Blog/January 2018/Jan 5th

January 5th

This week was busy. Esther’s coworker, the only other one at her firm who knows how to deal with US taxes, left the company. So my wife now has to take up the slack until they manage to find and train someone else. She’s not excited about this turn of events, but what can you do?

I worked on various 8th issues, and published the next installment of my series on the ARM blog. I’m working on finishing up the changes I need to make to 8th so I can make a release next week.

Because you see, I’m flying back to the US (unfortunately, without Esther) to help prepare my mother for her upcoming visit to Israel. We want her close to us, so we can keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t rob a bank or something. We’re working assiduously to make our nest as comfortable for her as possible. Among other things, that involves getting US TV — and since we have neither a television nor cable, that’s proven an interesting challenge.

Other things:

• The real reason white Americans voted for Trump. It’s not what you think.
• The coming apocalypse.
• A new Dave Rubin interview of Ben Shapiro.
• The Salt Institute. Apparently, it’s a real thing.
• And finally, Dave Barry’s year in review.

The big news this week was the announcements of really, extremely bad vulnerabilities in all modern computer CPU chips. The good news is, you don’t need to do anything. The bad news is, you can’t do anything. Instead, there are some steps that your OS vendors (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Linux etc.) are taking which will help with some of the issues, at the cost of performance (hint: you will probably notice a slowdown on your favorite computer). But those steps will only help partially. The real fixes need to come from the CPU vendors (Intel, AMD, ARM), and will only appear gradually since they have to retool their production lines with new designs, and get those designs rolled-out into consumer products.

It’s not a pretty sight.

Related, but not-really-related, various crypto and security things:

• The strange story of extended random.
• Critical Tor flaw leaks user’s real IP address.
• And some Android malware is so aggressive, it physically harms the phones.

I’m turning another year older in a couple days, and my grand-nephew is turning one year old the day before my birthday. We’re going to his birthday-party today — though I’m pretty sure he’ll not care that it’s his birthday. So, happy birthday to Netzach (and to me, I guess)! Sarah said that she told her boyfriend that there was “a יום הולדת לנצח, and he was very confused at first”. The Hebrew can be translated either as “a perpetual birthday”, or as “a birthday for Netzach”. Hence, his confusion. I’ll admit, it really is a confusing name…

That’s it for this edition, except that I’d like to give a “shout-out” to my cousin Royce and his family for keeping an eye on my mom and keeping me informed!

This shabbat we’ve got guests for shabbat and my birthday dinner. We’ll enjoy:
homemade ḥalla, chicken soup, roast beef, chicken schnitzel, roasted veggies, roasted beets, potato kugel, grandma’s eggplant, more veggies, various salatim, and chocolate-raspberry birthday cake.

Yum!

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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