10 MB file size limit, so I’m using Dropbox to host this file. Let me know if it doesn’t work.
Banana republicans watch: August 2, 2012.
August 2nd, 2012Randy Adams wants severance pay.
That’s Randy Adams, former police chief for the city of Bell.
That’s Randy Adams, former police chief for the city of Bell, who was making $457,000 a year and cut a deal with the city of Bell to approve his disability pension at the same time the city was hiring him.
While I was on vacation, another story broke that I didn’t have time to cover. Last year, the state of California announced that they couldn’t keep all the parks in the park system open. Citizens and municipalities in California responded by donating money and coordinating fund raising events.
It turns out that the park system actually had $54 million stashed in various accounts. And folks are peeved.
Pity the poor Stockton PD. (Well, and the Stockton Fire Department, too.)
Since the city has filed for bankruptcy, the company that was providing gas has terminated the contract.
By the way, former Stockton Police Chief Tom Morris, who served as the chief for eight months and retired at 52, is getting an annual pension from the city of $204,000.
(Hattip for that last link to Instapundit.)
I am disgusted.
August 2nd, 2012It is 3:00 PM local time on Ice Cream Sandwich Day, and nobody has brought me my Android 4.0 tablet yet.
DEFCON 20 updates.
August 1st, 2012- Added a link to FX and Greg’s “Hacking [Redacted] Routers” to the day 3, part 2 post. (By the way, the messages on those fortune cookies? Real Huawei router messages.)
- Added a link to a blog post by Moxie Marlinspike summarizing the presentation he gave with David Hulton (Pico Computing) on “Defeating PPTP VPNs and WPA2 Enterprise with MS-CHAPv2“. Moxie’s post includes the sexy, sexy diagrams of MS-CHAPv2 handshaking and does a better job than I did of explaining how the problem reduces to attacking 256 DES keys.
- Added a link to Philip Polstra’s blog entry on his “Bypassing Endpoint Security for $20 or Less” which includes links to the slides and his code.
- Here’s a link to the “Hacking the Google TV” presentation, which I missed. There’s also a GTV Hacker blog, and a GTV Hacker wiki.
- Here’s a link to Anarch and Omega’s “The Darknet of Things, Building Sensor Networks That Do Your Bidding” presentation. I was curious about this one, but it was opposite “Busting the BARR”. I note, however: “NO ARDUINO!”
- Link to Ryan Reynolds and Jonathan Claudius’ presentation, “Stamp Out Hash Corruption! Crack All The Things!“, another one I missed due to a schedule conflict.
Yes, we have more bananas.
August 1st, 2012…
Obstruction? “deliberate failure to produce documents”? “…callous disregard for her staff and the resources entrusted to her by the American people”? And she gets a reprimand?
You’re doing it WRONG!
August 1st, 2012(Video of the “high-speed chase” at the link.)
Banana republicans watch: August 1, 2012.
August 1st, 2012Tyrone Freeman used to be the president of Local 6434 of the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU).
Then things started happening. The LAT did a series of reports on Freeman’s spending as head of the local. The federal Department of Labor, the FBI, and the IRS started investigating.
And now Freeman has been indicted on 15 counts:
Oddly enough, I see no mention of strippers. Freeman was apparently big on cigars and cognac.
Yeah, Hawaii is nice and all. But, dude, the Pro Bowl? Seriously?
Quote of the day.
August 1st, 2012Noted for the record.
August 1st, 2012The two NSA pamphlets I mentioned previously, “Solving the Enigma – History of the Cryptanalytic Bombe” and “The Cryptographic Mathematics of Enigma” are available from the NSA website as free downloads, along with quite a few other publications related to WWII cryptography. There are also publications available on cryptography in other eras: Korea, Vietnam, Cold War, etc.
I personally like having the printed versions to have and to hold (and you can request them by email), but this is a gold mine for the impatient person who really wants to know the “History of the Cryptographic Branch of the People’s Army of Vietnam 1945-1975“.
Bring the NYT the brown trousers (and other random notes for August 1, 2012).
August 1st, 2012Last year, NYC sold 28,000 pounds of spent brass to Georgia Arms, which reloaded the casings and sold re-manufactured ammunition.
Not surprisingly, the NYT has issues with this.
Meanwhile:
More:
“It’s not working! Do it harder!”
Interesting:
This appears to be a breaking story:
Obit watch: August 1, 2012.
August 1st, 2012Noted author and William F. Buckley foe Gore Vidal. (NYT. LAT. WP. No A/V Club yet: when they post it, I’ll add it here.)
After action report: Las Vegas, NV 2012.
July 31st, 2012I don’t have much new to report as far as equipment, but I do have a couple of notes on existing stuff. DEFCON for the past few years has run a “secure” network using MSCHAPv2 authentication.
- This worked fine on the Kindle Fire. I was able to log in and browse whenever the network was working. However, there seems to be some sort of bug in the Kindle Fire: after a certain amount of time, the wifi setting on the Fire would either stop responding completely (on/off switch wouldn’t do anything) or would immediately crash (with an error message) as soon as I tried to open the setting.
- The default Network Manager on Ubuntu 12.04 would not connect to the “secure” network at all, but just constantly brought up the authentication prompt. Google turned up more than a few reports of Ubuntu issues with Network Manager and MS-CHAPv2 authenticated networks, so it seems this is a known issue. I worked around this by downloading and installing wicd, which was able to connect. However, wicd does not appear to save network settings, so every time I wanted to connect to the network, I had to re-enter the configuration.
(In general, I’m seeing more and more problems with project e and Ubuntu 12.04. I suspect some of these may be issues caused by doing several upgrade installs in succession, so I may try doing a backup of /home, reformatting project e, and doing a scratch install and restore of 12.04.)
Food: I had excellent meals at Lotus of Siam (the sea bass drunken noodles) and at Piero’s Italian Cuisine, which is a very old-school Italian restaurant near the convention center.
That was some swell osso bucco. And I don’t think I paid much more for it than I paid for osso bucco at Ciola’s when they were still open.
I also broke with one of my rules and went back to Shabu Shabu Paradise again. In my defense:
- I really like these people and want them to be enormously successful.
- I haven’t been there since my last trip with Andrew and Mike the Musicologist.
- I kind of have a tiny little crush on the waitress. Who, by the way, recognized me from my previous visits, even though I was clean-shaven last time. (I think she’s married to the chef, so nothing’s going to come of that.)
I also had a good meal at Mint Indian Bistro, and very good breakfasts at Blueberry Hill on Flamingo and The Egg and I on Sahara. (The rule doesn’t apply to breakfast, as it is very very hard to find good breakfast places that aren’t casino buffets, Denny’s, or IHOPs in Vegas. If anybody does have a recommendation for a good breakfast place in Las Vegas, please feel free to drop it into the comments.)
I’ve been driving past Hofbräuhaus Las Vegas for years now, considering giving them a try and then not going after all. This time, thanks to Tam inspiring a German food craving in me, I thought I’d give it a shot. The verdict: meh. It wasn’t a horrible meal. The service was pleasant and efficient. But it seemed like I paid a fair amount of money for pretty average food. Walburg is better and cheaper and really not that bad a drive if I go there from work. (You’d be hard-pressed to spend $50+ at Walburg without either being too full to move or too drunk to drive.)
I drove past Flavor Flav’s House of Flavor several times (it is very close to my preferred ATM in Las Vegas, which, in turn, is far enough away from DEFCON that I’m not any more paranoid than usual about using that ATM), and I regret not getting a photo.
I did get some photos (but they didn’t come out well) of “Lynyrd Skynyrd BBQ & Beer“. BBQ and beer? I can haz both?
(By the way, I was never offered a full can of soda on any of my Southwest flights. But I did get a full can of drinking water between PHX and AUS.)
Thanks to: Everyone at DEFCON 20 (staff, goons, presenters, and attendees), the folks at Shabu Shabu Paradise, Lotus of Siam, the Egg and I, Blueberry Hill, and Mint Indian Bistro, the Mob Museum, Amber Unicorn Books, Greyhound’s Books, Borepatch for linky-love, and anyone else I missed.
Banana republicans watch: July 31, 2012.
July 31st, 2012I apologize: things were so hectic while I was away that I kind of let the banana republicans slip. I don’t think there was much that went on while I was in Las Vegas, anyway. But now that I’m back…
…this LAT story is kind of confusingly written, but it looks like Angel Perales of Cudahy, the “former head of code enforcement”, has pled guilty. Osvaldo “Bimbo and the Badge” Conde and former mayor David Silva are pleading Thursday.
Perales could receive a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
And Louis Byrd and Fernando Pedroza, former council members in the city of Lynwood…
According to the LAT, this was the first test of this argument, but the LA County DAs office is expected to use this same approach against the city officials in Bell. Also:
Strippers. Always with the strippers.