Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News

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Digital storage has always been an issue. This isn't something that just popped it's head up. Think about it. What if we had a nuclear war? What if everyone went back to the stone age? Other than books, how would you relearn civilization?

The first problem I seem to remember historians complaining about was the constant change of formats over the years. After a decade or so at the fast pace of the spread of new formats, it was hard to open/store/save the old stuff.

With tape formats, use caused the high frequency to drop out. Worse the over lap of each layer on a tape reel, passed small amounts of magnetism to the adjacent layers and over time this caused the high end stuff to start dropping out. Then over time, the material that is used to store the recording on, starts separating from the plastic backing that provides the strength to the tape. Then you wind up with no data whatever on tape but that takes a while.

With CD storage, it came down to quality assembly of the CD. CD/DVDs are a sandwich. Two layers of plastic, with a foil inside. The foil can't be exposed to the atmospheric air, if it does get exposed, it starts corroding. So the glue that held it all together becomes really important. The poorer quality CDs start to fail at about 10 years. Archive level quality does much better.

Today, were we to have this back to the stone age event, all electronics would be pretty much be gone. That means any and all digital storage would be just so much trash, what remained accessible. Things like stuff stored in the cloud, would just vanish to most people, as if it never was.

Without most of the citizenry noticing we've become near as bad as China for invasion of privacy while in public or while on the net. License plate readers, used by both LEO as well as third parties wanting to sell the data, often cruise parking lots where events are happening, such as concerts, ball games, and the like. Getting your license tag numbers while you are attending the event. They are also often mounted in patrol cars, (if I remember rightly) able to read 500 tags a second. (that's a lot of capacity). Some towns where the main route takes you through it, also have set up such readers, capturing the flow of the traffic.

Internet places offering services such as Ancestry and others, often co-operate with the law without a warrant, on request to see if some family member of the same DNA tree might be in their data base when trying to identify who might be a person of interest or a suspect at large, yet unknown.

Companies offering free VPN service get to see your browsing habits and that data is for sale. You want better security you have to pay for it and not all of them honor their billing. All those apps you load on your phone, if they are asking for access to data on your phone that is not required for their service, they are gathering data for sale so be especially leery of freebees, how you pay for the service, isn't money up front.

You go shopping with your cell phone on you, there are now stores that record you paused and what you likely looked at, that data for sale to advertisers. If you get to noticing it, often what you buy on line, you get an ad within a day or two on a similar item. It's not by chance.

One of the things that ad companies set up to be careful about is something called Uncanny Valley. Uncanny Valley is when ads strike really close to home and it dawns on you, makes you uncomfortable or worse, see the link.

www.nationalreview.com

This has been known for years, just not talked about a lot. Here was the first one that came out over the NSA's spying room.

en.wikipedia.org

The NSA is supposed to keep track of foreign threats, not so much domestic.

While the government supposedly is blocked from spying on their citizens (without a warrant), their work-a-round has always been third party. All these outfits that want to know who you are before you buy something or in the case of places like FB who want you to use your real name to register an account, there's a reason for that. Any data they collect on you will be tied to you.

Here's one article on that from back in June but this goes back years and years on data collection being sold to the government as well as LEO forces.

techcrunch.com

There are rare times when 100 mph might be appropriate, such as a road rage idiot with gun, intent on you being the target. That's not often that happens. Young adults tend to think they are bullet proof, they want know how fast the vehicle will go without considerations. Drunks are a problem as well when it comes to driving, not to mention cell phones.

Mostly I am grateful for cruise control. I can get on the interstate, set it, and forget about my speed and just concentrate on driving. There will always be those who want to go faster. In ways on the interstate I love to see that. It means the next cop stop won't be me. I don't need to run along behind them to watch the action, I'm quite content to arrive on the scene long after the stop has occurred.

Still we have the high speed hazard here. It comes from the coyotes (the name given those smuggling in illegals) and they often get in high speed chases locally. The last one that was close to me occurred a couple of months ago. The highway patrol put out the tire spikes downtown. The coyote drove another few blocks and they all bailed not two blocks from my home. That's not to say how many others have passed on by and not be close to me. That happens near every week or so. Some wind up wrapped around trees, some wind up going in people's houses, vehicle and all before they bail. The last one that happened last week, involved a high speed chase, on a two lane, where the coyote lost control of his SUV and headoned another. 8 people died in a fiery crash.

Mostly vehicles today are speed limited. If you just got to race, it requires you buying a special chip that allows the motor to rev higher. Honestly, I'm happy to see that. While it won't prevent you from breaking the speed limit, it will prevent you from doing a flat foot on the throttle speed run at higher speeds. Still there is no substitute for driver experience and caution on the road.

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