September 9, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Emergency Preparedness for Cats"--Jackson Galaxy (13-1/2 min.). Tips on evacuating with your cat.

• RIP: Jerry Pournelle apparently died yesterday. His name, if not his actual works, should be familiar to science fiction fans. Preppers should also be familiar with this name--he was a co-author with Larry Niven of Lucifer's Hammer which I still consider the best  post-Apocalyptic novel written.
• "Romulan, or Vulcan? Preference-Driven vs. Process-Driven Design in the Field of Small Arms Ammunition"--The Firearms Blog. Nathaniel F. has another article on ballistics and small arms ammunition development. This particular article discusses how two different approaches to ammunition design--but both with the same objectives--can come up with two different solutions: one being a heavier cartridge in 6.8 mm, and the other being a lighter, higher velocity round using--wait for it--a .224 caliber bullet of approximately 67 grains.
• It's not that disasters bring out the worst in people--to the contrary, I think--but that there is always a portion of a population predisposed to commit crime, and the absence of rule of law allows them to be themselves: "'There are no rules': Desperate stranded tourists tweet out of St Maarten as looters with 'guns and machetes' raid hotel rooms and stores"--Daily Mail.  Attacking tourists, looting hotels (TVs and other valuables), and even a bank robbery reported. The Dutch have deployed troops to restore order. Large amounts of looting were also reported on Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. I don't expect there to be too terribly much coverage of looting as it would not be politically correct.
• "Real World Bug Outs Continued"--Total Survivalist Blog. Some good discussion back and forth between the blog author and one of his readers about more realistic bug outs for more "real world" emergencies (e.g., hurricanes or flooding). For instance: 

This is where the real world part comes in. We aren't fleeing the zombie apocalypse to go camp in the woods or something. Thus a need for a tent and traps and a bunch of bulk food isn't present. I'll be living on a couch or in a cheap motel eating pizza or microwave food from the grocery store. So I do not need to waste time and space on that stuff.

• A couple articles on Facebook and Deep Data:

• "Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won't Tell Me How"--Gizmodo. The author begins:

        Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook, however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of “People You May Know,” the social network’s roster of potential new online friends for me.  

        The People You May Know feature is notorious for its uncanny ability to recognize who you associate with in real life. It has mystified and disconcerted Facebook users by showing them an old boss, a one-night-stand, or someone they just ran into on the street. 

        These friend suggestions go far beyond mundane linking of schoolmates or colleagues. Over the years, I’d been told many weird stories about them, such as when a psychiatrist told me that her patients were being recommended to one another, indirectly outing their medical issues. 

        What makes the results so unsettling is the range of data sources—location information, activity on other apps, facial recognition on photographs—that Facebook has at its disposal to cross-check its users against one another, in the hopes of keeping them more deeply attached to the site. People generally are aware that Facebook is keeping tabs on who they are and how they use the network, but the depth and persistence of that monitoring is hard to grasp. And People You May Know, or “PYMK” in the company’s internal shorthand, is a black box.

Rebecca Porter turned out to be the author's great aunt, by marriage. But how did it know about the familial connection?

        How Facebook had linked us remained hard to fathom. My father had met her husband in person that one time, after my grandmother’s funeral. They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone. But neither of them uses Facebook. Nor do the other people between me and Rebecca Porter on the family tree.

        Facebook is known to buy information from data brokers, and a person who previously worked for the company and who is familiar with how the tool works suggested the familial connection may have been discerned that way. But when asked about that scenario, a Facebook spokesperson said, “Facebook does not use information from data brokers for People You May Know.”

        What information had Facebook used, then? The company would not tell me what triggered this recommendation, citing privacy reasons. A Facebook spokesperson said that if the company helped me figure out how it made the connection between me and my great aunt, then every other user who got an unexpected friend suggestion would come around asking for an explanation, too.

       It was not a very convincing excuse. 

The author was never able to get to the bottom of it, but is requesting similar stories from others to assist her in her research.

• "What should you think about when using Facebook?"--Vicki Boykis (h/t Bayou Renaissance Man). The author explains:

        Facebook, the platform, has taken up such a large part of our mindshare and has started to serve as our pensieve. Because of this, it’s important to understand what Facebook, the company, is doing with our hopes, dreams, political statements, and baby pictures once it gets them.

        And gets them it does. In 2014, Facebook engineers wrote that they have about 600 terabytes of data coming in on a daily basis.

         For perspective, the size of War and Peace, the text is 3.1 megabytes. The 1966 Soviet movie version of War and Peace the movie is 7 hours long, or 8 gigabytes in size.

        So people are uploading the equivalent of 193 million copies of War and Peace books, or 75,000 copies of War and Peace movies, every single day.

          Facebook’s Data Policy outlines what it collects and what it does with that data. However, like most companies, it leaves out the actual points that tell customers what exactly is happening.

         Frustrated by the constant speculation of where those keystrokes are going for every status update I write, I decided to do some research. All of the information below is taken from tech trade press, academic publications, and what I was able to see on the client side as a Facebook user. I’ve added to this post my own interpretations as a data professional working with user data for 10+ years.

This is a long article, but I recommend reading the whole thing. A few points, however. First, the author notes that Facebook not only saves your posts, but also monitors and saves your keystrokes before you post anything--ostensibly to research how people engage in self-censorship. It also logs every device from which you used to access Facebook. And it uses a program called Deep Face to monitor all pictures of you or in which you are tagged so it can recognize you. And it tracks you as you browse the web, even after you have logged out. So, you might want to think twice about using Facebook.

• Ignoring the elephant in the room: "Why Sweden has more fatal shootings per capita than Norway and Germany"--The Local. Sweden has seen a sharp increase in gun violence. But no one wants to admit why. From the article:

       “We don’t really know why yet, but what we can see is that the increase comes as we also see a rise in gang-related crimes and a growing number of criminal networks,” Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmö University, told The Local, after Swedish public radio first wrote about new research he is involved in.

        One study which is yet to be published suggests that Sweden experienced four to five times as many fatal shootings per capita as Norway and Germany in 2008-2014, two otherwise similar countries. Previous figures have shown that deadly violence in general is going down in Sweden, but gun violence has gone up.

       Gerell also singled out Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city, as the one place where shootings are becoming particularly common.

        “Malmö stands out,” he said, noting that the southern city is somewhat more exposed to social problems and poverty in comparison to both the capital and Gothenburg.

         “Malmö is also what we describe an ‘early adopter’ when it comes to crime. It was the first of the three cities where hand grenade crimes became more commonplace and it was also the place for the establishment of Sweden’s first biker-gangs. We don’t know whether this is to do with its proximity to the European continent or not, but it could explain why the trends seem to start there.”

Another article on the same subject notes that gun violence seems to be "mainly taking place in the age group of 15 to 29 year old males." Where could all these military age males have come from? Malmo is 20% Muslim, and the crime wave there is primarily centered in the Muslim community. 

• Related: "Moroccan 'street children' attack Swedish police in separate attacks"--The Truth About Knives. 

• "Saudi government allegedly funded a ‘dry run’ for 9/11"--New York Post. The article reports:

“We’ve long asserted that there were longstanding and close relationships between al Qaeda and the religious components of the Saudi government,” said Sean Carter, the lead attorney for the 9/11 plaintiffs. “This is further evidence of that.”

• "DACA is a SCAM"--DiploMad. The author observes that "DACA accepts applications from qualifying illegal aliens who were 31 years old or younger on June 15, 2012. That means 36 year olds will be able to apply in 2017, provided they were 16 or under when they arrived in the United States. Clearly this was not a program aimed at protecting children from deportation."
• "Believing In National Sovereignty Doesn’t Make You A Bad Christian"--The Federalist. The author correctly notes that "[t]here's nothing immoral about wanting border security and its enforcement." She writes:

       Most people agree that citizens of a nation have a right to protect their culture and defend their economic and security interests by regulating immigration. Most people also probably recognize the obligation that citizens in free and prosperous countries have toward those seeking asylum for humanitarian or other serious reasons.

        Balancing those interests is not immoral. Citizens of a country should be mindful of the cultural and economic changes that immigration can bring and particularly how the downside of those changes tends to be borne by those with lower incomes and less power than the ones who tend to make immigration policy. Unfettered immigration can strain the resources of schools, hospitals, and local communities. Poorly managed immigration policies can also lead to disruptions in the political order and culture.

         As Peter Meilaender has written, “The world, after all, contains countless needy people who require assistance. How are we to know whom to help? So we begin with those to whom we stand in special relationships. The neighbor whom we are commanded universally to love takes particular shape as the aged father in need of regular attention, the cousin whose husband is away fighting in Iraq, the fellow parishioner who has lost his job. Immigration regulations are a way of embodying in policy a preferential love for our own fellow citizens and the way of life that we share. Such a preference can be overridden, but it is not inherently suspect.”

Read the whole thing.