73F and damp here in the swamp.
On this day, foreign terrorists murdered thousands of our citizens and allies as they went about their lives. It happens that I was only a few miles from Ground Zero working at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It was a turning point in the national consciousness and in my own.
I still can’t talk about it without tears and anger. OFD would say that’s probably PTSD,. but if so, I’m no different from millions of others, and what millions do isn’t a disorder, it’s normal.
I remember watching the towers fall, getting every bit of cash I could out of the machines in the lobby of our venue, and heading to the grocery store. We bought a week’s worth of food, topped up the rental car gas tank, and returned to our hotel. Then I sat numb in the chair, watching the news feed on PBS, the only channel still on the air as their antenna wasn’t located on top of the World Trade Center. The only comms device that was working was my Skytel pager which allowed me to send email to friends and relatives. I carried that thing for years afterward, just on the strength of that experience.
We ended up driving toward home in our rental car. I’ll forever be grateful to Hertz for their response to the attacks. They told us “Get home safely, and let us know where you leave the car.” This is in stark contrast to the green and white company that told my co-workers that if they took the car out of state, they’d be charged with grand theft.
The murderous attack on 9/11 still is taking lives as first responders and ordinary people get sick and die from their exposures on the day.
NEVER FORGET. NEVER FORGIVE.
nick
While we have this advisory from folks who should know, keep your situational awareness up.
n
(Source: Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative)
Saw this interesting on Hurricane preparedness on ZeroHedge
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-10/five-likely-hurricane-aftermath-scenarios-prepare
One item in particular stood out: Keep a key to your house with you if you regularly use the garage as the primary means of entering your home, in case the garage door will not open
This happened to me during our last power outage. Drove up to the house and kept pushing the garage door remote with no result. But we use battery powered keypad locks so getting in the house wasn’t a problem. If we still had key locks it could have been an issue. When we did have key locks we kept a hidden key and gave one to the trusted neighbor.
We use keypad locks too. I have a keyfob to activate the strike release on the man door of my garage, and I can always use the key.
We have a physical key (override key) in a push button lock box, screwed to an inconspicuous location on the fence.
n
I was at Fort Sam Houston with the Twins for their checkup. Sitting in a lounge when the towers fell. The Twins were too little to know what was going on. I just walked out with them after that, but they were already blocking the main gate. I boogied to the back gate and made it out before that one was blocked. Total lockdown for 12 hours.
Yes, never forget. And never forget who did it.
Why hack the power stations? Kill the grid by hacking the demand side – air conditioners, water heaters, etc.
https://www.wired.com/story/water-heaters-power-grid-hack-blackout/
This article has the feel of several others I’ve read over the years. It is early days of something that will literally change the world in ways we can’t imagine.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-science-of-seeing-around-corners-20180830/
I’ll add that if it can be applied to visible light, it can be applied to other parts of the spectrum too.
n
_Outage (Powerless Nation)_ by Ellisa Barr
https://www.amazon.com/Outage-Powerless-Nation-Ellisa-Barr/dp/1477829946/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a three book young adult apocalyptic EMP series. I read the well printed and bound trade paperback. I will order the next book in the series soon.
Fifteen year old Dee has been stranded at her grandfather’s farm in Washington state for the summer as her parents go on a long cruise. When the EMP happens, the small town nearby slowly dies due to the evil of man.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars (170 reviews)
Why hack the power stations? Kill the grid by hacking the demand side – air conditioners, water heaters, etc.
https://www.wired.com/story/water-heaters-power-grid-hack-blackout/
If you are stupid enough to connect your appliances to the internet then you deserve what you get. The internet is the wild west nowadays and the number of bad actors are steadily increasing. From idiot teenagers to countries trying to wage war over the internet, it is very dangerous out there.
there’s no shortage of stupid in the world, and we’ll reap what they sowed….
n
The trouble is, I don’t deserve the result of what those idiots do when they connect to the ‘net.
We can’t shut the ‘net down without killing the nation, but reckless actions of some number could knock it down for us.
Putting anything on the ‘net just for the gee-whiz factor is stupid, as are the people that do it. (My boss did that. He can open & close his garage from his phone.) Dumb.
Putting anything on the ‘net just for the gee-whiz factor is stupid, as are the people that do it. (My boss did that. He can open & close his garage from his phone.) Dumb.
My favorite is the people starting their cars from their phone. If they can control the starter from the phone then they can control the engine speed, steering wheel position, brake position, etc, etc, etc. Foolish.
“Seagate Announces 14TB Barracuda Pro, IronWolf, And IronWolf Pro”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-14tb-hdd-ironwolf-barracuda-pro,37768.html
“Seagate’s 14TB drives use standard PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording), which has been the industry’s recording technology of choice for nearly a decade. Seagate’s next-gen 16TB models will mark the debut of HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology, which uses tiny lasers to increase storage density.”
Good night, these hard drives are getting bigger by the minute. And not cheap at a list price of around $600 each.
“Illegal immigrants cited in theft of 39 million Social Security numbers”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/illegal-immigrants-cited-in-theft-of-39-million-social-security-numbers
“”Their report draws attention to a move by former President Barack Obama to stop sending so-called “no match” letters to employers notifying them that numbers used by employees on the wage forms do not match their identity.”
“The change followed the president’s decision to approve amnesty for some 700,000 younger immigrants let into the U.S. under his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Some of those have been dubbed “dreamers.””
“Several groups promoting immigration reform and limitations have shown that illegal immigrants compete with low-income Americans for jobs.”
Not good, especially if your social security number was stolen and used by somebody else for a job.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
My favorite is the people starting their cars from their phone. If they can control the starter from the phone then they can control the engine speed, steering wheel position, brake position, etc, etc, etc. Foolish.
Autonomous cars are yet another Valley lotus-eater fantasy, but *automated* cars, driven by remote central control at least part of the time, are probably inevitable. Maybe 20 years at most before all these seemingly-discrete, nifty convenience and safety features like auto parking, lane assist, and collision avoidance are reconciled into automated freeways, and that’s only because studies show it takes two decades to completely turn over the car fleet in the US.
Cringely covered it at some point in the recent past. The West Coast states are already working on higher tag fees for 20+ year old vehicles to encourage upgrades. Naturally, Oregon is taking the lead.
Things will reach a point where congestion is impossible to manage. The politicians don’t have the stomach to let variable rate tolling algorithms do what they were designed to do. $20 tolls on Mopac express lanes don’t sit well with the Apple employees driving shiny new Model 3 Teslas.”
(My boss did that. He can open & close his garage from his phone.)
That’s cool. 🙂
But. What’s wrong with the clicker that came with the garage opener? The one that clips to the sun-visor?
And if it’s a bad day and you left the phone at the office or the battery died or you broke the phone, now what?
Assuming the phone is ‘netting to your home network, what if your ISP is down?
Fun stuff but too much to break.
The ’81 Imperial had the remote built into the sun-visor that talked to a box in the garage that you wired in like a push button. It had a pretty good range, too.
And it is why I never installed a keypad outside of the garage. Because the code you enter on the keypad is set in the keypad. Dip switches. The wiring is two wires, like a doorbell button. Take the keypad off of the wall, short the wires…. Sooooo secure.
I’m gonna just be an old fart forever and never connect any appliance to the ‘net. Including a TV.
$20 tolls on Mopac express lanes don’t sit well with the Apple employees driving shiny new Model 3 Teslas.
Sucks to have the money to spend for a Tesla and not enough smarts to figure out alternative routes than MoPac. [shrug]
Then again, Lamar is a pain, Burnet Rd, ouch, both clogged with almost empty buses.
360 is stuffed full of traffic lights now (it was a glorious drive Once Upon a Time), 620 was always too far west for where I was going unless to the lake.
But yeah. Years ago, we were to meet in south Austin. At Rosie’s Tamale House on 71? Way way south for someone who lived north off of Lamar and Braker Lane. At the time, Braker stopped at Lamar…. look up Space Lane.
One group took MoPac. I followed for a while and exited at Far West, turned right at Burnet Rd, tootled down to 45th, left to Lamar, over to Guad at 29th, over to Congress at MLK and onward. And we waited an hour for the MoPac driver to show. Funny how a someone’s wreck can trash your plans up.
Fun times. Bummer that Willie wasn’t at Rosie’s.
Sucks to have the money to spend for a Tesla and not enough smarts to figure out alternative routes than MoPac. [shrug]
Mopac now has variable tolled express lanes in each direction. The problem is that the politicians freak when the toll drifts above $10 so they cap it artificially and the “express” lane isn’t so express since the law of supply and demand isn’t allowed to work.
Some things work well connected or communicating. Toll roads & speed-pass. Headsets & cell phones. Teats & babies. Works great.
Some things make no sense together. Phones and an ENTIRE 3500 LB CAR. My computer and your air conditioner. Russian (Latvian, Chinese, whatever) and OUR ENTIRE ELECTRICAL GRID.
The guy I worked with last week used his remote vehicle start to cool down the truck before getting in. That was convenient. The potential issues are too big for me though, so I just open the windows to blow out the hot air.
I put in cameras for people to see if they remembered to close the garage door, and some have apps to do so if you forget. It’s convenient, I guess. I just watch until I’m sure the door closed and stayed closed.
If you want to reduce traffic congestion, build the wall, send them home. The last time I was in LA for the ‘you’d miss us if we were gone’ demonstration by La Raza was AWESOME. Freeways were open and moving. Parking was available. Surface streets were flowing well. Remove 1/3 of the population and you don’t need new roads, new schools, more cops, new hospitals, or any of the other things.
n
They also lie. Here the Teslas and similar have stickers on the back that say “ZERO EMISSIONS”. Well, their emissions are at the nearest electrical generating facility that turns CH4 into CO2 and H2O. Our local buses make that conversion up and down the street at their tailpipes. However, the politicians can’t admit to the difference in locations for the same emissions.
Or maybe they are chemically ignorant. Lynn?
Now, now Slim. The state legislature and Moonbeam just enacted a law to give California a zero sum carbon free energy grid. You have doubts? Don’t you feel better already?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeo3ISj8DaQ
Last night’s discussion about first aid preps brings a thought: gloves. You can stuff 20 each extra large latex gloves into a sandwich sized ziplock bag, and be ahead of the game if dealing with injured bleeding people. Or use a larger bag and include at least one pair of the heavier, dishwasher style rubber gloves, to be used while having the others on underneath. The heavier duty latex gloves used by medical professionals would be better, but they’re expensive, and as always the perfect is the enemy of the good enough. For other purposed, heavy duty gloves in a bug out bag are also a really handy item. Again, cheap and disposable beats the hell out of nothing / busted knuckles / blisters.
And like the others here, I don’t want an internet connected toaster, garage door, washing machine, etc. I do have a remote for the garage door on an outside wall, but it’s wireless. And I use a conventional key to lock & unlock my front door as well as my 16 year old vehicle.
I bought a thing from eBay that lets me remote start the van. It works if the stupid locks are working.
It’s a hit “lock” on the remote four times and the van starts. If you don’t have the key, as soon as you touch the brake pedal it kills the engine.
Actually kind of nice in the middle of August…. just let the a/c keep running.
I’m not going to buy such a thing for the truck. I can remove the key while it is running.
On 11/9/2001 I had finished supper and was browsing the internet in our flat in Discovery Bay, on Lantau island, Hong Kong. I received an automated email from CNN. I had just signed up for their new automated headline news distribution a week before. The email said a small plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. I called downstairs to my wife and told her. She switched the TV to Sky News and gasped as the first thing she saw was the second plane hit. She called me down and we spent the rest of the evening watching in horror as the towers fell and local news started speculation on attacks in Asia and Hong Kong. The next day was difficult. I worked on the 87th floor of what was then the tallest building in Hong Kong. Wife kept our little girl home and pleaded with me to stay home as well. But I managed IT security for MCI Asia and felt I needed to get to work. Suddenly everyone was telling me how awful they felt for America and offered whatever support they could. Later that day we learned that the brother of a close friend there in HK had been on the second plane to hit NY. For weeks afterwards, the news was filled with rumors of Islamic attacks in Asia and plans for more. We kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, unable to believe this was all there was, not the start of continued attacks.
There is SO MUCH FAIL packed into this one story–
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6156511/Father-two-pleads-guilty-stabbing-girlfriend-16-death-crime-passion.html
21yo dating a 16yo. 21 yo already has two kids with someone else. 21yo stabs the 16yo 60 times, because he “feared he would be blamed for the deaths of Morris [her mom] and Pavlicek [her sister- who btw doesn’t have the same last name as mom]”
jeez.
n
“unable to believe this was all there was, not the start of continued attacks. ”
—added– I felt the same. It was like the opening shots, and then the war was stillborn. They certainly got a lot of effect for the effort expended.
Turns out it’s harder than thought to convince someone technologically sophisticated to commit suicide. Fortunately there are a limited number of same.
Hence the switch to lone wolf, self radicalizing, and attacks which don’t require either sophistication or a conspiracy, or lots of money.
Not saying those couldn’t happen again, but it wouldn’t be aircraft.
n
if you really want to wallow in it, read thru the pager traffic in NYC that am… it’s like watching a bomb explode in slow motion. available at wikileaks. I don’t recommend it due to the effect it has on the viewer.
No doubts after you provide a link to the actual costs of production of solar energy. I certainly can’t find one.
OK, tomorrow. I’ll come back with another example of their lies and fraud.
And like the others here, I don’t want an internet connected toaster, garage door, washing machine, etc.
Don’t forget IoT sex toys. I believe Mr. SteveF sells them on the side to the Japanese LBGTQZYZ community since they don’t even leave their houses anymore.
Toll roads suck. The politicians should prevent overcrowding instead of taxing it. Economies that depend on growth are a bad design.