Carpet Bomberz Inc.

So Fox decided to queue up last years race (2019) and obscure the fact that the real race hasn’t even started yet. We’re watching last year’s 2019 race on broadcast TV. This sux. How are they going to get the season opener done? Are they running it tomorrow? seems like they shoulda started the race early, say 1:30 instead of waiting for all the pomp/circumstance of POTUS coming up from Mar-A-Lago to insert himself and Melania into the 2020 Daytona 500. That guy has been Prez for 4 years now and NEVER attended a race. LAME!

The search service built into Windows 10 appears to be malfunctioning. Microsoft has yet to issue a fix.

Another Windows 10 bug: Now it seems the search bar doesn’t work – CNET — CNET News

Funny thing happened at work today for me. At ~10:00am EST my Search Box stopped working. The thing MS got me addicted to, looking things up no matter what, well that broke utterly. Meaning, I no longer know where to look for and find the CMD command. Instead I just type right into the Search Box and MS presents it too me. Asks me “Do you want to launch it as Administrator?” etc. But that came to a screeching halt when all I could see, all I was presented was a big old dumb grey rectangle with no links, no recent activities, no “suggestions”. Worse yet as you typed into the box, NOTHING happened.

I restarted. Nothing happened. I ran full runs of System Checker (sfc /scannow) also the DISM.exe /restorehealth. NOTHING fixed it. In desperation I started looking up the problem, seeing everything from what I had already done (reboot/sfc/dism) or worse suggestions like editing the registry. But fact is, I couldn’t do that simple step because I don’t know the path to the regedit.exe command anymore because Windows Search was supposed to remember that FOR ME!

And now I’m reading this article from C|NET and find out it was a “thing”. Eventually I got clued into the fact SearchUI.exe was suspended for some unknown reason. I went to Task Manager and stopped it, then killed the whole process tree. That force it to restart, but the SearchUI went right back into “suspended” mode. Then all the time I spent (30 minutes or more) passed without anything working and magically SearchUI.exe went into start mode around 10:30AM EST and it all just came back on it’s own miraculously. So weird, so bizarre, and I thought I was the only one experiencing the problem today. Thanks CNET!

This just in,…
And just now I read this little missive in The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21124204/windows-search-down-blank-results-issues-microsoft-bing-outage. It appears the issue started at 8AM EST (before I arrived at work) and cleared up when MS remediated the issue by 11:35AM. My issues seemed to clear up at 10:30. So I guess I got lucky. But I was certain I broke my OS and was getting ready to backup data and re-install the OS. Man that’s frightening to see happen without anything so much as a MS announcement to sit and wait.

The police service in Scotland has posted a video showing a Cellebrite device in action, accessing text messages, photos, and calendar entries from a smartphone. The same device is used by many US law enforcement agencies… more… The post Police video shows Cellebrite device in action, says it ‘minimizes intrusion’ appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Police video shows Cellebrite device in action, says it ‘minimizes intrusion’ — 9to5Mac

Cellebrite and GrayKey are the 2 Eight hundred pound gorillas in the room when it comes to Law Enforcement absconding and cracking mobile devices. Between this and facial recognition and a multitude of other persistent strongly identifying characteristics, there are no more secrets. And know this too, what’s good for the private citizen is equally good for law enforcement. Who watches teh Watchmenz? These same “tools” and toyz will fall into the hands of non-Law Enforcement entities and actors and eventually the contracted security companies (think Booz Allen Hamilton et. al.) Just because you can create a product that breaks into mobile devices doesn’t mean you should, even if the entrepreneurial opportunity outweigh possible negative outcomes. It’s not a suitcase nuclear weapon, but that’s not an absolute. it’s a sliding scale on the spectrum of weapons. And as police depts. get more militarized, Cellebrite and GrayKey will find their way further down into your local constabulary.

For all that follows, there’s much more to be said–but if I try to say it all, the post will never be written or shared. So let’s get started with this beginning. Recently a Twitter thread emerged on the origins of the “Domain of One’s Own” project (usually abbreviated DoOO). Jon Udell’s epic talk at…

The Odyssey Project – A Domains Origin Story — Gardner Writes

I lurvs me some Origin Stories, especially from the wild frontier prior to the rise of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Web 2.0 was really going to be a chance to set a course and follow it to a less bubble-like conclusion, exploding on it’s way up-up-up into the future. Being able to make one’s own tools seemed like a good starting point, but as is often the case you bump into the limits of time and your current ability. Luckily, as Gardner points out, hosting companies like Bluehost had attempted to automate, script, GUI-ify much of the existing tools in a way meant to lower their costs of supporting end-users. The upshot in Gardner’s eyes were these interfaces lowered the barrier to end-users actually USING these tools at a level they wouldn’t normally be allowed in a Learning Management System context. The promise was, and in some ways is STILL there. We just need more people who are better able to convince the populace they should care. And now more than ever the Kelly-Anne Conways extolling alternative facts have proven we need to care. Otherwise we do get fooled again (remember Pets.com?) and rhyme with history like the civilizations of yore. Here’s to the future, again, we can do/learn to do, these things, or at minimum learn to CARE.

Forming lasting memories appears to depend on an interaction between glial cells and brain waves that are produced during sleep — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Deeper Insights Emerge into How Memories Form — Scientific American News

Fascinating read from SA on new study done by researchers looking at the critical role myelin sheaths perform in making long term memory. It’s all about the speed of travel “it seems”, where myelin sheaths between points in the brain, helps speed connections. Or at night during non-REM sleep, myelin is being made to “cement” the short-term memory/experience gained recently. Looks like the brain scientists are really onto something here.

China’s video and e-commerce platforms say they’re putting rural content creators on the path to fame and fortune, but questions persist about whether their poverty-busting initiatives can actually make a difference.

Can Livestreaming Lift China Out of Poverty by 2020? — Sixth Tone RSS

In Spring 2019 I watched a program on PBS about the live streaming phenomenon in China. Very similar to the voting based talent shows broadcast first in Europe and now in the U.S. But done completely over the internet in China using live streaming. People vote for their favorite “host” by awarding them virtual currency and raising their status in comparison to competing “idols”. I’ve never heard until today, that part of the reasoning, emphasis of this phenomenon is to give “opportunity” to rural citizens and provide a pathway out of poverty. But as the article points out, while the population of China is large and has a large number of participants on the Internet, there’s over 500+ million people who are not. And that’s saying that this less of a pathway for those 500+ million people who are not online. It is interesting to watch how the government and the citizens of China evolve their own culture and social systems surrounding the Internet.

The Morning Show is one of the flagship Apple TV+ original shows, starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell. In a new interview with Variety, Jennifer Aniston offers new details on working with Apple, the show’s inspiration, and more. more… The post Jennifer Aniston explains selling ‘The Morning Show’ when Apple TV+ ‘didn’t have…

Jennifer Aniston explains selling ‘The Morning Show’ when Apple TV+ ‘didn’t have walls‘ — 9to5Mac

More important than any of this is Jennifer Aniston didn’t really understand “streaming” and that the show was available anytime, on demand. She lamented the passing of “tuning in Thursday night”, and people yelling to you in the bathroom as the commercial ended, to let you know it’s back on. It’s sad. Yes it is Ms. Aniston, yes it is sad.

I deactivated my Twitter account after reading this article on both Slashdot and The Register: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/09/twitter_data_leak/

Twitter attempted to gain phone numbers of folks with accounts claiming it was for security purposes. This happened also to me on Facebook when they shutdown my account back in 2015. FB Support wanted my phone number to reinstate my account and I refused so they I was locked out.

Then Twitter shutdown my account, and refused to reinstate no matter what I did. But they STILL tried bullying me into handing over a telephone number, and I refused that one too. It was too suspicious and too damning, and bald-faced to be coincidence. And now the cat is out of the bag for the Twitter phone number cache. It was NEVER about security, ever, EVER, EVAR. It was all about advertising and engagement and all the negative BS social media has come to encompass. So as of today, I have deactivated Twitter. I originally let Twitter shutdown my first/original account but couldn’t stay away, and re-upped after 5 months off (in 2015). But this time it’s for good. No more FB, no more Twitter, you’re no fun anymore.