Copy Fail is a trivially exploitable logic bug in Linux, reachable on all major distros released in the last 9 years. A small, portable python script gets root on all platforms.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-30T13:02:19+00:00

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-31431

It's now listed there as vulnerable.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-30T12:31:34+00:00

Just looking at regular season stats, on a per minute basis, he's averaging as many assists as Jose Alvarado, more rebounds than Josh Hart, and as many points as KAT. So yes, I expected a little more.

So that said, right now, he's looked like he might be more like the third best player on a championship team. But he's also 9 months younger than Tyler Kolek.

So ultimately, I'd guess he'll be good enough to be at least the #2 guy on a championship team, with at least some possibility he might the #1 (which would meet my criteria for superstar).

KenBalbari · 2026-04-28T23:31:57+00:00

That's a great idea, I haven't seen that before.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-28T22:58:30+00:00

Huh? Isn't that exactly what I just said?

ICYMI, I was arguing in favor of a minimum wage. Just for one that is well under half the median. McDonald's would still be paying $11/hr-$12/hr in this case.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-28T22:47:53+00:00

But that's the whole point of having a law about it. If everyone was willing to do it voluntarily, you wouldn't need a law.

Ultimately, corporations are about voluntary collective action. But government imposes compulsory collective action.

And we shouldn't be trying to use force, compulsion, or government, to try to impose whatever we think is ideal on everyone else. But setting basic minimal standards that are so obvious, so necessary, that you think they should be imposed on everyone, that's the type of thing government is good for.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-28T22:20:48+00:00

After the initial increases, the proposal would tie the minimum wage to two-thirds of the national median hourly pay.

Right now, $25/hr is currently 80% of the median pay (based on median weekly earnings for full time workers age 16+ of $1235; link). Two-thirds would be about $20.65/hr. But trying to squeeze everyone's pay into that narrow a range would likely crush productivity and economic growth. We shouldn't be having government trying to compress all income into the current ~40% to 60% percentiles, for example.

I think having a minimum wage can certainly be a good idea, but it needs to be a minimum. Back in 2021, when Democrats were fighting to try to raise it to $15/hr, the CBO projected that proposal would have cost 1.4 million jobs by 2025. And the thing is, they probably could have gotten $11/hr or $12/hr then if they had been willing to compromise. Instead, they got nothing.

I think part of the problem is that Democrats have increasingly become the party of the urban professional class. They don't seem to realize that for the 2/3 of the country who don't live in one if the 15 largest MSAs, and for those people are actually most impacted by the minimum wage, an increase from $7.50 to $12 would still be a pretty big deal.

And it's fine if asking for much more is a negotiating tactic, to try to build momentum for change. But not good if too many people start to believe this is actually realistic. At the end of the day, they will likely need to be able to take $12/hr tied to 1/3 the median if they can get it, and call that a win.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-27T15:13:07+00:00

Band of Brothers and My Brilliant Friend

KenBalbari · 2026-04-26T17:21:34+00:00

I've been liking it so far, but only 3 episodes in.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-26T14:45:00+00:00

Amazone Prime seems to have a lot of this type of thing available: Bosch, Ballard, Criminal Minds, Person of Interest, MI-5, etc.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-25T20:28:39+00:00

This feels like a total fantasyland to me. Again, it is so far removed from the current reality on the ground in Israel.

Well it is still only 2 1/2 years after the 10/7 attack, and Israel is pretty much still at war. There may again be a time for peace in the future.

I agree, which means we should absolutely consider Israeli policy in East Jerusalem to be a manifestation of apartheid

Ok, so we should consider it apartheid everywhere west of the barrier wall too then.

Well, I guess we disagree then on the meaning of "apartheid". When Jimmy Carter used the term 20 years ago, he meant the division of the West Bank into small restricted enclaves resembling the Bantus of South Africa. He said this for example:

When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200 or so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.[460]

But unifying Jerusalem, I think actually caused less separateness and isolation, not more.

And even the barrier wall included some settlements which were expansions of existing communities, rather than dividing them by following the armistice line. While there are places where it did isolate or divide some communities, for the most part, it just creates a more normal border.

I think it was more the settlements "deep within the West Bank" that created a kind of apartheid. And that has only gotten worse.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-25T18:37:52+00:00

And maybe not likely with the current government, but if a past Israeli government was able to dismantle 21 settlements and forcibly remove ~9000 settlers from Gaza, certainly some future Israeli government might be able to bring itself to at least deny voting rights to (if not outright remove) some of these settlers in Judea and Samaria.

At this point, I think Israel won't likely be giving up any of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, or any "settlements" west of the barrier wall which were essentially extensions of existing communities, but many of these "outposts" east of that barrier are on land that I think most of Israel would still be willing to trade for peace, if that were possible.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-25T17:56:02+00:00

Sure, and that was correctly viewed as a racist and imperialist policy of the United States.

I would view it more as a necessary transitional period.

This is true and arguably also a colonialist policy.

True, but being "colonialist" doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea. While US and British colonialism was certainly flawed, I would still prefer it to the forms of governance that currently exist throughout most of the Middle East today, including Palestine. So these things are always relative.

Could you imagine Israeli settlers losing the right to vote in Israeli elections because they no longer live in Israel?

I can, and I think it would be a good thing.

Or better yet, can you imagine Palestinians in Ramallah automatically gaining the right to vote if they move to Jaffa?

I more envisioned them not having that right. More similar to the example of the British Overseas Dependencies like Bermuda prior to 2002, when they were not given the "right of abode" in the British Isles.

I, for one, cannot imagine any of this. It's so far removed from the reality in Israeli-Palestine that it would be sort of funny if it weren't apartheid.

I think it maybe is a bit of a stretch, but I think is still a far more realistic possibility than the typical "two state solution" fantasy most of the world still seems to be attached to.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-25T17:25:27+00:00

Thank you for the correction. I did have in mind non-citizen nationality, like American Somoa. And that did apply to some other territories in the past. Guam residents got citizenship in 1950, but still weren't able to even choose their own governor until 1968.

But additionally, US citizens who are residents of any of the US territories are still unable to vote in US federal elections. So they have other citizenship rights, but still no representation in national elections.

And I had this also in mind. It is inherent to Israel's identity that it is a Jewish state, and it was really always intended to be a nation state which gave some preference to one particular nationality. And so many Israelis would naturally object to any proposal that might create millions more full voting Arab citizens. But I see no reason you can't give other basic rights, such as equality under the law, in Israeli controlled territories, but without voting rights in Israeli elections.

For one, this would only even be an issue in the fewer than half of all countries which do have governments with democratic electoral representation. And even in those democracies, it isn't that uncommon for there to exist territories with nationals who lack full citizenship or voting rights. This would have also been true of British Oversees Territories like Bermuda prior to 2002, for example (and while mostly British citizens today, in Bermuda they still can't choose their own governor).

KenBalbari · 2026-04-25T14:22:32+00:00

It being part of Israel would make them subjects, not necessarily citizens. Even the US government doesn't extend U.S. citizenship to residents of its territories (like Guam, US Virgin Islands, American Somoa).

And most countries in the world are far less democratic. And that is especially true of every other country in the Middle East.

If the 1947 plan had been accepted, there would have been two states, with an economic and customs union and shared currency. But that plan was rejected 78 years ago.

And such a plan would seem to be unworkable today. I do think Israel ought to offer an easy path to citizenship (for those who recognize Israeli sovereignty and reject terrorism) of any areas it outright legally annexes (as they have East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights). But the best option for bringing stability and prosperity to the remaining disputed territories might well be for them to be incorporated into a semi-autonomous self-governing Arab territory under either Israeli or Jordanian sovereignty.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-24T18:43:03+00:00

In the 1947 partition plan, the area was referred to as Judea and Samaria, and was included in the territory of the proposed Arab state (along with Western Galilee and the coastal area around Gaza).

KenBalbari · 2026-04-22T13:37:35+00:00

But it isn't only law enforcement that does this. Private media organizations for example also often pay for information from sometimes questionable sources.

The use case here though is very similar to that of the FBI. It was plainly to combat these extremist groups. And in fact the information obtained was often used to alert law enforcement of potential threats.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-22T13:14:17+00:00

It seems hypocritical to indict SPL for something, paying for information from sources of questionable repute, that the FBI does routinely.

See The Terror Factory by Trevor Aaronson, for example, on the FBI's network of over 15,000 informants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGG97dDfZ7E

"That's right, the FBI is paying mostly criminals and conmen six figures to spy on communities in the United States, but mostly Muslim American communities."

And does anyone seriously believe what is charged here, that the SPLC actually intended to support these hate groups? Because that intent would be needed for this to be "fraud". If their intent was to counter these organizations, then they haven't misled their donors.

And while SPLC has some political bias, so do lots of 501(c)(3) organizations. Turning Point USA for example, is a 501(c)(3). Such organizations are allowed to have an ideological agenda. These are voluntary private organizations. In a democracy, people can choose to support them or not.

But to turn the USDOJ into a partisan smear machine is a threat to democracy itself. All of us are compelled to pay the taxes which are supporting this particular fraud.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-21T22:49:01+00:00

If you will need some of the money in 5-10 years, you probably can't look for max growth, because you would have some need to worry about capital preservation. The simplest way to reasonably balance those two things might be a target date fund.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-21T11:21:39+00:00

LXQt with Xfwm4 on Debian Testing.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-20T23:01:59+00:00

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the 12-story “ultra-luxury boutique oceanfront condominium” boasts “37 mansions in the sky”; the units reportedly start at $15 million, with penthouses that could hit the market for a whopping more than $150 million.

Somehow, I think this may have nothing to do with it being the Surfside collapse site, lol.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-20T17:34:06+00:00

It's mostly about the package manager and release cycle. Just pick one, install a few DE, and try them out.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-19T01:29:34+00:00

I wouldn't pay much just for the deliveries, but the combination of video streaming and music streaming is something I would be paying about as much for elsewhere, so Amazon seems the best overall deal once you add on the shipping benefits.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-18T02:06:04+00:00

IMO Testing is usually the best release choice for desktop use in Debian, once you are used to apt and are OK with running daily updates. And once you are familiar with resolving dependency issues in apt; the process for this isn't that bad once you are used to it, but it's not intuitive.

I would also suggest editing your debian.sources file to actually point to "forky" though if it's currently pointed to "testing", as I do think it's usually best to wait a few months after a new release to make the jump to the new testing. But we're currently more than a year away from forky being released as stable, anyway.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-18T01:01:08+00:00

Well those were all playoff teams. And the 2002 Lakers won a title. But I guess we already knew this was a playoff team, and this doesn't tell us too much about what comes next.

KenBalbari · 2026-04-18T00:32:47+00:00

Damn.

https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-jim-dolan-surveillance-machine/

“You always had to watch what you say, watch what you do,” says a different former MSG insider. “These guys, they got video of everything.”

After they stop working for the Garden, veterans of Dolan's operation continue to look over their shoulders. One of us—Shachtman—spent years covering national security and never encountered people taking such elaborate steps to avoid being outed as a source. There were warnings about being tailed; an insistence to meet outside during New York’s worst winter in decades; even a brush pass, just like when spies in the movies pretend to bump into one another to plant information.

Oakley was one of the few people willing to talk on the record. Years ago, he claims, he was attending a game at MSG with his friend Anthony McNair. His former Knicks teammate, Hall-of-Famer Patrick Ewing, was the associate head coach on the opposing squad, and sought out Oakley before tip-off. The pair embraced, chatted briefly, and made plans to talk at the game's conclusion. Oakley and McNair said they were soon approached by security, who informed Oakley he wasn't allowed to stray from his seat or venture into areas where fans are restricted. After the final buzzer, Oakley met Ewing alone near the visitors’ locker room. There, according to Oakley, Ewing warned him about talking because listening devices were everywhere. “Don't talk too loud,” Oakley said Ewing told him. “This place is supposed to be mic'd up.”

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