Scantlings

San Francisco is so expensive that people are being pushed out onto the water. It's behind a paywall but I figure some of you might already have a subscription.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/housing-in ... _lead_pos9

We have that up here too. The Washington DNR is trying to contain it. (Department of Natural Resources.)

It's a very old story around here.

To put this in perspective:

- The San Francisco waterfront is rubble that was piled on rafted up sailing ships which were used as housing, brothels, and shops during the gold rush. Sank, and new ships were rafted above them. When it got to three or four ships deep, they pushed dirt and rock over the mess. We find them all the time when building new buildings past Battery street, which is a long way from the water.

- The town of Tiberon in Marin used to have a lagoon which was open to the bay. Folks had houseboats stacked four and five deep in the lagoon. They called them "arcs". The nicest of them are still there even though they are on dry land. The entrance to the lagoon was filled in by the locals and the arcs were all stranded.

- Sausalito has had many hundreds of houseboats along the shore and stuck in the mud for over 100 years. When trying to build real boat marinas there were battles between the squatters and the marina builders. Some of those old squatter pileups are still there.

All of this is why locals to the SF Bay consider liveaboards as a form of semi-legal landfill.

Wow, that's pretty interesting.

During the '08 economic recession, I did observe an uptick of people on boats here on the Chesapeake but nothing like what you're describing.

Ajax wrote:Wow, that's pretty interesting.

During the '08 economic recession, I did observe an uptick of people on boats here on the Chesapeake but nothing like what you're describing.

Just after the gold was discovered the city of SF went from about 2,500 people to over 25,000 in a matter of one year. No one is quite certain, but the claims are that within that 25,000 people only about 200 were female. They were "professional". The sea captains built their homes further in the Bay in a town called Bencia to ensure that their wives and kids didn't have to put up with the "professional" women and the attendant mob of sailors and miners.

Much of the character of the SF Bay was set by the massive infusion of people from all over the world and the crazy lawlessness which followed. More stories later, I've got to do some things, but it wasn't until after 1900 that SF had any real sense of lawfulness surrounding it.

SF History part 2:

To put things into perspective, the State used tens of thousands of Chinese to build everything from roads to railroads to mines. Whenever it was REALLY dangerous, the Chinese were used as near-slave labor. They arrived from China on sailing ships having heard (and believed) stories of streets that were literally lined with gold. What they found was institutionalized indentured servitude. Unable to buy land near the waterfront, they moved up the hill to what SF now calls "China Town". As the city grew it became pretty clear that China Town was prime real estate. So, when the 1906 earthquake and fire hit the City, the white guys got their guns and saw this as an opportunity to push the Chinese out of the City. Predicting this, the Chinese barricaded the streets entering their part of town and a skirmish broke out what folks being shot on both sides. This was not the only case of this sort of smash-n-grab going on in the City, but it was one of the most violent.

As soon as the telegram asking for help reached Los Angeles, the first two trains headed north to SF were filled with US Army troops. They arrived about 18 hours after the earthquake and started separating the various combatants and shoot the looters. Meanwhile, the city had continued to burn. The Army then started demolishing blocks to make fire breaks through the city. The folks in power directed the Army to build the fire breaks in the area owned by their political opponents. Like most cities, SF was divided into Italian, Chinese, White, Black, Mexican, and other smaller national areas. Much of SF is still divide up that way. To this day you'll see the colors of the Italian flag painted on lamp posts in North Beach. During the chaos after the earthquake, many of the boundaries were moved and didn't start changing again until the 1970s.

Because of massive natural resources and very little control by institutions like police etc... the culture of N. California grew to be what we would currently call Libertarian. Of course, it's simply referred to as lawlessness by most folks as the fundamental precept was that the strong got to beat up on the weak. There were numerous examples of land tracts owned by Mexican descendants simply being taken, Chinese gold miners being shot so that their claims could be taken, etc.... It goes on and on and only really ground to a halt after the disaster of 1906. The state government started to take law enforcement seriously. To put this in perspective, Lealand Stanford ran for and won a seat in the US Senate in large part because he wanted to avoid prosecution in Californa for a large variety of crimes.

What all this chaos created was a broadly held belief that if you were to "Go fast and break things" (to quote a tech moto) you could get away with things and make millions doing it. That belief is still broadly held. In my opinion, this is one of the primary reasons that the state has continuously and aggressively innovated in all manner of industrial activity from making movies, to aircraft manufacturing, rocket engines, biotech, semiconductors, and software. Whenever a new field emerged, regardless of where it was initially created around the world, the folks in California would rush in and start capitalizing on it. The population has fewer inhibitions on starting new companies and being the veteran of a few failed companies doesn't inhibit many folks from trying again. All of the above are my opinions based on 40 years rattling around in four or five emerging industries. Others may have very different impressions.

Thanks for that Beau. Really interesting.

The stories coming out of Silicon Valley these days, particularly Tesla, Facebook, and Uber I find fascinating. What do you know about Palentir? I worked for a place called TASC that was a contractor doing mostly government research work but we were early users of Pixar hardware and did one of the first google-earth-style fly-throughs, for ABC, of the 1988 winter olympics venue in Calgary.

The "break things and ignore regulations" model seems particularly ill-suited to government work.

kdh wrote:Thanks for that Beau. Really interesting.

The stories coming out of Silicon Valley these days, particularly Tesla, Facebook, and Uber I find fascinating. What do you know about Palentir? I worked for a place called TASC that was a contractor doing mostly government research work but we were early users of Pixar hardware and did one of the first google-earth-style fly-throughs, for ABC, of the 1988 winter olympics venue in Calgary.

The "break things and ignore regulations" model seems particularly ill-suited to government work.

Keith, (This is long, get a cupacoffee or click on)

In most cases, I think you'll find that the folks doing biotech and computer-tech have been so far out in front of the US Congress and States that there really weren't any regulations at the time they were doing whatever they were doing. EG: LSD was a legal drug when the folks around Stanford were playing with it. Also, I still don't think there are any real regulations/laws regarding customer data in the US, which obviously should apply to Facebook and their ilk.

When I was managing stuff at SGI/Cray etc... we were constantly going to the US Gov, who were our largest customers by far, and saying: "Here's what we're up to. We think that others will be able to do this within a few years. You need to get the US Congress to do something about regulating this stuff." (my paraphrase).

I was the point person for SGI/Cray in talking to our US Gov. customers. While the various Intelligence Agencies, and to a lesser extent the US Military, did listen. As a group, we got exactly NOWHERE with the US Congress or any State Government. Now, of course, that the shit is hitting the fan it is all the fault of those evil technology companies. Give me a freaking break!!! The first software which manipulated elections in the way Russia is trying to do to the US was written at Xerox PARC under contract to the US Gov. I worked on it in the '80s. For anyone in the US Gov to claim that they didn't know what was going to happen is simply a lie, or they are too stupid to listen to their own Intelligence Services. (That last bit is key to the problem)

Here's a public example. With help from a small group of Tech companies, the US Gov. was able to literally blow up a large number of very expensive Iranian nuclear reactors. Yet, at that exact time, various committees in the US Gov were taking testimony about US vulnerabilities to similar attacks. Was anything done? Nope. Nada, zilch, nothing.

The most common response from the US Congress, at whose feet the blame should be laid, was to remark that this seemed pretty unlikely and that they didn't want more regulations on Industry. One effect of the US Gov not wanting to encumber US Industry with "regulations" is that one can make a fortune in the short term off of doing things which are simply idiotic in the long term, and in many cases things which put the US Gov at risk. If you'd like a painful example, do a bit of reading about how easy it is to crack US Voting machines. It's simply appalling. The States and the US Gov have been told, and told, and told about this. We even ran a contest in which a high school kid hacked the #1 electronic voting machine within 10 minutes. The response: nothing. It was deemed by States that it was too expensive to toss the obvious pieces of shit which they had bought to use voting machines and replace them with anything else, even paper ballots!

Whenever I think about this idiocy I get really pissed off.

On to Palantir. I don't' know them well. But I have a story for you to consider. Anytime you put a company like Palantir in charge of "all your most valuable data", you have effectively taken a dependency on their security and honesty. Consider the lowly cell phone. It used to be that "bad guys" used them for most of their business. Those customers thought that turning them off or hanging up would stop the microphone from listening to what they were saying. They even thoughts (and some still do) that taking the battery out would turn the thing off. It turns out they were wrong about both things. For well over a decade, maybe two, the US Intelligence Agencies were using cell phones to record conversations, transmit the location of bad guys, etc.... The folks who took security seriously, like Osama Bin Laden, didn't go anywhere near a cell phone. For good reason.

What Palantir is doing is helpful to Industry. It is also the PERFECT insertion point for someone who wishes to steal all the data. I have no idea if this has happened, if the US Intelligence guys have inserted code into Palantir to allow them to track things, or if this is just my paranoia. But, I would look long and hard at that company before putting all my data into their product.

Obviously, security is a form of friction in getting things done. Folks don't like friction. But removing security or regulations that require security puts folks at risk. The only real question is: Is the gain of running fast and breaking things adequate to make up for the obvious losses.

In the case of hacked elections - the answer is clearly no.
In the case of rampant gene splicing - I believe the answer is no.
In the case of banks - Hey, as long as they underwrite the loss sure go fast and break shit.

Sorry for the long rant. It's obviously something I care deeply about.

Congress is probably one of the easiest organizations to hack since our elected representative don't take computer security seriously.

I worked in the health insurance business for over a decade. When I started, security mainly meant HIPAA. And maybe Sarbanes-Oxley. Sometime, maybe 10 years ago now, we started getting pressure on security from the insurance companies themselves. This was basic stuff, like password hygiene and encrypted email, encrypted file transfer.

George Orwell published 1984 in 1949. He correctly foresaw the surveillance culture that we have now, but he thought it would come from intrusive government. In fact, it's largely from private companies.

If I spilled classified information at the rate and severity that our elected representatives do, I'd be in jail for life.
They on the other hand, get re-elected with pensions and lifetime medical care.

SemiSalt wrote:Congress is probably one of the easiest organizations to hack since our elected representative don't take computer security seriously.

I worked in the health insurance business for over a decade. When I started, security mainly meant HIPAA. And maybe Sarbanes-Oxley. Sometime, maybe 10 years ago now, we started getting pressure on security from the insurance companies themselves. This was basic stuff, like password hygiene and encrypted email, encrypted file transfer.

George Orwell published 1984 in 1949. He correctly foresaw the surveillance culture that we have now, but he thought it would come from intrusive government. In fact, it's largely from private companies.

Trust me, the government has it’s share of your personal data. They just don’t tip their hand by monetizing it with Google ads.

LarryHoward wrote:

SemiSalt wrote:Congress is probably one of the easiest organizations to hack since our elected representative don't take computer security seriously.

I worked in the health insurance business for over a decade. When I started, security mainly meant HIPAA. And maybe Sarbanes-Oxley. Sometime, maybe 10 years ago now, we started getting pressure on security from the insurance companies themselves. This was basic stuff, like password hygiene and encrypted email, encrypted file transfer.

George Orwell published 1984 in 1949. He correctly foresaw the surveillance culture that we have now, but he thought it would come from intrusive government. In fact, it's largely from private companies.

Trust me, the government has it’s share of your personal data. They just don’t tip their hand by monetizing it with Google ads.

It is safe to say that the US Gov. has all the data Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc... have about each of us. But, fortunately for us all, they are very poorly equipped or motivated to actually use that data, or even find it. The next time folks moan about how ineffective the US Gov is, remind them that if they were more effective they'd be collecting a LOT more taxes from the millions of tax cheats in our country. That usually stops the conversation.

Ajax wrote:If I spilled classified information at the rate and severity that our elected representatives do, I'd be in jail for life.
They on the other hand, get re-elected with pensions and lifetime medical care.

They get FERS benefits similar to every other GS. You get 5% of base at 5 yrs up to a max of 80%. I don't know where the myth of congressional medical care comes from, but they were in FEHBP like all other gov't employees until the ACA was passed and now they have to buy on the DC Exchange. In fact, I think they only get the employer contribution if they buy at the Gold level. Nothing lifetime about it either. Uniformed service retired benefits are way better.

Half the classified shit I knew came out in the news when those Russians smeared nerve agent around Coventry last year.

I was working on some highly classified programs back during the hotter parts of the cold war. Each week, we would get direction that we could not comment on one or more stories in the latest "Aviation Week and Space Technology" , or "Aviation Leak", as we referred to it.

Of course, I was on the CinCPACFLT staff when "Blind Man's Bluff" came out. Lots of folks walking around HQ saying "can they really publish that?"

Benno von Humpback wrote:

Ajax wrote:If I spilled classified information at the rate and severity that our elected representatives do, I'd be in jail for life.
They on the other hand, get re-elected with pensions and lifetime medical care.

They get FERS benefits similar to every other GS. You get 5% of base at 5 yrs up to a max of 80%. I don't know where the myth of congressional medical care comes from, but they were in FEHBP like all other gov't employees until the ACA was passed and now they have to buy on the DC Exchange. In fact, I think they only get the employer contribution if they buy at the Gold level. Nothing lifetime about it either. Uniformed service retired benefits are way better.

Half the classified shit I knew came out in the news when those Russians smeared nerve agent around Coventry last year.

I'm always happy to be set straight. Thanks for clearing up the health care story, it actually does make me feel better.

LarryHoward wrote:I was working on some highly classified programs back during the hotter parts of the cold war. Each week, we would get direction that we could not comment on one or more stories in the latest "Aviation Week and Space Technology" , or "Aviation Leak", as we referred to it.

Of course, I was on the CinCPACFLT staff when "Blind Man's Bluff" came out. Lots of folks walking around HQ saying "can they really publish that?"

Our definition of classified was "freely available on UK web sites."

When the stuff I mentioned above came out, I called a retired, totally former, Army SG's consultant on Chem Casualty Care for guidance on what I could and could not say and he didn't even want to speak the forbidden words on the phone. I decided that was just silly, but I don't know if anything was ever actually declassified.