10 thoughts for December 4, 2013

It's official: I'm a lazy bum who prefers to jot down these 10 daily thoughts than write long form.

1. This story is somewhat misleading.  To recap: 2M passwords compromised, but unlike the Adobe breach (or any other breach) this one involves a virus keylogger.  So, those 2M passwords compromised are actually 2M people who downloaded a virus.  Of course, the original source conflates password strength (length and complexity) with this breach, which only serves to confuse people and the journalists who write about these things.  Sigh.
2. FSU's quarterback, Jameis Winston was awarded ACC player of the year today.  Tomorrow the state AG will release its findings.  I'll go out on a limb and explain that the AG will say that there isn't enough evidence to prosecute Winston on rape charges.  But here's they key: The AG will not bother to present its investigation to a grand jury because the grand jury would not hesitate to vote to charge Winston with a felony and let a trial jury figure it out.  If any other person without the celebrity status, the AG would have quickly sent it to the grand jury and the grand jury would have voted to take it to trial, but it's not entirely fair to say that there is bias at play.  What's driving the decision is whether the AG, knowing how the police botched the initial complaint, will have enough evidence to avoid a jury nullification vote.
3. We now know that there are at least 5 exoplanets with water.  So, why are we trying to send humans to Mars?  I know, it's baby steps, but really, don't you rather that we shoot for a place that is actually livable?  On a side note: I realize that NASA and others place a premium on studying planets without disturbing them, but it might be time to look towards propagating humanity.
4. Consecutive record lows about to be broken in Portland and elsewhere in Oregon and Washington this week.  The last time the temps were this cold, was several years ago in the middle of Winter, not at the end of Fall.  We're talking 15°F / -9.4°C for a couple of days!  I don't think I've ever experienced that cold of temperatures in Portland, since I moved here 18 years ago.  Sounds like a great time to make it over to Multnomah Falls, no?
5. It's not really that cold if the wind isn't blowing.  I've written about this before: I can withstand about 18°F / -7.8°C in shorts, unless it's blowing.
6. It's difficult to comprehend, but apparently there are some GOP lawmakers who advocate bombing of Iran with nuclear weapons.  Every country has its nutty, dangerous lawmakers, and the US is no exception.
7. Just 21 days until Christmas -- three weeks.  Time is ticking like crazy in my head right now, because I always miss those deadlines for getting custom-printed / made products ordered.
8. Hundreds of millions of mobile devices being tracked by the NSA.  No wonder they need to scale up storage server farms. They're trying to keeping track on every piece of hay, just to find the handful of needles in that haystack.  Talk about inefficient program.  Just imagine the scale of database they're building, and you can see the problems emerging.
9. By the way, many headline writers got their information mixed up.  There aren't 5B cellular phones being tracked around the world, daily.  Rather, there are 5B records being collected daily.  If the NSA tracked 5B mobile devices, that'd be nearly 3/4 of all cellular phones in the world.  (ITU says there were 6.8B phones in the world in 2013.)
10. Speaking of the internet, there is no proof that what goes on the internet stays on the internet forever.  To wit: If someone decides to delete stuff, it's gone.  Sure, Google will save a cache of the internet for a period of time, and they do keep records of its users.  However after a certain period all that data is anonymized and untethered from your persona, and eventually cached website data disappears.  Perhaps the federal government needs to require the NSA to keep its data for forever, for the sake of posterity?