Sometimes the simplest things… You know what’s next.

The other half has an old Mac. The poor thing has been a trooper considering it’s age.

Looking at the newer machines, making a big purchase right now is out of the question.

So I started looking at upgrade options. Surprisingly I found that the hard disk could be replaced with an SSD and that the memory in the machine could be doubled for a couple hundred dollars. Between the drive and the memory, we should be able to get another few years out of this old workhorse.

With that in mind I placed the order and 2 days later the parts showed up.

This morning I pulled the old machine apart and had no trouble installing the new memory and new hard drive. As I was buttoning things up I thought, “That was easy!”

Uh huh, Jinxed myself!

After buttoning everything up I tried to access the nifty Mac network utility to reload the OS. I was able to get to the utility. After answering a couple of questions, the utility started, then told me that the OS wasn’t available. Gee THANKS APPLE!

Now I’ve got a computer that should be fast as hell and no OS. I booted the machine from a bootable memory stick that had the appropriate operating system on it. (Yeah, I tend to have some redundancy.) The system booted, I clicked on the installer, and it started just fine. Again I answered the questions and directed the installer to install the OS on the brand new 1TB internal hard disk.

The system takes off, executes a format of the internal HD then reboots as expected. Things went south from there. The reboot damaged the OS on the memory stick and in the process told me that the OS image (Downloaded from Apple about 2 years ago, and used several times to install the OS,) was invalid or possibly corrupt.

Great! I can’t even install from my rainy day backup.

Now what?

Uh, maybe I’ll just use the TimeCapsule backup.

Nope, Backups 1 – 5 are corrupt.

I do still have the original bootable disk in an external enclosure. The computer is still workable booting from that external disk. But a 1TB internal SSD isn’t being used.

I try booting to the recovery partition. It works, but I still can’t install the OS from Apple.

This leaves me two choices. Do a complete backup from the original disk to another USB disk, then restore from that backup. Or I can try to sequence through the other backups on the Timecapsule hoping to find one that works.

I choose the latter, and remarkably seem to have found a backup that is intact. So I start the restore process.

Currently the restore is reporting 32 hours remaining. Let’s hope it works Otherwise I’m down to only one option which will probably take just as much time. USB 2 is painfully slow, although even with the 1GB speeds of my internal network, apparently network restore is also painfully slow.

Sometimes, the most straightforward things with computers turn into the most complicated.

In this case I’d tell Apple that if you’re going to say in a dialog box that the computer will either install its original OS or the most current version of the OS that is available…

DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO DO!

Giving someone the illusion that you’re going to support a system, is worse than saying that you’re not going to support that system. In the first situation your user figures, “No Problem” in the other case the user can make alternate arrangements as long as you don’t as part of some bullshit “verification” process destroy the alternative.

I’m not amused that I’ve lost a whole day to a simple 15 minute job.


1 AM update. The restore from the Time Capsule backup failed about 8PM. Digging around on the internet gave me an interesting option. It seemed I could use Apple’s Disk Utility to clone the existing drive to the 1TB SSD.

Well, what the heck did I have to lose at this point?

Boot from the recovery partition on the 1 TB SSD. (Yeah, that got installed properly thank goodness) Pull up Disk Utility from the recovery partition. select the destination drive. Select “recover” from the edit menu, select the source and hit enter.

A few hours later… I’m awakened by a familiar ding. Click the “Done’ button, select the start disk and Eureka! There is now a bootable usable operating system on the new drive.

I’m going back to bed… this has been a royal pain in the ass. Next up, deleting the corrupted backup from the Time Capsule and replacing it with something usable.

But I’ll do that tomorrow, my brain won’t even allow more than the contemplation of such an exercise tonight.

I don’t know if this is a good idea

There’ve been a lot of articles recently, about Google and Apple collaborating on a Coronavirus tracking application

At first glance, you think, “good,” that will make it easier for health officials to figure out how to stay ahead of outbreaks.

It would, but at a price to your privacy.

We have only Apple and Google’s assurances that the information won’t be misused. Implicit in this software solution is the belief that when the Coronavirus emergency is over that the tracking information, indeed the application itself will be of no further use. The assumption is that the application can be deleted and tracking will by default, be turned off. How do we know that & how can we verify that this is true?

I could see an application such as Google and Apple are working on, morphing into a general “Health” application wherein a wide variety of diseases are tracked. As I understand the Coronavirus aspect if you test positive for Coronavirus and enter your diagnosis into the application, then your movements are plotted. Local health officials can then watch the spread of Coronavirus throughout a community presumably because other people will also be entering their diagnosis too.

This raises some questions for me. If one person whose positive, visits an area and other people get sick is that person liable? Could they be prosecuted or sued? Should they be? I’m sure that due to the fear promulgated by media, politicians, and rumor. The initial response would be YES!!!

But let’s step back a bit. Would the answer be the same if the application was tracking hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, Influenza, herpes, HIV, measles, or chicken-pox? These diseases present health departments with challenges to tracking and treatment. In fact these diseases are more of a health hazard than Coronavirus may prove to be.

Even if you think this is a good idea, what happens as the application evolves? Do you really want your phone telling the health department or law enforcement that you not only have the clap, but that you visited a particular massage parlor? How about your phone automatically warning others around you that you’re a pariah, because you’ve got the flu or that one of your kids has chicken-pox?

In an extreme scenario; do you want to have to verify and report to authorities that you’re going to have sex with an individual?

The application could in fact give that kind of power to an authoritarian regime. Phone A was in close proximity to Phone B for 43 minutes in a hotel that rents by the hour on this date. This was an unauthorized sexual event, warrants have been issued for the participants arrest.

Oh we say that could never happen. Yet, we have evidence of widespread surveillance by departments within our own government, of average people.

We’ve seen maps of cell phone data showing that people en-mass can be tracked going about their daily business. There is evidence to suggest that specific individuals can be isolated from the mass of data without too much effort or specialized tools.

During this pandemic, we’ve seen cell phone maps used by the New York Times to paint some areas of the country as “Non compliant in the lockdown” because the cell phones were traveling more than X miles from their point of origin.

The fact that the area of the country the New York Times called out, was a rural area and the nearest grocery stores were 15 to 20 miles away was conveniently omitted from that article when it first appeared. The Times, isn’t a government entity, nor are they involved in public health, but it demonstrates just how easily data can be misused.

This got me wondering… Just how much information is my phone, my smart watch, my computer, my ipad, even my car sending and to whom? The next question is, “If I turn these systems off, how much do I degrade the operation of my devices?

I was shocked when I pulled up the privacy setting in my phone.

Privacy

Almost every application is requesting access to location data.

Some of these applications make sense, Maps, Workout, AAA, and Airline applications. 

Others, such as time tracking applications that will automatically start running when you get to work make sense. The apple wallet application asking for location data makes sense so that it can lookup and associate your charges.

Other Applications don’t make as much sense. Why does my bluetooth enabled thermometer application need to know where I was when I took my temperature? Why does an insurance application want to know where I am when I’m accessing it? Who cares where I was when I made a voice memo? Why does Wallgreens want to know where I am?  These applications I can deny access on. But am I really prohibiting them from getting that information?.

There are dating applications that say they won’t operate at all unless they have access to location data. This is to narrow the search parameters to local parties. Okay, then why do I get hit on from people 6000 miles away? Suppose I don’t want to use the cruising part of the app? 

But it gets even more interesting when you dig deeper into system services, and significant locations. Yeah, I hadn’t told the system not to track my location. On the one hand the benefit is that your phone will keep track of where you parked your car. But does that data go anywhere? Or is that data simply used locally on the phone? 

Answers to these questions are ambiguous. Obviously the phone itself is transmitting it’s unique ID to the cellular provider. But what of the other data? 

I can tell the applications that they are denied cellular data services but does that mean that when the phone re-connects to the internet via WiFi at my home these application will send what they’ve recorded as a long data burst? Does denying cellular data access actually protect me from being tracked?

I’m suspicious of any government agency having easy access to my location. At the same time I recognize that the convenience afforded me by my cell phone is very cloying and that there’s a trade-off for convenience versus privacy.

There’s a cellular service called Patriotmobile.com part of their pitch is that they’ll help support Patriotic things and that they don’t sell your data. Okay fine, but if I have applications that are giving the data away, their service really doesn’t help.

That leaves using a VPN all the time. This solution is okay but I’ve had more than one situation where the VPN interfered with connectivity and created a less than convenient user experience. This is particularly true when the application updates.

I’ve got two VPN applications, One is part of my antivirus solution and the other is one that owns all their servers. I prefer the second one since the data isn’t just flowing through whatever server may be available.

After a while, I’d done all I could and opted to just turn off all the devices for a while. It’s clear that all of our technology has gotten away from us and significantly eroded our privacy. 

Unfortunately, I can’t come up with any solution about regaining my privacy short of a VPN solution all the time. But even then, while using a VPN you’re not actually in very much control of what Apps running on your phone may be doing. They could still send the actual location data via the VPN.  I’m going to have to think about this some more.

I can say I’m not going to opt in to the Apple/Google contact tracking application. The potential for abuse of that data is simply too big for my tastes.

No Technology Weekend

Yeah, Yeah

I’m using technology now. But I’ve been offline most of the weekend. It’s been nice and quiet.

This started accidentally but eventually because something that I preferred.

Here’s the story:

I was looking at and writing what should have been a short piece about the Google / Apple Coronavirus tracking application.

I have reservations about the app for privacy reasons. I get that the app is supposed to help health departments react quickly and efficiently to potential outbreaks. It also makes sense that an app, as an extension of our technology would be the first thing that anyone thought about. 

My concerns about the app go deeper. When does the app go away? Who sees this information? Who could see this information? With the inevitable feature creep that all applications undergo, how long would it be before the app would be tracking other public health concerns?

What might that look like? Would we suddenly be tracking Measles, Smallpox, hepatitis? Admittedly this on the surface would seem like a good idea. But what happens when other diseases or conditions are being tracked?

We’re seeing authoritarian behaviors “For the Public Good”. It’s reasonable to ask just how long it would be before the authoritarianism pervaded all aspects of everyday life. Imagine the possibilities.

Your phone could automatically warn you that you were entering a hotspot. (That might be good.) But what happens if your phone informs authorities that you were in a no-tell motel with someone who had VD? Does that mean that you could be met by police at your home?

See, abuse of information is a simple thing and it’s deceptively easy to move from “Good” to “Evil” in just a step or two. Look at Google. They used to be the “Don’t be evil” company and  now… Well it was a short road wasn’t it?

This led me to wonder what applications on my phone are currently requesting to transmit location data. 

What I found was amazing and disturbing. A ton of my application are asking for access to GPS data and often a lot of them are transferring that data as well.

So I started thinning out the applications by turning off their access. What this will do to the day to day operations of these applications I have no idea, time will tell.

Then I realized that these apps existed on all my devices. Phone, pad, watch, computer and  each device had to have each application’s access turned off.

Why for example, does a drugstore app need to know where I am?

Then I noticed that Siri was also asking for location data. Why? Siri shouldn’t need access to location. Then as I was looking at Siri’s settings I realized that Siri was listening on all my devices all the time. On the one hand Siri listening is convenient. On the other hand Siri is listening all the time. Is that something that I really want?

PrivacyAfter several hours and shocks, I came to the conclusion that the most expedient way to deal with what was becoming technological overload was to power the tech down.

That was when I made another interesting discovery. If I powered down the phone and watch, then applied power, these devices powered back up. My watch couldn’t be powered down at all while it was on its charger. Hmmm, interesting.

I grabbed my nice automatic winding watch and powered everything down.

This let me process on the rabbit-hole I’d been sucked down, without the distraction of the technology asking for my input or reminding me of stuff. It was nice to breathe.

Now that I’ve gotten past the tons of SPAM and the missed messages I’ll make choices about applications and move forward.

I hate DST!

clocks.jpgWho doesn’t?

I never sleep well the night it’s going to take effect. I’m always worrying about getting to work, being on time and it takes me a week to begin to get adjusted.

I worry about the one clock (there’s always one) in the house that I’ll forget to change, and invariably that forgotten clock will be the one that I’m looking at while planning to get out the door to go somewhere.

I feel like I’m late for everything for days after the time change even when I’m actually on time. 

It’s like a mandated jet lag for the whole damn country.

Thankfully my phone, computer, and most of the tech in my house figures it out for itself. Unfortunately that actually makes it more likely that I’ll miss a manual clock somewhere.

plane.jpgNext weekend, I’ll be taking a trip. The time change during the trip will make things more interesting and coming back home will force me to “Reset”. I just hope that I’m not going to be totally screwed up for the week after I get home.

Yes, I’m getting on a plane. God help me. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to sleep most of the way to/from my destination. I’ll probably end up next to some chatty kathy who wants to tell me about their life. The whole time we’re airborne.

Thearing protection.jpghis is going to be a real test for my AirPod Pros. Can all annoyances be blocked out? or just the drone of the jet engines?  I had another type of noise cancelling headphones years ago when I traveled a lot. They were great at cutting out background noise, but allowed me to hear every word spoken by the passenger next to me.

Maybe I’ll fly with my shooting range ear protection. If they can kill the sound of a .45 perhaps they can kill the sound of annoying talking and baby screaming in a plane cabin.

I’m going to be traveling light. Just enough clothing to be comfortable and if I need something else I’ll buy it when I get there. I’ll have my computer with me, I think that the battery will last me the whole flight and if I can’t sleep I’ll write. I doubt that I’ll need the aircraft WiFi but I think that’s an option.

Don't fuck with time!What still is to be determined is if I’ll need to extend my stay. From what I understand I have relatives that may not be with us much longer and that means that perhaps I’ll have to make the rounds to several states.

Well, I can look for a job from my destination as easily as I can from home. The corona virus will give me a great excuse to do Video interviews.

What? Wait…

IowaCaucus.jpgI was reading about the Iowa Caucus.

The acting DHS secretary Mr. Wolf said that the application issue appeared to be a “Load” issue. By “Load” he means that the servers were unable to keep up with the number of requests.

Okay I’ll buy that is a possibility, if everyone in a state was voting at the same time. But as the number of voters decreased, the server would catch up and post each transaction in turn. If this was the problem then it’s pretty obvious whoever tested the software didn’t do any load testing and quite possibly didn’t do much testing at all.

Lets face it, we’re all familiar with online opinion polls, and I’d imagine the servers handling those are dealing with millions of votes a minute. Seems to me that Shadow (The company that apparently spent 3 years building the software,) would have looked to other examples of voting systems, during their development process.

For god’s sake, there are PORN sites that handle votes for performers without crashing. Given the prevalence of Porn Sites I’d guess they process something on the order of MILLIONS of votes per Second.

Then I read that the application was only for the 170 – 190 precinct captains. So the paper votes were cast, then counted, and the captains were to use an application to input those numbers?

You’re telling me that with 3 YEARS of development no-one ever tested with a measly 200 simultaneous users?

WTF?

As I sit reading more about this, I’m astounded.

I have Apple Time Capsules here in my home that can handle 50 simultaneous users on WiFi.

A low end Dell server purchased from Best Buy could probably handle 250 users from the moment it was plugged in, possibly more if all the server had to do was tally incoming data for ONE Single application.

I have to point out that I’m kinda talking out of my hat here because I don’t have all the facts. So take what I’m saying here with a salt lick.

My point is, that with something as important as votes, if I could put a system together with commercial of the shelf (COTS) equipment for less than 10K in hardware and a little web programming there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the debacle we saw in Iowa.

Much less so when you factor 3 YEARS of development time.

Hell, with 3 years of development time, I could give you Web and Phone based access, Live updates, and auditing of figures entered by precinct, candidate, and user. Complete with state of the art security. I’d have also taken the DHS up on testing the system too. The DHS has an entire division dedicated to Cybersecurity. 

I’d probably have requested that the FBI and NSA take a look too, if they were willing.

WHY?

Because the product would have to be rock fucking solid and more eyes looking at a system are more likely to find flaws that can be corrected before its debut.

Especially given that over the last four years we’ve heard about nothing but Russian influence in our election process. I’d be wanting to make something that was so secure that there’d never be any question about the veracity of the product or its results.

Make no mistake, this is (or was) a product.

Shadow would have been in a prime position to resell the product to all 50 states and would have been reaping the benefits for decades with maintenance and upgrade contracts.

Now Shadow will fade into the morning light like a bad dream, having made millions (I’m guessing) for its principals and casting everyone below executive level to the unemployment line.

Oh, and they’ll have an added lovely parting gift of FAILED project on their resumes.

As I said, we don’t yet have all the facts and likely, we never will.

Online voting could be a reality. But only if we commit to doing it right. 

Don’t you find it interesting that we have more security in place online and over the phone to deal with our banking needs than we do when dealing with the direction of our country as a whole?