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Wednesday: Feliz Dia de los Muertos — Happy Day of the Dead!

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In this Day of the Dead roundup: World Series Game 7, Rule 41, AT&T and net neutrality, Google spanks Microsoft, Slack smacks.

Happy All Saints’ Day Two — the second day of observation through Latin America as el Dia de los Muertos.

Was thinking of death and dying when I saw a post about one of my favorite movie soundtracks by one of my favorite contemporary composers. The Fountain, composed by Clint Mansell, was released today on vinyl. The 2006 film directed by Darren Aronofsky may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but the score surely must have wider appeal. The score features collaborative work of the contemporary classical chamber group Kronos Quartet and post-rock quartet Mogwai. The former provides most of the string work and the latter most of the rhythm, melding into some truly haunting music.

I think The Fountain is some of Mansell’s finest work; it was nominated for multiple awards including a Golden Globe. But do check out some of Mansell’s other film work, including that for Requiem for a Dream (especially the cut Lux Aeterna) and Black Swan. Stoker did not receive the recognition it should have; its presence is another character in the film. Granted, Mansell’s score for Stoker was only part of a soundtrack featuring other artists’ compositions.

World Series – Great Lakes Edition
So Game 7 is underway. I’d rather see Chicago Cubs up against Detroit Tigers, but the summer kitties let me down. I’m hoping for a Cubs win just because. What about you?

Cyber-y stuff

  • Less than a month before Rule 41 deadline (ZDNet) — Congress has diddled around after the Supreme Court created a potentially awful opportunity for law enforcement overreach. I can’t even imagine the foreign policy snafus this could create, let alone the fuckups which could happen from searching machines with spoofed identities and locations. I can think of a case where a political entity plopped on an IP address belonging to a major corporation — now imagine some huckleberry charging into that situation. FIX THIS, CONGRESS.
  • That’s not the airport, that’s the Kremlin! (MoscowTimes) — Speaking of spoofed identities, apparently the Kremlin’s location has been masked by a beacon emitting the GPS and GLONASS geolocation coordinates for the Vnokovo airport to prevent drones from snooping. An interesting bit, this…I wonder where/when else geolocation coordinates have been spoofed?
  • AT&T ‘zero-rating’ on DirecTV content should be reviewed (WSJ) — Favoring DirecTV — owned by AT&T — by lifting data caps on its content isn’t net neutrality when content streamed from other providers like Netflix does count against data limits.
  • AT&T already in the hot seat with USDOJ on Dodgers’ games (Bloomberg) — USDOJ sued AT&T and DirecTV for colluding with competitors to influence negotiations for Los Angeles Dodgers’ ball games. Imagine what this network will do if it owns content? Definitely not net neutrality — a perfect example of the conflict of interest between ISPs/network carriers and content creators.
  • Google takes Microsoft to the woodshed in full view of public (Threatpost) — I think Google is fed up with Microsoft’s buggy software and slow response which causes Google a mess of heartburn to plug on their end. Google told Microsoft of a new major zero-day vulnerability being actively exploited and then told the public 10 days after they told Microsoft. Apparently, MSFT hadn’t gotten a grip on a fix yet nor issued an advisory to warn users. By the way, guess when the next Patch Tuesday is? Election Day in the U.S. Uh-huh.
  • Slack takes out a full-page ad to welcome/razz Microsoft (WinBeta) — Microsoft is currently working on a competing group communication tool called Team, aimed at Slack’s market share. Slack welcomed the competition and gave MSFT some free pointers. Based on my experience, these pointers will go right over the head of MSFT’s management as they don’t mesh with their corporate culture.

That all for now, off to finish watching the Cubs who are giving it to Cleveland in a really fast-paced game that won’t last much longer at this rate. Must be all that Great Lakes water.

Tuesday Morning: Monitor

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Y me lamento por no estar alla
Y hoy te miento para estar solos tu y yo
Y la distancia le gano al amor
Solo te veo en el monitor

— excerpt, Monitor by Volovan

Sweet little tune, easy to enjoy even if you don’t speak Spanish.

Speaking of monitor…

Flint Water Crisis: Michigan State Police monitoring social media
Creeptastic. MSP is following social media communications related to Flint water crisis, which means they’re watching this blog and contributors’ tweets for any remarks made about Flint. Whatever did they do in the day before social media when the public was unhappy about government malfeasance?

MDEQ personnel told Flint city water employee to omit tests with high lead readings
The charges filed last week against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and a Flint city employee were related to the manipulation and falsification of lead level tests. From out here it looks like Mike Glasgow did what the MDEQ told him to do; with the city under the control of the state, it’s not clear how Glasgow could have done anything else but do what the state ordered him to do. Which governmental body had higher authority under emergency management — the city’s water department, or the MDEQ? And what happens when personnel at the MDEQ aren’t on the same page about testing methodology?

MDHHS too worried about Ebola to note Legionnaire’s deaths in 2014-2015?
Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services director Nick Lyons maintains a “breakdown in internal communication” kept information about the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak from reaching him. He also said MDHHS was focused on Ebola because of its high mortality rate overseas. There were a total of 11 cases of Ebola in the U.S. between 2014 and 2015, none of which were diagnosed or treated in Michigan. Meanwhile, 10 people died of Legionnaire’s due to exposure to contaminated Flint water in that same time frame. Not certain how MDHHS will respond to an imported biological crisis when it can’t respond appropriately to a local one created by the state.

Other miscellaneous monitoring

  • Charter Communications and Time Warner tie-up approved, with caveat (Reuters) — Charter can’t tell content providers like HBO they can’t sell their content over the internet – that’s one of a few exceptions FCC placed on the deal. I think this is just insane; the public isn’t seeing cheaper broadband or cable content in spite of allowing ISPs to optimize economies of scale. Between Charter/TWC and Comcast, they’ll have 70% of all broadband connections in the U.S.
  • Mitsubishi Motors fudged its fuel economy numbers for last 25 years (AP) — This investigation is exactly what should happen across EU, because EU-based manufacturers have done this for just as long or longer. And the EU knows this, turns a blind eye to the tricks automakers use to inflate fuel economy ratings.
  • Goldman Sachs has a brand new gig: internet-based banking (Fortune) — This is the fruit of GS’ acquisition of General Electric’s former financial arm. Hmm.
  • BAE Systems has a nice graphic outlining the SWIFT hack via Bangladesh’s central bank (BAE) — Makes it easy to explain to Grampa how somebody carted off nearly a billion dollars.

Toodledy-doo, Tuesday. See you tomorrow morning!