A Geek With Guns

Humans are awesome. I know this goes against the misanthropes who view humanity as some kind of plague that should be destroyed for the sake of Mother Gaia but I’m not a misanthrope. In fact let me state the following: fuck misanthropes. If you do any research into the achievements of humanity you can only walk away awed. I feel the best way to truly gain an understanding of humanity is to research the mundane things we take for granted today. My love of wristwatches has lead me to lightly study horology, the art and science of measuring time. Measuring time is something people take for granted today as every DVD player, cell phone, computer, microwave, car, and GPS unit has a build in way of measuring time (usually referred to as a clock). Heck most of these devices don’t even have to be set anymore, instead they automatically sync with various atomic clocks built around the world. This hasn’t always been the case though, measuring the passage of time used to be quite a feat.

I’ve started reading Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800. The first chapter talks about the scientific achievements of Galileo Galilei (I hope to Odin that everybody knows who Galileo is and that my link to his Wikipedia page is entirely pointless). During the last 1500s and early 1600s Galileo was studying motion. In order to study motion he needed a way to measure the passage of time, unfortunately accurate clocks didn’t exist at that time. What’s a man to do? In the case of Galileo he used two methods: measuring the passage of time by the beating of his heart and by using a song with a repeating beat. Most scientists today would call such methodology unscientific but they have the benefit of highly accurate clocks that measure the passage of time based on the transition frequency of atoms. It’s easy to claim something is unscientific when you’ve enjoyed 400 years of scientific advancement.

Time brings up the though of hours, minutes, and seconds for most people. If you study horology you learn quickly learn that those measures of time, like all measures of time, are arbitrary. Why does one second need to take, well, one second? It doesn’t. The primary thing you need when measuring the passage of time is repetitiveness. Beats in songs are repetitive and thus can be used to measure the passage of time in a useful manner. Your heart rate, although far less accurate as it’s susceptible to variances based on bodily conditions, can also be used to measure the passage of time. Speaking of accuracy, it’s another thing that’s subjective. In the case of Galileo’s experiments the accurate of song beats was plenty for what the needed to do. On the other hand computers need to measure time in the span of microseconds so using the beats of songs, with the possible exception of extremely fast metal, isn’t going to cut it. To get around this we developed other methods of measuring time including the back and forth oscillation of a spring-loaded wheel, vibration of a quartz crystal that is subjective to a minor electrical current, and the aforementioned transition frequency of an atom.

The amount of ingenuity involve in telling time is phenomenal. Studying things we take for granted today really helps you appreciate what humans are capable of and what we have overcome in a short time in this universe. In roughly two million years we’ve gone from barely being able to harness fire to harnessing the power of nuclear energy. We’ve gone from a species whose only transportation was our two feet to landing on the moon. Humanity is awesome and you really need to look at the history of achievements we find entirely mundane today to appreciate that fact. Instead of trying to surpress human ability we need to let is flourish. We need to appreciate what our species can accomplish.

I’m one of those ever more rare individuals who always wears a wristwatch. While I could just reach for my cell phone every time I wanted to know the time that isn’t my idea of practical nor desirable. Even as a young kid I was always fascinated with wristwatches, especially mechanical ones (quartz ones may be more accurate and the watch I wear most often, my Tissot T-Touch, may be quartz but my heart has always been with mechanicals). It’s a feat of human ingenuity to get all those little gears, springs, and jewel bearings running together in such in a way that allows us to accurately tell the passage of time. If you’ve ever taken a mechanical movement apart you can’t help but appreciate the engineering that went into its design and construction.

With that said I also enjoy those old videos that explain how things work. Needless to say I came across this gem, an old video that has to be from the ’50′s or ’60′s explaining how mechanical watches work. It’s actually does a very good job of explaining the concept (it seems older videos were much more straight forward and expressed their point clearer than modern videos usually do so they’re often better in my opinion):

For those of you wondering why I’m posting content about watches on my blog realize this is my blog and I will post what I want. It’s always fun to drive off of the beaten path and post things that have nothing to do with my usual content of guns and libertarianism.

Many districts have been pushing hard for electronic voting machines. People believe that electronic devices are going to be more reliable for elections than any mechanical system could be. Machines that are used in the voting process are mechanically simple and thus it’s fairly easy to predict what kind of failures you’ll run into unlike complex electronic devices:

Tests on an electronic voting machine that recorded shockingly high numbers of extra votes in the 2010 election show that overheating may have caused upwards of 30 percent of the votes in a South Bronx voting precinct to go uncounted.

WNYC first reported on the issue in December 2011, when it was found that tens of thousands of votes in the 2010 elections went uncounted because electronic voting machines counted more than one vote in a race.

A review by the state Board of Election and the electronic voting machines’ manufacturer ES&S found that these “over votes,” as they’re called, were due to a machine error. In the report issued by ES&S, when the machine used in the South Bronx overheated, ballots run during a test began coming back with errors.

“After lunch [when the machine was idle for about an hour] almost every ballot was read incorrectly, in all orientations, even ballots that had read correctly just before lunch,” the ES&S report said.

Electronics are finicky and generally much more prone to unpredictable failures than mechanical devices. Minor variances in temperature, moisture, and electrical conditions can cause electronics to fail in strange and difficult to predict ways. Combine this with the fact computer software is almost impossible to write well and you have a perfect storm for massive electron fraud.

Remember all the uproar about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? There was an Internet blackout to raise awareness and eventually passage of the bill became toxic to political careers. Obviously we won a great victory for liberty with that one! Or did we? The rule of thumb with politics is this: if there is money backing a bill it will be passed. Meet the HR 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA is the new SOPA. This time the critters in Congress were smart and decided to leave out any mention of piracy in the bill’s name and, as expected, the serfs have remained relatively quiet and therefore passing it will be a walk in the park:

The House on Thursday approved cybersecurity legislation that privacy groups have decried as a threat to civil liberties.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, sponsored by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), passed on a vote of 248 to 168.

Its goal is a more secure internet, but privacy groups fear the measure breaches Americans’ privacy along the way. The White House had weighed in on Wednesday, threatening a veto unless there were significant changes to increase consumer privacy. The bill was amended to provide more privacy protections, but it was not immediately clear whether the Senate or the White House would give the amended bill its blessing.

Obama is threatening a veto. Remember when he threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)? His supporters claimed he was threatening to veto the NDAA because he was a proponent of civil liberties when in fact he merely wanted more power. When his desire for power was fulfilled he signed the bill without hesitation. I’m guessing CISPA has something that reduces his power so he’ll threaten to veto the bill until Congress adds in a clause to increase Obama’s power and the bill will get signed right away.

Now my question is this: where is the outrage? When SOPA was making its way through Congress we had a veritable uprising on the Internet. SOPA was one of the few bills that actually got responses from the general population. Shouldn’t the populace be doing the same thing against CISPA? Yes, but this time the bill title doesn’t mention piracy so nobody cares. Much like the Student Loan Forgiveness Act, CISPA has a warm fuzzy title that promises security but is really something far more sinister.

Yes, I’m still madly in love with my Kindle. While I never actually got around to typing up a review of the Kindle Touch I can say it’s a great device with only a handful of caveats. One of the features that was removed from the Kindle Touch that was present in all previous models was landscape mode. Honestly, I never used it so I didn’t miss it but Amazon has finally added the feature back into the Kindle Touch in the new 5.1.0 firmware update:

• Language Support: Customize your Kindle Touch with the language you prefer: English (US and UK), German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian Portuguese.
• Landscape Mode: Switch between portrait and landscape orientation in books and PDFs to read maps, graphs, and tables more easily.
• Instant Translations: Tap any word or highlight a section to instantly translate into other languages, including Spanish, Japanese, and more. Translations by Bing Translator.
• Kindle Format 8: Formatting and layout improvements make Kindle books look even better.
• Wi-Fi Enhancements: Connect your Kindle Touch to Wi-Fi with WPS and select WPA2 Enterprise networks.
• Read-to-Me With Text-to-Speech: Have your Kindle Touch read English-language content out loud to you, now including summaries of newspaper and magazine articles when available from the publisher.
• More Sharing Options: Tell others what you’re reading on Facebook or Twitter from anywhere within a book — just tap to share a link along with your comments.
• Onscreen Keyboard Suggestions: Search and shop faster with automatic word suggestions as you type.

Landscape mode is accessibly in the menu, although I wish they would have placed it on the bottom menu bar that appears when you tap the menu button for consistency. Beyond the above mentioned changes the home screen has been updated a bit. The font used to display boots and collections appears to have changed a bit and the top now had three new combo boxes; one for filtering content that appears on the home screen, one for selecting how content on the home screen is sorted, and one for quickly jumping to a desired page on your home screen. Overall the home screen update is minor but welcomed.

The predictive text is a nice touch as well but I don’t type very often on my Kindle Touch so it’s really just a minor update for me. I will also have to play with the supposed WPA2 enterprise update just to fulfill my curiosity. Beyond those updates I doubt I’ll utilize any of the other new features, I mostly use my Kindle to read books and that’s really it.

March 30^th is a day when we’re supposed to turn off all of our lights, forgo the use of electronic devices, and otherwise act like we’re in the fucking stone age for one hour. This idiotic idea has been going on for a few years and it’s called Earth Hour. During Earth Hour I always make it a point to turn on all of my lights, computers, and run my truck because I like celebrating the fact we’re not living in the stone age. Well this year I wasn’t alone because Earth Hour has been renamed Human Achievement Hour:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute plans to recognize “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on March 28, 2009 to coincide with Earth Hour, a period of time during which governments, individuals, and corporations have agreed to dim or shut off lights in an effort to draw attention to climate change. Anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings.

We salute the people who keep the lights on and produce the energy that helps make human achievement possible.

Green and private conservation are fine. We have no problem with an individual (or group) that wants to sit naked in the dark without heat, clothing, or light. Additionally, we would have no problem with the group holding a pro-green technology rally. That is their choice. But when this group stages a “global election” with the express purpose of influencing “government policies to take action against global warming,” we have every right as individuals to express our vote for the opposite

Sadly Human Achievement Hour has already passed for the year but if I know my readers, and I believe I do, most of you likely had every light, computer, and red dot sight turned on. The achievements of the human race should not be looked down upon, they should be embraced and celebrated. How many lives have been saved by medical technologies made possible through the invention of electricity? How many man hours have been saved by these wonderful devices we call computers? How much more connected are we as a race with the invention of the Internet? All of these things, things many environmentalists decry as evil, are the products of human minds.

Whenever an enviro-Nazi (I would call them environmentalists but most of them don’t respect private property) tells you electricity is killing the planet remind them that they wouldn’t likely be alive without it since electricity makes many medical marvels possible. When they tell you automobiles are evil remind them that American cities are dependent on them, we couldn’t live in our cities as they’re currently designed without the invention of automobiles. Don’t let people get away with decrying the achievements of great minds, point out their idiocy so all can point and laugh at those who advocate we return to the stone age.

Why is it that people must always be reminded to avoid voluntarily divulging information they don’t want others to know? When you provide your location to servies like Facebook and Foursquare, don’t be surprised when some clever individual finds a way to use that information for less than noble purposes:

The developer of a controversial mobile app that used data from Facebook and Foursquare to reveal the location of nearby women defended its intentions Saturday after drawing a firestorm of criticism over privacy concerns.

On Saturday, Foursquare cut off access to the “Girls Around Me” app that made it possible to view the location of women on a map and their publicly available data and photographs from Facebook. Foursquare said the app violated a policy against aggregating information across venues. A number of blogs, led by Cult of Mac, raised questions as to whether the app encourages stalking.

You know what encourages stalking? Putting your location and other personal data out there for all to see. Think about this for a minute: when you check-in on Facebook or Foursquare everybody following you can see where you are, and those not following you can see where you are depending on your privacy settings. Since other people can see where you are, well, they know where you are. Should you want to avoid having stalkers it would be smart not to broadcast your location for all to hear.

Some may ask how you are supposed to alert your friends of your location if you don’t use a check-in service and to that I would say this: call you friends and tell them where you are. A phone call, unlike a check-in on Facebook and Foursquare, doesn’t get broadcast for all to hear. Instead only you, your friend, and the National Security Agency (NSA) will know where you are.

Don’t be stupid, when you put something on the Internet it’s there for all to see. When you don’t want people to see something don’t put it on the Internet.

Who do you think produces the buggiest computer code? Some would say Microsoft, others would say Apple but the winner of this prestigious award actually goes to the state:

Humans aren’t generally very good at writing secure code. But it seems they’re even worse at it when they’re an employee of a government bureaucracy or hired as unaccountable federal contractors.

In a talk at the Black Hat Europe security conference in Amsterdam later this week, security researcher and chief technology officer of bug-hunting firm Veracode Chris Wysopal plans to give a talk breaking down the company’s analysis of 9,910 software applications over the second half of 2010 and 2011, automatically scanning them for errors that a hacker can be use to compromise a website or a user’s PC. And one result of that analysis is that government software developers are allowing significantly more hackable security flaws to find their way into their code than their private industry counterparts.

According to Veracode’s analysis across industry and government, fully eight out of ten apps failed to fully live up to the company’s security criteria. But breaking down the results between U.S. government and private sector software, the government programs, 80% of which were built for federal agencies rather than state or local, came out worse. Measuring its collection of apps against the standards of the Open Web Application Security Project or OWASP, Veracode found that only 16% of government web applications were secure, compared with 24% of finance industry software and 28% of commercial software. And using criteria of the security-focused education group SANS to gauge offline applications, the study found that 18% of government apps passed, compared with 28% of finance industry apps and 34% of commercial software.

Anybody will tell you that proper computer security is hard, but apparently it’s even harder when you’re an employee of a huge unaccountable entity that likes to throw money like it’s confetti at a wedding. It’s a good thing the state hasn’t claimed a monopoly on writing software yet, we’d beg for a return of Windows ME.

Apple announced a new iPad. So what do I think? I’m glad you asked. Overall nothing surprising was announced but the new iPad does look like a suitable evolution of the iPad 2. The retina display is a welcomed addition as is LTE. Of course LTE isn’t available anywhere near me so it’s merely a nice idea (yes the world does revolve around me and therefore LTE is a meaningless feature until I have it).

Will I get one? I’m not sure yet. There are times that I find a tablet with a data plan appealing but then I stop and wonder if I would ever use such a device with any frequency.

Apple also released iOS 5.1, which supposedly fixes some battery life issues, I’ll let you know if I see a difference after running it for a couple of days (my hopes aren’t high since Apple has released several “fixes” that accomplished nothing).

Remember Lulz Security? They were the hacker group that was traveling around the Internet and breaking into site for shits and giggles? While they were in full swing I mentioned that they, along with Anonymous, were good testers of Internet anonymity:

I often talk about the importance of anonymity and groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous make great testers of the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet. People likely to be prosecuted by law enforcement would do well to watch the actions of these groups and determine how they are able to avoid law enforcement. If the tactics used by these groups allows them to avoid those who are seeking them out then the same tactics can be used by political dissidents in oppressive countries. Those wishing to release dirt on private or government entities would also be well served by such information.

It appears as though some work is still needed in the field of Internet anonymity:

Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader — who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months — arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.

Law enforcement was finally able to close in on several members of Lulz Security by gleaming information from the group’s leader, who provided evidence in, what I’m guessing was, exchange for either a reduced sentence or no sentence at all:

The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations, was allegedly led by a shadowy figure FoxNews.com has identified as Hector Xavier Monsegur. Working under the Internet alias “Sabu,” the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. After the FBI unmasked Monsegur last June, he became a cooperating witness, sources told FoxNews.com.

Obviously Monsegur failed to anonymize himself property as did his cohorts. This failure could have been through bragging about his capers, having his machine compromised, or by failing to properly anonymize his traffic during the attacks. His cohorts failed to keep themselves anonymous from Monsegur. If you’re going to be committing illegal acts it is best that you divulge no information about yourself to you coconspirators as such information could lead to your arrest if any other member is arrested.