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Ask Soylent: Do I Need SSL?
My book site, mcgrewbooks.com, has been online for years now. It doesn’t really need SSL because there is no sensitive information shared, just HTML to read, pictures to look at, links to follow, and free e-books to download. To buy a physical book there’s a link to Lulu, which does have SSL.
That is, there’s no technical reason to need SSL.
Then a few years ago Google said sites without SSL would be downgraded in their search algorithm, and I worried a little, but my traffic numbers didn’t drop.
But looking at the site after Firefox’s last upgrade I noticed a broken padlock next to the URL. Most people don’t know anything about SSL, but a broken padlock sure looks ominous to them!
So I started looking into it. My host wants almost half of what I pay for hosting to add SSL, which would only serve to make my readers less uncomfortable. It’s not really expensive, about twenty five bucks a year.
Then I found LetsEncrypt.org, which offers free SSL certificates. I don’t know if my host (R4L) would allow it, and it would take some research to figure out how to use it.
What do you folks think?
Super Heavy Booster Changes
SpaceX tweaks Starship's Super Heavy rocket booster as design continues to evolve
Height of the booster will now be 70 meters, up from 68 meters. That would match the entire height of Falcon 9 or Heavy.
According to Musk, the Super Heavy booster will be stretched by a steel ring or two, reaching a new height of ~70m (230 ft). In other words, Starship’s first stage alone will measure as tall as the entirety of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket – first stage, second stage, and payload fairing included. Powered by up to 37 Raptor engines, a Super Heavy booster could produce more than ~90,000 kN (19,600,000 lbf) of thrust at liftoff – an incredible 12 times as much thrust as SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Starship, meanwhile, will be a beast of an orbital-class upper stage on its own, measuring at least 50m (165 ft) tall and weighing some 1350 metric tons (3 million lb) fully-fueled. Stacked on top of Super Heavy, a Starship ‘stack’ would reach a staggering 120m (395 ft) and weigh more than 5000 metric tons (11 million lb) once loaded with liquid oxygen and methane propellant.
There was talk of making Starship significantly taller and/or wider in the future. Making initial versions taller could help it get closer to the goal of taking 150 metric tons to LEO.
Sketching out a rough series of upgrades that could feasibly be made to the reusable spacecraft’s currently design, Musk thinks that Starship’s conical tank domes (and thus Super Heavy’s, too) could be flattened. That might allow an extra ~3m (10 ft) of propellant tank space to be squeezed into the same 50m Starship length, improving performance by simply using the vehicle’s fixed volume more efficiently.
Palemoon creator makes request of web devs
Dear Web Developers, how about not helping goog with their vendor lock-in, bloat, and monopoly over the web?
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004
I can't expect that sanity will prevail. If that were possible, we wouldn't have made it to where we are today.
BTW, the US Census website is trash that doesn't work in Palemoon. Guess I'll fill out a paper one.
Arthritis Drug and Medical Insurance
Thinking of COVID-19. I am reminded of an episode with medical insurance company about a year ago. It's about one specific drug that I take for arthritis. (a drug that makes me somewhat immune compromised but not sarcasm compromised)
They stopped shipping it to me in 90 day supply. I had to start getting it in 28 day supply -- and from a "specialty" pharmacy. "specialty" usually means for a drug that is ultra fantastically expensive and/or needs special handling, refrigeration, cannot be beamed by transporter, or all of the above and more.
Instead of the usual 90 day bottle, it now comes in special packaging with all kinds of special scary warnings. WARNING - CYTOTOXIC COMPOUND! Don't touch it with your fingers, etc. (how do they think I've been swallowing it once a week for the last 13 years?) My wife definitely wanted to keep some of that packaging and photograph it. Use it for things she sent to friends, etc.
So I called them and asked why can't this be filled the way it has always been? But no real answer. They did send me to the specialty pharmacy. Those people had a lot of questions. The gist of it sounded like they think I have cancer. But I've been taking this drug for over 13 years, I tell them. Really? They are a bit astonished. Yes, for arthritis. My arthritis specialist and I know that is off label use, but it is sometimes used this way. And it is effective. (and anything to not take, or take less hydrocodone is good IMO)
It suddenly dawns on me. They think if I'm dying of cancer, I might not be around for 28 days, let alone 90 days. So why ship a 90 day supply of what was a very inexpensive generic drug. I assure them I've really been taking this drug more than 13 years and intend to keep taking it for a long time.
Then I notice it starts coming from the regular pharmacy again, in 90 day supply. No scary warnings or frightening packaging. My doctor never had mentioned handling or touching this drug in any special way different than any other pill that I take. And I'm the only one that handles or touches it.
If you haven't guessed, it's Methotrexate. And it is cheap.
Edit: thinking about it, this may be more about the pharmacy than the medical insurance. Insurance has an incentive to keep things cheap.
OOoOoOooOoOooooo
INFINITE DOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!
I N F I N I T E D O O M
eBoLaIDs 2.0
EBOLAIDS
ebol
aids
We're all gonna die!!!!!!!
ooooooooOOoOoOOoOoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
E B O L A I D S
In all seriousness, COVID 19 isn't going to be what causes the pain.
It's the planet wide recession it has now triggered. The United States (my country) will be hit especially hard due to its poor healthcare and lack of sick pay. Destitution for all! Yay!
You Can Watch "The Hunt" on Friday
Hollywood Could Take $20 Billion Hit From Coronavirus Impact
A studio has given in to the coronavirus and will make several movies available on your favorite illicit/piracy platforms.
Lava Lake. I mean Comet
Comet Lake Core i9-10900T CPU at 35 Watt rating hits 123 watts in Sandra benchmark
TDPs are often a very tricky thing, but this one definitely falls into the category, odd. In the SiSoft Sandra database, an entry appeared of a pending Core i9-10900T processor, that T in there is for the energy-friendly 35 Watt models.
Now, make no mistake, we're talking about a 10-core/20-threads processor. So in low base-clock loads achieving 35 Watts, I would find it amazing by itself all together. That, however, is not the case, the benchmark shows that the Core i9-10900T actually draws up-to 123 Watts under load. Again, 10 cores, I am not shocked, but with a rating of 35 Watts, it's definitely on the high side if you think about it for a small form factor build. The base clock (the absolute lowest load clock for all cores) should be 1.9 GHz for the Core i9-10900T. The processor is listed as having a 4.5 GHz boost frequency (single thread).
Top-end 10-core could draw up to 300 Watts.
Another fading fad
On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America.
[...]
But it has also become a lightning rod for critics, and that one sentence about the role of slavery in the founding of the United States has ended up at the center of a debate over the whole project. A letter signed by five academic historians claimed that the 1619 Project got some significant elements of the history wrong, including the claim that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery. They have demanded that the New York Times issue corrections on these points, which the paper has so far refused to do. For her part, Hannah-Jones has acknowledged that she overstated her argument about slavery and the Revolution in her essay, and that she plans to amend this argument for the book version of the project, under contract with Random House.
The criticism of the Times has emboldened some conservatives to assert that such “revisionist history” is flat-out illegitimate. The right-wing publication The Federalist is extending the fight with a planned “1620 Project” about the anniversary of the Mayflower Landing at Plymouth Rock. (This plan is already inviting its own correction request, since Plymouth Rock is not actually the site of the Pilgrims’ first landing.) The project was even criticized on the floor of the U.S. Senate when, during the impeachment trial, President Donald Trump’s lawyer cited the historians’ letter to slam the project. Some observers, including at times Hannah-Jones herself, have framed the argument as evidence of a chasm between black and white scholars (the historians who signed the letter are all white), pitting a progressive history that centers on slavery and racism against a conservative history that downplays them.
So what was NYT Journalist Hannah-Jones (the driving force behind Project 1619) response to this accusation?
The clarification is small -- just two words --but important. We add tht [sic] slavery was one of the primary motivations for "some of" the colonists to declare independence. As written, it appears that I am saying this was a universal motivation of ALL colonists. I wasn't clear enough
"Some" is one of those weasel words that can mean anything. That reminds me of an ancient Trump speech [Edit: added link] which uses "some" in much the same way:
[...]When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
That bolded phrase totally makes the earlier part ok, right? Anyway, as the saying goes: great minds think alike. Apparently, so do mediocre ones.
Anyway, I think the thing is over now that the sexy claims are getting walked back. The history of slavery in the US is important, but this deliberate attempt to cast the Revolutionary War, an important part of the past (and to a lesser degree, other parts of the US's history), as revolving around slavery has failed for the time being. We should wonder why so many people need the past to be so sordid that they uncritically embrace made up shit. History isn't pretty. You don't need to try.
My take is that they don't care about history in the first place. Rather it's a pretext for making very ugly changes in the present. If you can make the past all about slavery, then a little more modern slavery doesn't look so bad in comparison.
The Hunt (some) Liberal's wet dream
Review: The Hunt is every bit as bad and offensive as we suspected
But at least it's an equal-opportunity offender. And Betty Gilpin is terrific.
Jennifer Ouellette - Mar 14, 2020 1:00 pm UTC
Twelve random "regular" people find themselves being hunted by vengeful wealthy sociopaths in The Hunt, starring GLOW's Betty Gilpin and Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. Delayed since last fall in the wake of mass shootings, the film is being touted as a daring, politically incorrect edgy satire. It's not. It's just a predictably pointless, simplistic premise with all the subtle nuance of a cudgel to the side of the head, pretending that it has something relevant to say about "cancel culture" and our current hyper-polarized partisan divide.
Written by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse (whose father Carlton shared showrunner duties with Lindelof on LOST), The Hunt is about 12 strangers who wake up in a clearing with no idea where they are or how they got there. They soon discover they are "prey" at an exclusive resort called The Manor, where the uber-wealthy come to hunt human beings—although Hilary Swank's high-end executive (who masterminded the whole thing) scoffs that they should hardly be considered "beings." But one of the targets, Gilpin's Crystal, fights back, and proves to be a formidable adversary.
As I pointed out when the first trailer dropped, it's not a particularly new idea, since Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" was first published in 1924 and has spawned countless film and television interpretations of the basic concept over the ensuing decades. The twist in this case is that the hunted are all red state "deplorables," and the hunters are "liberal elites"—albeit of the super-entitled uber-wealthy variety.
Naturally, Fox News had a field day with the film's storyline. It's essentially trolling Fox's core audience, after all, although the premise is frankly just as offensive to folks on the opposite end of the political spectrum (fair and balanced!). Sometimes that kind of controversy can be good marketing for a strong opening weekend. But then Universal decided to pull the film's originally scheduled release in the wake of three US mass shootings that claimed the lives of more than 30 people. That was the right decision.
Even though the premise, and that original trailer, seemed pretty dubious, I was willing to give Lindelof and Cuse the benefit of the doubt and wait to see the film before rendering judgment. If anyone could set up expectations and then toss in a jaw-dropping twist, it's those two. So I'm actually quite peeved that The Hunt is so unrelentingly predictable and pedestrian. How Lindelof and Cuse could go from something as multi-faceted and sublime as Watchmen to this godawful mess is a the head-scratcher.
The most recent trailer (embedded above) has been recut to hint that The Hunt isn't really about rich liberals literally killing conservative folks, but that's disingenuous. Yes, the premise really is that dumb and obvious. There are no fully-formed characters, just caricatures; half of the characters aren't even named, they're just listed in the credits as "Yoga Pants," "Trucker," "Staten Island," or "Crisis Mike," to name a few. As for the motivation of the so-called "liberals," we learn that the notion of the Hunt started out as a Q-Anon-like Internet conspiracy.
The "liberal" group in question, while making fun of the idiocy of an unnamed president (*cough* Trump *cough*), joke in a group text thread about killing a few "deplorables" in an upcoming hunt on "the Manor." When one person's phone is hacked, the texts go public and a certain segment of gullible right-wing Internet denizens thinks it's real. Everyone on that thread is summarily fired to preserve the "optics" of their respective corporations. Orchestrating a real "hunt" that targets those who bought into and spread the rumor is their revenge.
This bone-headed premise might conceivably work in the context of a five-minute comedy sketch, except the ham-fisted script isn't particularly sharp or funny, regardless of which group it's targeting with the jibes. Case in point: there's a scene where Ma (Amy Madigan) and Pop (Reed Birney), posing as rural gas station owners, argue about whether "Black" or "African-American" is the more politically correct terminology for people of color as they haul the bodies of the targets they've just slaughtered into the back of the store. Hahaha. Get it? That's about as subtle as the purported "humor" gets.
The sole exception to all of this is Crystal, and that's largely due to an extraordinary performance by Gilpin—the one bright light in this otherwise dankly distasteful film. (The gifted Swank is utterly wasted in her role as Athena.) It's also an underdeveloped part, but Gilpin's expressive face and mannerisms infuse her bare outline of a character with a bit of much-needed depth. She's a cipher from the start, although we gradually learn she's a veteran who saw combat in Afghanistan, which certainly explains her mastery of weaponry and skill at hand-to-hand combat—and matter-of-fact ruthlessness at killing those hunting her, like a Mississippi John Wick. I suspect a touch of PTSD might be a factor.
What’s the point?
When Crystal finally faces Athena in the inevitable final confrontation, the latter is surprised to learn that Crystal can recognize the music of Beethoven and has read (and understood) George Orwell's Animal Farm. So what is the implicit message here? That Crystal deserves to live because she has some cultural refinements, while her fellow "deplorables" deserved to die? I'm sure that wasn't Lindelof and Cuse's intent, but it is a natural inference to make, especially when we learn that Crystal's kidnapping was actually a case of mistaken identity. She's not one of the much-maligned "deplorables" who were targeted because of their online embracing of a weird conspiracy theory.
Perhaps there's supposed to be some kind of nihilistic message in all of this, but if so, it's garbled and muddled to such a degree as to be meaningless. At one point Crystal tells one of the other survivors a story her mother used to tell her, about the jackrabbit and the box turtle. It's a version of the tortoise and the hare, with an ugly twist. After the cocky jackrabbit loses to the box turtle because he took a nap mid-race, he goes to the box turtle's house with a hammer, kills the turtle's family in front of him, and then kills the box turtle, before gobbling up their dinner amid their smashed bodies—"because the jackrabbit always wins." Her fellow survivor, confused, asks if they are the jackrabbit or the box turtle. Crystal doesn't answer. That's pretty much the predicament of anyone looking for deeper meaning in this film.
The Hunt is doubly disappointing because, in the right hands, this could have been a challenging, thought-provoking take on a well-established literary classic. The studio's marketing is trumpeting this as the most controversial movie of 2019 that nobody has yet seen, hinting at playing the "censorship card" and urging audiences to decide for themselves. Well, I'm hardly squeamish about challenging films that push the boundaries of socially acceptable mores, which puts me very much in the target audience for this film. But it's actually hard to pull off such a feat, and sadly, The Hunt fails on almost every level.
The Hunt is currently playing in theaters, should you decide to take a break from "social distancing." But frankly, it deserves to bomb at the box office.
Actually, this should be classified as "fantasy". In reality, elite liberals hide in the cities, quaking in fear at the idea that "deplorables" own weapons.
Lest you feel superior, many of you liberals are equally deplorable. If the only Wagner ever to be heard in your home was "Flight of the Valkyries" in a war movie, you're deplorable.
This is why we want only police to have weaponry
Lawyer: Man asleep when police fired on house, killing him
https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2020/03/lawyer-man-asleep-when-police-fired-on-house-killing-him/
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, killing him and wounding his girlfriend, an attorney for the 21-year-old man’s family said Friday.
The Montgomery County Police Department said in a news release Friday that Duncan Socrates Lemp “confronted” police and was shot by one of the officers early Thursday. Rene Sandler, an attorney for Lemp’s relatives, said an eyewitness gave a “completely contrary” account of the shooting. She said police could have “absolutely no justification” for shooting Lemp based on what she has heard about the circumstances.
“The facts as I understand them from eyewitnesses are incredibly concerning,” she told The Associated Press.
The warrant that police obtained to search the Potomac home Lemp shared with his parents and 19-year-old brother doesn’t mention any “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, Lemp’s relatives said in a statement released Friday by their lawyers. Nobody in the house that morning had a criminal record, the statement adds.
“Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility onto Duncan or his family, who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home, is not supported by the facts,” the statement says.
A police department spokesman didn’t immediately respond to the statements by the family or their lawyer.
The department’s news release on Friday says tactical unit members were serving a “high-risk” search warrant around 4:30 a.m. when one of the unit’s officers fatally shot Lemp. Police detectives recovered three rifles and two handguns from the home. Lemp was prohibited from possessing firearms, police said.
“Detectives were following up on a complaint from the public that Lemp, though prohibited, was in possession of firearms,” the release says without elaborating.
Sandler said the family believes police fired gunshots, not a flashbang or other projectile, from outside the home, including through Lemp’s bedroom window, while he and his girlfriend were sleeping. Nobody in the home heard any warnings or commands before police opened fire, she said.
“There is no warrant or other justification that would ever allow for that unless there is an imminent threat, which there was not,” Sandler said.
The police department’s news release says the “facts and circumstances of the encounter” are still under investigation. Prosecutors from neighboring Howard County will review the evidence at the conclusion of the investigation.
“An established agreement between the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office stipulates that when an officer-involved shooting involving injury or death occurs in one county, the other county’s State’s Attorney’s Office will review the event,” police said.
Lemp was Caucasian, according to Sandler. She did not know the race of the unidentified officer involved in the shooting because she said the officers were wearing masks. The officer was placed on administrative leave, a standard procedure after police shootings.
Sandler said Lemp’s grief-stricken family is traumatized. Their statement says they intend to “hold each and every person responsible for his death.”
“We believe that the body camera footage and other forensic evidence from this event will support what Duncan’s family already knows, that he was murdered,” the statement says.
Lemp worked as a software developer and was trying to raise money for a startup company, according to friends and co-workers.
“He was a talented, smart guy. Super nice. Didn’t deserve to get shot,” said Samuel Reid, whose Canadian software company employed Lemp as an independent contractor.
Tsolmondorj Natsagdorj, 24, of Fairfax, Virginia, said he met Lemp in 2016 and bonded with him over their shared interest in cryptocurrency. They also talked about politics. He described Lemp as a libertarian who frequented the 4chan and Reddit message boards, sites popular with internet trolls.
“Duncan was a young guy with a bright future as an entrepreneur,” Natsagdorj said. “We was working on things to change the world.”
On social media accounts that friends said belonged to him, Lemp’s username was “YungQuant.” On an internet forum called “My Militia,” someone who identified himself as Duncan Lemp, of Potomac, and posted under the username “yungquant” said he was “an active III%’r and looking for local members & recruits.” That’s an apparent reference to the Three Percenters, a wing of the militia movement. The group’s logo, the Roman numeral “III,” has become popular with anti-government extremists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
On his Instagram account, Lemp recently posted a photograph that depicts two people holding up rifles and included the term “boogaloo,” slang used by militia members and other extremists to describe a future civil war in the U.S.
Friends said they never heard Lemp espouse any anti-government rhetoric. Sandler said Lemp was not a part of any anti-government or militia-type group.
“He was pro-America and supported wholeheartedly all the protections of the Constitution,” she said.
Copyright © 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
It appears that the youngster went online, and inquired into joining one of the militias - so the police raided his hime and killed him.
Odd, all the millions of Americans who own guns, but never kill anyone. But, the cops who can be "trusted" manage to kill people routinely. Kill them while they sleep, officer, it's safest.
BTW - this is Maryland. The state where the cops run your plates while rolling down the highway, and if you are a registered gun owner, they will pull you over to search your vehicle.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/30/gun-owners-fear-maryland-cops-target-them-for-traf/
