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We’ve been tired and busy this week. Tired because the clocks changed and now it gets dark at 5:30 in the afternoon. This whole “changing the clocks” thing is getting tiresome. The EU [https://www.dw.com/en/eu-to-stop-changing-the-clocks-in-2019/a-45495680 is going to stop this nonsense] but probably engender confusion as well. It’s at least possible we’ll do the same, since we are currently more or less synchronised with the EU. Well, it’s a thought…

Busy, as usual. Esther’s back to work, as is Sarah. They both would rather not, I think.

The recent American abandonment of its Kurdish allies and the subsequent Turkish atrocities bring into sharp focus America’s [https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/untenable-alliance-is-no-turkish-delight/ untenable alliance] with Turkey. Let’s not forget that the Turk’s genocide of the Armenians was an inspiration to Hitler: he [https://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html correctly surmised] that “the world” would be indifferent. In his words: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”. Still true, almost a century later.

The political scene in America has deteriorated into the [https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/not-enemies-but-friends/ politics of ‘cooties’]. Y’all need to grow up, fast, or your country will no longer be one. This week I was “blocked” by someone on Gab, for informing him that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Spencer Robert Spencer], an ardent campaigner against Muslim supremacy, is not in fact Jewish. The guy ''blocked'' me for stating something which is an incontrovertible fact. If you can’t introduce facts into a conversation without ending it, how will you ever learn anything?

Various things:
* Culture wars: going [https://freebeacon.com/columns/from-woke-to-broke/ from ‘woke’ to broke].
* “Dark web” site [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/10/dark_web_site_t.html taken down] without breaking encryption. The important take-away is that weakening everyone’s security by putting “backdoors” into encryption protocols is not necessary. As testified by:
* The former FBI General Counsel [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/10/former_fbi_gene.html chooses encryption] over “backdoors” in encryption protocols.
* Facebook sues an Israeli company [https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/whatsapp-nso-group-malware.html for hacking WhatsApp]. Even without backdoors, faulty implementations open up “front-doors”.
* Rented a car recently? You might want to [https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/five-months-after-returning-rental-car-man-still-has-remote-control/ check the remote-app] access.
* Thinking of skipping that vaccination? Don’t. Why getting [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/01/health/measles-amnesia-study-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html immunized against measles] is ''really'' important.


I’ve been working on getting 8th put back together for the next release. There are a lot of changes, bug fixes, and enhancements. The QA effort is pretty exhausting.

One of the major work items for this upcoming release was “hardening” the encryption. In this case, I’m referring to ensuring that the “randomness” of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator the PRNGs] is as random and unpredictable as possible. I wrote about this [http://ronware.org/wiki/Blog/October_2019/Oct_18th two weeks ago], and have continued working on this issue. This week I reviewed things to ensure that different tasks use different PRNG states. So, why all this emphasis on “random numbers”? Because [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/how-a-months-old-amd-microcode-bug-destroyed-my-weekend/ bad randomness] is disastrous!

I’ll have a lot more to say about this next week, B”H, since the release is planned for then.

Our weather’s been pleasantly cool; a bit below average, in fact. It looks like we’ll have cool weather over ''shabbat'', and then a slight warming for the week.

Just the three of us this ''shabbat''; we’ll try to console ourselves with:
<br>
homemade ''ḥalla'',
veggie soup,
chicken and red rice,
baked yams,
sticky wings,
various ''salatim'',
and brownies.

Until next time,<br>
''shabbat shalom''!


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