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2024

I am openly hostile toward cryptocurrency, NFT, web3, and other blockchain gimmicks. Aaaaaand that's not going to change any time soon. Even still, there is a genuine, no-bullshit, for-real-for-real positive outcome for society. That's not to say crypto is a net positive - don't be silly. But this goat rodeo is going to stick around a while so we might as well admire the silver lining.
Rotate your phone’s chimes to temporarily relieve anxious reactions. Useful for unavoidable phone notifications, like work email/chat or tough social situations.
... But I do know that they offer the most demented upsell in the entirety of capitalism. For $2.50 more a month, you get access to all MLB games. Obviously, they offer this because it doesn’t cost them squat and the extra couple bucks is an easy capture against fans willing to subscribe in the first place. Step back a minute. Their 14% increase unlocks a positively prodigious 1,500% more content. That gets even more daffy when you consider that it’s virtually impossible to consume all this extra value your $2.50 gets you.
Mom’s cable company charged $141 monthly for one of those awful “triple play” packages. You know the sort - internet, TV, and home phone for the same price as a bottle of Blanton’s every month. She chopped that down to $50 monthly with a few hours of research and some gear from Walmart and Amazon.

2023

Series of posts outlining the surprising costs of responding to a ransomware attack from investigation to litigation
Willow is a wily dog. She’ll let you leave the room with food on the coffee table month after month after month, never once causing trouble. You might think she’s a very disciplined pup. Lies. She lulls you into complacency until you leave particularly forbidden snacks unattended. Forbidden snacks like the onion rings I bought for today’s lunch. We knew that onions are toxic to dogs but didn’t know how toxic or what to do about it. A bunch of articles and forums told us, “Don’t delay! Induce vomiting IMMEDIATELY if your dog eats even one ring”. We called ASPCA’s Animal Poison hotline on the recommendation of two separate vets, and I happily cosign that rec if you’re in a similar pickle.
AbolishIP was a short-lived pseudonymous blog from my early 20s.
I love looking up concept art, interpretations, or even fan art when ramping into a book / audiobook. It adds atmosphere, contextualizes characters, and makes it easier to imagine complicated concepts and scenes. The trouble is that it's almost always a terrible idea. You'd be hard pressed to think of a better way to catch unwanted spoilers than blindly Google'ing for story images. Just this year, I badly wanted to image search Three Body Problem to help imagine the surreal scenes in the first book. No doubt visuals would have added a great dimension to the experience, but I felt I had to force myself to do without until finishing the series. I had a similar thought reading Log from the Sea of Cortez. Steinbeck chocked it full of beautiful descriptions of dozens and dozens of sea creatures, and I'd have loved a way to see individuals while I was reading without putting the book down to google, deconflict, and find my page again. Someone should make a platform that gives you images based on where you are in the story. Enough to aid imagination without spoiling the whole tamale. For Audible in particular I think this would be a great feature. Think something akin to Spotify's music visualizations.

2022

DarkReading | "Attackers are already circling back to reselling stolen data instead of — and in addition to — extortion"

2021

"Guest James Gimbi, Director at technical advisory firm MOXFIVE, shares why he believes banning ransomware payments is bad policy..."
As the policy community gets its arms around how government can address ransomware, we wanted to share an industry perspective on one proposal floated by thinkers outside the cybersecurity space: we believe ransomware payment bans are bad policy.

2020

Brett Thorson and James Gimbi from BCG Platinion Cybersecurity share their thoughts on what the recent SolarWinds breach means for affected organizations, digital product and service providers, and their customers.
Five tips for congressional staffers navigating the @SolarWinds #hack as the next batch of @congressfellows approaches congress

2018

Exchange that strikes a chord from 'Stranger than Fiction'

2017

For some time now I've been working toward a new direction. Step one is around the bend. Today I found a crew with a similar model nearly eight years ahead of my curve. Check out their early work.
— Martin Luther King, Jr
Celebrating a giant in the family
My first Lichess LoneWolf League match was this morning! Andy (Elo 1752) shredded me (1442) to bits, but I'm happy with my play.
My friend Shanna shared “The Alien Mind” (Philip K. Dick) while we traded old science fiction short stories. It rests on a sketchy .RU domain, and she couldn’t find it anywhere else. Risky-clickiness aside, I wondered how long it would survive before the webmaster stopped paying the bills. Creative collections peppered across the old web are slowly dying off, so I'll mirror a small selection of favorites here.
— Isaac Asimov
Only cowards support the immigration ban. Cowards waste this country. Freedom is dangerous and brave, and would be better spent on families facing real terrorism every day.
No-longer-relevant post about moving from off a consumer blogging platform to a hand-built system

2016

— Jim Harrison
Sharing a refactored comic from 'Calvin & Muad'Dib'
Let's be constructive. Celebrate common ground, identify the cause in our differences, and aim to understand them instead of hate them.
— John Steinbeck
— John Steinbeck
— Antonin Scalia
We hear a lot of chatter about term limits for the Supreme Court these days. The motive is to make the Court more representative or politically accountable. This is dangerous. Democratic representation is ideal for political offices, but SCOTUS was not meant to be political.
— Kurt Vonnegut
User-focused considerations about consumer ad-blockers -- Mark Addison of Adblock Plus was [uninvited to this year's IAM Annual Leadership Meeting, spurring discussion about the ethics of online ads and ad blockers. Seems like an appropriate time to explain why I block ads

2015

Recounting this year's bookshelf. It was a good year for science fiction.
— Philip Su
On the bright side, Clinton and Trump agree on something. On the dark side...
— Josh Lyman

2014

— Sergey Nikitin
Thoughts on the debate about tax inversions
— U.S. Patent & Trademark Office manager
Sifting signal from noise in the Heartbleed's wake

2013

— Thomas Jefferson
In case anyone asks, my life and safety are not worth trading in your uninterrupted privacy and liberty. I accept the consequences of living in a free society, few as they are.
'Some Far-out Thoughts on Computers', a 1962 paper by CIA officer Orrin Clotworthy, predicts with fair accuracy the impact computers, games and game theory, and data analysis in our age.
AIP: On the Republican Study Committee's paper about copyright
AIP: The technique is simple and, sadly, almost cliche: 1) target small businesses with little to no legal faculty; 2) demand cash for infringing flimsy patents completely unrelated to their respective service lines.

2012

Sharing a theory that spammers use deliberately poor language to optimize their hit rate on promising targets over savvy users that ultimately don't close
AIP: Apple's exclusive right to use page turning animations
AIP: METHOD OF EXERCISING A CAT
AIP: While somewhat dated, this article from Kunvay provides a slew of examples of how copyright spoiled the Olympics for many patriotic Londoners
AIP: On Jordan Weissmann's piece in The Atlantic
AIP: METHOD OF SWINGING ON A SWING
AIP: A good time to be a lawyer. A bad time to be an innovator.
AIP: Easy to get confused
Summarizing my experience and presentation at Roc's best 'unconference'
Thoughts on this year's NCAA tournament
Congratulations on the national championship and a well-earned promotion to DI!
My last post was about an awesome new law in New Hampshire requiring state agencies to consider open source software. I was, however, slightly confused about the mandate's exclusion of the Judiciary. New Hampshire State Representative George Lambert was kind enough to offer a quick explanation.
New Hampshire passed a new law advocating open source software and open data formats. While not perfect, HB418 represents a huge step forward for transparency and technical competence in government

2011

AIP: Launching a (now defunct) blog about intellectual property

2008

Non-comprehensive list of things that seem much more important when calc projects are due
A list of several presidential campaigns that are still active. There's more on the menu than McCain and Obama, believe it or not.
Some of them are built so that the front doesn't fall off at all.

2007

Everyone needs a first post