Sunday, November 10, 2013

Bits and Pieces - November 10, 2013

I will be writing up my thoughts on this week's negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran over at Nuclear Diner. But first I want to clear some of the tabs I've been collecting.

The official statment from the negotiations. Next meeting coming up soon, a good sign.

November 22 will be the fiftieth anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Articles are starting to ramp up. Lee Harvey Oswald's widow still lives in Texas. Here's her history.

The United States is made up of 11 nations. This Tufts Alumni Magazine article is better than The Atlantic's ripoff.

What Mass Killers Want—And How to Stop Them. This sounds about right to me. But will the media ever figure it out? Looking forward to the WSJ's bloodthirsty coverage of the next one. :(

Haven't seen much coverage of this or the Snowden revelations about which country is cyberattacking Finland. But I can guess. Hint: they're right next door.

The Hacker News does a poor job of re-reporting Eugene Kaspersky's claim that a "Russian nuclear plant" was infected with Stuxnet. The Hacker News story features a photo of a civilian nuclear power plant, but, if Stuxnet "infected the internal network of a Russian nuclear plant, exactly in the same way as it compromised the control system in Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz," one might wonder if the "nuclear plant" involved was one of Russia's centrifuge enrichment plants. That is what is implied by that quote, but it's clear that neither reporter has any idea whether this is the case.

A good explanation of why allies watch (yeah, spy on) each other.

In case you're wondering about the report that Pakistan might share its nukes with Saudi Arabia, A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, says that no other nation funded Pakistan's program.