NC-20’s stunningly-ignorant climate change memo


I was drawn to the memo from the NC-20 group pushing the state to ignore climate change research and, quite frankly, I’m stupefied that otherwise-rational people would take this stance. The memo was helpfully provided by Laura Leslie at WRAL [PDF] as part of her story on the group’s science advisor, Mr. John Droz, who apparently knows as much about climatology as I do.

The whole thing reminds me of the mayor in the movie Jaws, who knows the killer shark is out there but refuses to tell the tourists because it would scare them away. I’ve highlighted some of the more outrageous statements in it below.

I swear it seems like North Carolina Republicans have declared a war on science itself.

MEMO: NC 20 Members
FROM: Tom Thompson, Chairman
DATE: December 2, 2011
SUBJ: Sea level Rise Negotiations

As all of you know, the State has been pushing hard to declare a 39” (1 meter) Sea Level Rise (SLR) by 2100 a fact. The CRC came within 24 hours of mandating it for NC 20 counties Land Use Plans. Larry Baldwin and I met with Bob Emory, CRC Chair, the night before the key meeting and persuaded him to retract the mandate. To his credit and our relief, he did.
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Wade CAC getting back on track

Remember that neighborhood crisis I mentioned earlier? Well, last night was the night of the first “special meeting” to try to get the CAC back on track. Neither Dwayne Patterson and Luis Olivieri-Robert from the city’s Community Services department nor I had any idea how many members would attend the meeting, held at the Unitarian Church. It turns out that around 70 people showed up, which isn’t too shabby for a week’s notice.
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More on the LinkedIn password breach

I found this analysis from a fellow network security geek in the UK to be quite interesting:

…which lends a little weight to the theory that the file primarily contains hashes which some script kiddie could not crack with basic tools, and hence makes us wonder what he’s done with all the ones which he did crack – and how much of the LinkedIn corpus that would represent?

He’s got a point. So many tools exist to easily crack these password hashes. I just tried hashcat on them using the standard Ubuntu dictionary file and cracked 20,000 of them in seconds using just my lowly laptop. So why would the hacker pretend to need help cracking them? Why post to a hacker forum where one is certain to face ridicule?

This leads me to speculate that the hacker is either enormously clueless or (perhaps more likely) aiming to embarrass and/or blackmail LinkedIn. Was this a staged demonstration of a hacker group’s power to disrupt a high-profile site? A warning to others, like Facebook and Google?

Another amusing aside is that just yesterday I used LinkedIn to send a message to a stranger who might know an old friend of mine. I tried several times to leave my email address in LinkedIn’s contact message but finally gave up: LinkedIn’s anti-spam measures are quite clever and blocked every iterations of email address obfuscation that I tried.

It’s amusing that LinkedIn can be so good at blocking spam to its users while being so bad on keeping their accounts secure!

LinkedIn password leak is confirmed

I did some hunting for the password hash list which reportedly includes the passwords of 6.5 million accounts. After downloading the file, I did a quick search on my password “tXrNNb706+” (which has since been changed, duh):

grep -n `echo -n tXrNNb706+ | shasum | cut -c6-40` hacked.txt

This spit out the following:

4096152:b0a6f8fba1a954de7d60bf4dbc3805d1056cf443

Boom! My hash appears on line 4,096,152. Yikes!! It’s a good thing I use unique, strong alphanumeric passwords for all of my accounts! That password was only used for LinkedIn, so I know the hash list was collected from LinkedIn.

But why is this file only 6.5 million hashes, if LinkedIn has over 161 million users? My guess is that an exploit was placed on the LinkedIn servers during a certain timeframe and during that time it collected the hashes of these 6.5 million users. My compromised LinkedIn password was last changed in December 2011, about six months ago.

The whole incident has given me reason to rethink the password problem, and the problem of authentication, to see what better methods exist for proving identity in a digital world.

Bonus link: read this detailed analysis on YCombinator (warning: heavy geek quotient).

Bad Day For LinkedIn: 6.5m Hashed Passwords Reportedly Leaked

This is bad. Very, very bad. Unhashed passwords are a no-no. I’m shocked that LinkedIn has been so careless.

If you have a LinkedIn account, you should change your password immediately!

And always, always use a unique password for each and every service you use.

Already in the spotlight over concerns that its iOS app collects full meeting notes and details from a device’s calendar and sends them back to the company in plain text, LinkedIn user accounts are now said to have been compromised, with 6.5 million hashed and encrypted passwords reportedly leaked.

Norweigan IT webite Dagens IT reported the breach, with 6.5 million encrypted passwords posted to a Russian hacker site. Security researcher Per Thorsheim has also confirmed reports via his Twitter feed, stating that the attackers have posted the encrypted passwords to request help cracking them.

via Bad Day For LinkedIn: 6.5m Hashed Passwords Reportedly Leaked.

House Creek Greenway opening in September now

I got the word about why Raleigh’s much-anticipated House Creek Greenway will be opening in early September now, rather than the July 19th I had initially mentioned. The delay comes as a result of the contractor needing to put up over 3,000 feet of railing along the top of the retaining wall.

House Creek Greenway covers some challenging topography. It’s a big project that has been anticipated for many years. While it would be great if it was open now, another few months are worth the investment to get it right.

Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse

This is right on the money. Business Insider is proving what I’ve been saying for years about the television business: it must change or die.

Today’s “cord cutters” might be considered the “early adopters” (if there is such a thing when people skip a service) but soon the masses will begin eschewing traditional television and then TV as we know it will collapse.

We still consume some TV content, but we consume it when and where we want it, and we consume it deliberately: In other words, we don’t settle down in front of the TV and watch “what’s on.” And, again with the exception of live sports, we’ve gotten so used to watching shows and series without ads that ads now seem extraordinarily intrusive and annoying. Our kids see TV ads so rarely that they’re actually curious about and confused by them: “What is that? A commercial?”

via Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse – Business Insider.

Coyotes and deer in Raleigh

A discussion on the Mordecai email list about our urban deer got me wondering about their natural predators. It just so happens that the rumors about coyotes in our area appear to be real.

I found this interesting report from an exotic animal veterinarian of a coyote brought in last December. It’s cool that so many critters are finding room to live here in downtown Raleigh.

Well, the guy comes back in carrying a canine of some sort by the armpits, rear end dangling, with a large bunch of towels wrapped around the head to keep him from being bitten (Good idea!). The animal was in bad shape: skinny, wet, matted fur, lice crawling all over, and a strong odor of filth. I had him lay his bundle on the exam table, donned a pair of leather falconer’s gloves, and began to unwrap the front half of this dog to see what we were dealing with. To my surprise, staring back at me was a genuine, bonafide, roadrunner-eating COYOTE!

via It’s a Coyote, for Real! | Avian and Exotic Animal Care, Raleigh, NC.

Neighborhood break-in causes little concern

RPD is just a phone call away


Thursday provided a bit of unexpected excitement in the neighborhood. I had just stepped away from my home office desk for lunch when I read an email from a neighbor, saying that she had seen suspicious men at another neighbor’s home and had called the police. Looking out the window, I was amazed to see three Raleigh Police cruisers parked down the street!

I found out from other neighbors who were outside that the house at the end of the neighboring street had been broken into. Officers had the house surrounded, believing the perpetrators were still inside. I chatted a bit with my neighbors until a K-9 officer returning his dog to his car let us know that no one was inside.

It seems the perpetrators left out the back door as officers arrived, having had time to stack TVs and an Xbox outside but no time to take them with them. Fortunately for the police, the burglars very thoughtfully left their getaway car sitting in the driveway! I smiled as I watched the car being towed away, knowing how much evidence the burglars must have left in it. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the hapless burglars are caught.
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Save the date. Every one of them.

Along with Kelly, I went to a volunteer luncheon at Conn Elementary yesterday. One of our favorite teachers, Nicole Jackson, sat down with us and chatted a bit.

“He was the cutest little boy!” she said of Travis as she told another volunteer how he used to play “peek-a-boo” with her as he passed through the hallways with us, not yet old enough to attend Conn himself.
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