Category: technology

09:02 – It was 55.2F (13C) when I took Colin out at 0715 this morning, with heavy fog. Our back fence line and the trees along it were barely visible, but everything beyond it was a uniform gray.

More and more web sites are now on my no-visit list, as they implement anti-ad/script-blocking measures. I run Adblock Plus and NoScript on Firefox. I happened to use Firefox yesterday afternoon to visit one of those sites. The main page looked normal, but clicking on any of the articles displayed an error page that said there was either a problem with my internet connection or I was running an ad or script blocker and that I should disable it. Yeah, right, like that’s gonna happen. Instead, I took the action that most of their former readers will take and removed them from my bookmarks. Anyone who allows ads to display or scripts to run on a website is just asking to be infected with malware or other serious problems.

Attempts to block adblockers and script blockers have become rampant over the last few months. I blame it on Trump, since it seems to have started right around then. Facebook famously tried to implement blocking of ad/script blockers and failed miserably. The same is true of other sites. But the thing is, even if a site somehow succeeds, all it’s doing is driving off most of its readers. The problem is that sites regard ad revenue as the only way to pay their costs, while readers regard ads and scripts as completely unacceptable. There simply are NO acceptable ads. If you want to monetize your site, put up a paywall or a tip jar.

If that drives you out of business, so be it. Die gracefully instead of polluting your readers’ screens. Just be aware that most readers don’t consider your content to be worth paying for at all, let alone by letting obnoxious, dangerous ads be displayed on their systems. And only a tiny fraction will donate via tip jar, let alone by subscribing. You simply don’t have any content that is worth paying for. And by “paying for” I include such minimal things as giving you a valid email address.

There’s apparently a new report out that has panicked commercial websites. In Germany, 40% of internet users use ad/script blockers; in France, it’s 30%; in the US, it’s still under 20%. It’s time for us all to strike back. Those figures need to be 100%. For many years, every time I install or degrunge someone’s computer, the first thing I do is install AdBlock Plus and NoScript. We should all be doing this. Every time you see someone’s computer running without blockers, tell them of the dangers of running barefoot and offer to install blockers for them and show them how they work. If everyone with basic computer smarts does this for all of his friends and acquaintances, we can get the percentage of systems running blockers up much closer to 100%, making it impossible for parasitic web sites like The Atlantic, Facebook, etc. to earn money from ads. Any web site owner who thinks ads are an acceptable way to generate revenue needs to be awakened rudely. Let’s drive them out of business.

And, yes, I’m looking at you, Google.

I got another one of “those” emails overnight. I periodically get emails, sometimes from long-time readers, who think I’m not just expecting a TEOTWAWKI event but actually looking forward to it. They’re wrong on both counts.

On the first, I’ve said over and over that I’m not expecting a TEOTWAWKI event but instead a gradual (or not-so-gradual) slide toward dystopia. Yes, a TEOTWAWKI event is possible. In fact, it’s likely, depending on your time frame. I’ve guesstimated the probability of such an event at 0.03/year, so over the long term it’s more likely than not to occur. But if my guesstimate is correct, that also means that the probability of things continuing pretty much as they are is 0.97/year. So our preparations focus on that 0.97 probability, with just a nod when possible to the 0.03.

As to the second point, not only am I not looking forward to a world-ending catastrophe, I dread it as much as any sane person does. Probably for different reasons than most people. I’m not concerned with the humanity thing. I don’t really care if 100 million Americans die, except to the extent that such an event affects me, my family, and my friends. Yes, if I could wave a magic wand and cause every prog/neocon/politician/bankster to cease to exist, I’d do so, but only if it didn’t inconvenience me and mine. That’s not an option, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that no such event occurs.

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09:44 – It was 51.9F (11C) when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning. We’re supposed to get rain pretty much all day today, and well above average temperatures for the next several days.

I’m about ready to bag Firefox. It’s slow, bloated, and has a lot of other issues. I’ve had Vivaldi installed for several months and have been using it from time to time. Barbara has also been having minor nagging issues with Firefox on her notebook, so yesterday I installed Vivaldi for her and imported all her Firefox data. We’ll see how she likes it.

I’ve been thinking about our medical preps and looking at various prepping sites for ideas. What strikes me immediately is that many preppers are going about things the wrong way. I try to apply systematized decision making, using a simplified type of n-dimensional multivariate analysis to decision making.

For prepping decisions, the n-dimensional part is 3-dimensional:

1. How likely is an event?
2. How easy or difficult is it to take measures against that event?
3. How much will it cost in time/money to take those measures?

When you finish your analysis, you end up with each event ranked as likely/unlikely, easy/difficult, and cheap/expensive. Deal with the likely/easy/cheap ones first and the unlikely/difficult/expensive ones last, if at all.

With regard to medical preps, a lot of people have built what amount to trauma kits, which fall into the unlikely/difficult/expensive class, but have ignored the likely/easy/cheap ones. It’s all well and good to have what you need to deal with gunshot wounds, assuming you have the skills to do so, but gunshot wounds are definitely in the unlikely group. Sure, it might happen, but it’s not the first thing you should be preparing for medically. Unless you’re a physician or a trauma nurse, you’re as likely to kill the patient as help him.

GI problems on the other hand, are not just likely but almost certain. Between greatly elevated stress levels and less than ideal sanitation, you’re going to be dealing with diarrhea and constipation, not just occasionally but regularly. The former can kill the patient; the latter will just make them wish they were dead.

Fortunately, both problems are probably going to be pretty easy to deal with. Stock up on loperamide for minor diarrhea and oral rehydration salts for more severe cases. Both are cheap and effective. (By the way, unless you really know what you’re doing and have the resources to culture and identify STEC versus non-STEC bacteria, NEVER EVER treat even the most severe diarrhea with antibiotics; doing so may kill the patient.)

As to constipation, stock up on laxatives. The cheapest and one of the most reliable is the saline laxative Epson salts. One tablespoon in a glass of water normally works within a few hours. You can buy a large retort bag of the stuff at Costco or Sam’s for a few bucks. PEG laxatives are also safe and effective. Costco sells a 3-pack with 90 daily doses for about $20 in stores and on-line.

In med school, one of the first things they teach is that when you hear hoofbeats, don’t think about zebras. In other words, consider the most likely cause, horses, first and only after you’ve eliminated the likely causes should you consider the unlikely ones. The same is true for prepping, medical or otherwise.

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08:56 – It was 29.1F (-1.6C) when when I took Colin out this morning, with snow flurries and light winds. Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket this morning, and plans to take Bonnie, our next-door neighbor, out for lunch. Bonnie turns 89 years old today.

The SSD for Barbara’s notebook is supposed to show up with the mail this morning, so I’ll spend some time today getting her notebook running on the SSD with Linux Mint 18.1 LTS. I’ve been using the Cinnamon environment for years, but I think I’ll install the KDE version for Barbara since she’s used to MS Windows.

Finally. The price of powdered eggs skyrocketed when the chicken plague struck, and has stayed high since then. When I last bought powdered eggs, right before the plague, I paid $17.50 for a 33-ounce #10 can. Almost overnight, that price doubled, and finally reached about $50/can. It’s gradually declined since then, but as of even a week ago it was still at $27/can or so. When I checked Walmart yesterday around dinnertime, they had Augason #10 cans of powdered eggs for $12.99.

At first, I figured they were actually going to ship the #2.5 cans rather than the #10 cans they were advertising, but I checked Amazon, which also had the #10 cans for $12.99. Obviously, the new, much lower price of eggs has kicked in. So I ordered four more #10 cans, which is just under 24 dozen eggs.

Augason rates the shelf life as 10 years, but as usual that’s imaginary. I remember in 1979 spending the night with a prepper friend. The next morning, his wife made bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast. After breakfast, he handed me a #10 can, which was military-issue from 1944. I’d just eaten 35-year-old eggs reconstituted from powder, but I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure these Augason powdered eggs will be as good decades from now as they would be if I opened them today.

At $12.99 per can, if you need powdered eggs to add to your preps, now is the time to grab them. I’m not storing enough eggs to have scrambled egg breakfasts, but they’re also useful for cooking and baking.

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09:58 – Here’s an interesting datum about the longevity of writable optical media. I just downloaded Linux Mint 18.1 (I decided on Cinnamon for Barbara because it’s not the pig that KDE is) and was looking around for a disc to burn it to. There was a stack of old Verbatim DVD+RW discs just lying in a pile, so I grabbed one. It had last been written on 14 May 2006, almost 11 years ago. It read fine. The last six digits of the checksum, which were all I’d recorded, checked out. I just wrote and verified LM to the disc without error. Understand, this pile of discs wasn’t even on a spindle, just a random disc I grabbed from a random pile of old discs. So maybe there’s hope for very old writable discs.