Tag: Modern Problems

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Okay, the Fiber Internet is down…

Digital 1S 0S ON or OFF1No worries, it’s just very unusual.

Switched over to the hotspot in my phone and voilà I’m connected again.

I knew something was up when I had no new email…

I get hundreds of spam emails a day and while it was refreshing to not have any spam in my inbox, it was also disconcerting.

It’s not unusual for me to have only one or two actually important emails every other day. Without spam I could easily go for days not realizing that something was amiss.

Since the WiFi was up, none of my devices had anything new on them. They were being good little machines and asking if there was anything new, the WiFi said, “nope,” and the  devices said, “Okay”

When I disconnected my phone from WiFi, forcing it to go to the cellular data plan exclusively… Then the machine got really busy for a while. Text messages, emails, and all the usual spam came rushing in.

After resetting everything including the fiber access point, still no joy.

Sigh… This is why I have a backup plan. 

It’s interesting that while I notice the difference in downloads and web page loading, It’s not excessively annoying. I suppose if I were to try watching video it would be. But for my purposes today I probably won’t notice the difference.

Job searching doesn’t take that much bandwidth. But this could seriously impair my ability to veg in front of the TV. Don’t even ask about the porn!

No calls this morning either, that’s nice. 

I spent the majority of yesterday on the phone trying to sort out whatever issue the insurance company was having with repairing my car.

Yep, a month almost since my car was dropped off at the repair facility and State Farm is still screwing around on repairing it.  If I’m lucky I may get it back before Christmas, but I’m not holding my breath.

Yes, I called them out by name. I’d strongly suggest if you’re looking for an insurance provider, you keep looking. This is especially true if you’re in the Riverside area of Southern California.

State Farm’s local estimator seems to like to lowball any repairs and makes the client have to call repeatedly to get reasonable service. The estimator may be fine with anything below a Lexus, but with higher end cars he may be simply out of his depth.

I’ve decided it’s time for me to start shopping for a new insurance provider. Between the house, the supplementary coverage, the bike and the car I should be an attractive client, but that’s for another day.

The interesting thing about the internet being down, is that it’s somehow quieter. I’m sure that is simply me. It’s like there’s a buzz that’s missing but there’s no way I could be aware of the ebb & flow of data traveling at the speed of light. 

When the power goes out up here, it gets really quiet. I like those times. No sounds other than nature.

We don’t really notice it going about our busy lives, but all the electrical motors add a lot to the background noise. Heaters, AC systems, water pumps, washers, dryers, refrigerators, all add just a little noise, and if you’re in a community of people, there’s always a drone of machinery. 

DSC 0496When the power is out, you can literally hear a car coming from a mile or more away.

I guess that’s why I like being well away from cities. 

Even here, when I’m hiking up on the mountain I can still hear the drone of modern life. It’s just not as obvious.

It makes me wonder what earth sounded like in the pre-industrial age. What does that kind of silence, sound like? Does it make you feel isolated and afraid, or do you completely unwind? 

One of these days I’m going to have to find a place where there is literally nothing, just to see how I feel.

I do get a sense of that silence when I’m diving. Even then, there’s the sound of my dive gear and an amazing variety of sound coming from the creatures in the water with me.

Aside from the dive gear and occasional boat motor, the sounds are all naturally occurring. This makes me wonder if I was someplace miles from anything else, would my hearing simply shift over to the sounds being made by animals going about their day or would I not hear them at all. I suspect I’d start hearing the animals, then be curious about their sounds.

It looks like it’s going to be a quiet day.

I hope your’s is as pleasant.