Adventures in Router Land

The virii and trojans and  ransomware are getting aggressive this year.  I decided to upgrade the firmware in my router.  Router is a $40 plastic box that plugs into the cable modem and offers WIFI and four internet connectors.  The router faces the raw internet, and needs to reject incoming messages that would take over the router and do evil.  The router acts as a firewall, and if it should be penetrated, the hacker has direct access to the Windows machines plugged into the router.  And Windows is like Swiss cheese, fully of holes.  If the tougher software in the router is compromised, the Windows machines are toast. 
   My router is a NetGear N300 purchased a couple of years ago.  I Googled the router maker name, model number and "firmware".  This gave me an offer to download new firmware.  On this particular router you can talk to it using your web browser.  You put in a special URL and the router picks up and displays a groovy little user interface.  From this I learned that my current firmware was v18 while the new downloaded firmware was v42.  Hmm, been a lot of patching of router code over the last couple of years.   The router offered an "upload firmware" function, which was sorta flaky.  I had to run it two or three times before the upload "took". 
   So, me router firmware is all up to date, which is the best I can do against the swarm of malware running around the internet.  Upgrading the firmware did not mess up any of my computer connections to the router.

Wall St Journal Pushes a Carbon Tax???

Yesterday's Journal Op-Ed had a piece authored by James Baker and George Schultz.  Both of these guys have been Secretary of the Treasury AND Secretary of State.  So they have some experience.  They may not have any common sense, but they have lots of experience.  They claim that a $40 a ton carbon tax will clear our air and improve the economy.  They propose the revenues from the carbon tax be paid out to all citizens rather than going to reduce the deficit and pay the government's bills.  They think this payout will avoid the downturn that just socking everyone with a hefty tax hike will.   They make it sound kinda sweet, mentioning a $2000 a year refund to the average family. 
   What they don't mention, is that everyone will have to hike their prices to pay their carbon tax.  To put it in perspective, each time I fill my 275 gallon furnace oil tank, I'd get hit for $40 in carbon tax.  Call it $200 a winter.  
    And surely, avoiding a $40 a ton carbon tax would be a strong incentive for business to expand overseas, or anywhere outside the US just to avoid the tax.  That carbon tax will undo all the good work of frackers in getting the price of oil down. 
   And, they want to impose all this pain to reduce global warming.  We haven't had any global warming that you could measure with a thermometer for the last 19 years, and they want to sock it to me for global warming?  As I write this it is 14F outside with snow swirling in front of my windows. 

That $500 billion foreign trade deficit

According to today's Wall St Journal  that's how deep in the hole we are.  Our imports were $500 billion more than our exports.  In short, the rest of the world shipped $500 billion worth of goods into America and America shipped them zilch.  Since people don't like to ship goods and not get paid, presumably we sent $500 billion in cash to pay for this stuff. 
   $500 billion is a lot, even for a US GNP of $17 trillion.  And we have been doing this for at least 20 years, maybe more.  How does it work? 
   Do we merely print an extra $500 billion dollars?  The US greenback is desired all over the world, and we can probably get away with printing a whole lot of 'em before foreigners wise up and stop accepting them.
   Do we have some invisible export that earns us $500 billion a year?  Does tuition paid by foreign students to US colleges count as exports?  What about royalties for Hollywood movies, video games, pop music, Superman comic books, and other stuff? Does all that count as exports?   Do foreign stock purchases on the NYSE or NASDAQ count?
    Something else?
    The point is, we have been running humongous trade deficits for many many years and it keeps on running.  Somehow the international books get balanced and we don't run out of money.  It would be nice to know how this really works 

Jungle Book, Disney 2016

I missed this when it was in the theater in town some months ago.  So I Netflixed it this week.  It's a live action kinda remake of the old Disney animated one.  Neel Sethi plays Mowgli and does it well.  He is young,  cute, he delivers his lines well, he looks good.  He is about the only real live action actor,  the rest of the cast are CGI animals, all well done, nice fur, good voices, very huggable.  It is an enjoyable flick.  They manage to do a couple of scary scenes that I found scary even at my age.  They borrowed some songs from the earlier animated version.  Baloo and Baghera and Kaa are nicely done.  I liked it.  Any child over the age of six ought to love it. 

Shed another tear for poor old Sears Roebuck

Sears troubles are so bad that banks are leery of lending to Sears.  According to the Wall St Journal Sears investors had to pay $4.62 million in bond insurance (a credit default swap) to insure a Sears $10 million for five years bond.  That' $924,000 a year, or 9.24% a year.  That's pure usury.  Or, the investors view Sears as so likely to default that they don't want to risk their money. 

Trump Adminstration leaks

The TV is talking about them.  They believe the number of leaks from the new born Trump administration is excessive.  The imply (they don't have the stones to come out and say it) that the leaks are coming from Trump appointees jostling for position inside the new administrative. 
  I wonder about that.  The vast US civil service are Democrats to a man (or a woman)  They are fire proof.  We could not fire low level civil servants even after we caught them stealing stuff out the base warehouse.  I'll bet you cannot fire them for leaking, even if you could catch them at it.  Not when they can put gigabytes of data onto a single easily concealable thumb drive.  And they all have broadband internet at home.
   Judging from the hysterical response of Democrats to Trump, being shown on TV hour after hour, I bet a lot of those Democratic civil servants are just as rabidly anti-Trump.  And they plan on leaking to damage the Trump administration.  
   Dunno what Trump can do about that.  Civil servants are everywhere in the US government.  They are the typists, the IT guys, the administrators, the janitorial staff, the receptionists, and every sort of paper pusher.  And  they can see everything, especially if someone has it typed up.
   We may be in for the most transparent administration in history, where everything gets leaked, to the media, to the Congress, to the homeless in the streets.
   Transparency may be OK, but American allies are already reluctant to share intelligence with the Americans for fear it will turn up on the front page and the New York Times,  burning agents and undoing years of careful intel work.
   

Superbowl LI

First TV in months that wasn't all about Trump and the election.  Refreshing I call it.  Cliff hanger ending.  Go Pats.