Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

From the article: "The U.S. Justice Department has filed criminal charges against three U.S. men accused of swatting, or making hoax reports of bomb threats or murders in a bid to trigger a heavily armed police response to a target’s address. Investigators say the men, aged 19 to 23, all carried out the attacks with the help of Tyler Barriss, a convicted serial swatter whose last stunt in late 2018 cost a Kansas man his life.

FBI agents on Wednesday arrested Neal Patel, 23, of Des Plaines, Ill. and Tyler Stewart, 19 of Gulf Breeze, Fla. The third defendant, Logan Patten, 19, of Greenwood, Mo., agreed to turn himself in. The men are charged in three separate indictments with conspiracy and conveying false information about the use of explosive devices."

Tyler Barris was very well-known, and I expect there's a lot of people around the country who are deleting their social media accounts and reformatting their computers right now. And that won't help them, enough evidence to convict them has already been gathered. I expect some more arrests.

There's a quote that I wish I could find, unfortunately Google has been tainted by Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so I can't find it right now. It's something along the lines of "Zeus is slow to look in his book, but he DOES look."

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/01/three-charged-for-working-with-serial-swatter/

For those not familiar with this incident, take a loot at my SWATting tag and the previous posts on this incident.

10/05 The Compleat Werewolf (Retro Hugo Nominee), Anthony Boucher
10/10 Good Omens, Pratchett & Gaimen (rr)
10/12 Hogfather (DW 20), Pratchett (rr)
10/15 Jingo (DW 21), Pratchett (rr)
10/20 The Last Continent (DW 22), Pratchett (rr)
10/21 Exit Strategy, Murderbot 4, Martha Wells
10/21 Rogue Protocol, Murderbot 3, Martha Wells

11/01 Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour Book Store, Robin Sloan
11/21 Carpe Jugulum (DW 23), Pratchett (rr)
11/23 The Fifth Elephant (DW 24), Pratchett (rr)

12/02 Artemis Fowl, Eoin Coffler
12/05 Paladin of Souls, Lois McMasters Bujold
12/14 Russian Roulette, Michael Isikoff & David Korn
12/17 The Truth (DW 25), Pratchett (rr)
12/20 Midnight Riot (Rivers of London 1), Ben Aaronovitch
12/22 Thief of Time (DW 26), Pratchett (rr)
12/24 The Last Hero (DW 27), Pratchett (rr)
12/28 The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (DW 28), Pratchett (rr)

Seventeen books for the final quarter of 2018. No physical books completed though a few were progressed, ten of these seventeen were re-reads.

My total of the year is SEVENTY books read! I think that is a record for me: 2017 was 42, ‘16 48, ‘15 and ‘14 were 18 and 2013 was 19, 2012 was 41 and that was the first year that I kept tab. Of course this was a year that I started re-reading the entire output of Terry Pratchett, and I can knock-off a Discworld book in two days easily, so that helps.

39 books were re-reads, obviously lots of those were Pratchetts as I got up to #28 plus Good Omens and also re-read John Scalzi’s output. No physical books were included in this year’s count as this list is almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy. I did include Hugo nominations, but only novel and novella nominees.

On to commentary! And I’m going to combine the Discworld books together and also the two Murderbot stories together.

I’ll be doing a later post on what I think were the most notable reads of the year.
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