only logical

So legally, shouldn't Huawei face steep fines for violating Roe v Wade's "Right To Privacy"? (I'm not holding my breath)


https://www.cnet.com/news/us-finds-huawei-has-backdoor-access-to-mobile-networks-globally-report-says

censorship online

The Z Man explains many things well, including censorship via technology:

"[it is unlikely] that the tech oligopolies will come to their senses and stop trying to suppress speech on-line. In all probability, they will exhaust themselves trying to stamp out dissent, which means things will get much worse. Apple, for example, is now censoring speech within chat programs like Telegram. Microsoft is promising to moderate speech over Skype. The people behind these efforts are driven by hatred and self-loathing, so they lie awake at night thinking about this stuff.

The trouble is, it is expensive. The latest YouTube banning probably cost the company $10 million dollars to organize. It’s pretty clear they invested a lot of manpower in reviewing specific videos. The return on that investment was mostly bad press and greater awareness by regulators that there is a problem...

...With every censorship effort, the reputation of the oligopolies declines. Silicon Valley is now the universal villain.

The point of all this is not that libertarians are right that the market will magically sort out the problem for us. All of this could have been avoided if the government had done its job and cracked down on these oligopolies a long time ago."

moral bankruptcy

The Federalist, on another Google problem:

"to a company with a crippling liberal bias, human traffickers are less icky than people who say things that challenge their political preferences."

read the rest

3D Modeling Master Class

Igor K at myCGroom makes amazing models, and demonstrates how he makes them - in mindblowing timelapse form!

Is his last name Streisand?

"The Reddit user responsible for bringing the hacked photos into the public eye has decried an invasion of his privacy by the media."

To rephrase, John Menese, a 33-year-old onanism promoter from Nevada, is upset that his privacy has been violated because he violated the privacy of others.

(title reference)

M$

"Seldom have both Microsoft's lack of innovation and their kludgy, ad-hoc approach to software design been explained so concisely."

i can't drive 56k

arbitrarily low speed limits set by a distant and unresponsive government didn't work during the era of the previous worst president ever either.

some networks just aren't safe

...when the nsa is on the prowl

hunting dogs

and see related images

geoguessr

update & bump 2: i've discovered a new malady - geoguessosis - a condition where, when presented with a view of majestic wilderness scenery, one's first reaction is "phooey, no road signs".

update & bump 1: new high score: 30942 (same conditions as before)

my new favorite online game: geoguessr

my new geoguessr high score: 28148 (which took patience, highway signs, and guessing a bit of cyrillic - and no googling anything :D )

double vision

two takes on google glass:

xkcd
vodkapundit

who can it be knocking at my door?

stay away, don't come round here no more.

which hunt?

this story is both sillier and scarier than the old monty python bit.

made up words

believe it or not, a friend of mine helped me write a perl program to generate words* like the ones dustbury found in his spam folder - so i had at least as much fun coming up with some definitions for them as he did:

• "viscent" - n. - a small coin minted in honor of a viscount.
• "simposconcia" - n. - the practice of electing morons to positions of leadership.
• "gramazing" - adj. - in a manner that elicits wonder in cows.
• "reextruch" - v. - a medical term for the action of giving yourself leg cramps
• "matempendully" - adj. - in a manner similar to the flabby upper arms of a maternal ancestor.
• "recroutratess" - n. - a woman who serves seconds at a german restaurant.

and two of them are proper names.

• "disgroonesset" is the name of a massachusetts island, derived from the algonquin words for "fever and vomiting".
• "squero" is a vehicle produced by a pontiac-scion joint venture.

* as a phonotactic experiment related to conlangs, not for spam.

rotten spam

somebody left the container open ;)

i just received the most pathetic phishing scam spam ever. i would have copied it exactly, but had to change all the <> brackets to ^ so that it can be viewed as closely to verbatim text as i recieved it - not interpreted as html by your browser.

^html style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 90% 90%; ^moz-background-clip:

^moz-initial; ^moz-background-origin: ^moz-initial; ^moz-background-inline-policy:

^moz-initial;"^^head^^style^body {margin:8px} .tr-field {font:normal small arial} img

^moz-force-broken-image-icon: 1;}^/style^^/head^^body g_editable="true" hidefocus="true"

class="editable tr-field" id=":ce" style=""^^div^
^img alt="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/paypal_logo.gif"

src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/paypal_logo.gif"^
^/div^

Dear Customer,^br^^br^
We are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures. Your account

has^br^been randomly selected for this maintenance, and you will now be taken through a

series of^br^identity verification pages click on the link below

^br^^br^

^a href="http:***SPAMMINGSCUMBUCKETS***.htm"

target="_blank"^^font size="2" face="Verdana"^Verify your Paypal

account^/font^^/a^^br^^br^Protecting the security of your PayPal account is our primary

concern, and we apologize for^br^any inconvenience this may cause.^br^^br^^br^Thanks For

using Paypal^br^Management^/body^^/html^

check out the infographic below

follow this link for the pic

President Barack Obama’s Facebook and Twitter following leaves Republican presidential candidates in the dust. The president has more than 25 million Facebook Likes and more than 12.5 million Twitter followers...

Romney comes in second with 1.4 million Facebook Likes...

Newt Gingrich has 1.4 million Twitter followers...

Ron Paul is the third most followed candidate with more than 862,000 Facebook Likes and more than 130,000 Twitter followers...

Rick Santorum is next to last with nearly 130,000 Twitter followers and more than 138,000 Facebook Likes...

Gary Johnson, the libertarian who has been in and out of the race... has more than 23,000 Twitter followers and 149,000 Facebook Likes...

My guess is that these numbers represent people who need to have someone else do their thinking for them :)

storing files in the cloud...

...is dangerous when they start evaporating for no reason.

SOPA

Unlike some other sites, this blog is just too important to shut down in protest  :D  , but here's a quote about (yet another) really bad piece of proposed legislation:

(SOPA) is like shutting down a freeway because a car got stolen.

new quotes

i just added a few quotes about freedom to appear in my subheader from this good source.

A: a pinched wire

Q: what caused a week-long internet outage at my house?