We Need More Diversity in the Blogosphere

Like that? I generally don't get to say hip things like blogosphere.
And I generally don't want to say things like diversity.

I just came across a disturbing article, describing how a diversity research group wants to bring greater diversity to the entertainment industry. Of course this is a college professor, because a really large number of really bad ideas come from college professors.  The original name of the group was Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative. The new name is the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and it includes people from UMG, Disney, Sony, and others.

I hope that readers of ThermionicEmissions know by now that I have no problem with anybody except the Stupid. There are no problems with diversity, unless it's forced. And sure enough, this organization wants to force diversity upon the music industry. Not the artists - we can all agree that there are few fields as organically diverse as music. No, they want to make everybody from label owners down to recording engineers and coffee getters more diverse.

Most of the people I know are old-school, like me. They believe you should hire the best qualified person for the job, regardless of gender, race, origin, handicap, dominant hand, etc. The new breed of PC social engineers feels it more important to have diversity than the best person for the job. I find this infuriating, as it's gaining traction and being accepted, even if grudgingly.

Philadelphia had an issue in the past few years that perfectly exemplifies the issues with social engineering diversity.  Someone decided the Philly Police did not have enough black people on the force. I have no idea who or how they made the decision. So they did whatever was necessary to hire more black people. The problem showed up during testing, when some of the black people did not score well in the tests. Rather than hiring people who could pass the test, the police department lowered the standards for the test and for hiring.

I don't know about you, but I want the best and brightest protecting me. If you prefer a more diverse force over a good force, I suggest there's something wrong with you.

I want to emphasize that I'm speaking about people getting the job solely because of diversity. If they can do the job as well as anyone else, there is no issue.

If I'm recording, I want a great engineer and producer. I don't want a new hire who got in because she has internal plumbing, plus less skill than the other candidate.

A relative took a test for a government job. She did well. Unfortunately the minority lady who didn't test as well got the job, because they needed to hire minority people. This is called discrimination.

After the professor gets done making the entire entertainment industry inclusive and diverse, I have some more work for her to do...

• women need to start or get caught harassing men. There are no reports of this at the present time - all harassers are men. This is not inclusive or diverse. Something needs to be done.
• take a good look at professional hockey. See any Asians? Women? Jews? Get on the ice and get some diversity happening!
• Basketball and football have a black male majority. Is this tolerable in 2017? What about transgenders? Women who identify as Caterpillar backhoes? When was the last time you saw a vertically-challenged person (midget) on the court?
• My body is genetically male. I identify as male. This is not diverse at all. What can we do about this situation? Do I qualify as diverse when I have sex because I'm connected to a woman (customarily my wife)?
• NASCAR: men. Old and young white men. With silly hats outside the oval. Why not throw a few women in there, who have never operated a manual transmission? Some math geeks, who have never gone over 25mph? A few anarchists, who don't believe in seat belts or helmets?
• WHERE ARE THE FAT PEOPLE in olympic gymnastics? Sorry - people of size.
• when was the last time you saw a baseball game with a left-handed catcher? Or a donkey?
• Why are there no clowns in Congress?  Wait - let me rephrase that. Why are there no people with big red noses and thick makeup.. no, that won't work either. People with caked on white makeup, floppy shoes, and noses that light up. I give up. You get the idea.

In case you're amused or you just want some less than pleasant news, there's an android bug that can potentially affect up to 75% of phones, excluding the latest version of android (Oreo). The long and short of it is you need to be looking for a popup, asking permission for the MediaProjection service to access something. Unfortunately, a potential attacker can detect when this comes up and put another popup on top of it (tap-jacking). The immediate solution, as most of solutions go, is to Just Say No. This service is typically used in taking screenshots. IF you can locate the service, you can turn it off and/or disable it. Be aware with all popups.

• Linux users: here's a quickie on using the mlocate or locate commands, from the command line. Not to worry, there's a 'find' program in the graphical interface, so you don't have to use the command line. Wuss.

Germany has banned the sale, distribution, and possession of kids' smartwatches. Dropping my libertarian objection to government getting involved in business, this is a very interesting phenomena. Germany's problem with these is that they are spy devices, as I said when I discovered them. This is a case of government actually doing something helpful. In the US, we're more concerned about forcing a bakery to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

• Duckduckgo, the search engine that doesn't track you, has some stats and suggestions on privacy. I use it and highly recommend it. You can set it as the default search engine on most browsers.

Best phrase of the week: I looked down and there was a baby in my sweatpants.

• While people are busy dying, we must unfortunately add another name: David Cassidy, late of The Partridge Family. I don't think anyone makes it out alive, pardon the pun, from childhood stardom.
• David's cause of death was listed as complications from dementia. Two days ago, he went into the hospital with what was described as needing an organ transplant, other organs failing, and doctors induced a coma. Once again we have two completely different diagnoses. This happens a lot.

If you're gonna sext, which I don't recommend, here are Motherboard's basic steps to protect yourself. Good reading, regardless of information sent. I don't recommend sexting not for moral reasons - I just don't send anything out that could cause grief if read by anyone else. Email can't be unsent, texts are kept, and pictures are saved. Do not send or text anything you don't want people to know or see. This is also the reason not to store data 'in the cloud.' Look at the celebrities whose accounts got hacked and their very private pictures got posted all over the internet.

• There are certainly any number of reasons to hate Google. The most recent one is that since January, android phones have been sending your location information to Google. Google, of course, says they're not using the data and just throwing it away. This happened whether your location setting is on or off.  Naturally Google is horrified and has no idea how this happened. The practice will end by the end of November. Do. Not. Use. Google. For. Anything.

Net Neutrality is all we're hearing about, as the vote looms. The FCC, like useless corporate puppets they are, are about to drop network neutrality, which will potentially allow cable and other companies to give certain traffic or users priority or low priority. While most would encourage Net Neutrality, this is a red herring. The real issue is whether government should be involved in the internet. The answer, as it is with everything else, is no.

• Texas Rangers have sent Apple a search warrant to get data from the Texas church shooter's phone. The last time data was requested, Apple refused and the FBI paid a hacker to retrieve the information. I hope that Apple will refuse again.

A trombonist was practicing and somehow managed to send his wife a text message, via voice recognition on his phone. Google and Apple keep your voice commands - this is fact. Now they'll have recordings of you practicing your instrument. No data is available on which instruments are able to send text messages, but we recommend you do not play with your instrument with voice recognition on. The message looked like this:

(1/5) Woo woo woo woo hoo hoo woo who wu woo woop woop etc etc etc.

• Uber announced this week that they suffered a breach of 57 million user accounts in 2016. Why did it take over a uear to report? Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to keep the hack a secret and delete the data. Stolen was names, email addresses and phone numbers of 57 million Uber customers and names and driver's license numbers of about 600,000 US drivers.
• The CSO and an employee were fired. The founder and former CEO was made aware of the breach a month after it happened. Two months later. the new CEO may or may not have had knowledge of the breach, which happened before she took the position.
• The data was hacked from Amazon Web Services (THE CLOUD).
• Last year Uber was fined $20,000 by the New York attorney general for failing to report a different breach in 2014. (wow - 20k! I'll bet they felt punished)
• Uber recently agreed to twenty years of privacy audits by the Federal Trade Commission for failing to provide reasonable security for consumer data.

Uber Related Continuing Rant:

Why have I been poking at THE CLOUD forever? Because once you can no longer touch your data, it is no longer your data.

Why don't I give out my data? Because companies will misuse it for marketing, sharing, selling, and it might get stolen.

Why might it get stolen? Because companies don't know and/or don't care about protecting the data, whether it's them or a third party. Something will be configured wrong or passwords will be leaked and the data will get stolen.

Why turn your phone's location service off? Do you seriously want anyone to know where you've been or where you are? It's not that you're important or unimportant; it's the fact that your data is yours and should remain so. Your location data, also kept by Uber, can be used to figure out what you were up to, which is nobody's business but yours. 

Rest assured that if someone can get your data, they will, and it will be used for their purposes, whether you know or approve or not.

ThermionicEmissions is beyond excited to announce our early Christmas present: Marshall's final chemo treatment was canceled, because he's doing so well. It's just blood work now.

The vet is pleasantly surprised and we're thrilled.

We get our baby for longer, and the doc's Mercedes is now paid off.

Look at that face...

From the bottom of my heart, thank YOU for stopping by.