Author Archives: eehines

Securing Cameras

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The Wall Street Journal ran a good article concerning home surveillance cameras and how to secure them from hackers, or at least harden them against hacking (here, too, security is an arms race, and no particular security technique is either proof or permanent).

There are other cameras besides home surveillance cameras that are vulnerable, though; the camera built into laptops, for instance.

In addition to the strong password for the AP or Ethernet router through which the laptop connects to the Internet, it’s necessary to use a strong password for login access to the laptop (and encrypting the hard drive). On top of that, I put tape over the camera lens except for those rare occasions when I actually use it. My laptop also has a light on its microphone key that tells me when the microphone is muted; I monitor that.

And: in addition to keeping the AP/Ethernet router software and firmware current, it’s necessary to do the same with the laptop.

The only password manager I use is pen and paper, kept secure. That way, there’s no cloud hack that can get to them, and if my laptop were hacked or stolen, there’d still be no access to my passwords.

New York’s Education Problem

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In addition to eliminating concrete examinations to assess whether a high school pupil (in New York, I hesitate to term them students), the State is instituted a carefully vague and unmeasurable in objective terms set of descriptions of a high schooler who’s suitable for graduating.

New York now wants its high-school graduates to be “academically prepared.” The rest of the qualities that make up the portrait are nicely nebulous: “critical thinker,” “creative innovator,” “effective communicator,” “reflective and future focused” and a “global citizen.”

The rest of them? “Academically prepared” also is carefully indeterminate. Prepared for what? According to what criteria? Measured by whom?

But the deliberately indistinct criteria still aren’t the most serious failure. That accolade goes to the “global citizen” pseudo-criterion.

Why not require the graduate wannabe to be an effective American citizen? Oh, wait—that would run counter to the Left’s holding that America is evilly racist, too full of itself on the world’s stage, and needs to be hammered down several pegs. Nothing exceptional about us except the depth of our depravity.

That New York isn’t alone in this abject failure—[a]bout half the states and hundreds of school districts have developed their own portraits—but that in no way excuses New York.

A No-Brainer

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Or it would be for anyone other than a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist. The supposed conundrum centers on England’s Premier League’s supposed cream of the crop Manchester City soccer club (not to be confused with the Manchester United soccer club, which appears to have entirely clean hands). It appears that Man City has been caught in more than 100 violations of the Premier League’s rules on spending, violations like

“‘sham’ commercial deals” from 2009 and continuing into the 2017-18 season, the Premier League said following an independent investigation. The purpose, it added, was to “artificially inflate the club’s revenues, and reduce its costs, by more than £900 million ($1.2 billion) during the affected period to appear to comply with financial rules.”

The price of this cheating could extend to this:

…the club stripped of several championships and Manchester City expelled from the Premier League. In that scenario, it would be busted down one or more divisions and forced to work its way back up over the course of several seasons.

The supposed conundrum is this:

The predicament is especially awkward for [UK Prime Minister Andy] Burnham, who built much of his political appeal on his everyman soccer-fan image, but now finds himself caught between a major investor in the UK economy and defending the integrity of the Premier League, Britain’s most popular cultural export since the Beatles.

Hmm…. Let’s see, does Burnham do the right thing, the moral thing, the honest thing, and let the League hammer City for its blatant and long-lasting cheating? Or does he wink at it in order to curry the favor of a major (foreign) investor? What to do, what to do….

As I said at the outset, only a Leftist, a British Liberal, would find himself challenged by the choice. Or, the WSJ‘s news writers are overstating the case, and Burnham will have no trouble reaching the correct decision.

Business Decision, or…?

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Legislation lately getting the backing of the Trump administration would

give merchants the option to choose a different card network to process transactions when their customers use a credit card.

Banks object.

[They] say that the fees are what power credit-card rewards, like cash back and travel points, and that passing the bill would force them to change those programs consumers love.

The banks may be correct in that, but their beef also is irrelevant to the situation.

Offering those rewards (and finding the funds to pay for them) is a business decision subject to free market imperatives, not any sort of inherent right that wants government protection.

Two Things

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Here are two things, taken in isolation but not separated from each other.

Last week, five likely terrorists were caught in the process of scoping out, if not actually attacking our B-1 bombers housed at RAF Fairford in the UK. The five terrorists were back out on bail within hours of their arrest, functionally free to resume their plot.

This week, the Israeli government closed the British Consulate in Jerusalem, sending home the Consul General and the bulk of the consulate staff; this came in response to the UK’s decision to harm Israel by banning trade with Israeli settlers operating in the West Bank. A skeleton crew remains in a small diplomatic mission, styled UK Mission, Jerusalem, left to serve…Palestinians.

These two things, in their aggregation, seem to imply that the UK favors Palestinian terrorists over its obligations to NATO and to UK allies. They appear to suggest that the UK has no interest in Israel—which is further consistent with government rhetoric condemning Israel’s efforts in Gaza to defend itself against repeats of Hamas’ and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s atrocities of 7 October 2023.

This, by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, makes the matter plain [emphasis added]:

We have been clear that we do not accept that the government of Israel has the legal right to close the British Consulate General in Jerusalem, which has been there for nearly 200 years. The UK government reiterates its long-standing view that East Jerusalem is occupied territory.