Are you driving a hackable Beemer?

This is one of those things it’s easy to ignore, but I’ve been aware of it for a while: increasingly sophisticated electronic systems in vehicles mean more hackable vehicles. The happy fella driving a shiny silver BMW off the lot today is piloting a 2-ton PC with a buttload of potential cyber security holes. From Auto Express:

Modern cars have a number of electronic control units (ECUs), which not only control infotainment services, but also the operation of the engine, transmission and safety features such as stability control and anti-lock brakes.

If someone can hack into the connectivity system, they then have access to all the car’s other ECUs because there is currently no physical or electronic barrier between them.

Harman, a technology firm presenting at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), says “car hacking” is already here, and troubling. Auto Express quoted Harman’s Sachin Lawande, who said car hacking is “a serious problem” because “[the] infrastructure of many cars was not designed with networking in mind.”

That means that once a car dials into the internet, it may be critically exposed. A hacker could worm their way into major vehicle functions. Harman presented on the subject at CES, naturally, because they’ve developed software for networked vehicles that will protect the car’s vital functions, an industry first.

Protections like Harman’s will likely be widely available in a few years. In the meantime, enjoy your fine German transportation and if a savage cyber attacker takes over while you’re tooling down the highway, I guess just buckle up and enjoy the ride, and hope the cops are careful with the stop sticks when they deploy them under your compromised status symbol.

[Auto Express]

Neo-Nazis on the rise in Europe

Golden Dawn's flag. Looks vaguely familiar, huh? — Golden Dawn’s flag. Looks vaguely familiar, huh?

Filed under: “Shit Americans Won’t Pay Enough Attention to Until it’s Almost Too Late”–A new sort of fascism, not particularly different from the old kind, is making a bit of a comeback in Europe.

The Golden Dawn Party achieved a foothold in Greek government first. They took advantage of Weimar Republic-like economic woes and did just what the Nazis did in the late 20s and early 30s in Germany–they began providing what extremely distressed, impoverished households needed: scapegoats (immigrants); and assistance. Golden Dawn members made it into Parliament and were regularly appearing on Greek talk shows. With a recent spate of prosecutions against high-ranking Golden Dawn members for stuff like, you know, murder, the party’s power in Greece may be on the wane.

But that’s okay–from the fascist point-of-view, I mean–because International Business Times reports that extreme right wingers are doing just fine, elsewhere:

Since the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece, far-right parties have gathered momentum across the continent carrying with them a disturbing brand of fascism and xenophobia.

The collapse of confidence in institutions after the 2008 financial crisis, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the spread of populist and nationalist sentiment has acted as recruitment magnet for the dissafected and the angry.

At the forefront of the protest against the European Union – perceived as a bureaucratic, useless apparatus made to suck up growth -, neo-Nazis have focussed their action on the wave of migrants coming to Europe to escape from civil wars, genocides and poverty.

The article goes on to report about Slovakian Marian Kotleba, a former high school teacher who wears straight-up SS gear and who was recently elected governor of a region in the country on a campaign platform of hating the Roma. It then mentions the Swedish Resistance Movement. Just last December, 40 members of that group went in on anti-racist demonstrators in Stockholm, hurling rocks and fireworks at 200 demonstrators. The Swedish Resistance is just fine with using the old-fashioned Swastika, by the way.

And so on. There’s a Nationalist Party of Bulgaria. They want to “cleanse” their country of “foreign and alien immigrant scum.” In Hungary, they have the “ultra-nationalist” and Jew-hating Jobbik party, which holds down 43 seats in that country’s parliament and–more worrisome, if you actually think about it–two in the EU parliament.

This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain: “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The quote is used often enough to approach becoming a cliche, but cliches sometimes come into being because they’re full of truth.

Having read history with at least a quarter of my brain switched on most of the time, it’s hard for me to learn about the renewed rise of fascism in any western country and not wonder where the rhyme scheme of this particular verse is headed, and if anyone capable of doing something about it will pay enough attention to try, before it’s too late.

[ibtimes.co.uk]

Winter Olympics in Sochi to be white-knuckle affair

I got sick of hype and pearl-clutching when I was blogging about crime all the time, but when reading news from southern Russia it’s hard to not worry for the athletes and visitors flocking to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. From Ria Novosti/The Moscow News:

Russian security forces have launched an anti-terrorism sweep in response to the discovery of an explosive device and an unexplained series of deaths across a southern province near Sochi, which is hosting the Winter Olympics next month.

A car exploded Wednesday in the Stavropol region, then police discovered a vehicle containing explosives and a pair of corpses sometime Thursday… in addition to two more bodies found Wednesday elsewhere in Stavropol. All the deaths were considered homicides. Add these to terrorist attacks from Islamic militants based in the North Caucasus, and it gets spooky.

Not to mention: the Tsarnaevs, allegedly responsible for bombing the Boston Marathon in April, 2013, were originally from the North Caucasus and the older brother who died in a shootout with police had spent a good deal of time there within the last couple of years.

Russian authorities have set up a huge and tight security perimeter around Sochi, but it still may end up being a nerve-wracking experience to watch and wonder if more explosive shoes will drop.

[The Moscow News]

A little more about that X-Class solar flare

Yesterday the sun unleashed a big X-class solar flare, aimed directly at Earth. Today the NOAA has issued a couple of interesting alerts related to the incoming geomagnetic storm expected from the flare, indicating:

Power system irregularities are possible.
GPS navigation may be affected by loss-of-lock
We may be able to see aurora as far south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.

A slightly more recent alert says that an “enhancement in the energetic portion of the solar radiation spectrum may indicate increased biological risk to astronauts or passengers and crew in high latitude, high altitude flights.” There may also be “increased risk to all satellite systems.”

Make no mistake, there’s no reason to actually expect massive planetwide electric doom from the storm, but it’s worth noting that the Great Solar Storm of 1859 (also called the Carrington Super Flare), which struck a far less networked, electronic planet, was nevertheless a real sonofabitch on the few systems in place at the time. Aurorae were seen in areas that never normally witness the phenomenon and telegraph operators reported electric shocks and sparks flying from telegraph poles. Weirdly, some telegraphs even continued sending messages even after their power was shut off.

Don’t fly, buy paper maps and don’t rely on satellites for a day or so, you’ll be fine. Also don’t be an astronaut.

Good talk.

[Space Weather Alerts]

Polar Vortex, Solar Flare, a Winter Salad of Doom

Hey, this is fun–as the northern hemisphere shuddered in the throes of the icy grip of the Polar Vortex, the Sun decided to remind us all who is really the real big cheese in this solar system and threw an X-class flare our way! SpaceWeather.com reports: “Giant sunspot AR1944 erupted on Jan 7th at approximately 1832 UT, producing a powerful X1-class solar flare. First-look coronagraph images from the STEREO-Ahead spacecraft appear to show a coronal mass ejection (CME) emerging from the blast site. If so, the CME is almost certainly heading for Earth.” The X-Flare won’t cook us or anything, but it’s worth notice, because they can be “major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.”[SpaceWeather.com]

Sudden Arctic temperature drop summons devils from Lake Michigan

Extremely cold weather phenomenon can be quite creepy, and here’s some proof. In a post on Google+, KC Wildmoon explains: “When the dry Arctic air moves over the warmer water, the air humidifies, causing the visible steam. The warmer air rises, drawing the steam, and because a vortex is involved, it can swirl, although quite slowly and often barely visibly. They are not related to waterspouts or tornadoes. The phenomena were first studied on Lake Michigan in the 1970s, when researchers dubbed them ‘steam devils’.” There may be wrath in the wind, chaos and destruction, but there are cold ghosts and turning devils in the ice and snow.

[kc wildmoon]

Daily Workout Post (almost kind of daily!)

Tonight I’ve edged back toward making daily workouts daily again! Yay, the cold, hard universe smiles upon my puny efforts at delaying the grave! Anyway, yesterday’s workout was pretty thorough, so I thought I might lay off today. But around mid-afternoon I found myself doing pull-ups. Only 10 total, in a 4-3-2-1 descending ladder. I’ve felt bad in the past about the fact I never do more than 5 reps of pull-ups in a set, but then I looked in the mirror and remembered I’m a damned 195 pound man closer to 50 than 40 and I can divide my sets and reps however the hell I want. Tonight, I did a brief burpee workout, also sort of ladder-style–push-up burpees in 15-14-11-10 descending ladder, for a total of 50. As an aside, I also discovered the etymology of the word burpee, (a word redolent of certain body functions to the juvenile-minded like me) and it turns out every con’s favorite prison cell workout is named after some guy! Quoth the Oxford Dictionary: “[burpees are] named after Royal H. Burpee, American psychologist. The original usage was Burpee test, in which a series of burpees are executed in rapid succession, designed to measure agility and coordination.” See? They’re not named after what you do after 50 of the damned things jostle your innards enough to, uh, let off steam, as it were.

Daily Workout Post (that’s still not daily)

Since the first one went on a bit, let’s make today’s dumb workout post brief. I don’t pretend there’s any coherence to this one other than I’ve been in a day on/day off pattern and even though that’s 4 days a week, it feels like slacking, so I needed a whole body workout.

Part the First, in which our hero* addresses cardio, chest and arms:

Burpees x 5
Push-ups x 15
Burpees x 5
“Arnolds” with 2 25-lb dumbbells, x 10. (Link goes to a video demonstration of “Arnolds,” which are, believe it or not, not named after that football-headed cartoon character, but the former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

I did four of each set in a circuit, for a total 40 burpees, 60 push-ups and 40 Arnolds. Or Ah-nulds, if you prefer the old hacky nod to the gov’s Austrian brogue.

Part the Second, in which our hero** addresses the need for an all-over body burn:

I did the workout above, as demonstrated by one of my favorite online fitness folks, Daniel, who runs the awesome FitnessBlender.com with his lovely wife, Kelli. In the interest of full disclosure, I used a single 53-lb kettlebell (I’ve switched between the 53 and a 70 before) and added a minute’s pause at the middle of the tape, figuring I began the thing already pretty sweaty and tired. I love this FitnessBlender workout in particular because it’s a time-saver and it hits all the good stuff.

Parts 1 and 2 together timed out to 30 minutes.

Plug I give every time I mention them–I can’t recommend Fitness Blender strongly enough if you, like me, have personal and budgetary constraints that make you wary of the gym. I prefer to run 2-5 times a week if I can but winter in New England can make that a tough sell–a resource like the one provided by these guys is invaluable in that situation, as well.

The usual disclaimer: I’m essentially using blog posts like this as notes for an ongoing project. This isn’t meant to be instructional and before you try any of it, you should eat a candy bar and think about your life and know that I’m just some Internet idiot, and I like to eat donut holes and drink scotch in addition to working out. I won’t claim to tell you what to do fitness-wise but I can totally instruct you on those things. (Hey, this whole blog warns you about the “unreliable narrator” part of this deal, sparky.)

For real education on these kinds of things, you should park yourself at FitnessBlender.com for a day and absorb their videos and plans like they’re your Jedis of gym stuff.

[Fitness Blender]

*Village idiot

**Middle-aged dipstick desperately fleeing the Reaper’s scythe

Astronomer spots asteroids before they hit the Earth–twice

Rich Kowalski, a Tucson-based astronomer, should be earning a goddamned good paycheck. The guy just spotted–for the second time–a near-Earth asteroid before it became on on-Earth asteroid. The Arizona Daily Star reports that 2014 AA was only the size of a car and it burned out harmlessly in the atmosphere on Jan. 1. Most asteroids are about that size and burn up unnoticed, but Tim Swindle, who heads the lab where Kowalski does his work, says the work of astronomers like Kowalski is “to find the ones that may be dangerous” and that the “trick is to find them before they find us.” Looks like that may be possible, after all. Hopefully soon. [AZStarnet.com]

Man to try and pass off pet dead hobo as Bigfoot

Screengrab from Click2Houston.com. Seems legit.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a man is roaming in the Texas wilds when he straight up shoots a large bipedal hominid in the face (or something). If you said, “Dick Cheney!” you’d be right, but no, this is about self-styled Bigfoot hunter Rick Dyer, who says he’s got a dead Sasquatch on ice and plans to show it to the nation:

Rick Dyer released these photos on Thursday of what he says is proof that the mystical creature does, or at least did exist, before he shot and killed it. The legend chaser told our affiliate station, KSAT, that he shot and killed the creature while camping in a wooded area on the northwest side near Loop 1604 and Highway 151 in early September 2012.

Cool story, Rick, I’m sure it’s just as true as the story told by the guy who exhibited the dead Sasquatch my dad took me to see at 100 Oaks Mall in Nashville in 1978. Dead, iced-up Bigfoots all over the damn place, for decades now, apparently.

One hopes Mr. Dyer put the poor creature on ice. Bigfoots are legendarily stinky, and one that’s been dead longer than a year surely smells worse than a live specimen.

I can’t even bring myself to discuss the hirsute dead hobo possibility, because I don’t want to live in that world. Though I kind of do.

[Click2Houston.com]