Ideology

One of the primary targets of Islamist terrorism is the vast majority of moderate Muslims. Sometimes physically, but always psychologically. And they want the rest of us to do their dirty work for them. A prime goal of these acts is to engineer a schism between Muslims and Western cultures. To create alienation, and to make Muslims a target of fear and anger. The resulting exclusion, xenophobia, suspicion, and implicit or explicit segregation is a tool of radicalisation.

Exactly.

Do yourself a service and read the whole thing.

iPad Pro: it really is something else

I’ve had the iPad Pro and the Logitech Create keyboard now for a couple of days and it’s really very, very different from what iPads used to be. I’m coming from the first iPad Retina, so it’s been a couple of generations in between. 

I’ve never before succeeded in writing anything more that emails with a short “yes” or “no”, or maybe a sentence, from any iPad or iPhone. It simply never was worth the pain. Now, I’m writing this very blog post on the iPad Pro. Using the Logitech keyboard, of course (there are limits; I’m still not prepared to attempt using an on-screen keyboard).

I’m using 1Password for all my logins, and it used to be that any login would be an “oh, no, not again” moment, since it would require switching to 1Password, logging in to it slowly and painstakingly, painfully copying the password, memorising the user name, switching back to the original app, manually entering the user name, painfully (usually takes two or three tries) getting the password “paste” option, then pasting the password, then finally logging in. Now I can slide in the screen from the right, select 1Password there, open it with my thumbprint (YES!), select the username, copy it using cmd-C (!), switch back to Safari (or whatever app I’m in) with cmd-tab, select the password field (if it isn’t still selected) and hit cmd-V. Just like on a desktop or laptop. Most of the keyboard shortcuts we use on a laptop work, like cmd-tab, cmd-X/C/V, cmd-space for search. You’ve got cursor keys on the Logitech keyboard. They’ve also implemented cmd-arrow to go to the beginning and end of lines, and top and bottom of the document. Free at last!

My productivity on the iPad has gone up tenfold, from almost zero to near desktop level. It’s for all practical purposes as productive as a laptop, but with the added ability to be comfortably used for reading, and drawing/annotations with a pen (which I haven’t gotten yet).

I’m missing only a few apps on the iPad, most notably Apple Remote Desktop. I’m not seeing all that much justification, except for this, for keeping a Macbook Air. Especially since the Air’s screen is atrociously bad compared to the iPad Pro’s screen.

So, no, this isn’t just another iPad, this is a game changer. 

Finally, a sensible paper leaked

White House officials have backed away from seeking a legislative fix to deal with the rise of encryption on communication devices, and they are even weighing whether to publicly reject a law requiring firms to be able to unlock their customers’ smartphones and apps under court order.

The whole paper, written on a typewriter and then scanned, can be found here. It’s really disturbing when you read a leaked secret paper from the NSC that actually makes sense and that you can agree with. What’s the world coming to?

Adpocalypse, or not

Everybody’s on about the end of the web due to more and more people using adblockers. In one camp are the ones (me included) who are sick and tired of ads and tracking, and on the other side the ones accusing me and my kind of stealing content.

What ad providers try to do is to serve us as many ads as possible, hoping we’re interested in any one of them. At the same time, the whole tracking deal is to find out which ads we could be more interested in. That latter almost seems like it’s in our interest. Or would be if it worked better and didn’t involve the general creepiness of advertisers trying to read our minds and share it with others. 

But I think there is a solution. 

Imagine if you had a settings sheet in the browser or in an extension, where you as a user could declare what kind of thing interests you in general. The browser presents this selection to sites you go to, allowing them to present you with targeted advertising without a lot of second guessing. I, as a user, would be less frustrated, and wouldn’t want or need adblocking. The advertiser would have a much higher conversion rate. And the site owner could make such a preference header a requirement to visit the site. In exchange, there’s no need for tracking to try to guess my preferences; I already told you myself.

The beginning of the end of the DNS

Or how the insanely stupid anti-piracy lobby will screw us all. 

Many of us saw this coming a long while back. Letting the **AA-holes misuse the DNS system for their censoring inevitably leads to the rise of a parallel DNS system. Yes, we already have the darknet for (other) illegal purposes, but this brings the darknet principle into the mainstream in a big way. 

“The censorship is easy to bypass, by simply changing your name server, so we decided to practice what we preach and offer such a service to all those affected by the problem,”

And…

“The Pirate Party’s DNS has added benefits though, as it supports additional Top Level Domains including .geek or .pirate, and the Namecoin based .bit.”

It’s easy to see that this unregulated DNS system will quickly overlay existing domains with alternatives, either accidentally or intentionally. Phishing and DNS MITM attacks will be of an entirely new caliber. The actual “bankofamerica.com” will lead to a phisher. 
 
(My prediction for what happens then: with https becoming enforced, the **AA-holes will take control of who can have a cert, leading to the pirates providing new CA roots for users, leading to even the bankofamerica.com phisher having extended certs… hey ho, there we go.)
 
Any safeguards built into DNS clients will be switched off by the users wanting to get the “uncensored” internet. 
 
Can you imagine how hard it will be to convince users to responsibly switch between the public DNS and their respective alternate DNS systems depending on what they’re doing? If there even was any OSs that supported such domain-dependent switching to begin with.
 
Even if Microsoft, Apple, and Google would want to implement a dual (triple?) DNS client in their systems, the **AA-holes will certainly fight even that, since it would “enable piracy”.
 
No, I don’t blame the Norwegian Pirate Party for setting this up. I blame the anti-piracy lobby, and the politicians that take their money, for creating the “need” for these destructive designs. Can’t anyone stop them?
 

The Socrates of the NSA

This is a disturbing look into the mind of an NSA employee. One wonders if it’s representative.

“I found myself wishing that my life would be constantly and completely monitored,” he continued. “It might seem odd that a self-professed libertarian would wish an Orwellian dystopia on himself, but here was my rationale: If people knew a few things about me, I might seem suspicious. But if people knew everything about me, they’d see they had nothing to fear. This is the attitude I have brought to SIGINT work since then.”

 

“We tend to mistrust what we do not understand well,” he noted. “A target that has no ill will to the U.S., but which is being monitored, needs better and more monitoring, not less. So if we’re in for a penny, we need to be in for a pound.”

 

“We probably all have something we know a lot about that is being handled at a higher level in a manner we’re not entirely happy about,” he wrote. “This can cause great cognitive dissonance for us, because we may feel our work is being used to help the government follow a policy we feel is bad.” Socrates advised modesty. Maybe the policy is actually correct — or perhaps it is wrong but will work out in the end. “I try,” he explained, “to be a good lieutenant and good civil servant of even the policies I think are misguided.”

Where have we heard this before… 

How stupid can you be…

Read this in Jerusalem Post, couldn’t believe it. I know Swedes can be real useful idiots, or useful real idiots, but this? Did a quick search, and yes, Swedes can be even greater idiots than I ever imagined. They actually did it. It’s true. Rewarding voluntary ISIS fighters after homecoming. Way to go.

Congrats, Sweden. If there was a dumbass competition for city councils, Stockholm should get first price.