RainCaster
RainCaster's JournalLawsuit forces CenturyLink to stop charging "Internet Cost Recovery Fee"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/lawsuit-forces-centurylink-to-stop-charging-internet-cost-recovery-fee/Thanks to our state AG, CenturyLink will have to stop billing WA residents for a bogus fee that is just part of the normal cost of doing business.
"CenturyLink deceived consumers by telling them they would pay one price and then charging them more," Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in an announcement yesterday. "Companies must clearly disclose all added fees and charges to Washingtonians."
Ferguson encouraged Washington residents "who believe they have received bills that include undisclosed fees to file a complaint" with the state.
Ferguson's office said it began investigating CenturyLink in 2016 "after receiving complaints from consumers that their actual bills were more than the advertised price, or the price that they were promised by sales representatives."
Bohemian Rhapsody
I spent the evening working on the surround sound wiring, EQ, etc. for our home theater system. Then I rewarded myself by putting on the 4k version of this.
Steve Rabel rocks!
Thanks to my lovely wife, she got the radio synced up to the Seahawks game on Fox TV.
So much better!
Fashion: Cardigans are hip
Ok, I have always liked cardigans. I wear one in my office at home, and I love the feel. Yet when I travel for work, I always wear a sport jacket. Now the NY Times says I'm cool, in an article entitled "The Men's Cardigan Makes a Comeback". https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/fashion/mister-rogers-cardigan.html
Hopefully, you can read this. I don't know if it's behind their paywall.
Mike Pompeo: Last in His Class at West Point in Integrity
From the "failing New York Times"
Mike Pompeo: Last in His Class at West Point in Integrity
The secretary of states behavior has been cowardly and self-serving.
I say that because Pompeo has just violated one of the cardinal rules of American military ethics and command: You look out for your soldiers, you dont leave your wounded on the battlefield and you certainly dont stand mute when you know a junior officer is being railroaded by a more senior commander, if not outright shot in her back.
The classes on ethics and leadership at West Point would have taught all of that. I can only assume Pompeo failed or skipped them all when you observe his cowardly, slimy behavior as the leader of the State Department. I would never, ever, ever want to be in a trench with that man. Attention all U.S. diplomats: Watch your own backs, because Pompeo wont.
Plenty more at the link.
Business vs Government - Trump edition
Let me begin by saying that I have spent my life in business. I have started numerous companies in Silicon Valley and Seattle. My understanding of how government works is what I got from many years of working with state and county officials on various issues that are important to me.
I know that in the business world, it is critical to your company's success that you get out the message that you are "open for business" as soon as possible. While I don't agree with it, I have heard the notion that "if they spell your name right, it's good news". My opinion is that PR has to be complimentary to your exact business, otherwise, it's counterproductive.
What I saw today in the impeachment hearings was evidence of a president and his embassador who told the world "we are open for business".
Now, if the US is a business, that is acceptable. However, my understanding is, that our government is supposed to be about doing all things possible to support the lives of its citizens, and not about the personal gain of its government officials. But, what what Sondland and Trump did in their phone call was to tell the entire world over an unencrypted phone line that our country could be bought and the price is cheap.
To me, this is wrong and needs to be corrected. DFT needs to find a permanent place in our penitentiary system, along with all his cronies. Those must include Mike Pense, Rudy Ghouliani, Richard Sondland, and any other jackass who wants to worship at the feet of the Cheeto Tweeter.
We Read All 2,677 Pages of Ukraine Testimony So You Don't Have To
This is from LawFareBlog. It looks like a great resource for all of us.
To make these voluminous pages more digestible, Lawfare contributors have summarized each of the released eight deposition transcripts. We have published summaries of all eight. The summaries are available below and include links to the relevant deposition transcripts:
* Amb. Marie Yovanovitch
* Michael McKinley
* Amb. Kurt Volker
* Amb. Gordon Sondland
* George Kent
* Amb. William Taylor
* Fiona Hill
* Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
We (they) will add more summaries as further transcripts are released. They will be available at the first link shown at the top of this.
The coming events
I stopped at the grocery on the way home tonight. There is a Seahawks game (NFL) tonight, and I needed snacks for that. I picked up a few more for the Wednesday events as well. At the cashiers line, I had several people ask why I needed so many chips & other things for one football game. My explanation was that there is two more major events this week and each will require a significant quantity of beer. Then I reminded them of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday & Friday. Several replied with words similar to "its a bad week to stop drinking".
Have any TV networks promised gavel-to-gavel impeachment coverage?
Where can I watch this fabulous popcorn fest?
8chan reemerges as "8kun" but can't keep its new website online
Source: Arstechnica
"Not sure how long we will be able to stay online with clearnet due to activists trying to deplatform us, and hackers preparing to ddos us. The tor hidden service should remain available regardless," Watkins wrote on Twitter Saturday. 8kun was also available on Loki, which Watkins described as an experimental alternative to Tor.
FURTHER READING
Dumped by Cloudflare, 8chan gets back onlinethen gets kicked off again
8kun is using Tucows as its registrar, and a Vice report says that 8kun's hosting service is the Russia-based Media Land LLC. Media Land was recently described as a "bulletproof hosting service" by security reporter Brian Krebs. It's not clear if the 8kun administrators found a full replacement for Cloudflare's anti-DDoS services.
"We have been under sustained attacks the past few days and doing everything we can to get things stable again," Watkins wrote on Twitter today, shortly before the site went down again. "The site is still onlinealbeit limping alongas we reorganize and restructure to deflect attacks coming from many angles."
...
8chan temporarily got back online in early August, shortly after losing Cloudflare service. 8chan switched its website to a provider called BitMitigate, the same company that began serving the Daily Stormer after Cloudflare cut it off. But that didn't last long, either, as BitMitigate's cloud infrastructure provider decided to shut off BitMitigate's service.
Read more: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/8chan-gets-back-online-and-is-promptly-forced-off-again/
It looks like hate speech on the internet is not welcomed by the uber-geeks. Makes my day.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHome country: USA
Current location: Left Coast
Member since: Mon Oct 10, 2016, 07:19 PM
Number of posts: 10,923