More Federal Keystone-Ism

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Remember when the FBI claimed it didn’t have to answer Ryan Shapiro’s FOIA requests because he might learn something as a consequence of their hilariously inconsistent and irrational redaction?

Yeah, they’re doing it again. This time, they heavily redacted a letter released to some privacy hawks in Congress despite the fact that one of them had already been released in full previously. But go read the whole link; it’d be hilarious if it weren’t, you know, the top law enforcement body in the country.

Darwin At Work

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Snake handling pastor bitten by snake during service. He then refused medical attention, and was thereby promoted to the choir invisible.

All good Heathen, of course, know this Robert Heinlein quote, from Time Enough for Love.

Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

RAH was wrong about many, many things, but this is not one of those times.

Holy Crap.

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Look. I don’t watch TV news. It’s been a dead letter for a long time. I sure don’t watch TV sports coverage — I’ve got little use for the nattering foolishness that usually qualifies as sports broadcasting, and find reading stories on ESPN completely fills what needs I have for information from that world.

So I skipped Dale Hansen’s commentary on Michael Sam until just now. That, gentle Heathen, was a mistake.

Dale Hansen is the sports anchor for Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA. It should without saying, then, that Hansen is an older, straight, white man (I checked; he’s 65). So what Hansen says about Michael Sam caught me a little flatfooted even though I knew, as you must by now as well, what his position was.

Go watch.

You’d think that “journalists” would have at least SOME shame about these things

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NBC ran a report about how your devices would get OWNED immediately by evil Russian hackers the minute you turn them on in Sochi.

Turns out, not so much. It’s basically the exploding truck all over again. As noted in the TechDirt takedown:

  • The reporter was in Moscow, not Sochi.
  • The problem was sketchy web sites the reporter sought out, not the connection in the Moscow coffee shop, and so are equally dangerous regardless of where you are — Moscow or Minneapolis.
  • The hack required the reporter to CHOOSE TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL MALWARE (yes, it said it was an AV tool, but that man in the van won’t really give you candy, either).
  • The malware would only install if the reporter TURNED OFF SAFETY FEATURES that are left on by default.

Nice job. NBC are, of course, doubling down and insisting their story is genuine and correct, because they are generally craven and ignorant.

More at the well-regarded Errata Security.

My friend Chris Mohney is doing something interesting

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PLAY will be a short film about childhood, playtime, and that sort of secret world we all lost when we grew up. Chris and his partner will rpoduce the footage using a dozen GoPro cameras strapped to a dozen children who are then turned loose in a New York playground. It sounds like a punchline, but it really does work — he’s got a little sample up on his Tumblr, shot from his son’s perspective. It’s immersive and cool, and the idea of having a broader pool of such footage to work from is pretty fascinating.

There is, inevitably, a Kickstarter to make the whole thing real. The goal is modest ($24K), and they’re almost 10% of the way there. Help ’em out, if you’ve got a little extra in your pocket.

Busy? I don’t care. Do this.

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Today is the day we fight back against ridiculous, overreaching, plainly illegal surveillance from the NSA.

Go to the link. The EFF will help you determine who your reps in Congress are, and will even set up the phone calls and give you talking points.

Make time. Even if your reps are, as mine are, generally weasels. This kind of day of action is precisely what pols respect.

This is a democracy. Take part.

You know those “one second a day” videos?

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Well, new SNL featured player Brooks Wheelan made one.

What’s neat about this is that a year ago, in early 2012, Wheelan had an engineering job in Los Angeles and did comedy on the side, as a hobby. He did not even have a Wikipedia page.

The video ends up documenting what will probably be one of the most momentous and amazing years in his life, but he had no way of knowing that would be the outcome when he started the project last January.

That’s pretty cool.

Are you watching *True Detective* on HBO?

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Because, brother, if you’re not, you’re not living right. Only four episodes in, and this show is on a pace to be one of the best things ever on television.

Last night, the fourth episode of the thus-far-very-talky drama ended with a 6+ minute tracking shot — i.e., almost 7 minutes with no cuts or edits — that is, all by itself, the best action sequence I’ve seen in years.

No idea how long it’ll be up, but as of right now it’s on YouTube. Be aware this it’s basically one long spoiler, so stay away if you plan on catching up. A similarly spoilery recap is up at IndieWire, which includes HBO’s “behind the ep” feature free of HBO’s frankly awful web site. There’s another solid bit of discussion over at AV Club, naturally.

I swear to God, I thought this was the Onion

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But no: Fox News is freaking out over CVS’s decision to stop selling tobacco products.

Professional halfwit Gretchen Carlson actually asked, on air, “Is it OK legally … to restrict tobacco availability in a private store like this?” Apparently, Ms Carlson thinks some body of law governs what must be sold in any given store, and implicitly supports such laws, despite the rather alarming implications.

This is really yet another example of Fox being primarily interested only in stories they can warp into a club to hit the President with. How anyone takes them seriously is completely beyond me.

Oh, Microsoft. You’re adorable.

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My company routinely deals with government entities that have legitimate security concerns, so it’s not surprising that, sometimes, I receive mail that is digitally signed, or has some encryption component.

Usually, this is done poorly, which is no surprise, because mail encryption is still not seamless. However, yesterday I got a mail that Outlook won’t open at all. Instead, I get this:

Screen Shot 2014 02 07 at 10 33 32 AM

The hilarious part of this is that the mail opens fine with no hint of trouble when read from my Mac’s Mail.app client, or from either of my iOS mail clients. Security, Microsoft style!

Here’s a shocker: DHS asserted “state secrets” to hide a mistake

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This is why state secrets is bullshit, and why “trust me” is never a legitimate policy for law enforcement.

The government contested a former Stanford University student’s assertion that she was wrongly placed on a no-fly list for seven years in court despite knowing an FBI official put her on the list by mistake because he checked the “wrong boxes” on a form, a federal judge wrote today.

We only know this today because Ibrahim sued, which was only possible because she was able to get pro bono legal aid, because despite knowing it was bullshit the feds fought her every step of the way.

Heads. Should. Roll.

Just Ella

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This short film (5-ish minutes) is pretty great. From the description:

“Just Ella” posits a future overrun by gibbering monstrosities. Ella takes refuge in a “the Ossington Safehouse, a collectively-run space dedicated to human sovereignty.” But despite doing the assigned tasks on the chore list, the Safehouse isn’t safe — the terrors outside are nothing compared to those within.

Contains perhaps the first cinematic example of autocomplete used for a dramatic reveal.

Widely linked, but I saw it over at JWZ’s place.

More on Tartt’s *The Goldfinch*

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This review is really, really spot-on. In particular:

I’m no more privy to what went on behind the scenes in The Goldfinch’s journey from draft to publication than I am aware of the ins and outs of similar processes for Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot or Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue. But I know that all three of these novels (and there are many other examples) read as though their editor had been afraid to touch them, and had left early, baggy drafts unchanged.

Telegraph Avenue is one of the few books I’ve simply given up on, which was really sad at the time given how much I’d loved Chabon’s other work.

Giant Shocker: Those TSA scanners? Useless, according to an insider

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Politico has more:

We knew the full-body scanners didn’t work before they were even installed. Not long after the Underwear Bomber incident, all TSA officers at O’Hare were informed that training for the Rapiscan Systems full-body scanners would soon begin. The machines cost about $150,000 a pop.

Our instructor was a balding middle-aged man who shrugged his shoulders after everything he said, as though in apology. At the conclusion of our crash course, one of the officers in our class asked him to tell us, off the record, what he really thought about the machines.

“They’re shit,” he said, shrugging. He said we wouldn’t be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket.

We quickly found out the trainer was not kidding: Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone.

On the upside, the monitoring parties DO get to see you naked, so there’s that.

Seriously, don’t miss this. The author is the guy behind the Taking Sense Away “inside the TSA” blog from a few months back.

Decrypting Wiggins

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Some of you have met our cat, Wiggins. Wiggins is one of those cats with no unvoiced thoughts. She has lots to say, but it really hasn’t been clear what it was. Until now.

Using cutting-edge linguistic techniques, we have isolated her primary messages:

  • “I am in a room, but the people are in some other room, and I cannot find them.”
  • “I am in a room, and there are people in it, but it is the wrong room.”

Despite the breakthrough nature of this discovery, it’s not at all clear what actions we’ll take as a result.

Except, I guess, occasionally changing rooms.

Dept. of Great Men Passing

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Arthur Rankin, Jr. passed away at the end of January. He was 89.

With partner Jules Bass, Mr Rankin formed one of the most influential animation studios of his era; you know their work even if you don’t know their names. It was Rankin/Bass that gave us Rudolph, for example (the special will celebrate its 50th anniversary, by the way, this coming Christmas).

There’s a MeFi post worth your time, if you’re interested.

Someday, Microsoft will pay for all the time they’ve wasted with shitty online meeting technologies

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Back in the boom, we tried to use online meeting tools, which inevitably led to shit-tons of time wasted at the head end of every meeting trying to get LiveMeeting to work.

It never really did.

In the years since, other companies have entered this space, and some of them are basically flawless. Trouble is, the good ones cost money, and most of our customer IT orgs are (a) cheap and (b) too paranoid to let their people use GoToMeeting, so we get forced into trying to connect with the execrable “Lync” — i.e., rebranding LiveMeeting bullshit — across the Internet.

MSFT makes their products so that they’re effectively free, but never bother solving for corner cases — like, say, a cross-site meeting that’s not all on the same network or active directory domain. Worse, Lync has no end of weird foibles and fuckups. For example, if you end up on 2013 instead of 2010 (which will happen if you upgrade Office), it’s no longer possible to join a meeting without having corporate credentials on the hosting party’s network.

That’s fine, though, because obviously nobody ever wants to meet with people outside their company, right?

CHRIST. It’s enough to make you want to strangle someone.

This. Is. Awesome.

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This man is brilliant.

A MAN bought a first-class ticket and used it to have free meals and drinks at the airport’s VIP lounge almost every day for nearly a year, Kwong Wah Yit Poh reported.

The itinerary for the ticket was found to have been changed more than 300 times within a year, and the owner of the ticket used it to enjoy the facilities at the airport’s VIP lounge in Xi’an in Shaanxi, China.

The rare case was discovered by a China Eastern Airlines staff member, who then decided to investigate.

When the ticket’s validity was almost up, the passenger cancelled it for a refund.

The Inevitable Super Bowl Math Post

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Last night we got a (delicious) smackdown of a SuperBowl. Heathen Central didn’t have a normal dog in the fight, but ended up rooting for Seattle for two reasons:

  • The weird shameful racist reaction to Richard Sherman; and
  • The fact that Seattle has more Alabama players than Denver.

Add in a little bit of underdog-ism — Seattle’s never won the Super Bowl, but playing in one and winning is old hat to Peyton and the Broncos — and it’s good enough for us. (And enough to overcome a distaste for Pete Carroll.)

Turns out, a more smashmouth, old-school style of football — dare we call it “SEC”? — still works in the NFL, and that was nice to see. As they say, defense wins championships.

However, it made me wonder about the SuperBowl and margins of victory. I thought I remembered a time when the big game was almost always a blowout, but over time there’s no real clear trend. Most of the Super Bowls have been fairly close — 56% of them were won by two touchdowns or less. Increase the margin to three touchdowns, and you’re over 77%.

Actual blowouts — which we’ll define as four touchdowns or more — have actually been pretty rare: only 6, or about 13%. Yesterday’s was the first such victory in 20 years. They were (SB record in bold):

It’s clear where my sense of “blowouts are the norm” comes from, considering that 5 of the 6 blowouts happened when I was in high school and college and was paying attention as a quasi-adult for the first time. Overall, the game is usually close(ish), as the data shows.

Anyway, because I’m a dork, here’s a graph:

Screen Shot 2014 02 03 at 11 39 11 AM

Note: There are two 27-point victories since 1993: XXXV (Ravens 34, Giants 7) and XXXVII (Bucs 48, Raiders 21), which almost count — but even the most recent of those is 11 years ago. Since 2003, the margin of victory has only been as high as 14 once, and is only over 10 three times.

Mmm, crypto-Whedon

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I came across this trailer a few minutes ago, for a rom-com (otherwise forgettable, I suspect) starting Fran Kranz (Dollhouse, Cabin in the Woods, Much Ado About Nothing) and Dichen Lachman (Dollhouse).

The trailer includes Felicia Day plus a good chunk of the cast of Dollhouse, so I went over to IMDB, expecting to see that it was written or directed or produced by the guy who usually drives this particular company… and yet, no.

Interesting.

Books of 2014, #3: The Answer to the Riddle is Me, by David Stuart MacLean (30 Jan)

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So, here’s one for you.

Imagine suddenly “coming to,” standing in a train station — in India! — with no idea who you are, where you’re going, or why you’re there. You don’t know your name, where you’re from, who your parents or friends are, or even what your job is or why you’re in India.

I dunno about you, gentle Heathen folk, but that would freak me right the hell out. It’s horrifying and scary, but it’s the situation in which Fulbright scholar David MacLean found himself back in October of 2002. Local authorities initially took him for a shattered junkie, but the actual culprit turned out to be a then-commonly-prescribed antimalarial drug called Lariam.

What follows is MacLean’s harrowing and fascinating road to something like recovery. He doesn’t shirk the hard questions, either; much of our identity and sense of self is tied up with what we’ve done, and how we remember what we’ve done — but MacLean was robbed of this. On his trip home to Ohio to recuperate, he met his girlfriend, who was of course a stranger to him. He develops the ability to fake recollection, but all the while he’s really completely adrift and unconnected; he knows no one, and is vaguely threatened and alarmed that all these people seem to know him.

I’ve spoken to MacLean here in Houston, at a reading a few years ago. At that time, he had recovered much of his memory — but not all of it. He had no memory of his sister’s wedding, for example. But regaining what he did regain was a long road, and it begs the question of whether or not post-Lariam MacLean is the same person as pre-Lariam MacLean, and of what that sort of person-hood means. There’s no easy answer here.

It’s a fascinating read; I devoured it in a couple days, and would’ve read faster if I hadn’t been so busy with other things. You oughta read this book, for sure.

By the way, despite a series of these episodes, including suicides among US Special Forces, the drug is still widely available. However, the US military kept giving it to SF troops until last September. Worse, the military used mega-doses of it on all incoming detainees at Gitmo in an attempt to trigger psychological distress. (That’s not on the Wiki page, but it’s documented in MacLean’s book.)

Remember this drug, and make sure you don’t ever take it. The trade name (from Roche) is Lariam, but it’s also available as a generic under the name mefloquine. DANGER DANGER DANGER.

So very, very high

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They’re released new footage of Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting freefall. Go and watch, but (as IO9 points out) be aware it gets pretty intense early on, during his spin.

It’s also interesting to watch the stats; he goes very, very fast initially, but loses speed almost as quickly as the air thickens up around him.

Here I Go Again: the 2014 MS150

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It’s springtime in Houston, and that means we’re all spooling up for another MS150.

Last year, I thought I’d be one-and-done with this, just proving to myself that I could do it. Well, I did it — and rode the century on day one, even — but I had so much fun that repeating with the Karbach Team was never in doubt. We’ve already started the training rides again.

Last year, you, my friends, helped make me the number one fundraiser for the Karbach team. I don’t mean to take anything away from that, but I don’t think it’s possible for me to repeat: someone is already out in front by a long, long margin (check it out). That said, though, I’d love to make my mark once again. And it’s up to y’all to help me out. Can I count on you?

Thanks, all of you, for the tremendous support you gave me last year. It was remarkably motivating, and you helped make a real difference for the NMSS. Let’s do it again.

BEEFTANK

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SBNation’s Jon Bois has been Breaking Madden this season, but the best experiment came early. I give you BEEFTANK:

Personal

Born in 1937. Parents were a rhinoceros, a Sherman oak, a wheelbarrow full of graphite, a ray of light that shone through the clouds, a fulfilled prophecy, a buried time capsule full of set-and-baited mouse traps, and a real big ol’ dude.

Was encouraged to play football at age 10, when he chanced upon a mannequin at the clothing store wearing a shirt with the words “FOOTBALL GAME” and a drawing of a football on the front. He talked to it for hours, and it never told him he was too round for this world or that he shouldn’t eat the plastic bologna rings.

Played college football at DeVry, where he studied poetry. He finished with a GPA of reddish-gray.

Dislikes taking the subway, not because of any particular phobia, but because whenever the car stops and nobody gets off, he feels terrible for the train operator.

Refers to liquids in plural, i.e., a glass of milk is “a glass of some milks.”

Mutter-sings.

(via MeFi.)