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Thursday Morning: Things Are Gonna’ Change

After Tuesday’s primaries and last night’s Democratic candidates’ debate, surely something will change in messaging and outreach.

And surely something will change on the other side of the aisle given the continued rampage of ‘Someone With Tiny Hands.”

Calls to mind an animated movie popular with my kids a few years ago.

Moving on…

Volkswagen and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

  • USDOJ subpoenaed VW under recent banking law (CNBC) — This is the first such application of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (Firrea) since it was signed into law in 1989 in response to the savings and loan scandal. The law was used to target bank fraud in subprime mortgages after the 2008 financial crisis. (Caveat: that link at CNBC autoplays video. Bad practice, CNBC very bad.)
  • VW’s US CEO Michael Horn departs with marked haste (Bloomberg) — Huh. Interesting timing, that. A subpoena and an exit inside 48 hours? The phrases “mutual agreement” and “leave to pursue other opportunities” are very telling. IMO, Volkswagen Group’s response to the scandal has been lackluster to obstructionist, and Horn might not want to be the automaker’s sin eater here in the U.S.
  • Not looking good in Germany for VW, either, as prosecutors expand their investigation (Business Insider) — 17 employees now under scrutiny, up from six.
  • VW’s South Korean offices raided (Reuters) — Wondered when South Korea would catch up after all the recenty happy-happy about clean diesel passenger vehicle sales.

I feel like I’m telling a child Santa Claus is a lie and the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, but it’s important to this scandal to grasp this point: There is no clean diesel technology. There is no clean diesel technology coming any time soon. Invoke a little Marcus Aurelius here and look at this situation and its essential nature, by asking why VW cheated and lied and did so for so long.

Because there is no clean diesel technology.

And the clock is tick-tick-ticking — the court case in California gave VW 30 days to come up with a technical solution. Mark your calendar for March 24, people.

A – Apple, B – Bollocks, C – Cannot…

Panopticonic POV

  • Defense Department used surveillance drones over U.S. for a decade (USA Today) — All legit, though, nothing to see here, move along. Disregard the incomplete list of flights, just trust.
  • What will happen when your neighbors can buy a StingRay on the cheap to listen in on your cellphone calls? (Bloomberg) — Worse thought: what if they’ve already built one?
  • If you’re a commercial trucker, chances are anybody can track you (Naked Security) — Read this, especially the pointers at the bottom of the article. (Personal tip from me: If you’re a female trucker, use a gender neutral name or initials in the workplace. Insist your employer respects this practice.)

That’s enough damage for one day. Things have got to change.

Tuesday Morning: Some Kind of Freak

Today’s the intersection of my Gwen Stefani jag and International Women’s Day 2016. Need some more estrogen-powered music to celebrate IWD? Try this list — note and compare Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me and Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walking against more recent tunes like No Doubt’s Just A Girl.

Let’s roll…

Volkswagen shocked, SHOCKED! the EPA went public on the diesel emissions standards cheat
But by the time the EPA made public statements regarding VW, the German automaker had already known about the International Council on Clean Transportation’s research results for a year and had yet to reveal to shareholders the risk of prosecution and penalties. VW’s leadership hoped for a mild and quiet slap on the hands and enough time for a technical solution before the EPA’s disclosure:

“In the past, even in the case of so-called ‘defeat device’ infringements, a settlement was reached with other carmakers involving a manageable fine without the breach being made public,” VW argued. “And in this case, the employees of Volkswagen of America had the impression on the basis of constructive talks with the EPA that the diesel issue would not be made public unilaterally but that negotiations would continue.”

Hope somebody is looking at insider trading for any sign that VW executives were unloading stock in the period between September 2014 when ICCT’s results were published, and when the EPA went public in 2015. Wonder what penalties there are under German/EU laws for this?

USDOJ appealed last week’s ruling in Brooklyn iPhone 5S case
At the heart of this appeal is Apple’s past cooperative actions when federal law enforcement asked for assistance in unlocking iPhones. Apple, however, said past acquiescence is not consent. USDOJ has now asked for review of Judge Orenstein’s ruling.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak appeared on Conan, sided unsurprisingly with Apple
Woz admitted to having tried his hand at writing viruses for Mac, but the entire premise terrified him, compelling him to destroyed his efforts. Video of his appearance included at this link.

France to punish phonemakers for encryption, while UK’s GCHQ says it should get around encryption
A narrow body of water, a different language, and a recent terrorist attack make for very different reactions to encrypted communications. France’s Parliament voted yesterday to punish phonemakers which do not cooperate with law enforcement on unencrypting data; the bill is not yet law, subject to further parliamentary process. Meanwhile, Britain’s spy chief said he hopes methods can be developed to get around encryption without building backdoors.

Drive-by quickies

And it’s Presidential Primary Day in Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho, Hawaii. I may avoid social media for most of the day for this reason. Hasta pasta!

Monday Morning: Put Your Pom-poms Down

A certain state governor (or his PR team) tweeted a bunch of smack last night during the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate. Like this:

RSnyder_tweet_06MAR2016

It is to laugh. Every decision made by this administration about Flint has been about money, not about the right thing, and not even about the legal thing.

He put his pom-poms down last week long enough to lawyer up, though. Mm-hmm.

By the way, that’s the NSFW version – here’s the language-sanitized clean version of that video for your office space. Crank the volume and bring it.

All around Apple town

  • Email provider Lavabit filed an amicus brief in #AppleVsFBI, arguing the FBI’s demands could have adverse affects on businesses:

    Such precedence would likely result in many businesses moving their operations offshore, therefore, making it more difficult for law enforcement to obtain even ordinary assistance from such companies…

    Wow, sounds familiar, huh? Brief’s worth a read (pdf).

  • Apple VP of software engineering Craig Federighi wrote an op-ed for yesterday’s WaPo, restating an opinion Apple and many of its supporters already expressed:

    “…it’s so disappointing that the FBI, Justice Department and others in law enforcement are pressing us to turn back the clock to a less-secure time and less-secure technologies. …”

  • The stakes get higher in #AppleVsFBI as Apple prepares to launch several new iPhones and an iPad on March 21. We all know a decision by Judge Pym will affect these devices in the future, not just the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C.
  • And just to keep Apple users even more on their toes, there’s now Apple ransomware on the loose. So far only Mac devices have been targeted, but it’s only a matter of time before other Apple devices are similarly affected. I’d put my money on higher profile users or those using iPhones to remotely control costly systems.

Quickety-lickety

And on this day in 1876, U.S. Patent 174,465 for Improvement in Telegraphy was granted to Alexander Graham Bell.

What will they write about this day in another 140 years? Do something worth writing about.

Friday Morning: The Political is Musical

It’s Friday, and that means more jazz. Today’s genre is Afrobeat, which emerged in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Nigerian musician Fela Kuti is credited as the genre’s progenitor, though Fela maintained drummer Tony Allen was essential to style, saying, “[w]ithout Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat.”

Afrobeat fuses a number of different types of music with jazz, including funk, highlife, rock, and folk music from West African cultures. In this video, Beasts of No Nation, it’s easy to hear the different styles of music added as layers underpinned and unified by drums.

The lyrics of many Afrobeat tunes are very political; the album of the same name, Beasts of No Nation, was an anti-apartheid statement released in 1989.

Recommended read to accompany today’s musical selection: The Wealth of Nations by Emmanuel Iduma (Guernica magazine).

Let’s move…

Not far from the Apple tree
Lots of developments yesterday in the  #AppleVsFBI story.

  • In support of Apple, big names in tech file amicus briefs to meet deadline. The two most powerful briefs constituted a who’s who of Silicon Valley. Amazon, Box, Cisco, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nest, Pinterest, Slack, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Yahoo filed one joint brief. AirbNb, atlassian, Automattic, Cloudflare, EBay, Github, Kickstarter, LinkedIN, Mapbox, Medium, Meetup, Reddit, Square, SquareSpace, Twilio, Twitter, Wickr filed the second. There were several other pro-Apple briefs filed, but none with the economic clout of these two briefs.
  • Cato’s Julian Sanchez may have the best take on yesterday’s filings.
  • UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said forcing Apple to write code for the FBI “could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security,” constituting a “a gift to authoritarian regimes.”
  • Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County DA, exposed his lack of technology prowess in an ex parte application to participate as Amicus Curiae.

    “The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino’s infrastructure…”

    Emphasis mine. WHAT. EVEN. Dude just screwed law enforcement, making the case (using a made-up term) for the iPhone to never be opened.

Brazil’s former president Lula held for questioning as home raided
The investigation into state-run oil company Petrobras now reaches deeply into the highest levels of Brazil’s government. Investigators are looking into former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s role in Petrobras’ corruption, including kickbacks and influence peddling. The investigation’s discoveries threaten the viability of current president Dilma Rousseff’s ruling coalition. Wonder if the NSA was following this when they were spying on Petrobras?

Quick licks

  • Absolute insanity: Amazon’s Kindle devices no longer encrypted (Motherboard) — Well, nobody in this household is getting a Kindle any time soon.
  • Nope, not hackers, not squirrels: bird droppings suspected in shutdown of Indian Point nuke plant last December (Phys.org)
  • Joint US-UK college hacking competition this weekend (Phys.org) — Wanna’ bet some of these students will be asked about hacking Apple iPhones?
  • Connecticut wants to ban weaponization of drones, thanks to stupid teenager’s home project (Naked Security) — Seems like a federal issue, IMO, but let me guess the gun lobby will step and whine about gun-enabled drones as a Second Amendment right. Surely our forefathers anticipated flying, cellphone-controlled privately-owned gun drones.

Ugh. That’s a wrap on this week, stopping now before this really devolves though I can’t see any distance between here and absolute bottom. Have a good weekend!

Wednesday Morning: All the Range from Sublime to Silly

We start with the sublime, welcoming astronaut Scott Kelly back to earth after nearly a year in space — 340 days all told. Wouldn’t you like to know how these first hours and days will feel to Kelly as he regains his earth legs?

And then we have the silly…

Apple’s General Counsel Sewell and FBI Director Comey appeared before House Judiciary Committee
You’d think a Congressional hearing about FBI’s demand to crack open Apple iPhone would be far from silly, but yesterday’s hearing on Apple iPhone encryption…Jim Comey likened the iPhone 5C’s passcode protection to “a guard dog,” told Apple its business model wasn’t public safety, fretted about “warrant-proof spaces” and indulged in a thought exercise by wondering what would happen if Apple engineers were kidnapped and forced to write code.

What. The. Feck.

I think I’ll read about this hearing in French news outlets as it somehow sounds more rational: iPhone verrouillé: le patron du FBI sur le gril face au Congrès américain (iPhone locked: FBI boss grilled by US Congress – Le Monde). Other kickers in Comey’s testimony: an admission that a “mistake was made” (oh, the tell-tale passive voice here) in handling the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, the implication that the NSA couldn’t (wouldn’t?) backdoor the iPhone in question, and that obtaining the code demanded from Apple would set precedent applicable to other cases.

Predictably, Apple’s Bruce Sewell explained that “Building that software tool would not affect just one iPhone. It would weaken the security for all of them.” In other words, FBI’s demand that Apple writes new code to crack the iPhone 5C’s locking mechanism is a direct threat to Apple’s business model, based on secure electronic devices.

Catch the video of the entire hearing on C-SPAN.

Facebook’s Latin American VP arrested after resisting release of WhatsApp data
Here’s another legal precedent, set in another country, where a government made incorrect assumptions about technology. Brazilian law enforcement and courts believed WhatsApp stored data it maintains it doesn’t have, forcing the issue by arresting a Facebook executive though WhatsApp is a separate legal entity in Brazil. Imagine what could happen in Brazil if law enforcement wanted an Apple iPhone 5C unlocked. The executive will be released today, according to recent reports. The underlying case involved the use of WhatsApp messaging by drug traffickers.

USAO-EDNY subpoenaed Citigroup in FIFA bribery, corruption and money laundering allegations
In a financial filing, Citigroup advised it had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney’s office. HSBC advised last week it had been contacted by U.S. law enforcement about its role. No word yet as to whether JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have been likewise subpoenaed though they were used by FIFA officials. Amazing. We might see banksters perp-walked over a fútbol scandal before we see any prosecuted for events leading to the 2008 financial crisis.

Quick hits

I’m out of here, need to dig out after another winter storm dumped nearly a foot of the fluffy stuff yesterday. I’m open to volunteers, but I don’t expect many snow shovel-armed takers.

Monday Morning: Let’s Mambo

When your Monday begins to drag — and you know it will at some point — put on a little mambo.

Especially Perez Prado‘s Mambo Number 5 and Mambo Number 8. They’ll spice up your day, get it back on track. There are some more recent covers and mashups of Prado’s mambos, but they just aren’t the same as the originals.

Be careful where you play this stuff; it’ll make your mother or grandmother move in ways you may not want to watch.

Let’s cha-cha-cha…

“Damn it Jim, what the hell is the matter with you?”*
FBI-Comey_TakeADeepBreath_21FEB2016
FBI was still trying to dig itself out of a hole on Saturday evening, resorting to damage control mode yesterday. Note, though, Director James Comey’s statement at Lawfare and subsequent coverage at the Los Angeles Times don’t mention at all the screwed up handling of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone. Take that deep breath, then save it to cool your soup, eh?

So I’m following the map that leads to you
Nope, not Maroon 5, but Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, building a map of the network it claims will help it understand how best to reach populations with poor to no internet. A map, to people not on the map? Creepy, like a stalker ex-boyfriend with global reach. Can’t wait for the conditions by which the U.S. government claims it needs access to that.

Radioactive materials gone walkabout in Iraq now found
This is a strange story. Not the part about a testing device containing radioactive Ir-192 used by a Turkish oil pipeline inspection services company that went missing in November but not reported by media until last week, or the part where the device turned up this weekend, dumped by a gas station. Nor even the odd description of the discovery:

“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces,” the chief of security panel in Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, said.
“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 per cent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”

What’s strange is the coverage of this story: picked up by mostly conservative outlets, not widely covered in large news outlets. Huh. Weird. Pick out some key words from the story and do a search yourself, compare to coverage on other stories. Heck, it doesn’t even show up on Reuter’s Middle East and Africa site this morning, though they first broke the story.

Not-so-happy anniversary, Q-1 Predator drone
15 years now this death-from-the-sky has been in use. Sadly, it’s become embedded in our culture now.

All right, time to set this aside and put on my dancing shoes. ¡Vamonos! ¡Baile!

* gratuitous Star Trek quote, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy to Captain James T. Kirk.

USDOJ: Make Apple Fix Their ‘Brand Marketing Strategy’ for Our Needs

(Note: I drafted the following piece Friday after the USDOJ filed its latest motion, but before the latest revelation of law enforcement’s handling of the iPhone at the heart of the case. I’ve added an additional remark set off with emphasis after the disclosure. And now this afternoon’s new development? I can’t with this stuff. ~smh~)

You may imagine me agog after reading the Department of Justice’s motion filed today in the case of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone. USDOJ believes Apple’s repudiation of its demands to write code in order to allow USDOJ to access the phone’s content by brute forcing the pin “to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy …”

Does the USDOJ understand what a smartphone is, and how it differs from a plain old telephone or even a vanilla cellphone? Are they just screwing with us, or do they simply not understand that smartphones aren’t just communications tools?

Wallet_EW-blog<<– For example, this device is designed to contain materials that are important and valuable to its user, including identity documentation, money and other means of payment, keys to access other devices and locations, possibly papers with important notes.

Imagine the USDOJ insisting the wallet’s designer must allocate personnel and resources to redesign and apply a new closure on a single device so that content caught in it will not be destroyed when the closure is opened by USDOJ.

Ridiculous.

.

.

Wallet-2_EW-blog

<<– Compare now to this device, designed to contain materials that are important and valuable to its user, including identity documentation, money and other means of payment, keys to access other devices and locations, possibly papers with important notes. Only this device may contain entire libraries and businesses.

Imagine the USDOJ insisting the device’s designer must allocate personnel and resources to redesign and apply a new closure on a single device so that content caught in it will not be destroyed when the closure is opened by USDOJ.

Users rely on this device’s inherent closure integrity to secure its contents. This is not merely a “public brand strategy” — it is the essence of the device’s utility, its fundamental nature. The only thing different between these devices is communications capability in the latter, not the former. But users rely on the content of messages to be treated like the content of notes one might put in their wallet or purse — private and secure. Users seeking wallets and smartphones don’t buy them because they are insecure. Smartphone buyers aren’t shelling out $20 for a wallet, and they’re not buying just a communications device. They’re spending hundreds of dollars buying a digital portmanteau to replace their wallet/purse containing their laptop/books/files/photo album/audio player/more. It must be secure for that reason. The investment of time and money reflects this.

Which is why it seems to me — and I am not a lawyer — the government’s demands on Apple to allocate business resources to create an insecurity in a device designed to be secure is unreasonable, even if the insecurity demanded will be used one time as the USDOJ claims.

Worse, this demand by USDOJ is an attempt to remedy a case of bad device management. The specific iPhone in question, used by Syed Farook, was issued by his employer — San Bernardino County. Why didn’t the county issue devices with an administrative override? It’s like issuing a company car but not retaining a spare set of keys if the employee was suddenly terminated. Why should Apple undermine the inherent integrity of its product to resolve a poor case of asset management?

EDIT: And why should Apple invest private resources into compelled speech as software to rectify a screw-up on the part of San Bernardino County and the USDOJ in their inept handling of the single iPhone in question once the device had been retrieved from the suspect?

It doesn’t matter if, as USDOJ swears, this compelled reverse engineering is written and applied only once. That it would have been done at all establishes a precedent, allowing the U.S. government (and others!) a foothold to demand companies allocate resources to service the government, while undermining the inherent integrity of their products.

What might this do over the long run to Apple’s investment in Apple Pay — literally a wallet-alternative payment technology based on iPhone?

A wallet that retains its contents isn’t just “brand marketing strategy.” It’s the innate purpose of a wallet — and the same with devices we now use as digital wallets.

There is another larger conversation we must have about the evolution of technology and the inability of our laws to keep apace.
Consider Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh’s recent brief in which he maintained persons carrying a cellphone into a store had no expectation of privacy, “because [the suspect Andrews] chose to keep his cell phone on, he was voluntarily sharing the location of his cell phone with third parties.” But cellphones — more specifically, smartphones — are the convergence of our entire desks. We do not expect by keeping them turned on that we have given third parties entrée to our desks unless we have pointedly been asked and given permission. People don’t just walk around holding their wallets and backpacks open for inspection by anyone who chooses to snoop.

But smartphones are the convergence of our entire desks. We do not expect by keeping them turned on that we have given third parties entrée to our desks unless we have pointedly been asked and given permission. People don’t just walk around holding their wallets and backpacks open for inspection by anyone who chooses to snoop.

Unfortunately, we the people have not negotiated our expectations by way of legislation. Law enforcement and the military both are operating in the gap we’ve left in our social contract, a hole where our expectations have not been established. Are we suffering from future shock about the technology we expect and use? More than likely, and our legal system is slower than we are, suffering even more so. But because no law clearly tells them, “This is a personal desk with access to remote files — both node ends and the transmission between are private,” law enforcement and the military will simply assume they can ask anything they want.

This includes demanding a smartphone manufacture to create an insecurity in digital wallet technology.
__________
Here are a few articles related to the USDOJ’s demand on Apple I find particularly interesting:

(Disclosure: I own shares of AAPL. Adder: IMO, the embedded video is already anachronistic, behind technological evolution. Many of us, including myself, do most of their work on smartphones/phablets/tablets.)

Thursday Morning: Number 49

Name day of Saint Simon (Simeon), and Greek name day for Leon and Agapitos, it’s also the 49th day of the year, only 317 more to go. Make the best of it, especially if your name is Simon, Leon, or Agapitos.

Hollywood hospital paid ransom — $17K in bitcoin, not millions
See the official statement linked in this updated report. Speed and efficiency drove the payment. Given the difference between the original amount reported and the amount paid in ransom, one might wonder if there was a chaining of devices, or if many less important devices will be bricked.

Laser pointed at Pope Francis’ plane over Mexico
Someone pointed a laser at the Pope’s flight just before it landed in Mexico City yesterday, one of the highest profile incidences of “lasering” to date. The incident follows an international flight forced back to Heathrow on Monday after one of its pilots suffered eye injury from a laser. Thousands of laserings happen every year; it’s illegal in the U.S. and the U.K. both, but the U.S. issues much stiffer penalties including fines of $10,000 and prison time. If Mexico doesn’t already treat lasering firmly, it should after this embarrassing and threatening incident.

Air strike on Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’ Syrian hospital spurs call for investigation
It’s absolutely ridiculous how many MSF medical facilities have been hit air strikes over the last year, the latest west of Aleppo in Syria. MSF has now called for an independent investigation into this latest attack which killed nine medical personnel and more than a dozen patients. This particular strike is blamed on the Syrian government-led coalition, but Russia and the U.S. have also been blamed for attacks on MSF facilities this year, including the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last October. You’d think somebody had it out for MSF specifically.

Is China rousing over Korean peninsula escalation?
Tension spawned by North Korea’s recent nuclear test, missile and satellite launches, as well as South Korea’s pull back from Kaesong industrial complex and U.S. F-22 flyovers have increased rhetoric in media.

Just as it is in the U.S., it’s important to note the origin and politics of media outlets covering China. GBtimes, for example, covers Chinese stories, but from Finland. ~head scratching~

All Apple, all the time
A huge number of stories published over the last 24 hours about Judge Sym’s order to Apple regarding unlocking capability on San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone.

I wonder if this is really a Third Amendment case, given the lack of daylight between the FBI and the U.S. military by way of Joint Terrorism Task Force involvement, and the case at hand in which a non-U.S. citizen’s illegal activities (Farook’s wife Tashfeen Malik) may have triggered related military counterterrorism response. Has the U.S. government, by demanding Apple create code to permit unlocking the shooter’s iPhone, insisted on taking private resources for government use? But I’m not a lawyer. What do I know?

That’s it for now. Thursday, February 18th is also “Teen Missed the Bus Day”; ‘Agapitos’ he is not at the moment. Kid’s going to owe me some time helping with the next morning post.

Friday Morning: It’s Five Somewhere

This week has been really long. Painfully dragged out. Mid-week snowstorm probably didn’t help. But here we are, survivors with another week and yet another Presidential campaign debate under our belts.

I’ll keep it short and snappy given how much ugly we’ve been through.

Your information security is only as good as the stupidest person on staff
“Hello, FBI? I’m new here and I don’t have my code. Can you help a girl out?” No joke, that’s about all it took for one unnamed hacktivist to get inside the FBI. And yet the FBI demands backdoors into all mobile devices. I can’t even…

Meet your new immortal overlord: Your self-driving car
This first graf scares the crap out of me:

The computer algorithms that pilot self-driving cars may soon be considered the functional equivalents of human drivers. That’s the early opinion of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—and so begins our slow-burn acquiescence in the battle of man versus machine.

And not even for the reasons that PC World’s editor-in-chief Jon Phillips outlines in his editorial. If a governmental agency recognizes an algorithm as equal to a human, how long before humans are actually subordinate to artificial intelligence?  It’s bad enough corporations — legal constructs — have nearly the same rights as humans and can live forever. This needs to die on the vine right now — especially since Google is ramping up hiring for its line of self-driving cars.

Speaking of Google…

Busy week on Zika front

Media commentator Douglas Rushkoff interviewed on digital society

You left Facebook in 2013. How is that working out for you?

Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane! …

A worthwhile read, give it a whirl when the dust begins to settle.

Here’s hoping the weekend moves as slowly as this week did. Huli pau!