Russia’s military rejects U.S. criticism of new Baltic encounter | Reuters

The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) was buzzed earlier this week by a pair of Russian SU-24 Fencer bombers as the Cook transited the Baltic Sea. The Fencers flew an attack profile and flew within 100 feet (and some say within 30 feet) of the Cook in what the Cook skipper CDR Charles Hamilton called an unsafe and unprofessional manner.

While the incident was unusually unsafe, this kind of response from Russia is no surprise. Russia has long been irked by the U.S. Navy’s stubborn insistence on exercising its right of free passage through international waters, including the Baltic and Black Seas near Russia’s coast. Russia has a history of aggressively challenging the U.S. Navy as it operates in these areas, behavior which has sometimes resulted Continue reading →

Too busy to blog

I’m hoping to catch up at some point with documenting all of the stuff that’s been going on lately. We’ve had a trip to Savannah, a trip to Puerto Rico, and a work trip to Boulder. I’ve been pretty exhausted in-between, too. Hopefully tonight and tomorrow I’ll have time to properly write it all down. Stay tuned.

How one programmer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of code – Quartz


This is a fascinating story of how one programmer’s deletion of 11 lines of his code wound up breaking the Internet. Yes, we are really that interconnected.

A man in Oakland, California, disrupted web development around the world last week by deleting 11 lines of code.

The story of how 28-year-old Azer Koçulu briefly broke the internet shows how writing software for the web has become dependent on a patchwork of code that itself relies on the benevolence of fellow programmers. When that system breaks down, as it did last week, the consequences can be vast and unpredictable.

Source: How one programmer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of code – Quartz

Why Bernie Sanders Is Adopting a Nordic-Style Approach – The Atlantic


Good article taking issue with those who say Bernie Sanders’s healthcare and college proposals won’t work
here like they do in Nordic countries.

Bernie Sanders is hanging on, still pushing his vision of a Nordic-like socialist utopia for America, and his supporters love him for it. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is chalking up victories by sounding more sensible. “We are not Denmark,” she said in the first Democratic debate, pointing instead to America’s strengths as a land of freedom for entrepreneurs and businesses. Commentators repeat endlessly the mantra that Sanders’s Nordic-style policies might sound nice, but they’d never work in the U.S. The upshot is that Sanders, and his supporters, are being treated a bit like children—good-hearted, but hopelessly naive. That’s probably how Nordic people seem to many Americans, too.

Source: Why Bernie Sanders Is Adopting a Nordic-Style Approach – The Atlantic

How I almost invented Wikipedia

Wikipedia Logo

Wikipedia Logo

I sold one of my domain names this month, reliablesources.com. I had that domain longer than I’ve had kids, registering it on 17 January 2000. Two months ago the domain became old enough to drive.

I remember just where I was when I decided to register the domain. I was in my entrepreneurial phase at the time, working with some extremely talented friends at NeTraverse and while I was on a business trip to Austin I dreamed up what I thought would be an innovative website.

I was a regular reader of the Slashdot (which was recently sold) nerd news website back then and was intrigued by its “karma” system of ranking posts. I wanted to apply this karma ranking to the people in the news, giving users the ability to rank what someone in the news says based on that person’s known credibility.

It was inspired by President Bill Clinton’s time in office. The Office of the President carries a lot of built-in credibility, for instance, so right away you’re going to listen to what the President says. But what if the President is caught lying (i.e., “I did not have sexual relations…”)? That should make one skeptical of whatever that President says, knocking down his or her karma score.
Continue reading →

Hillary’s “tough bitch” problem

Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton Campaigns In Las Vegas
Hillary Rodham Clinton had some big wins during yesterday’s Super Tuesday primary elections, including North Carolina. Last night, a female Clinton supporter had this today about her on a Facebook thread of a mutual friend:

[A friend] asked me today if I thought HRC could take on Putin. I told him “Oh yeah, she’s one tough bitch. No problem!”

This is precisely my problem with Hillary Clinton, that this would even be a consideration. Clinton’s desire to be “caught trying” often means she skips right over the “speak softly” part to the “carry a big stick” part. The last thing our country needs is a leader far too eager to look tough.

I wore the uniform in the early 1990s and served during Desert Storm. Since then I have cast a jaundiced eye towards unnecessary military adventures with dubious goals and shadowy benefactors. I’ve also become a parent of two kids. Maybe that makes me little more sensitive than others to the possibility of dropping bombs on somebody else’s kids, usually for the benefit of the arms industry, the oil industry, or some other big-bucks special interest group that sees nothing but dollars in destroying foreign people and places.
Continue reading →

Trump Rally No Joking Matter

Trump_Rally_No_Joking_Matter

Scary first hand account of the meanness inside a Trump rally.

I almost missed it. I saw this photo of 2 young men holding a Trump sign at a Trump rally in my Facebook feed, which disappointed me, and I was ready to move on to better things, when I saw that the fella posting the photo (Jordan Ray Correll) had written: “DO NOT JUST SCROLL PAST THIS PICTURE WITHOUT READING THIS POST FIRST. THANK YOU.”

As a result of his comment I decided to take the time to read what he had posted about his experience, and I realized that my initial assumptions about the photo had been incorrect.

Source: Trump Rally No Joking Matter

Al Franken to GOP, ‘Scientists tell us there are 10 and a half months left in this president’s term’

Man, I love Al Franken. Here are his comments on YouTube.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) sat through all of the statements made by all of the Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s “debate” Thursday, and he had a lot to say to set the record straight.He started out responding to Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) who railed about “activist judges” and making sure that the court kept its ideological balance and that President Obama wouldn’t nominate another justice who would “legislate from the bench.” That definitely set the good senator from Minnesota off:

“This idea of nine unelected justices making law from the bench, that is what we have seen with the Roberts court. […] We had 100 votes in the Voting Rights Act. Unanimous vote by the United States senate. And what did Justice Scalia say? He said that, well, the senators voting for it because it was named to the Voting Rights Act. Remember that? […] I mean, this is insulting. To hear that. It is just insulting.”

Source: Al Franken to GOP, ‘Scientists tell us there are 10 and a half months left in this president’s term’

How I built a hoverboard company and then blew it up | TechCrunch

This story has captivated me since I read it a few days ago. It has inspired me to maybe actually do something with those little side projects I’m always dreaming up.

I was first introduced to Hoverboards while watching Casey Neistat’s daily vlogs on YouTube. I thought, “Wow. That’s pretty cool!” and started searching online to purchase one myself. When I looked at the cost of an IOHawk at $1,800 or the Phunkeeduck at $1,500, I thought there had to be a cheaper way. That’s when I found out how cheap they would be if you bought them online in bulk straight from the manufacturer.

That was an intriguing idea, so I decided it wouldn’t hurt to order straight from China. I thought I would keep one and sell one, and if I could sell one, then maybe I could sell more. So I began the process.

Source: How I built a hoverboard company and then blew it up | TechCrunch