What do you call someone who doesn't back up their data?

Dataless:

You should backup your data. You should have multiple backups of your data. You should have multiple rotating or rolling backups of your data. You should have multiple rotating or rolling backups of your data saved to different types of backup media. Ideally, you should have multiple rolling or rotating backups of your data saved to different types of backup media including off-site backups.

Evidently, a PBS station didn’t follow any of these rules. Instead they handed their data to a third-party, said “Here, we’ll pay you to store it for us,” and now they’re screwed because the company went defunct.

Le sigh.  Lawrence brings the hammer down on their IT organization:

Nor can this PBS station plead poverty: “2022 their gross income was [about] $13.5 million expenses 12.8 million. Their net was 3/4 of a million. So the net that is what they got to keep after paying all the employee salaries, after paying the directors 700,000 bucks.” Yeah, they could afford a local backup solution. 

 And quite frankly, so can you.  ASM826 and I wrote at length about this a decade ago.

Here we go again. Not, this isn't the "Hottest Year Ever"

They keep saying this every year, and I keep saying what I say every year.  First, what they say:

July was “a wild weather month,” setting a record as the warmest month ever for the contiguous United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

Temperatures last month averaged 76.9 degrees Fahrenheit as above-average warmth blanketed the U.S., and several locations in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Montana saw all-time high temperature records since NOAA started keeping track in 1895.

Last month was 0.1 to 0.2 degrees warmer than July 1936 and July 2012, according to the agency. July also broke the record for the average low temperature, at 64.2 degrees, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7 degrees. 

 Notice how slippery this report is: several locations in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Montana saw all-time high temperature records.  So what about the State high temperature records for those locations?  And this is where I say what I've been saying for like a decade or more:

You want to see a real heat wave?  Look at July 1936.  Eleven States set high temperature records that stand to this day.  That Wikipedia page is a little shifty on this, trying to hide the decline in record temperatures.  You'll see an asterisk next to South Dakota, which the Wiki page says means Also on earlier date or dates in that state.  So what was that earlier date for South Dakota?  July 1936.

Oh, and three more States set high temperature records the next month, August 1936.  That makes 14 out of the 50 States suffered record high temperatures in the summer of 1936.  That's almost 30% of the States.

Everyone is shifty on climate data.  So what gives?  It's the old expression from Statistics: if you torture the data enough, it will confess to anything.  Here's how they torture the data:

The reported warming trend appears to be driven mainly by rising nighttime low temperatures. Because climate “averages” combine daytime highs and nighttime lows, warmer nights can make the overall average look higher even when daytime high temperatures do not show the same increase.

...

NOAA adjusts older weather-station records to account for non-climate changes, such as stations moving, equipment changing, or observers recording temperatures at different times of day. Its Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) compares a station with nearby stations to identify and correct apparent breaks in the record. 

Remember, they adjust the measured ("raw") temperatures, but they don't adjust the record temperatures (because that would be way too shifty).  So (as I've been posting for years), how much of the 20th Century's warming is from adjustments?  It's 80%: 

An interesting question is how much of the 20th Century's warming came from adjustments, rather than from raw data? A picture is worth a thousand words:
What you're looking at is the annual adjustment made to the raw temperature, for each year in the 20th Century. You'll notice that almost no adjustments are made to years up to 1960, and then a very interesting shape appears in the graph.

A hockey Stick.

And what Science®-denying Tea-Bagging place did I get that?  From the Fed.Gov's weathermen, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

So the data are fiddled to the point that over 80% of the reported warming cannot be found in the data as recorded.  Its in the adjustments to the data after the fact.

And so we're left with three observations:

1. The reported data are fiddled and are untrustworthy.
2. The record data are not fiddled and are trustworthy.
3. It's summer.  It's hot, hot, hot ...

Hey, Bustah!

Cool archaeology news

Two items of note here.  First up, Baltic shipwreck champagne was destined for Tsar Alexander II:

Meticulous research into the bottles of champagne found in a shipwreck discovered in the Baltic sea south of the Swedish island of Öland in July 2024, has uncovered that they were destined for the table of Tsar Alexander II.

The well-preserved remains of the 19th century ship were found 190 feet deep by technical divers from the Baltictech Association. The ship stayed upright when it sank to the seabed, and the cold waters of the Baltic were ideal storage conditions for dozens of glass wine bottles and stoneware Selters mineral water bottles.

...

The team reached out to Louis Roederer to find out more about the bottles, perform chemical analyses of the liquid inside the bottle and advise them on recovering a few samples. As luck would have it, one of Roederer’s champagne experts, Peter Liem, is also an experienced technical diver, so he was able to go down to the wreck and point specific bottles to recover. One was tested in Sweden, and several sent to Louis Roederer Champag

Meticulous research into the bottles of champagne found in a shipwreck discovered in the Baltic sea south of the Swedish island of Öland in July 2024, has uncovered that they were destined for the table of Tsar Alexander II.

The well-preserved remains of the 19th century ship were found 190 feet deep by technical divers from the Baltictech Association. The ship stayed upright when it sank to the seabed, and the cold waters of the Baltic were ideal storage conditions for dozens of glass wine bottles and stoneware Selters mineral water bottles.

...

The team reached out to Louis Roederer to find out more about the bottles, perform chemical analyses of the liquid inside the bottle and advise them on recovering a few samples. As luck would have it, one of Roederer’s champagne experts, Peter Liem, is also an experienced technical diver, so he was able to go down to the wreck and point specific bottles to recover. One was tested in Sweden, and several sent to Louis Roederer Champagne House in Reims for analysis.

The champagne contains 110 grams of sugar per liter and 12% alcohol and it is not just still drinkable, according to Peter Liem, it is “glorious:”ne House in Reims for analysis.

The champagne contains 110 grams of sugar per liter and 12% alcohol and it is not just still drinkable, according to Peter Liem, it is “glorious:”

Actually, the floor of the Baltic Sea is likely to be an ideal storage environment to age Champagne.  The temperature is just above freezing and doesn't change over the course of a year (or century).

Next up: Name of 8th c. Maya astronomer deciphered

A text of Maya glyphs painted on a Classic period (250–900 A.D.) building at the ancient site of Xultun, Guatemala, has been discovered to record an astronomical formula that concludes with the name of its author: “so says Sak Tahn Waax” (meaning White-Chested Fox). He is the first mathematician and astronomer in the Americas known by name. 

The glyphs were in a hidden (lost?) room inside a pyramid.  You have to wonder how much more hidden history is waiting discovery. 

IT department's cunning new password security scheme

It put yellow sticky notes with username and password on corporate laptops:

The company decided to take some old laptops and give them out to new users. To make life easy for the recipients, they put sticky notes – everyone’s favorite credential-sharing tool – on the laptops with the name of each employee and their initial login credentials on it.

Let’s just stop for a moment to remark on how bad it is to put usernames and passwords on a piece of paper where the wrong person could see them. Even the IT department should not know your password, should someone in IT themselves turn rogue. So, even if the laptop stayed on a shelf in a closet that only the support staff had access to, having that sticky note would be bad.

However, our situation is even worse because the laptops in question were stored in a conference room while the facilities team finished readying the office for the move. During that time, anyone who had access to the conference room could go in and get multiple user account credentials.

And that's exactly what happened ...

Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us.  And remember - this was the IT Department that did this.

Sigh.

This is why we can't have nice (security) things on the Internet.

"Justice Department" are a bunch of big Poopy Heads

Now I'm a simple guy, one who believes that the Bill of Rights means what it says, and applies even to whack environmentalists who don't like cops.  And so this seems like something that the Courts should swat down:

The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a 

The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices. Tunick’s attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his phone.

The software feature allows the device owner to set a passcode that deliberately wipes the contents of that device if entered instead of the user’s unlock passcode.

passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports. 

This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a “duress” password built into a phone’s software.

According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year and that any evidence — including the alleged wiping of his phone — should be thrown out.

The Einsteins at DoJ say that the Border Agents didn't need a warrant to search his phone because he "hadn't entered the US" - even though this all took place at Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta.  Oooooooh kaaaaaaay.

It looks like they guy has some pretty high powered legal help - including the Electronic Frontier Foundation - so hopefully the right precedent will get established here: i.e. that the 4th and 5th Amendments mean what they say.

This is all about a software feature called a "Duress Passcode":

The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices. Tunick’s attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his phone.

The software feature allows the device owner to set a passcode that deliberately wipes the contents of that device if entered instead of the user’s unlock passcode.

The Border Patrol dudes asked him for his passcode while holding him in durance vile for hours.  Eventually he gave them the Duress Passcode.  

IANAL, but just because he's an activist for anti-cop activities doesn't mean he doesn't have rights.

And yeah, the scare quotes in the post title are intentional.

AI Hilarity

Midwest Chick (you do read her every day, don't you?  Thought so.) posts about how a Professor was smarter than most of his students, catching most of them using AI to cheat on an assignment:

A very clever professor in Mississippi decided to test and see if his students were cheating using AI. So he put some code in his exam instructions using white font that couldn’t be seen by the students, but could be seen by an AI if a copy/paste was used. 

Click through for the details (which are hilarious) but even more so for the comments her readers left.  My favorite was one from Carl Bussjaeger:

Oh, yes. I should probably mention DuckDuckGo’s AI. When called out on all of its hallucinations, it informed that if I don’t want it to make s–t up when asking strictly factual questions, I have to specifically TELL it not to make s–t up. 

 Sure you can trust AI.  Just tell it not to make s**t up ...

The Four Rules, This Time With Emphasis

Just to review.

Treat all firearms as if they are loaded.

Never point the firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy.

Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

Today's lesson will focus on the second rule and the problem I have with appendix carry. A holstered firearm in the front of your strong side leg is commonly referred to a "appendix carry". I have always thought it broke the four rules. The muzzle of your firearm, depending on if you are seated, crouched, or standing, will variously be pointed at things you do not want to destroy.

When another rule is broken, as in the case documented by the shooter below, that bullet is going to find your tender flesh in life altering ways.

Appendix carry. Just say no. 

 

Dad Joke CCCLXVIII

Tuna sends in another one:

Want to hear 2 short jokes and 1 long one? joke joke Joooooooooke