Josh Rogin in The Washington Post:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy and three of his top officials. It’s not clear if they resigned on their own, or if they were pushed out.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

Regardless of whether they chose to leave or not, it’s a statement on the Trump administration. Either these career officers couldn’t bear to work under Trump (and he was unable to convince them otherwise), or Trump decided he didn’t want (or need?) their expertise.

Either way, their departure leaves the State Department worse off, and U.S. diplomats less safe.

AKA “The Trump Escape Plan”.

(I spent two weeks a couple of winters ago traveling through New Zealand. It’s quite beautiful and the people are lovely.)

A gift to the cast from a group of fans. Remarkable work.

I’ve been thinking this for a while now.

Not surprisingly, Adams calls the article a “weak hit piece” and the author a “bottom-feeder,” without bothering to dispute the contents of the article itself.
Sometime ago, Adams left the plausible realm of “Trump is great at persuasion” to “Trump should be president”. It just seems he isn’t able to admit it.

As an old-school Apple II fan, this is a thing of beauty. I only wish I could justify it’s $3,000 price tag. See also their 27″ 5K iMac and Keyboard and Mouse.

Apple II Forever!

Sure. Master keys that open millions of locks are fine.

Easily secured and never at risk of compromise or misuse.

Disappointed in President Obama. From the Verge’s coverage of his appearance at SXSW:

“If your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can and should in fact create black boxes, that I think does not strike the kind of balance we have lived with for 200, 300 years. And it’s fetishizing our phones above every other value. That can’t be the right answer. I suspect the answer is going to come down to how do we create a system where the encryption is as strong as possible, the key is as secure as possible, it is accessible by the smallest number of people possible, on a subset of issues we deem is important.”

His suggestions are “compromise security now” or “be forced to compromise security in the future”.

He’s either poorly informed, or doesn’t believe in citizens’ rights to absolute security.

No one ever thinks “let’s ban shredders or fire” so criminals can’t destroy evidence.

They don’t say “let’s force safe makers to make safes that make it possible to open them”.

And no one ever says “let’s force people to tell us what’s in their head”.

Well, perhaps that’s all not yet.

If you study our state laws, federal laws, and international treaties, you’ll see many examples of intellectual property that actually are protected against warrants. Yes, there are things in this country that are deemed warrant proof.

[…]

is that our country recognizes many laws and international treaties that support the concept of warrant proof as a valid concept. It is not only well within Apple’s rights to produce a product that happens to be warrant-proof, but it’s actually Apple’s responsibility to create a product that’s capable of enforcing the highest level of security permitted by our country’s laws… not the lowest. Apple is well within not only their rights, but in practices that support and place appropriate locks consistent with the levels of privacy our country recognizes. These products protect everyone – diplomats, doctors, journalists, as well as all of us. Of course they should be this secure. If our own country recognizes warrant proof as a thing, of course our technology should too.

Good idea for future marketing from Apple: Our devices are warrent proof.

I liked it so much, I registered the domain name and pointed it to that article).

Of greatest concern to me is how cheerful they all seem in spouting their opinions.

Well, except for the guy who thinks slavery should still be thing. He wisely covered his face.

I mean, why embarass yourself, right?