TO ME, THIS EXPERIENCE SAYS THAT WE’RE NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING READY FOR INTERNET VOTING, OR FOR THE “INTERNET OF THINGS.” It’s Crazy What Can Be Hacked Because of Heartbleed. “Over the past weeks, Weaver and researchers at the University of Michigan have been scouring the internet for systems that are vulnerable to the bug, which lets hackers steal information from a machine’s memory. As expected, he found that most websites have now patched the flaw, which was in a common piece of encryption software called OpenSSL. But the My Cloud is just one example of an enormous problem that continues to lurk across the net: tens of thousands of devices — including not only My Cloud storage devices but routers, printers storage servers, firewalls, video cameras, and more — remain vulnerable to attack.”
Archive for 2014
April 28, 2014
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Woman Arrested On Bestiality Charges After Looking For Horse On Craigslist. James Morrow comments on Facebook: “If Putin is bringing back tsarism, who can blame her for going all Catherine the Great?”
WOULDN’T YOU? Toyota Moving Its U.S. Headquarters from California to Texas.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails: “So, will shareholders of California-based companies start asking at shareholders’ meeting why their company isn’t moving? It affects the bottom line and return to shareholders fairly dramatically. For that matter, will shareholders start suing boards for not moving?”
THE HACKERS WHO RECOVERED NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN is on the politicization of science fiction fandom.
REMEMBER, MALE TEACHERS ARE RARE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID THEY’LL BE SEXUAL PREDATORS: Polk teacher faces 20 additional charges of sex with student.
THE COOLEST DEATHTRAP ON ONE WHEEL: Monowheels.
#VOXFAIL: So the headline on this Vox piece by Sarah Kliff is dramatic: Chipotle’s Calorie Labels Are A Lie. But if you actually read the article, you find out that (1) the calorie ranges are because the dishes are highly customizable; and (2) though Kliff doesn’t like the “range” approach, it turns out that “The Obamacare requirement to post calorie labels, however, favors the range approach. In regulations published in 2011, the Food and Drug Administration directed restaurants to publish a range from the lowest calorie version of an item to the highest. But it doesn’t say anything about including examples of what’s included at each end.”
So, Chipotle’s accused of a lie, but the real problem is bad regulation that’s the result of ObamaCare. Maybe I should have headlined this Vox’s Headline Is A Lie.
THIS IS KIND OF COOL: From brewing to sales, beer company is in veteran hands. “Two months ago, Delgado began working for the Veteran Beer Co., a new Chicago microbrewery, where every role — from brewing to sales — is filled by veterans. The company essentially plans to market employees like Delgado to sell their craft beers and employ as many disabled and non-disabled veterans as possible along the way.”
IN THE MAIL: From Allen West, Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin’s Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 354.
MATT RIDLEY: Relax: The World’s Resources Aren’t Running Out.
I have lived among both tribes. I studied various forms of ecology in an academic setting for seven years and then worked at the Economist magazine for eight years. When I was an ecologist (in the academic sense of the word, not the political one, though I also had antinuclear stickers on my car), I very much espoused the carrying-capacity viewpoint—that there were limits to growth. I nowadays lean to the view that there are no limits because we can invent new ways of doing more with less.
This disagreement goes to the heart of many current political issues and explains much about why people disagree about environmental policy. In the climate debate, for example, pessimists see a limit to the atmosphere’s capacity to cope with extra carbon dioxide without rapid warming. So a continuing increase in emissions if economic growth continues will eventually accelerate warming to dangerous rates. But optimists see economic growth leading to technological change that would result in the use of lower-carbon energy. That would allow warming to level off long before it does much harm.
Just look at how the fracking boom has undercut claims that we had passed “Peak Oil.” You don’t hear the “peak oil” phrase any more, and yet it was on everyone’s lips a decade ago.
A LOOK AT CARJACKING IN THE 1920S. This story brought back a memory: My grandfather told of being accosted very much like this on a lonely country road at night. He stuck a pistol out the window and fired off several shots in his assailants’ general direction, and they scattered as he “gunned” it out of there in more ways than one.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN is on the politicization of science fiction fandom. Could Robert Heinlein get a Hugo today?
IS THIS BECAUSE THEY’RE SUCCESSFUL? BECAUSE THAT SOUNDS KIND OF RACIST: Latino assemblyman: Asians not ‘people of color.’
CONGRATULATIONS: Michael Totten’s novel, Resurrection, has been optioned for film.
CHANGE: Article V Movement Gathers Steam, Critics Seethe. As I’ve mentioned before, not long ago, the Tennessee Law Review published a symposium on Article V conventions, including a staff-written section on procedure, a couple of years ago. Contributors included such luminaries as Randy Barnett, Richard Epstein, Sanford Levinson and many others. Here’s my contribution, which focuses specifically on spending. And here’s video of me talking about it at the Harvard Law School conference on constitutional conventions.