Do you have a gnawing feeling that Amazon does not have enough of your personal information? That you are sometimes in a dead zone where Amazon – or Google or Facebook – is not tracking you? Not to worry: the on-line behemoth is moving toward their goal of recording everything you say or do. The latest step: “Alexa for Hospitality.” Now they can monitor you not only in your home, but also while you’re in a hotel room with the door locked and bolted.
Of course, Amazon’s monitoring device is asleep until you awaken it with “Alexa.” The cynical among us ask how Alexa knows you want it if it’s not listening. Amazon assures us that it is not keeping any information that you don’t want it to have. And if you can’t trust Amazon…
Memorial Day began in 1868 as Decoration Day, promoted by General John Logan on behalf of Northern Civil War veterans, designated May 30 as a day for “the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”
The day of remembrance became Memorial Day during the Great War – later to become known as World War I – to honor veterans of all the nation’s wars. The commemoration was changed to the last Monday of May in 1971 to conform to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, passed by Congress in 1968.
Memorial Day is also the unofficial beginning of summer in the U.S.
Harley-Davidson paid its President and Chief Executive Officer, Matthew S. Levatich, $11.1 million in 2017, a 19% increase from his $9.35 million take the prior year, rewarding him for taking the company’s net income to $522 million, down 25% from 2016’s $692 million. Five years ago, he collected a paltry $3.7 million. A share of H-D stock (HOG) was priced at $69.24 at the end of 2013; $50.88 at the close of 2017, down 27%. ($42.31 on May 25, 2018.)
Twenty-two-year-old Elvis Presley paid $102,500 for a home in Memphis for his parents and himself. That was in 1957. The purchase price was equivalent to about $915,000 in 2018. Today, Graceland is the second-most-visited house in the country. (First is the White House.) At 10,000 square feet and less than a million dollars, though, Elvis’s estate is almost laughable in the hierarchy of grandiose residences. In Los Angeles’s Bel Air neighborhood, anything less than 30,000 square feet cannot be taken seriously. And a million dollars? Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton recently sold his Malibu home for $110 million.
There’s no question Republicans are doing all they can to suppress voting: the fewer votes cast, the better Republican chances. But that’s another story. We’re here to talk about your vote actually being counted.
Oregon elections are vote-by-mail. My ballot shows up in my mailbox. I complete it, sign it, put a stamp on the envelope and mail it back. In a day or two, I receive a text message or e-mail confirming my ballot has arrived at the election office. Later I receive another message telling me that my vote has been counted. Prior to repatriating back to Oregon, I voted by mail in California for twenty years.
Seventeen states have formally requested the Department of Homeland Security do risk assessments of their voting systems. With primary-election season here, DHS has so far completed nine. Homeland Security is also providing 33 state and 32 local election offices with cyber-scanning services to identify weaknesses in their networks. Collusion or not, there is no question that Russians infiltrated voting systems in the 2016 election; Russia attempted to hack into the election systems in 21 states. Two of those states — Alabama and Oklahoma — have not yet requested a DHS security review.
We’ve come a long way since the punch-card debacle of the 2000 election. Unfortunately, the “new” electronic voting equipment since then is now old and susceptible to malfunctions and breakdowns, not to mention hacking. Some of the manufacturers of voting machines have gone out of business. Direct-recording-electronic voting machines – DREs – make it easy to cast a ballot, but do not provide a paper record of voter choices. Even slot machines in gambling casinos keep better information.
Hacking is not just breaking into voting-system hardware. Precincts transmitting election data via Internet or even modem are also vulnerable.
Of course, Amazon’s monitoring device is asleep until you awaken it with “Alexa.” The cynical among us ask how Alexa knows you want it if it’s not listening. Amazon assures us that it is not keeping any information that you don’t want it to have. And if you can’t trust Amazon…
