Paul Ryan's budget gets endorsement from Ayn Rand

LOL! My wife came across an article saying that Scalia had resigned from the Supreme Court and we were discussing whether it was April Fool's Day. Turns out this guy is a moderately wry humorist.

I thought this one was quite cute.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/03/ryan-budget-plan-gets-endorsement-from-ayn-rand.html

Kim Jong-uh oh

"The time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation."
—Kim Jong-un, ordering North Korean forces to be on standby to strike the U.S. mainland and U.S. bases in the Pacific

I wonder how insane this guy is. He's cut all of the emergency diplomatic phone lines with the south, so there's no direct way for the U.S. or South Korea to talk to him. I think China has direct diplomatic ties.

Could be just posturing for some later advantage, like increased food supplies since he's totally incapable of feeding his country's population. Could be a prelude to war with South Korea. Maybe he is actually thinking about throwing nukes at the U.S. I wonder if he's realized that his people are slowly starving to death, and maybe by starting a war and rolling over, then letting the U.S. and S.K. rebuild him, that he/his people would be better off.

The certainty is that he has demonstrated North Korea has atom bombs of some sort, but it's doubtful that he can accurately target the U.S. Launching a satellite in to orbit is not the same as launching an ICBM.

Interesting legal challenge to the use of a stingray

A stingray is the nickname of a piece of equipment used by the FBI for surveillance. They were after an identity thief, a guy who was running a gang that was stealing people's identities in order to file false tax returns and steal the refunds. Fairly clear-cut type of crime. The defendant was using a Verizon cellular data card for connecting his laptop to the internet to perpetrate his crimes.

The stingray is a fake cell tower. You fire it up and it captures cellular traffic, just like a normal cell tower, and it logs the information and then passes it on to a real cell tower. There's some debate about how the stingray was used: it can intercept all cell data, in this case, internet data. The FBI maintains that it only kept header information and discarded all information for anyone who was not the suspect. The ACLU and the defendant's attorneys say that the FBI did not properly disclose how the stingray worked, nor the fact that it gathers all cell information in the area, to the judge. Obviously the defendant wants all information obtained from the stingray, which would be the basis for some search warrants, thrown out.

Lots of interesting issues. The thing that I find the most amusing is that the trial is taking place in Phoenix, which is where I am, at least until tomorrow afternoon.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/gov-fights-stingray-case/all/