daft.red

I switched from windows to Linux in 2004 when I was sick of windows dying once a month. I became so good at reformatting I could remember my windows key off the top of my head. That key is long gone because I haven’t used windows in years on my home machine. I spent time with SUSE Linux, Gentoo (which I still believe is the fastest OS available) and Ubuntu. Gentoo, although I loved the speed, died on me every two or three months. An improvement from windows, but eventually after I graduated college, I didn’t have time to maintain the sandbox anymore. So I switched to Ubuntu. I kept Ubuntu on there for a while but realized I’d never use it again. After some hacking and crafting I managed to get my partitions converted over to HFS+. I switched to mac in January when I built my newest machine. Quad core, I’m never going back. That said, I do believe an open source operating system will eventually over take a flagship mac operating system in features, ease of use, and eye candy. Until then I will remain on OSX.

Around this time last year I decided to make meditation part of my life. I started with five minutes a day for the month of January. There were a bunch of days where I made it more than five minutes, but everyday I did at least five minutes for whole month. At first I did not know what to do with myself. I was under the impression my thoughts would eventually drift away and the serene inner peace I was hearing about would appear. In some ways it did, but only for very brief fleeting moments after several months of pillow time. For the most part I was left searching for something, over and over again, anything. After reading many books and articles about what I should actually be doing, I realized that searching was a misleading action in my practice. It was necessary, it really opened my mind to the idea of sitting for longer periods of time, but I eventually outgrew the search. Searching first gave away to waiting. But even more quickly waiting too gave away to something else. About half a year later, when waiting gave away, I found my mind watching itself. The watching sensation recognized for the very first time the immensity of the thinker. I will readily admit having identified with the thinker my whole life. I placed value on the thinker, as the part of the brain allowing me to do the things I love like programming and chess. The thinker has always been the part of the brain from where my success has arisen. When the thinker finally gave away to the watcher, it was astonishment at this new place or feeling which replaced it. This was my first insight. The thinker quieted down for long enough for me to understand the dominate trains of thought from a new perspective. I found a place of existence where those thoughts we no longer there, they were no longer even necessary. The best part of this realization, was not that this is a place meditation allows me to access, but this is a place I can always access. It is most certainly true in meditation the watcher can be much more focused and yet aware at the same time. But that does not preclude me from watching in the every day moments of life in a more accessible manner. This realization has enabled me to be more like the watcher, in a way not possible without meditation. This present sense of watching has been one of the highlights in my practice in the past year. It has taught me there is still much to learn about my own mind, and the experience I can have. I suspect I have a couple more iterations of this cycle of searching, waiting and watching on the path to new understandings. I am much more patiently practicing at this point then when I started. I choose to sit at this point as I have learned it is very rewarding in its own right.

Troy Hunt successfully frames the context of Apple vs the FBI court order in his must read post, but ignores an important question. What is on the iPhone that is so important to the FBI that they would go to this length to get it? This is the first time that a court has ordered a technology company to develop new software requiring Apple to backdoor their own iOS system. In October 2015 Obama agreed to stop pressing for legislation for encryption backdoors in technology products. Now Bloomberg highlights that this was a tactical change in direction and not a policy change. > “In a secret meeting convened by the White House around Thanksgiving, senior national security officials ordered agencies across the U.S. government to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, the marquee product of one of America’s most valuable companies, according to two people familiar with the decision. > > The approach was formalized in a confidential National Security Council “decision memo,” tasking government agencies with developing encryption workarounds, estimating additional budgets and identifying laws that may need to be changed to counter what FBI Director James Comey calls the “going dark” problem: investigators being unable to access the contents of encrypted data stored on mobile devices or traveling across the Internet. Details of the memo reveal that, in private, the government was honing a sharper edge to its relationship with Silicon Valley alongside more public signs of rapprochement.” The New York Times has taken the position this is a classic single case of a terrorist investigation, but fails to discuss the potential value of a dead man’s work phone as well. The NYT discusses Apple’s business value and the Justice Departments criticism, but completely ignores the value of a non-personal phone in a terrorist investigation. Since Farook destroyed his personal phone, it reasons there is nothing on his work phone, otherwise it would have been destroyed as well. Snowden points out that the FBI already likely has any information which could be reasonably extracted from this phone. The FBI knows that Apple cannot get into the iOS 8 iPhone 5c without changing their software. The FBI also knows that Apple cannot physically get into the next generation of iPhone 6s running iOS9 due to improvements in the Secure Enclave. Therefor the window of opportunity to get into iPhones during future investigations is closing. If the FBI does not challenge Apple now, they will lose the ability to get evidence off future phones. With this understanding, the EFF’s statement is very clear. > “It might seem the FBI wouldn’t go through such a public battle if they had a secret way to get the data, but even if they did it’s likely they wanted to take this case to court because the high-profile nature of the San Bernardino shootings makes this a sympathetic case to create a legal precedent in their favor.” Apple’s public letter response to this order does not highlight the additional cost and challenges presented by the order but focuses on the dangers to civil liberty should the order set a legal precedent. Rightly or wrongly this is a master stroke from Apple, diverting attention from annoyed user base increasingly upset with software decisions and instead rallying the troops around issues in Civil Liberties. Apple is hardware company, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (minus Surface & Xbox) are not. This is why Apple is publicly starting this conversation in response to this court order. Should they lose this appeal, security conscious consumers will evaluate their options. International nations will also place pressure on Apple to decrypt phones in their home countries. Countries where human rights abuses take place, citizens will be less safe. This is a very important conversation for us to have about the future of Privacy, Censorship and Security in our country. But make no mistake about it, this is a strategic long term decision the FBI is leading.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was a senior in high school sitting in my English Literature class. My friend Ashley came in to sit in front of me. She stated, “Two planes have hit the World Trade Center.” I responded, “Oh, that wasn’t planned.” I thought to myself, “Why would two small Cessna-like planes crash near the WTC?” We continued on with our class. I’m not sure anyone else knew yet, and I don’t remember all these years later how she knew already. Our English class period ended, and I walked down the stairs to proceed to the next hallway. After walking up the next set of stairs, I saw my history teacher (we’ll call him H). H was probably the largest person I knew, blessed with the wit, strength, height, and mass to keep in check any little shit high schoolers causing a ruckus. He was a gentle giant who rarely gave the “knock it off” look, but when he did, you knew he was serious. He was standing in the hallway. His eyes held back tears, his body language shouting pain. I could tell he was very upset, and I thought of what Ashley said to me. “Oh no.” My body knew something was wrong before my head did. Not long later our school principal came over the intercom with a message to all the faculty and students. She informed us that the Twin Towers had collapsed in NYC, and that after school programs had been canceled for the day. I appreciate today that she didn’t leave us in the dark to find out another way. I’m not sure many other high schools in the nation treated their students the same way, perhaps out of shock, perhaps still treating high schoolers as children. I went to lunch in a small cafeteria outside of the normal student cafeteria. My friends worked for the school television station and there was a TV in the cafeteria playing CNN. This was my first exposure to the horrific images, short looping planes flying into the buildings, and clouds of asbestos death descending on Manhattan. My friends and I discussed at lunch what would happen next, barely eating. The trouble was that the ’90s we knew were a transition decade. Those years were after the USSR and Cold War, but still before anything else. All of our discussions were still stuck in that old world. We were educated in that old world, only able to conceive of its dynamics, foreign policy, coalitions, and economics. It really didn’t matter what we discussed, predicted, or conceptualized in response to such a shock. We were wrong, and I think we were just trying to cope. For the first time in our lives we were old enough to understand and feel heart-stopping fear. I remember crying later that day with my family at home. We watched the WTC-7 building collapse on TV in the early evening. There were many hugs as we comforted and consoled one another. Later that night I was in my room reading or listening to music. A military fighter jet flew over the house. The unmistakable sound of a high-performance jet engine rattled the windows and furniture in my room. On September 11th, 2002, I was a freshman in engineering school. Many of my new friends were from the tri-state area. I listened to their stories about their parents, many of whom worked in Manhattan. One of my friends could see the towers collapse as she watched from her schoolyard in Queens. Thankfully none of their parents died in the attacks, but practically everyone of them had a friend from their hometowns who did. On September 11th, 2007, my friend Carol (not her real name) told me her story that day. Carol was working near the WTC at the time. She arrived off the subway just as the second plane hit the South Tower. She walked up the subway stairs only to see people running and screaming in a full-blown panic. She had no idea what was going on and froze for a moment, only for something to tell her to get back on the train. She went underground and got on a northbound train to head back to her apartment. After sitting down on the train and taking a moment to breathe, the woman sitting next to her asked, “Ma’am, are you okay?” Carol looked up to see a beautiful young woman with an expression of concern on her face. “Oh, I’m okay, thank you.” “Are you sure? Would you like anything?” Carol, still in shock from the scene, couldn’t help but feel that she needed this person in this moment, and the woman responded with grace and care in, of all places, the NYC subway. They continued to chat a little bit, but Carol got off the train to return to her apartment. As Carol was walking up the stairs to her apartment, she realized she knew the kind woman on the train and her name was Monica Lewinsky. By the time she had gathered herself later that morning and turned on the TV, both towers had already collapsed. I have heard and read countless accounts of the mass trauma surrounding these life-changing attacks. Years later, I still stop to give my full attention to anyone telling their story of that day. I’d like to think that’s not all that uncommon for myself to listen to said stories, but I probably don’t listen to other stories with the same intensity. It is notable that once a year, everyone does stop and fully listen to one another. It doesn’t matter where you were, or who you were with. Your story on that day matters. Maybe if we listened to each other as we always do on the anniversary, we wouldn’t have such disconnects in our society. - Rick Rescorla - JourneymanHunt on Reddit - Mistakes, mistrust and misdirection: 25 years after 9/11, its dark legacy continues to unfold - 911 In Realtime

I am seeing some music sharing posts around the small web, and I decided to throw in. You may find something you like or haven’t heard before. RAYE - This Music May Contain Hope Sienna Spiro - Visitor Jon Hopkins - Music for Psychedelic Therapy Brian Eno - Apollo The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Parcels - Day / Night Thomas Bangalter - Mythologies HUNTR/X and Saja Boys - Kpop Demon Hunters Tchaikovsky - Sleeping Beauty DRAMA - Gallows Love - Reel to Real Daft Punk - Random Access Memories Robyn - Body Talk The Field - From Here We Go Sublime Hans Zimmer - Interstellar