Category Archives: View

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

On matters of foreign policy, Trump is not a realist, isolationist, or neoconservative, although at times he can sound like all that and more. Instead, he is a Jacksonian who wants a huge club at the Department of Defense largely to ensure that he’ll never have to use it. And if he is pushed to swing it, he wants to flatten any who would hurt the U.S.

Victor Davis Hanson

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Phil Tharp calls attention to this article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443667/trumpism-tradition-populism-american-greatness-strong-military

Although I was a subscriber to National Review from the 1950’s, I have lately given up reading it; but this is by Victor Davis Hanson who is both a Professor of History and a Central California Valley farmer, and his insights are always worth paying attention to. This time he has exceeded himself: nothing original, but he patiently explains the meaning of Trump and his populism. How can a billionaire be a populist? Read Hanson’s article. It explains it all very well. You must remember that populism is not equalitarianism, nor is it plebiscitary democracy. Populists expect to earn what they get; but they also expect to keep what they earn, and to play hard on a level playing field.

[snip] Making Stuff

Trumpism is a pragmatist in another way: his unapologetic deference to 19th-century muscular labor and those who employ and organize it. Though we are well into the 21st-century informational age, Trump apparently believes that the age-old industries — steel, drilling, construction, farming, mining, logging — are still noble and necessary pursuits. Using one’s hands or one’s mind to create something concrete and real is valuable in and of itself, and a much-needed antidote to the Pajama Boy–Ivy League culture of abstraction. Silicon Valley, the marquee universities, and progressive ideologues might dismiss these producers as polluting dinosaurs, but all of them also rely on forgotten others to fuel their Priuses, bring them their kitchen counters, their hardwood floors, and their evening cabernet and arugula and, 12 hours later, their morning yogurt and granola. The producers acknowledge the equal importance of Apple and Google in a way that is never quite reciprocated by Silicon Valley. In other words, expect Trumpism to champion fracking, logging, Keystone, “clean” coal, highway construction, the return of contracted irrigation water to its farmers, the retention of federal grazing lands for cattlemen — not just because in Trump’s view these industries are valuable sources of material wealth for the nation but also because they empower the sort of people who are the antidote to what American is becoming.[snip]

There’s more, and it’s all pretty clear; I might have written much of it. I mean that in the sense that I found little to disagree with; I don’t mean to take anything away from Professor Hanson. Read the article. You’ll understand Trump better, agree with Trumpism or not.

It has been slow at Chaos Manor. I’m doing a lot more exercising during the day; I have to. My backaches and joint problems are creeping up on me, and lots of stretching is really the only thing that helps.

I suppose I need a new hip, but my observation of what happens to people who get artificial hips does not encourage me to try it. I’ve forgone the Tibetan Rites until I get the back problem under control. I’ve also had problems with hearing – mostly mine. I seem to grow more wax than bees do. Aggressive cleaning with a syringe is indicated, but I guess I was too vigorous because I managed a mild earache. Nothing serious, and it is subsiding, but it has been annoying. And of course there are still books to write.

President Obama gave his farewell speech. He did not mention one of his great legacies;

President Obama Increases U.S. Regulatory State by 12% in one Month

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/12/26/president-obama-increases-u-s-regulatory-state-12-one-month/

Actually that’s quite a record.

Vinland

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/05/new-ruins-of-viking-village-near-the-hudson-river-seriously-question-where-were-the-borders-of-the-legendary-vinland/2

J M Davis

Interesting. Of course the Vikings always believed Vinland was closer to Greenland, but that could be misinterpretation.

DNC Hack –

Hi Jerry,

Attribution of attacks is a major problem.  

https://clockworklantern.com/2017/01/01/the-problem-of-attribution/

Let me describe a situation, and see if you can guess what I’m referring to:

A high-profile hack occurred, including data disclosure, and has been attributed to a foreign government.   The original source for that attribution was a leak to the press, followed by statements from the executive branch.  Later, the intelligence community released a report that’s woefully thin on details, and have yet to provide a classified briefing to the congressional oversight committee with full information.  No joint statement from the select committee has been released.

I’m sure you immediately thought of the recent hack of the Democratic National Committee, but it easily could also reference the Sony hack last year.  In both cases we have an assertion of responsibility to a nation state, with no substantive details.  What’s interesting to me is how some in the security community responded to those two assertions.  One was widely dismissed, pointing out the difficulty of attribution, while the other – by the same security experts – was generally accepted.   Let me come back to that.

First, let’s look at the broader problem of attribution.

Primarily it involves indicators of compromise (things left from the hack) and human sources of information (things from people).  Hacker toolkits and techniques are designed to minimize the IOC’s as much as possible.  Everything from wiping logs, to hopping multiple compromised servers and using proxies to disguise the originating machine are bread and butter to the sophisticated adversary.

In some cases, malware code is left behind, which can provide a vital clue, but that only goes so far.  This week, there’s been a number of breathless news stories that Russian malware has been found on a computer at an American utility.  To paraphrase the greatest movie of all time, “I’m Shocked, Shocked! that there is malware from Russia going on here. (Insert a scene of a junior hacker running up and saying ‘hello sir, here’s the attack tool kit we bought off the dark web’).”

Seriously, a substantial percentage of the malware in circulation today relies on toolkits built by Russian hackers – they’re very good at it.  But the source code is almost all available for sale, so the original author (and remember, Russian hacker doesn’t mean Russian government) is rarely the one perpetuating the attack.   More to the point, it’s no surprise to anyone in the security profession that there’s Russian, North Korean, or Chinese on any particular machine in America – any more than it’s a surprise for Iran, Russia, China, or North Korea to find that there’s American, British, or Israeli malware on their systems.  Everybody hacks.  But unless the hacker makes a mistake, successful prosecution and reliable attribution from IOC’s alone is very challenging.

That’s where the people side of the investigation comes in.   Most hacking involves money, and following financial trails is something law enforcement is very good at.  The majority of the remainder involves intellectual property theft, which can also be traced – often when knockoff products appear, though by then it’s too late to do anything about.  Pure activism hacking is the hardest, but in all three cases people talk, either in exchange for protection from prosecution, venting on a forum, or social media bragging rights, and law enforcement finds out.   Lastly, for some attacks there’s both signals and human intelligence that can be brought to bear, but much of that will never be revealed (and rightly so) as it would compromise sources and methods.

So we’re back full circle.   For the hacks I referenced above, we must remember there are geo and domestic political motivations to attribute those to a particular nation state.  I treat any such assertion (from either party) as suspect, particularly when it’s ‘leaked’ to the press.  My own experience with folks in the intelligence community is that the ones who really know, don’t talk, and the ones who don’t know, well, they talk too much.

Wikileaks claims that they didn’t get the information from the Russian government, rather that it was delivered in a Washington park by an insider.  Given the complete lack of details in the report issued this week, the timing of the attribution, the refusal to brief the select committee, and the petulance of the outgoing administration, I’m skeptical of the asserted story.  I don’t dismiss it, but I am skeptical.  I’m also skeptical of the Sony Hack attribution, and still skeptical of much of Snowden’s story as well.   We have assertions and very limited real information on all three – we pretty much know “what” happened, but the who and why remain unclear.

It’s very human to take what facts we do have and try to make a coherent story out of them.  That’s my job actually – to recognize the pattern and story in what my clients are saying, and then capture and articulate it back as a security architecture and strategy. Of course, I have far more information to work with than we’ve been given on these attacks, and can go back and ask questions to make sure I fully understand the situation.

But that’s where the analogy breaks down.   I work for a company that sells security software and services.  Both my own integrity and our company values, require that I work in the best interest of my client.  That’s why part of my job is to integrate with competing solutions and services.  Of course, when our products and services meet the requirements and provide good value, I’ll recommend what I sell – that’s my job, and no one expects me to do anything different.

Attribution is different.  As professionals, we must set a common yardstick and apply it equally and fairly to regardless of target, source, or impact.  Rarely will we know with certainty.   Ethically we must disclose the speculative nature, alternate explanations and probabilities involved.

For the DNC and Sony attacks, because there are nation state issues, we’re never going to have all the facts, and will have to rely on a trusted third-party who does.  You can stop laughing now, because you’re right – that doesn’t exist;  I don’t trust either administration on this one.  The best that we could do is a joint statement by both the majority and minority leaders of the house select committee on intelligence, after a full classified briefing by the entire intelligence community, that provides attribution and some level of IOC’s.   Until then, I remain skeptical.

D

As you say. Certainty of attribution is an extraordinary claim. As to voting integrity:

In One Detroit Precinct 52 Ballots Yielded 307 Votes

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=18271?omhide=true

A scientific consensus that does not include Freeman Dyson is no consensus at all.

http://www.noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman_dyson.php

Well worth your reading.

“Russian” hack redux

The KrebsonSecurity article, linked by Tracy, is very informative. However it, like nearly every other article on the subject, ignores the most important piece of information in all this. Julian Assange — you know, the founder/head of Wikileaks, who actually released the “hacked” emails to the public — has assured us that he got the material from a DNC insider.

Should we trust Assange? Should we trust Clapper? Hmmm . . . Tough choice.

They could both be telling us “the truth”. There is abundant evidence that the Russians — or someone pretending to be Russians — penetrated both the DNC and the RNC. But should we believe that they were the only ones? Probably so did the British, the French, the Dutch, the Israelis, the Bangladeshis and a couple score of script kiddies working from their parents’ basements.

It may be that Clapper is being truthful (for an arbitrary value of “truthful”), in telling us that the Russians (or someone pretending to be clumsy Russians) penetrated those systems, but he simply cannot know who gave the goods to Wikileaks.

Occam’s Razor suggests that Assange is telling us the truth about that.

Richard White

Del Valle, Texas

The point being that we simply do not know, but saying that we do is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. We have seen little.

Jerry,

The most alarming facet of the on going circus surrounding the DNC Hack and document dump is how politicized our National Intelligence Agencies have become.

This is, perhaps, the swamp that needs to be drained first. The Department of Education’s demise is important, but its abolishment should be much easier.

Bob Holmes

But the DoED is much harder to control; we have a unique opportunity to undo the mistake made after Sputnik. We should take it. Intelligence services we will always have with us, and that swamp will always need periodic draining.

This will seem to ramble a bit, but there’s a lot of background, to be able to appreciate the punch line.

Over the Christmas holidays, as part of a combination “escape from Huntsville/last-minute mileage run”, I took up a new hobby.

I’m learning to fly the Boeing 737NG, in simulation, on a Pacific Simulators (http://www.pacificsimulators.com/) PS3.5, a state-of-the-science Advanced Aviation Training Device.  This is a flight simulator without a motion base: the pilot gets his motion cues from a high-quality visual scene.

Their customers are usually people who want to get a taste of airliner flying, or (usually) give their children a taste.  I went in, explained that I wanted to learn the 737, stick-and-rudder flying, really learn it.  They looked at me and basically said “We can do that.”

I have 1 1/2 hours of “orientation”-type rides, and 8 hours of hard working time.  I flew every day for six days: 4 days of 1-hour sessions, 2 days of 2-hour sessions.  I have learned a surprising amount, made memories that will last a lifetime, and I’m just getting started.

Thirty years ago, during lunch hour one day, I had the opportunity to fly the Research and Engineering Simulator at General Dynamics / Fort Worth Division.  It was a fixed-base sim, with visual scene.  It required five (later reconfigured to need “only” three) Harris superminicomputers to run, and used an Evans & Sutherland light valve (I think that was the term for the projector system).

The PS3.5 is nicer than the R&E sim was.

And now I finally get to the point:

After a particularly instructive session (you really don’t want to know), I discovered that the simulator was running on Microsoft Windows computers and Lockheed-Martin’s Prepar3d.  (http://www.prepar3d.com/)  Prepar3d is what used to be the professional version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.  When Microsoft discontinued it, Lockheed-Martin bought the rights and has continued to develop it, for non-entertainment purposes.

Windows.  PCs.  PC graphics cards.  Commercial projectors.

We are definitely not in Kansas any more, Toto.

–John R. Strohm

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

A little late, as the information was put out at a news conference in 2015, but NASA confirmed the presence of liquid water in multiple locations just below the Martian surface and in large amounts.

How large?

One of these locations, in Valles Marineris, as a bare minimum to explain the observations, would have to contain 10^5 cubic meters of water. That’s one hundred million liters in one of these wet spots, which have a long name that NASA abbreviates to “RSL”.

Here is the original news conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og67Xe5quEY

Aside from the implications for possible life on Mars, this means human colonization is now proven much more feasible. Mars is known now to have the minerals in the soil, CO2 and Nitrogen in the atmosphere and water to grow food in “greenhouses”. Simple nineteenth century chemical engineering, a la Robert Zubrin, allows you to turn water and CO2 into oxygen and methane, which makes a nice rocket fuel. The perchlorates in the soil that are what seem to make this solid water possible by expanding the temperature range of liquid water on Mars from the narrow zero Celsius to ten Celsius of pure H2O to something around nine times wider are also very useful chemicals. Solid fuel rockets can be made from aluminum perchlorate.

These wet points have so far only been observed at the driest time of the day on Mars, and only in the roughly five per cent of the Martian surface that has been mapped at hi-res by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. There is in all likelihood a LOT of water on Mars, and not hard to get at, nor frozen.

Petronius

Elon Musk envisions colonizing Mars, with thousands of ships.

Space Access Conference Announcement 1/8/17

Sunday, 01/08/17 – There will not be a Space Access Conference this April in Phoenix. Our long-time Conference Manager is retiring from that role. Proposals are now being accepted to organize and run the next Space Access Conference, date and location TBD.

Details at http://space-access.org/updates/SAAnnouncement.html

Congressional Black Caucus Rehangs Painting Depicting Cops as Pigs Day After Black Cop Shot Dead

 

A high school student’s painting that portrays the events in Ferguson, Missouri, is back on the wall on Capitol Hill. Democratic congressman William Lacy Clay rehung the painting on Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker had removed it because he found it offensive.

 

 

Half of young people have so many ’emotional problems’ they cannot focus at school, study finds

Jerry

This is mostly about how at-sea kids feel today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/10/half-young-people-have-many-emotional-problems-cannot-focus/

One is struck by how much they feel they will not have jobs. This is understandable. So why not provide jobs for everyone? Ditch welfare – we can’t afford it anyway. Pay people to do things we can’t afford to pay for today because we are too busy paying for welfare.

Ed

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Monday, January 9, 2017

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

In 1953, the Office of Education, a very minor Bureau in the Federal Security Agency which was, I believe, in the Department of the Interior was upgraded to become part of the cabinet level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Education was a small part of that, because it is not mentioned in the Constitution and thus was considered the task of the States. The GI Bill after WW II changed higher education by making it possible for nearly every veteran of the war to go to college; the Korean Bill gave a smaller, but less restrictive, grant of $33/week to Korean vets who chose to go to college full time. Neither of these revolutions in higher education had much effect on primary and high school education, nor were they intended to.

During the 1950’sthere was considerable agitation for a stronger federal role in the public school system. The opposition against Federal Aid to Education – a favorite debate topic in both high school and college debates – was chiefly that federal aid would mean federal control, and would mean the bureaucratization of all state schools, and thus would hamper education all over the country. Proponents spoke of what wonders could be accomplished for a fraction of the cost of a warship or bomber, and how deplorable some schools were.

The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 was decisive.

[snip]The Soviet space success and well-publicized American space failures induced a climate of national crisis. Critics pointed to the deficiencies of American students in mathematics and science. The Sputnik crisis sparked national legislation to support training, equipment, and programs in fields vital to defense. The scientific community including university scholars and curriculum specialists are often called upon to reconstruct subject-matter content, especially on the high school level. [snip] https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/fedaid.html

[For more details see file:///C:/Users/JerryP/Downloads/Kaestle_Article_FutureFedRole_020101.pdf ]

There was great pressure for Education to have a ministry – a cabinet level Department – of its own, but this was successfully resisted until Jimmy Carter in 1979. Note that Federal Aid to Education had been in effect since 1958, and had grown in size and control over local education systems every year. Now it was a Department, and growth accelerated. In 1983 a blue ribbon National Commission on Education headed by Nobel Prize winning nuclear scientist Glenn T. Seaborg published a report called “A Nation at Risk” that concluded “If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.” Most studies conclude that education has deteriorated since that report. Republicans have attempted to abolish both the Education Department and Federal Aid to Education (to be terminated with a diminishing series of block grants) but failed.

Today the very liberal Los Angeles Times published:

For better schools, abolish the politicized Department of Education and give local districts more control

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-meredith-paige-abolish-education-department-20170106-story.html

Bruce Meredith, Mark Paige

Republicans opposed the Department of Education from its beginning and regularly threaten to abolish it now, arguing that educational policy should be reserved to the states. Two respected Democrats also objected to the department’s creation almost 40 years ago. New York Sen. Daniel Moynihan warned that it would become a partisan sword. New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm worried about divorcing education from other policy areas vital to student success, such as making sure they had decent housing and enough to eat.

History has proved the critics right. It’s time for the department to be dismantled. It has done some good, especially in pointing out education inequity. But more often it has served political, not educational, interests.

In fact, the Department of Education was created by President Carter in part as a gift to the National Education Assn., for the union’s early support of his candidacy. Politics was the department’s original sin, and that reality has gotten only worse.[snip]

The article is worth reading; but its conclusion is vital. Federal Aid to Education has generated, among other horrors, “No Child Left Behind”, which, through aggressive enforcement and regulations, produces the result of No Child Gets Ahead, which is the only way to assure that statistically no child will be left behind. The Congress should end DoED and Federal Aid to Education – by a series of diminishing block grants to the states to be administered by the Department of the Interior after the instant abolition of DoED, all its employees being declared redundant.

If the Federal Government wants to show the States how to have great primary and secondary schools, it has the undisputed Constitutional right to do so by establishing those schools in the District of Columbia. It should easily be able to do so (if the experts actually know how) with the savings from the elimination of the former Department of Education; if they do not attract copiers by their excellence of results, perhaps they ought not to have been imposing methods on all the schools in the nation.

I had another back attack this morning and have spent much of the day exercising and stretching. It’s fairly clear I will have to do a lot more of that in the next couple of weeks. See previous post on details of that.

Wall Street Journal: “The smart line from the beginning would have been to denounce the hack, acknowledge that Russia has been acting in ways that harm the U.S., and say that Mr. Putin should stop or face consequences once Mr. Trump is President. Mr. Trump could also say that if Mr. Obama had retaliated sooner against Russia, the election hacks might not have happened. Instead, Mr. Trump’s denial of Russian reality makes him look like a sap for Mr. Putin.”

Mr. Trump: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad!” he tweeted on Saturday. He added: “We have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now.”

Wall Street Journal: “Let’s hope so, but it isn’t “stupid” to mistrust Mr. Putin. After his sheltering of Edward Snowden, his invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, intervention in Syria, sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and massacre of civilians in Aleppo, only a fool would imagine that Mr. Putin can be trusted beyond the cold logic of military and economic balance of power.”

But if only a fool would trust Mr. Putin, does it make for a better negotiating position for Mr. Trump to say so? To publicly denounce Mr. Putin in order to provide the media with headlines? May we not assume that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin pretty well know what they are doing, and this includes a pretty good idea of the actual interests each seeks to protect? And that each pretty well knows this, and each knows a lot about what the other desires, needs, and is thinking? So why do we need to impose sanctions on Russia for doing what we have always done, namely tried to influence public opinion in each others’ nation? When Reagan talked of the evil empire, he was denounced by the press; now Trump is denounced for not speaking ill of Russia and Mr. Putin, and he is not yet President.

Apparently the Wall Street Journal is concerned that the New York Times will think ill of it. Or perhaps it simply wanted to say something even if it makes little sense. Memo to WSJ: Mr. Trump is no fool, and betting that he is a fool is a very bad bet.

Pompey the Great was Julius Caesar’s son-in-law and so long as Caesar’s daughter Julia was alive they had strong mutual interests and got along splendidly.

             Sunday, 01/08/17 – There will not be a Space Access Conference this April in Phoenix. Our long-time Conference Manager is retiring from that role. Proposals are now being accepted to organize and run the next Space Access Conference, date and location TBD.

Details at http://space-access.org/updates/SAAnnouncement.html

Daesh

Terrorists are organizing scavenger hunts where pre-teens are killing bound prisoners in abandoned buildings. They even have a pre-schooler shooting someone in the face and a seven year-old kid beheading someone and more.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/01/08/isis-shows-preschooler-killing-victim-tied-to-carnival-ball-pit/

Yeah, we can’t do anything about this. We need to cry about Russian hacking. This is an embarrassment, the Democratic party is an embarrassment, and I’m nearly embarrassed to call myself American in 2017. This is disgusting. Some “JV Team”, eh, Groveler in Chief?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Come now. We can defeat ISIS, although not with a CinC who thinks they are the Junior Varsity.

The Russian Bear

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
From today’s (London) Times, a quote from Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe:
“In reality, Russia has set itself on a collision course with the West. It is far more dangerous than Isis and is now our strategic adversary, having built up its military capability and thrown away the rule book on which post-Cold War security was based. … The invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was a turning point in history and demonstrated unequivocally that Russia was our enemy now and that the situation had fundamentally changed. They’d been planning this all along, while pretending openness. Again, Putin got away with it, but it provided the wake-up call we needed.”

I agree that Russia has a long-standing interest in Slavic populations, and that Estonia is close to St. Petersburg. But I also remember the Sudetenland, and the story of the farmer who said “I’m not greedy. I only want whatever land is next to mine.”

It would indeed be unwise to twist the bear’s tail. But, as an old backwoods camper, neither would I want to feed it or pose for selfies. So far we seem to be shouting and making noise; which sometimes works.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

There’s only one rifle in this camp, and another camper has it. I will have it in a couple of weeks. I think it would not be wise to go out looking for the bear to taunt it; but even less wise to do so while someone else has the rifle.

Russian Email Hacking
Personally, I trust Assange more than I do the US main stream media or *anything* that may come from the corruption that is the Obama Administration. But, concerning the assertions that Putin and the Russians were behind the email hacks the response, I am, nonetheless, reminded of a quote from The Usual Suspects that was based upon the following quote from Charles Baudelaire’s “The Generous Gambler”;
“My dear brethren, do not ever forget … that the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!”
That being said, supposedly, these masterminds of intrigue broke through the layers of defense built to protect these servers – presumably – yet was amateurish enough to leave behind enough evidence of the break-in to provide certainty of those responsible.
Yeah. And, I have some prime ocean front property in Arizona for sale.
Even if the Russians *were* behind the break-in, just what was the result?
Did they invent anything? Are the documents released fraudulent in any manner?
Best I can tell is that all that was exposed was the TRUTH. It seems to me that, if the claims of Obama et al are correct, that Putin and the Russians were behind the hacks, then a Pulitzer or two might need to be handed out to the Russians for uncovering the scandal of what was done to Bernie Sanders by Hillary’s campaign and the DNC. Would not that rise to the level of Watergate?
So, I don’t believe the Russians were behind the hack, if for nothing else than they are experienced enough to not leave behind any evidence, certainly not the bumbling ineptitude necessary to provide the level of detail Obama and his cronies assert exist.
But, there’s still Baudelaire’s quote…
Cam Kirmser

Hello Jerry,

At the time I bought my computers the anti-virus program most highly recommended by Best Buy was Kaspersky. According to Consumer Search it continues to be highly rated but according to their latest review was narrowly beaten out by Bitdefender.

Kaspersky is a Russian product and is supposedly very good at performing as advertised.

Would anyone be shocked to learn that a software product produced by the Russians, distributed all over the world, and intentionally bought and installed on a large percentage of the world’s government, business, and personal computers by their owners had a few ‘undocumented’ features that may be more valuable to the Russians than the sales revenue?

Mind you that I am not saying that Kaspersky HAS any such undocumented features; I am only expressing surprise that millions of folks apparently have a high degree of confidence that the Russians produced and distributed such software WITHOUT including them.

Bob Ludwick

Cyberwarfare for Sale

An article about “ethical” hacking tools – and how they can be abused by governments and private concerns.

Cyberwarfare for sale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/magazine/cyberwar-for-sale.html?_r=0

Clapper is Incredible

I read the View today and saw this line from Clapper:

<.>

Whether or not that constitutes an act of war I think is a very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make. But it’s certainly — would carry in my view great gravity.

</>

As DNI he knows, or should know, better. Covert action straddles the line between diplomacy and warfare. Anyone who knows anything about statecraft or intelligence knows this. Who does he think he’s fooling? They’re totally trying to sensationalize this. And of course you cannot measure the impact of intelligence operations, in most cases we cannot even prove they were effective it’s called “the paradox of intelligence”. What I read was merely shameless pandering to the ignorant, all of it; not just the part I quoted in this email.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Oxymoron…

I remember when “military intelligence” was jokingly(?) called an oxymoron. 

Now that the United States has decreed that all intelligence bureaus throughout the federal government shall freely share information working under a super intelligence chief – currently Clapper – it is probably true that in the United States national intelligence is an oxymoron. No joking this time. 

Charles Brumbelow

Jerry,

   Here’s one of the best comments I’ve seen on the current state of the DNC hack I’ve seen, by one of the best security researchers I know:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/the-download-on-the-dnc-hack/

Tracy

Russian Hacking Narrative

Jerry,

The Dems, the current (Dem partisan) intel bureaucratic leadership, and the MSM are all enthusiastically pushing this “Russia hacked the election” narrative for the obvious reason, an attempt to cripple this new administration from the start.

Does it even need to be said that what the Russians did was of a piece with what they (and the Chinese, and half the rest of the world) have been doing to us (during our elections and otherwise) for years now?

Nor was it clearly distinguishable from what our former SecState did to the Russian elections a few years back. Why the left-prog establishment is finally, now, suddenly noisily horrified is left as an exercise for the reader.

I note this morning however that Senators McCain and Graham are on one of the Sunday talk shows, chiming in. I can see why they’re doing this

– they hope to pressure the President-elect into adopting more of their actively anti-Russian stance.

As you know I even sympathize with the two Senators on that point; I too think firm support for Balts and Ukrainians and Georgians should take precedence over rapprochement with Russia, at least till Russia dials the international aggression back down a bit from 11. (Mind, I’m beginning to think it’s at least arguable that Trump’s approach may have better odds of achieving that dialing-down. But that’s a different letter.)

Regardless, I think McCain and Graham are making a grave error in tactically allying with the Dem/Bureaucrat/MSM axis on this. It is very unlikely that they can accomplish just their limited goal of altering Trump’s apparent Russia accommodationism, then step aside unscathed, when their ad hoc allies are going all-out to cripple the new Presidency from the start (with what currently looks like some chance of success.)

Porkypine

 

On 12/19/2016 12:26 PM, Porkypine wrote:

Jerry,

Byron York has a great deal more on the CIA’s – actually, on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s – defiance of the House Intel Committee, tying it into an overall effort to delegitimize the President-Elect as “Russian-backed.”

On December 9th, “President Obama… ordered the Intelligence Community to finish a review of allegations of Russian election hacking by the time Obama leaves office on Jan. 20.”

Then “on Dec. 12, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saying, in effect: Why didn’t you tell us? Why do we have to learn about this in the media? Nunes demanded the DNI brief the Intel Committee on the Russia situation no later than Dec. 16.”

“It didn’t happen. First, DNI flatly refused Nunes’ request. And then, included in an announcement that it would not brief the Electoral College, the DNI also announced it would offer no more briefings to lawmakers until after the Obama-ordered report is finished next year.”

The piece then goes into considerable detail on why “the bottom line is many Republicans who follow intelligence issues closely are convinced the White House is going to drop an intensely political document in January, the intended effect of which will be to delegitimize the election of Trump.”

My view: It’s a preemptive strike on Trump by partisan Dem intel bureaucrats, aimed at beating him right at the start of the fight to redirect their agencies to support the new Administration’s policies.

(After all, that worked so well for Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor!)

I’ve said before that Trump will need to go through the agencies with fire and sword to root out Dem partisan activists before he can get anything much done.

Now these people seem to be doing their best to persuade him he has no other choice. Smart? Not if they don’t win decisively at the start. If they get him mad and it turns into a prolonged war of attrition… Just ask Admiral Yamamoto how well that worked out.

Read the whole thing. It’s at

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-intel-report-wont-end-russia-hacking-fight/article/2609959

Porkypine

Paul Krugman is now a Deficit Hawk

Jerry,

Things have changed a lot in 2 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days. Paul Krugman is now a Deficit Hawk! — It’s a miracle!

The Tea Party can now proudly hold the banner: “We love Paul Krugman!”

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Time to Borrow, Paul Krugman AUG. 8, 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/time-to-borrow.html>

“….Right now there is an overwhelming case for more government borrowing…..”

Debt, Diversion, Distraction, Paul Krugman, October 22, 2016 <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/debt-diversion-distraction/?_r=0>

“…. So, about that supposed debt crisis: right now we have a more or less stable ratio of debt to GDP, and no hint of a financing problem. So claims that we are facing something terrible rest on the presumption that the budget situation will worsen dramatically over time. How sure are we about that? Less than you may imagine…..”

Deficits Matter Again, Paul Krugman JAN. 9, 2017 < http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/opinion/deficits-matter-again.html>

“…. Those apocalyptic warnings are still foolish: America, which borrows in its own currency and therefore can’t run out of cash, isn’t at all like Greece. But running big deficits is no longer harmless, let alone desirable…..”

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Just when I thought it couldn’t get crazier, Washington, the Democrats, and the media found a way. Either I’m nuts, or they are: We have the spectacle of “the Intelligence Community” becoming the leakers-in-chief, probably with the approval and encouragement of the Commander-in-Chief, releasing a “Declassified” document insisting that we know:

1. Who hacked what servers, Federal, State, and County. The hacking was done by Russia,

2. Not only what country accomplished the hacking, but what organizations in that country did it.

3. The name of the Russian official who approved this operation, namely Mr. Putin.

4. What he intended to accomplish with all this, namely that he wanted to influence the American Presidential election, ensuring the election of Donald Trump, while degrading Hillary Clinton, this with a view to undermining liberal democracy everywhere in the world.

In other words, we have the most spectacularly accomplished and successful Intelligence establishment in the world, ranking right up there with some of the great spies in history; and this Intelligence Community released a report bragging about the accomplishments.

Since the evidence on which they based these conclusions remains classified and is nowhere even hinted at, we must draw our own conclusions without it.

The first conclusion is that there are only a few ways we could have any level of certitude about the intentions of Mr. Putin. One would be his own public statements; but these seem a mixed bag, capable of several interpretations, and do not constitute overwhelming evidence of an intent to work harm against America in order to promote Mr. Trump and downgrade Mrs. Clinton. Indeed, from much of what he has said, he would consider Mr. Trump both a more formidable opponent than Barack Obama or Mrs. Clinton as his successor. He might prefer Mr. Trump as a better candidate for a deal – he has said as much – but where is the evidence that he feels so strongly on this that he would use clandestine methods to harm Clinton and aid Trump? Mr. Putin did not leave incriminating emails on Mrs. Clinton’s server, nor did Russian hackers falsify any voter information. He has made public statements about the form of liberal democracy the US establishment tries to export, and is obviously not impressed with the results in Somalia, Libya, and various other places, but neither is anyone else; no clandestine means needed.

Now it is possible that the hackings were so sloppy as to leave irrefutable evidence of both the country of origin of the hackers; that it was a government act; and the hackers left evidence of their identity. It is possible that we are so skilled as to identify that these indicators of Russian involvement are genuine, and not some clues left by others intent on deceiving us; but it is not obviously true. It is an extraordinary claim, or two claims: that we’re that good, and they’re that sloppy; but again this is not obvious, and indeed most evidence is that they are plenty good.

DNI Chief Clapper Takes Swipe at Trump, Assange as He Defends Russia Hack Intel

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sen-mccain-russia-s-election-meddling-unprecedented-attack-n700981

The nation’s top intelligence official on Thursday defended his colleagues’ findings that Russian agents interfered in the U.S. election — and dismissed the credibility of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a day after the president-elect appeared to back him over the intelligence community.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also took a swipe at the president-elect for “disparaging” the intelligence community.

Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia had stepped up its cyber espionage operations, but stopped short of declaring the Russian election hacking an “act of war,” saying that would be “a very heavy policy call” more appropriate for others to make. [snip]

A Look at Russian Hacking

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119291

While the international space station brings new renown to Russia, the nation is gaining a darker sort of notice from other explorers — hackers who launch into cyberspace.

Russia’s reputation as home to some of the world’s most gifted and devious hackers was underscored last month when Microsoft Corp. disclosed that passwords used to access its coveted source code had been sent from the company network to an e-mail address in St. Petersburg.

It is by no means clear whether a Russian was behind the break-in — that e-mail account could have been managed remotely. But that doesn’t stop Russian hackers — “khakeri,” or “vzlomshchiki (house-breakers)” — from puffing out their chests at such exploits.

Bragging Rights?

In a recent poll on a hacker-oriented Web site, 82 percent said Russia had the world’s best hackers; only 5 percent said Americans were better. [snip]

And none of this is much evidence that the activity was ordered by Mr. Putin; and even less so for ascertaining his motive. Indeed, the only way we could be positive that it was ordered by Mr. Putin specifically to upgrade Mr. Trump and downgrade Mrs. Clinton – positive to the degree General Clapper asserts that we know it – would to be to have a mole in Mr. Putin’s headquarters: a code clerk, or stenographer, or a high official; someone who would be present when such matters were discussed. If we’re that sure, we must have sparked some frantic counter-intelligence activities in the Kremlin. Perhaps I have underestimated the abilities of our Intelligence Community? This whole show was to make the Kremlin go mole hunting?

In any event, it was not designed to increase Mr. Trump’s esteem for the Intelligence Community; but it does make the Democrats feel better about losing elections down to the level of county dog catcher; it was all because of the Russian, and that devil, Putin.

Clapper: Alleged Russian Hacking Efforts ‘Did Not Change the Vote Tallies’

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/01/05/clapper-alleged-russian-hacking-efforts-not-change-vote-tallies/

[snip] MCCAIN: I thank you. And so really, what we’re talking about, is if they succeeded in changing the results of an election of which none of us believe they were, that would have to constitute an attack on the United States of America because of the effects, if they had succeeded, would you agree with that?

CLAPPER: First, we cannot say — they did not change any vote tallies or — or anything of that sort.

MCCAIN: Yeah, I’m just talking about…

(CROSSTALK)

CLAPPER: And we have no — we have no way of gauging the impact that — certainly the intelligence community can’t gauge the — the impact it had on the choices the electorate made. There’s no way for us to gauge that.

Whether or not that constitutes an act of war I think is a very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make. But it’s certainly — would carry in my view great gravity. [snip]

The week started reasonably well, but Wednesday night I read late, slept in late Thursday, and everything started downhill. Didn’t get much done Thursday – not really much to write about, what with not going to CES, and the gangs in Washington chasing their tails. Friday morning I woke up to find I had a crippling backache. It was about the same in both location and magnitude as the one I had in the early 1980’s, when Larry and I were working on Footfall. It went on for days, and during that time Larry and I were guests of honor at a science fiction convention in Bellingham, Washington. The backache was so severe that Larry had to deal with my luggage; it was very nearly crippling. The morning after we got there I had so much trouble bending far enough to put my socks on that Larry was moved to ask “Just how close is this collaboration?”

I was young then and managed to endure the weekend, and returned home to find the medical profession wasn’t much use. They could offer me pills and other pain relieving stuff, but not much else. Fortunately, Steve Barnes did know: he gave me a book, Stretching, which told me exercises that in a week got me mobile and in three weeks essentially banished that particular back pain for thirty years. I’ve given copies of that book to any friend who has back problems, and it works. Well, usually works. The exercises for that back pain are very painful; at least they were for me. I do tend to be an overachiever, and that may be part of it. But I stuck to them, and in a week they weren’t particularly painful, and in three weeks my pains were gone. I periodically kept them up over the years, along with the Five Tibetan Rites, but since my stroke I have been neglectful, and since Roberta’s difficulties even more so; and Friday morning I could barely walk.

I knew precisely what I had to do (as well as what I’ll have to do in future): I had to do those stretches. The problem was that the important ones involve being on the floor. It’s not easy for me to get on the floor, but I managed it. Did several stretches and twists. Painful as hell, bad as I remembered from thirty years ago, but I knew I was improving, and next time wouldn’t be as bad. Unfortunately, I was on the floor. My Yoga pad was upstairs, but I was on the floor of my downstairs bedroom. And I couldn’t get off the floor. I couldn’t even get to my knees.

I tried, and managed to pull over a chair trying. A fall of no great distance – I couldn’t even get to my knees – and a resulting huge ugly bruise on my forearm, but it wasn’t painful and it will go way. No further damage except to the remnants of my pride. And there didn’t seem to be a path to standing up in my bedroom. I’d have to get to my knees first, and while normally I have no problems doing that, the back pains were severe enough to prevent it.

I managed to scoot across the floor to the bathroom, where there is a signaling device – placed a bit high for reaching from the floor, but with the aid of a grab bar down low near the toilet I got to it and pushed the button.

Of course nothing happened. Ryan and Kelly had taken Roberta to physical therapy and I was alone in the house.

But the grab bar down low by the toilet was sufficient to let me get to my knees, then to sit on the toilet, and from there it was painful to stand but I could do it. Ryan and Kelly brought Roberta back an hour later. By then I had made coffee, and taken a lot better precautions about getting up again and had a couple more stretches. And this morning the back pain was down by more than half, I could do more stretches, and now, this afternoon, I’ve got this thing licked. If I’d known about Stretching thirty years ago I needn’t have spent several weeks of misery. I advise everyone: get that book, and learn about The Five Tibetan Rites. You’ll be glad you did.

The Tibetan Rites will help you grow old a little more gracefully. I’m not really up to them although I was working my way into them when Roberta had her stroke, and I shouldn’t have stopped. I’ll start again. Incidentally, while Hugh Howey and Amber give a good non-mystical intro to the Tibetan Rites, the best demonstration is by Ellen Rush.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/06/spectacular-collision-suns-will-create-new-star-night-sky-2022/

Find the darnedest things in the internet…

https://www.pdf-archive.com/2014/07/14/the-bell-curve/the-bell-curve.pdf

 

The original controversial book, with an afterward by one of the authors, I do believe.

The version with the afterward is 689 pages while the original (also downloadable) is 439 pages. Careful, the main part of the site seems to want people to download stuff they likely don’t want. This link seems clean.

http://www.ttu.ee/public/m/mart-murdvee/EconPsy/2/Lynn_2008_The_Global_Bell_Curve_-_Race_IQ_and_Inequality_Worldwide.pdf

Somewhat of a follow up to the ground breaking study, internationalized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

An overview with various links of possible interest.

Charles Brumbelow

It is one book everyone ought to read; it has been badly reviewed, lambasted, denounced by “scholars” who have never read it; but the data are there, and you can make up your own mind.

“They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort.”

<https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/clapper-russians-didnt-alter-vote-count-presidential-election>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Now what do you suppose could be done with all that fresh water?

very, very respectfully,

Rod

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/06/the-crack-in-this-antarctic-ice-shelf-just-grew-by-11-miles-a-break-could-be-imminent/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_antarctic-1250pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.9a643b9d35a6

Congressman and Pilot Jim Bridenstine is the Trump pick for NASA Admin. He is friendly to what you and your readers want. Mitch Daniels is being offered as the alternative. Buzz and the Mars people have gotten behind Daniels. Few sure Daniels really wants the job but it muddies the waters.

This is a good rundown of where everything else stands.

http://www.geekwire.com/2017/superhighway-space-jeff-bezos-twitter/

There you go, again

Dr. Pournelle,
National review has caught up to you on F35: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443612/f-35-donald-trump-should-cancel-failed-f-35-fighter-jet-program
NR is also calling for intelligence reform, but I seem to remember reform being how we got into this mess: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443606/donald-trump-intelligence-reform
…more iron law examples, I suppose. To my thinking, F35 acquisition is typical, not exceptional, in the way military contracts are run, and the whole system needs to be rebuilt. Combining intelligence agencies ignores the very real problem of political, military, and commercial intelligence becoming a political stage for personal gain — these services _need_ firewalls to maintain credibility and constrain behavior. We’ve failed to learn the lessons from J. Edgar Hoover’s secret policing and Colin Powell’s disgrace.
With best wishes for Roberta,
-d

Obama Awards Himself Defense Dept. Distinguished Public Service Medal

by BREITBART NEWS January 5, 2017

 

On Wednesday, President Obama added another prestigious medal to his Nobel Prize collection when he had Defense Secretary Ash Carter award him with the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

Secretary Carter awarded his boss with the medal on January 4 during the Armed Forces Full Honor Farewell Review for the President held at Conmy Hall, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia.

Carter insisted that the medal was a token of appreciation for Obama’s service as commander in chief, the Associated Press reported.

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obama-awards-himself-defense-dept-distinguished-public-service-medal#ixzz4V82itbVg
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

‘When the only acceptable answer to the natural inequality of man is more democracy, you eventually end up with pure democracy, but the same natural inequality. That leaves enforced equality as the logical next step.’

<http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=9290>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

“There is too much to do” is a terrible excuse for doing nothing.

— Howard Tayler

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2017-01-04

While digging around in the past I found this, which may be worth reading through the section on how the ARPANET saved GPS. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives/archivesview/view27.html#ARPA

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

Joe Biden on coming great achievements, 2010

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.

Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies’ bathroom. Progress.

Mark Steyn

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Protests against Trump continue in New York City, with promises that the Democrats will desperately oppose any Trump appointment to the supreme court

Schumer Poised to Oppose Trump Supreme Court Nominees

http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/04/schumer-poised-to-oppose-trump-supreme-court-nominees/

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is reinforcing his opposition to any Supreme Court nominee President-elect Donald Trump will nominate.[snip]

The ‘most transparent’ president in history issues record number of ‘midnight’ regulations

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/5/obama-issuing-record-number-midnight-regulations/?utm_source=RSS_Feedutm_medium=RSS

 

 

President Obama has issued 145 “midnight” regulations with a cost of more than $21 billion since the election of Donald Trump, the most by a lame-duck president in a generation, a study has found.

The conservative American Action Forum said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s rules, issued from Nov. 8 through Dec. 31, include 31 “economically significant” regulations with a cost of at least $100 million each.

“The administration has published more than 21 million hours of final federal paperwork requirements since November 8,” said Sam Batkins, AAF’s director of regulatory policy. “At the current pace, the Obama administration is going to be the most active ‘midnight’ (period from Election Day to Inauguration Day) regulator in more than a generation.”

The Republican-majority House on Wednesday passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act by a vote of 238-184. It would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow Congress to repeal any regulations finalized in the last 60 legislative days of an administration under a single disapproval resolution.

The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The House also on Thursday passed the REINS Act, a bill that would require any executive branch rule or regulation with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more to come before Congress for an up-or-down vote before being enacted.[snip]

This should be interesting. In addition to opposing Trump’s Supreme Court appointments, some Democrats are also trying to oppose his Cabinet appointments. A few are fishing for anti-Trump Republicans in hopes that they can delay any Trump actions against Obama regulations, and stop the Senate from accepting the bill that gives Congress control over financial and other executive department regulations. The Obama administration has issued a record number of regulations since the November election, including several they claim cannot be undone by Mr. Trump; and with a vacancy in the Supreme Court that is possible. The Republicans, of course, are “the Party of No”.

Apparently some Democrats are hoping that a constitutional crisis will shut down the government and they will emerge in better shape than the November, 2016 election left them in. I do not wish them good luck with that reasoning.

The week has been expensive, and I have to get to work trying to stay even, or at least not get too far behind. Last year was more expensive than I hoped; this year threatens to be worse. Today I was told that repairs to the leaking washing machine will cost more than a new one,. And they won’t warranty their work on the old one. Roberta has always bought Maytag, and I suppose I need to look for a new one. Any sane suggestions?

Roberta is slowly improving in speech and general coordination, but it’s a lot slower than any of us thought it would be. Alex and I went to Larry’s New Year Party – Roberta couldn’t go, but we had people to take care of her, and she was well in bed before the changing of the year. I didn’t feel very festive, and we left not long after the ball fell. Roberta was asleep of course, and all was well. I saw some of the people we see only at New Year. I hope we can take Roberta next year.

Everything is on hold in Washington and New York, and it’s been pretty quiet out here. Things will heat up after the inauguration. CES is going well, and Eric and Alex are there, so we’ll have some reviews next week. Steve Leon and his associates will have over 100 exhibitors at his Show Stoppers party; I wish I could be there,

It was a quiet year in technology, everything moving forward, but we’re so used to new marvels that we barely notice them now. Multi-terabyte drives for under a hundred dollars. Yawn. Solid state drives moving up the gigabyte scale. Yawn. Data transmission speeds unimaginable a decade ago. Yawn. We’re seeing the consequences of exponential growth, and we’re getting used to it.

But think on it. I’ve said before, by 2024 (and I think sooner) technology will allow over half the present jobs in the United States to be done by a robot costing no more than the annual salary of the person now doing it. The robot will last ten years (after which it will be replaced by a more efficient robot). At least ten of those robots can be “supervised” or operated – think of the operators of the Spinning Jenny – by a single human, and the number that of robots human can supervise will be growing constantly, although he may need robot assistants. Of course his job is not eternally guaranteed.

I may live to see that. Most of you will. And we’ll still be blowing people up with suicide bombs, running over festive crowds with trucks, and fashioning IED’s.

US Army joins dystopian planning…

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/

Per Mike Davis, author of “Planet of Slums” and “Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb,”…“This is a fantasy, the idea that there is a special military science of megacities,” he said. “It’s simply not the case. … They seem to envision large cities with slum peripheries governed by antagonistic gangs, militias, or guerrilla movements that you can somehow fight using special ops methods. In truth, that’s pretty far-fetched. … You only have to watch ‘Black Hawk Down’ and scale that up to the kind of problems you would have if you were in Karachi, for example. You can do special ops on a small-scale basis, but it’s absurd to imagine it being effective as any kind of strategy for control of a megacity.”

In any event, the producers of the included video and the concept itself seem enthralled with the idea of urban war in large cities – maybe especially those in the States. 

Charles Brumbelow

New MIT Study on Dyslexia

Jerry,

I am currently sitting on the local Board of Education. This study should have us all thinking about reading interventions in terms of when they should begin and just how much can be accomplished.

Essentially the research shows that people with dyslexia have less brain plasticity and neural adaptation.

Distinctive brain pattern may underlie dyslexia

Here’s the full study.

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia

Here’s the Gabrieli Lab at MIT: http://gablab.mit.edu/

Sue

Alas that’s Roberta’s domain and she’s not up to commenting. Good to hear from you.

Happy New Year, also a few worlds about ICBM detection

Mr Pournelle,

I wish you and Roberta Happy New Year and all successes in recovering features that your family as a remarkable and redundant system had lost yesteryear due to health issues. It’s always very nice to see people of your age not only alive and well, but thinking well and looking into the future. You surely know that Jan 2nd was Isaac Asimov’s birthday; and nowadays, after Frederik Pohl passed away, of all SF writers, who lived through good portion of twencen and stays active in the Net, you’re probably most closely resemble Hari Seldon from Foundation who, when asked why should people concern ourselves with matters of the next centuries and millenia, replied in kind with your blog that while he himself could not be alive half a decade later, he nonetheless identifies himself with that mystical generalization called Humanity.

Also of some interest to you due to hacking elections turmoil may be that article (in Russian)

https://www.gazeta.ru/army/2017/01/02/10460825.shtml

which, along with a journey down the memory lane, says that for the first time in 25 years all gaps in Russian ballistic missile early warning system, left by 1990s military industry collapse and Soviet Union dissolution, are sealed due to upgrade of old ICBM radar stations with new Voronezh-class radars. The article specifically emphasizes that BMEWS of USSR from the Cold War era possessed significant blind spot on its northeastern flank, an artifact of the Perestroika, when Gorbachev had agreed to demolish half-complete early warning station and army base in Yeniseysk, Krasnoyarsk Region, as the United States regarded its installation inconsistent with ABM Treaty of 1972. In some point of time after the US withdrew from the ABMT, construction of Yeniseysk radar station had been renewed and now it’s completed as an interim facility, and three more bases are planned to erect, including, btw, station in Sevastopol, Crimea, on the site of its predecessor, completely deteriorate d and shattered down under scarce Ukrainian maintenance. I think the action of issuing such article, signed by Russian military expert Mikhail Khodarionok, just coincided with the expelling of Russian diplomats for hacking. Or maybe not, who am I to know for sure?

Best regards,

Kirill.

If you are going to twist a bear’s tail, you ought to be sure your powder is dry…

8 facts on the Russian hacks

https://sharylattkisson.com/eight-facts-on-the-russian-hacks/

waves of culture

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
Your correspondent “Petronius” took aim at the notion that “All People Want the Same Things.” I am convinced he’s quite right: which brought to mind some research which deserves to be more widely known.
A readily available source is Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner’s book “Riding the Waves of Culture.” They also have a web site: http://ridingthewavesofculture.com/ What’s interesting is that they do much more than observe that different cultures do in fact want different things: they’ve analyzed some of the differences, and laid them out in an array of polarities.
One that caught my attention was behind the survey question: You are a passenger in a car. Your friend is driving. He carelessly hits and injures a pedestrian. The police arrive. The question: *should* you tell the truth about the accident, or *should* you lie to protect your friend?
What’s interesting is that it’s framed as a *should* question: that is, it’s not about whether you live up to your principles, but rather about what those principles *ought* to be. It appears that Americans tend to assume that justice and truth-telling are principles of high importance; but some other world cultures are at least as much convinced that *friendship* is more important. From that perspective, *of course* you should protect your friend.
Well, I disagree: and I also suspect that “friendship before justice” is also a set of values that makes corruption very easy. So I’m far from arguing for cultural relativism. But I do think their findings are important. It’s not that other cultures are less principled than ours. It’s a deeper disagreement on what those principles ought to be.
I’m far from sure where this leads us. But it certainly seems to be something I need to know.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

It’s hardly a new question. Even John W. Campbell, Jr., took a shot at it.

[

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.