by Kevin

Might be time to retire the Vudoo

The rimfire forum section on SnipersHide seems to have recently changed the description text, and it seems to be furthering a trend of Vudoo taking a turn for the worse. The description used to read:

Victor company .22 rimfire section, NRL 22 discussion, and rimfire talk.

Now it reads:

DI Precision, Official Rimfire gunsmith for the NRL22 and PRS Rimfire
series, Exclusive Authorized Custom Shop for Vudoo Gunworks

It’s been pretty controversial with Vudoo the last few years. Changes in ownership have resulted in changes in focus and direction, leaving rimfire competitors confused. And they are stopping production of left-handed actions … as a lefty I have a very classy hand gesture to tell them how I think they’re #1 with that choice! And they have locked out all other custom shops and gone with one singular dude as the “Exclusive Authorized” shop.

Now that shop is being trafficked in the forum description, exclusively. Seems sleazy.

by Kevin

Get in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

by Kevin

Climate Crisis

They can talk about carbon footprints all day long and it won’t do any good. The world population has MORE THAN DOUBLED in the last 50 years. There’s your problem. The human virus is spreading faster than either nature or our own inclinations for self-destruction can keep up with.

No one wants to even think about solving that problem, but it’s there. Just ask an introvert.

by Kevin

Broken Trust

Apple’s iOS team has had a pretty stellar record of secure designs and security-minded intent for a long time now. Android has never been a trustworthy system, and Google doesn’t care. Thanks to the “wutan-flu” as the kids call it, both are leaving vulnerabilities unpatched on purpose and tracking us.

Google did this BEFORE the joint announcement of Google and Apple working on APIs for contract tracing. They did not ask users consent, users didn’t even know this could be done until the datawas already gathered and the report published.

April 3, 2020 – Google’s announced report based on data it had already been gathering for who knows how long: https://www.blog.google/technology/health/covid-19-community-mobility-reports

April 18, 2020 – Google and Apple announce partnership to produce APIs for contract tracing. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-bluetooth-contact-tracing-covid-19/

The Bluetooth vulnerabilities are critical, but since the companies can make money from tracking us, they won’t be fixing them any time soon. https://www.zdnet.com/article/contact-tracing-apps-unsafe-if-bluetooth-vulnerabilities-not-fixed/

All this has been a waste of time, as people aren’t installing the apps that use these APIs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/05/22/contact-tracing-apple-google-coronavirus-security-update-android-iphone/#496197251d59

I refuse to update my phone to 13.5 or higher because they’re tracking users without consent, leaving vulnerabilities open, colluding with Google to compromise our privacy and security, and creating unused APIs for apps to track people. A malicious app could be installed which takes advantage of the APIs and the Bluetooth problems.

Obviously the FBI must be loving this “feature” to instantly trace a baddie’s circle of contacts. Just as with the end-to-end encryption debate, once that backdoor is created, there’s just no guarantee that it can’t be used maliciously. Apple & Google did this on purpose, which I would expect from Google, but Apple? Such betrayal will not soon be forgotten.

by Kevin

Welcome … mostly

I agree, mostly. I doubt everyone who comes here because they didn’t like there actually tries to make here like there, consciously. It’s likely subconscious in nature, especially when they grew up there. The result, however, is the gradual move to make here like there, and that’s where we start to have a problem with them and there’s influence on us and here.

by Kevin

Heat

I remember watching the Denver area weather forecast on the evening news each night, and in the summer months they would track how many days of 90 degrees F or more were had over the season. They don’t do that anymore, it’s not news-worthy anymore.

I found some data to support my memory, at least a bit.

Mean number of days with 90 or more high temperature per year, by decade:

  • 1950s : 32
  • 1960s : 33
  • 1970s : 35
  • 1980s : 35
  • 1990s : 33*
  • 2000s : 46
  • 2010s : 52*

With 2019 still going, that 2010s number isn’t based on complete data, but you get the idea.

Footnotes:

  • 1994 : first year with 60 days of 90+ temps
  • 2012 : epic year of hell on earth, with 73 days of 90+ and 13 days of 100+ temps

It’s getting hotter. I don’t like it. If anyone is hiring for remote work, and I can get good bandwidth in someplace cooler, I’ll be looking to move soon.

The Data

by Kevin

The Enemy Within

Does anyone born before 1989 remember the “red scare”? The good folks of this nation, many of whom lived through World War II, were gravely concern about Communism and the tyranny it represents spreading around the world. We went to war on numerous occasions in (thankfully) far-away lands to keep that kind of oppression from subjugating any more innocent people anywhere on earth. We didn’t always succeed, yet the infection slowed considerably.
 
Yet we’ve allowed it to come from within. This virus started by attacking our children in school and people who were dancing or listening to music, to instill fear. Then next vector was the media turning that fear into anger at inanimate objects and at each other. Now it has spread to the government and metastasized into an agency given the power to ban things and a president to endorse it, a state pushing for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment, and actors and spies with no real qualifications instilled in Congress to continue feeding this infection. It’s now a cancer running at full throttle.
 
Make no mistake, forcing victimhood on, or criminalizing, the otherwise responsible and law-abiding free people of America only serves to open the flood gates for censorship, loss of due process, and oppression and tyranny through military force. The 2nd amendment upholds all the others. Censorship is already starting. We will cease to be a free people, and we will invite tyranny and oppression amongst us, if we continue down this path. Some will fight to retain their freedom.
 
I weep at the thought of needing to defend my family and my freedom against the same country which fought to suppress tyranny around the world earlier in my lifetime. Please God don’t let this corruption turn brother against brother, again.
by Kevin

A “Good” Programmer

What is a “good” programmer? How does one judge themselves, or more importantly, portray themselves in interviews?

So many interviewers are looking for “rock stars” but they don’t really understand programming. Rock star programmers do exist, but searching for them is like waiting to live your life until you win the lottery.

I read this on the C2 wiki (the original wiki) and it really resonates with me:

It is like the definition of a good pilot: one who uses his/her superior judgement to stay out of situations in which he will need his/her superior skill.

You might be asked how to reverse a string in Java without using StringBuffer#reverse() or similar functions. Why? Why is it not good judgement to use proven code? Cleverness for cleverness sake is just stupid and dangerous. And re-engineering solved problems is usually a waste of time. It reminds me of the all-too-common thinking that using well-known and proven cryptographic functions is somehow dangerous so “I’ll just write my own”. Ugh. I shudder to think how many security breaches have been caused by that line of thought.

So, “good” requires skill but also good judgement. I like it. But also:

…programming is an attempt to compensate for the strictly limited size of our skulls. The people who are best at programming are the people who realize how small their brains are. They are humble.

from Edsger Dijkstra

Honestly, I feel I suffer in interviews far too often as I realize I’m still working toward that “good pilot” definition and try to stay humble about it, while interviewers are looking for (over?) confident “rock star” programmers.

I mean, I wrote a distributed caching system that ran in production for 6+ years with zero bugs, so …

Oh yeah, humble … right. Still working on that part, too, I guess.

by Kevin

It’s A Mystery

https://www.alamogordonews.com/story/news/local/2018/09/07/sunspot-observatory-south-cloudcroft-closed-due-security-issue/1227788002/

The FBI show up with a Blackhawk helecopter and the people working at the observatory were immediately evacuated. Local law enforcement were asked to help but were told nothing about what was going on.

In all likelihood there’s a reasonable and boring explanation. However. A mountaintop observatory in New Mexico doesn’t seem like a strategic target that would need protection from a terrorist threat, or anything like that, nor would there be risk of hazardous or toxic materials to protect the public from. So to evacuate the people in a hush-hush tactical operation sure does make the imagination wander.

How fascinating would it be if ….