U.S. Based VPN Tries to Get Me to Promote Their Service
October 7th, 2016As I’ve told you guys on here forever, all a VPN does is shift your Internet activity from one place to another. Instead of the logs being held by X, they’re held by Y. It’s not magic. You’re not anonymous online.
Since I can’t know what any VPN service is doing on the backend, I’ll never promote any VPN service. It’s that simple.
This was my concluding email to the persistent affiliate sales guy.
Hi Chuck,
There’s no way for me or my readers to know what you’re doing on the backend with the logs. The fact that the users’ IPs are hidden means nothing.
Even if there was a way to know that you weren’t handing everything over to ______ (fill in the blank), you’re a U.S. company and anyone who relies on a U.S. company for VPN services hasn’t been paying attention.
Anyway, there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d promote your, or any other, VPN service. haha. No way. I wish I had a dollar for each of these offers I’ve turned down, though.
A Few Solar Panels Turned Up…
October 7th, 2016This was the scene in Auckland yesterday at the company I work for. These are crates of the new 290 watt Trina Honey Plus panels. Monos. Top of the line from the #1 solar panel manufacturer in the world.
To all the politicians, power company executives and complicit media that continue to lie about solar power in New Zealand, here’s what you can do. Kindly put this in your pipe and smoke it:
In other news, my wife noticed that the meter reader came by two days in a row last week. On the second visit, she poked her head out the window and asked if everything was ok.
He said, “They think I’m not reading your meter right. They want me to do it again and take pictures this time.”
She told me what happened and I chuckled, knowing that we must have exported more than we imported during the last billing cycle, and some bean counter blew a fuse over it.
Sure enough, a few days later, our statement indicated that both registers added up to -11 units.
Maybe Meridian should send the guy out to read the meter three times next month, when our solar system will be making even more power. Let me pose next to the meter with a nice, big grin.
I am Jack’s smirking revenge.
I wish we could keep all of that juice we’re making, instead of exporting what we can’t use to the grid…
Tesla’s Gigafactory is going to drop prices on lithium batteries and I’m hoping that Aquion will respond by dropping prices on their offerings. We’re not interested in playing the hybrid game, staying connected to the grid and almost certainly getting hit with a solar tax in the future. When we pull the trigger on batteries, it’ll be for all the marbles. Grid defection.
Come on, Aquion. Daddy needs just one Aspen 48M.
British Pound Flash Crash
October 7th, 2016Punishment for Brexit?
Via: Reuters:
The sterling tripped lower on Friday on what traders called a “flash crash” that knocked the currency to a 31-year low, while the dollar slipped on news of unexpectedly weak U.S. job growth in September.
Even before a sudden plunge that briefly shaved a tenth of the pound’s value during Asian trading, the sterling was on track for its worst week since January 2009 as some national leaders call for Britain to make a “hard” exit from the European Union.
Tick Bites That Trigger Severe Meat Allergy on Rise Around the World
October 6th, 2016Via: Guardian:
People living in tick-endemic areas around the world are being warned of an increasingly prevalent, potentially life-threatening side effect to being bitten: developing a severe allergy to meat.
The link between tick bites and meat allergies was first described in 2007, and has since been confirmed around the world.
Sufferers of “tick-induced mammalian meat allergy” will experience a delayed reaction of between two and 10 hours after eating red meat. Almost invariably, they are found to have been bitten by a tick – sometimes as much as six months before.
National Guard, State Police Descend on 81-Year-Old’s Property to Seize Single Pot Plant
October 6th, 2016Via: Daily Hampshire Gazette:
All that remains of the solitary marijuana plant an 81-year-old grandmother had been growing behind her South Amherst home is a stump and a ragged hole in the ground.
Margaret Holcomb said she was growing the plant as medicine, a way to ease arthritis and glaucoma and help her sleep at night. Tucked away in a raspberry patch and separated by a fence from any neighbors, the plant was nearly ready for harvest when a military-style helicopter and police descended on Sept. 21.
In a joint raid, the Massachusetts National Guard and State Police entered her yard and cut down the solitary plant in what her son, Tim Holcomb, said was a “pretty shocking” action — one that he argues constitutes unlawful surveillance and illegal search and seizure.
“It’s scary as hell,” said Tim Holcomb.
Russia Launches Massive Nuclear War Training Exercise
October 6th, 2016Via: Independent:
The Russian government has launched a nationwide civil defence training exercise to ensure the country is properly prepared in the event of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack from the West.
Amid growing international tensions, particulary over Russia’s conduct in Syria, the Defence Ministry-run Zvezda TV network announced last week: “Schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow.”
Lasting three days, the exercise bing run by the Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) will involve 200,000 emergency personnel and the co-operation of 40 million civilians.
FBI Arrests NSA Contractor
October 5th, 2016Via: The Atlantic:
The FBI arrested a National Security Agency contractor in late August for stealing classified material from the intelligence organization, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors have charged Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. Martin had a top-secret national security clearance, according to Justice Department officials.
On August 27, police searched Martin’s home, two storage sheds, and his car and found hard-copy documents and information stored on electronic devices, according to the criminal complaint. “A large percentage of the materials recovered from Martin’s residence and vehicle bore markings indicating that they were property of the U.S. government and contained highly classified information,” the complaint says.
Prosecutors say Martin initially denied having taken the materials, but later “stated that he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized.”
Not OK, Google
October 5th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch:
At its hardware launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Alphabet showed the sweeping breadth of its ambition to own consumers’ personal data, as computing continues to accelerate away from static desktops and screens, coalescing into a cloud of connected devices with the potential to generate far more data — and data of a far more intimate nature — than ever before.
…
The scope of Alphabet’s ambition for the Google brand is clear: it wants Google’s information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center — i.e. where it’s all but impossible for consumers not to feed it with a steady stream of highly personal data.
Outage Knocks Out All Major Phone Providers on the East Coast
October 5th, 2016Via: Daily Dot:
Every major phone carrier experienced outages on United States’ east coast this morning from about 11:00am local time until around 11:45am.
DownDetector.com, which tracks technology failure, illustrated the precipitous collapse of major networks.
More: Outage at Level 3
Homeland Security Tracks License Plates At Gun Shows
October 5th, 2016Via: ZeroHedge:
Newly discovered emails from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reveal efforts of the federal government to track American citizens who visit gun shows across the country. The discovery came via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Wall Street Journal that revealed internal emails from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent requesting the support of local California police officers to “deploy license plate readers” at a 2010 gun show in Del Mar, California.
In an email titled “Request for Assistance,” an ICE investigator wrote, “We would like to see if you can support an outbound guns/ammo operation on (redacted) at the Crossroads (Del Mar) Gun Show. We would like to deploy license plate readers.” The email, whose sender and recipient are redacted, includes a large section of operational details that are also redacted.
According to the emails, the program was intended to collect license plate data from gun shows and then cross reference that data with border crossings in an attempt to identify gun runners. Of course, the program has drawn criticism from gun rights organizations across the country who argue that this form of mass surveillance draws undue suspicion to people who happen to engage in two completely legal activities.
