Big Brother watches Baltimore, lets it burn.

Since the FBI and DHS are not protecting Pamella Geller from Islamists who actually shoot people at her events, what are they doing?

They're flying surveillance over Baltimore.

Not so obvious was a single engine Cessna and a small Cessna jet–both were conducting aerial surveillance for the FBI.

The website www.flightradar24.com tracked them circling Baltimore–not during the riot–the FBI was watching last weekend when peaceful demonstrations were held.

The ACLU has filed a request with the FBI to learn what video and cell phone data was collected during the flights.

Baltimore police referred questions about the flights to the FBI.

At first, the local FBI field headquarters declined to comment, but in a statement to WJZ, it said:

"The aircraft were specifically used to assist in providing high altitude observation of potential criminal activity to enable rapid response by police officers on the ground. The FBI aircraft were not there to monitor lawfully protected first amendment activity."

It's not known just how much aid police on the ground received from the FBI's planes.

Emphasis mine.

What they were doing was collecting video and cellphone data. If you showed up at any of those demonstrations or even drove around those days, the FBI has a complete record of who you are and where you went.

They also have a complete record of all the looters, burners and other assholes who were out looting, burning and being assholes. Like, they've got VIDEO of it with helpful captions identifying who everybody in the pictures are thanks to cellphone data. Because looters are stupid, they took pictures of themselves looting and carried their phones everywhere.

Given that the cops were specifically ordered to let the looters loot, its difficult to see how all this surveillance was of any use.

What's that you say? They can go pick them up later you say? Well no, that's not going to happen because the FBI is going to very great lengths making sure this technology does not show up in court.

Well then, if they weren't protecting the city from looters, and they weren't collecting evidence for catching criminals later, what were they doing?

They were tracking the peaceful demonstrators, obviously. Looters are not a threat to Big Brother. Intelligent and dedicated political activists are. The fact that in this particular case those activists are all Full-Moron Lefties doesn't mean the FBI isn't following their every freaking move.

The Phantom

New York Times: "She was asking for it."

Shorter New York Times: "Well if you didn't want to get raped maybe you shouldn't have been wearing that mini-skirt, you slut!"  Via National Review.  Quoth The Times Editorial Board:

Some of those who draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad may earnestly believe that they are striking a blow for freedom of expression, though it is hard to see how that goal is advanced by inflicting deliberate anguish on millions of devout Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism. As for the Garland event, to pretend that it was motivated by anything other than hate is simply hogwash.

Yep, Pamella Geller is a hatey hating hater, and She Was Asking For It. The bitch.

This is Pam not giving a shit what the NY Slimes Editorial Board thinks.

So its really no surprise that the FBI and DHS have cut her loose.

"They have not contacted me," Geller said about the FBI. "But of course we've now increased my team. I have a team now, private security, and NYPD counterterror has been in touch with me."

She said that in the same interview with Sean Hannity during which Anjem Choudary said she should be put to death for insulting Mo.

But hey, she was asking for it. Right?

My comment is this:

 

Pamella should do her next event in this dress.

 

The Phantom

License plate readers disguised as saguaro cacti.

You can always tell which town in Arizona have the most liberals in them by the stuff they spend their money on. Town of Paradise Valley decided they needed to have license plate readers all over the place.

The City of Paradise Valley has added cactus with cameras in them over the past few days, but residents have no idea why, and the city doesn't want to talk about them.

About two dozen fake cactus already serve as cover for cell towers, but some people were alarmed to see cameras being place in cactus around town.

Fake cacti, obviously. However the town apparatchiki did not answer questions regarding these stealth cameras. So the journalists DID THEIR JOBS for a change and found out.

FOX 10 asked Paradise Valley Police about the cameras, but they said they were not prepared to make a statement at this time. At City Hall people were also hesitant to talk with FOX 10 about the cameras, saying they wanted to wait until all the cameras were installed, but eventually the Town Manager answered some of the questions.

"The town is embarking on the installation of license plate readers," said Kevin Burke, Paradise Valley Town Manager.

Burke says the cameras run license plates of cars against a hot list database. If the car is stolen, or the subject of an amber alert, the police will be notified.

FOX 10 did a story in February about the same technology being installed on traffic lights, the city also declined to talk publicly then too.

Now, the city manager spun some nice sounding BS about why this thing was all done sub rosa, but the truth of the matter is they wanted the thing in place before they told anybody what it was. I expect they'd very much like to have their system up and fully functional with all the money already spent before they share with the peons what all that money was for.

Mr. Burke is also being less than fully forthcoming when he says " the cameras run license plates of cars against a hot list database". Its true that the system does do that. Eventually.

What it actually does is photograph the entire intersection. Usually every time a car is  in its field of view, plus I'm sure at other times. Then it stores the pictures. Potentially forever because as I've said many times, storage is cheap. Then a computer somewhere, possibly in the camera itself or possibly somewhere else, scans the photo of your car and identifies the license plate, making note of the day and time, which camera it came from etc. Then it stores this information, now associated with your license plate. Again, potentially forever. THEN it runs your plate against the hot list.

So really what they've got is a virtual real-time record of every car that goes by those cameras. Given enough cameras they can track who goes where and when. They may not end up doing that, but they -can- do it.

Time to start asking yourself, is it your town/state/federal government's business where you are at any moment of the day? Is it in your best interests that they know that?

And please, don't forget that these town police/road safety people SUCK AT SECURITY. Those cameras are begging to be hijacked, probably completely insecure. Who else might want to know your exact whereabouts that shouldn't be allowed to know that?

The Phantom

Monday morning quarterbacks vs. Pamela Geller

Ace of Spades, (via Small Dead Animals):

Are we here to talk about ideas and principles, or are we here to secure position and advantage?

A woman spoke.

Men with guns shot at her for speaking.

Do we really need to take an "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach here.

And we need not talk about "tone" or whether Ms. Gellar speaks for us on all things.

One does not award Style Points on a battlefield.

Worth reading the whole thing, as Kate says.

My two cents worth: Pam Geller is the fricking BOMB, and anybody who says otherwise is a useless, cowardly collaborator with murderers. If all you Canadian Mooselimbs out there are smart you'll be boosting Pamela Geller and contributing money to her as fast as you can.

Oh noooes, DRONES!!!!! Yes they can spoof wifi. Duh.

NBC Chicago comes up with the Big News that you can stick a wifi router on a drone and have your drone pose as an "open" wifi point.

Drones are inexpensive, small and hard to detect when flying several hundred feet in the air. And security researchers warn the remote devices can also be outfitted to gather private information.

In a controlled environment, penetration tester Parker Schmitt and robot expert David Jordan attached a tiny computer to a drone to show how the device could be used for nefarious purposes. While in the sky, the drone poses as an open Wi-Fi network and tricks other devices to connect to it. Once the connection is made, any information that passes through -- credit card information, home addresses, and telephone numbers -- can be obtained.

What they don't tell you is that this is -trivial- and the $5 chip which does it is the size of your baby fingernail.

This is a big one that is a wifi enabled micro-controller/embedded computer.

This is the WiFi part out of a pair of wifi headphones. Get it?

If you put one in a can and nailed it to a fence post it would do the same thing. Put one of those small solar panels on it, the ones the size of half a sheet of paper, give it a cell-phone battery, and you've got a permanent pirate wifi hotspot. Put a decent antenna on it and it can have a range of hundreds of feet.

The real danger is when these guys pose as cell-phone towers. They can do that too. Less trivial, a bit more power involved, but can still be mounted on a drone. Or a fence post, or in a street light, or you put it in a matchbox and throw dozens of them out the window of your car, one every half mile...etc.

This is more complicated and larger than a throw-away wifi pirate.

Notice that the largest part of the Twitter Fridge Magnet is the 9V battery? It could be a hell of a lot smaller. Those are Sparkfun Arduino boards made for hobby prototypes, not Secret Sam Spy Stuff.

This technology is getting ridiculously small and -cheap-, its going to be freakin' -everywhere- in the next five years.

Don't do your banking on your phone.

The Insufficiently Paranoid Phantom

Sad Puppies: Oh the Humanity-ing.

The worst has happened my friends. The eeeeevile Brad Torgersen, Puppy in Chief, has admitted, on Twitter, that he's not too sure about that John Scalzi guy. Just not too sure which way that guy swings, if you know what I'm saying.

Needless to say, there is a Kerfuffle on the Interwebz. Its just as lame as one might expect, I'm not linking to any of it.  Becausezz soo sleepyzzzzzz....

Well, I'm sure its an understandable confusion, Scalzi being kind of a Hollywood stereotype in his internet interactions. Not that there's anything -wrong- with being a yappy pomeranian one minute and a supercilious dick the next, I suppose. If you're into that sort of thing.

John Scalzi explaining something.

Personally I think there are more important things to know about somebody, particularly an author, than which way they swing. Such as, are their books worth buying?

Early Scalzi, I'd say yes. Lately? I think his editor hates him, and is letting him get preachy and intemperate. Kind of a professional hazard when you're a bitchy SJW, eh John?

The Phantom

Quantum teleportation on a chip.

http://phys.org/news/2015-04-quantum-teleportation-chip.html

Yes. Quantum teleportation IS a thing, and now somebody put it on silicon.

Holy. Freaking. Freak.

Social Justice Benches.

By which, I do not mean park benches. Exhibit A, the puppy fearing Vonda N. McIntyre

I'm distressed to see that some folks who were planning to come to Sasquan are thinking of skipping Worldcon this year.

Because they're frightened.

I understand why people are frightened, given the racist, misogynistic, and dishonest screeds they've been subjected to. It isn't — alas — unusual for verbal abuse to escalate into physical abuse; and anyway verbal abuse is no fun to begin with.

Yes friends, the Huns are coming to WorldCon.  They will be armed, dangerous and hunting for Truefans to kill and then eat.

So you're asking yourself, how much use is Vonda going to be, given RACIST/BIGOT/MISOGYNISTIC CANNIBAL KILLERS FROM HELL are going to be roaming the halls at will?

But I'm thinking that maybe it would make folks who feel threatened feel a little safer to have someone at their side, maybe even someone with a bunch o' fancy ribbons fluttering from her name badge, even if that person is shorter, smaller, and older than they are, white-haired and not physically prepossessing. It's another person's presence.

It might cause some abuse not to happen.

Yeah, because ABUSE is what going to happen if we don't all band together and face down those RACIST/BIGOT/MISOGYNISTIC CANNIBAL KILLERS FROM HELL in solidarity.

Or, you know, not. Somebody might look at them funny, I guess.

Yep, that convention is going to be SO much fun, uh huh. Fearful old ladies traveling in packs to make sure the Sad Puppies don't get 'em.  Big, big fun.

The Phantom

Sad Puppies: You want an example? Here's an example.

Ok, so everybody on one side of this Sad Puppies thing wants an example of The Problem. They keep saying "What's your [expletive deleted] Problem you [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted].

Alrighty then. Compare the non-Sad Puppies pick for Novelette:

 "The Day The World Turned Upside Down" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

with Sad Puppies pick for Short Story:

"The Parliament of Beasts and Birds", by John C. Wright,

or Sad Puppies pick for Novelette: "Championship B'tok", Edward M. Lerner.

Yes, you should READ them. Go ahead, they're small.

For my money that comparison pretty much encapsulates the issues at hand.

The Phantom

DemocRats are pro-crime.

Ok, provocative title. What makes me say that DemocRat Party members are pro-crime? As in: they like crime, and work towards creating more of it.

That's a hell of a thing to say, right?

Well here's why.

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Before a crowd at the National Action Network in Harlem, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito says some simple crimes like drinking alcohol in public, or urinating in the street should be handled more like parking violations.
"We are examining way in which we can expand the use of summons and desk appearance tickets" she said.
A pair of bills proposed in the City Council would decriminalize several low-level offenses.
The list also includes bicycling on a sidewalk, being in a park after dark, littering, failing to obey a sign and making excessive noise.
Reverend Al Sharpton says over policing of minor crimes like these often creates tension between community and law enforcement.
"Until police understand mutual respect, we will continue having these tensions" he said.

What do we know about crime in New York City? It used to be pretty bad, right? Mayor David Dinkins presided over a period when New York City was the Murder Capital of the USA.

But then it stopped. The reason why it stopped was two policies instituted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The first was to defeat corruption in the NYC police departments. Hundreds were fired or took early retirement because they were taking payoffs from street punks and landlords to look the other way. Firing them all put the NYPD into a condition to  pursue the second policy, Broken Windows.

Broken Windows was a policy of arresting, charging and jailing "street youths" for petty crime. The concept was that one broken window in a building quickly leads to more being broken, because it looks like nobody cares. Shoplifting, loitering, pissing in the street, littering, J-walking, spitting, noise complaints, graffiti all got punks busted and booked at the precinct house. It was discovered that by doing that the police quickly collected ALL THE ASSHOLES who were doing ALL THE CRIME in the city. By arresting and detaining maybe a thousand people out of a city of ten million, they had pretty much stopped property crime and mugging in New York City.

Then, having cleaned up the gutters, they went up the food chain a little and started busting all the crappy little stores and "restaurants" that the street dealers and muggers were working out of. Noise complaints, health code, fire code, all that type of thing got enforced instead of the old baksheesh looking the other way. Plenty of criminal enterprises got shut down.

So many got shut down that they created a crisis in the real estate business. No legitimate business could afford the rents. Only drug dealers could. So when all the drug dealers got jailed or chased out, suddenly all these huge landlords were stuck with no renters and no cash flow. The commercial real estate of New York City was standing on a foundation of drug money. Pressure was brought to bear.

Result, Mayor Bloomberg who undid all the work Giuliani accomplished as quick as he could.

Now we have New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito moving to defang the police even further. Why? She -knows- crime will increase if this policy is followed. Everybody knows. Its obvious.

Therefore we must conclude more crime is what she's after.

More corruption, graft, baksheesh, payola. If the foundation of the NYC corporate profit structure is drug money, then they want more drug money. Lots and lots more, right away, and anybody who says different better prepare themselves for the Smear Machine.

The reason Al Sharpton is involved is that the vast majority of the people Giuliani arrested were young Black men. DemocRats hide their intent to increase crime behind the fig leaf of race, as if Giuliani's policy was to arrest only Black men. That's the fig leaf Ms. Mark-Viverito is taking cover behind now.

Problem for them is, the fig leaf has been tattered down to a postage stamp. Everybody knows that >5% of the population in a city does 95% of the crime. Everybody knows that number is overwhelmingly composed of Black males in NYC. Everybody knows that the way to get crime and robbery and murder out of a city is to bust every little prick making a bloody nuisance of himself on the sidewalk or in the subway. Because they already did it. The 1990s wasn't long enough ago that everyone has forgotten it.

Everybody knows its not about racism. The newsies still pretend, but the recent rioting in Baltimore and Ferguson have effectively ripped away the mask. Al Sharpton and the assholes rioting in Baltimore this week do not give a single damn about some kid who got killed by police. As I saw somebody say elsewhere, most of those rioters would have stepped over his body like road kill if they found him lying someplace. They just want an excuse to steal booze and break shit.

Here endeth the rant.

Baltimore: this is why nobody likes you.

Ok, so the cops manage to break the spine of some kid named Freddie Gray, and he dies.

Clearly its no accident, and just as clearly something needs to be done with the Baltimore cops. Murder is murder.

What do the "protesters" do? They steal some reporterette's purse. Yeah, Justice!

Now what they do in China when the Chicom cops do something horrific, which is a regular occurrence, is they get the whole town together and they go attack the cop shop. They drag all the cops into the street and beat them, burn the building down, the whole works. Cops shops in China get burnt down about monthly due to shit like this. Because logic, right? Cops do something, townies go after them. In plenty of rural areas of China the cops walk very carefully.

But not in America.

In America  they loot the 7-11. Because the 7-11 has beer, not because the 7-11 owner did something bad.

The truth is that none of the "protesters" give a shit about Justice or Freddie Gray, they just want to loot, burn and beat up White people. You can tell by all the looting, burning and White people getting beat up.

Getting to be a pattern, you ax me.

But I'm the racist for mentioning it.

The Phantom

Update: Maybe Freddie Gray was murdered, maybe not.

Sad Puppies: The Butthurt-ening

David Gerrold reveals that The World Is Ending Because of the Sad Puppies. Because its  apparently on Facebook and I can't be assed to dig it out, I'm linking to The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster fisking of Mr. Gerrold.

Quoting Mr. Gerrold (assuming PGBB has him correctly):

So, Brad, Larry, Vox -- congratulations. You've spoiled the party. Not just mine, but everyone's.
I waited nearly a half century to get here, and when I do get here, there's ashes.
It hurts.
Not just me. Everyone.
And I don't care how you dodge and weasel, how you rend your garments and play the victim game, how you pretend it's everyone else's fault -- that's bullshit. You've made it impossible to have a Hugo ceremony that is a joyous celebration of the best in our genre.

 Yes friends, the butt-hurt is truly nuclear in scope.

Lets review another post from somebody less famous than Mr. David "Star Trek" Gerrold regarding that " joyous celebration of the best in our genre" bit, shall we? Dave Freer talks about who has been log rolling in SF/F awards.

Many of the same people won Hugo AND Nebula nomination. They were well connected, very much part of the clique that spent a lot of time talking to each other. This is a fact. There is ample evidence of the same. Strangers did not gain nomination. The power brokers, publishers, editors, agents, even influential reviewers were and probably still are part of this ‘In’ group.
Do you honestly, truly believe that those were ‘the best’?
Do you honestly, truly believe that they behaved one way in SFWA… gained great success with it there… and never ever repeated the same very successful pattern elsewhere? It only took 30-40 votes to get onto the nomination shortlist for the Hugo in some categories.

I've been reading SF/F for a -long- time, and I've been seeing the Hugo and Nebula awards going to unreadable crap for most of that time. By "unreadable crap" I mean things that make no sense, things that are boring, or (and this is a main complaint of mine) things that make you feel dirty after you read them.

Authors like David Gerrold and books like The Man Who Folded Himself are the kind of thing I'm talking about. The Man Who Folded Himself  was nominated for a bunch of awards including the Hugo and the Nebula. [Corrected, thanks Nicolas.] Its a terrible book. I read it in the 1970's when it came out, thinking a Hugo meant it would be Awesome, and after struggling through the damn thing felt like I needed a shower.

But because a bunch of More Highbrow Than Thou VIPs thought is was an "Important" book, despite being a rip-off of Heinlein's "All You Zombies" from 1959, it got nominated.

Its always been that way in my adult lifetime. "Important" books get awards, good books don't. For the most part in my experience, a Hugo on the cover means "take a pass on that one!" There are exceptions of course, as I have to throw in for the Nit Picker Battalion, but its been a rule that has served me well over the years. Hugo = politically correct deviant horseshit, 8/10 times.

That's why I'm so pleased with the Sad Puppies campaigns. Finally we get to serve a big steaming plate of FUCK OFF! to the Highbrow Cognoscenti and their fucked up Important Books. Proud to be a part of it.

I also think this is a culturally important campaign. Here's why:

Voice of Fire.

This painting is called Voice of Fire. It hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. They paid well over a MILLION BUCKS for it because it is an "Important" painting. That would be ~$1,750,000 tax dollars. My money.

The people who made this travesty possible long ago utterly ruined Fine Art. They have finally come for Science Fiction. The painting Voice of Fire is a graphic representation of the Hugo Awards and all the underhanded machinations it contains.

Sad Puppies is me doing my small part to jam a stick in their spokes. The consternation and rage apparent on all the "fan" sites (like I'm not a fan) make it plain that IT WORKED and some snotty SJW fuckers have done a huge faceplant on the hard concrete of Reality (TM).

Incidentally, for all you -stupid- cocksuckers out there with the Guilt By Association thing going on, please feel free to link me with Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. I have no connection to any of those guys and I didn't nominate anything on the Rabid Puppy slate, but since the facts don't matter just go ahead and smear me with that.

I don't actually care what any of y'all do, given that my comrades and I are KICKING YOUR ASSES. Best $40 I ever spent.

The Phantom.

Update: John Scalzi reasons like a common internet troll. Disappointing.

Sad Puppies: The Logo-ening

Loaded from a link kindly provided by WiFi Lunchbox Guy, this logo is made of awesome.

My perspective, this is a graphic illustration of the Sad Puppies 3 having moved into the Hugo House the SJWs Stole:

Note tacky SJW decor, note guy actually READING the nominees.

This is me in the SJWs living room. Except I'd have a cigar going, and this guy has more hair.

Sad Puppies 4, next year:

Note improved decor.

That's right. Feet on the table. Lots and lots of feet.

Trouble in Paradise Island.

The new DC Wonder Woman film has claimed its first casualty: the director.

Not long after it was announced that Warner Bros. and DC Comics would be producing a Wonder Woman feature film starring Gal Gadot in the title role, the studio made clear their intention to hire a female director for the project. In November, they secured Michelle MacLaren, whose credits including episodes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul.

Now, MacLaren has departed the project over "creative differences."

DC discovering yet again that the most important thing about a movie director, particularly for a comic book movie, is not if they sit down to pee.

Oh dear, did that upset some of you?

I would like at this time to direct all the outraged SJWs and other reading-until-offended types to the following movie: Thunderbirds. It sucked. Hard.

Directed by precisely the wrong director, Jonathon Frakes, and written by people who did not know a single thing about the original Thunderbirds series.  The most important thing about Jonathon Frakes, for the purposes of making Thunderbirds, was not his personal plumbing, or surface albedo, or any of the other horseshit that SJWs get bent out of shape over.

Quote from Wikipedia: "During development, creator Gerry Anderson was invited to act as creative consultant, but was left out when the studio felt there were enough employees on the payroll acting as part of the creative team. The studio offered him $750,000 (£432,000) to attend the premiere but Anderson could not accept money from people he had not worked for. He eventually saw the film on DVD and was disappointed, declaring "It was disgraceful that such a huge amount of money was spent with people who had no idea what Thunderbirds was about and what made it tick."^[8] He also said that it was "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

Thunderbirds cost $50 million bucks to make, and only every recovered half of it.

This Wonder Woman movie is going to suck as hard or possibly even harder than Thunderbirds did, and for the same reasons. The thing will be getting written by people who don't give a shit about Wonder Woman, its being staffed and cast by people who are clearly putting feminist politics ahead of EVERYTHING else including profit, its going to be directed by some pinhead who's got lots of Social Justice Warrior/Feminist cred and zero talent, and it will be promoted as some kind of political feminist propaganda film. Which no one in their right mind will want to pay money to go see. It will be on Netflix three months after the release.

And that is why it will suck. The only way for it not to suck is if somebody who gave two shits about Wonder Woman as a character got in there to run it, and fired every single feminist sympathizer and political apparatchik off the thing. Then and only then could they tell a story worth telling. For starters they could hire a Greek chick to be the main character. Gal Gadot is a -fine- looking woman and may even be able to act (I've never seen her in anything) but she is not a Greek Amazon girl. Her neck is too small, for one thing. And her wrists.

See, what's hilarious is that these Hollywood goofs would hire a slim, poofy lipped fashion model to portray a sword swinging, ass kicking, monster hunting warrior woman who can bench press a Buick. And call it Feminism! because "teh director is a Woman!"

But what's even funnier is watching the SJWs lap it up. You people are -stupid-.

The Phantom

City of Miami Department of Precrime. Actual newspaper story.

Sometimes I read things and they are just too stupid top believe somebody really published them.

Armed with high-tech software and years of crime data, Miami police believe they will soon be able to stop crimes by predicting when and where they will occur.

It sounds a little like something out of a science fiction novel, but the department is in the process of adopting a system called HunchLab that produces maps showing small areas where specific crimes are likely to be committed during shifts. The probability program is a geographical version of "predictive policing" software, which more departments are using — even if, in the words of one supportive cop, it's "kind of scary."

Similar algorithm-based programs have been credited with lowering crime rates in cities around the country, and some South Florida departments recently have adopted their own systems. In Miami's case, the department is funding the implementation of HunchLab and other software programs with a $600,000 federal grant doled out by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to encourage smart policing tactics.

Miami accepted the grant in November. On Thursday, the city commission will vote on a $120,000 contract with Florida International University to have Rob Guerette, an associate professor of criminal justice, study the department's program and run tests ahead of its launch.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article19256145.html#storylink=cpy

What this really means is that some guy scammed the Miami PD into paying him $120k to do what could be done with a box of little red pins and a map. But he's doing it with a [gasp!] COMPUTER so that makes it all science fictiony!

Why can't these dead tree assholes hurry up and go bankrupt already? My ghod, what a tool.

The Dead Tree Phantom

Sad Puppies: The Greg-ening.

Well my friends, I have here an example of why we Sad Puppies are sad, and why we must take it out on the Hugos.
This is a comment from "Greg" I found over at John Scalzi's blog, Whatever.

thephantom: Couldn't figure out who and what to vote for myself, right? … Its all down to Torgersen and Correia, not to forget the odious Vox Day. Right?
A quick look at your blog (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/authors-dont-even-make-minimum-wage.html) shows you doing nothing but parroting the charges by VD, so, yeah, apparently not. Why are authors paid so little? You explain by reproducing VD's sermon:

the "professional organizations" of various literary genres have been taken over by raving Leftists. The one that simply LEAPS to mind is of course the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As well, over the last 30 years the awards given for Science Fiction and Fantasy such as the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards etc. have uniformly rewarded dreadful message fiction over good stories that have succeeded in the marketplace.

And you repeat the exact same sermon against racial diversification: (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/indie-music-too-white.html)

Nuh uh. And y'all are a racist for even thinking this might be racist. Because… well I'm not sure why, but RAAAAACIST!!!!!! Also, nerds are racists. Because anybody who applies Rationalism to anything is RAAAAACIST!!!!! Why, you ask? Asking "why?" is RAAAAACIST!!!!!!!! The Phantom RAAAAACIST!!!!!

the phantom is racist. You said it, not me.
When the hugos got the slate from VD, you're post (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/hugo-award-nominees-posted.html) was again, more of the same from VD:

Read it and weep, bitchez:

But who did you vote for? Well, you actually confess right here:

and I voted for people whose books are in my library, or whose works I have read and liked, or whom I have at least heard of. Meaning mostly the Sad Puppies Slate,

In short?

I voted … mostly the Sad Puppies Slate

So, no, you didn't figure out what to vote for yourself. You're a meat puppet for the slate. Congratulations on your new found "freedom".
Why did you vote or those things? For the exact same reason VD asked you to vote for those things: pure politics. To "stick it" to the left. Nothing to do with the works themselves. Pure politics.

Result, the rending of the clothes, the tearing of the hair, the wailing and cursing of The Left.

From Feb 2015, you have a post complaining about a group trying to get people to stop using "gay" and "retarded" as slurs. You're response? Bigotry that would make your leader VD proud.

The whole thing is so lame I feel retarded for having even read about it.

So, good on you, phantom, you're a bigot doing exactly what master bigot VD wants you to do. Yay you!

Quick search of The Phantom Soapbox  shows I mentioned Vox Day precisely zero times before today. I did mention him here in an update today where I mocked Greg.

Clearly, The Phantom takes his marching orders from Vox day. Or, you know, not.

Greg clearly can't be assed to do that frigging two second bit of work, because he's determined the outcome already inside his tiny brain and he's already moved on to the punishment phase.

And that's why I voted in the Hugos this year. To piss Greg off. And its working AWESOME.

See you at the Awards, Greg baby.

Update: Seems Greg fears the Iron Finger of Deletion! Over at Scalzi's blog he's going off about it.

thephantom: Fair warning Gregy, The Iron Finger is hungry.
*snort*
Yet another demonstration that this is all about how the puppies feel powerless and are desperate to establish that they have some kind, any kind, of power. Even if it is only in their mind.
The only reason the stuff you voted for got on the Hugo ballot is because you voted in lock step with VD’s slate. What else is there to talk about? More of your false bravado? that’s why you had to “warn” me, right? Because you’ve got an “Iron Finger” and it it big, and powerful, and will do terrible things to me, right?
You are not some righteous and powerful grassroots political movement, you’re a bunch of brats who didn’t want to sit at the children’s table anymore, so you got together and threw the holiday ham on the floor then demanded to sit with the adults or you’ll throw the gravy next.
What on earth do you think we would talk about?

You know what we are, Greg? We're winning. We have been winning since the very start, since Correia started SP1. We are exposing you, Greg, as a rabid partisan who will cheerfully make shit up about other people just to be in the Cool Kids group. You and a whole bunch of other people.

Come on Greg, don't fear The Finger. Tell us how you feeeeeeel!

Update II: Here we are a day later and Greg has bravely declined to comment. Probably because he knows I'll demolish his skinny little straw man like a diesel lawn mower.

By email, long time correspondent and SF author Who Shall Remain Nameless Lest The Minions Of Dickness Descend said they could become a successful cat herder faster than they could get The Phantom marching in lock-step with any organization. Kind words, and very true. The Phantom just does not play well with organizations of any sort, be they business, government or religious.

Some call it having high standards, others tell me I'm just contrary and lack social skills. I say hey, why not both! ~:D

Update III: The Greg-ening continues:

thephantom: its an anti-SJW munition. Exposure to it may explode your head.
Munitions? Explode?
My what big guns you have! The power courses through your veins! Such big biceps!
How to recruit a fascist little puppy: find someone powerless and pathetic. Promise them power and glory if they but march in lockstep to some cause (any cause really). repeat.

Greg talks some pretty hefty anti-fascismo, but he still hasn't shown his girly face here yet. Must be the biceps. Or the veins, maybe.

Is it the veins, Greg?

Happy Lenin's Birthday, hippies!

Yeah, you may thinks its Earth Day today, but really its Lenin's birthday.

Scrawny little git, isn't he?

And on this day, let's not forget the great legacy of this revolutionary leader.

1932-1933.

Oh, and happy Earth Day if you like that sort of thing.

I'm going to go do some of this later, to celebrate the dirt.

Also this.

and maybe some of this:

Go burn some gas, you hippies!

Authors don't even make minimum wage.

Interesting datum popped up today. It seems that according to a study in Britain, most authors earn less than minimum wage.

The research, commissioned by The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, found the top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors in 2013. The median income for professional writers is just £10,432, less than the minimum wage. Technical and academic writers are among the worst paid.
The report, compiled by Queen Mary, University of London, concluded: "There is a high concentration of earnings in a handful of successful writers whereas most do not earn much at all."

Well, what about the rest of them then?

The bottom half of writers – those who received less than £10,432 in 2013 – earned just 7 per cent of total earnings between them. "It appears that writing is a profession where only a handful of successful authors make a good living while most do not," the report said.

Ok, why is that? Publishers are sticking with the Big Names, apparently. The report doesn't say so, but I expect the profit margins publishers used to enjoy have been eroded away by inflation, taxation and middlemen like Amazon.com.

Then there is the other thing, wherein the "professional organizations" of various literary genres have been taken over by raving Leftists. The one that simply LEAPS to mind is of course the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As well, over the last 30 years the awards given for Science Fiction and Fantasy such as the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards etc. have uniformly rewarded dreadful message fiction over good stories that have succeeded in the marketplace. Awards go every year to books and stories which most people have never heard of, much less read.

When you reward a behavior, you get more of it.

When you get enough "challenging" stories out there with lame characters who make stupid choices and bad things happen every single time... people stop reading. And authors stop making money.

Pretty simple.

The Phantom

Update: Hi Greg! (Greg is a troll from John Scalzi's blog who is too chickenshit to post here.) For your information and edification old son,  I, The Ineffable Phantom, wrote this post. In its entirety.

Vox Day did not write this, nor did he have any input. Nor does he know who I am, nor would he care a damn if he did, I'm sure. I have never read anything by Vox Day, nor have I ever linked to his blog, nor have I even seen his blog that I recall.

Also on a more personal note, should we ever meet in Real Life I will be sure to thank you for labeling me a racist in the time honored way of my People. Who are the Scots.

New GE "data collecting" streetlights for Florida.

Here's the announcement, from Infowars.

In accordance with the "GE Intelligent City Initiate," the "data-collecting" LED streetlights will be placed throughout the city's downtown and surrounding areas.

According to a Thursday morning presentation by GE, the lights will be "interconnected with one another and will collect real-time data," as reported by the Jacksonville Business Journal.

"GE's intelligent LEDs are a gateway to city-changing technology, with sensors, controls, wireless transmitters and microprocessors built within the LED system," GE states.

Now, the linked Jacksonville Business Journal article talks about the "GE Intelligent City Initiative", but it doesn't say what it is. Just that it collects and shares "data" collected by "street lights".

Well, as we all know a street light does not have any data worth sharing. Its only data is if it is turned on or not. Well, unless you are actually talking about a full-on networked PC with camera and microphone and maybe some other infra-red sensors too, maybe a magnetometer, maybe radar, maybe a laser... with a light attached to it.

One of the more relevant, ready-to-go applications is the ability to have smart parking. Through the streetlight sensors, residents can be notified when parking spots are available, or even if their meter might be running out.

What sensors does a "streetlight" need to tell if a parking spot is open or occupied? Camera, obviously. Cheapy little webcam camera you can buy wholesale for $5 would do it. It would do that by taking a picture of all the parking spaces every few seconds. And storing the pictures in its memory. Millions of pictures of all the cars that parked in those spots, the storage of which is trivial.  They can be archived virtually forever, available to any casual search.

The "streetlight" also be able to read and record LICENSE PLATES, which when combined with government license records opens all sorts of possibilities for local law enforcement to track people, collect fines, all kinds of stuff.

As well, the "streetlight" will "incidentally" as part of its parking space job take a picture of every single person who walks by it.

Now multiply that by every f-ing streetlight in the city, because remember that this is General Electric we're talking about here. They have the resources to engineer a web-enabled LED "streetlight" that can do all the stuff I said, and a lot more I haven't even thought of yet, and make the whole freakin' package available for the same price as a regular sodium vapor lamp.

Call your local city council and let them know this would be a really, REALLY bad idea.

The Phantom

Indie music: too white!

No, this did not come from the Onion. But it should have.

As a lover of Belle and Sebastian, I was disappointed, though certainly not surprised. Belle and Sebastian's work is steeped in Whiteness; God Help the Girl merely underscores this. The film itself is an egregious mess that romanticizes a woman's struggles with an eating disorder for the sake of Murdoch's self-promotion. The optimistic, happy-go-lucky and painstakingly adorable aesthetic evidenced in every character he created is founded in Whiteness. Whiteness is beauty; Whiteness is what gives the character the ability to dream of fostering a career in music; Whiteness is what enables the audience to empathize with Eve's character. A recurring filler in the film was a fictitious radio show where two men try to decipher what "real" indie is and every band mentioned is white, enforcing the film's aspirational Whiteness. While Belle and Sebastian aren't the only examples of perpetuating Whiteness through indie rock, this movie serves as a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity that is omnipresent in indie rock.

In indie rock, white is the norm. While indie rock and the DIY underground, historically, have been proud to disassociate themselves from popular culture, there is no divorcing a predominantly white scene from systemic ideals ingrained in white Western culture. That status quo creates a barrier in terms of both the sanctioned participation of artists of color and the amount of respect afforded them, all of which sets people of color up to forever be seen as interlopers and outsiders. Whiteness is the very ideal for which art is made in Western culture, be it the cinema of Wes Anderson or, say, the artists on Merge Records.

Whiteness. Apparently, this is a problem.

But its not racist.  Nuh uh. And y'all are a racist for even thinking this might be racist. Because... well I'm not sure why, but RAAAAACIST!!!!!!

Also, nerds are racists. Because anybody who applies Rationalism to anything is RAAAAACIST!!!!! Why, you ask? Asking "why?" is RAAAAACIST!!!!!!!!

The Phantom RAAAAACIST!!!!!

Hugo Award Nominees posted.

Read it and weep, bitchez:

2015 Hugo Nominations

The nominees that follow were chosen by popular vote of members of Loncon 3 (the 2014 Worldcon), Sasquan (the 2015 Worldcon) and MidAmeriCon II (the 2016 Worldcon).
A total of 2122 valid nomination forms were received (2119 online and 3 paper).
A list of the top 15 nominees in each category, along with the number of nominations received by each, will be released after the Hugo Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 at Sasquan.
Best Novel (1827 nominating ballots)

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• Lines of Departure by Marco Kloos (47North)
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

Best Novella (1083 nominating ballots)

• Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)
• “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)
• One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
• “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House)

Best Novelette (1031 nominating ballots)

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014)
• “Championship B'tok” by Edward M. Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014)
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014)
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014)
• “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)

Best Short Story (1174 nominating ballots)

• “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet (The End is Now (Apocalypse Triptych Book 2), Broad Reach Publishing)
• “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014)
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “Totaled” by Kary English (Galaxy's Edge Magazine, July 2014)
• “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)

Best Related Work (1150 nominating ballots)

• “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF” by Ken Burnside (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
• Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli (The Merry Blacksmith Press)
• Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
• “Why Science is Never Settled” by Tedd Roberts (Baen.com)
• Wisdom from My Internet by Michael Z. Williamson (Patriarchy Press)

Best Graphic Story (785 nominating ballots)

• Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt (Marvel Comics)
• Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)
• Saga Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
• The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate by Carter Reid (The Zombie Nation)

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) (1285 nominating ballots)

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, concept and story by Ed Brubaker, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Entertainment, Perception, Sony Pictures Imageworks)
• Edge of Tomorrow screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, directed by Doug Liman (Village Roadshow, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, 3 Arts Entertainment; Viz Productions)
• Guardians of the Galaxy written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, directed by James Gunn (Marvel Studios, Moving Picture Company)
• Interstellar screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy)
• The Lego Movie written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LEGO Systems A/S Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation (as Warner Animation Group))

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (938 nominating ballots)

• Doctor Who: “Listen” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
• The Flash: “Pilot” teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW) (Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television)
• Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper” written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”, written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC) (GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV)
• Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)

Best Editor (Short Form) (870 nominating ballots)

• Jennifer Brozek
• Vox Day
• Mike Resnick
• Edmund R. Schubert
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Best Editor (Long Form) (712 nominating ballots)

• Vox Day
• Sheila Gilbert
• Jim Minz
• Anne Sowards
• Toni Weisskopf

Best Professional Artist (753 nominating ballots)

• Julie Dillon
• Jon Eno
• Nick Greenwood
• Alan Pollack
• Carter Reid

Best Semiprozine (660 nominating ballots)

• Abyss & Apex Wendy Delmater editor and publisher
• Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Association Incorporated, 2014 editors David Kernot and Sue Burtsztynski
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
• Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant
• Strange Horizons Niall Harrison Editor-in-Chief

Best Fanzine (576 nominating ballots)

• Black Gate, edited by John O’Neill
• Elitist Book Reviews edited by Steven Diamond
• Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Colin Harris, and Helen Montgomery
• The Revenge of Hump Day edited by Tim Bolgeo
• Tangent SF Online, edited by Dave Truesdale

Best Fancast (668 nominating ballots)

• Adventures in SF Publishing Brent Bower (Executive Producer), Kristi Charish, Timothy C. Ward & Moses Siregar III (Co-Hosts, Interviewers and Producers)
• Dungeon Crawlers Radio Daniel Swenson (Producer/Host), Travis Alexander & Scott Tomlin (Hosts), Dale Newton (Host/Tech), Damien Swenson (Audio/Video Tech)
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)
• The Sci Phi Show Jason Rennie
• Tea and Jeopardy Emma Newman and Peter Newman

Best Fan Writer (777 nominating ballots)

• Dave Freer
• Amanda S. Green
• Jeffro Johnson
• Laura J. Mixon
• Cedar Sanderson

Best Fan Artist (296 nominating ballots)

• Ninni Aalto
• Brad Foster
• Elizabeth Leggett
• Spring Schoenhuth
• Steve Stiles

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (851 nominating ballots)
Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2013 or 2014, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

• Wesley Chu*
• Jason Cordova
• Kary English*
• Rolf Nelson
• Eric S. Raymond

*Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.

Let the SJW head explosions commence.

By the way. I get to vote in this thing, and I voted for people whose books are in my library, or whose works I have read and liked, or whom I have at least heard of. Meaning mostly the Sad Puppies Slate, presently being burnt in effigy all over the Interwebz.

Way to go Sad Puppies for living rent free in exploding SJW heads all over the globe. May the explodiness warm you hearts as it does mine.

Coolest thing I've seen in ages. Gecko tonge robot gripper.

This is just freakin' genius.

The chameleon is able to catch a variety of different insects by putting its tongue over the respective prey and securely enclosing it. The FlexShapeGripper uses this principle to grip the widest range of objects in a form-fitting manner. Using its elastic silicone cap, it can even pick up several objects in a single gripping process and put them down together, without the need for a manual conversion.

It can pick up an egg, then a pair of glasses, then three ball bearings at once, one after the other. Better than fingers.

Technology is awesome, eh? :)

The Phantom

Ikea flat pack homeless shelter. I'm not kidding.

This is destined to be one of those Great Humanitarian Ideas that just fuck over poor people for years and years. The Ikea flat-pack "BetterShelter".

Better Shelter is a groundbreaking example of collaboration, technical innovation and practical application. The shelter has been put to the test by some of the world's most exposed families, and their experiences and needs lie at the heart of the development process.

Yep, its another "White Man's burden" great idea that's going to trap a lot of refugees in really fucked-up circumstances for a really long time. Just like the anti-malaria mosquito net that's denuding large parts of Africa of every frog and waterbug in existence as poor people scoop up every single thing that moves... and eat it.

This Ikea thing is designed to last for  three years. I bet  that we'll be seeing these damn things still in use ten years from now, all rotting and falling apart, by the same people moving into them now.

Tents suck, but at least with a tent you can pick it up and move it, patch it when it leaks, sell it if you need to. This Ikea thing, not so much.

Ikea: Swedish for Bleeding Heart Liberal Dumbasses.

Intel Edison: super duper small PC on a chip.

This is a whole PC. ~$50 retail. WiFi and Bluetooth included.

I just picked one of these up. Its an Intel Edison PC-on-a-chip widget. It can be powered for days on a small battery, if you don't have it doing much. It comes with wi-fi and Bluetooth capability built in. Its powerful enough to be used as a desktop PC for surfing the Internet.

Intel intends it as a rapid-prototyping device for kids making "Internet Of Things" projects, or robots and autonomous drones. The low power draw also makes it awesome for doing any kind of embedded control device, like adding a computer network to your car or making a solar powered weather station for the back yard. The battery out of a cell phone would keep it going all night, and it would charge up all day.

I bought one. Its pretty kewl.

The reason I bring it up is, this thing is SMALL. Like, really small. Fits inside a matchbook with its battery too kinda small. I bought it for something like $50 retail at Fry's in Phoenix, if you bought a whack of them from Intel it would be half of that.

If you wanted a throw-away PC for doing something silly, like counting every Cadillac Eldorado that crosses the Brooklyn Bridge, you could put this in an Altoids tin with a teensy camera and stick it to a bridge stanchion and leave it there forever.
Or if you wanted to seed an area with wi-fi coverage you could make up a bunch of them and stick them on lamp posts. Use a Pringles can antenna for extra distance coverage and the can is the biggest part of the thing.
Put two of them miles apart and communicate via laser.
Detect deer in the back yard by radar and squirt water at them.

Track your girlfriend's car, undetectably and wirelessly. (You know some weirdo is going to do that, right?)

Fly a camera drone up onto a building to look into a particular window... and leave it there.

Detect and report on the water level in your basement sump, and the temperature of the sump pump motor, and how many times an hour it pumps, and how much electricity it uses, and how the battery back up is doing, and if the whole system pukes it sends you an email...

All kinds of things you want a PC for, you can do in a matchbox run off a 9V battery. For CHEAP.

They didn't make it as small as they could, by the way. Its a toy, basically.

Imagine the kind of crap that could be built in to your car or TV or your cell phone or even a plain old extension cord, right now, that you'd never ever know about.

Update: Welcome Rifleman's Journal readers! Consider building a bunch of these: Pirate Box. Never know when a little bit of anonymous file sharing capability might come in handy. Make it out of an Intel Edison and then tell EVERYBODY how you did it, I don't think its been done yet.

Defeating air gaps using heat.

Traditionally, a computer that is off the Internet and off the local network is considered safe. This is called an air gap, there's air between the computer and all other computers. I've posted before about guys using radio frequency (RF) shenanigans to defeat the air gap.

Now there is a new idea. This one uses heat.

The proof-of-concept attack requires both systems to first be compromised with malware. And currently, the attack allows for just eight bits of data to be reliably transmitted over an hour—a rate that is sufficient for an attacker to transmit brief commands or siphon a password or secret key but not large amounts of data. It also works only if the air-gapped system is within 40 centimeters (about 15 inches) from the other computer the attackers control. But the researchers, at Ben Gurion's Cyber Security Labs, note that this latter scenario is not uncommon, because air-gapped systems often sit on desktops alongside Internet-connected ones so that workers can easily access both.

The method uses thermal sensors inside both computers to detect outside increases in heat. The malware uses the CPU to increase and decrease the temperature inside one machine, these changes are detected by the thermal sensors in the other machine. In this way they can exchange ones and zeros, one at a time, minutes apart. Slowly over the course of hours larger messages can be exchanged.

Currently the hack can be defeated just by moving one of them to the other side of the desk. But the very idea that you can transfer even small amounts of data like this is amazing. Previously it didn't matter what kind of malware your computer was infested with, if you unplugged the network you were safe from intrusion. Now, not so much.

Also to be considered is that this hack was developed by a student. Some kid whipped this up as part of a Masters or a PhD.

Imagine what the guys who do this for a living have come up with these last 25 years.

In other news the Kremlin has switched from word processing on computers to typewriters, in a back to the '50s move. So I guess they've been reading about this stuff too.

Personally I think the venerable typewriter is too hack prone, everything you type is recorded on the ribbon, don't forget. I'm going back to a pencil and paper for all my world domination plans. Inside a Faraday cage. In the cellar. Burn before reading.

The Phantom

Some things which are troubling today.

Hertz puts cameras in their rental cars.  Its in their newest navigation device, along with a microphone. But they have "no plans" to actually use the camera. Honest. Pinky swear.

Open secret StingRay phone tracker remains a State Secret. 

The issue led to a public dispute three weeks ago in Silicon Valley, where a sheriff asked county officials to spend $502,000 on the technology. The Santa Clara County sheriff, Laurie Smith, said the technology allowed for locating cellphones — belonging to, say, terrorists or a missing person. But when asked for details, she offered no technical specifications and acknowledged she had not seen a product demonstration.

Buying the technology, she said, required the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

"So, just to be clear," Joe Simitian, a county supervisor, said, "we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers' money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don't have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money," he continued, but "you can't tell us more about it."

The technology goes by various names, including StingRay, KingFish or, generically, cell site simulator. It is a rectangular device, small enough to fit into a suitcase, that intercepts a cellphone signal by acting like a cellphone tower.

I've posted about this thing many, many times before. Everybody knows about it, some guys even built one and stuck it in a model airplane. There's Instructables on YouTube how to make one. But this StingRay remains a super secret as far as officials are concerned.

Interesting, yes? Probably because it can do things they don't want you to know it can do. Like, it can scan an entire area and identify every phone in its range, because that's how it actually works. It finds one phone by scanning ALL the phones.  And if I may speculate, it can most likely take control of any phone in its range, turning on camera and microphone on command. We know that can be done, this is likely the machine that does it. Speculating just a little bit further, it can probably hoover up the contents of your phone too.

Formerly only for super spies, now available to Constable Plod of the Podunk Police Department. You think they aren't downloading all the selfies off the phones of random hot girls they spot on patrol? If not there's a bridge in Brooklyn I can get you a really good deal on.

And now the kicker, Albert W. Gore comes right out and says Climate Change Deniers Must Be Punished!!!

For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to "punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting 'accepted science,'" said the Chicago Tribune.

Gore said forward-thinking investors are moving away from companies that invest in fossil fuels and towards companies investing in renewable energy. "We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends," Gore told the Chicago Tribune, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. "And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics."

Are YOU a Climate Change Denier? Big Brother wants to know, and is more than happy to subvert your phone so he can listen to you in real-time, so as to gather evidence of your Denial.

Or just to get any pics of babes in yoga pants that you may have on there. Big Brother don't pay for pr0nz.

The Phantom

No, your iPhone/Android thing is not secure.

And its not secure because = government.

Technology companies are scrambling to fix a major security flaw that for more than a decade left users of Apple and Google devices vulnerable to hacking when they visited millions of supposedly secure Web sites, including Whitehouse.gov, NSA.gov and FBI.gov.

The flaw resulted from a former U.S. government policy that forbade the export of strong encryption and required that weaker "export-grade" products be shipped to customers in other countries, say the researchers who discovered the problem. These restrictions were lifted in the late 1990s, but the weaker encryption got baked into widely used software that proliferated around the world and back into the United States, apparently unnoticed until this year.

Researchers discovered in recent weeks that they could force browsers to use the weaker encryption, then crack it over the course of just a few hours. Once cracked, hackers could steal passwords and other personal information and potentially launch a broader attack on the Web sites themselves by taking over elements on a page, such as a Facebook "Like" button.

The problem illuminates the danger of unintended security consequences at a time when top U.S. officials, frustrated by increasingly strong forms of encryption on smartphones, have called for technology companies to provide "doors" into systems to protect the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance.

Yes, simply recording every packet on the internet is not enough. Big Kahunas in the US government want a backdoor into your smart-phone and desktop PC. Like, a hardware one.

I think what some of these guys would really like is all citizens living in work camp dormitories with cameras in every room, two in the bathroom. Because they need to be SURE you're not a terrorist, see?

The Phantom

Toldja: rats with bubonic plague type fleas found in NYC.

NO ONE EVER LISTENS.

Scientists studying rats in New York found the flea that carries the plague - the Oriental rat flea - hosting on some of the city's rat population, according to the study published Monday in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Bubonic plague is infamous as one of the most devastating pandemics in world history, known as the Black Death. During the 14th Century, the plague killed between 25 million and 50 million people in Europe.

Before panic ensues, it must be noted that researchers found no trace of the plague or typhus – another disease carried by the Oriental rat flea – in any of the fleas they sampled.

How long before one of those fleas comes down with something?