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It’s 2016, and stuffing cash in an envelope and mailing it to a small island nation is sometimes still the best way to move money with some degree of privacy.
This is not the cyberpunk dystopia I was promised.
A few weeks ago I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X260, replacing the T430s that has been my daily driver since 2012. I’m a big fan of the simplicity, ruggedness and modularity of Thinkpads. It used to be that one of the only downsides to Thinkpads were the terrible screens, but that has been addressed by the X260’s FHD display. The high resolution let me move from the 14” display of the T430s to the 12.5” display of the X260 without feeling like I’ve lost anything, but with an obvious gain in portability. The X260 is a great machine to put Linux on, which Spark helps me to do with no effort and a minimum expenditure of time.
In his decade at the FBI, Soufan developed an expertise in al-Qadea, investigating the Kenyan embassy bombing, Jordan millennium pole, attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11th attacks. The book is a history of al-Qaeda, beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as a memoir of the author’s experience investigating the organization. It is a well-written, intriguing read that offers a different insight into familiar stories. I was inspired to read it after subscribing to the The Soufan Group‘s daily IntelBriefs and have not been disappointed.
Four encrypted 2TB hard drives, stored in a Pelican 1200, with Abloy Protec2 PL 321 padlocks as tamper-evident seals. Having everything that matters stored in git-annex makes projects like this simple: just clone the repositories, define the preferred content expressions, and watch the magic happen.
It’s the first solution I’ve found that allows me to carry a SOFTT-W on-body, comfortably and unobtrusively. The Flatpack prevents the need to resort to a secondary tourniquet for first line carry, which makes it a valuable supplement to any EDC. BFE Labs offers an overview of the product in their first look.
The Aviationist pointed out that the plane had its ADS-B transponder on, allowing it to be tracked on Flightradar24. The Tu-214R also broadcast its deployment to Syria on the 15th.
An older article on The Aviationist discusses the impact of ADS-B and MLAT tracking on military craft. Somewhat related is a recent Defense One article on using commercial satellite imagery to identify airstrip expansion.
A credit security freeze denies access to your credit file. I first learned about it last summer from Brian Krebs, but didn’t implement it until a couple months later. It took me about 45 minutes and $20 to activate the freeze with the five major credit bureaus. This goes a long way to reducing the threat of identify theft, with very little energy expenditure required. A proactive defense is superior to reactive monitoring services. If you need your credit pulled monthly or more frequently, constantly freezing and unfreezing your file would probably be an annoying inconvenience. For the rest of us, I’m not sure if there is any good reason not to enable the freeze.
BRouter is open source navigation software built on OpenStreetMap, intended primarily for bicycle routing. It offers both web and Android versions. The Android version calculates routes as GPX tracks, which are then fed into a mapping application. My preferred OpenStreetMap application, OsmAnd, supports BRouter as its navigation back-end. OsmAnd allows me to configure the frequency, repetition and units of instructions. I use Ivona TTS with the UK voice, which I think sounds more natural than either the Ivona US voice or Google’s TTS offerings. In sum, this gives me accurate, offline navigation, tuned to my method of travel, anywhere on the planet, with superior maps to traditional commercial offerings.
Carry a towel and don’t panic.