A shooting in Ocala, Florida made national news when it killed two and injured four. There aren’t a lot of details, but the names of the two victims may give us some insight into the shooting.
According to police, D’amonta Harris, 30, and Abdul Hakeem Van Croskey, 24, were killed in the incident at around 4:30 a.m.
Looks like those damned Norwegians are at it again.
Southwest airlines cancelled flights over the Christmas holiday. The passengers in Nashville who were stranded at the gate by these cancelled flights were standing at the counter, wanting solutions. What they got was a cop threatening to arrest them. What happened was this:
The flight was cancelled. The ticket agent didn’t want to deal with irate customers, and instructed police to have the people removed. The theory that the cop is using is: The flight was cancelled, therefore your ticket has also been cancelled. Since you can’t be in the sterile area without a ticket, you are now trespassing.
The only problem is that this is a bullshit argument. The ticket represents a contract between the passenger and the airline. There was an offer, an acceptance of that offer, and valuable consideration changed hands. The fact that one party (the airline) failed to perform under the terms of that contract doesn’t mean that the contract no longer exists, nor does it mean that the person who is the victim of this nonperformance is a criminal. What is happening here is the cop is inserting himself into a civil matter to the benefit of the party that has breached the contract.
That ticket is still a valid contract. The fact that the airline has chosen not to perform (no matter if that is a good reason or not) doesn’t cause the ticket to cease to be a contract. A person who is merely standing in line and inquiring as to what the other party is going to do to remedy the situation is not a crime, nor is it evidence of a crime.
Why do airlines get special police protection? Can I call the cops if McDonald’s fails to include the fries in my combo meal? Can McDonald’s call the cops if I pay for food that they can’t deliver, but I am still standing there with a valid receipt, waiting for my food or at least a refund?
For years, airlines have overbooked, oversold, and failed to honor the terms of their contracts. It is long past time that people demand a change to these practices. What other industry would get away with selling more of a product than they are capable of delivering? Can a car dealer sell more cars than they have or can reasonably provide?
This cop is an asshole, but then again most of them are. The Nashville airport has issued an apology, but that doesn’t change the fact that police officers have no business inserting themselves into a contract dispute. Honestly, it is stuff like this that makes me think perhaps we WOULD be better off if the police were defunded.
If you own a rental property in Florida, today is the day that a new law goes into effect. Owners of rental property consisting of 5 or more units (including hotels) will have to conduct background checks of all employees, and will have to keep a log of everyone who is given a key to rental units and requires that the key be returned once the work in that unit is complete.
This law is a response to a 19 year old woman that was murdered by the maintenance man of her apartment complex. Even if this law had been in place then, it would have prevented nothing. The maintenance man had no criminal history.
Also, nothing in the law prevents a person with murderous intent from making a copy of the key and then using that copy six months later.
Stupid, useless law that accomplishes nothing.
James Cameron is so opposed to guns, that he cut ten minutes of gun violence from his latest movie, Avatar 2. He claims that he did it because he didn’t want to fetishize the gun.
Of course, he didn’t cut ALL of the gun violence out, because then even fewer people would have watched his movie. After all, he made millions from ‘gun violence’ when he directed, produced, co-wrote, or otherwise was involved in movies like Dark Angel, True Lies, Titanic (which had gunplay), the Aliens series of movies, The Abyss, Point Break, Alita: Battle Angel, and the 33 movies, TV shows, video games, and other stories of The Terminator series.
No, he left plenty of gun play in Avatar 2, even though he claims to hate guns so much that he moved from North America to New Zealand because “they just banned all assault rifles two weeks after that horrific mosque shooting a couple of years ago” but doesn’t hate the fact that he is making millions of dollars off of movies with gunplay in them.
Look, I would still respect Mr. Cameron even as I disagreed with him over this issue, if he took a principled stance and refused to use any firearms at all. That isn’t what he does. He uses enough scenes involving firearms to make money, then claims to be “sick to his stomach” about “gun violence” even as he becomes wealthy by using them.
Then there is the fact that Cameron can afford to hire, and does hire, private armed security guards. It isn’t that he hates guns. It’s that he hates when poor people have guns. Poor being anyone who has less money than him, that is.
Back in the day, I used to frequent the three bars in this story. Not any more. Orlando night life has gone to shit. Actually, all of Orlando has gone to shit ever since it became a Democrat run shithole wanting to be a workers’ paradise. I wouldn’t go near that area any more.
Gone are the days when Kevin Beary was the sheriff. He was the sheriff from 1993 to 2009, had a tough on crime persona, and was a real ally of the 2A. He was once interviewed because a CCW holder got in a gunfight with some fleeing criminals who tried to carjack him when the vehicle they were fleeing from police in was disabled. The CCW holder killed one and wounded another. They were eventually caught by Orange County SWAT. The reporter asked if the CCW holder would be facing charges. Beary responded by saying that he would probably offer the guy a job because he had saved the taxpayers of Florida so much money. The press hated his ass and supported the Demings couple.
The left hated Beary for approving NFA purchases for Orange county residents. They eventually were able to run him off. So now we have a downtown Orlando that is overrun with crime.
The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtownI live back in the woods you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle and a four-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
If a deer attacks you on your own front porch, and it’s outside of hunting season, I would assume that it’s still lawful to shoot his ass. I’m sure a couple of handgun bullets to the cranium would take him down, no problem. (mute the audio. The woman screaming is annoying.)
My question here is: Would you then be permitted to add his meat to the freezer? Some venison steaks would be delicious!
The hospital where I work has all sorts of issues. There is a nursing shortage, there are problems with long waits, patients holding in the ED waiting for space on the floor that isn’t available due to a shortage of nurses. Turnover has been enough of an issue that they can’t keep staff.
There have been multiple administrators that have come and gone, and each of them has addressed it in a different way. One way was hiring contract nurses at $200 or more an hour. That was too expensive. Another administrator tried paying large bonuses to get nurses to work more days per week. Still another tried bringing in foreign workers.
One thing that all of them have had in common was the dumbest, least effective action. They changed the colors of the scrubs everyone wears. When I was hired, you could wear any color except black, denim, camouflage, or pediatric prints. Six months later, the colors changed. Since then, we have cycled through at least four different colors. In less than two years, I have bought at least five different collections of scrubs.
Effective tonight at midnight, we all have to wear a new scrub color. These scrubs have to be embroidered with the logo of the hospital and your job title “Nurse,” or “Doctor,” or what have you. We have to buy them from one approved vendor. That vendor is owned by the wife of one of the administrators. I am not sure how that is legal, but there it is.
So I had to buy two sets of scrubs in the new color, complete with the logo of the hospital affixed to it. I’ve learned not to buy more than that, because we will just have to buy a new color within a few months anyway.
The managers are mostly assholes and treat staff rather poorly, although I can say that I like the ones in charge of the ED. They are mostly cool, and I don’t blame them for my recent suspension. That came from risk management, and wasn’t their decision. Still, this place has begun getting on my nerves.
I am giving serious thought to switching hospitals. I’ve been here for two years now, and one of the nice things about this profession is the ease of finding a job. I know one nurse who shows up to interviews in casual clothes and says something to the effect of “Here is my license. We both know that you need nurses badly enough that you are going to offer me this job. So let’s cut to the chase- what are you willing to offer me? Don’t waste my time with useless back and forth, give me your best offer,” and they present her with her options.
Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery. There are a couple of options:
I think I am looking at leaving this place in June or so, when my wife’s school year ends. I don’t need benefits, because I get health insurance from my wife’s job. Maybe I will take a month or so off, then look at my options.
The government added sesame to its list of allergens as a the FASTER Act, which goes into effect on Jan. 1. This regulation triggers all sorts of complicated tests and requirements for consumer notification in order to prove that the food product you are selling don’t contain the allergen, in this case, sesame. The plants where your foods are handled and processed must be inspected, cleaned, and maintained in such a way as to ensure that there is no way that sesame could contaminate the foods handled there. It’s a costly process.
The costs of testing, certification, and other compliance costs were so high that some restaurants discovered that it was cheaper to simply add sesame to their food and then put a waring label on it, declaring that the food contains sesame. By adding sesame to products that didn’t previously contain it, companies may be able to skirt manufacturing processes that would ensure production facilities are clean enough to avoid cross-contact with the allergen.
So that is exactly what they did. Chick-Fil-A, Olive Garden, and other restaurants have added sesame to their products so that they can avoid the added expenses incurred in not having sesame in their food products, while still complying with the FASTER act. These establishments are now fully in compliance with the new law.
According to Jason Linde, the senior vice president of government and community affairs for FARE, a nonprofit working to increase food allergy awareness, the nonprofit is disappointed that companies seem to be defeating the purpose of the FASTER Act, potentially putting millions of people’s lives at risk.
The same is true of assault weapons bans. What the left says is an “assault weapon” is a semi-automatic rifle with certain cosmetic features (pistol grip, barrel shroud, collapsible stock, etc.) that don’t change its function. So when the last AWB went into effect, people complied with the law by using bullet buttons, fixed stocks, thumbhole stocks, eliminating bayonet lugs, etc. The left then accused them of “exploiting loopholes” when what they were really doing was complying with the law.
This is what happens when you demand that the government do something. They do something without regard for the unintended consequences of what it was that they did, then you wind up with sesame seed breadsticks or sesame flour on your chicken nuggets.
INFOSEC, and its subset COMSEC, takes many forms. Included in that is the security of your persona, your online identity- bank accounts, email accounts, even access to your blog and social media accounts. I am having to tighten my information security yet again.
In 2000, I bought a car from a used car lot. The finance guy used my personal information to steal my identity. It was a financial mess. I increased security by locking my credit reports. Now you need a password to unlock and access them.
Back in 2014, my ex-gf used my passwords to steal my emails, access my social media, and stalk me. She used the information that she obtained to try and get back at me after we broke up. It created all sorts of problems. She also stole the MICR data from the bottom of my checks and used that to go on an online shopping spree.
I massively tightened my information security. The problem is that passwords are a weak spot. If you have a password that is easy to remember, it is also easy to guess. Especially if the person attempting to guess your passwords is using computer assistance. Humans being who they are, they tend to fall into patterns and people tend to be lazy with passwords. More than 80% of people use the same password on more than one account, and people also tend to fall into predictable patterns when choosing passwords. For example, here are the 20 most common passwords of 2022:
Not wanting to get pwned like that, I tried using a passphrase, something like “4_$core&seVenYearsL8Tr” but it is hard to create and memorize a different passphrase for each account. As a result, I used a complicated phrase for one level of account (financial), a slightly less complicated one for email accounts, and an easier, less secure one for general things like online shopping. That didn’t work for long, because data breaches at different companies meant that one breach compromised multiple accounts. Also, that phrase is still weak. A strong passphrase needs to be random, need not be easy to memorize or type, needs to have a mix of character types, and should be at least 12, but preferably 15 or more characters long.
It was then that I began using LastPass. That software is great. It uses one passphrase to secure and encrypt your password file (called a wallet), and saves the wallet in that encrypted format. That wallet is saved on the LastPass server and is encrypted with 256 bit encryption. Not even LastPass has access to it. This allows me to have long, random, complicated passwords like Gyhu#wyr4o3fuX6$dD83 that are 12 to 20 characters long and are nearly impossible to guess, even for a computer. It’s served me well for about 8 years now. (There are others, 1password.com, for example)
The obvious weak spot is the master passphrase. Since that master passphrase needs to be somewhat easy to memorize, it by definition won’t be random. That is the weak spot. If the encrypted wallet were to fall into nefarious hands, a brute force attack could be used to crack the password wallet’s encryption and the bad guy now has your passwords.
Due to a phishing attack at LastPass, black hats managed to gain access to the servers and downloaded customer password files, including the customer’s unencrypted email address and their password wallets. This is a major breach, because the email address can be used to gain a lot of information about the owner of the wallet, making a brute force attack on the wallet’s master passphrase an easier prospect.
I saw this and was worried about my files being compromised, so I spent several days changing all of the passwords in my and my wife’s password wallets, thus making the compromised passwords outdated and useless. We also changed the master passphrases for our wallets. It appears as though we have come through the breach unscathed and our accounts remained secure. The weakness of this system was a single point of failure that was even discussed when I last posted about password wallets, but I considered it to be a low risk at the time.
Now that the black hats are doing things like this, I am worried about a similar event in the future, so we will be upgrading security again. It’s a major problem. In fact, 31% of people in the US have reported being the victims of a data breach within the last 18 months. Nearly two thirds of breaches are due to stolen or weak passwords, and 85% of cyber breaches due to a human element, such as phishing or reused passwords, so it is important to find a more secure way to INFOSEC. Currently, the most secure way to lock your information is to use multifactor authentication(MFA). The idea behind MFA is to have more than one way to authenticate yourself as the proper user of an account.
The first level of authentication in accessing any electronic account is user name and password. As we have been discussing, this is not a very good way of securing high value stuff. Sure, it may be fine for securing access to your CVS frequent shopper card, it won’t be enough for an account with saved credit card numbers or access to your online banking account. So we use a second, independent method of ensuring that whoever is attempting to access your account is actually you, and not some person intent on stealing your information.
The lowest level of MFA is to have the company you are logging into send you an email containing a link that you must click on to confirm your identity, with the next lowest level being an SMS message containing a 4-6 digit number whenever you log in from an unrecognized device. This sort of message is easier to beat than most other methods, as many phishing attempts center around gaining access to these. The texts/emails are unencrypted, and if intercepted can allow a black hat to have access to your account.
There are also Authenticator applications. This is a separate program that must be periodically used as a second means to verify who you are. You try to log into your bank account, for example, and the login process includes using this app to verify that it is actually you. Google authenticator, for example.
A third, more secure way is to use something else like biometrics. Your fingerprint, voiceprint, or face, for example. Even though it is more secure than an SMS message or email, biometrics have one key flaw- they can’t be changed if they are ever compromised. Your biometric data is stored in a digital format, and that means sooner or later, someone will figure out how to compromise them. This makes them predictable and this is the weakness.
Currently, the most secure way is to use a hardware key. A hardware key is a physical key, like a USB or NFC device that stores and generates a complex, unique code each time it is used. This becomes the second authenticator in the MFA chain. This is how banks, information companies, and other high security infomatics systems are authenticating users.
The two work together- you can’t access an account unless you have BOTH the username/password combo AND the physical hardware key. It becomes MUCH harder for someone to gain access to both means of authentication and provides a high level of security.
After quite a bit of research, I have decided to go with hardware keys. The one I have selected is Yubikey. I selected it because it works well with all of the browsers I use, it works with LastPass, and all of my banks and stockbroker accounts support it. The keys themselves come in a variety of forms: USB-A, USB-C, NFC, and others. Some of them even support biometrics, but I did not select that option.
I ordered two of the Yubikey 5 Series keys, and you can read more about them here. (pdf from Yubikey’s website) I will set my accounts up for both of them- one key I can carry, and a second, backup key that will stay in the safe to allow account access in the event my primary key is lost or damaged.
My keys will be here within the next two weeks, and I will review how easy they were to setup and use shortly thereafter.
As usual, the disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive no compensation whatsoever in exchange for my reviews or articles. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. I pay what you would pay. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.
As of Sunday, you won’t need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Alabama and Georgia. That’s right- those two states have gone to Constitutional Carry. The cops are opposed to this, and many times they claim that they are opposed to it because it makes it more difficult to fight crime. However, in at least one case, the cops have let slip that the real reason for the opposition is that CWP fees are a major source of funding.
“And those fees that are generated by the permit go directly to law enforcement purpose only…For instance, here at the sheriff’s office in Lee County, we use that for training and education primarily,” Sheriff Jones adds.
With gun permit requirements out the window, Sheriff Jones says they’ve already seen a 30 to 40% decrease in revenue. While it has not put a dent in their budget, he says sheriffs in smaller counties throughout Alabama have expressed concerns about how they’re going to make up for the loss.
It’s all a grift. I ask you this- why do you need a driver’s license? You say that it’s to make sure that each driver knows how to drive? Yeah? So why does it expire? What’s that you say? So they can make sure that you aren’t blind or otherwise have a disability that prevents them from being safe behind the wheel? So how can you make sure of that when a driver renews by mail? My guess is that collecting the fees is the real purpose there.
A Florida driver’s license costs $48 and is good for 8 years. So, $6 a year times the 18 million licensed Florida drivers equals $108 million.
A Florida concealed weapons permit costs $45 and is good for 7 years, or just about $6.50 a year. Multiply that by the 2.6 million Florida permit holders, and you see that the state gets another $17 million a year.
Permits are all a grift.