Like writing long, rambling blog posts.
Why is it every time I hear someone talking about an awards show, I feel a rush of relief that I don't pay $50/month to have that crap pumped into my house in HiDef? Why would anyone?
How long before we have stuff going on in our networks that resembles a mammalian body vs. bacteria, viruses and parasites?
When it comes to cybersecurity, Darpa’s taking inspiration from nature, with “Cyber Immune” — a defense model for the Pentagon’s computing systems that’s able to detect an attack, fight back and even heal itself automatically to prevent subsequent infiltration.
Right now, computer security is teams of humans waging an ongoing war by software proxy. What happens when the human element is removed? How quickly can two computer programs going at it evolve into something unrecognizable in both form and function? After all, a piece of software may evolve a very different view of what constitutes legitimate vs. illegitimate network traffic. How long before all the carbon-based units are patterned for data storage?
A couple related wins in the war against anti-vaxxer/pro-disease yahoos:
AVN may be closing its doors.
Lancet retracts Wakefield MMR study.
In case those make anyone too euphoric, here are three related federal budget stories (only for those with strong stomachs):
Obama budget: record spending, record deficit.
Remember when Congress recently raised the the debt ceiling to $41,000/person? They already need more.
Moody's threatens to lower US credit rating.
Which set the mood for this week's essay at the Archdruid Report:
...Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today’s news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all....
...Friends of mine in a couple of midwestern states have mentioned that the steady trickle of refugees from the Chicago slums into their communities has taken a sharp turn up....
...The state of California is essentially bankrupt; nearly all the mistakes made by the once-wealthy states of the Rust Belt as they slid down the curve of their own decline have been faithfully copied by California as it approaches its destiny as the Rust Belt of the 21st century....
...The figures coming out of state revenue offices strike a jarring contrast with the handwaving about “green shoots” and an imminent return to prosperity heard from Washington DC and the media....
...Despite soaring deficits, not to mention a growing disinclination on the part of foreign governments to keep on financing the same, every new issuance of US treasury bills somehow finds buyers in such abundance that interest rates stay remarkably low. A few weeks ago, Tom Whipple of ASPO became the latest in a tolerably large number of perceptive observers who have pointed out that this makes sense only if the US government is surreptitiously buying its own debt....
...for most of the last thirty years, the United States has been trying to stave off the inevitable – the sharp downward readjustment of our national standard of living and international importance following the peak and decline of our petroleum production and the depletion of most of the other natural resources....
...If I read the signs correctly, America has finally reached the point where its economy is so deep into overshoot that catabolic collapse is beginning in earnest. If so, a great many of the things most of us in this country have treated as permanent fixtures are likely to go away over the years immediately before us, as the United States transforms itself into a Third World country....
In somewhat lighter news, the latest threat to airline security is women with large breasts. Leave it to the damnable Muslims to take the fun out of fun bags.
And Clooney's Batman is officially the worst film ever. The one problem with these "ten worst movies" lists is that I now have an overwhelming urge to rent all ten of them for an MST3K party. At least I only own one or two on this particular list.
And just to end with a bang. The latest M51 Hubble Remix:
(click to galactify)
I can stare at that all day.
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