Blog/July 2019/Jul 5th

July 5th

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Esther and I celebrated our 33^rd anniversary this week. Incredible, but true: she’s put up with me for well over three decades. B”H!

We went out for a night on the town (the “town” being Jerusalem); well, for an evening anyway. We enjoyed a pleasant dinner, a nice stroll, and some great people-watching. Jerusalem is full of tourists and rather odd people (those sets are not disjoint), so it’s always interesting to just observe people.

Daniela et. fam. arrived safely in Buenos Aires, where they experienced VIP treatment at the airport and were whisked away to their apartment. Unfortunately, the apartment seems to have less than a VIP electrical system; they had numerous power-outages. That would be less of a problem if they weren’t on the sixth-floor with twin babies. Nevertheless, Jeremy got to experience first-hand the total solar eclipse, since his uncle-in-law kindly drove him 2.5 hours to the place where they could see it properly.

As expected, the twins have been a big hit during their first World Tour. The great-grandparents can’t get enough of them, though the babies’ inquisitiveness and mobility have proven a challenge for my father-in-law’s housekeeping skills.

And now for something completely different. Computer security is a major interest of mine, as you know by now; and you also know that your web-browser is relatively unsafe. As it turns out, it’s even less safe than you thought, even if you have privacy extensions turned on. As if that’s not bad enough, some Android phones have a backdoor built-in, so even if you have all the paranoid precautions turned on, you’re vulnerable. And then the “RAMBleed” attack makes even Linux machines vulnerable. Most worrying, another hack allows changing drug doses in medical pumps. It’s not been a good month or so for security pros.

This is why it’s most worrying that, apparently, Trump officials are weighing an encryption crackdown. It’s bad enough that criminals can scoop up your data via various vulnerabilities, but now the US gov’t is contemplating making your data insecure so the criminals’ job is easier. Feh!

Read, and be outraged (or not):

• Nabisco just had to issue a special-edition LGBT Oreos. This is why we can’t have nice things.
• Portland, OR, is now Antifa’s city.
• US gov’t security keys vulnerable to hackers for the dumbest of reasons.
• Boeing outsourced software development for the 737 Max. Perhaps that was an unwise cost-savings…
• India is on the verge of producing their own CPUs. So your computer will tell you it understands you, but won’t, really.
• Apollo’s brain: the computer that guided man to the Moon. Imagine what they could have accomplished with a couple Pi Zeros!

I was quite manly this week, and gave the A/C unit in our “salon” a proper cleaning. That involved significant disassembly, which wasn’t too bad. But the amount of crud the unit had accumulated inside was pretty alarming. Likewise, the revelation that the installers had jacked-up the chassis so that it wouldn’t fit together properly on reassembly. Fortunately, there’s duct-tape. After about two hours of relatively strenuous work, I got the unit cleaned up and reassembled; it now works much more quietly and well.

And in Good News: the DuoLingo program finally started their Arabic lessons! So I’ve been going through it — and while it could be improved, it’s nevertheless a good way to learn the alphabet and get some basic vocabulary.

We hope “the kids” were able to find alternate accommodations, or at least make their current ones livable again! With shabbat fast approaching, they don’t have a lot of choices.

As for us, we’ll try to relax this shabbat and feast upon:
homemade ḥalla, baked chicken, roasted potatoes, roasted veggies, veggie cholent, various salatim, pear tart, and fruit.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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