November 18, 2017

JCT Estimates: Amended Senate Tax Bill Skewed to Top, Hurts Many Low- and Middle-Income Americans

https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/931644071625535489

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/jct-estimates-amended-senate-tax-bill-skewed-to-top-hurts-many-low-and-middle

November 18, 2017

Post your favorite R&B (rhythm and blues) tunes here!

Wow so many, but this is one of them

eta: I guess technically this is disco but pretty close.

eta2: hey why stick with one ? lol

November 18, 2017

Len - Steal My Sunshine (if you need a smile)

Enjoy.

November 18, 2017

Massive US military social media spying archive left wide open in AWS S3 buckets

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/17/us_military_spying_archive_exposed/

Three misconfigured AWS S3 buckets have been discovered wide open on the public internet containing "dozens of terabytes" of social media posts and similar pages – all scraped from around the world by the US military to identify and profile persons of interest.

The archives were found by veteran security breach hunter UpGuard's Chris Vickery during a routine scan of open Amazon-hosted data silos, and these ones weren't exactly hidden. The buckets were named centcom-backup, centcom-archive, and pacom-archive.

CENTCOM is the common abbreviation for the US Central Command, which controls army operations in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. PACOM is the name for US Pacific Command, covering the rest of southern Asia, China and Australasia.

Vickery told The Register today he stumbled upon them by accident while running a scan for the word "COM" in publicly accessible S3 buckets. After refining his search, the CENTCOM archive popped up, and at first he thought it was related to Chinese multinational Tencent, but quickly realized it was a US military archive of astounding size.

November 17, 2017

In 1976 UF required calculus if you majored in business

UF = University of Florida in Gainesville

I initially majored in biz in 76 but that requirement gave me pause. Have you ever used calculus in your business career?

yes I'm bored lol, thanks for indulging me, kind ladies and gentlemen of DU.

November 17, 2017

According to one estimate, wealthy couples in NYC need $190 million to keep their heads above water

(yes a real headline. What ?!)

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-to-be-rich-2017-11

Ah yes, our new Gilded Age. Sigh.

eta: original source here

November 17, 2017

fwiw, snopes.com about Franken

https://www.snopes.com/photographer-said-franken-image-was-staged/

It's really long and quoting 4 paragraphs doesn't do it justice. Simply posting for critique and comment. I really like Senator Franken and I'd really hate for him to quit the Senate. He's one of our very best there.

November 17, 2017

Infamous Tech Industry Predictions and Quotations (fascinating article with tons of quotes)

https://www.techspot.com/article/754-tech-predictions-and-quotes/

snip



snip





snip





snip




tons more, hilariously bad predictions and some really good ones.

November 16, 2017

San Francisco housing market near bubble risk....Majority of Bay Area renters plan to leave

San Francisco housing market near bubble risk according to UBS report. Majority of Bay Area renters plan to leave. (full headline)

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/san-francisco-real-estate-mania-ubs-renters-leaving/




The San Francisco housing market is the most overvalued market in the United States. People over inflate the market because tech is sexy and cool and many are chasing the next Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Everyone wants to strike it rich with as little work as possible. And what better way to do that than in real estate? In San Francisco the typical crap shack will cost you $1.2 to $1.5 million. The response from many housing cheerleaders is the typical logic you see in manias – hey, someone paid for it! You also get similar stories from the tulip bubble, dotcom bubble, and other bubbles where the justification for higher prices is simply that some other sucker paid for it at that level. And there is now signs that we may be in a rental bubble in the Bay Area. 83 percent of renters surveyed in the Bay Area said they plan on leaving. Tie that in with the UBS Global Real Estate Index showing that San Francisco is dangerously close to bubble territory and you have indicators that something is rotten in SF.

Some people understand the business cycle and the waves that ripple through our economy. The housing market and economy has been booming since 2009. People forget that recessions happen. And now that we have added millions of renter households with higher rents, what happens when that next correction hits? While you can sit in a home and let it flow into foreclosure like many did during the housing crisis, there is a smaller window for renters should cash flow issues occur.
It is rather clear that San Francisco real estate is in a bubble. Even conservative UBS is showing that prices are inflated:

(see graphic above)

But our neighbors to the north in Canada are taking it to another level with their housing bubble. It is nutty how obsessed people are with real estate in the Bay Area. People are drinking the Kool-Aid by the gallons. For those that own, you have a confirmation bias occurring and who could blame them? If you owned a piece of crap house and suddenly Zillow gives you a $1.5 million Zestimate why wouldn’t you believe it? I suppose you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Renters clearly think something is wrong since many are voicing their displeasure and have plans on leaving:

(rest at link)

November 16, 2017

Amazon Key flaw makes entering your home undetected a possibility

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/amazon-key-flaw-makes-entering-your-home-undetected-a-possibility/

Security research firm Rhino Security Labs found a vulnerability in the Amazon Key in-home delivery service's security procedures that could allow either the courier or even a savvy and malicious bystander to enter your home undetected after the delivery is completed. Amazon has promised to change how Key works in order to make it easier for you to tell when something unusual is happening in this event, but the changes proposed by Amazon don't necessarily resolve the vulnerability.

Amazon Key is available to Amazon customers who have bought and installed Amazon's own Cloud Cam security camera and installed it at their front door. If you're one of those customers, you can select "in-home delivery" as a delivery method when purchasing something on Amazon. Amazon couriers can then authenticate themselves with your Cloud Cam to unlock the door and enter your home to leave the package. However, they can only do this at a home to which they're assigned to make a delivery and only at the scheduled time. They are recorded by your security camera as they make the delivery, and they must lock the door when they leave. Amazon also tracks which courier is assigned to the delivery, and only that courier has access.

Rhino Labs discovered that a courier equipped with a simple program can use their laptop to fake a command from your Wi-Fi router to disconnect the Cloud Cam from your network. This causes the camera to stop functioning by freezing the image at the last frame. At that point, the courier could re-enter your home, do whatever it is that they want there, and then exit, reactivate the camera, and lock the door as usual. This re-entry would be undetectable by the resident, and it would appear like a normal delivery in Amazon's data.

In theory, a bystander could also do this as a courier is leaving, but this is less likely for a few reasons. First, the bystander would have to know that delivery was scheduled and that it was to be an in-home delivery. Second, they'd have to do it before the courier locked the door, but the hack prevents the door from locking, and the courier is instructed not to leave until they've locked up.

Just one more reason never to participate.