One of last year’s big flaming hyena stories was about Harry Sidhu, the mayor of Anaheim, who resigned over land deals with the Los Angeles Angels (and his “illegal registration of a helicopter“).
I kind of lost track of this story because California newspapers. But thanks to the Field of Schemes blog, I found out: former mayor Sidhu is taking a guilty plea.
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Really, seriously, just shut the f**k up.
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Remember, my people: the coverup is almost always worse than the actual crime.
First, a preview of something that I hope to post very soon.
You may remember a while back – April of 2022, as a matter of fact – I said I was special ordering a gun from my local gun shop for Buy a Gun Day.
It came in…on August 3rd. Yes, this year. I actually waited longer for this than Someone Who Isn’t Me expects to wait for their Form 4 item. (Don’t ask. I will not be taking questions at this time.) Not that I blame my local gun shop for this. As I understand it, there are reasons for the delay related to the manufacturer. All will be revealed soon, I hope.
In the meantime, let no man say that I am not PC.
After the jump, some more gun books for my loyal reader…
Gregg Easterbrook posted a new Tuesday Morning Quarterback on August 1st. We missed it because we were preparing for our trip.
What does he have to say?
Well, that sounds ominous.
Doing a copy and paste into Word as plain text gets us a word count of 4,210 words. That doesn’t seem too bad by the standards of previous TMQs, but this is a “preview”, not a regular season column.
And here’s the nut graph:
Would you believe I actually got to engage in a little bit of recoil therapy this weekend? Thanks to KR Training for letting us use their range after the class, and thanks to Greg Ellifritz for putting on a great class: “The Explosive Threat: Recognizing, Detecting, and Neutralizing the Terrorist Bomber”.
I didn’t do a lot of shooting because it was hotter than the hinges of Hell, and we didn’t have a lot of time before our dinner engagement. But I did manage to function check a couple of carry guns, and am reasonably satisfied with their performance.
I finished Ammunition, Demystified: The (non) Bubba’s Guide to How Ammo Really Works on my trip. My opinion hasn’t changed. I absolutely do recommend it. But you should be aware that there’s some pretty heavy duty math in the book. I think most folks could probably benefit from it even if times tables give them a headache. My only other issue with the book came when Mr. Siewert discussed some ballistic work he did back in the day with a company that was making air rifle pellets. My issue? “Where were you when I was a teenager, Mr. Siewert?”
And now for some more gun books from the stack…
There’s a story in The Register about the Johannes Willbold “Houston, We Have a Problem: Analyzing the Security of Low Earth Orbit Satellites” presentation at Black Hat.
But I’m not going to link it. Instead, I’m going to link the Hacker News discussion of the story, which I think is more interesting (and contains a link to the story itself).
There was a suspicious package discovered on Saturday night, and DEFCON was evacuated until it was dealt with. There’s a lot of speculation floating around that I don’t want to link to, so I’m only providing the official statement.
Here’s a really detailed and clear write-up of “A Pain in the NAS: Exploiting Cloud Connectivity to PWN Your NAS”.
And here’s more on “All Cops Are Broadcasting: Breaking TETRA After Decades in the Shadows”, including the team’s paper for the USENIX Security Symposium.
I know I pointed folks to the media server the other day for preliminary presentation slides, but I want to call this presentation out specifically: “Private Keys in Public Places”.
Shelley Smith, actress. Other credits include the 1989 “Dragnet” revival, “Magnum P.I.” (the original), and “Cover Up“.
Linda Haynes, actress. Other credits include “Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley”, “In Like Flint” (uncredited), and “Paper Moon” (the TV series: yes, there was a TV series based on the movie. It lasted 13 episodes.)
One of the guns that is currently high on my want list is a Smith and Wesson Model 53.
The Model 53 is a weird gun. It was designed and chambered to shoot the .22 Jet cartridge, which is a .357 Magnum necked down to take a .222 bullet. This was a relic of the time when people were experimenting with odd .22 caliber wildcat cartridges in revolvers.
I’ll probably write some more about the Jet when I get mine, but for now I’ll just say the .22 Jet and the Model 53 were not a complete success. Fortunately, the Model 53 can also bet set up to fire .22 LR: either by swapping out the .22 Jet cylinder for a .22 LR cylinder (it was fairly common for the guns to ship with both) or by using special inserts in the .22 Jet cylinder.
The 53 shipped with 4″, 6″, and 8 3/8″ barrels. I’m pretty set on getting one with a 8 3/8″ barrel, as that seems ideal for varmint hunting.
I’ve actually just found a really nice Model 53 with an 8 3/8″ barrel and both .22 LR and .22 Jet cylinders…that I won’t be buying.
Why?
Three reasons:
1) The estimated auction price is between $60,000 and $90,000.
2) It is really really really nice. Too nice to shoot.
3) (related to #2 above): it was Elvis’s gun.
“Elvis’ Guns: The Bicentennial Smith & Wesson” from Rock Island Auction.
RIA lot number 1504: Elvis Presley’s Exhibition Quality S&W Model 53 Revolver.
I saw this gun, up close and personal like, at the 2022 S&WCA Collector’s Association Symposium. it is a beautiful gun, and if any of my readers have a spare $90,000 I encourage you to submit a bid. Better photos than I can take are in the RIA listing.
Slides are up for Thursday’s Black Hat presentations. At least some of them, including:
Here’s a link to the DEFCON 31 presentations on the DEFCON media server.
Thursday’s DEFCON presentations that I was interested in:
As I noted earlier, the current state of Twitter makes it almost impossible for me to keep up with and provide presentation updates. Your best bet (and I feel like a lazy journalist saying this) might be to check out the decks on the media server for any presentations you are interested in, check out those folks Twitter or Mastodon feeds (if you’re on one of those services, and they’ve put that in their deck) and look for updates there.
Tips in comments are welcome.
I don’t want to seem snarky here, though I am going to snark a little bit on a certain media outlet and not the people who died. This is a tragedy, and I think there’s an important lesson here.
Three people and a dog died in Elgin on Wednesday.
The reports say that they were hunting hogs. One of their dogs escaped and fell into a cistern, and one of the hunters went after it. He passed out, and two people went in after him. The fourth one stayed out and called 911.
One major media outlet claims they died from “high levels of hydrogen — a toxic gas“. While it is true that hydrogen is toxic, in the sense that if you just breathe hydrogen instead of air YOU WILL DIE, more literate outlets are reporting it was actually an accumulation of hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
H2S is nasty.
The key point here, though, is: your safety is the priority. If someone goes into a confined space and passes out, I know the desire to help is hard to resist. But: don’t do it, unless you are a trained responder with self-contained breathing equipment. Otherwise, you’re just giving the first responders two victims to rescue instead of one.
It can be told now: I was in the Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia area Thursday of last week through Tuesday of this week. I kept this under my hat for security reasons.
If it seems like an odd place to travel on a vacation, it sort of wasn’t a vacation: my mother and I went up for the funeral of my late uncle Kenneth Eberhart, who lived in Virginia Beach for many years.
I’m not sure I want to talk more about that now, but I probably will when Veterans Day comes around. And I’m a firm believer in putting the “fun” back into “funeral”. So let’s talk about some other stuff.
I only visited one gun store on the trip, because I only had time to visit one. I picked Bob’s Gun Shop because their web site says they’ve been open since 1945, and they buy and sell guns. The folks at Bob’s were very nice, and I’m glad I picked that store. It’s a big store – three floors, with a pistol range on the top floor. But I didn’t buy anything.
I visited two used bookstores. Smith Discount Books was the best of the two, but I only bought one small gun book there. That will be in the roundup at some point.
My one regret is that I ran out of time before I could visit the Military Aviation Museum. If I had been there for just one more day…
We had a lot of really good meals. I had two conditions for this trip:
(Me? Grinding an axe?)
Among the places we dined that are worth writing about:
I’d like to thank the various family members who are handling Ken’s business and were there for the funeral. I’m not going to name them here for privacy reasons, but thank you, various family members.
Also, many thanks to the Gator Volksmarch Club (AVA-13). Ken was an avid volksmarcher, and many of his friends from the Gators were at the funeral. The club is holding a remembrance walk and picnic for him on October 7: details are here.
Robbie Robertson. THR. Pitchfork.
I haven’t seen “The Last Waltz” and kind of want to (it is available on Criterion) but I’ve seen it described as “Martin Scorsese interviews Robbie Robertson. Also, he interviews some of Robbie Robertson’s friends about how great Robbie Robertson is.”
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I may be being a little unfair to Mr. Robertson, but it seems like everyone in The Band who wasn’t Robbie Robertson didn’t get along with him. When one person has an issue, okay, one person has an issue. But when the entire band has issues…
On a related side note, should I give pigpen51 a guest account here and leave writing the music-related obits up to him?
This is breaking news: Johnny Hardwick, who voiced “Dale Gribble” on “King of the Hill”. IMDB.
Edited to add: THR obit for Johnny Hardwick.
The Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas started today.
DEFCON 31 starts tomorrow, though it seems like Friday is when things pick up.
Despite the recent, and much appreciated, shout-out from Borepatch, I’m feeling kind of ambivalent about trying to keep up with DEFCON this year.
My recent trip (write-up coming in the next few days, promise) blew a pretty big hole in my schedule. I haven’t had any time to do prep work for DEFCON/Black Hat. And I have a whole bunch of things I want to do, and so little time to do them in.
I also rely heavily on Twitter for links to presentations. And the current state of Twitter makes that almost impossible.
It also feels like DEFCON has moved past me. It used to feel like a gathering of one of my tribes. Now it feels like…something else. I note that DEFCON admission is now $460. And you don’t get free admission, or even a discount, if you go to Black Hat.
Still, tradition is tradition. So let’s see how badly I can do this.