Category: Technology

Latest Read: Blockchain Basics

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 11, 2017

The Blockchain Basics by Daniel Drescher. This is a very basic blockchain book. I would recommend this to someone completely unfamiliar with blockchain. Daniel hits his mark as he places a repeated template for each step. In this design, I felt the book had trouble flowing for anyone who has already read a blockchain textbook.
Daniel pushes the elementary lessons through 25 steps.

There is a very basic outline to the security of the blockchain. Again this book has a specific target audience: Newbie.

I have to admit that I was bored reading the text. yet was impressed by the lessons and related topics that are presented.

Yet his lessons and related topics are simple to follow. For an overall tip of the iceberg, you can fly through this book and then move to Don Tapscott, William Mougayar and Melanie Swan.

Tags blockchain, Blockchain basics, business, daniel drescher, ethereum, fintech, knowledge, trends

Education Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest read: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date February 28, 2017

Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars is the story Sam’s incomplete memoir War of Numbers could not deliver. Sam Adams died suddenly in 1988 at the age of 54. Sam was a gifted analyst at the CIA. Author C. Michael Hiam delivers a well written narrative of Sam’s life.
Sam displayed the uncommon trait of speaking truth to power. As history often suggests Sam was in the right place at the right time.

His truth revealed outcomes that pitted him against the White House, MACV and even senior leadership within the CIA.

What also made Sam unique was his inability to backdown to the highest offices in the government. Sam created a point of great turmoil by discovering and confronting repeated MACV intelligence failures. His analysis was not supported by CIA Director Richard Helms. Nobody wants to make their boss look bad.

Haim traces Sam’s life from Harvard to a rising star within the CIA to a disillusioned analyst. War of Numbers did not shed light on Sam’s death. Realizing Haim was going to discuss his passing at the close of the book I dreaded the last chapter to the life of Sam Adams.

Tags cia, gains hawkins, george carver, george w. allen, intelligence failure, Joseph McChristian, Khmer Rouge, MACV, richard helms, Sam Adams, tet offensive, The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, viet cong, Vietnam War, Westmoreland v. CBS, william westmoreland

Education Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest read: None So Blind

Regarded as one of the CIA’s premiere Vietnam intelligence experts George W. Allen wrote a 2001 memoir None So Blind: A personal account of the intelligence failure in Vietnam that remains an alarming insight of intelligence failures that forecasted both France and America’s defeat in Vietnam. Allen’s contributions set the stage regrettably for the Pentagon and White House to also follow France’s misplaced goals for the next twenty-five years.
My interest in Allen’s memoir developed from reading a series of confidential reports by the US military and CIA from the 1950s.

Declassified in the late 1990s the documents address the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Many of those documents point to Allen’s intelligence reports and analysis. Naturally this peaked my wish to better understand the American intelligence analysis of the French defeat.

Allen holds a unique, deep understanding of the Indochina Wars (France 1945-1950) and the coming failure of America’s intervention on behalf of South Vietnam 1960-1974. The lessons in his book leave deep, haunting impressions today on the White House and Pentagon leaders who ignored our intelligence community.

Tags cia, compartmentalization of information, defense intelligence agency, Dien Bien Phu, george w. allen, indochina, intelligence failure, joint chiefs of staff, MAAG, MAAV, MACV, pacification, pentagon, richard helms, robert mcnamara, tet offensive, Viet Minh, VietCong, Vietnam War

Blockchain Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation IoT Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest Read: Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 2, 2016

Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology by Siraj Raval is my follow up to three previous blockchain books. This kinda forks hard left after chapter two and drifts.
My first book Don Tapscott’s The Blockchain Revolution was interesting in broad strokes. William Mougayar’s The Business Blockchain was better.

Melanie Swan wrote an even better overview to in her book Blockchain: A blueprint for a new economy. Melanie provides a great overview (looking back from 2015) to address decentralized apps (Dapps), decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs), decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs) and decentralized autonomous societies (DASs). There is such a deeper dive required to wrap your arms around decentralized autonomous blockchains.

Tags bitcoin, blockchain, Cryptocurrency, dapp, das, decentralized applications, siraj Raval

Cyberinfrastructure IoT Network Technology

Tesla Patch Wednesday

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date September 21, 2016

Microsoft and Adobe own Tuesdays. Tesla may take over the Wednesday rev cycle as Chinese hackers were able to turn on the model S wipers, open the car doors and even apply the brakes while in motion.
Tencent’s Keen Security Lab posted a video that has gone viral on September 19. Tesla updated an over-the-air software update to their Model S. The Tesla Model S is now running v7.1 2.36.31.

This is not a new issue. Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller hacked a 2014 Jeep Cherokee while on a California highway. Its a sign of thing to come as the Internet of Things continues.

Tags hack, Internet of Things, IoT, jeep, Keen Security Lab, remote hacking, Tencent, tesla