The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts
Answer after the jump.
Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category
Onion headline, or New York Times headline?
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013Toes in the water.
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013Sorry about the short blogging quasi-hiatus there.
After work on Friday, I drove down to San Antonio for LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. It was a swell time. I got to hang out with several friends, including Mike the Musicologist, Andrew the Colossus of Roads, RoadRich, and Lawrence, who was doing a land office business in books. (Who says people don’t read any more? I covered the table for him a little bit, and by Ghu the books were flying off the table like snow crab legs at an all you can eat Chinese buffet.)
I haven’t been down to San Antonio for reasons other than medical for years, and hadn’t been on the RiverWalk since LoneStarCon2. I’d forgotten how nice the RiverWalk is, even though the vendors make things a bit crowded. (I don’t remember there being as many sidewalk vendors there last time I was down. But I’m getting old, and memory fades.)
Mike the Musicologist did most of the meal planning. Breakfast for two out of three of the days we were there was in the Marriott Rivercenter, mostly for reasons of timing. However, it is a pretty good buffet; I’d go so far as to say, with the custom omelets and made-to-order waffles, it comes close to being worth $20+tax and tip. Especially since I really didn’t see any breakfast places near the hotels or along the Riverwalk. (McDonalds and Whataburger excepted. There was also a Denny’s across the street from the Rivercenter; but literally the first thing I heard when I got to the hotel was that a mutual acquaintance of ours got food poisoning from the Denny’s bacon.)
The one non-Marriott breakfast was at the Magnolia Pancake Haus on Embassy Oaks, which was packed to the gills. We waited 40 minutes for a table, but the Munchener Apfel Pfannekuchen was worth it. I’d love to go back (and maybe try the wild mushroom hash) but I’d make sure I brought a good book.
(At some point in the near future, I want to do a post on how tablets, and especially the iPad, are transforming the restaurant industry, with Magnolia being one of my examples.)
We also had an excellent meal at Moroccan Bites (I loved the lamb shank and the chicken bites) and a pretty good meal at a place called Charlie Wants a Burger. (I had the pulled pork sandwich. And wings.) Sunday night we went to Fogo de Chao…which, you know, is Fogo de Chao. If you want huge amounts of roasted meat, you know what you’re getting into. For reasons I won’t discuss here (think Tim Cahill’s rule #6, corollary 1), I just had the salad bar. Which is actually a reasonable thing to do at Fogo de Chao (especially since you also get to eat the fried polenta, bananas, and cheese rolls), and I didn’t feel ripped off at $22.50. (I did feel gouged by the $3.25 iced tea. Note to self: water next time.)
(If you think you detected a trend, you may be right: Moroccan Bites and Magnolia have both been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Guy Fieri may have problems running a place of his own, but as far as recommendations go, he’s batting 100% with me.)
Oddly enough, I bought more t-shirts (three) than I did books (two). Of course, one of those shirts is a gift for my brother. And one of those shirts I don’t actually have yet (they’re shipping it). And one of those books I bought mostly so I could support my friends. (I would have bought more books, but nobody had any Robert Frezza. “The Whistling Pig” was the theme to my last few months at 4LCC.)
I do want to say a few words about the best thing that happened at the convention. I don’t like bragging about famous people I know, mostly because I’m always afraid someone will ask them about me and they’ll say “Dwight who?” (Or, if they’re talking to Gardner Dozois, “That a–hole Dwight?!”)
(If you’ve never met Gardner in person, let’s just say he has a puckish sense of humor.)
But I digress. The best thing that happened at the convention is that one of my closest friends in the world won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. That put the cap on a pretty swell weekend.
Congrats, again, Pat.
Quote(s) of the day.
Friday, August 30th, 2013I probably would have posted these even if Lawrence hadn’t done a quote of the day, because: Derek Lowe! More “Things I Won’t Work With“!
But I can’t decide which one I like more:
Explosions are definitely underappreciated as a mixing technique…
Or:
“Spaying hyenas” has so many possible uses.
“How was work today, honey?”
“Spaying hyenas.”
(“Spaying Hyenas” is also the name of my next band. We do Daft Punk covers.)
The economics of expensive fluids.
Monday, August 26th, 2013Would you believe that IV fluid (specifically, normal saline) is almost as cheap as house-brand cola at the grocery store?
That is, if you buy it in bulk from the manufacturer. If you go to the hospital and get an IV…
Of course, there’s hospital overhead and such involved. You don’t expect to go to Best Buy and pay wholesale price for a laptop, so why would you expect to pay wholesale for IV fluid? But isn’t $786 a lot of markup?
At White Plains Hospital, a patient with private insurance from Aetna was charged $91 for one unit of Hospira IV that cost the hospital 86 cents, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Eliza O’Neill.
Ms. O’Neill defended the markup as “consistent with industry standards.” She said it reflected “not only the cost of the solution but a variety of related services and processes,” like procurement, biomedical handling and storage, apparently not included in a charge of $127 for administering the IV and $893 for emergency-room services.
SmarterTimes has one take on this. I have another. Actually, I have two:
- If you go to watch a dragon dance, don’t eat lunch from food stalls at the Buddhist monastery.
- This is one of the reasons I have qualms about health care reform. I really do believe the system is broken and needs reform. But many of the proposed changes seem like tugging at a protruding wire in a deeply intertwingled snarl of wiring, without knowing whether you’re going to rip something vital loose or shock yourself or both.
This also gives me a chance to plug a forthcoming paperback that I’m very excited about: David Goldhill’s Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father–and How We Can Fix It
I’m not sure how applicable Goldhill’s prescriptions are to this incident. Much of what he talks about involves changes in routine health care, such as providing consumers with better cost information; being poisoned by monks at a dragon dance is the kind of catastrophic event you’d figure should be covered by insurance, and not the sort of thing where you shop around for the best deal on IV fluids and antibiotics.
Still, this does give me a chance to plug his book, which I was previously unaware of…
Random notes: August 20, 2013.
Tuesday, August 20th, 2013NYT headline:
(Edited to add: I am willing to offer karma points and gratitude for a photoshop of Admiral Ackbar in a Yankees uniform.)
At least Richard Cohen is consistent. Here’s a man who’s never met a totalitarian initiative he doesn’t like.
Speaking of NYC and guns…
Say what?
So let’s see. NYC has strict gun control. So crooks are stealing weapons (already illegal) or engaging in “straw purchases” (also illegal, and rarely prosecuted by the Feds). So what we need is more gun control, and also stop and frisk.
I would laugh at these guys, but…I’ve got my own embarrassing gun related issue (which I will write more about at some time in the future; no, it wasn’t a negligent discharge, I’m just having problems getting something to run right), so I’m withholding the laughter for now.
A small handful of DEFCON 21 (and related) notes: August 19, 2013.
Monday, August 19th, 2013- Bruce Schneier has a post up at the Schneier on Security blog that serves as sort of a response to the famous Black Hat 2013 Cryptopocalypse paper. Again, this is one of those subject areas where my skills are weak; I don’t know who is right or wrong here (or if both sides are both part right and part wrong) but I wanted to point out Schneier’s post in the interest of giving equal time to the other side.
- Here’s a link to Justin Engler’s GitHub repo, which includes build info for R2B2 (the PIN cracking robot), the control software, presentation slides (though I’m not sure if these are from DEFCON 21) and some interesting material related to PINs. (By way of the presentation slides, here’s another interesting bit of PIN related statistical information.)
- If you’re interested in the “Android master key” bug, here’s a link to Jeff Forristal’s BlackHat 2013 presentation. (If you don’t know what that is, “The vulnerability involves discrepancies in how Android applications are cryptographically verified & installed, allowing for APK code modification without breaking the cryptographic signature; that in turn is a simple step away from system access & control.”)
- Two interesting and related things from Daniel Crowley: “The Way of the Cryptologist” and cribdrag, a tool for cryptanalysis of “ciphertext encrypted using an XOR operation with a predictable key” (for example, ciphertexts encrypted with a one-time pad, where somebody reused the one-time pad. Bad mojo. Don’t do that).
- Hoorah! Hoorah! The Doug DePerry/Tom Ritter/Andrew Rahimi “Traffic Interception and Remote Mobile Phone Cloning with a Compromised CDMA Femtocell” presentation just went up. This link takes you to the iSEC Partners website, where you can find both slides and video.
- Nicholas Baldanos has been updating his blog with more information on the ccTalk protocol. Part 1: details of the protocol. Part 2: coin acceptor handling.
Ubuntu blues.
Saturday, August 17th, 2013Documenting this here for the record.
I think I have finally resolved the “the system is running in low graphics mode” error I’ve been getting on Project e (which, I will remind you, is an Asus 1005HA with an integrated Intel 950 graphics adapter) since upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04.
This particular document is comprehensive and ultimately useless. I tried every suggestion in it, with no success at all.
What finally seems to have resolved the problem was a suggestion in this thread. Specifically, brucey99’s suggestion to edit /etc/init/lightdm.conf and add
sleep 10
above
exec lightdm
seems to have done the trick. (I used “sleep 20” instead of “sleep 10”. What’s the harm, 10 seconds more boot time? I can always change it later.)
It also seems like the
sudo service lightdm restart
command from a terminal window works to get things back to normal if the machine does start in low graphics mode.
And I’m not sure it made any difference, but just to document: I also created a xorg.conf file (from xorg.conf.failsafe) and edited the “Device” section:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "UXA"
EndSection
After restarting about a half-dozen times, it hasn’t come up in low graphics mode yet. I’ll see how it goes.
As David Brin once said, “Let the next guy know what killed you.” And thanks, brucey99.
Noted.
Thursday, August 15th, 2013The 5th edition of Learning Python
Since I am not an idiot, I bought the ebook; doing so is easier both on my wallet and on my back. I started reading it and working through the examples last night.
Quoth Chapter 1, under “Who uses Python today?”:
The IronPort email server product uses more than 1 million lines of Python code to do its job.
I can only smile and say “No. Comment.”
And a few bullet points later:
The NSA uses Python for cryptography and intelligence analysis.
So remember, folks: the NSA is spying on you, but they’re doing it with open source software. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
(Yes, yes, I’m sure the NSA also uses Perl and Java and Visual Basic and FORTH and even internally developed languages that are still classified. I just found it funny, is all.)
And even more DEFCON 21 links: August 9, 2013.
Friday, August 9th, 2013- The slides for Nicolas Oberli’s presentation, “Please
InsertInject More Coins”, are here. - Slides and code from the Todd Manning and Zach Lanier talk, “GoPro or GTFO: A Tale of Reversing an Embedded System“, are located here.
- The GitHub repository for gitDigger, from the Jaime Filson and Rob Fuller talk, “gitDigger: Creating useful wordlists from public GitHub repositories”, is here. I have not found slides from DEFCON 21 yet, but there’s a video of the talk from BSidesLV 2013 here.
- Slides from the Jaime Sanchez presentation on “Building an Android IDS on Network Level” are here.
- Melissa Elliott has uploaded the slides from her talk, “Noise Floor: Exploring the world of unintentional radio emissions” here. Thanks to the rtl-sdr.com blog for the heads-up.
Random notes: August 8, 2013.
Thursday, August 8th, 2013I’m not all that interested in the digital Leicas, though. The Leicas I drool over are the vintage film ones. Yes, I shoot digital, but I still have a secret fondness for film and certain film cameras.
Speaking of low-light lenses, I’ve been wanting to link this:
Kubrick used those lenses to shoot scenes lit only by candlelight in Barry Lyndon (which, I have to admit, I haven’t seen yet: I’ve often heard it called “Boring London”, but it is one of those movies I feel obligated to see). Anyway, these lenses still exist, and you can rent them along with a camera modified to take the lenses if you really need to shoot something in very very low light.
The family of Henrietta Lacks has made a deal with the National Institute of Health:
This is kind of a big deal, for reasons outlined in the NYT article. The very short version: Ms. Lacks died of cancer in 1951. Scientists discovered that cells from her cancer were able to survive in lab environments, and those cells have been used in research since her death. However, her family was never compensated for the use of her cells, and didn’t even know her cells were being used until many years later.
The above is a very simplified version of the story. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
DEFCON 21 updates: August 7, 2013 (part 2)
Wednesday, August 7th, 2013I actually thought I’d published the first update last night, but I got up this morning and found out I hadn’t.
Oh, well.
Anyway, Wesley McGrew and I have been carrying on a pleasant correspondence by email, and he’s graciously allowed me to host the preliminary version of his presentation, “Pwn The Pwn Plug: Analyzing and Counter-Attacking Attacker-Implanted Devices” here until he gets the final version uploaded. You can download the ZIP archive which contains the white paper, slides, and code here.
(By the way, Mr. McGrew is a heck of a nice guy.)
More DEFCON 21: August 7, 2013.
Wednesday, August 7th, 2013- Haven’t found anything yet from the Tom Ritter/Doug DePerry femtocell talk, but Tom Ritter does have slides and speaker notes up for another of his DEFCON 21 talks, “De-Anonymizing Alt.Anonymous.Messages”.
- Ryan Holeman has his slides and code from “The Bluetooth Device Database” up here. He also has a blog post that might add a bit more context to the slides.
- Slides from Karl Koscher and Eric Butler’s talk, “The Secret Life of SIM Cards” are available here, and there’s a bunch more resources in that repository.
- Slides from the Eric Robi/Michael Perklin talk, “Forensic Fails”, are here.