Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to JessicaRose,
Also in line with freezing the things (I just noticed that someone else suggested the ice trays on an earlier post) freeze grapes and use to chill wine without watering it down.
You're awesome. I'mma do this on a warmer day.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Hebe,
General tip: As a long-term feeders of boys, I have found they eat most anything when put in bread/buns or spread on a pizza.
Leftover potatoes – boiled, roast, baked, whatever. Slice up the next day and throw them on a pizza with whatever cured meat is lurking in the fridge. Mebbe brush with a little olive oil, mebbe not. Wilt some fresh rocket on the hot pizza as soon as it comes out.
Great idea for a thread Russell,; just right for a day like today with storms to come. I’ll try not to over-share.
I know! It’s better than a recipe book. I’ve had had the idea for a while, but today just seemed right.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to JessicaRose,
Ice trays for freezing everything!
Not just limited to freezing water, you can freeze (when in season) fresh herbs in olive oil in perfectly measured amounts suitable for popping into cooking – also lemon and lime juices and tomato paste are suitable for this size and quantity freezing method.
Ooh. That fresh herbs in olive oil idea is interesting. A friend of mine is not a red wine drinker, but sometimes uses it in cooking. She freezes the leftover wine in trays, and swears by it.
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Good news!
I've wrangled a couple of nice prizes for the best hacks -- see the updated post. Extra incentive!
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Hard News: The future: be careful what…, in reply to Rob Coup,
A recent series of articles by Ben Thompson discuss ESPN & AMC as examples of affiliate/ad revenue. Basically:
One key issue is that both of those produce the content they sell. Coliseum is just distributing imported content -- it's more like Netflix than a cable channel. Sky produces the local sports coverage it sells us, through a subsidiary (another gig that TVNZ used to have). It's a big step to offering local sport for Coliseum if it means producing coverage.
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Hard News: The future: be careful what…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
There were worst decisions made by TVNZ, such as the selling-off of the Natural History Unit for diddly-squat. I can recall Michael Stedman telling me a couple of years back that NHNZ was making a bigger annual profit than TVNZ.
I think losing that strategic shareholding in Sky was more critical. And as Michael has pointed out, NHNZ wouldn’t have done nearly as well under TVNZ management.
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Hard News: The future: be careful what…, in reply to Konrad Kurta,
A friend of mine was saying buying rights for Serie A is being considered by the group. Other leagues might be available as a “standalone subscription or a cheap upgrade to the premier league pass” if enough people are interested.
That's a pretty good guess, I think. They'll test demand and then add the other leagues for free or cheap.
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Hard News: Media3: Game On, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’m confused. Do you mean Mediaworks or PlanetFM? Cos the former seems to have found a way to opt out of tax, and already got a sweet deal on a deferred payment of $43mln in license fees (will these ever be paid?)
Yes, the payment was completed last year, ahead of schedule. I didn’t have a particular problem with what the government permitted there – the outstanding payment was carrying a fair whack of interest, and it was a better option than risking the loss of a major media company which provides solid public-interest fare alongside the circuses. The company’s problem was the debt loaded in by the clowns at Ironbridge and not the fault of the management trying to keep it in business.
The $22 million in tax on the “old” Mediaworks was disputed and IRD would likely have settled for less, out of court. Indeed, I gather there’s still a reasonable prospect of that happening.
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Snowden’s new Q&A with Guardian readers was both interesting and frustrating. Someone did try for clarification:
1) Define in as much detail as you can what “direct access” means.
More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.,/q>
So he’s saying the oversight it the real problem – it’s hard to disagree – but he’s still fudged the “direct access” question a bit. Are they, as the original news story said, reaching directly into the Facebook et al’s networks and grabbing what they want without a warrant, or are they picking up stuff that’s been requested through a FISA process and delivered to an official dropbox, which is what the companies and Bart Gellman’s sources say?
2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?__
NSA likes to use “domestic” as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as “incidental” collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of “warranted” intercept, it’s important to understand the intelligence community doesn’t always deal with what you would consider a “real” warrant like a Police department would have to, the “warrant” is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.
Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say “someone at NSA still has the content of your communications” – what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?
Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time – and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.
And no one has asked how he, as a sysadmin in the Hawaii branch office, apparently had the apparent power to order up a wiretap of almost limitless scope. Either he didn’t have that much power, or he did. Either answer is disturbing.
Meanwhile, Obama fudges a bit – but quite authoritatively – in a useful new interview on the subject.
On the 702 scheme:
There is a second program called the 702 program. And what that does is that does not apply to any U.S. person. Has to be a foreign entity. It can only be narrowly related to counter-terrorism, weapons proliferation, cyber hacking or attacks, and a select number of identifiers — phone numbers, emails, et cetera. Those — and the process has all been approved by the courts — you can send to providers — the Yahoos or the Googles, what have you. And in the same way that you present essentially a warrant. And what will happen then is that you there can obtain content. But again, that does not apply to U.S. persons.
Again, it seems the robustness of the oversight is the big question.
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Hard News: Media3: Game On, in reply to Sacha,
You will admire the 'control room' at media3.
OnFilm's running a story on how it wuz done, with commentary from Dylan Reeve and dodgy photos by me.