Blog/August 2019/Aug 2nd

August 2nd

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Too much to thoroughly discuss this week! Election drama in Israel and the USA. New neighbors. Moving trauma. Software. AND MORE!

I’ll start with Sarah’s moving trauma. She’s moving to a different apartment, not too far from where she was. She hired a mover, who gave her a quote. In the middle of the move itself, the owner (of the moving company) screams at her “you lied to me” about the number of stairs, kept screaming at her and Yarin, and told them they had to pay more. So since they didn’t have a choice, they paid up. After the move, she posted a synopsis (with screenshots of the messages the bully had sent) to a Facebook page. Someone there told her she needed to be careful lest she be sued, so she took it down after 15 minutes. Shortly thereafter, The Bully send her a notice he was going to sue her (for defamation).

Now, a quick Google search revealed that The Bully had pulled this stunt more than once in the past; but he gets a 4.9 out of 5.0 approval rating; most likely because he’s very good at intimidating his clients.

Yarin’s got some connection to a lawyer, and the lawyer told Sarah that The Bully hasn’t got a case, and he’s just trying to intimidate her. But if he does take it to court, he’ll lose, and she doesn’t have to worry about it.

I think this is an argument for “baseball-bat justice”, know what I mean? This week’s aphorism: “In an uncertain world, aim for center-of-mass.”

Our new neighbors moved in this week. I was concerned they would be very noisy, but they seem to be fine, so far. We introduced ourselves to them “formally” one evening, so they won’t guess at the truth of my anti-social nature.

Israeli elections: The various political parties were frantically working on “merger agreements” up to the deadline Thu evening to register their lists for the Knesset elections. The “United Right” is less united than it could have been, since “Otzma Yehudit” and “Zehut” both opted not to join in. That is, in my humble opinion, a grave tactical error which will cost the actual “right-wing” seats (and therefore influence); and it’s all because of the hubris of the minor parties’ leaders. Sad!

USA’n elections: The Democratic Party debates went a second round this week, and it looks like Biden is poised to take the prize. He just has to avoid screwing up, and he’ll probably be “in”, because he’s the only sane one with a chance and he’s currently the front-runner. The majority of Dem candidates are so far off the Left end of the spectrum, they were attacking the Obama administration’s policies as if Obama were a Republican! It’s just insane; it’s like they want Trump to be re-elected.

Other stuff:

• Facebook, that bastion of privacy-protection, is planning on “backdooring” WhatsApp. That means that they will be able to read (and pass on to 3rd parties) your supposedly “end-to-end-encrypted” messages. Switch to Signal now!
• A former Amazon employee hacked Capital One and got millions of sensitive records. But in common with other criminals, she bragged about her exploits and was arrested. Dope!
• Some millions of mission-critical devices are vulnerable to remote takeover. Have a good night’s sleep.
• How to secure your linux machine or your windows machine with a USB key, for extra security.
• This week a video of a 1939 football match went viral, as it was a match between Australia and Palestine. The Fakestinians were pushing this as proof that “Palestine” existed before Israel. Their “narrative” got whacked upside the head when it was revealed that every one of the “Palestinian” players was Jewish.
• Those of you who think Israel is, or should be, a Western country: think again. We don’t live in Europe, we’re in Asia, and the neighbors are very rowdy.

This week I made a new release of 8th, and also worked on removing Perl from the 8th build system. It gave me a pleasant feeling to get rid of random tools in favor of 8th.

And! This week marked our 12^th “aliyaversary”. Twelve years ago, we came home to the Land; and we don’t regret our decision even for a minute. It’s well past time for the rest of our coreligionists to make the same move (well, not to our house).

The weather has been the usual for summer, but it will be somewhat cooler over shabbat. At least the month of ʼav has begun on a cooler note.

We hope we’ll have a quiet shabbat! The menu consists of:
homemade ḥalla, chicken breasts with artichoke-hearts, traditional cholent, tuna cakes, various salatim, and oatmeal-bars.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥodesh ṭov!

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