Baltimore Water Blackmailed

“For nearly three weeks, Baltimore has struggled with a cyber attack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services,” according to The New York Times. “[On May 7,] City workers’ screens suddenly locked, and a message in flawed English demanded about $100,000 in Bitcoin to free their files: ‘We’ve watching you for days,’ said the message, obtained by The Baltimore Sun. ‘We won’t talk more, all we know is MONEY! Hurry up!’”

“To be clear, the hostage is not a person. It’s data,” KPCW reported. “That data ranges from legislative bills to online payments for water and parking tickets.”

If what has been kidnapped and made inaccessible is data, how is that Baltimore has no backup? Apparently, the quality of municipal governance has declined in the USA. 

Your Brothers' Blood Cries Out To Me From the Earth (Kiev)

Looks like a good year

Looking back in this first half of the year 2019 I see it was good. I took a three-week vacation on City Island, Bronx, a very quiet and friendly neighborhood, with excellent air from the Atlantic Ocean. I had the best company I could ask, my little daughter and her fiance. Then my third daughter is expecting a baby girl, and I heard that the family is expanding in other continents too. The stock exchange produced several disappointments, like NVidia, TEVA, Bezeq, Tower, Mirland, and so. The losses were made up by other plays. These last weeks I was being harassed by my Clients because I was not keeping my schedules, but took courage and resigned three projects and returned the retainer. The University of Ariel has grown enormously and it is now a regular bureaucratic mass institution far different from the small, penniless, struggling, "illegal", boycotted settler initiative in "Occupied Territories" it was when I joined it. Probably this is my last semester there. 

All in all, the year started well.  

The Second Cold War

The trade war between the USA and China seems to be evolving to the formation of trade blocks, and then, Cold War blocks. China tried to prevent this development by its Belt initiative, building trade entrepots all over the world, but in the new world situation, we have to see if it can be operated.

An article referred to by Marginal Revolution blog maintains that Chairman Xi has recognized that China's aggressive and triumphalist policy was a mistake and now have to retreat in a Long March. We survived a bad Cold War already, we shall survive this too. Not me personally, but the Jewish nation. While friends of China, we are with the USA. (The ill. is from a Singapore paper, it is misleading). 

Paralysis in Israel

There is no government in Israel, and the bureaucrats are left unchained. They are the only ones that feel safe in their Olympus, they are like angry Zeus watching the human ants and feeling whom to strike down next. The bureaucrats in their airconditioned offices are privileged Whites while my Clients are mostly worthy Mizrahi people just out of the ghetto trying to realize their dream of an independent business - a pizza shop, a small worker restaurant, a small sandwich business. Tomorrow I promised to help a sandwich business in Hashmonaim Street Tel Aviv, in a dark underground cave. I hate to take money from this boy, but without the temptation of lucre, I am unable to work myself up and wear out my last grey cells to think out the solution to his problem.

To solve this problem, am meditating while drinking merlot and dancing the cumbia Alla va Maritza, yo me voy tras ella...  Colombia is the new jewel of the Caribbean, Cuba is no more. 

Dilemmas of an Israeli Water Engineer

I am designing the water system of an egg processing factory. On the one hand, I designed an ingenious used water recycling system, where the egg wash water is treated with flocculants and filtered and chlorinated, saving money on the water consumption bill. On the other hand, I am designing the wastewater treatment system, to render the water suitable for disposal in the municipal network. Egg sewage contains no sugars or easily fermentable carbohydrates but has proteins which cannot be degraded rapidly. To comply with the draconian regulations, I have to treat the wastewater almost to drinking water purity. The penalties for infractions are prohibitive and the unpaid accumulated debts to the water companies are a national problem. Recently there was some movement towards forgiving some mountainous debts, but we are living in a transitory year with no government able to take decisions.

Water costs about 5 to 10 dollars a cubic meter, for the industry, and sewage disposal costs about the same - if the sewage complies with the maximum content norms. If not, the cost of disposal jumps logarithmically. No kidding. Thinking of my Client, it would be better NOT to recycle the water and not to save drinking water, therefore increasing the volume of the sewage to be disposed of. The highly diluted wastewater would need less treatment to comply with the regulations, and most importantly, no worries of penalties.

Common sense says that Green/Environmental engineering harms the interests of my highly valued Clients, and does nothing to save the Earth. Israeli mothers warn their children to eat all the junk food because... children are starving in Africa. Israeli regulators are even more stupid, they force the factories to save water because in Erythrea it is not raining.

I shall adopt the Israeli method to deal with impossible choices: walk between the raindrops.

ללכת בין הטיפות

Solution

TASE Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Reflexions

Michael Rochberger writes in The Marker that the year 2019 is lost for large State projects because there is no government and the Ministers are busy in politics till the new elections in September and then to learn the subject.

The economy is stable, full employment, inflation low, private demand is not growing, so the great winners are the banks (red line on the graph). 73.77% growth in the last 4 years. The second line in green is real estate 45.09 %.

The total losers are technological companies, they lost 15% in 4 years. Terrible. I was hit by them big time - Bezeq and Tower and so.

Industrial companies are collapsing and cannot compete with Turkish imports. This development is very disappointing, I am a working engineer and my clients are hardworking entrepreneurs and I want them to profit, but in the current economy, it is impossible.

Open markets and the bureaucracy kill all local initiative. That's why I specialize in compliance vis-a-vis the regulators. I dislike this pointless torture, but it ensures me some income. Understandable, my Clients dislike (an understatement) spending on compliance and try to avoid paying me.

This is where I am now. What is to be done?