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Fried egg, sunny side up
I’d like to personally thank all of the contributors and commenters who have made us successful in our first week. You’re all wonderful.
Here are your links for the day
Rolling Jubilee has now raised over $350,000, which they plan to use to purchase and forgive over $7 million in personal debt. This is an excellent project. Please contribute at their page if you can.
It’s Mutual Aid, Stupid. Opinion piece from HuffPo about Occupy Sandy’s relief efforts, and the state of Occupy as a whole.
As activists functioning in the age of handheld, advanced technologies, it is necessary for us to fully understand the functions of our devices at the most basic levels, and to know how to maintain privacy and security in the face of tyrannical governments. Have you visited your local CryptoParty?
From AntiWar.com, 500 Egyptian Activists enter Gaza with medical supplies. Brave people doing meaningful work in the face of war.
In early November, the great state of Georgia passed a constitutional amendment to establish an independent commission to fast-track charter school approval and development. A number of organizations and politicians, now including the Georgia State Legislature’s Black Caucus, are filing a lawsuit to stop the amendment.
Washington State voters narrowly approved the construction of up to 40 charter schools, after rejecting similar ballot measures 3 times in the past. There was a lot of outside money thrown behind Initiative 1240, and local activists have vowed to contest the new law.
Beyond Proposition 30: California’s education future by Louis Freedberg at EdSource.org. The author brings up issues of funding inequity, per capita spending on education, and other problems facing California schools.
And now for a local project, near and dear to my Orange Hippo heart – Orange Santa, an annual event aimed at giving a Christmas to families in need. Orange Santa provides food, clothing, presents, and other general support for local families who need it most. Hippos United, our non-profit that succeeded in passing a local tax initiative to close the budget gaps for our school district, is heading up the fundraising efforts. My wife is acting as liaison with all the local schools, organizing fundraising days and events, and my children and I will be volunteering on distribution day. If you have any extra funds this holiday season, we would appreciate your help. You can donate online here (don’t mind the 2011 stuff in the format. The donor link is still live and being used). If you prefer to contribute old school through snail mail, contact me in the comments and I’ll provide my email address. We’ll work something out from there.
As always, Off Topic is safe here. I’ll see you in the comments.
83 Comments
Good morning firedogs. Coffee is on, cinnamon rolls are just coming out of the oven, and it’s Friday for me.
Morning all! They’re making me work for a living today, so don’t be upset if I’m a bit slow in responding.
Now to read the links.
Boxturtle (I hate it when real life intrudes on blogging)
Great Morning to ya, Kris.
You’ve got a nice roundup of interesting links, which I will press my cursor to after a while.
I noticed an email from Jane Hamsher inviting volunteers to help with a distribution to Walmart strikers in Los Angeles. I responded with a hearty “sure”. I can help out, and I hope FDL contacts me.
And, thank you, I’ll have a warm cinnamon roll.
Thanks, Kris, it’s good to see you and the rest of the pups here in the a.m. Interestingly, I attended Washington Elementary School in Sherman, TX, later to become one of the earliest charter schools – and happen to know it did no good, the traditional education worked as well in all instances, better in others.
As I have exceeded my bandwidth under the plan I subscribe to, I’ll be offline most of today, and back tomorrow when my new month begins. My own silly use of unneeded streaming video.
Morning Kris and pups,
I put this up with fatster also, but an action that might be worth seeing duplicated in several broadcast regions around the nation. Milwaukee right-wing radio license challenged in lawsuit.
Appointments this morning, be well.
Just a drive-by for me this morning, too. I woke up worrying about all of the stuff I have to do before I leave for Indy tomorrow. If I hang out here I won’t get it done.
RE maintaining privacy and security, this article is a must read:
Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore
I’ve posted it at FDL a couple of times, and I don’t mean to flog it, but as someone whose career was in IT, our vulnerability scares the bejeezus out of me. My LIFE is online.
You buy your internet capability by the month? Hmmmm, I’ve never heard of that. By bandwith? I’d ask you to explain, but I don’t want you to run out of “whatever”. See you on the morrow, then.
Good morning pirepups.
Thanks for the education links Kris.
Two hour school delay because of fog this AM.
Good morning to all. I see that I neglected to finish the title of my post before publishing. Sweeeet.
BT – have a great day at work. Hope your foot is doing better.
Demi – here’s a cinnamon roll for ya :)
Ruth – Charter schools, like any other for-profit institution, will eventually compromise quality for efficiency and profit.
Nonq – good morning to you. I hope that challenge works out. From the article it seems like there was a clear violation of election law. I’m sure the mega-giant Clear Channel will just get off with a fine, though.
msmolly – I’ve flagged your article for later reading. I’m becoming more and more interested in cyber-security. Thanks for the link.
Cellular wireless subscriptions charge you extra by the megabit if you exceed the monthly limit. A trial subscription that I used had my teen blowing through the monthly 5 gig limit in about 5 days. The provider said not to worry because they would not charge us more than $250 a month extra if the children go WAY beyond the limit.
Two Hundred and Fifty dollars more? Yikes.
This reminds me of when my daughter first got a phone in her bedroom and happened to be seeing a young fellow in a different prefix. Her first bill blew our minds so I called the phone company and we worked out a deal. Whew.
And, thanks for explaining.
There are a couple of others you should read, then. No time just now, but I will find them and post them or send to you.
Have you been following the new Bytegeist here at FDL. Seems to deal more with policy stuff (like the Google lawsuit) but you should find it interesting reading.
Morning Molly.
Did you make a list? I find that helps me when I worry about getting stuff done. I love crossing the items off as I complete a task.
See? I’ve said before I’m a cheap date. :)
Good morning all. Thanks for the postnhost Kris.
Alas, that’ll go nowhere. Even if they win the local challenge, political speech has the highest protection the 1st amendment can give and they’ll lose in federal court.
But they’ll lose locally.
Boxturtle (I’m unaware of any political station ever losing it’s license over something like this)
I’ve enjoyed it very much.
Yes, I make lists, but rarely remember to cross them off. I have a reminders app on the iPhone, too. The problem isn’t remembering what I have to do, the problem is having time to do it all.
Scooterboy! How’s it going at work? Still slow? You are our barometer for tracking how manufacturing companies are doing.
Lunch packed – check
thermos filled – check
School bus stopped – check
kitteh fed – check
bye-bye
How the hell did your kiddo use a gig a day?
I’m a fairly heavy user, streaming music and video to my phone when I’m out of the house, along with checking email, a couple of social apps, score updates for sports, web browsing, etc., and I’ve never topped 2 gigs in a month.
I find it’s best, when making lists, to check them twice. That way, you’re gonna find out who’s nau….never mind.
Maybe you need a larger clock. Ha.
Go make money, honey. And, enjoy the labor. I’m glad for you. :)
(madly waving hand) Me. Me. I’m the naughty one. :)
So then how would you recommend we authenticate? Eventually, we’re going to have to go to some form of hard token/password combination. Where I used to work, we had a token that displayed a 6 digit number that changed every 10 seconds or so. You needed a userid, password, and the number off the token generator to sign in. Everybody had a different token generator with a different seed, I couldn’t have signed on with somebody elses token.
Eventually, we’ll have to go to fingerprints or retina scans.
Boxturtle (remembers a movie where the crooks beat a retina scan by digging out an eye)
I see the Jury took down another Walker aide in the ongoing
corruption scandal. It seems as though the grand jury is
gonna get to Walker eventually. Yeah!
We seem to be just barely keeping enough work for about 1/3 the staff. Repainting workbenches and surfing the interwebs is the order of the day for the rest of the crew. The word is it was the best year ever by the end of September so there are no worries here. We are looking for it to pick up after the Holidays.
Yeah, the foot is doing better, thanks. Amazing what following Dr’s orders can do for a person.
Boxturtle (I have a 1 hour commute each way, mildly painful)
My work computer requires fingerprint, along with separate passwords; one to boot, one to log in. Hard drive is heavily encrypted.
Our consultants that work in the field use the token method. I think they change every minute or so.
Are you working this week?
O Good. Come sit by me….
Good Morning All…Sure ready for a few days off
coming up after tomorrow…;)
What is taking them so long to indict him? They should have everything they need.
If they ain’t got enough, they should close the investigation. GOPer or no, holding him on a hook like they are ain’t right.
Boxturtle (Wonders why these things always seem to happen AFTER elections)
Be careful out there; Im glad it’s better.
Pretty good for a burn…ouch.
I will sit with you, my dear. And, the oatmeal is just about ready. Want some?
You betcha. I’ll share tomorrow. Im
so tired Im fried. So, thanks.
I don’t have a recommendation, and neither does the author (Mat Honan). He does have a few suggestions (like two-factor auth), but says the problem is that we need to develop new ways to authenticate. He hits on companies that reset passwords after a lame attempt to identify the caller, who may not be the actual owner. It is quite an interesting article.
I’ve replaced nearly all of my weak and often duplicate passwords with random ones that LastPass created and stores. But Honan says even those are crackable with very little effort.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow only.
I forgot to ask this before. How did it go with the kiddies last Saturday. Did they find things to be grateful for?
Keep in mind that those are safeguards provided and required by your place of employment (those are vulnerable, too). But most of us don’t have a fraction of those things, and probably very few even use two-factor auth for their emails.
I think retina scans are going to be the wave of the future. i can sit down at my desktop and my camera can get a good enough view of my iris to authenticate. And it’s not a particularly expensive webcam.
Boxturtle (it’s nice, I sit down and I’m signed automatically)
And now, I am off to finish one of my to-do items. Have a good one, everyone.
Makes for a nice long weekend to hang with your honeys.
And, can I say this here? Eggnog!
They were great, and yes…like family, friends, pets. So dear. And I said Im grateful I get to spend time with them. Ive been going for about 10-11 years, so Id better be. Thanks for asking.
What happens to artificial eyes? I think I saw some plot about that.
oooooo eggnog
Anymore, processing power is so cheap that any password can be hacked by brute force. And if you use a password generator, keep in mind that the random number seed is all that a hacker really needs.
Best method for passwords I’m aware of: Take a favorite quote from a favorite book and use the first character of each word. To Be Or Not To Be becomes 2bon2b. Never use Shakespeare or Twain except for illustrative purposes. If that’s not goo enough for you, use the second character. 2ero2e
Boxturtle (Or you can just use PASSWORD and never keep anything of value behind it)
I fucking <3 eggnog.
My personal passwords are all random, 16-20 character, alphanumeric mashups. All of my password reset functions are set to send to my mobile phone’s text feature, rather than an email address.
I went through a lot of research and then resets and tweaks after I had an email account hacked a few years ago.
Thanks, Kris! How are you this morning?
OT: Is anyone on the road this weekend? I was on expressway in Austin midday yesterday, and it looked like the whole town was going north. Soo not worth it, imho.
Does this eggnog make my butt look fat?
I’m so glad. Tearing up a bit.
Woah. Is Jane actually in here at the kids’ table or am I seeing things?
No, but irresistable…does that work?
I’m great Jane, thanks. How are you?
G’Morning, Jane.
Hope you got my email saying I can help with the Walmart Strikers pj.
Really…me too. These are not privileged kids for the most part.
Thanks for your interest.
We tell my dad all the time that his bike makes his butt look big :)
Hee Hee. I must drink the nog in moderation, between now and Christmas.
Behave everyone, the boss is visiting! LOL!
*waves to Jane*
Now *poof* for real.
Do you make your own or buy from the store?
We’ve experimented with making our own (virgin, of course) at home a few times over the years, and it never turns out right. Always underseasoned, or too sweet.
We have made it a few times and it always turned out really well. I’ll see if the mister still has his recipe and I’ll look for one on the tubes that I’ll post tomorrow.
We had one fellow who had a glass eye. He just used the other eye. The system would actually work off the glass eye just fine, too. But security was concerned that he’d just hand his eye to someone else.
Boxturtle (Security was weird)
Thanks! I love the opportunity to make things like that at home. If the kids like what I’m making they’ll actually get involved and we have a lot of fun.
Really weird…as in who would want it? Thanks.
Apparently, it’s not only the ingredients, but the process that’s important. Say’s he just now. So, I’ll look for a recipe that’s similar to what he has done.
Anyway, just saying that the girls will enjoy working with you.
The Radical Reconstruction after the Civil War was neither radical, nor a reconstruction.
Discuss.
Ach. Too much for me right now.
But, thanks for today’s thread, Kris.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Kris(fuckin’)AinTexas.
See you all later.
Eggnog!
I was surprised when a couple of Irish guys came into my shop and did not know eggnog. I have always assumed that eggnog was a Northern European import. As wiki tells me, though, eggnog is descended from a British drink, egg flip, but popularized only in the US nd Canada as an alternative to wine. Since rum was cheap and plentiful in the Americas, and so was dairy and eggs, eggnog became a holiday substitute for European holiday wine drinks.
Who knew!
Eggnog. Blech. I’ve tried to learn to like it, but no dice. Wine for me, preferably Zinfandel.
The John Doe investigation has expanded to cover seven individuals since its inception, that are not in the news much. I have a feeling there is more to come. Kelly Rindfleisch’s attorney gave a 65 minute presentation at the sentencing hearing asking why several other individuals are not currently being prosecuted.
Chris Liebenthal who assisted FDL News when ddayen was vacationing last winter has info that came out in the sentencing hearing yesterday.
Just dropped by to say “Hi” and rec this.
Thanks BearCountry!
Excellent links, thanks!
Boxturtle (Willing to bet that Walker has a hate against that blog)
I’ve hit my data limit on t-mobile as a street journalist (my account has a 5 gig data limit) by sending a LOT of picture texts along with heavy use for web surfing, streaming, occasionally tethering, etc. Now I get around this by having a Clear Hotspot which is faster and actually has some other advantages…
Capper, has been relentless and actually understands all the connections between the individuals, and is the place to find out the latest news on Walker.
It was summer, and she was on almost every minute of the day and had things downloading 24 hours a day. Might have been seven or eight days, sorry for the exaggeration. I did a lot of surfing myself in the same time frame, probably both of us using more than normal when something other than dial-up was actually available for the first time. The cost would have been $40/month on top of a new cellular subscription for 5 gigs data.
We now have $15/month, unlimited data, no slowdowns, 126KB/sec on the land line phone, with a wireless modem supplied. Cable does not run here, they want 25 homes per mile before they will bring in cable service. Wireless service is very iffy, rural area, and the more users on at peak times caused that whole system to slow as data rates dropped to almost not usable. Life in the boonies.
John Nichols, of the Nation, on WTDY “Sly in the Morning” Madison WI radio, podcast on the Walker story from this morning.
Download at your leisure.
I see! I was thinking cellular phone, but it seems you’re talking about a computer on a cellular wireless connection. Now I get it.
Can we talk about this tomorrow?
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12871-why-anonymous-claims-about-election-rigging-cant-be-ignored
BoxTurtle @74
I know it is not Science Monday, but this sure sounds interesting.
Have a guess as to what it is?
Stop by and bring it up in the morning. Nothing is off topic.
I did momentarily forget that Capper (on his regular day job) is a public employee and fought and beat an attempt to charge him with blogging on the public dime (time). And Walker has yet to be charged.