Sunday Drive: Christmas Is Coming

The Blue Truck is now back online after a week-long and strangely unfathomable internet outage. Funny how something that 20 years ago we had no concept of, and never even thought about, is now so necessary to household happiness, all day every day. (Oh Mary, don't ask.)

But to get this blog back on track:  by request, the well-known theme from A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio:

Nightmare World: Facebook Wants Your Bank Account

I'll be honest with you, fellas:  Much as I try to keep a stiff upper lip about the decay of civilization, there are days when any attempt at optimism seems hopeless, and the vision of a nightmare world that surpasses anything Orwell ever dreamed of seems not merely imminent, but already present.

Facebook is not your friend, despite the happy college-kid face it presents to the world.  They now want to "partner" with banks to "improve customer service" and "benefit the consumer."  If you believe that, you are a fool.  It's a business, a huge, sprawling, corporation without a human soul.  A corporation is a machine to make money with - like any tool, it can be used for good or ill purposes.  But what all corporations want is to increase their stock prices and dividends, and too many corporate leaders tend not to care if any and all consumers get screwed in the process - hey, too bad, it's progress, wheeeee!

"Privacy" notice I got a few days ago from Google.  Even what your or I watch on YouTube or what places we look up on Google Maps are all tracked under the unceasing, unblinking eye of Big Brother, and filed in his unforgetting, ineradicable memory.  
If Google can follow your every stray thought, who else can too?  And is?

I could go on and on and on about the madness that has engulfed us all in the last 25 years since the advent of the Internet - and even though some antisocial types, like me, have never joined Facebook, there are who knows how many other companies, like Google, and countless little ones nobody ever heard of, all busily digging into everyone's privacy every minute of every hour of every day.  There is in fact no privacy left in the world for anyone, except maybe for some of those lost tribes in the Amazon jungle, and even their remote little world is being steadily invaded.

And it's not merely things that you think of as data-sharing sites.  There's also the ghastly Internet of Things, which to put it another way, means that your car, your refrigerator, your dishwasher, your microwave, and just about any other electronic gadget can in fact be made to spy on you and report everything you do, every word you say, and how you spend every second of your life, waking or sleeping.

From "sponsored content" about harvesting your privacy from the Internet of Things at Politico, 7/16/18.  Click to enlarge.

And every utility - electricity, gas, water - is produced, distributed, and metered by mini-minds that can also be misdirected or shut down.

And furthermore, every last one of those devices, in your home, or at the power plant, can be unlocked and controlled, probably, by some teenage hacker down the street or some spymaster on the other side of the world, with a few taps on a keyboard.

Just last year, somebody in Dallas broadcast a radio signal that activated all 156 of the city's tornado alarms, an amazing feat of digital malevolence.  Lily Hay Newman reported for Wired:

The Dallas incident fits with the broader uptick in infrastructure hacks around the country. From electric road signs to emergency text alert systems to suburban dams, hackers have targeted vulnerable structures with increasing boldness. And while the Dallas sirens did have some alarming secondary effects—over 4,000 calls to 911 flooded the city's emergency response lines for several hours—it's nothing next to the real danger that hacks like these could cause.

"There’s a steady drumbeat of these types of attacks and they’re all pretty benign right now, but what’s next? Is it water? Is it sewage?" says Chris Pogue, the chief information security officer at the data analysis firm Nuix. "Let’s not waste the potential lessons learned by saying it’s an isolated incident."

I don't want to be part of this nightmare.  And I don't want to be part of this ugly, vulgar, hate-filled century, which I'm afraid will one day make the horrors of the 20th century look like a Sunday-school picnic.  But what can any of us do now?  We walked into the enticing trap of the Internet willingly, all unsuspecting, and now the doors are closing on us, it seems.  One day, sooner than you think, Siri and Alexa and other talking boxes will not be optional - they will be required in every home.  Maybe even in every brain.  And then the last hope of resistance - of truly independent human personality - will have vanished.

And it won't be fresh-faced, innocent-looking types like Mark Zuckerberg pulling your strings.  It will be the ruthless, power-hungry leaders of the left or right - when they have a good grip on you with the ruthless digital hand, it won't much matter which side they are.

You may say, "Oh, Russ, you're just being melodramatic, don't get so excited, just chill."  Well, okay, boys - if you all don't think there's any danger to worry about, you just sit back and relax.  While you can.

But when a day comes that your bank balance is zeroed out, your credit cards too, and your car won't start, and you have no electricity - unless you do as you are told - for gosh sakes, don't come whine to me about it, "Oh I never dreamed this could happen."

It can.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

You have been warned.


P. S. -- Of course, I could be wrong. So was Orwell, so was Bradbury, so was Forster, so was Wells, and so were a lot of other writers who have rung the alarm bells about present trends and coming events, if you look only only at the small details of what they prophesied.  I don't have the talent for spinning a fascinating yarn as they did, either.

Nevertheless, no one doubts that they were right to sound a warning.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Who Can You Trust?

Story at Buzzfeed.


You have been warned.

It's Not Just the Feds You Should Worry About

A new documentary reveals the frightening power held by all the companies that you access online every day:

Terms And Conditions May Apply examines the cost of so-called 'free' services and the continuing disappearance of online privacy. People may think they know what they give up when they click 'I Agree' on companies like Facebook and Google. They're wrong.

See also the Guardian's guide to the metadata you generate online, and an example of how it was used by the FBI in the Petraeus scandal. (Hint: using an anonymous email account won't hide your identity.)


Update: On the other hand, you shouldn't stop worrying about the feds, either. Al Gore declared that the NSA's collection of vast amounts of data is "not really the American way" in a telephone interview published in the Guardian today:

Unlike other leading Democrats and his former allies, Gore said he was not persuaded by the argument that the NSA surveillance had operated within the boundaries of the law.

"This in my view violates the constitution. The fourth amendment and the first amendment – and the fourth amendment language is crystal clear," he said. "It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is."

Gore added: "This is not right." . . .

Gore has long had qualms about the expansion of the surveillance state in the digital age. He made those concerns public this year in his latest book, The Future: Six Drivers of Social Change, in which he warned: "Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place."

Within hours of the Guardian's first story about the NSA, the former vice-president tweeted: "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?

He said on Friday: "Some of us thought that it was probably going on, but what we have learned since then makes it a cause for deep concern."

Also: Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, which has oversight of the Homeland Security Department, said after a briefing by intelligence officials that the revelations of NSA surveillance leaked to the media this past week are "just the tip of the iceberg," the program being much broader than hitherto suspected.

Sign of the Times: Newsweek Abandons Print

The cover of Newsweek's first edition in 1933.

For good or ill, it seems an historic tipping point has been reached, as Newsweek magazine announces its exit from paper-and-ink format:

We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue.

Meanwhile, Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence, as well as its successful global partnerships and events business.

Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

Andrew Sullivan, whose Daily Dish blog appears on the Daily Beast website, is anxious to trash all printed media right away. An excerpt from his longish meditation on this subject:

The shift in my own mind has happened gradually. Even up to a year ago, I was still getting my New York Times every morning on paper, wrapped in blue plastic. Piles of them would sit in my blog-cave, read and half-read, skimmed, and noted.

Until a couple of years ago, I also read physical books on paper, and then shifted to cheaper, easier, lighter tablet versions. Then it became a hassle to get the physical NYT delivered in Provincetown so I tried a summer of reading it on a tablet. I now read almost everything on my iPad. And as I ramble down the aisle of Amtrak's Acela, I see so many reading from tablets or laptops, with the few newspapers and physical magazines seeming almost quaint, like some giant brick of a mobile phone from the 1980s. Almost no one under 30 is reading them. One day, we'll see movies with people reading magazines and newspapers on paper and chuckle. Part of me has come to see physical magazines and newspapers as, at this point, absurd. They are like Wile E Coyote suspended three feet over a cliff for a few seconds. They're still there; but there's nothing underneath; and the plunge is vast and steep. . . .

Print magazines today are basically horses and carriages, a decade after the car had gone into mass production. Why the fuck do they exist at all, except as lingering objects of nostalgia?

Your Head Trucker thought about writing a short eulogy here for the printed word, which sustained his spirit for so many years - but the modern world has no sympathy for such tristesse over antiquities like books and magazines, so I'll just keep my thoughts to myself. Besides - it's all about the money, anyway, as it always is.

Bonus: Just for fun, a report from 1981 on the future of online newspapers, then just barely a reality for a select few, as television was in the 1930's:

How to Wipe Your Google History

From Wired, via Andrew Sullivan:

If you've been to Google's homepage lately — and the chances you have are astronomical — you may have noticed a little announcement mentioning something about changes in Google's privacy policy. You then probably ignored it — but you shouldn't.

On March 1st, 2012, Google will implement a new, unified privacy policy. The new policy is retroactive, meaning it will affect any data Google has collected on you prior to that date, as well as any data it gathers afterward. The official Google Blog has more details on what the new privacy policy means. But what does all of this legal jargon mean practically? Basically, under the new policy, your Google Web History (all of your searches and the sites you clicked through to) can be combined with other data Google has gathered about you from other services — Gmail, Google+, etc.

Previously Google kept your search history separate, which means that its profile of you was less complete. If you'd like to keep your personal data a good distance away from Google, you'll need to delete your existing search history and prevent Google from using that history in the future.

Click here for a quick quide to wiping your web history from Google and keeping it private.

Then and Now

It all changed so fast, didn't it?

Honk to Joe.My.God.

The Connection Infection

[Note - I have no freakin' idea why this video won't display, and I've re-embedded it twice.  If it doesn't display on your end, here's the link.]

Your Head Trucker is one of the few people now living outside of a nursing home who has actually sent a telegram for ordinary communication - ten words for $1.50 in 1966.  SRSLY.

Stephen Heiner, a recovering Blackberrier, on the plague of eternal uplinkedness (honk to Andrew Sullivan):

As this breakthrough happened, I realized something deeper about the way we use phones – not just the smart ones: we are their slaves. We jump whenever they call because we never, ever turn them off. They only get turned off if we run out of battery life, and even then we become desperate for a charger and can think of little else until our depleted child has the charging indicator safely blinking and is serenely drinking its electronic milk.

We have allowed ourselves to become 24/7 radio beacons. We are always on. Always ready to transmit or receive. There is a nervous habit that the younger generation has of checking their cell phones every 90 seconds or so. Just watch them. They didn’t hear a text message notification, but they are checking their phones just in case. And who knows, one might feel the urge to send a text message because heck, it’s been 30 seconds since one was sent. Watch people in airports, or in the auto repair shop, or on a university campus. There is a constant need to check to see if they are still plugged in. It is a nervous tic that they don’t even know is a tic.

In previous times, when we were more tied to place and limits as a society, people were reached at a specific location. Letters came to homes. Telegrams came to homes. Phone calls were placed…to homes. The cell phone, the harbinger of the always-on internet society, unhooked the anchor of place from communication. And when communication is not limited, is not circumscribed, it becomes unlimited and tyrannous. . . .

While people always cite “emergencies,” more often than not the singular reason that a cell phone exists in their lives is to give them a crutch to prevent them from being alone with themselves, their thoughts, and their fellow human beings. Going to the gym? Call a friend. Running an errand? Send a text. Eating something interesting? Take a picture and show the world on Facebook. We are incapable of living outside the virtual cloud that surrounds us. We can only fully live if we are constantly connected.

Or we can turn it off, put ourselves back in control of the machine, and take back the solitude and dreamy quiet of our thoughts: the beginnings of a recollection that lends itself to prayer and conversation.

What I Say:  It's truly astonishing to consider how quickly and vastly the Internet has changed our lives in what seems to me like a rather short time.  When I was finishing college at the turn of the 70's/80's, computers were still largely in the commercial-use-only phase.   All big companies and most small ones by that time were sending you computerized bills every month, and I do recall that by my senior year the library at my university had supplemented the card catalog - gee, I miss those - with an electronic one.  Which actually had, wonder of wonders, not a keyboard but a touch-screen display (black screen and amber characters, no pictures, no Windows).  Which of course was promptly covered with every kind of greasy fingerprint imaginable and stayed that way.

But even though the very first PC's had just come on the market by the beginning of the decade, if I remember rightly, nobody but a very few intensely passionate fans of technology ("geek" had yet to enter the lexicon as a term for those guys) had them.  Pocket calculators, yes (from about 1975), but PC's, no.  For one thing, they were hideously expensive, maybe the equivalent of two to three thousand dollars now.  For another, to use them you had to learn a whole programming language, like Basic.  But even if you had the dough to invest in one, and the many long hours of solitary study to be able to program it, my thought always was, just what the hell would you do with it once you had it?

Continued after the jump . . . .

Warning: We Know What You Did

Couple things I've recently learned, and want to share with my Truckbuddies as a warning.

First, can you be fired from your job for posting an anonymous sexual comment online?

Yup.  It's just happened to a guy in Missouri.

Second, can somebody look up all the comments you've ever made online?

Apparently so.  Check out this Backtype website I just came across.  Type your screen name into the search box and see what pulls up.

Who knew? 

Shit.

Probly there's even more ways to dig up everything you've said and done online that this country boy doesn't have any clue about.  So I'm thinking maybe starting up my Toolbox site under the same screen name wasn't such a great idea.

Well guys, think about your own cyberlife and act accordingly.  You have been warned.

Eye of the Beholder

Perception is everything.

Over in the Toolbox, I've posted some pics (NSFW) of ultra-hot David Anthony, a new porn star with TitanMen.  He really winds my crank, I gotta tell you, guys - but I was struck by this editorial comment in Titan's press release about him:

Working with David is a lot of fun, because he’s such a nice and intelligent man. He has the kind of confidence that only a mature man can have. . . .  At 41, David is the archetypal TitanMen “Daddy”, mature, sexually confident and swinging a big stick!

Say what?  And here Daddy was thinking, man, what a fine boy he would make.
 
Which tells you something about me, I guess.
 
The Toolbox post also has a link to a clip of David off-duty in a San Francisco park, answering nature's call.  Which is pretty hot if you like to watch that kind of thing.
 
But then at the end of the clip, big porn stud rides off on a bicycle.  Yeah, yeah, I know it's like totally cool and earth-friendly, yada yada yada.  Yet I can't help thinking, just like a kid riding home from the playground.
 
Which tells you something about me and my generation, I guess.  Driving off in a butch pickup or jeep would have been a lot sexier way to end the clip. Or at least a Harley, for God's sake!
 
On a side note, David shows no hesitation about peeing for the camera out in a public place.  That reminds me how far we've all come in this internet age. 
 
Just 10 years ago, when I got my first home computer - yeah, I joined the party late, I kept thinking it was all just a fad - I remember I was startled to see all these ordinary guys posting their self pics online for all the world to see.   I couldn't imagine doing a thing like that, myself.  What's wrong with these people, I thought, have they no sense of shame, or dignity?
 
But I got over it.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is, after some polite but firm talk from your Head Trucker last week, AT&T offered to replace the burned-out power cord and send me a new modem too - free.  Plus, the last rep I talked to reviewed my existing phone /internet service, and offered me a landline package with unlimited long distance for only $35/mo.  Plus a good price on an internet upgrade, twice as fast as what I had - and I'll still be saving $20-25 bucks a month compared to the service I had.

So Ma Bell made me a happy customer in the end.  And my new modem arrived this afternoon, a day ahead of schedule.  Sweet.

Bad news:  the new DSL service doesn't start till 8 p.m. tomorrow night.  So till then I am still stuck with this abysmally sloooooow AOL dial-up connection.

Bonus bad news:  since the time change, it's now dark outside at 6 freaking p.m.  Bummer.

Chart:  etgiftstore

Rats!

So there I was, four hours ago, blogging away on the last post, when all of a sudden - no internet connection.

Three phone calls and a lot of fuming later, it seems that the power cord/adapter to my AT&T modem - not the modem itself - suddenly decided to stop working. 

Nobody else, of course, sells the exact same size power cord to go with an AT&T modem.  Yes, I tried wally world and Radio Shack, no dice.  So it might be 3 to 5 days before I can get a new one shipped out here to the edge of civilization, they told me at AT&T.  If the mule don't throw a shoe.

Therefore, blogging may be impaired on the Blue Truck for a while.  Fortunately, I have held on to my old AOL dial-up connection (ask your grandpa what that is) all these years, so I'm able to get a few squeaks out.  But damn, it is sooooo s-l-o-w after being used to broadband.

RATS!