In the mind of the Drygerskunk

Well, COVID-19 hit, the death of my mother hit as well, so things are... a mess.

So...

• New laptop is a Lenovo Flex 14... which I'm tempted to swap out the PCIe Wifi card (an RTL8822BE).  Seems to be working partially but I'm whittling away at it.
• The NUC i7 ESX server won't be enacted for a while.
• May reuse the ICSen for cheap display duty
• VR rig soon.

So I came across a redesign focused on simplicity:  https://www.behance.net/gallery/79280905/iOS-13-phoneOS

However, it has a serious flaw.  It does not address the question of old users that have been yelling "WHERE'S MY STUFF?!?"

Simple is fine, but it must be fast.  Apps should follow a Unix philosophy of "doing one thing and doing it well."

So...

The lock screen: I can disable notifications on the lock screen already with iOS 12, from all notifications down to app-level granularity.  Permanently disabling this breaks existing work flows.

The home screen: Once again, "WHERE'S MY STUFF?"  When I'm switching to the home screen, it's because I need to jump to another app.  This stuff was on a separate screen in iOS 12.  Now I have to add a swipe to get anything.  That's slow.

Overall styling/concept: You're adding padding.  Why are you adding padding?  You're just making the phone look fat, and causing me to swipe/tap more.  That's also slow.  You're also hiding stuff I use on a regular basis.  Where's my stuff?!?

Safari:  Keep the name "Safari".  I have "Firefox" and "Chrome" on my phone for various functions.  Bring back page titles.  Compact that URL card a bit more.  You have the room.  USE IT. 

Music/TV: You're still following the broken model that I want to listen to music that is not on my phone.  Nobody has unlimited bandwidth for that.  We load our phones with music and video because flash memory is cheap.  Follow the Unix philosophy:  Split Apple Radio out to it's own app, and default Music to pre-loaded music.  It's what we have iTunes for!  (Also split "TV" out in a similar fashion.)

And one more thing: Give power users some love.  Give us options to turn on and off and tweak.  We love that Apple's iOS just works.  It can work better by being much more customizable.

Just some areas of interest I should touch on (links if I have covered them):

• Illegal Immigration
• Economy
• Medicine
• Telecommunications
• Transportation
• Security - Physical
• Security - Online/The Internet
• Taxes and Tax Reform
• Power
• International Relations

If there's any others that should be covered, let me know.

I keep watching the second half of RedLine... and keep thinking of a fan fic sequel.

The TransAm is gone, but JP hooks up with Sonoshee (here as Soni), bring Frisbee and Pops along.  A new TransAm is bought, beefed up, and they test it at Green Line... and it passes clean.

But the Mob still wants their money, and puts a bounty on the team.  Lynchman & Jonny Boya is tasked for this.

Meanwhile Machinehead's gone through another iteration of "self-improvement".  The SuperBoins push out another record. Trava and Shinkai perfect their SpeedMaster.  However, Gori-Rider's been convicted of corruption and the Miki/Totoroki team didn't qualify.

Little Dayzina defects from Roboworld and finally does things right -- by racing into the field.  But Roboworld's pissed at this and at RedLine, and have vowed to "stop this nonsense at all costs."

That puts the field at:  JP/Soni, MachineHead, SuperBoins, Dayzina, Lynchman, and three other contestants.  Two slots are filled, but the RedLine committee holds slot 8 for a "representative" of RedLine 9's host world... WolfSkunk RedWolf.

(Really, I said it was a fan fic, right?)

RoboWorld isn't having any of this, of course... so they plan a full assault on the racers, keeping a bioweapon as their ace-in-the-hole.  Meanwhile, Lynchman sneaks onto Soni's garage where the TransAm is at.  RedWolf is also visiting after showing JP and Soni to a good, high-class restaurant... and notices (along with Pops) Lynchman attaching a bomb to the Transam.  Everyone notices RedWolf removing the bomb, mistakes RW as planting it... until Pops speaks up, and Frisbee pulls the video.  Yep, Lynch is sloppy.  RW keeps the bomb, strangely enough.

The day of the race, and they drop.  Course is split in three, and follows a similar setup. Of course, RoboWorld also hyperjumps (having figured out how to do it) but is immediately noticed by Canmephian ground forces.  The racers are caught in the crossfire, and are able to speed out.  Lynchman of course plays with JP/Sono.  RedWolf hangs back some, and even though shi takes fire, the Black Hole Express' shielding redirect it to it's ASC power supply (with a codename)... and uses it as fuel.

RoboWorld gets frustrated, unable to catch Dayzina or exact revenge due to Canmephian forces.  They drop the bioweapon, FunkyVolton.  This causes commotion until RedWolf arrives, the bioweapon fires, launching the BHE into the air... which RedWolf opens up the ASC codenamed "Can of Whup-Ass" on and sucks the thing down whole.

BWWWARRRRP!  CRASH!

The racers recover; Canmephian forces mop up.  MachineHead is back in the lead, Trava/Shiykai is second,  RedWolf crashes into 8th, JP/Soni 6th, and Lynchman 7th.  JP/Soni hit their second gold nitro and pop into 2nd.  Lynchman follows in 3rd, and tries to hit the bomb... but RedWolf's pops in 4th and notes shi's reprogrammed the detonation code for it. 

MachineHead pops a Platnum Nitro "to make it interesting again."  JP/Sono does the same, but Lynchman tries to hook them like last time.  Ooops, the deceleration allows RedWolf to catch the hook, attach the bomb (with a timer this time), and send it back... taking care of Lynchman and having it be MachineHead, JP/Soni, and RedWolf.

It's a tight three-way, but the TransAm's engine is pushed too far, exploding into another win.  MachineHead's GodWing disentigrates into third, pushing RedWolf into second place.  Credits scroll, and while JP and Soni celebrate, RedWolf's mate Sandra comes over.  "You did it!!!" "What did..." "You didn't win!" "Yeah, but..." "I bet that you'd come in second or third." "You didn't!" "I did! Cost the mob some scratch but then you should see the raid the police did..."

*shlrps a medium roast*

Around 5977 (Canmephian time) the first "Jump Drive" was invented. This traveled galaxies by "jumping" into an alternate plane of existence where distances between the two were much shorter. Jumping was done by opening a wormhole between the two planes and traveling through it. The power usage in opening the wormhole twice is great if you compare it to a regular car, but easily handled with then modern generators. The concept of a five year mission was borne, as well as the Canmephian Space Command (or CMSC). Opening (and closing) of these wormholes requires two 11-space coordinates, with three constantly being updated (X/Y/Z) and one incremented (time) on both sides... and the remaining locked down inside the drive's controlling circuitry.

In 5995 scientists have found a way to transport an object between two places and fixed point of time by completely locking the 11-space coordinates down and initiating a modified drive. The effect was a fade-out. However, the power requirements to perform this were greater than a regular jump drive so much that it was highly impractical. The maximum size was of that of a phone booth in London.

In 6000 Dryger "pocket dimension" technology was introduced; in 6009 "transportal" technology was discovered/reinvented by the CMSC's Admiral RedWolf and Lt. Commander Caspian.

In 6012 a physics student combined the three, and built a "TARDIS", where a London police box containing a pocket dimension's portal was transported through time. Power generation as well as control and living quarters were in the pocket dimension.

One day, the student, having been granted hir doctorate in both physics and engineering, took hir TARDIS out for a spin... and never came back. Hir notes and previous technology have been seized by the CMSC and Canmephian government under current "High Security Risk" laws. Rumor has it that a note was left, one not of anyone's handwriting, saying "Your Engineer will be well taken care of."

I'm going to put this out there.

I'm for limited application of the death penalty, with reforms to ensure justice is properly done.

Limits, you say? Yes. And I'll put it in plain text.

The following crimes should be eligible for the death penalty.

• Mass murder (duh)
• Murder by explosive device (duh)
• Repeated immigration w/o approval -- aka if a person gets back INTO the USA without going through Customs & Border Protection, no visa or green card, after getting expelled out of the USA... then all bets are off, the expelling the person again will only make them come back in, so lets nip that in the bud, shall we?  Besides, if the country they came from is *THAT* bad, they should be applying for political asylum.
• Any combination of crimes that would require that the person serve beyond a normal life span of 150 years to be considered for parole.
• Any combination of crimes that have the possibility of multiple "life without parole" sentences.

The first two are "You have shown a grave indifference to life in general, with no hope of reform.  Why should we let you live?"  The third one is similar, a "You've shown that you will not obey a lawful order.  Why should we trust you with your own life?" Once the sentence of death is proclaimed in these situations, the case should be automatically appealed for a multi-judge review.

The rest is a case of being real.  We're essentially yanking any freedoms away, giving them three "hots" (hot meals) and a cot to sleep on, until they pass away... for what?  A combination of crimes so outlandish but proven to be committed? If a case like that lands a "lock up and throw away the key" sentence on several orders of absurdity, it should be automatically appealed as a Constitutional violation.  I mean, seven life sentences, plus 400 years, for several cases of murder and attempted murder via explosive devices?  No, the person must be put to death.  I don't care what state you are.

The fatal "SWATting" of an innocent bystander caused by a $1.25 bet off of a Call Of Duty session could of been prevented had the Caller ID not been spoofed.

How could it happen? Well, the caller used a VoIP provider that can spoof a Caller ID. The police assume the worst in any case... and given they were told "hostage situation with weapons" shot someone.

So the question really comes down to how do you detect if the Caller ID is spoofed? Well...

In this day and age, all calls go digital and get sent over digital lines. It doesn't matter if it's over fiber, POTS, VoIP, or cellular. The solution here is to add more metadata and a call-back to verify the call is coming from where it's supposed to be.

With fiber optic service, it's "what line is associated with what location." The same goes for POTS. Record which port at the telephone facility goes to which house. Keep that info (assign it a unique ID). That can't easily be spoofed.

With cell phones, that "port" is the IMEI code, possibly with more info off the SIM or device itself to make it hard to spoof.

With VoIP calls, it's the caller's IP address and Ethernet MAC address off the router or otherwise Internet-accessible device (if it's behind a firewall, the IP and MAC is the firewall).

So, with that number and port, we can look up the provider and ping it's verification system securely. If it comes back saying "Yes, that person is legit." then you can trust the caller ID. Anything else should be considered spoofed (including if the verification service is down).

What would emergency services do if they get a spoofed call? Well, the caller should have given them a location. Locate any other buildings around and call them, as well as dispatch an officer. If the neighbors say "Nothing's going on" then it's likely a SWATting's happening, and the officer should calm down.

So I got things together on the financial front, which helps out a lot.

My next step is consolidating hardware. You see, I got drives all over the freakin' place. I think it's time I did something about it. So, I'm building a proper, rack-mount NAS/VM host/misc server.

Yes, I'm rebuilding my occlan server, essentially. My sidney server will still be around, but will be a testbed and print server. Mail can go to occlan and I can put all the spare Raspberry Pi's there as well for a bit of a cluster. It also kills a *)@#( old Drobo, which was expensive to get at the time, and only does USB 3.0 shared by four drives. I'd like some more speed please. I'll RAID 5 the whole mess and toss the old Drobo. It's not worth the time to deal with it.

Plus, 8 TB drive to back it all up on just came in. I'll mess with that later.

Before I go too deep, some ground rules:

1. I'm going to swear. So shut the fuck up about it.
2. There is no TL;DR. Read the entire thing or get the fuck out.
3. I prefer that if you counter me with an argument, that you counter with proof that will pass muster in a court of law. Not any back-water just-pulled-together rigged setup, but an established court like the US Federal Court System. So take your time, get your coffee, I can wait.

Let us begin, shall we?

( Read more... )

Reading the happenings of having a (MTA Maryland) MARC train set being leased to (NYC MTA) Long Island Railroad (aka LIRR) to help with summer crunches... got me thinking about exclusive local communications though cell phones, and eventually onto secure group communications.  I'll try to put it in laymans terms for those non-geeks, using some old standard-ish terminology.

Alice and Bob want to send letters back and forth, but know Craig (that NSA narc) is snooping around.  What do they do?

Well, they encrypt their messages.  To make it hard for Craig to snoop, they use what is called Public Key Encryption.  Alice makes two keys, one she keeps herself (private) and one she gives to Bob (public).  Bob does the same, giving a key to Alice.  When Alice encrypts a message, she uses her private key and Bob's public key.  When Bob gets it, he uses his private key and her public key.  The algorithm used allows this scheme to work.

Of course, I'm simplifying the issue, especially in cases where Craig may of dressed up like Bob and got in the middle of things.  But that's the essence of secure encryption.  SSL/TLS connections (used in that HTTPS connection you go to Amazon or your bank with) use PKE with a few administrative levels to make sure Craig isn't going to steal out of Bob's bank.

But what if Alice has more friends with a similar interest?  What if they want a group chat with Elen, Frank, George, and Helen about their dearly departed friend Zoe?

They could swap public keys, and have every push out every message... but that wastes time and bandwidth.

They could go though one person, like Xavier.... or is that Craig in disguise again?

Or... Alice could make another pair of keys for the group, and send both to everyone (but Craig, because he's a dick) via the existing secure messaging.  Everyone would send using their personal private key but the group chat public key, and decrypt using the sender's public key and the group chat's private key.  All they would need is someone to relay the chat to save bandwidth... and Xavier volunteered for that (the geek -- he doesn't even save connection logs).  Craig would have nothing because he wouldn't even see the group chat key being sent.