NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought

Reuters reports Exclusive: NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought "Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers."

Jobs and Skills and Zombies

Paul Krugman on Jobs and Skills and Zombies - NYTimes.com "But the belief that America suffers from a severe ‘skills gap’ is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die."

He points to this article, Is There Really a Shortage of Skilled Workers? that has lots of graphs showing high unemployment across all education levels, and across all occupations compared to 2007 as well as unemployment vastly outnumbering job openings across occupations and no evidence of hours or wages being ramped up.

Conclusion: it’s aggregate demand, stupid!

There are simply no structural changes capable of explaining the pattern of sustained high unemployment over the last five years. What we have, instead, is an aggregate demand problem. The reason we are not seeing robust job growth is because businesses have not seen demand for their goods and services pick up in a way that would require them to significantly ramp up hiring. The right policies for the present moment are, therefore, straightforward. More education and training to help workers make job transitions could help some individuals, but it’s not going to generate demand, so it will not solve the unemployment crisis. Instead, Washington policymakers must to focus on policies that will stimulate demand. In the current moment this can only be reliably accomplished through expansionary fiscal policy involving such measures as large-scale ongoing public investments and the reestablishment of state and local public services that were cut in the Great Recession and its aftermath.

Medicare Doc Fix Passed, Probably Illegally

Kevin Drum writes John Boehner vs. the Tea Party, Part XVII.

It's hard not to laugh at this. The House Republican leadership needed to pass the annual Medicare doc fix, but they didn't want to raise taxes or cut other spending to pay for it. Nor did they want anyone to be forced to go on record voting for a bill that wasn't paid for. What to do? Answer:

• Call a recess.
• Huddle up with Democratic leaders and get their buy-in for a quick voice vote.
• Do not—repeat: do not—tell tea party types about this.
• Get back out on the floor pronto and call up a bill that doesn't pay for the doc fix at all. Just put it on the ol' deficit spending credit card.
• Pass it fast before conservative Republicans realize what's going on and demand a roll-call vote.
• Hightail it out of Dodge.

More here, Boehner and Cantor Ram Home Unpaid-For Doc-Fix.

The more you look into this the more ridiculous it is. Medicare is extremely popular so cutting it is out of the question. If you're in the tea party, then paying for it is out of the question. This comes up because the fees that doctors can charge are way too low and rather than actually fixing them for good, we do temporary fixes that require votes every few months. And while there are votes to pass this, there aren't enough in just the GOP and Boehner wants to keep the illusion that the Republicans can govern on their own. Or something.

If you watch the CSPAN video of the vote, it probably didn't even pass. Reminds me of the Texas legislature trying to end Wendy Davis' filibuster.

It surprises me that tea party darling Eric Cantor was in on this. Why Did Eric Cantor Just Put More Medicare Spending on the U.S. Credit Card?

Our government is just broken.

After seven years, exactly one person gets off the gov’t no-fly list

Ars Technica reports After seven years, exactly one person gets off the gov’t no-fly list

The Ibrahim case marks the first and only successful challenge to the terrorist watch-listing program, which arose following the 9/11 attacks. But Ibrahim's case, as just one of hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on such lists, shows the system's opacity. First, the only surefire way to even determine if one is on such a list in the US is to attempt to board a flight and be denied. Even after that happens, when a denied person inquires about his or her status, the likely response will be that the government ‘can neither confirm nor deny’ the placement on such lists.

The government's surrender in Ibrahim comes on the heels of a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union that shows just how insanely difficult it is to contest one's status on the government blacklists. The ACLU explains:

The 'redress' procedures the US government provides for those who have been wrongly or mistakenly included on a watchlist are wholly inadequate. Even after people know the government has placed them on a watchlist... the government's official policy is to refuse to confirm or deny watchlist status. Nor is there any meaningful way to contest one's designation as a potential terrorist and ensure that the US government... removes or corrects inadequate records. The result is that innocent people can languish on the watchlists indefinitely, without real recourse.

Cory Doctorow summed the insanity up nicely:

The ACLU says that the national terrorism watchlist has 1.1 million names on it, and an AP report from 2012 found 21,000 people on the no-fly list. Recently, Rahinah Ibrahim became the first person to be officially, publicly removed from a no-fly list, after the government was forced to admit that she'd been placed there due to a bureaucratic error. All through the Ibrahim case, the government argued that disclosing any facts about her no-fly status would endanger national security, but ultimately it was obvious that the only potential risk was that the government's sloppiness would be disclosed. The state was willing to spend millions of dollars and ruin an innocent person's life rather than admitting that an FBI agent literally ticked the wrong box.

California's Historic Drought

In Focus shows California's Historic Drought "The year 2013 was the driest in California's recorded history, and predictions for 2014 aren't much better. Three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall have left reservoirs at a fraction of their normal depth, seriously threatening farms in the state that grows half the nation's fruits and vegetables. California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a drought emergency and signed a $687 million drought-relief package into law, and 125 additional firefighters have been hired already in anticipation of a dangerous upcoming fire season. One bright spot: gold prospecting. Amateur prospectors are flocking to the Sierra Nevada foothills, taking advantage of lower water levels to search for gold in riverbeds that have been unreachable for decades. [25 photos]"

2 Cellos Live

I don't think I've heard of 2CELLOSlive before but this was funny and entertaining...

More on Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores

Mark Walsh wrote in SCOTUSblog ACA’s return taxes the High Court describing the arguments almost as a short story.

Dahlia Lithwick does one better in Is the Contraception Mandate Doomed?. While describing the legal issues raised in the arguments she manages to answer "What kind of contraceptive method are you?" for each of the nine justices.

The ACLU wonders, Does Hobby Lobby Even Have Standing?. "These companies say that they suffer direct harm: the contraception mandate costs them money. That is what the Tenth Circuit in Hobby Lobby briefly noted: the companies “face an imminent loss of money, traceable to the contraceptive-coverage requirement.” But even if that is true (which was the subject of tough questions at the arguments), paying that money does not directly affect any individual’s ability to freely exercise religion. Only the employees and officers can directly exercise their individual religious beliefs. And they are not the ones paying to comply with the regulations. They are separate from the company."

Kenneth Jost tweets that so far in this Supreme Court term, "SCOTUS: another 9-0 ruling, still no 5-4; never before has Roberts Court reached April w/o a 5-4 decision."

St. Petersburg From Above

In Focus makes St. Petersburg From Above look gorgeous.

"Recently, photographer Amos Chapple spent some time in Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. He used a small drone to lift his camera high above the cathedrals and fortresses, capturing some amazing aerial photos. Chapple: 'There's a legend in Russia that Saint Petersburg was constructed in the blue heavens and lowered in one piece into the marshland, 'for how otherwise could a city so beautiful exist in a region so bleak.'' Chapple, has previously showed us Stalin's Rope Roads, and took us on a trip to Turkmenistan. [12 photos]"

The Republican Street Fight over Transparency in Government

Lawrence Lessig writes (and I could not avoid reading it in his voice) in The Daily Beast about The Republican Street Fight over Transparency in Government. "A growing rift in the Republican Party about transparency has deepened within the Senate, with 16 Republicans now scolding a federal agency for the outrage of requesting that scientists submitting studies in a rule-making procedure identify any financial conflicts of interest."

"The real question here for the Senate—and for that matter, for President Obama, since he is, after all, the executive—is not whether OSHA, like Oliver Twist, should be permitted to beg for the disclosure of financial conflicts. (‘Please, sir, tell me some more?’) The real question is why every federal agency doesn’t require disclosures of the financial interest of anyone seeking to affect federal policy through supposedly scientific submissions. Every single brief filed in any federal court must include a disclosure of interest by the parties making the arguments. Every senator must disclose every financial contribution (over $200) made to his or her campaign. Why, exactly, should federal agencies be any different?"

How Not To Conduct Online Surveys

I subscribe to a few magazines including Wired, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, Boston Magazine, and Sky & Telescope. I also recently subscribed to Ars Technica, mostly so I could get single page views of articles to save in Instapaper but also to feel good about how much I consume their well written and researched content.

Today I got email from "WIRED psn@survey1.condenast.com". It was reasonably formatted and had a top portion that looked like a Condé Nast letterhead listing their publications. I recognized Wired and Ars Technica. I know the name Condé Nast but I wouldn't have been able to tell you what publications they own. Here's the text:

At Condé Nast, we really care what you think. That's why we are asking for your help with this online survey. As a thank-you for your valuable time, you will be entered into a sweepstakes giveaway for a chance to win $50,000.*

We know you may receive countless emails each day, but since this is one of the most important surveys we conduct all year, we hope you will take some time to fill it out. Simply click on the link below or cut and paste the link into your browser.

http://www.CN2014survey.com/Instructions.html?magID=37&id=XXXXXXXXXXXX&w=4056&b=s&c=2&s=C

Many, many thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Condé Nast Research and Insights

There's also some boilerplate legalese at the bottom about no purchase necessary, etc. I've X'ed out the id in the URL above since I don't really know what it identifies. Now I suspect this is actually real and I'd actually be willing to give them my opinion of their publications (though I suspect their survey will not have the questions I really care about). But the problem is, this email looks like spam. Sure it passed Gmail's spam filter, but so does real spam.

• The From isn't from a magazine I subscribe to but from condenast.com and that's at least a real domain name but the From header is easily forged.
• The linked URL is to CN2014survey.com which is as spammy an URL as I could think up.
• The $50,000 is a link to mkt636.com, another spammy sounding URL and different from the one with the actually survey and different from the From header. The links in the boilerplate stuff are all to mkt636.com so that's at least consistent.
• They provide a link to a privacy policy which is also from mkt636.com but then follow it with this email address, Privacy_administration@advancemags.com, yet another domain name.
• If you visit mkt636.com you get web page that looks circa 1993 with an Anti-Spam and Privacy Statement and saying to send questions to abuse@silverpop.com. Silverpop is apparently "Award winning marketing software trusted by more than 5,000 brands worldwide." Uh huh.
• If you visit the marketing survey the first two questions are your gender and age, certainly stuff that marketing surveys would want, but also stuff spammers or others would want. I was given no indication it wouldn't get worse going on.

So Condé Nast, if this really is "one of the most important surveys we conduct all year", then maybe you should make it not look like spam. Maybe instead of outsourcing it to several layers of marketing companies, you should do it yourself. You should at least set it up at your own website. That's kind of like the 21st century equivalent of signing your name. You should say what the survey is about, more than it's "online" and "important". The survey itsefl should like something from you, not something generic that any high school programmer could whip up in an afternoon. If I have to tell you these things, then I think you need more help than a survey response could give you.

Jedi Cat

This is much better than Laser Cats.

Death Penalty Evolution Map: How Executions Have Changed in States

Lane Florsheim writes in The New Republic writes Death Penalty Evolution Map: How Executions Have Changed in States "By 2009, all death-penalty states had made lethal injection the sole or primary execution method for death row inmates, despite problems with the method that have been evident since the 1950s. Now, the death penalty is transforming once again, due to a shortage in the drug used in the three-drug protocol to paralyze the inmate during his execution. As a result, states have resorted to hunting for a replacement in unusual places, such as domestic compounding pharmacies. Some have changed their protocols to use just one drug, or tried to replace the missing drug with new drugs. Others have put executions on hold. In states such as Louisiana, Tennessee, and Wyoming, there’s even been talk of reintroducing the electric chair. This has led to a spate of ethical problems and legal challenges."

Sadly the animation in the above map doesn't seem to be playing in my copy, click to visit the page to see the changes over time.

SCOTUS Hears Obamacare Challenge on Religious Rights of Corporations

Lyle Denniston wrote for SCOTUSblog, Argument recap: One hearing, two dramas.

"The Supreme Court, in a one-hour, twenty-eight-minute session Tuesday, staged something like a two-act play on a revolving stage: first the liberals had their chance and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave them some help, and then the scene shifted entirely, and the conservatives had their chance — and, again, Kennedy provided them with some support.

So went the argument in the combined cases of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius.  The ‘contraceptive mandate’ in the new federal health care law, challenged under federal law and the Constitution, fared well in the first scene, and badly in the second.

But the ultimate outcome, it seemed, will depend upon how Justice Kennedy makes up his mind.  There was very little doubt where the other eight Justices would wind up:  split four to four."

The conservatives are now arguing that corporations have religious rights. Denniston seemed to have missed this reference, Kagan Throws Scalia's Own Religious Liberty Arguments Back In His Face.

During oral arguments Tuesday about the validity of Obamacare's birth control mandate, Justice Elena Kagan cleverly echoed Justice Antonin Scalia's past warning that religious-based exceptions to neutral laws could lead to "anarchy."

"Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard," she told Paul Clement, the lawyer arguing against the mandate for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. "So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative."

Kagan's remarks might sound familiar to the legally-trained ear. In a 1990 majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia alluded to the same examples of what might happen if religious entities are permitted to claim exemptions from generally applicable laws. He warned that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."

TPM's headline is of course too strong as they mention, "But Congress responded to Scalia's opinion by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, which sets strict scrutiny standards for any law that substantially burdens a person's exercise of religion. That's the law that endangers the contraceptive mandate -- and it's the basis under which Scalia appeared to lean against the government's position during Tuesday's oral arguments."

Cities reluctant to reveal whether they’re using fake cell tower devices

Ars Technica reports Cities reluctant to reveal whether they’re using fake cell tower devices "For some time now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been on a quest to better understand the use and legality of ‘stingrays.' These devices, which are also known as international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catchers, or fake cell towers, can be used to track phones or, in some cases, intercept calls and text messages.

The ‘Stingray’ itself is a trademarked product manufactured by a Florida-based company, the Harris Corporation. (It has since come to be used as a generic term, like Xerox or Kleenex.) Harris is notoriously secretive about the capabilities of its devices and generally won’t talk to the press about their capabilities or deployments."

How did I miss this? Ars reported on it a year ago, New e-mails reveal Feds not “forthright” about fake cell tower devices

At Least 14 Dead in Washington State Mudslide

In Focus on At Least 14 Dead in Washington State Mudslide "Last Saturday, at 10:45 am, part of a hillside above Oso, Washington -- known by some locals as 'Slide Hill' -- collapsed after weeks of heavy rain, sending a wall of mud and debris across a small valley of the Stillaguamish River. The neighborhood below the hillside was destroyed, and more than 100 properties damaged, resulting in at least 14 verified deaths -- a number that may grow larger, as the list of missing has grown to 176. Efforts to rescue victims have been slow, as the surrounding hills remain dangerously unstable and the affected area is so large. Rescue workers continued their search throughout last night. [16 photos]"

Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner Is Real Food

Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner Is Real Food "Katz and Yale colleague Stephanie Meller published their findings in the current issue of the journal in a paper titled, 'Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?' In it, they compare the major diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets. Despite the pervasiveness of these diets in culture and media, Katz and Meller write, 'There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.' They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. 'A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.'"

Shocker.

Also, What the heck are we supposed to be eating?

A Polarizing Discovery About the Big Bang!

Minute Physics does a great job on the recent Polarizing Discovery About the Big Bang!

Also I guess some Cosmologists Cast Doubt on Inflation Evidence saying that while inflation is the mostly cause of the fluctuations, the discovery doesn't rule out other causes, it merely constrains them.

Can You Spot the Liar?

The NY Times has a Can You Spot the Liar? quiz. I got the first 2 wrong but then the next 8 right.

India beats the odds, beats polio

CNN reports India beats the odds, beats polio

"Rukhsar Khatoon is too young to fully grasp the significance of her life: that she is a last in a country of 1.2 billion people. She has become the greatest symbol of India's valiant -- and successful -- effort to rid itself of a crippling and potentially deadly disease. Rukhsar, 4, is the final documented case of polio in India."

"Since Rukhsar's diagnosis three years ago, India has not seen another new case of polio. On March 27, the World Health Organization will formally announce the end of polio in India and proclaim another one of its global regions -- Southeast Asia -- free of the disease. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only three countries that have not eradicated polio, leaving the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa the last two WHO regions with the disease."

While a great accomplishment, it seems odd to celebrate the last victim of the disease as the article does.

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

Chris Goodfellow in Wired has A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah1 was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.

Iranian Ship, in Plain View but Shrouded in Mystery, Looks Very Familiar to U.S.

Iranian Ship, in Plain View but Shrouded in Mystery, Looks Very Familiar to U.S. - NYTimes.com "Iran is building a nonworking mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that United States officials say may be intended to be blown up for propaganda value."

How strange. Personally, I would have thought this was an Absolute ad:

Teacher stuns noisy pupils into spellbinding silence by threatening them with Game of Thrones spoilers

The Mirror (not The Onion) writes Teacher stuns noisy pupils into spellbinding silence by threatening them with Game of Thrones spoilers.

"At one point he became tired, he stopped and asked the classroom who was watching Game of Thrones and three quarters of the room put their hands up.

"He said, 'well I have read all the books and from now on when there is too much noise I will write the name of the next death'."

The teacher then began writing names as a hurried silence fell across the room.

The student added: "I can tell you there was a religious silence during the last lesson."

True or not, a pretty fun story.

Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies

The New York TImes writes Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies

The business effect of the disclosures about the N.S.A. is felt most in the daily conversations between tech companies with products to pitch and their wary customers. The topic of surveillance, which rarely came up before, is now ‘the new normal’ in these conversations, as one tech company executive described it.

“We’re hearing from customers, especially global enterprise customers, that they care more than ever about where their content is stored and how it is used and secured,” said John E. Frank, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, which has been publicizing that it allows customers to store their data in Microsoft data centers in certain countries.

A few points:

People blaming Snowden for this are blaming the messenger. The problem is the extent of the NSA's operations.

I think companies looking for tech companies out of the US are doing exactly the wrong thing. The NSA is prohibited from spying on the US and most of the things we've learned about them spying on US companies like Google and Yahoo is that they use these companies' foreign connections to spy on the data. They're looking at Google data because Google is huge and their targets probably use them but they're not getting the data from the US, they're getting it when Google sends data between data centers in different countries. There's nothing stopping the NSA from doing anything to a company that has no US footprint.

Finally if you really care about the location of your data, then cloud services are probably not for you regardless of where they are.

Netflix says it will pay “tolls” to more ISPs, not just Comcast

Ars Technica explains Netflix says it will pay “tolls” to more ISPs, not just Comcast "Netflix today said it will continue to pay 'tolls' to Internet service providers to guarantee a good experience for its customers, but it called upon the Federal Communications Commission to create net neutrality rules that govern network interconnections."

Website turns any TV show into a chart, revolutionizes arguing about TV

The AV Club writes Website turns any TV show into a chart, revolutionizes arguing about TV

Graph TV, "looks up the IMDB user ratings for every episode of a given TV show and turns them into points on simple graphs that show the ebb and flow of public opinion over the course of a series. Each season of the show is coded with a different color, so users can see, for example, which seasons of Dexter received more praise as they went on and which ones tumbled down the Y-axis faster than an Olympic bobsled team with nothing left to lose."

I do think this is kind of genius and am shocked no one's done it before. The y axis changes changes scale for different shows so it might look like the fourth season of The Sopranos was awful but it was just in the high 7s instead of the series average high 8s. I'd also like a graph to compare two or more different shows.