Not news to me, either, Drew.

Aaw, I should have told you. Thereâ(TM)s some equation that relates energy, mass, and the speed of light. Probably most physics postdocs have heard of it.

Thanks, Will-O. I quite remember this cia guyâ(TM)s rubber stamp collection with dozens of great stamps: NOFORN, EYES-ONLY, and different fonts of Secret and top secret. Damn, but the guard at the place seized my paper with all those stamps.

On the other hand, I still have a VIP parking pass for the CIA headquarters â" Lets ypu park right at the front steps. Valid, if you have a time machine going back to April 5, 1988.

My warm thoughts fly over to you, Kill (owatt-) Hour â" last weekâ(TM)s eclipse fund me beneath stratus clouds just east of Buffalo, having a wonderful (though cloudy) day with 4 generations of my family. Itâ(TM)s a joy to see how my home town has evolved â" memories of climbing the Michigan Avenue Lift Bridge at midnight and watching them tap the redhot coke ovens at Bethlehem/Lackawanna Steel mills.

Following up, I am honored by the attention and kindness of fellow nerds and online friends. When I first started on that chase in 1986, I had no idea wrhere it would lead me.

A curious accounting error led me through Unix internals, tcp/ip protocols, early Arpanet connections, and backwards to a group of computer hackers working for then Soviet & Stassi agencies. Along the way, I met people from the FBI, NSA, CIA, AFOSI, and plenty of very smart computer jocks.

It was a time of analog phones and dial up modems; when you would carry coins in your pocket to make calls on the street.

Since then, thanks to the support of online friends and math folk, I have explored and shared interests in topology and math. Along the way, Iâ(TM)ve made plenty of mistakes and bloopers; pretty much the same as student times. Goofups in grad school are easier to sweep aside!

To all my friends: May you burdens be light and your purpose high. Stay curious!

- Cliff

Iâ(TM)ve been away from slashdot for a while, and Iâ(TM)m now on a post-eclipse trip on the east coast.

With good fortitune (and Amtrak), Iâ(TM)ll be home in 10 days; Iâ(TM)ll then fill the tsunami of Klein bottle orders that havve arrived in the past few hours. Over a dozenâ" Iâ(TM)ll be catching up for a few days!

Smiles all around,
-Cliff on a rainy Saturday in Potsdam, NU

For both signatures and private/public encryption, NIST has gone through three rounds of public submissions and scrutiny for new post-quantum algorithms. They're actually a bit delayed in announcing a winner, but it should come any day now. Why the need for a startup to create some off-shoot non-standard solution?

Here's the funny thing about traffic enforcement cameras in the US.

I'm not sure this is 100% true in all states, I wouldn't be surprised if it is because it should be, but I at least know this is true in many states. One state in particular, had to change their laws because law enforcement kept perjuring themselves over it.

In the US, constitutionally, a criminal offense has to be proven to be you doing it. All cameras prove is that someone driving your car did it. Camera resolutions are nowhere near 100% in identifying drivers, and moreover, what if you had a twin? That is not sufficient for a criminal offense, aka "moving violation" for traffic laws. Financial responsibility of the vehicle does not equate to committing the violation. So you don't go to traffic court for camera violations, your insurance doesn't increase. Moreover, in some states, like mine, a moving violation citation needs to be issued by a uniformed law enforcement officer *at the time of violation*. They can't just mail it to you like they do with camera violations.

So, camera tickets are *civil* penalties. They're like parking tickets. If you don't pay them, the state can send it to collections, ding your credit, forbid you from other related government services like drivers license renewal and car registration renewal until you pay, but they cannot throw you in jail.

In my jurisdiction, there is a small rectangle at the bottom of a back page where I can affirm that I was not in control of the vehicle. There's also a line where I "MAY" identify who was driving. I don't have to give up that info under the 5th Amendment. I just sign that declaration and The End. The ticket goes away.

You're buying a code.

Someone said it was money and said it had value, and people believed it.

In "some cases"? 40% of the US still don't see any problem with dumping fossil fuel pollution into the environment, killing 50,000+ Americans every year, and destroying the environment, possibly permanently.

Agreed. Between Climate Change Denying comments getting modded +5 and Slashdot posting this FUD about a company that is significantly helping humanity, I'm gone.

Even though Slashdot doesn't write these articles, it needs to have the journalistic integrity not to post BS. Otherwise, it drives away the objective, knowledgeable users that will mod down false comments. Destructive feedback at its best.

Parent does a good job of explaining the situation without using any abusive language. GP doesn't understand that the science is settled. How is it GP is moderated higher?

And why is it I never have mod points when I actually want and have time to use them? E.g., some time when I'm not about to head out on a road trip... I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to figure out how to do some metamoderating, in case that would reward me with some mod points. M2 seems to be invitation only at this point, and I haven't been invited to M2 in a long time...

Yep, that does look pretty bad. The next things I'd want to know are: Did Hunter actually get paid $3M, or was the prosecutor fired because he made up that number? What was Hunter's contract, e.g. was $3M standard pay for anyone on the board doing similar work?

Thanks: I'll check it out this evening. And No, I don't consider Biden a great with respect to Climate Change. He's my least favorite of the leading candidates precisely for that reason. However, I suspect he might have a better chance of winning against Trump simply because he's not as left as Warren, Sanders, et al. I just don't know on that score. If he somehow does end up winning in 2020, I hope he changes his environmental tune quickly. Otherwise, it's not going to matter if it's Trump or Biden: humanity's fate will be sealed, and it won't be pretty.

If this really is an honest investigation of a crime committed by the Bidens, where are the indications that a crime may have been committed? Before opening a homicide investigation, the cops usually need to know that a) someone has died, and b) it wasn't by natural causes. I haven't seen any of that from Trump, et al., just a "Biden's son was on the board of _company_." Did the Ukraine or that company get any special treatment during Obama's presidency? I haven't seen mention of any on the news. That doesn't mean there wasn't any, but Trump needs that before beginning an investigation. Friends and relatives of a new [Vice] President still need to be employed so they can put food on the table. In general, the friends and relatives aren't just going to quite because someone was elected. I could imagine a case where there is a conflict of interest, but it would be something like New President's Sibling happens to be high in the Chinese government or military.

Further, when the cops do their investigation, they keep detailed notes and have chains of custody on evidence, allowing the defendant's defense team to question the cops and verify their work. Said notes and evidence are also needed if Internal Affairs opens an investigation to verify the cops are doing their jobs correctly. Trump is preventing the "cops" from talking to the "IA investigators", that being Congress.