I Can Get to Europe Next Month; Can I Get Back Again? August 4, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in travel.Tags: COVID, Swiss Testing Day, travel, vaccination
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I am speaking at Swiss Testing Day in Zurich on September 14th. They seem to be bound and determined to hold an in-person conference, even with the rise of the Delta variant and the next wave of Covid.
I haven’t made any reservations yet. But I have been researching requirements for travel. First, the good news. Because I am fully vaccinated, it appears Switzerland will accept me. But I’m a little leery of that; because of the strange attitude in the US toward vaccine passports, my proof is my vaccine cards (I have two, one for each shot), which are hardly positive identification.
It’s also a little problematic because Switzerland is not part of the EU, but is a member of Schengen, the larger aviation consortium. But it looks like I can transit Amsterdam Schiphol (the Netherlands itself is not accepting Americans), as long as I stay airside.
Getting back is another story. Even with vaccination, anyone coming into the US (only on an airplane) is required to have a negative Covid test within three days of departure. Not 72 hours, but three days (don’t ask).
My problem here was that I had no idea where to get tested in Zurich. Some research informed me that the Swiss, efficient people that they are, are offering testing at the airport, before you leave. I am a little hesitant about getting a test shortly before I get on the airplane; what happens if it comes up positive?
But what kind of test do I need? The explanation is dense, but I think (emphasis on think) a rapid antigen test will suffice. The airport clinic says that the turnaround time for this type of test is about 20 minutes, which means that it can be done just prior to departure. The more comprehensive PCR test returns in about five hours.
And, of course, everything or anything can change in the next six weeks.
And then I get to do the same thing two weeks later to go to Serbia.
No Guarantees July 28, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.Tags: COVID, mask, vaccine
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Yes, I’m writing about Covid-19 again. After returning from a road race in Florida, where masking discipline is nonexistent, I have to confront the reality of people’s excuses for it being so.
First, you can’t tell me with any level of seriousness that 98 percent of people anywhere are vaccinated. Yet that’s about the percentage of people who don’t wear masks in Florida, indoors or out, according to my admittedly unscientific estimate.
Certainly we might consider Florida an exceptional case, where the governor has mandated, well, the lack of a mask mandate across the state. You can’t fix stupid. But this has largely been the case in other states (North Carolina, Alabama) I have visited this year. In fact, in Key West in January, the police were enforcing masking even on the streets.
Not now. People are using a wide variety of excuses to shed masks. Whether it is my choice (not really), personal freedom (absurd as a logical statement), government imposition (the government can impose health measures), experimental (but still tested with tens of thousands of subjects), infertility (I can’t think of anything more stupid), I think just about everyone would agree that we declared victory too early.
Much of the blame lies with the CDC. Rather than saying unmask willy-nilly, it should have provided a step-by-step rollout of relaxing restrictions. Now it is reinstating masking guidance, even for the vaccinated. They have managed to confuse just about everyone, including me.
Vaccinated people are apparently getting frustrated. If around 80 percent of the population were vaccinated, there is a good chance we would be beyond this point. But too many people don’t care a whit about public health.
One of the more pervasive, yet stupid, arguments against vaccines is that vaccinated people are still getting Covid, so why should I bother. Um, there are not, and were never, any guarantees with any vaccine. We are greatly improving the probability that we won’t get Covid, but if we do, it is far more likely to be a light case. That’s what the vaccine provides us, not guarantees. Get it through your heads, people. There are no guarantees in life. But we do have chances to greatly reduce risk.
Now, I want to say something personal. I am a reasonably healthy, 60+ year old male who had priority on the vaccination list in my state, and took full advantage of it. I mask, and I wear a face shield and gloves when traveling.
People are still dying. Covid-19 cases are increasing dramatically. We can fix this. Why do people still insist in acting against public health?
Space, the Never Frontier July 20, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, travel.Tags: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Space travel
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A couple of years ago I ran in the Gateway to Space “road” race, which actually involved going to Cape Canaveral and running the Space Shuttle runway (I’ve since done it again, but have to pass later this year). A part of that experience is being on hand to visit the Kennedy Space Visitor Center, the central tourist attraction for those inclined to understand and appreciate our space program.
Despite the seeming somnambulance of our national space program over the last decade, the Kennedy Visitor Center presents an optimistic and glowing future, led by a public/private partnership that emphasizes exploration with exploitation of both the moon and of Mars.
You see where this is going. This year Richard Branson, through Virgin Galactic, and Jeff Bezos, through Blue Origin, have participated in suborbital flights, perhaps marking the dawn of a new Space Age that seamlessly combines science, exploration, and commercial ventures. It’s only a matter of time before Elon Musk joins them through his own venture, SpaceX.
Yes, all are billionaires. And I will not begrudge their (financial) ability and willingness to be the public face of space exploration in the future. If I had a few billion dollars, there is a high probability I would do the same. If the recent flights are a little too reminiscent of little boys flaunting their expensive toys, I might be willing to excuse that in favor of a renewed excitement over space exploration.
But it is troublesome that this is coming almost entirely from private industry. In one sense, this is little different than thirty years ago, where private industry (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Thiokol, etc.) essentially designed and built our space capsules and delivery vehicles, under the loose control of NASA. Industry was still the building blocks of our space program.
But this feels very different today. Space will be commercially exploited at some point in time, and these three entrepreneurs and companies will likely be at that forefront. My problem is with the public faces.
But with NASA and the government in charge, we had ordinary people who we could think of, ultimately, as hero explorers. Here in New Hampshire, we have the Christa McAuliffe-Alan Shepard Discovery Center and Planetarium. I met John Glenn once, as a United States Senator, and Neil Armstrong, outside of the Delta Sky Club in Cincinnati.
These were ordinary people, defined by their exceling in their respective fields and demonstrating that anyone can make the space travel dream a reality. We could be among them. Today we don’t have that. Instead we have billionaires who are in that position by virtue of their wealth rather than their ability and drive. Yes, they made their billions on their own volition, but now space seems to be a fun distraction for them.
And that troubles me for the future of our space program.
This is the Best Scam I Have Ever Seen July 1, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture.Tags: Domain Services, scam
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Today I received a paper bill, to my home address, to renew my primary domain (I own five others), petervarhol.com, for the next year for the sum of $228.
Problem. I own this domain through Register.com, and it is already paid for through the next year. I looked it up, and contacted Register, and they confirmed.
The bill is very professionally done, even offering payment by credit card (yeah, right) and including a return address envelope (no stamp though).
I do believe this is the first time I have been disconcerted by a scam. I suppose it’s possible for a scammer to get my home address, using a combination of whois and generally available address databases. I wonder how many people would simply pay the bill, believing that it was simply a renewal notice, albeit an expensive one.
This one was scary, because of the seeming legitimacy of a bill on paper (yes, I am of that generation), and my dependency on this domain for my life activities.
So, fair warning. Don’t fall for something that looks like the bills we get on a regular basis. If it doesn’t pass the smell test, it may just be an increasingly sophisticated scam.
The Relationship Between Education and Warfighting June 29, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Education.Tags: General Milley, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson, William Calley
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I confess that it made my blood boil to hear disparaging comments on our military leadership recently (yes, that’s you, Matt Gaetz and Tucker Carlson), especially with regard to educating themselves and their peers on controversial topics.
Our military is among the most highly and broadly educated segments of American society. The military academies are among the most highly rigorous and competitive universities anywhere. Almost all officers graduate from college, many from the top schools in the country. In addition to military tactics and strategy, they study history, literature, current events, international relations, and even art. The enlisted personnel, the airmen, soldiers, and sailors who likely joined right outside of high school take a combination of general education and technical training courses to enable them to function in a highly complex society. Many have some college, and about ten percent get bachelors degrees.
All is not necessarily right with the military. Soldiers and sailors often live in difficult circumstances, away from families for months at a time, and making a pittance to support those families. The security and economic stresses can be enormous. Their responses often reflect this.
Further, the military is a microcosm of larger society. While the military is often in the vanguard of social change, we still have theft, assault, murder, insubordination, and other crimes. That doesn’t make the military an indiscriminate killing machine, but it does make them human.
First Lieutenant William Calley was 25 years old, leading several hundred troops in a rural area of North Vietnam, and under his command the company murdered and raped villagers under the mistaken belief that they were Viet Cong sympathizers. He served three and a half years of house arrest, and certainly deserved much more. Yet, at 25, living a largely sheltered life, would I have done any better? I would like to think I would have, but I hope to never find out.
Yes, I am a veteran. I can’t say that I was a very good airman; I can name a hundred things I could have done better, back in my early 20s. But I groked some life-long, and life-changing lessons from the experience. And to be fair, I was largely disappointed with General Milley until his last appearance before the House. Now I see that I was wrong about him.
There are those, military and ex-military, who shirk at the need to know anything beyond warfighting. But the best soldiers are those who are able to understand the language, culture, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses of their adversaries, and of their society in general.
Simply, we want the best soldiers we can produce. We do a credible job at that, at least as good as other advanced countries. And one of the most important ways we do that is to enable and support education of controversial topics. These are smart people; we can trust them to evaluate the nuance of what they learn for the good of society. But learning, wherever curiosity takes them, is an essential part of that process.
I Watched My Grandnephew Graduate from Space Cybersecurity Camp June 25, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.Tags: Nash Braden, Space Camp
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Over a hundred kids, from all over the country. Irrespective of my grandnephew, Nash Braden, this was supercool to see all of these young people get certificates, in space, aviation, cyber security, and other specialties. While it is live streaming on YouTube, it is incredibly powerful to see our youth achieve like this.
After a couple of years of wondering if we are falling back instead of achieving a higher level of civilization, I now know that we are emphatically not. The best of our young people are advancing our civilization and intellect in a way that I never had the opportunity to do. We don’t have to worry that science and intellectual curiosity are dead; they are most emphatically not.
These young teens (my grandnephew is actually twelve) represent the future of our society and our potential. I am so incredibly pleased with the focus on science and technology that they demonstrate in working for a week focused on science areas.
I would love to be in an environment where science is the focus of a period of time where we can just learn new things. As an adult, it’s difficult to focus on pure science, and be able to show a concrete result after a week of intense effort. The leaders here are college students who are using their summers to guide the generation behind them in building a foundation of learning in things that we probably never knew existed.
I recognize that Space Camp is a rather elitist thing to do. It cost some money, and my family is not poor. No one that I ever knew growing up would have had the opportunity to pay to spend a week at Space Camp when I was young. I would like to see more opportunities for disadvantaged youth here, and well, maybe they do.
But in a world where science is downplayed and even denigrated, this is a clear breath of fresh air. Bon chance, Nash Braden, and all of the rest of you in your teens, your further education, and your careers.
Cybersecurity, Past and Future June 23, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Algorithms, Software platforms.Tags: Clipper, Cybersecurity, PGP
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I just returned from helping drop off my grandnephew at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where he is taking a weeklong camp in cybersecurity. Before dropping him off, I asked him if he knew what SQL injection and buffer overruns were. He didn’t, but he’s only twelve, and I hope he does before returning at the end of the week.
This got me thinking about cybersecurity in general, and what seems to have become a backwater in encryption in particular. I’m going to start with the Clipper chip, a hardware integrated circuit promoted by the US government, that provided for a secret encryption algorithm with a backdoor for the government to access encrypted communications. This chip, announced in 1993, was found to have at least one security flaw, and because the US government did not or could not mandate its use, disappeared entirely later in the decade.
There was a particularly tense period in computing where it looked possible that the government would be able to impose Clipper on computer manufacturers (as well as phone manufacturers), which would have allowed the US government a back door into every single one of our systems.
I can’t count the number of problems, nor the extent of arrogance, with this approach. First was the security flaw, which had nothing to do with the algorithm, which is secret, and everything to do with how it transmits the keys, which is simplistic enough to be hacked fairly easily. Plus, while the government said it would never read anyone else’s mail or files without serious reason and a court order, no one believed them. Despite the obvious use in helping to fight crime, it is ripe for government overreach and abuse.
At about the same time (1991), computer scientist and software engineer Phil Zimmerman introduced an algorithm called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), which arguably provided a far superior encryption approach that Clipper. Rather than attempt to profit from it, Zimmerman released it and the source code as open source, meaning that anyone could download, modify, and use it. He let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
The amusing thing (not for Zimmerman) was that at the time encryption technology was considered a munition by the US government. Yes, that’s right; a weapon (it still is, although now at a higher level of encryption than PGP). As a result, Zimmerman was hounded by the FBI, the Customs agency, and the NSA for making a controlled weapon available outside of the US. Zimmerman was never arrested, but he was harassed mercilessly by the authorities, before that case was finally dropped.
Today, I’m not sure where encryption is in the general population. The problem was that these approaches, known as private key/public key encryption, required users to go through multiple steps in order to decode their own documents, and to send email to others. Using it in a phone is potentially easier, and that may be where it has found a home. No one wants to go through those extra steps. Clipper has been completely dead for over 20 years.
Our major issues with cybersecurity today involve hacking through more traditional attack techniques (SQL injection and buffer overruns are still popular), rather than trying to read files. The truth be told, whatever is encrypted today is unlikely to be read by anyone soon. The random algorithms simply take too long to crack. And individuals aren’t going to go through the extra steps in order to encrypt and decrypt files. While personal encryption may be an important technology, it is also an intellectual backwater.
Back to my grandnephew. It is too early to tell whether cybersecurity will attract his attention span, but he could do worse.
January 6th Would Have Worked June 22, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Uncategorized.Tags: insurrection, January 6
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I dislike discussing politics, especially publicly, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. I am a longtime registered Republican, from the Bush school of thought (both of them). I became a Republican when leaders were talking about a “big tent” and “ten thousand points of light”. Those were powerful sentiments that evoked community and shared purpose, even if we weren’t all the same. Those are the things that any group of people need to be a successful country and society.
Today, of course, it’s a small tent, growing smaller, encompassed in darkness. Its goal is to elicit anger, victimhood, complaints of unfairness, and an us-versus-them mentality (and I don’t even know if I am us or them).
The world I grew up in was very different. I can’t say that it was better, except for the lack of overt hostility. The unionized working class of the 1960s and 1970s was staunchly Democrat, and I railed against the requirement to pay and promote strictly on seniority. I was, and still am, a meritocrat, believing that learning, skill, ability, and drive do make a difference in life. I have not risen to the top, but nor am I mediocre.
And over time, the Democratic Party became the party of the avocado-toast consuming crowd, which I have nothing in common with. While I am educated and I would like to think comfortable with sophistication, my inclinations and tastes are still pretty basic.
That brings us to January 6th, surely a seminal day in American history. It’s easy to view it simply as a rogue event, driven by a few thousand rowdy individuals against an unprepared police force. Our country was not really teetering on the edge of an armed insurrection, civil war, or violent overthrow of government.
Or was it?
Recent reports on advance planning, weapons, and abject violence argue that we can’t dismiss it so lightly. Were there people in the crowd who gathered with the explicit goal of overthrowing the government and overturning the election? Evidence points to a definite yes.
So the fact of the matter is that there were people there who could have succeeded in a coup, had they had more forces and been better organized. The problem was that President Trump seems to have simply wanted it to happen without his direct intervention.
His direct intervention, on the other hand, could and probably would have tilted events in the opposite direction. Let’s say that Trump called upon all of his followers to bring their guns into DC that day, maybe a hundred thousand strong, and invade the Capitol and the Supreme Court, with the explicit goal of keeping him in the White House as what he calls the legitimate President. He could have backed off the police presence and forbid the National Guard from getting involved. He might even have been able to call out friendly forces in the Army to support his cause.
It’s not clear that our institutions, which I believe in very strongly, would have held up. At best, it would have been a significant mess. Would these people have hanged Mike Pence, or held members of Congress against their will? Would they have prevented an obvious Supreme Court ruling against the overthrow, or even prevented the Supreme Court from ruling at all? At Trump’s explicit instructions, I think they might have.
So I think we did dodge a bullet back in January. And we’re not done dodging that particular bullet.
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