At a Crucial Juncture, Trump’s Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation — The New York Times

Highlights:

Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has pushed theories on Fox News that the F.B.I. made up evidence against Mr. Trump, left the team on Sunday. He had been hired last Monday, three days before the head of the president’s personal legal team, John Dowd, quit after determining that the president was not listening to his advice.”

Also:

“Mr. Dowd had concluded that there was no upside and that the president, who often does not tell the truth, could increase his legal exposure if his answers were not accurate.”

Jokes about “the best people” aside, it sounds like genuinely competent people want nothing to do with the fiasco in DC.

If you pay for a 100Mbps cable connection to the Internet and your plan sets a 300GB data cap, you can use your connection at full speed for 8.3 hours per month before hitting overuse charges.

If your cell phone plan supports 50Mbps LTE speeds and has a 10GB data cap, you’re only allowed to use it at full speed for 33 minutes per month.

I think it’s deceptive for an ISP to advertise an Internet connection’s speeds without disclosing how much you can actually use it without being disconnected or racking up extra fees. I’ve written to my senators asking them to introduce legislation to protect customers from this misleading and predatory practice:

I believe that all Internet service providers should be required to disclose, as part of their advertising, how many minutes you may use their service at full speed without hitting data caps.

For instance, a cable company advertising “100 megabits!” but imposing a 300GB data cap only allows their users to download information for about 8 hours per month. A cell phone company that advertises fast 50 megabit LTE speed but has a 10GB data limit only gives their customers about 33 minutes per month of full speed usage.

I believe that simultaneously advertising fast Internet connections while only allowing customers to use it for a short amount of time each month is highly deceptive and should be illegal. Please introduce truth in advertising legislation requiring ISPs to disclose what portion of time customers on a typical plan would be allowed to use an Internet service being advertised.

I don’t reasonably expect anything to come of this, but I’m going to try anyway.

Airlines Restrict ‘Smart Luggage’ Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries : The Two-Way : NPR:

“Beginning Jan. 15, customers who travel with a smart bag must be able to remove the battery in case the bag has to be checked at any point in the customer’s journey. If the battery cannot be removed, the bag will not be allowed,” American said in a statement on Friday. The same day, Delta and Alaska announced similar policies on their flights.

American’s policy dictates that if the bag is carry-on size, passengers can take the luggage onboard, so long as the battery can be removed if needed. If passengers need to check the bag, the battery must be removed and carried onboard. But if the bag has a nonremovable battery, it can’t be checked or carried on.

An FAA spokesman told The Washington Post that the airlines’ policies are “consistent with our guidance that lithium-ion batteries should not be carried in the cargo hold.”

Last month I wrote: “Listening to an ad for luggage with a built in USB charger, which may be the worst idea ever. Now your suitcase can grow obsolete. What if it breaks? Or a bigger battery comes along? And you always have the weight penalty even when you don’t need it.” I think we can all agree now that this is a terrible idea for many reasons.

Software authors are increasingly switching to subscription models to make their work “sustainable”. Too often they’re forgetting to make a value proposition that helps their customers. Here’s a hint: if you have to write a Medium post explaining why I should support your new business model, you’re doing it wrong.

I understand why authors can’t afford to write an app and then offer free upgrades for the following decade. That’s a great way to cut off the income supply that keeps new development happening. Neither authors nor their customers want that! Creators want to be compensated for their time and users want up-to-date software with competitive features. Buying an application one time shouldn’t come with the expectation that I should get all the newest work for free, forever.

The alternative is not that purchasers are an endless font of cash and goodwill, though. A recent trend is for annual app subscriptions to cost roughly the same as buying a copy of the app each year. In the real world, no one does this and it’s not sustainable. If you want to move to a subscription model, your price has to make sense as a value proposition by itself. Customers don’t care about pretty words and guilt trips in long blog posts. They want a good deal from their own perspective.

From a customer’s point of view, the math is simple: your target annual fee is the previous price divided by the number of years I would have expected to keep a paid copy before upgrading. For instance, if your upgrades used to cost $40, and you released new paid major versions every two years, I can be convinced to subscribe at a rate of $20 per year. Anything beyond that is a price increase, and that increase must be justified exactly as if you were selling me a new copy instead of a monthly rental. That is, you can’t tack on “…and now with cloud sync!”, or “…for teams!”, or pack it with other features I won’t care about and expect that I’ll happily pay twice the old price.

1Password did this right: although their new “1Password Families” service costs more than their old software licenses, it offers lots of features that genuinely make it more useful. Smile Software did this wrong: their new annual TextExpander subscription service costs about the same as their previous one-time software licenses, but all of the new features were geared to a workflow that could not have been less attractive to me if they’d tried. They were asking me to pay a lot more and get nothing of value to me in return.

In summary, you want to make money. I want you to run a profitable business so that you’ll continue to make the software I enjoy. But you have to remember that while your app is your labor of love, for me it’s just a tool I use for work or play and it’s not my life’s ambition. It’s the one among several competitors that had the best value proposition. If that ever changes, I’ll re-evaluate and move on to one of the others. I’m frustrated that this is 101-level business class stuff, and we shouldn’t need to keep learning this lesson anew.

In computing, metric-sounding prefixes almost universally refer to sizes expressed as powers of two:

• kilo = 2^10 = 1024
• mega = 2^20 = 1,048,576
• giga = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
• …and so on.

In 1998, the IEC incorrectly voted to change that, and it’s time to fix this mistake.

Using “k” to mean 2^10 dates back to at least 1959, with Gordon Bell of IBM ("Architecture of the IBM System/360"), Gene Amdahl of DEC ("Instrumentation Techniques in Nuclear Pulse Analysis"), and others standardizing them as units in 1964. Since that time, binary units have been used pervasively to describe quantities. Well, almost. Hard drive manufacturers started using the smaller, metric homonyms to describe their products with larger numbers than their competitors. That is, a company could market their 50MB hard drive as 52 (metric) MB so that it sounded larger than anyone else’s 50MB drive. This caught on like wildfire because marketing loved it, even though binary sizes were correctly used for everything else.

The International Electrotechnical Commission decided to weigh in, and in 1998 (the same year that gave us SOAP) decided that the electronics industry should change their standard units to use a new system. Henceforth metric-sounding prefixes would start referring to decimal sizes, like:

• kilo = 10^3 = 1,000
• mega = 10^6 = 1,000,000
• giga = 10^9 = 1,000,000
• etc.

This was bad enough, because those numbers don’t naturally correspond to anything computer-related except hard drive sizes. For instance, the IEC would have us incorrectly believe that a 32-bit address could refer to 4.29GB of RAM. No. Worse, though, were the fictional binary units they invented to replace the actual industry standard. From then on, we were to say that:

• 1,024 bytes = 1 KiB = 1 kibibyte
• 1,048,576 bytes = 1 MiB = 1 mebibyte
• 1,073,741,824 = 1 GiB = 1 gibibyte
• and I lack the stomach to continue.

Donald Knuth said:

The members of those committees deserve credit for raising an important issue, but when I heard their proposal it seemed dead on arrival — who would voluntarily want to use MiB for a maybe-byte?! […] I am extremely reluctant to adopt such funny-sounding terms; Jeffrey Harrow says “we’re going to have to learn to love (and pronounce)” the new coinages, but he seems to assume that standards are automatically adopted just because they are there.

Knuth, as always, was right. The awful-sounding standard was appropriately mocked and ignored. Western Digital settled a lawsuit in 2006 for marketing an 80 billion byte hard drive as 80 gigabytes, with the plaintiff citing the fact that even then — 8 years after the “standard” was passed — essentially no one used metric sizes to refer to quantities.

A few well-meaning but misled companies have started using the metric units. For instance, Apple’s macOS describes hard drive sizes in metric units (but inconsistently lists RAM quantities in correct binary sizes such as 16GB). Before this snowballs out of control, we need to reach a real industry-wide standard that engineers will actually use. I assert that:

• Computing, as do all other industries, has its own jargon. Our mouse is not a mammal, and our prefixes don’t need to mirror the metric system.
• The current IEC standard looks terrible, sounds terrible, and is nearly universally avoided.
• The great thing about standards is that we can make our own and start using it.

The binary kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte are our heritage and our vocabulary. In the realm of computing, we own those terms. Therefore, I propose a new standard for describing storage quantities in computing. Effective immediately, metric-sounding prefixes in computing officially refer to their binary sizes as they have since IBM and DEC claimed them in the 1960s. Furthermore, metric sizes will use the new “tri” infix notation — abbreviated “t” — like so:

• 1,000 bytes = 1 KtB = 1 kitribyte
• 1,000,000 bytes = 1MtB = 1 metribyte
• 1,000,000,000 bytes = 1GtB = 1 gitribyte
• and so on for tetribyte, petribyte, extribyte, and so on.

Let people who want to use different units be the ones to adopt them. And frankly, “metribyte” sounds a lot better than “mebibyte” ever will.

I don’t travel a lot, so when I do I invariably find that I’ve forgotten something important (9 PM the night before: “say, dear, where are we boarding the dogs?” “I thought you were doing that!”). I wrote an AppleScript to copy items from an OmniOutliner document to an OmniFocus project so that I never have to forget again.

I love OmniFocus. It runs my life. But it lacks any kind of a template systems to let you quickly churn out copies of a project. That’s exactly what I needed here, though. Fortunately OmniOutliner fills that gap and gives me a nice way to describe that project. Here’s how mine starts:

When I run the AppleScript and say “I want to travel on June 24”, it creates actions like “Call the vet to make pet boarding arrangements, with the Phone context, due on June 3 at 5PM”. I add everything to this list:

• USB gadgets to charge
• Toiletries to pack
• Things to remove from my messenger bag (so I don’t find myself in line at security and realize I’ve still got my pocket knife)
• People to notify, such as telling my credit union that I’ll be using my debit card in some exotic place like Topeka and please not to block it as fraud

A magic moment for me was hearing Merlin Mann’s suggestion to add an “update this list” action:

A couple of days into my trip, I get a reminder to add anything new I’d forgotten or wish I’d done differently. This turns my template into a living document of exactly my own personalized requirements.

The shield was half-heartedly poking at her keyboard when the car started to move. Oh. “I guess I’m rolling. Coverage is sketch here so I might cut out.”

“Oh my God. You’re still shielding her? I thought we paid you better than that.” His voice lifted when he disapproved. She rolled her eyes. “Her husband gives me a hundred bucks plus six a mile. She probably just wants ice cream or fries or something.”

She didn’t mention the time when it wasn’t just ice cream or fries, but shopping down in the Long Beach Autonomous Zone. That trip had covered her rent for two months. She didn’t know how to get any good drugs in Little Utah, though, and she had been bored out of her mind, barely leaving the car. He was still pissy that she’d left without telling him first. She didn’t care. They chose her more often because she was willing to roll on a moment’s notice.

“I worry, you know.” His tone softened. He probably did worry. “I know. You shouldn’t. Nothing ever happens. As long as a rock doesn’t fall on the highway or something, it’s free money.” If it did, well, that would be different. As negotiated and coordinated with the AIs steering the cars around them, her own little car would race to wedge its way between the road hazard and the cargo she was protecting, absorbing the damage so that her employer’s car didn’t have to. Lots of shields walked away from events. Sometimes they didn’t. For six bucks a mile, she was ready to take that chance. US West law didn’t allow unoccupied vehicles on the road, so she hung out and napped her way through riding shotgun.

“Look, I’ve gotta go. I need more insulin and they pay up hourly. I wanna top off my playlist while I still have data. I’ll hit you up when I get back.”

“If. If you get back.”

“When,” her voice shaking. She didn’t have time for this.

I am pro-military. I think having a strong military means we’re unlikely to have to use it to protect ourselves. But how strong does it actually need to be?

For the sake of argument, I’ll assume that spending corresponds to strength. That is, America spending $1 million gives us roughly as much military power as China or Russia spending $1 million. If this is not true, then we’re spending money poorly and should re-evaluate our budget before increasing it. But that whole line of argument frankly disrespects our world’s finest soldiers and sailors, so let’s agree to set that aside for now.

According to SIPRI, these are the budgets of the world’s biggest militaries in 2015, in billions of dollars:

World Military Spending, 2015

The extra column, “Cumulative”, is a running total of the budgets of countries other than the United States. Look at Germany, #9 on the list: that’s where the rest of the world added together is finally bigger than America. We literally spend more than the next 8 countries after us. Of those, UK, India, France, Japan, and Germany are staunch US allies. Removing those, we outspend the remaining top three countries by 60%. Even in an outlandishly unrealistic scenario where we’d be fighting all three of them simultaneously¹, with no help at all from our allies, we’d probably still win by a wide margin.

If something like that happened, we would get help from our allies on this list, whose militaries add up to $274.4B, or just $94.4B shy of those top three “unfriendly” countries (and $59.4B greater than China alone). In a likely situation where the rest of the world shows up, our combined allied strength is vastly stronger than any potential enemies.

We’re currently hearing lots of propaganda about our pathetic, run-down little military. Those are unpatriotic lies. We already have the world’s largest military and it’s nearly three times stronger than runner up China. We could probably be making wiser decisions about how we’re spending our money, but if anyone tells you we should be spending more, make sure their hands aren’t reaching for your wallet.

Over-eager airport security has recently taken to making travelers unlock their phones and tablets for examination. This is both unforgivably invasive and trivially easy to defeat. Here’s how to protect your data¹ on your iPhone or iPad² when traveling.

Simplest: disable Touch ID

• Enable a six-digit passcode on your device.
• Set your device to erase itself after 10 failed passcode attempts. You should do these two steps anyway!
• Before you get to airport security, turn your device off. iOS devices require a passcode to unlock themselves the first time after they’re turned on. For dumb legal reasons, passcodes are generally thought to be protected by the 5th amendment, but fingerprints are not.

Now you have at least the physical ability to refuse to unlock your device. Be prepared for mental or legal pressure to supply your password, though. File this under “better than nothing”.

If you want to keep your current device

• Turn on iCloud backup.
• When it’s finished backing up, reset your device to its factory settings.
• When you get where you’re going, restore your device from backup.

You’re traveling with a device, but one as bare as the day you originally bought it. Be prepared to explain why you’re carrying an empty device.

Keep your device, but less suspicious

• Turn on iCloud backup.
• When it’s finished backing up, reset your device.
• Start using it. Add a few contacts. Set up a (disposable) email account. Add some songs.

Now you have a plausibly used device. When you get to your destination, reset your device again. Restore it from backup. This is more work than the previous instructions, but also less suspicious.

If you’d rather travel bare-handed

• Turn on iCloud backup. Let it finish.
• Leave this device at home.
• When you get where you’re going, buy a replacement device. Restore it from the backup you made earlier. Now you have an exact clone of the original.

This is the most expensive option, but you can’t unlock what you don’t have.

Conclusion

Searching travelers’ devices at airports is security theater. It’s a massive and inconvenient violation of privacy, and only the world’s least prepared criminals would ever get caught this way. I guarantee I’m not the first person to think of backing up a phone and restoring it at my destination. Since it’s ineffective and almost certainly unconstitutional, cooler heads would recommend ending these pointless searches. Don’t wait for that to happen. Protect your data.

I started this blog twelve years ago. I always meant to update it regularly, but… life intervenes. After recently coming back to it, I decided it was due for a good cleaning. There were lots of old articles about things I no longer care about but that people on the Internet keep visiting and linking to. I kept them. But there were also a lot of opinion pieces that I no longer agree with. Their disposition was a harder decision. The possibility of deleting them felt dishonest, like I was denying ever holding those beliefs. Conversely, this blog isn’t a diary (I have a separate one of those) or a public record (I just write stuff every now and then).

I won’t ever apologize for opinions I’ve had but discarded. If we’re a product of our environments, then our ideas must surely be the result of the people around us and the things we were taught. We don’t often get much say in these until later in life. However, many of my opinions have changed greatly through time, usually after meeting new friends or reading new viewpoints and considering my own beliefs in the light of new information.

Additionally, while reading through those old posts, I realized that a lot of them were phrased a lot more strongly, perhaps harshly, than I’d ever actually felt about the subjects involved. In person, I can cheerfully discuss great differences with just about anyone. I’m excited and energized by tracing back to the roots of our dissents and looking for common ground in even wildly different worldviews. And yet, reduced to written word, a lot of the things I would have said with a smile over a shared meal came across as, well, angry and mean.

Given that I now disagree with many of the ideas I’d described, and that other posts inaccurately conveyed a stridency I never felt during their writing, I’ve deleted large swaths of old content. If I won’t apologize for my opinions, I will for how I might have expressed them in ways that hurt, angered, or belittled.

And with that, let’s begin this experiment anew.