You Can't Silence Us

Not a Free Pass

For those who read here, you know that I remain opposed to the death penalty. Not because killers don’t deserve it, but because I don’t trust our legal system not to execute the innocent. Still, the left wing press (redundancy alert) is up in arms because today is the day that Florida executes an 80 year old man. The press is claiming that it’s cruel to execute a disabled 80 year old.

He wasn’t 80 when he was convicted and sentenced 50 years ago. The man has delayed his punishment with appeal after appeal for five decades. While I am opposed to the death penalty, what we have now is a farce, with inmates spending 30, 40, and even 50 years abusing the court system. The government can abuse the legal process, but so can criminals.

If you are going to have a death penalty, there should be a limit to the number of appeals. Put all of your appeals into one motion that must be considered and ruled upon at once. Five year limit.

People who have read this post: 67
By Divemedic, ago

Infosec

As much as I disagree with and detest those Antifa asshats and everything they stand for, this news item grabbed my attention. Sam Tunick was stopped for interrogation in Atlanta’s airport while on the way home from vacation in the Dominican Republic. What he didn’t know is the feds put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his association with the protests of Cop City.

The agents took him to a room and began an inspection, but all their questions were centered on child sexual abuse images. (If the Feds want you, they always allege some sort of child porn charges. Ask the Branch Davidians how that plays out.) Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was refused access to an attorney each time. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights. They tried to use the “port of entry” exception to search him and his belongings.

Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone during the interrogation, telling him they would seize it if he did not. When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.

It turns out the phone was a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS. One of the security features the OS has is a “duress” code that, if entered, resets the phone to factory settings and wipes the memory. It’s such an issue that police in the EU assume you are a criminal if you have this OS installed. Anyhow, the Feds have charged him with a Federal felony:

On or about January 24, 2025, in the Northern District of Georgia, the defendant, SAMUEL TUNICK, before and during the search for and seizure of property by Customs and Border Patrol Tactical Terrorism Response Team Supervisory Officer L.C., a person authorized to make such search and seizure, did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control, in violation of Title 18, Untied [sic] States Code, Section 2232(a).

Duress passwords exist for scenarios like border crossings, where individuals face immense pressure to unlock devices without traditional legal protections. The US has long maintained that routine border searches don’t require warrants, creating what civil liberties groups call a “Constitution-free zone” for travelers’ digital lives. A 2019 federal court ruling found suspicionless phone searches at borders violated the Fourth Amendment, but the government continues doing it anyway.

I don’t have a problem with this. I am less afraid of criminals than I am the government, who seems to overlook this kind of behavior if you have certain connections. Remember Hillary Clinton and Bleachbit?

Jury nullification is a thing. That’s all I will say about that.

People who have read this post: 84
By Divemedic, ago

Every Time

Every time I see a story like this, cops comment on here about how I am “anti-cop.” No, I am anti criminal. This cop beat the shit out of someone, breaking 8 ribs, puncturing his lung, and giving him a concussion. Then he compounded it by turning off his body camera (thereby destroying evidence) and lied in his arrest report (thereby committing perjury).

People who have read this post: 347
By Divemedic, ago

ID Isn’t Always Racist

My wife sometimes asks me why I debate lefties online. Here is an example. I made that post about Mamdani’s commie grocery store. Then I got sucked into an online debate. Someone picked up my idea about reselling the stuff from his store, and the left responded with this:

It really tickles me when they set up such easy T-ball shots.

People who have read this post: 240
By Divemedic, ago

Microcharges

I’m a home lab tinkerer. I enjoy getting my house to do things that make my life easier. My current project involves using Home Assistant and my new home network to monitor my house. I don’t have to pay alarm company fees, camera fees, or any other rent to a company for things I already own. That’s why this story hit a nerve with me.

Imagine you just spent $400 on a smart garage door opener. You paid Chamberlain another $30 for a myQ hub to make it “smart.” Then in November 2023, Chamberlain blocked every third-party app from talking to your own garage door. Home Assistant. Apple Home. Google Home. SmartThings. IFTTT. All dead overnight.

Chamberlain called it “unauthorized usage” and said they cut off outside apps from accessing their door openers to improve the experience for their 10 million users. Home Assistant removed the myQ integration weeks later. The odd part? Amazon Key in-garage delivery still works because they charge $1.99 per order and they pay Chamberlain fees for access.

You now own a $430 garage door opener that only talks to one app, owned by one company, and they control who can and can’t interact with it. You are renting access to your own garage.

Paul Wieland, a former IT guy reverse-engineered Chamberlain’s Security protocol and built a device that speaks to it. He named it Rage Against the Garage Door Opener (ratgdo). He hoped to sell 100 units. Instead, he sold tens of thousands of them.

I’ve been predicting for years that the whole pitch of “you will own nothing and like it” that’s been going on, where people have to pay microfees for everything, would spawn a new industry of people who will sell hacks to get around this bullshit. It warms my heart to see that happening.

The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I don’t think that I ever will. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested. In this case, I don’t own and have no experience with ratgdo. I have no idea how well it works or if it works. As a home lab tinkerer, I am just happy to see people working to find better alternatives to renting your garage door opener.

People who have read this post: 174
By Divemedic, ago

Business Plan

Mamdani says that NYC is going to open a city owned grocery store in each borough and sell products 30% less than retail stores do. Here is my plan.

  1. Buy all of the stock that the NYC owned stores have at the steep discount they are offering.
  2. Mark it up to full retail
  3. Resell it.

That’s it. That’s my plan. My store’s name will be Nalyevo*

* In Russian and Polish, the use of the term nalyevo (na lewo in Polish) means ‘on the left’, but can also connote taking bribes or “sneaky” behavior.

People who have read this post: 289
By Divemedic, ago

Zone Updates

It’s an election year, and like clockwork, the left is beginning to get their violence on. So I will begin updating my warnings as events unfold. The best way to survive violence is to not be where it occurs.

With recent events in mind, I have updated the warnings for Minnesota and Hawaii.

Keeping in mind the violations of free speech, I have upgraded the warning for Minneapolis to include the entire state of Minnesota. The entire state of Minnesota is now a Zone 3 area.

Zone three areas are where violence has has taken place with little to no attempt at mitigating response from local authorities. Additionally, police and/or prosecutors are likely to bring the full weight of the law down upon those who attempt to defend themselves from these actors, or those who speak out against them.

The story this morning about racially motivated attacks, along with this video of local Hawaiians attacking people, I am also adding the islands of Maui and Oahu to Zone 2. Even though it turned out he wasn’t a real ICE agent, this is still a violent attack on what the crowd believed was one.

Zone 2 cites have seen recent violence, with local authorities either refusing to intervene or even actively assisting those committing violent acts. Violence may occur in these cities with little to no warning, and those who employ self defense in these cities can expect to face a hostile or antagonistic response from government authorities.

See the Zones page for more information and a complete list of zones.

People who have read this post: 222
By Divemedic, ago

Discuss

Watch the video below. This apparently happened in the Home Depot in Ocala Florida. It is right down the street from Silver Springs, which is why you hear them refer to that. Below the post and video is my opinion. Discuss.

I don’t think the people in this video are stupid at all. He kept tapping her phone with his, while causing the phone to chirp each time. Then he made various claims of “It’s charity” and “I need money” then later, he said “I only took a hundred”

In my mind, this creates the reasonable belief that he is somehow using his phone to steal money, or at the very least, some sort of information from her phone. He is intentionally creating that belief in an attempt to get content for his stupid social media post that he is obviously filming with smart glasses. Many people’s phones contain financial information or automatic payment apps. It’s completely reasonable to believe he is using his phone to steal money, and he even made statements to that fact.

Once that reasonable belief exists in my mind, I am holding him for police. This is at the very least a reasonable belief that theft is taking place. Florida statute 776.031:

A person is justified in using or threatening to use force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to prevent or terminate the other’s trespass on, or other tortious or criminal interference with, either real property other than a dwelling or personal property, lawfully in his or her possession or in the possession of another who is a member of his or her immediate family or household or of a person whose property he or she has a legal duty to protect. A person who uses or threatens to use force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such force.

I am tackling this guy’s bitch ass. If he offers ANY physical force to resist my apprehension of him, it is now reasonable for me to believe that his theft has now become robbery. I am drawing a gun on his stupid ass. Why? Because as soon as he uses force, that becomes a reasonable fear of imminent commission of a forcible felony, as in robbery.

All of this for cheap laughs. This video would have been much funnier if it had ended with the videographer getting his ass kicked, or proned out on the ground looking down the barrel of that old man’s handgun.

Once it turns out he was placing me in fear for Internet laughs, my lawyer would be instructed to sue this asshole for intentional infliction of emotional distress. That would be funny as well.

People who have read this post: 265
By Divemedic, ago

We Hate You. Give Us Money

A California family was injured at a luxury resort in Hawaii in a racially motivated attack by as many as 20 locals. The ringleader said:

We’re going to beat up the haole boys.

Haole (pronounced ‘howly’) is the native Hawaiian term for people who aren’t from Hawaii and is used mainly as a reference to whites. My wife lived there in Hawaii for several years, and told me the disdain for whites is pervasive, especially for white women. The native Hawaiian girls feel like white women are “stealing their men” and it’s tough to fit in to society there as a white person.

We visited the island state in 2016. One of the things that I saw when we were on Oahu was a large number of signs declaring that haole should leave, “Tourist go home,” or “We have enough hotels.” Signs of that nature. There are a large number of ‘native’ people who believe that Hawaii was some sort of peaceful paradise until Europeans arrived, and they think secession will return them to the ‘good old days.’ Hawaii residents still think that they are entitled to payment from the mainland.

More than 1,000 people are missing or dead from the Maui fires three years ago – many of them children- after police would not allow them to flee the advancing flames. People get the government that they vote for. That’s why I don’t feel sorry for the residents of Hawaii. They voted for a Democrat governor, Senators, Representatives, and have voted for Democrat Presidents for decades.

Hawaiians: This is YOUR fault. Remember that on election day, assuming that it isn’t too late for your votes to matter.

People who have read this post: 280
By Divemedic, ago