0.4 B US greenbacks lost in Yemen when the rebels overturned the US friendly government. So as in Iraq where we spent basically 1000 B dollars arming ISIS, we’ve armed the Yemeni rebels with state of the art equipment. Secondly, the overturned government allowed US drone strikes. I wonder if that had something to do […]
We’ve now spent more not rebuilding Afghanistan after an undeclared war than we did rebuilding Europe after something widely known as World War II. In inflation-adjusted dollars. Seems like something good could have been done with that money. Like rebuilding Europe after we destroyed it with a banking crisis. Or heck, just rebuilding the long-neglected […]
I give it six months. If the cartels are using drones to fly drugs over the fence before Amazon Prime gets drone delivery figured out, it won’t be more than six months before ISIS is using drones. Yes, we started this fire.
If they’re to be believed (which they’re not), the NSA knew about the Sony hacks before they occurred. So why not a word to the wise? I understand sources. Methods. But if you’re willing to go to cyberwar over something like this, maybe your intelligence services should try to prevent cyber attacks. In either case, […]
This headline says that the executive branch approved of the hacking of the legislative branch computers, but what the report really says is that the CIA informed the White House after the fact. Effectively, the CIA has no oversight. They hack into legislative branch computers. They destroy evidence. They perjure themselves under oath. They do […]
Actual terrorists in Paris and Belgium. Lots of them. Going back and forth between ISIS, Syria, and our allies. And the NSA has zero clue. So what is the NSA there for? It is completely incompetent at its actual mission. All it’s good for is obviating the fourth amendment. Burn it. Raze it. Salt the […]
Nurse who attended ebola patient gets on a commercial flight with a fever. CDC tells her it's okay. The hospital she worked for fails at even basic PPE measures, as does the county health department, who send unprotected LEOs and others to quarantined apartment. MSF doctor returning from attending ebola patients takes NYC subway and […]
Like the local hardware stores (ahem, Berg Hardware Store – good riddance), the local bike shops are going to drive themselves out of business. They don’t even need online stores to do it, but that’ll help. Steve’s $75 tune-up cost me a $300 wheel-rebuild. He ripped three spokes out of the rim overtightening them. Oh […]
I work with a bunch of really computer literate smart guys. Advanced degrees from well-respected universities with TLAs for names, program FPGAs, get poached by Wall Street regularly. Literally computer rocket scientists. Yet it is not uncommon for them to email me saying “Username xxxxx/password yyyyy doesn’t work anymore. Can you reset it?” And most […]
I listened to Neil Young exactly once, Spotify. Once! Otherwise, I’ve only used Spotify to listen to new music incessantly, looking for the next Mountain Goats or Best Coast or National or or or anyone from this millenium. Anything new. So why is it that every notification I get is about Neil Young or CSNY […]
The head of the CIA, a position that requires Senate approval, declines to answer questions from the Senate about his agency’s spying on the Senate. Yet subpoenas will not be issued, contempt citations not issued, the sergeant-at-arms not called, U.S. Marshalls not sent to compel attendence at hearings. Laws will not be passed, funding will […]
If you’re using CSS to write one of these way cool Medium-like pages that takes 10 seconds to load after you click on the URL while it’s doing all it’s CSS stuff, or makes you have to figure out how to scroll down, or disables the space key, or waits to load until I’ve scrolled […]
There’s a building in Utah that holds exabytes of data at a cost of $1.5B. Yet the NSA seems to be befuddled by ISIS. Possible explanations: That’s not their primary mission. They’re incompentent. They’re too busy amassing information on politicians. In any case, the solution is the same. Burn it down. Salt the earth. Ostracize […]
It turns out that the US tried to rescue James Foley, but failed because their intelligence was bad. Huh. Maybe the NSA should spend less time on spying on citizens, and more doing its actual job. At which it fails almost every time. Or we could just burn it to the foundations, salt the earth […]
It had to happen. Now we send people to jail, not for what they’ve done, but for what they might do in the future. Unless of course you’re C-level at a too-big-too-fail bank. Then you can money-launder drug money, sell worthless mortgages, commit fraud, and not only get off scot-free to, utterly predictably (and not […]