So about those locks.....

One of the challenges I've had with allowing the manipulation of lock state (other than lock/unlock, or setting the keypad on or off) is the risk of someone picking off a code from your phone -- and then being able to break into your house.  For obvious reasons that would be bad.

I've decided to leverage the notification system built into the software for this purpose.  This has several advantages, chief among them being that neither the phone or the base software has to store a code from a lock in any case.

If you select "Get Code in Slot" and enter the slot number when you click Execute HomeDaemon-MCP retrieves the code in real time over the AES-encrypted channel from the lock and sends it back to your device via the encrypted notification system.  It never touches anything else (like the cloud) and is not stored anywhere other than in RAM on the device when displayed in the notification pane, which can be dismissed.  In addition there is no storage off-site, anywhere, of the event itself either so Mr. Subpoena (or "Mr. NSL") can pound sand since nobody can produce what they don't have.

If you set a code it is transmitted to the lock.  Ditto for deleting a code.

Codes on most common locks (they're all using the same basic board) can be 4 to 8 numeric digits.  8 is quite secure; 4, not so much, although after a few (wrong) attempts the lock will raise an alarm exception.  In all cases when the change "takes" an exception is raised back to the phone, so you know it went through, exactly as is the case for an asynchronous event (e.g. someone uses the code to open the lock.)

Disabling the keypad locks out all the codes, instantly (very useful if you're not at home, don't expect to be home, and don't want anyone to be able to open the door.)  The state of the lock in the background is currently set this way ("Prohibited" .vs. "Accessible.")  Oh, and the manual operation of the lock (e.g. with a key or the inside knob) is also instantly reported.

Again -- no cloud, no BeeEss, no stealing.

HomeDaemon-MCP is available to the firm, large or small, that wants to disrupt the model of "smart home" systems.  All rights, source and all, to both the base code running on a $35 piece of hardware and the Android app are included.  Look to the right and email me today!

HomeDaemon-MCP's Android App now knows how to handle multiple locations at once -- with always-on 24x7 monitoring and control from anywhere, without any cloud involvement.

 

In addition the license server now populates the HomeDaemon.Org domain automatically when a license registers or renews, and as a result for those who don't have a convenient "dynamic dns" provider, or don't wish to set one up you no longer need to -- the software does it for when the license is validated.  While this is not instant response if your IP number changes but connectivity does not go down or the unit resets (e.g. power goes off) it is convenient and "no setup required."

You may suspend monitoring on any declared host if you wish at any time, and then turn it back on without altering the others, or having to re-enter a password.  As has been the case thus far in the app's development cycle no passwords are saved, ever in the app itself or in the app's data store.

Power consumption with full-time monitoring enabled and your phone sleeping continues to be negligible -- and yet no cloud management or storage tools are used anywhere in the application.  Nobody gets your data but you -- ever -- on your house. Not your coming and going, not the motion, your thermostat or camera data.

It's yours, and only yours.

Again HomeDaemon-MCP is for sale as a complete, ready-to-go package needing only to have the customer front-end set up to meet your desired licensing scheme.  All rights are available at a very reasonable price -- contact me today if you're interested (and of course can fund the acquisition) and we'll move forward!

There's been plenty of discussion over whether services such as Apple's iTunes, Google Play, Facebook, Twitter and similar can ban users on a purely-discretionary basis.

The common argument is that because they are private companies they can create whatever policies they'd like so long as they do not violate existing civil rights law (e.g. you can't ban someone because they're black.)

But this isn't merely about services such as Facebook, Twitter and similar -- now the ability of content creators to monetize their work is at stake. As of the 21st of September  Infowars has been notified that Paypal is refusing to process payments for subscriptions as well as merchandise.

If you remember in 2017 the notorious neo-Nazi web site Daily Stormer was basically run off the Internet -- first by GoDaddy and then in rapid sequence multiple other firms, including Google.  They were denied the ability to buy DNS and hosting service as they were effectively black-balled by dozens of providers of these basic utility-class services more or less "all at once."

More recently Microsoft threatened Gab.ai with loss of their cloud computing provider, Microsoft's Azure, unless they made changes to their operations.  Microsoft was and remains unwilling to provide a specific list of changes they required or specifics of any alleged violations of their terms of service.

The premise that a private company can refuse service (or sales) to anyone is a fundamental part of Capitalism; the theory is that if one retailer does not wish to do business with you then another will.  But these campaigns of harassment are far more sinister and troubling because they now encompass the utility services that underlie the Internet's infrastructure.

This must not be allowed to stand.

Here's an example.  A hypothetical neo-Nazi wishes to buy a domain and purchase web services to air his views.   However repugnant the right to hold those views and express them is protected by the First Amendment.

Do businesses involved in selling Internet utility services have the right to refuse to sell to him?

To put your views on the Internet you need several different services, not just one.

1. A circuit or means of delivery and interchange with other users on the Internet.  Your cellphone or cable modem is an example of the "end connection" in this regard; in the publisher category this is either an ISP or some sort of a cloud provider.  This circuit is not just a line; in some way you have to connect to an interchange point, much like a phone on a physical wire is useless unless it connects to a switch so you can call other people.

2. A DNS or "nameserver" service.  This is what turns "vile-nazi.com" into an IP address in the format "1.2.3.4" or, in the IPv6 vernacular, "2501:......".  This is an essential service for the modern web because it is not only commonplace it is virtually always true on shared hosting or services of any sort that multiple names are bound to one IP address.  For example "vile-nazi.com" and "sweet-kitty.com" may both point to the same numerical IP address; the server determines which request goes where by the presentation of the domain name.

3. A computer (server), either a physical device or a virtual piece of a larger physical computer.  These days most small and moderate sites are run on virtualizations, not physical machines -- it's much less expensive and most small and moderate-sized sites simply don't need the entire power of a modern computer, so spreading it among other clients makes it less expensive for everyone.

4. The software that takes the message(s) you provide and formats and delivers them to others.  In the web world this is often Apache (a freely available piece of code) although not always by any means -- there are many other packages, some free and some commercial, that perform this function.  In addition there are services that perform this function in other ways (which are software packaged up with a "brand") such as Facebook and Twitter.

The question before us today is where is the line between a company able to refuse service to anyone and not?

I think we can agree that the neo-Nazi cannot be refused electrical service at his house.  Nor can he be refused water, sewer and trash pickup.  He also cannot be refused access to a toll road or bridge, even if privately run, so long as he pays the tolls like everyone else.

But he can be refused seating in a local restaurant.

What's the distinction?

Simple: The neo-Nazi's views are not implicitly endorsed by the establishment in the case of electrical, sewer and toll road service.

It is instantly obvious to an observer that the neo-Nazi's words on Facebook are in fact associated with the company Facebook.  Ditto for those on Twitter. But it isn't obvious to the public that the neo-Nazi bought his DNS or Web Service from GoDaddy or Amazon.  If one was curious you would have to dig for the information.  Even so these providers bear little risk of being co-branded with that neo-Nazi.

As such we should draw through regulation and law some simple bright-line tests.

Facebook can ban whoever it wants, for whatever reason.  So can Twitter.

GoDaddy, however, cannot ban a user from DNS registration no matter the purpose so long their site is legal.  Ditto for Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure or any other cloud or hosting provider. Nor may providers refuse traffic interchange based on the viewpoints contained in their, or their customers, communications.

Twitter, in short, may ban anyone it wishes.  However, should they do so to any material degree there will be created an opportunity for a new Twitter, and anyone may start a competing service with essentially the same feature set.

What do we do with utility services that handle the flow of funds?

Traditional banks or fintech outfits such as PayPal  must not be allowed to discriminate against customers simply because they don't like their political views. Banking and monetary exchange is inherently a utility service and to deny same to any US Citizen as a consequence of their views is to attempt to "starve" a citizen for exercising their constitutionally-protected rights.

Thus the recent PayPal ban of Alex Jones must not stand, Master Card must not be able to ban Robert Spencer and neither can the decision of the bank that recently said "no" to a Florida candidate who supports the legalization of cannabis.  All of these are issue positions used to deny utility services.

We would not allow Florida Power and Light to cut off Nikki Fried's electricity because she supports the legalization of marijuana.  We must not also allow banks and modern utilities such as ISPs, domain providers and similar to effectively destroy people and political speech because they don't like the message, even though it's lawful.

Oh Bill Still!  Oh former Libertarian candidate for President who proclaimed this on stage:

"Crashes are caused by just one thing, and that's bubbles.  Bubbles are caused by just one thing and that's banks being in complete and total control of the quantity of the american monetary system in complete and total contradiction of the American Constitution."

But now, Mr. Still has found his #MAGA hat and his wife is worse, shilling his videos all over the Internet supporting outright monetary fraud and, in addition, shilling for herself with MLM "dietary supplements"!

Principles?  What are those?  Gee, did you forget what you actually said Mr. Still?

Well, let me remind you what the facts are from the US Treasury's own web site:

Now the GDP of the nation stands, as of last read, at $20,411,900,000,000.

Four quarters ago it stood at $19,588,100,000,000, a difference over the last year of $823,800,000,000.

In other words GDP is actually negative because the expansion of federal debt is greater than the expansion in GDP in dollars.

This is a matter of arithmetic -- not politics.

The problem is that in real terms you need to earn at least 6.23% to break even on a government (or any other) bond.  At any rate of return under 6.23% you are losing money in real terms if you buy such a security.  Of course right now Treasuries are all earning less than this (a lot less!) yet the above is a mathematical fact.

That is, in actual monetary terms the real inflation rate is 6.23%, not 2%.  The Fed can lie and the BLS and BEA can lie with their CPI tables but arithmetic does not lie and each dollar of monetary expansion by the federal government is a dollar of inflation -- period.

This sort of misdirection can be gotten away with for a while.  It was in the 2000s, and in the 1990s.  But it cannot be gotten away with forever because the damage in purchasing power done to everyone by this behavior is both real and immediate and it is this very behavior by governments and private banks that cause both bubbles and the resulting crashes.

Trump knows this and does not care.  He believes he will be out of office before it all blows up in his face.  Bush believed that too, and he was wrong.  Obama ran the same crap after the 2008 crash and got away with it for the eight years he was in office.

Trump will not get away with it.  We are running a 6.23% fiscal deficit during an expansion in the economy.  That's outrageously large and in fact belies the truth -- there is no expansion at all; the economy is in fact contracting and yet the false signals being sent to employers and others leads them to do uneconomic things like borrow money to buy back stock.

It is this very uneconomic behavior that in fact leads to crashes because it causes the valuation of assets to be falsely priced far above their actual value due to the perception that this insanity can and will go on forever, and thus whenever you wish to sell you will be able to at a higher price.

When reality comes calling prices do not "correct" they crash because there is utterly no underpinning for the valuation metric that you have been using and due to the effects of compounding actual valuations are half or less of where prices are trending!

It is stupid to continue to prance around and call this sort of economic distortion "good", but that's what I expect from our lying, fake-news media and serial liars and bubble blowers such as Larry Kudlow.

But the true test of whether someone is actually nothing more than 2-bit whore or believes what they say comes when someone who has made public speeches on the insanity of such behavior and in fact ran a campaign for the highest office in America on this very basis turns on a dime and supports the people doing it now.

Fuck you Mr. President and Congress both -- you're setting up the worst collapse and crash since the 1930s.  Double-fuck you, however, to those who have claimed in the past to be supporters of monetary and fiscal truth but have discarded same due to a putrid and fraudulent infestation in Washington DC that happens to be buttering one's bread via Youslob horsecrap and MLM schemes.

This is a bad number -- especially on the back of last month's report.

The unemployment rate declined to 3.7 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 134,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.

This is utterly nasty and the drop in the unemployment rate is entirely due to an increase in the NILF figure -- people who have left the workforce.

Let's look inside:

In a word: Meh.

The 12 month change is below 2m.  The rate has been over 2m for roughly the last year, but now it is solidly below.  That's bad news, because the increase in working-age population is approximately 2 million, so if you can't manage to put up that number on a 12 month rolling basis you are losing ground.

Heh, look at that "formal unemployment rate" -- it's a multi-generational low.  But does it mean anything?

Not really since there the employment:population ratio is nowhere near the 1969 figures.  Having an "unemployment rate" that is extremely low because people aren't looking for jobs but are either sucking off public assistance or otherwise out of the workforce isn't positive -- it's negative since only working people pay taxes.

Have you looked at the annualized "debt to the penny" figures lately?  No?  Well maybe you should.  I'll help you out with that in the next few days in my usual annual report on exactly how much bullshit Washington DC has emitted into the "economy" and thus the fraud embedded in the GDP "expansion" rate.

Once again having a Bachelors or better did not outperform; all of the educational categories gained, but both high school dropouts and degree-holders managed one tick of advancement.  "Some College" and High School graduates both gained more, however, meaning that once again we are making McJobs and not, as is often said, positions for the "highly educated."

There are also indications of slack in the part-time statistics but this month I ignore them because of Florence.  If they persist into next month, however, they are likely an early indication of a negative turn in the economy and employment situation.

We shall see.