Paranoia?

Posted on May 12, 2017 by ehurst

I have a burning conviction in my soul that something big is about to break out in our world. Several of you have discussed with me privately how God is calling you to serve in ways that make no sense at all unless He’s going to change the situation in big ways. Each of us is being called to prepare for something that is currently not fully visible.

God wants and uses all kinds of people. His glory shines at all levels of human existence and in ways we might not expect. Not everyone needs to know about the wider context, because God made them to handle only one small part of that big picture. But some of you have a calling that requires you be aware of the big picture. Maybe not so much because He wants to use you at that higher level, but He has determined that His glory shines brightest when you see your small part in that bigger whole.

For example, I tend to see bigger trends, even though a major part of my individual calling is just seeing them, not getting involved. My job is seeing and telling; the communication is the thing. I’m perfectly fine with being an introvert and a loner in religious terms. While I do have a gift for public presentation, I don’t have a forum right now. Instead, I do almost all of my work via the Internet. And that also means investing a lot of resources in understanding the Internet.

I’ve mentioned often enough my very bad experience with senseless persecution from the US government in the guise of the US Marshals. It started just about 1999. They were chasing a fugitive from a drug sting and I was close to that fugitive’s family. But instead of first checking to see what kind of man I was — a recent Military Policeman and DARE Officer — they simply assumed the worst and tore into my life with ham-fisted abandon. When they finally found out I was not a reasonable target of suspicion, it changed nothing in their bureaucratic blindness. They kept up the surveillance for a few of years and slandered me to other folks in that fugitive’s family and circle of acquaintances. Apparently they never found anything that justified the wasted effort.

Still, they were tapping my phones, creating suspicions about me in the community where I lived, and got me fired from my job as a church Music Director. During that same time I experienced a lot of major computer hassles. It went on for a couple of years. This was when I began seriously exploring alternative computer operating systems, and learning about hacking and snooping. When I changed over to Linux and FreeBSD, those computer problems went away. Instead, I faced other forms of interference with my presence on the Net. My accounts were hacked. It came and went, and a few years ago on this blog I mentioned facing a fresh rash of troubles that bore the same signature of half-assed technical incompetence, but still enough messing around that I almost closed this blog. I note in passing that brushing up against a few powerful religious figures seemed connected to it. Yes, the powers of the US government were used against me in favor of mainstream religious bigshots; someone used their influence to renew some of that surveillance activity.

I got completely away from my previous mainstream religious activities. Then it quit. Need I explain in detail how this all ties to my faith? This whole thing started when I was teaching Bible History and background to folks from my unique perspective. And everything bad the Marshals said about me was tied to my religion. It made me defensive because this was not long after the Feds murdered some folks who had non-mainstream religious views: Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. And don’t let anyone lie to you; the religion was a major element in federal attention to these folks. Not that I shared any of their beliefs, but I was exploring in my own soul just what kind of implications it had for me to face that kind of persecution. It wasn’t harmless for me.

People who haven’t experienced that kind of thing see me as paranoid. It’s the kind of people who think having your computer hacked is like getting struck with lightning. I’ve been struck by lightning twice, though fortunately both times it was indirect. I got a serious jolt but no lasting injuries either time. I’m not afraid of storms and electricity, and I’m not afraid of hacking. I’m just taking precautions that match my experience. Is it paranoia if you have already been hurt?

You don’t have to share my paranoia, but it might help if you understand where it comes from. Meanwhile, I’m not going to let that persecution stop me. That’s what matters here for you, dear Reader. You have your own sorrows to face, and you still have a calling from God on your life. Meanwhile, we are up against a whole world that doesn’t see the hand of God moving. They never saw it before and are even more blind to it now. Don’t hesitate to move toward a sense of calling that makes no sense to anyone else. Boldly stand on the truth that burns in your heart, and the things God has led you through as preparation for a ministry of mercy we cannot yet see.

All things work together for the good when you keep yourself in His hands.

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39th Book Published

Posted on May 11, 2017 by ehurst

I think it’s ready… Okay, it’s not my best cover image work, but it was hard to get a free image of a pipeline project.

You can get your free copy here.

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The Current State of Electronic Snooping

Posted on May 11, 2017 by ehurst

This is a long post, a general consumer-level survey, distilling what we can know from public revelations.

Snoopers: There are four kinds of snoopers.

1. Government espionage: If you are targeted as a national security threat, they will get you. Your best bet is to avoid using electronic devices at all. Travel on foot and never stay anywhere long; keep a guard dog with you and learn how hobos survive. Don’t think in terms of defense, but in terms of being impossible to catch. There is no safe country, though some are slightly better than others, depending on who is after you. Don’t hide in the middle; if you aren’t globally famous, be invisible. It’s not that they are so competent, but that their resources are overwhelming.

2. Government criminal investigations: This requires you have either sponsorship from a powerful figure or a calm and reflexive paranoia, but you can generally avoid getting caught because the general level of competence is highly limited, and so are resources. That makes it a question of you investing enough smart effort in staying ahead of them. You’d be amazed at how many folks they want to catch and do not, never mind how many folks they don’t even know about.

3. Private snooping: This refers to stalking and the like. It’s highly variable; most predators aren’t that competent and lack sufficient resources. However, criminal organizational backing can tip the scales in their favor.

4. Corporate tracking: Take it for granted. On the one hand, they don’t give a damn about you, only your money. On the other hand, if they profile you, government and criminal agencies can theoretically get hold of it. In this case, the biggest threat is that corporations typically leave the door wide open for snooping from just about anybody because, again, they don’t give a damn.

The standard level of bureaucratic paranoia is a background issue. The hive-mind is always under threat, so it’s just a matter of identifying the threat and taking action. It’s a sick and perverted mindset that turns the most innocuous things into serious problems. As time passes, the perversion gets worse. Reform simply isn’t possible. Don’t imagine plans of fixing this problem; it goes away when the whole system does. Only the rarest gifted bureaucrats can have any influence in such a system, and most of those few are psychopaths. We give thanks that bureaucracies seldom attract any real talent; their incompetence is what prevents things being worse.

Techniques: Our biggest vulnerability is simply not understanding how snooping works. This is the result of social conditioning. While there are forces out there willfully aiming to shape this conditioning, in actual practice, it works out to be a combination of mindless forces each seeking their own limited predatory advantage, paired with the eagerness of the general public to be suckered. So it’s good that you can see the deep dark conspiracies, because they are quite real; but on a practical level of action you need to treat it as entirely natural to fallen humanity.

Our conditioning and instincts lead us to ignore the threat of snooping. We think about it, but we are totally unaware of the real threat. Most people have no idea how much personal data they are spewing into the world and how it can be discerned by watching eyes. And we are not conditioned to think in terms of the virtual world at all; our conditioning makes us miss the point. We hype non-threats and ignore the real problems. This part is generally done to us on purpose; the providers out to make a buck have built a huge infrastructure of lies. Other predators take advantage of that. Meanwhile, the people most likely to help you are marginalized by the infrastructure. There is a sliding scale of awareness and the vast majority of the human race plots in bunches between blithe ignorance and missing the point. Again, the industry itself promotes this for the sake of profit.

Here at Kiln of the Soul, our concern is avoiding the wrong kind of attention. Yours truly has been under surveillance of the criminal investigation type as a result of sheer bureaucratic incompetence. To this day I am officially listed as a cult leader with criminal tendencies, but I’ve dropped off the radar for now. Most of you don’t face any real attention from the government. Our whole consideration rests on keeping up a parallel existence on multiple planes. We want to stay below the radar, so the biggest threat is getting the wrong kind of attention. We trust God to take care of things we cannot touch, but give ourselves arduously to things He places in our hands. I’m not telling you to fear snooping; I’m explaining how it works in case God tells you it matters.

As noted above, you probably cannot prevent genuine espionage as a national security target. Becoming a target of criminal investigation is almost the same as being targeted by criminals seeking profit. Corporate snooping is a threat only because it enables too many other kinds of snooping. Indeed, if we can properly respond to corporate snooping, almost everything else is a non-issue. And for this, the most practical answer is a mixture of avoiding notice plus feeding them false data. Keep yourself out of the standard data streams, but when your calling puts you into that stream, give them nothing useful.

Technology: This is both your greatest threat and strongest ally. The difference is your awareness. Giving you all of the background would be a monumental task for me to write and for you to read. I’m going to construct a model that you can probably grasp more quickly.

The biggest single threat is Win10. Both the hardware and the OS itself leave you wide open to snooping. You cannot safely use Win10; it cannot be neutered and still connected to the Net. You can minimize the snooping, but you cannot turn it off. It’s not just the mandatory telemetry, where Windows constantly ships back to Microsoft detailed data of your use patterns and habits. The hardware itself will betray you. There is a paradox at work here; the only way Microsoft can protect Windows from criminal threats is to protect Windows from you. That is, in order to meet the market demands for fewer mishaps arising from all the ways things can go wrong with your computers and network, Microsoft has to keep you from messing with how it works, as well.

The means of empowering you includes taking away their profit margin. It also means you having to learn so much about it that you won’t have time to actually use the system for anything but doing computer security. That’s inherent in the design of Windows; it’s a highly integrated, centrally controlled and interdependent complexity that no small group of people could ever understand together. Thus, even Microsoft has no effective control. The complexity of the system means that it simply cannot be secured. They have to keep doors open for their centralized control, and there is no way they can keep someone else from getting a key to any of those doors. They cannot profit from total security.

The only way to tame the software issue is to remove the profit motive. That’s what Open Source is all about. Open Source is modular and far simpler in design in the first place. On top of that, you can take control as much as you like and it’s far easier to do so. The only way to profit from Open Source is in the packaging and delivery, and shifting the responsibility for technical servicing to someone else.

The other issue is hardware. However, given that the dominant OS in the market is Windows, there is a tendency for Windows to steer the hardware market. In the old days, the hardware did simple things and required user expertise. As things got more automated, it also became more closed to the user. Today, you cannot buy hardware that you can actually control. You would have to make it yourself; that’s also increasingly possible, but not yet. Instead, what we have today is commodity hardware that most people can afford, but that the owner doesn’t actually own.

The biggest issue if firmware. That’s the software built into the hardware itself, rather like the BIOS of most computers. Except that many parts of the computer each have their own firmware: hard drives, modems and networking chips, sound and video hardware, etc. If your hardware boots via UEFI, you have already lost the battle. At this point, it’s possible for someone to get their hands on your machine and change the firmware. Standard hardware doesn’t block such modifications. Increasingly, it isn’t even necessary to touch the hardware, only catch you in certain usage that exposes your system to remote takeover. Malware can change firmware. If your machine was designed for Win10, that’s true already. So in practice, anything you bought starting around Win7 is highly vulnerable to firmware changes without you knowing it; you can’t even find out without using a very expensive testing lab.

Given that governments act just like criminal organizations in secretly compromising every commercial operation big enough to get their attention, you might not want to trust even some of those expensive labs. You cannot trust the manufacturers already. Even if you stood looking over the shoulder of everyone in the factory who touches your machine, and then walked out the door with your computer never out of your physical possession, you still have to deal with the vulnerability of all the parts that the factory shipped in. And if you simply order something online, it can be intercepted and jiggered without you ever having a clue. We already know that the NSA has done this, having the shipper drop it off at their facility and changing the hardware, then repackaging it and giving it back to the shipper. We knew that four years ago.

But in general, hardware up through Windows Vista is safe while being powerful enough to do useful things. For myself, I try to buy high-end business machines made for Vista. There are a lot of them still out there and most of them run Linux beautifully. But then there’s cellphones and TVs, along with other gadgets capable of networking. Cellphones have tracking software built in as part of how cell technology works in the first place. Some standard bundled apps already exploit this for advertising revenue, and anything you add from the download stores will just increase that exposure. Recently there was noise in the news about how TVs can set hypersonic beacons that your cellphone apps can respond to and track your habits. If you carry your phone where you can hear it ring, it can hear what you are doing. If you turn on that voice-activated stuff, it most certainly is listening and recording your habits.

We have to make compromises. I’ve already covered browsers, but here are some generalities. The problems with browsers are four: (1) cookies, (2) graphics, (3) scripting, and (4) advanced multimedia. If you use a plain-text browser (Lynx, Elinks, etc.), all you have to deal with are cookies. If you need cookies to get things done, set your browser for session cookies only. If you use a simple browser that does text and graphics (like Links2 and Dillo) but no scripting, then you have to add the concern for web-beacons: little images that contain tracking information. Clear your cache or set the browser to keep nothing in the first place. Once scripting becomes possible, you lose far more control, because scripting is the single biggest vulnerability in browsers. Even if your browser can’t do advanced multimedia, scripting makes “evercookies” possible. You then have to start adding protection extensions to your browser, and learn how to delete the cache. The evolving advanced multimedia technology typically includes new means of tracking and fingerprinting.

Folks, the advertising industry has lobbied commercial browser makers to make changes taking choices from you, the user. Indeed, the advertisers are lobbying the standards bodies to put their advantages in the protocols themselves. Meanwhile, advertisers violently resist any accountability, even selling advertising space to crooks so that malware is nearly impossible to avoid. Blocking all advertising is in your best interest simply on the grounds of computer security.

I typically clear my browser cache between websites. If I chase links from one site to another, I clear the cache after visiting each link. The effect is that commercial trackers get nothing useful, even if they fingerprint my browser. As it is, I use multiple browsers at the same time, sometimes copying a link from one to another based on what I know about the link and why I’m chasing it. The vast majority of my surfing is with Links2, which does some images and no scripting. I clear the cache between sites. I have evidence that my habits have thoroughly confused the advertisers as to who I am, where I live and my income level. That’s not proof, but an indicator of how you can avoid the wrong kind of attention.

Addenda: Part of the surveillance (US Marshals) I experienced included having my systems hacked and fired from a church job. The hacking stopped when I switched from Windows to Linux and FreeBSD. Their comments to others indicated a prejudice against my Christian beliefs, so it qualifies as religious persecution. I’ve also been literally struck by lightening twice. Such things change your perspective.

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A Divine Mandate

Posted on May 10, 2017 by ehurst

I have a divine mandate, a calling from God. We all have one, so I’m not that special. However, my calling is pastoral in the sense of shepherding the people of God. Unlike most pastoral people, I don’t decide who shall be in my flock; it’s the flock that decides. In that sense, it is God who decides and leads people to give some regard to my pastoral leadership.

In this virtual setting, most of my leadership is exerted through persuasive writing. I’m trying to keep an eye on ways I can help God’s people get out of Satan’s domain. There is no image here of perfect escape, but of selective escape for certain issues that I have been granted to understand. On another level, it is a calling to understand something of the nature of Satan’s dominion so that people can discern for themselves how to look for ways to be free. Thus, I tend to offer my specific ideas as examples of how to approach the whole question.

One of those issues is the broad cultural trap in which we live. The best ally Satan has in keeping you under his thumb is the social mythology of our Western world.

We know that humans are inherently vulnerable to certain threats. That’s why there is such a thing as bulletproof vests, for example. They are expensive and their effectiveness is limited, while the act of wearing one is burdensome in itself. But if you spend very much time exposed to people inclined to fire bullets at you, it’s worth the expense and trouble.

We are also vulnerable in other ways. That includes a great deal of psychological vulnerability. The human mind remains open to some kinds of threat simply because that’s how we are wired. In order for us to live here in this environment, we have to take certain mental shortcuts. But those shortcuts can be exploited by other people to manipulate us into doing things we shouldn’t. Naturally you would expect the predators to lie and play down that weakness, saying it’s all a bunch of hoopla and scare-mongering. They have allies who dismiss the threats by saying you should simply ignore the manipulation, as if there is no cultural atmosphere that disarms us and makes it too painful to argue about it.

Precious few are born with the will and presence of mind to fight the system. And most of those are intentionally pressured and harassed until they stop exercising that will to resist. Our world makes it terribly expensive, even deadly, to take your own path. Distrust of the system will get you killed, or at least badly hurt. The system itself is predatory and demands that you keep yourself vulnerable.

I am my brother’s keeper; there are lots of sheep who aren’t wired to fight, so someone has to fight for them. I’m not a Darwinian about such things; I care. So it’s natural for some like me with a pastoral bent to make a lot of noise about things you need to consider changing. If I warn you about something the system seeks to do to us to deceive and manipulate, you can blow it off if you like; it’s really your choice. But if God starts knocking on the door of you conscience about this, then get with Him and work it out. If you start making noise about how people should naturally handle such things on their own, then you’ll be classed as an ally of Satan. Resistance has been beat out of them, so it’s my job work at healing the wounds and to provoke it back to life. Don’t be a calloused ass.

Advertising is inherently evil, folks. It’s one thing to let people know what you offer, but you’ll almost never see that in advertising; it’s so rare now you can’t call it “advertising.” Advertising is inherently manipulative, striving to prey on human weaknesses, both native and culturally derived vulnerabilities. By no means would I expect to change the system, particularly on the Internet. We are awash in advertising. What I am suggesting is that you as an individual consider the problem and decide whether God is calling you to act on this problem. I’ll offer ways to bulletproof your mind, both in restructuring the mind’s operations and in in blocking predatory input. There is no moral obligation to consume advertising, so fight it tooth and nail. That’s what Jesus did in resisting Satan in the Wilderness Temptations.

I’m not worried about some tiny slice of Internet users blocking advertising, as if this will bring the whole system down. The vast majority of folks won’t do anything about it. What I am worried about is the very real effort on the part of some to take that choice away from you. Those people are so evil they deserve vilification. These are people who want to hurt you. Given the right opportunity, I would consider taking more assertive action to stop them and removing the threat altogether. However, such opportunities are wholly unlikely, so I’ll stick with making noise about taking control of how you use the Internet. I’ll agitate for a few folks — that tiny slice of humanity who feel drawn to my message — to take more assertive action with how they use their computers.

That’s what God has called me to do.

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More Random Stuff

Posted on May 10, 2017 by ehurst

A witless comedian has complained about God. The only reasonable answer to fools like that is: God didn’t make the world like this. The world He made was wonderful; it was Eden. The problems with this world are our making. You find it nasty, Mr. Fry, because you participate in making it so. You can’t demand that God bend to meet your personal requirements; you have to meet His.

Do you remember those tiny lead-paged books found a few years ago? They are called the Jordan Lead Codices. Among other things, scholars suggest that the books indicate Jesus was trying to resurrect a more ancient form of Hebrew religion from the time of David. Sound familiar? We might debate some of the particulars of that ancient religion, but it’s obvious to just about everyone that it was not the same as Judaism. Naturally, the mainstream resists the idea that Christ didn’t come to start a new religion — their religion. As regular readers know, we always seek to tie faith in Christ with the ancient faith of Abraham and David, not just as a rhetorical device, but we take seriously the implications of knowing what kind of religion Abraham and David held. We assert that this is what it means to follow Christ.

The activists that elected Trump are now divided between those who simply support the man versus those who supported his promises. It’s never that simple with most individuals; the latter group is still trying to find themselves after the shock of Trump’s betrayal. They aren’t silent, but you won’t hear about them from mainstream sources. As regular readers know, I don’t support activism, but my advice to these folks feeling betrayed is to recognize that you cannot fix the system no matter who you send to the Whitehouse. Ignore Trump. There is still some momentum out there for changing things, but you’ll have to be ready to take this far more seriously than just electioneering. You’ll have to target specific individuals in positions of power who stand in the way of the changes you seek, and you’ll have to be ready to fight fire with fire. Start where you are in the lower levels of local government, and don’t shrink from removing judges, sheriffs, or school board members.

One of the things I watch for as I test different browsers includes a CPU meter. Mine shows all four cores separately. When I visit some sites, it’s almost abusive how much activity is going on just to keep the page open. I’m already blocking ads and animations, and some pages still manage to hammer away on my CPU the whole time the page is open. There is simply no excuse for this crap, from neither the website nor the cooperating browser makers that play along with this. This is one of the main reasons I no longer recommend anything based on Google’s Blink engine for daily browser use: Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi and Slimjet, just to name a few. This is a major flaw in the philosophy behind the Blink engine, in that it invites websites to abuse your system for their manipulative purposes, and to avoid having to do the work and craft a really nice website. They just throw in a menu list of pre-made abusive scripts. It’s okay for some specific uses, but not general browsing. For example, I use Opera for sites where I login. I firewall that from general surfing.

Mozilla Firefox is also moving toward cooperating with websites against users in this way. Thus, I typically recommend Seamonkey for most standard browser use. And if you don’t really need a full service browser, use something like Links2 from Twibright Labs (already included in repositories of most Linux distributions). It takes getting used to and you’ll probably need guidance in setting it up, but it simply ignores the scripting that causes most of this senseless background noise. Browser/website scripting is actually a security vulnerability, so don’t cooperate if you don’t have to. I’m not saying every webmaster is plotting evil against us, but that there are folks out there who just don’t give a damn about you and I, and they are setting the standards. They began sucking up to big-money lobbying long ago. They are trying to make the Internet like TV where the consumer has zero control or input.

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Not That It Matters

Posted on May 9, 2017 by ehurst

Yesterday I rode up Midwest Boulevard, zigzagged on Hefner Road to Douglas Boulevard, north to where it hits the turnpike underpass right before Memorial Road. Then I headed back to Midwest Boulevard. I stopped at the McClendon Memorial (previous references here and here). The redbud tree was quiet today. It seemed as if the business of the memorial was done; life goes on and only a few will remember his name, much less his passing.

For a couple of weeks I’ve been through a dry spell in the sense of that vivid communion with nature. It’s not a bad thing, just something that I passed through because it was there in my path. But now the hunger has returned and I sense the need to start paying attention again. While the whole experience is too personal to share, there are some markers I want to point out to you, indicators of things you might want to explore.

See James 4:13-16 — There’s nothing wrong with making plans and doing business. That’s how the human intellect engages this world. What’s wrong is investing your soul into such things. Do stuff because that’s what you feel called to do, but you should never assume that what we accomplish in this life means much. It’s all the other stuff inside our souls that matters. We have here two images of seasonal wild flowers to put McClendon’s life in perspective. That man’s memory resides in the minds of those who gave and received time with him. The imprint of his passing will vary with each individual, but the memories will fade. His business legacy is probably a somewhat better memorial than that patch of grass and weeds at the underpass where he died, even as the legal noose tightened on him. But I’m curious, waiting to see if someone comes back out to that spot and installs a more durable monument. It will say much of the people who remember him.

The New Testament is flooded with passages that tell us flatly not to get too wound up in this life, this body we use. It’s easy to get lost in all the pains and sorrows of injustice, but we have to remember that this world is fallen and transitory. I’m not trying to preserve my flesh through fitness; I’m trying to use it for God’s glory. His glory will be there waiting when I leave this world; nothing else from this life will follow me out of it. This is part of why I wasn’t emotionally devastated by that collision a year ago and the resulting permanent knee troubles. This is why I can forgive all the people who used and abused me through this life. I’m leaving all of that here.

There should always be a part of our awareness that holds to one truth: What really matters it the grace and mercy we share with Creation. It’s all one thing; we are created along with the rest of it. But we are fallen and the rest of Creation is innocent. Countering the Curse of the Fall is not something to accomplish; it’s a battle for every moment of life. It’s not recorded in detail, but the record is written into our souls. I have no need to seek organization of anything at all. Everyone in this world following his/her own sense of calling is inherently good and right. The aggregate result is not any part of my worries. God has flatly said He’s not going to fix this broken world to suit anyone’s sense of propriety. So I don’t expect much from human accomplishment, least of all my own. What I expect is a constant battle to manifest His glory. I’m fighting myself on this, because my fallen nature is hostile to His glory. A critical element in His redemption is to stop giving my fallen existence so much attention, except as it signals a demand for greater faith.

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Aftermath

Posted on May 9, 2017 by ehurst

The rebel activity virtually stopped along the pipeline. During a joint investigation with a senate intelligence committee, in a closed door hearing, Tim learned that the clandestine funding for the rebels had evaporated. Ned later learned that the VIPs had visited with rebel leaders during their tour of ancient monuments.

The reduced resistance along the pipeline provoked a reduction in funding for defending the project. But most of the troops and contractors were simply moved to Africa and South America because of new conflicts there over more commercial exploitation of resources.

Franklin got a job as sniper instructor for his employer. Barry ended up working on a conservation project in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa and married a local girl there. Part of his work was engineering cheap hybrid bikes for much needed motorized transportation in the region.

Ned’s AI project went Open Source. That is, it was embraced by the same people who kept the Open Source movement alive. AI never developed an independent conscience because it couldn’t, but it did seem to be aware that humans had one. One of its primary features was extrapolating each user’s conscience and warning them of unforeseen implications of certain choices. This didn’t prevent big money tech dreamers from trying to create an independent AI, but it never happened. AI couldn’t be made to care. All the good or evil arising from the use of AI was still the result of human moral choices. Meanwhile, AI made software companies totally obsolete.

However, the collaboration between Tim’s lab and the hackers gave birth to quantum computing. Tim made Ned the CEO of the lab, and the hackers were all offered full time jobs at generous pay. Ned was careful to never take the company public; it remained fully privately owned. They retained hardware patents on the design and process and profited from the licensing. But Ned kept the focus on genuine innovation, as there was no way to prevent someone else from using their own implementation of AI to duplicate the results some other way. Ned’s company simply got a head start and tried to stay on the forward edge.

Because of deep bureaucratic habits, some government agencies clung to their old ways of secrecy and surveillance, until AI virtually destroyed the whole industry. The old established intelligence community became a joke, and private espionage via AI took over. It meant a return to some forms of physical spycraft, something only a new generation had the energy to pursue. Their entirely different moral outlook changed everything.

And somewhere in a forgotten Middle Eastern country, a young boy with burn scars on his chest remembered the kindness of strangers and grew up with a peculiar genius for peacemaking. He united the warring tribes in his country and became a powerful voice for the oppressed.

This ends the story.

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The Courier 09

Posted on May 8, 2017 by ehurst

Franklin waited with a blank face until the man was out of earshot.

“Bess, what are their flight plans for the rest of their day?”

She responded with a list that included the location of a key field commander who was known for his ambition. The next two puzzled Franklin for a moment, until he remembered they were the location of two very important vendors working in support of the larger contract. One was the new manager for the parts supplier for the crawlers; the other was something he had to query Bess about. It was the manager for the satellite communications support, an opulent bunker just below a massive dish antenna atop the highest mountain in that part of the country. Bess noted in passing that Mister Big held a major portion of stock in each of those companies. After that, the entourage was headed back to the base and was supposed to fly out on their plane that night.

Bess managed to relay all of this before the VIPs began heading back to their chopper.

It came to Franklin in a rush. This slimy bastard wanted to hire him to be his private sniper to kill his enemies, using a weapon that was undetectable by any existing technology. He was going to try to bribe the new parts manager just like the old one. He was going to try something easily as nasty with the satellite manager. And he was going to seduce that commander — and could probably make a genuine offer of promotion — to support him in something that required military force. What he didn’t actually own, he could disrupt by controlling critical elements. And maybe this stuff wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, because this nasty little man was prepared to keep working this way until he had control over everything.

“Bess, do you reckon this fellow seeks to take over the whole world?” He really didn’t expect an answer.

“That appears to be the obvious end of his maneuvering” Bess said dryly.

The chopper began to rev up the engines. A short time later it shot up in the air and climbed steeply overhead.

No.

“Bess, unlock the targeting.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do it. And make sure the sensor doesn’t record this.” Franklin raised his rifle and dialed up everything to max.

Just before the bird was out of range, Franklin pulled the trigger, sighting up the turbine’s exhaust vent. The engine exploded into fragments; the blades broke free and scattered across the sky, trailing smoke where they had been attached. The bird started to drop a few meters, and then a secondary fireball erupted from the fuel. The shell of the bird blossomed outward at the top and separated from the power train; the luxury interior kept burning all the way to the ground.

Back at the base, Barry had been sitting in his office with his head in his hands. It was all he could do to stay at his appointed place of duty; he desperately needed to be out on a lonely hilltop and sing along with the wind.

It sounded almost as if someone had kicked the door open. One of the secretaries blurted out, “The VIP chopper exploded!”

Barry jerked his head up. “When? Where?”

“We don’t know yet. All we have is the actual notification. It was taking off from a stop and exploded. There’s almost nothing left of it, and it was too high for anyone to survive.” The woman disappeared down the hallway.

It was over. Barry was numb. Eventually he came back to himself and looked around. He picked up Torrie from the desk. “What should I do now? Got any ideas, Torrie?”

“Prepare for some local errands, Barry.”

Of course. He turned his conscious mind to the task. First was the quick rundown of things he had already done, but it amounted to a readiness checklist. The mental exercise made him feel like he was back into some modicum of control. Then he checked to see if the sense of foreboding was gone. It was. But for some reason, he didn’t feel the least bit like celebrating.

There was some loud chatter in the hallway. He looked back at his phone. “Torrie, tell Ned about this. I can report later in more detail if he wants.”

“Done,” the cellphone reported solemnly.

Mostly Barry was hoping Ned would get back to him with something that restored a sense that things were alright. He didn’t want to know everything, just enough to make sense of the implications of this turn of events.

From the hallway: “Barry! Emergency dispatch!”

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Some Random Thoughts

Posted on May 7, 2017 by ehurst

We don’t embrace the imperative of winning. Even scaled out to national survival, the Christian Mystic’s approach is that God is running the show, and His whims are inscrutable regarding such things. Instead, we focus on righteousness in the process. It’s the one thing that’s in our hands. Not that we can control ourselves in any strict sense of performance, but that we can learn to feed our own desires for holiness. God measures holiness in terms of desire, not in outcomes. It’s this outcomes-based obsession that is destroying the West. The Western consciousness scrambles hardest for outcomes, and it is the one thing no one can control.

Perhaps you heard about the way the FBI managed to seize control of a child porn website (“Playpen”) hidden away on the “dark web.” You might have heard that they held control of it for some time, using it as a honey trap to plant malware on computers of those who visited this members-only website. They have been condemned publicly for serving up child porn in the process. Both the porn serving and the malware have been condemned. Their defense is varied around themes of tactics that produced measurable results with hundreds of arrests once the users were all tracked down via that malware. But the real problem is that they already know the names of thousands of US government figures, both elected and appointed, who are directly engaged in both child porn and child molestation, but they refuse to investigate and prosecute. It would destroy the government.

Did you know that there is at least one genuine Open Source project aimed at producing a free version of Windows? It’s called ReactOS. It’s struggling due to lack of sponsorship, but the developers are giving it serious effort in their spare time. As you might expect, it’s a massive undertaking and they are way behind the curve. It’s not even close to ready for actual use and the target keeps moving. At one time I really believed this was a great idea. Not any more. I’m convinced that the Windows approach to things is already dead. It has nothing to do with any emotional commitment to any alternative, but a genuine conviction in my soul that the time-space window has closed on Windows. It has nothing to do with technical merits either way; it’s the inherent failure of centralized control. Its end is here. The longer people hang onto Windows, the more painful will be the shift when it is forced on us.

And if you think that’s an ugly picture, wait until it starts biting into the mobile device market. The current trend toward conglomeration among cell phone providers has not yet run its course, but somewhere not too far down the road, this trend will become impossible to maintain. Only the necessity of infrastructure and current technology keeps it alive. Once alternatives arise, the industry will become chaotic.

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The Courier 08

Posted on May 7, 2017 by ehurst

Nothing could have prepared Franklin for what happened.

It was surreal. The man seemed to have no trouble visually identifying Franklin’s location. The average human would have had trouble differentiating between the camouflage and the surrounding rocks. However, Franklin had heard there were just a few people who were born with some strange ability to see it, as if the cover was painted bright yellow. But that was the least of his talents.

The man seemed apologetic about bothering Franklin in his very important mission of protecting everyone. He offered profuse and eloquent thanks for Franklin enduring such privation to keep everyone safe. It was disarming, almost hypnotic. Was this man really so dangerous to everyone? Only when Franklin reached back from his mind into his heart did he find a flaming confirmation to watch out for this scheming liar.

“Please don’t let me distract you. My boss — such a fine man to work for — wanted me to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It won’t bother me at all if you keep your eyes out for trouble.” It was all so soothing.

Franklin wasn’t having it, but he mustered a nonchalant warmth. “There is more security around you folks today than normally covers this whole valley. I’ve been told to relax until your party leaves the area.”

“I see. That’s good, I suppose.” The man sat on a convenient rock across from Franklin. “We’ve heard a lot about you. Your team held off a truly monumental attack, thanks in no small part to your sharp tactical readiness.”

Franklin noticed how the man never quite pushed beyond the limits. He as careful not to let it sound excessive. He seemed to know just how much Franklin would be inclined to believe. Franklin did his best to respond in kind, indicating that Joe was smart enough to have the crawlers ready to do most of the work.

“Yes, of course. It’s good to work with competent men, isn’t it?”

Franklin nodded with a smile. He was trying to avoid saying too much.

“Sometimes I see that kind of camaraderie in the face of challenges and wished that I had had the nerve to spend some time the military. Yet your actual mission is still rather solitary, no?”

“We used to work with a spotter, but the modern technology has made that unnecessary. In the end, it’s the guy with his finger on the trigger that has to make the shot.” It was boilerplate sniper school platitudes.

“And you seem to be the best there is out here on this project. What will you do when this is over?” The man knew how to steer a conversation.

Franklin, tilted his head to one side and his eyes pointed upward a bit. “Not too sure. To be honest, I feel like this is what I was born to do.” That much was the truth.

“So if someone offered you a similar job, you’d take it?” The man seemed faintly eager for an answer.

Franklin shrugged. “I might. Depends on who or what the targets were.” It was Franklin’s turn to dangle bait.

The man smiled as if at some joke. “I’m told you don’t struggle with the ugly necessities of the targets that present themselves here.” That was putting it delicately. This must have been a major point on the man’s intention here.

“It’s a matter of loyalty. Mine is not for sale, but it can be earned.” Would that deter the man?

He nodded sagely. “That’s what makes you the man. I’d really like for you to meet my boss. He has worked very hard to earn my trust and loyalty. He’s really a genuine man, someone that inspires everyone near him to work hard, and he rewards us all in ways that really matter. I know you can’t meet him today, but I want to leave you his personal phone number. I am firmly convinced that a couple of conversations with him and you’ll see what I mean. It’s not just the money, generous as it is, but all of us working for him feel like it’s everything we’ve ever dreamed. He seems to know exactly what makes life worth living.”

The man pulled out a business card. It was plain and dignified and it featured the assumed name of the fraudulent actor and his personal phone number, and nothing else.

“Thank you, sir.” Franklin took the card and put it into the vest pocket inside his coat.

As the man rose, he turned and said, “Oh, and I am quite certain he can insure you get to keep using that same weapon. He can pull strings like no one else I’ve known.” Then he ducked out from under the camouflage and picked his way down the hill.

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