Joe – Page 2

perplexed

November 27, 2018 By Joe 7 Comments

Those that have been so kind to read the few words I post on here, as I am studying quite a bit & the old life thing going on I don’t have too much time to post.
I have found it difficult to put into words what I see politically and globally with what is going on.

Last night I was watching the series by James Burke entitled “The day the universe changed!”

We are back in 1984-1985 and the cold war is still up and running, the threat of nuclear war still looms & the world wonders what the future will hold.
We all know the mission to the moon was a pissing contest between Russia and the United States. With a side mission called scientific discovery. I was about 9 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon & got to dress up as a spaceman in my class.

When I was in my teens I would read boys books about time and space and the future science will bring. It was exciting and full of hope for the future. Western countries stood for freedom of expression and movement, the idea you can make it if you try! The United States was by far the biggest economy so it was felt the best opportunities were there, not that it was any more free than any other western country.

Russia & China being the opposite of freedom, no freedom of movement and being told what you can and cannot do was not the way for the future of society, if we were to go to space and beyond!

Of course times change and the cold war ended & we left the moon and didn’t go back because we won the contest. The funding for science dropped because funding was never really about the science. Time moves along and technology moves into the mainstream. So there is money to be made, and today we have the web (light & dark). We have access to more info than any humans since the beginning. This was going to be the new dawn of humankind.

But of course the dark side was always possible, and with the availability of knowledge was the availability of crap, social media, fake sites, scams, identity theft, click bait, Fox News!

The Russians discover they can fight a media war because people aren’t equipped to filter, and they don’t know where to get news they can trust.
Trump calls any story he doesn’t like fake news because it doesn’t stroke his ego. News media continue to give time to stupid people to give the impression of being fair. People begin to believe the stupid people because they are getting exposure.

And then there was this!
THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM

Before the 1970’s the christian right was part of the rest of the united states, probably just as happy with the moon landing and what science might bring for the future. A baby wasn’t a baby until it was a baby, not today when some consider a few cells to be a baby. But things changed and it may change what was once the bright future of the United States.

For some the multi-diverse idea of society breaks what they consider the mold from their youth. It was a fiction but real enough to them, and they feel it is gone & want to rekindle the past. They have been deceived into thinking it can come back. Society and business moves forward because business in the end wants to make a profit. The old industries are no longer really viable but they have been told the reason is immigrants, unions, the other side selling jobs overseas.

Business did move overseas, but it was purely for profit, and cheap labor. But another reason not mentioned too much was due to technological advances. Now we have people being voted into government who don’t believe in science, who want to make the United States a purely christian country, which goes against freedom of religion. I believe in freedom of religion, you should be able to practice what ever religion you choose. But do not try and impose your religious beliefs on me. If you take away my right to choose, I may as well be living in 1985 Russia or China!

Topless Asian Gang Captured!

October 15, 2018 By Joe 4 Comments

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The Year is about 1996 and I drove a beat up escort with only two seats, sometimes people mistook it for a mustang, but believe me when I say it wasn’t! I was living in Korea town because apartments were cheaper in that area at that time. I had to pay for parking in a LOT that was beside the building that was also used for public parking during the day and had attendants.

It was early evening and I had shopped for groceries and pulled into the parking LOT heading towards the rear where I liked to park. I wasn’t paying too much attention to what was actually going on in the LOT, minding my own business kind of thing. I parked and retrieved my two bags of groceries intending to head to my lovely single apartment. I turned and a few things happened pretty much at the same time!

First I heard the screeching as the police cars drove at speed into the LOT! I see them stop and get out pointing weapons at a group of maybe a dozen asian males in the center of the LOT. There was a helicopter overhead with the bright light beaming down upon the group of males, oh I forgot to mention that were all dressed the same, dark long pants but no tops on! I figured it was either a weird topless gang or a boy-band!

So there I was standing on the edge of this drama waiting patiently with my grocery bags in hand, trying to figure out what my next move will be. I had to walk by this drama to exit the LOT! Well to cut a short story even shorter the Gang/Boyband decided to prostrate themselves on the ground under police guidance. When they had complied to the extent that I figured I could remove myself from the situation I did so.

Peace!

I am the Anti-Poet

August 14, 2018 By Joe 6 Comments

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I would be the first person to tell anyone I am not a writer, I have opinions like any other person. But writing is not my Gig. Why do you have a blog then? I hear you say!

Originally I started my blog, long ago under another name because I wanted to talk about technology and computers and internet freedom, you get the gist!
I am reasonably acquainted with html, css, javascript, I speak mac, windows and linux, and my studies continue. I don’t seem to find the time to sit down and write about it, and I have always struggled with what to say. I hear that happens to actual writers as well!

My wife Susan is a poet, she has a way with words that I admire and respect, to manipulate words like a good poem shows me how the words being the bricks can make so many different walls. It’s a gift I do not have, and I am ok with that, we all have to be different or the world would be very boring. I am the anti-poet to her poet, where she is the writer I am her tech support. It works really well and I wouldn’t change a thing.

I am a Lord of the Rings Tolkien nut, and I could at one point in my life recite poetry in either Sindarin (low Elvin) or Quenya (high Elvin) languages. While I love poetry and love how words can be manipulated to express visuals in so many ways, I have always found it difficult to express why I like a certain poem or not. The vocabulary to detail what is good or bad about some writing is missing in my head. I am not saying I am in some way stupid or inferior because even if I was I probably wouldn’t know it!!
I feel my head is just wired differently, which takes me back to why I am writing this today. I bet you were wondering about that!

I wrote a blog a few days ago, my monthly post. And Susan read it and made a lovely comment, because she is my biggest fan! And I went about my days knowing I had done my duty to wordpress and the blogging world in general. Two days later I went on wordpress and to my surprise I had comments to my post. You may think I am crazy but I hadn’t expected that, I don’t know why but it just wasn’t in my field of view. I felt a bit bad because I write a post then head off into the wilderness and I didn’t want anyone to think I was intentionally being rude. And through Susan I have met some very exquisite people in the blogging world. So to you I would say this, if I like your post I really mean it, but I may not comment very much. And if I go missing for a few days, it’s because I am in the other room!

Peace

Fire Season, Power lines, stupid people.

August 10, 2018 By Joe 7 Comments

Recently I have been very despondent with stuff going on, The US has lost respect as a world leader, our President is a joke, he lies openly and yet people still support this man. People have been fed propaganda against the press, and some believe it, and when people don’t understand what the truth is how can they make informed decisions.

It’s fairly obvious that due to climate change summer fire season is going to be a normal state of events. My heart goes out to the thousands of people who have been affected by the fires. I have had family stay with me when they had to evacuate their home. To see the look of devastation not knowing if you will have a home to go to or not is heartbreaking, it should be the primary focus of the government to prepare for a future where this is the new normal.

I know that some of the reason we had fires was due to utilities electrical equipment, and the utilities are complaining that that they cannot afford to keep paying out when there is a fire. The Governor is looking into giving the utilities a break from prosecution if they are known to be in regulatory compliance. And to be honest I see logic in this. If you can still sue some company when it’s doing what the state dictates and it’s not good enough, well we need to change the regulations!

Burying the electric cables is not an option due to cost and maintenance, it’s just easier to maintain a line overhead when you have access. This started me thinking that in this day and age there must be a mix of technologies that would in fact make it mush easier for people to have electricity and require no power lines at all.

It turns out the technology does exist, but as always it’s just around the corner, like the cure for cancer! This company Solar Windows seems to have one answer to electricity production for the future. My contention is with solar windows and roof panels and efficient storage we could eliminate the need for cables and utilities as we know them completely. But as always the move to efficiency is being held up because the power brokers still want to burn fossil fuels and don’t believe what the whole world can see! How do we as a nation get the stupid out of politics?

I can understand different people can have opinions about how to get something done. But they should be able to debate and prove why their way is better. The truth should be the arbiter not alternative facts or bluster, or rage, or disrespect!

Peace People!!

Passwords

July 5, 2018 By Joe 5 Comments

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I freely admit I have been quite lax when it comes to certain things & the internet. I have some very secure passwords that I use, but I tend to reuse them because they are secure! For a while now I have been working towards becoming a website developer, front and back end. That process continues, but it has been part of the process that the old way of dealing with passwords is no longer viable. And making sure the passwords I use will actually stop a person gaining entry to the site I am trying to protect.

My initial intention was to just pick a password manager that works well and there you go all done. I am kind of like that, rush to get it sorted type. When it comes to certain types of software I either will be patient or I won’t; let me explain!

I am mostly on a mac or Linux so I don’t use virus software, but because of the nature of virus software (protect my system) I expect it to work, from the get go! I shouldn’t have to trouble shoot it on the installation, it’s a trust thing!

So I am checking out some password managers, 1password & Lastpass, I will give a review after a few weeks testing them. There is a bit of a learning curve as I already have Key Chain on my mac and at work I use chrome which already do a great job remembering passwords. The difference is that a password manager will stop or try to dissuade you from reusing the same password all the time. Let you know when it’s weak aka dogs name! And they have a password generator that creates strong passwords.

Although both password managers I am looking at have their differences I do trust they are both fairly secure. Nothing is completely secure but the chances of them being hacked are slim to almost none. Which leaves me to consider install and ease of use, there is also a price difference which I will take into consideration.

Regardless of what I am doing if you don’t use a password manager you should consider it in this day and age, even if you just used it for your financial websites. It pays to have the extra layer of security these days.

Be safe People!

Dealing with the Internet these days.

May 18, 2018 By Joe 2 Comments

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I work in the security business, I also deal with other aspects of security in regards to the internet. This means bad bots & malware and privacy are things I focus on often.
I try to keep myself informed in regards to data and where it’s going these days, not just the general stupidity of Facebook. But also what will be the deal now that AI is taking over much more of the daily grind when it comes to pretty much anything online.
Google Duplex Demo:

It’s apparent that AI, machine learning is moving ahead in leaps and bounds. The world moves on and even though our fool of a president eliminates the cyber security department to allow his Russian friends to do their stuff unimpeded.
It’s still an issue that I want the people who can make our data safe as possible are in fact doing so?
The internet as you probably know is or has for a while been moving to mobile. Google ranks websites on not only loading times, security certificates, but also if the work on mobile devices. malware on mobile has increase and so has robocalls.
If you are interested on checking what google has on you they are fairly open and transparent about it. go here Google sign in and check your stuff.

For Apple go to Apple’s Privacy Policy page:
(https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/)
Scroll down to the section titled “Access to Personal Information.” It’s worth reading and says explains that Apple will provide you with a copy of the information it holds if you request it.
Click the “Privacy Contact Form” link.
Choose your language.
Select “I have a question about privacy issues” from the drop-down box.
Fill in your first and last name, email, subject and comments.
Click submit.

Apple is much better with privacy, and Google is transparent, for Facebook we are just a commodity so don’t be surprised!
As for the future, if we can get passed the sharing our lives on the web without thinking about the consequences of how and what we share. AI will I think come to the rescue as computer systems can be taught to defend us.
AI will also be used to attack our systems and learn from it’s mistakes at speeds we can only imagine.
If I seem to contradict myself it’s because we are probably going to see both. To win we will have to take out the players, in the same way servers are taken when dark web actors are arrested these days.
I have a Facebook account, and I believe that Facebook learned a lesson after Trump won. You have a responsibility to the people who provide you with their data as much as you do to the companies you allow us the data to make money. I personally think Facebooks biggest mistake was the new Feed, Facebook isn’t a news source, it’s a social network, it takes no responsibility for the news it shares on it’s feeds. When legitimate news sites are not trusted and Facebook is we have a serious problem.
Our Data whether we like it or not is a commodity, and we should treat it as such. This feels like we are moving into Black Mirror territory!

Just another day in paradise!