Boing Boing

The Googler Uprising was a string of employee actions within Google over a series of issues related to ethics and business practices, starting with the company's AI project for US military drones, then its secretive work on a censored/surveilling search tool for use in China; then the $80m payout to Android founder Andy Rubin after he was accused of multiple sexual assaults.Tens of thousands of Google employees participated in the uprising, including 20,000 who walked off the job in February. The activist Google employees moved from victory to victory, including the ouster of a a transphobic, racist, xenophobic ideologue who had been appointed to Google's "AI Ethics" board.Two key organizers, Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, publicly accused the company of targeting them for retaliation in April (to enormous internal uproar).Now, Whittaker has resigned (on the thirteenth anniversary of her employement with Google), along with Celie O’Neil-Hart, who had been global head of trust and transparency marketing at YouTube Ads, and Google News Labs' Erica Anderson.In Whittaker's farewell note to her colleagues, she calls on them to "unionize — in a way that works," "protect conscientious objectors and whistleblowers," "demand to know what you’re working on, and how it’s used" and "build solidarity with those beyond the company." She says that Google's entry into "new markets" like "healthcare, fossil fuels, city development and governance, transportation, and beyond...is gaining significant and largely unchecked power to impact our world (including in profoundly dangerous ways, such as accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels and the deployment of surveillance technology)." Whittaker will devote her work to AI Now, the group she co-founded to build and promulgate critical, ethical frameworks for AI research. Read the rest

The US House passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that orders the Inspector General of the Department of Defense to "conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975." The amendment was spearheaded by New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith. From CBS News:The theory, which sounds like something straight out of a science fiction novel, contends that bioweapon specialists packed ticks with pathogens that could cause severe disabilities, disease and death among potential enemies to the homeland. Smith said he was inspired to add the amendment to the annual defense bill by "a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons."Those books, however, have been questioned by some experts who dismiss long-held conspiracy theories that the federal government aided the spread of tick-borne diseases, and federal agencies, including the CDC, may have participated in a cover-up of sorts to conceal findings about the spread of Lyme disease. Here's the amendment.image: "Chelicera of the sheep tick" by Richard Bartz (CC) Read the rest

Human rights activists in Washington DC who oppose the Trump administration's racist policies against mostly Mexican and Central American refugees at the southern border protested at ICE headquarters in the nation's capital today.Activists with NeverAgainAction say the are “shutting down ICE,” and they're livestreaming here on Facebook.From the video data:A group of Jewish allies and immigrants have been shutting down every entrance point to ICE headquarters for over 2 hours, and arrests just happened both outside and inside the building.Facebook video embed follows.The protestors have now left, marching away from ICE HQ singing “never again, para Nadine” pic.twitter.com/ztBzea8WRT— julia reinstein 🚡 (@juliareinstein) July 16, 2019[via @W7VOA] Read the rest

SPOILER: He's now in #TheSquad.

When President Trump said on Sunday that "'Progressive' Democratic Congresswomen" should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” was he violating federal workplace discrimination law? We aren't lawyers and we don't know, but here's something relevant from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website, “Immigrants' Employment Rights Under Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws” —Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments like, "Go back to where you came from, " whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.HT: @nick_ramseyOne things many minorities hear more than a few times in their lives is, “Go back to where you came from.” I always responded, “What, Los Angeles?”— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 15, 2019 Read the rest

F Scott Fitzgerald, in a 1928 letter to Blanche Knopf: "As ‘cocktail,’ so I gather, has become a verb, it ought to be conjugated at least once." (via JWZ) Read the rest

This 6.5-inch Lodge cast iron skillet is on sale at a bargain price on Amazon today for Read the rest

Citizen Lab has expanded its analysis of how censorship and filtering work on Chinese social media (previously). In (Can’t) Picture This 2 An Analysis of WeChat’s Realtime Image Filtering in Chats , researchers probe and document how Wechat complies with Chinese state censorship policies in private chats.Wechat maintains a massive index of the MD5 hashes of every image that Chinese censors have prohibited. When a user sends another user an image that matches one of these hashes, it's recognized and blocked at the server before it is transmitted to the recipient, with neither the recipient or the sender being informed that the censorship has taken place.Separately, all images not recognized in the hash database are processed out-of-band. This processing includes checking for bitmaps representing text (to catch things like photos of banned articles) and also to see whether it is a partial match for an already-banned image (if it's been resized, transformed, etc). Anything that is found to be "harmful content" (including material critical of the Chinese state) is removed from the chat on the sender and recipients' devices and the hash of that image is added to the blocklist.The system very slowly expires these hashes out of the banned database, in a way that seems non-systematic and hard to predict.Looming over all of this is the prospect of being blocked or suspended from Wechat, which is a "mega-app" that is used for taxi-hailing, food delivery, paying utility bills, booking doctor's appointments, and interacting with state services. Read the rest

Following a raid where they caught a suspect flushing evidence down the toilet Loretto, Tennessee Police Department has asked the citizenry to refrain from flushing dope due to the potential risks to local wildlife, including the possibility of creating "meth gators.""Folks … please don’t flush your drugs m’kay ... our sewer guys take great pride in releasing water that is cleaner than what is in the creek, but they are not really prepared for meth," the post read. "Ducks, Geese, and other fowl frequent our treatment ponds and we shudder to think what one all hyped up on meth would do.""Furthermore, if it made it far enough we could create meth-gators in Shoal Creek and the Tennessee River down in North Alabama," police wrote. "They’ve had enough methed up animals the past few weeks without our help. So, if you need to dispose of your drugs just give us a call and we will make sure they are disposed of in the proper way."'Meth-gators': Tennessee police warn flushing drugs could create hyper-aggressive alligators [Kalhan Rosenblatt/NBC] (via longtimelurker)(Image: Andrea Westmoreland, CC-BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Musician Robert Hazard (1948-2008) wrote and recorded "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on a demo tape in 1979. Four years later, Cyndi Lauper covered it and it made her famous.From Wikipedia:The song was written by Robert Hazard, who recorded only a demo of it in 1979. Hazard's version was written from a male point of view. Lauper's version appeared on her 1983 debut solo record, She's So Unusual. The track is a synthesizer-backed anthem, from a feminist point of view, conveying the point that all women really want is to have the same experiences that men can. Gillian G. Gaar, author of She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2002), described the single and corresponding video as a "strong feminist statement", an "anthem of female solidarity" and a "playful romp celebrating female camaraderie."[via r/ObscureMedia ] Read the rest

I was part of the team that launched MAKE: (a technology project magazine) and served as its editor-in-chief for 12 wonderful years. I just found out that archive.org has a searchable archive of all past MAKE: issues. Enjoy! Read the rest

Made from servo motors and tree branches, these robots were trained to successfully walk across the floor. Read the paper. (The project was undertaken by Preferred Networks of Japan, which also made this cool website called Paintschainer that colors black and white images using AI.)The robots were trained with "deep reinforcement learning" (DRL). Here's how VentureBeat defines DRL:Unlike supervised machine learning, which trains models based on known-correct answers, in reinforcement learning, researchers train the model by having an agent interact with an environment. When the agent’s actions produce desired results, it gets positive feedback. For example, the agent gets a reward for scoring a point or winning a game. Put simply, researchers reinforce the agent’s good behaviors.Image: YouTube Read the rest

The founders of German National Socialist fan-site "The Daily Stormer" were ordered to pay $14MM in damages for being trollish assholes. NBCThe founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer should be ordered to pay more than $14 million to a Montana real estate agent against whom he organized an anti-Semitic "troll storm," a federal magistrate judge found on Monday.The judgment was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana, against Andrew Anglin, who encouraged the online intimidation campaign against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in the Montana resort town of Whitefish, her husband and their 12-year-old son.In an opinion that must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen, the magistrate judge, Jeremiah C. Lynch, recommended a default judgment against Anglin, who failed to appear for a deposition in April.But Lynch went further than finding for Gersh on procedural grounds: He recommended that Christensen order Anglin, who is in his mid-30s, to pay $4,042,438 in compensatory damages and $10 million, the maximum under state law, in punitive damages for "the particularly egregious and reprehensible nature of Anglin's conduct."Writing about these guys the first time got me a lot of unwanted late night phonecalls. Read the rest

A few years ago bad dealmaking with the park concessionaire cost the National Parks Service the names of Yosemite's famous Ahwahnee Hotel, The Wawona Hotel and Curry Village. Restoring the historic names to the historic properties cost the American taxpayer $12,000,000 and legal fees.CNN:The Ahwahnee was renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel after the park's former concessionaire filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service in September 2015, claiming ownership of some of the park's trade names and trademarks.The Ahwahnee Hotel became The Majestic Yosemite Hotel. The Wawona Hotel became Big Trees Lodge. Curry Village became Half Dome Village. And Badger Pass Ski Area was renamed Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area.As part of a $12 million settlement signed July 15 and paid to the park's former concessionaire, names that had been changed during the lawsuit will revert to their original names. Read the rest

#Vanlife would be intolerable without coffee. This GSI Glacier series 30oz 'java' press is my new best friend.I transition back and forth from tea to coffee and spent most of the last year pounding shots of espresso. Upon moving into my VW Vanagon camper for the summer I forgot to pack either. After one day on the road my daughter, who is a mere 12-years-old, made the observation that I am a lot meaner and less fun to be around without the caffeine.An exgirlfriend declared my old press "no good" and threw it away after trying to brew loose tea in it. It had been used for coffee for years and was of course, not good for tea.Tea is lovely but it doesn't get the job done when camping. This 30oz french press does. I'm currently drinking pre-ground Trader Joe's medium roast, but when it is gone I'm thinking Illy or Lavazza. I used to hand grind beans when camping but the fuck if I have time for that now.This GSI insulated press is just the right size for me to brew a pot and drink it as I get my work done in the morning. The coffee stays hot for the 3-4 hours I am working, and always seems to be empty just when I am done typing away.Praise the press.GSI Outdoors - Glacier Stainless JavaPress, 30oz Camping French Press via Amazon Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the adorable racist Donald Trump complains about America so much, true patriots send him back to where he's originally from.

America has an epidemic of untested rape kits, thanks to the institutional misogyny of police departments and prosecutors, especially when it comes to rapes committed against poor and racialized women. An Obama-era subsidy for clearing rape kit backlogs, combined with DNA testing, has completely upended the conventional wisdom on rapists and how they commit their crimes.The first insight is that serial rapists are very common and very prolific. Police departments had assumed that rapes with different types of victims and different techniques were committed by different men, but it turns out that serial rapists aren't meticulous and careful repeaters of patterns: they're chaotic and impatient and even if they're looking for a specific kind of woman to attack, if they can't find someone who matches their desires, they'll just attack any handy woman.So rapists also aren't very smart about their crimes: their poor impulse control leaves behind plenty of physical evidence that can be used to convict them (Former Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty: "These are not the Napoleons of crime. They’re morons. We were letting morons beat us"). They get away with it because the cops don't investigate rapes.They're also not discriminating as to the kind of crimes they commit: as the old rape kits are subjected to DNA tests, we're learning that many men who've been committed for petty property crimes or non-sexual assaults have also committed strings of rapes. Frequently, these men start with vulnerable women (poor women, sex workers, women with disabilities, women who are addicted) and then rape women with more privilege, which sometimes leads to the police taking action. Read the rest

Modern Monetary Theory is the latest incarnation of chartalism, the economic theory that holds that government spending -- and a federal jobs guarantee -- doesn't create inflation, so long as the spending is on things that the private sector isn't buying: if a factory can produce ten widgets but is only producing five because that's all the public sector wants to buy, the government can put in an order for five more widgets, putting more workers to work, without driving up the price of widgets.That is, government spending (which it pays for by simply minting as much money as it needs) doesn't create inflation, provided there are idle resources (workers, physical plant) for the government to spend on. If the number of dollars in circulation does rise to the exceed the supply of goods and labor, and inflation starts to rise, governments tame inflation by imposing taxes, which reduce the supply of money and stabilize prices.This runs counter to the neoliberal monetary theory, which holds that people have money from their businesses and labor, and then government takes it away from them to provide services. In MMT (and in reality), money only comes into existence when governments "deficit spend" on some good or services. Only governments are allowed to issue money, after all, so it follows that all money enters the system when the government spends it into existence. The government can issue as much money as it needs to in order procure the services it need (cops, bureaucrats, teachers, tax collectors, soldiers, as well as hospitals, schools, roads and tanks), provided it isn't bidding against the private sector for those goods and services (when governments have to bid against the private sector, such as during WWII, it needs to tax money out of existence and use other techniques like selling "War Bonds" to reduce the amount of money in circulation in order to tame inflation). Read the rest

With the rising temperatures on tap this summer, the climate is going to be a frequent topic of conversation, and those conversations won't be happy ones. Luckily, there's a way to do a little climate change of your own - in a safe and sustainable way. When it comes to personal air conditioners, EvaPolar is putting out some innovative gear, and their EvaChill EV-500 is a particularly affordable example.This compact unit does more than just cool the air, though it does that extraordinarily well. It uniformly and quickly lowers the temperature in a 45 square foot area in front of it, and it does it without the use of Freon or other toxic elements. The filter and other components are made from non-organic EvaBreeze material that's completely biodegradable and won't harbor bacteria. Those same properties also enable it to filter dust and other allergens out of the air. As if that weren't enough, the EV-500 also functions as a dehumidifier. With all that working in tandem, you'll notice the change in air quality within a few breaths of turning it on.The EvaChill EV-500 is now available for $79, a full 20% off the list price. It's available in white and gray. Read the rest

Vlad Taltos is the (anti)hero of Steven Brust's stupendous, longrunning fantasy series (which is nearly complete, a generation after it was begun!); Issue 220 of Dragon magazine (August 1995) included a feature by Ed Stark explaining how to play the human assassin and witch who lives amidst a race of nearly immortal elves, against whom he bears a serious grudge. I just love that there's a stats-sheet for Vlad! The only thing that would make me happier would be the next goddamned book. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay Occupy Gotham, published in Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman, commemorating the 1000th issue of Batman comics. It's an essay about the serious hard problem of trusting billionaires to solve your problems, given the likelihood that billionaires are the cause of your problems.A thousand issues have gone by, nearly 80 years have passed, and Batman still hasn't cleaned up Gotham. If the formal definition of insanity it trying the same thing and expecting a different outcome, then Bruce Wayne belongs in a group therapy session in Arkham Asylum. Seriously, get that guy some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy before he gets into some *serious* trouble.As Upton Sinclair wrote in his limited run of *Batman: Class War*[1], "It's impossible to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on his not understanding it."Gotham is a city riven by inequality. In 1939, that prospect had a very different valence than it has in 2018. Back in 1939, the wealth of the world's elites had been seriously eroded, first by the Great War, then by the Great Crash and the interwar Great Depression, and what was left of those vast fortunes was being incinerated on the bonfire of WWII. Billionaire plutocrats were a curious relic of a nostalgic time before the intrinsic instability of extreme wealth inequality plunged the world into conflict.MP3 Read the rest

Clayton Morris -- a former host of Fox & Friends -- was part owner of Oceanpointe, a company that sold turnkey landlord services in Indianapolis to investors who could send Oceanpointe money, which the company would invest in properties that they would repair and rent out.Investors in the scheme -- mostly out of towners, many of them attracted by Morris's Youtube videos promising great returns with no work on their part -- say it was a Ponzi scheme and that Morris and his partner Bert Whalen did substandard repairs that left investors in the position of being slumlords who were liable for unsafe living conditions for their tenants. They claim that many properties were unrentable and that Morris and Whalen forged leases purporting to come from tenants, and used payments from new investors to pay off existing investors. Several lawsuit have been filed against Whalen and Morris and states' attorneys general have officially queried the men. At least 700 homes were flipped by Oceanpointe, many in poor neighborhoods.Morris's primary defense is that he was unaware of all this and was merely the pitchman for Whalen, who was responsible for the inhumane living conditions and financial shenanigans.Morris's wife, Natali Morris, blamed the focus on her husband on "polarization," implying that the public had latched onto him because of their political differences with him and Fox News, and not because he had shilled for a grifter who immiserated Indianapolis's poorest people while defrauding Morris's fans of their life's savings. IndyStar reported in March that investors were accusing Morris of running a Ponzi scheme with Whalen's help. Read the rest

5G cellular networks are able to transmit data at very high speeds, with incredible spectrum sharing that allows multiple 5G towers to operate in close proximity without their transmissions clobbering one another. There's only one problem: for 5G to deliver high speeds to our homes and businesses, each of those 5G towers has to be fed by a high-speed link -- like, say, the fiber optic links that America's ISPs have been vastly underinvesting in (while getting state laws passed that ban cities from picking up the slack) for decades.Putting a 5G tower next to your house will only help you if the 5G tower is connected to a fast internet pipe. Basically, 5G is fiber to the curb with wireless distribution over the final few yards, the very thing that America's telcoms sector is pathologically allergic to, and incapable of delivering on.There are those who say that the way the cellular companies will handle future growth is through millimeter wave spectrum. However, that technology will require a fiber-fed small cell site near to every home. We really need to stop referring to millimeter wave spectrum as 5G wireless and instead call it what it is – fiber-to-the curb. When thought of that way, it’s easy to realize that there are no carriers likely to make the investment to deploy that much fiber along every residential street in America. Wireless 5G fiber-to-the-curb is not coming to most neighborhoods. The bottom line is that the world is not going to go wireless, and anybody saying so is engaging in hyperbole and not reality. Read the rest

Amazon's Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote is the media player we use. I even keep an extra set with me to use in hotels and Airbnbs. Amazon is selling it as a Prime Day deal at a very low price. Read the rest

There are several proposals at the state and federal level to force the Big Tech platforms to disclose how much our data is worth to them -- with the hopes that this will curb their abuses of our privacy and even offer an income-stream that could benefit low-income users.But as my EFF colleague Hayley Tsukayama writes, "Our information should not be thought of as our property this way, to be bought and sold like a widget. Privacy is a fundamental human right. It has no price tag. No person should be coerced or encouraged to barter it away. And it is definitely not a good deal for people to receive a handful of dollars in exchange for allowing companies’ invasive data collection to remain unchecked."That's because the sums that Big Tech sells your data for are often very small relative to the costs those data-sales exact from you, from realtime location data being sold for less than $0.01/user to "lists of 1,000 people with different conditions such as anorexia, depression and erectile dysfunction for $79 per list. Such embarrassing information in the wrong hands could cost someone their job or their reputation."What's more, Big Tech can use seemingly innocuous data as a proxy for more potentially sensitive information, like where you went to high school, but "mortgage lenders, using proxy variables such as their high school, charge African American and Latinx homebuyers higher interest rates as compared with whites in similar financial situation" -- you might give that information away to Big Tech, but the total costs are huge: "the way companies use this information overcharges minority homeowners up to $500 million per year."Back in 2008, I wrote that "property" is the wrong way to think about information. Read the rest

CNN reports that the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, personally received deliveries, potentially including hacked materials related to the 2016 U.S. elections, during a series of odd meetings at Ecuador's Embassy in London. Marshall Cohen, Kay Guerrero and Arturo Torres, for CNN say their report is “based on documents obtained exclusively by CNN.”“The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.”Although Assange was physically confined to the Ecuadorian embassy while he attempted to obtain secure passage to Ecuador, Assange still managed to have meetings with Russians, “world-class hackers,” and other shady characters at “critical moments, frequently for hours at a time,” according to the embassy visitor logs. “He also acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives,” reports CNN.Excerpt from the CNN report:These stunning details come from hundreds of surveillance reports compiled for the Ecuadorian government by UC Global, a private Spanish security company, and obtained by CNN. They chronicle Assange's movements and provide an unprecedented window into his life at the embassy. They also add a new dimension to the Mueller report, which cataloged how WikiLeaks helped the Russians undermine the US election.An Ecuadorian intelligence official told CNN that the surveillance reports are authentic. The security logs noted that Assange personally managed some of the releases "directly from the embassy" where he lived for nearly seven years. Read the rest

Never forget: Trump said the Charlottesville racists were 'very fine people.'

Director Kevin Smith wrote Clerks III more than a decade ago but it was never made, the director has said, because Jeff Anderson, who plays Randal, wasn't game. Today, Smith announced that he and some unnamed "friends" will do a reading of the script at the First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. It's a benefit for the playhouse which is where Smith held open auditions for the first Clerks film 25 years ago. There were only 80 seats available (at $100/each) and, yes, it sold out instantly. This August - in the great state of New Jersey! Come hear what might have been, when we read the unmade CLERKS III script! There are only 80 seats at a pricey $100 apiece, but all the money goes to The First Avenue Playhouse (it’s a Benefit for them)! Tix: https://t.co/yJMbZzs8c0 pic.twitter.com/fFeslWDMRf— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) July 15, 2019 Read the rest

UK TV host and wildlife biologist Lizzie Daly and her crew were diving off the southwestern coast of England as part of their Wild Ocean Week initiative when they met this magnificent and massive barrel jellyfish. Typically, barrel jellyfish aren't bigger than meter long but this one was closer to 1.5 meters. From The Guardian:Daly and an underwater camera operator, Dan Abbott... stayed with the abnormally large, translucent bell-mushroom-shaped animal for about an hour before it swam away.The pair said they were not surprised by the animal’s behaviour. “It has got a very mild sting and poses no threat to humans – some people don’t even feel it,” Daly said. “Many people would be immediately worried, but it is not dangerous. Its a majestic creature.” View this post on Instagram SO THIS JUST HAPPENED😱💙 Diving with a giant barrel jellyfish! I could not think of a better way to celebrate the end of #WildOceanWeek. The full video of the dive is LIVE right now! I'll put the link in my stories if anybody wants to spend just two minutes watching this breathtaking moment coming face to face with a barrel jellyfish THE SAME SIZE AS ME while diving off of the coast of Falmouth 💙 What an unforgettable experience, I know barrel jellyfish get really big in size but I have never seen anything like it before! For anybody who is in Cornwall do come on down to Maenporth tomorrow at 12pm for a beach clean. There should be a good crowd of us rounded up now so it will be fun - and it will be followed by a small talk about the trip! Read the rest

Some 9,500 members were in the racist 'I'm 10-15' CBP Facebook group

Workers say they're underpaid and overworked, strikes planned for July 15th & 16th

Profiles in courage here, folks. Mitt Romney is a shitstain on the great state of Utah.Today, the Utah Republican Senator was asked about Trump's Sunday tweets that called for four congresswomen to go back to their countries of origin. “I certainly feel a number of these new members of Congress have views that are not consistent with my experience and not consistent with building a strong America.”Apparently we'll hear the rest of his response at 5pm, which is also ridiculous, local news folks..@MittRomney on Trump calling for 4 congresswoman to go back to their countries of origin? “I certainly feel a number of these new members of Congress have views that are not consistent with my experience and not consistent with building a strong America.” More @NBC10Boston 5pm pic.twitter.com/3tZ4DtCuvW— Alison King NBC10 Boston (@AlisonNBCBoston) July 15, 20192/2 @MittRomney. “At the same time, I recognize that the Pres has a unique and noble calling to unite all Americans regardless of our creeds or race or place of our national origin and I think in that case, the Pres fell far short.” Were comments racist? Answer @NBC10Boston 5pm. pic.twitter.com/6fqxnSvNp6— Alison King NBC10 Boston (@AlisonNBCBoston) July 15, 2019Photo, TOP: Gage Skidmore. Former Governor Mitt Romney speaking with supporters at a campaign rally for U.S. Senator John McCain at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona. 2015 Read the rest

None of this is a surprise. And none of it is normal or okay.Today, United States popular-vote-losing and illegitimate president Donald J. Trump was asked if he is concerned that he is speaking and tweeting in the language of white supremacy, and that many people view his messages as explicitly racist. Trump replied, “It doesn't concern me because many people agree with me.”Manu Raju of CNN:Trump, asked if he has concerns that he's using the language of white supremacists and many view his tweets as racist, says: "It doesn't concern me because many people agree with me." pic.twitter.com/C0ranRv6vg— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 15, 2019 Read the rest

The inaugural Heavy Metal Knitting World Championship were an unqualified success, with competitors from the US, Russia, Japan and beyond converging on Joensuu, Finland to thrash and knit: competitors such as Woolfumes, Bunny Bandit and 9" Needles thrashed to heavy metal music while knitting, for an audience of about 200. The winners were the five-person Japanese team Giga Body Metal. Scottish competitor Heather McLaren (a Ph.D candidate in engineering) told the AP, "When I saw there was a combination of heavy metal and knitting, I thought 'that’s my niche.'" Read the rest

SHA 256 is an algorithm that takes a digital input of any length and returns a string of 256 bits (typically converted to 64 hexadecimal digits). It's a one-way algorithm, which means there's no known way to practically retrieve the input from the output. As far as anyone knows, there has never been an instance of two different inputs having the same output, which means the hash of an input is a reliable unique digital fingerprint.In this 6-minute video, Matthew Weathers explains why SHA 256 is "useful for digital signatures, cryptography, authentication, and is a central part of the Bitcoin protocol." Read the rest

At 41 seconds, you can hear someone call this fellow a "dumbass."Image: YouTube Read the rest

Some 850 people in research labs across America will lose their jobs.

Why is the American news media so very afraid to just call Trump's racist tweets racist?We had another chance to see cowardice in action on Sunday.On Sunday morning, popular-vote-losing illegitimate president Donald Trump tweeted some awful racist tweets that you can read about everywhere, all the time, because he does white supremacist bigoted stuff constantly and will only continue to escalate it as his day of cosmic comeuppance approaches. Trump's totally a racist. The tweets were explicitly racist. Everyone knows this.So why did the big respected major media news outlets everyone turns to for breaking news all decide NOT TO CALL IT RACIST in their reporting, and instead rely on embedded tweets, commenters, pundits, and op-ed contributors to use the r-word? “Xenophobic,” “provocative,” and “inflammatory” aren't synonyms for “racist.” “Racially charged” isn't a better phrase to use in this case than “racist.” Just say racist. CBS morning show: "Critics" say Trump's attacks "are racist." NBC: "Some have branded his comments as racist." But ABC's @GMA and CNN's @NewDay called it what it is: "The president's racist attack."— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 15, 2019“I know that reporters in at least two newsrooms argued with their higher-ups about this language issue on Sunday,” writes Brian Stelter at CNN.“But in both cases they lost.”Stelter's own network, CNN, identified Trump's tweets as racist throughout Sunday. Certain MSNBC programs also did.Brian writes:On Fox News, so far as I can tell, the word was only used by guests or attributed to critics. Read the rest

Propublica's 2020 Presidential Candidate Summaries breaks down the 2020 candidates' fundraising, Trump's massive war-chest and Bernie's pack-leading raise and his continued success with small-money donations. Read the rest

Electrek.co test rode the Hardly-Dangerous 'Livewire' electric bike. The LiveWire has 105hp and looks like a Buell! It is also orange, but not as awesome an orange as BMW Daytona Orange. Read the rest

At Queensland, Australia’s Mount Isa, kayaker Martin Muller spotted a python devouring a whole crocodile. The nonprofit GG Wildlife Rescue posted Muller's evidence of the impressive feast to its Facebook page. From LiveScience:The olive python... is native to Australia and is found only there. This species can grow to up to 13 feet (4 m) long. Clashes with Australia's "freshies" (the local nickname for freshwater crocodiles) are common. Pythons are able to perform amazing feats of swallowing thanks to their elastic jaws. The snakes' lower jawbones are divided into two parts, connected by an elastic ligament, which allows the bones to spread apart. When a python has a prey animal subdued, the snake first "walks" over it, a process called the pterygoid walk. Then, the snake uses its jaw to hang onto the prey while compressing its muscles and slithering around the subdued animal until the meal is engulfed. Read the rest

The breakneck pace of mods, changes, and additions to Fortnite did not slow over the last few weeks! There are now drum shotguns, storms-in-a-bottle, and the wildly fun airstrike!Call in a rain of rockets and watch people run in a panic! Read the rest

This Mad Mats rug keeps sticks, dirt, burrs and other garbage out of my dog's fur and out of my camper!6'x9' and awfully stylish, I've had this rug since 2013 and it looks as good as new. Excellent for throwing down just outside the door of my VW Vanagon, under our pop-up shade, or right next to the picnic table where I am cooking and working.When you spend a lot of time with your dogs in the outdoors, anything that helps keep them a little cleaner, and make life seem a little more luxuriant, is welcome. Like getting nice furniture in your prison cell!There are other styles, pick the one you love!Mad Mats Oriental Turkish Indoor/Outdoor Floor Mat, 6 by 9-Feet, Rust via Amazon Read the rest

Title sequence for "Hopper, P.I." by Eddie Spuhghetti. Read the rest

Signal processing engineer Stéphane Pigeon created this captivating Gregorian chant generator. It enables you to simply "conduct," mix, and process the sacred a capella songs heard in the monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church since the 9th century. Gregorian Voices: Early Roman Catholic Church Song Generator Read the rest

The Bank of England has unveiled its new £50 notes, which had been earmarked to honour a distinguished British scientist, and which will feature Alan Turing, the WWII hero who discovered many of the foundational insights to both modern computing and cryptography, and whose work with the codebreakers of Bletchley Park are widely believed to have shortened WWII by many years and saved millions of lives.Turing was gay, and when the police discovered this fact, he was sentenced to a regime of cruel pseudoscientific torture in the form of forced hormone injections; while undergoing this torture, he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple.Turing was pardoned for his "crime" of sodomy in 2013, but the official pardon only inflamed public sentiment over the injustice of 50,000 other gay British men bearing criminal records for "sodomy." In 2016, all sodomy convictions for dead Britons were automatically pardoned; living gay men could apply to have their records expunged (a proposal to make this an automatic process died after David Cameron's Conservative government sabotaged a private member's bill).The new notes will circulate as of 2021. The shortlist for suitable scientist to celebrate with the note was drawn from a public process that attracted 227,299 nominations for a total of 989 honorees. Bank governor Mark Carney made the final determination.Ironically, the move comes as the British government is seeking to prohibit the most consequential elements of Turing's work from being used by the public: they have repeatedly proposed bans on both working general purpose computers and working cryptography, and have repeatedly mooted orders that would ban manufacturers from creating computers capable of encrypting data in ways that British government spies and police services can't break. Read the rest

I want XCOM 2 on the Nintendo Switch. I'm waiting for it. Hoping. It has yet to come, be announced or even rumored by its developers. So, of late, I've found myself looking for other ways to get my turn-based combat fix. I completed Wasteland 2 some time ago. Japanese games seldom hold my attention and, even Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has lost its charm. A couple of days ago, despite its mediocre reviews, I downloaded Phantom Doctrine, for $20. It's so close to being pretty much what I'm looking for. Sadly, it's held back by a number of issues.In the game, you're in charge of a cell of cold-war era spies who bop around the world collecting intelligence, killing members of a shadowy opposing faction and trying not to get captured or liquidated in the process. What are they collecting intel on? It's hard to say. Unlike XCOM, which has a solid story that leads you from one plot point to the next, in Phantom Doctrine, it's hard to keep track of what why you're doing what you're doing. The game's story is paper thin and even when it becomes a little more clear, still isn't all that compelling. Mission briefings inform you that you're supposed to collect an informant or, in some cases, kill someone who recognized one of your agents. You base is always under threat of being exposed. Your spies are always run the risk of having their covers blown. It's run-of-the-mill stuff.As with XCOM 2, your team members gain experience from every encounter they survive. Read the rest

You might recognize Wilko Johnson's as Ser Ilyn Payne from Game of Thrones, but that role's small potatoes compared to his musical legacy. As the lead guitarist and song writer for the British pub rock band Dr. Feelgood, Johnson's choppy, percussive style of playing is considered to be one of the earliest influences of the early UK punk scene. When you listen to Joe Strummer hacking away with his axe in The 101ers, you're hearing Wilko.In this brief video filmed back in 2012, Wilko demonstrates the ins and outs of the fierce, economic playing style that helped give rise to The Sex Pistols and The Clash. I've been a fan of the man for decades and, last week, was fortunate enough to spend a good chunk of time chatting with him. Look for my interview with Wilko to pop up on the site at some point in the near future.Image courtesy of Abigail Elizabeth Photography Read the rest

Axciom buys records from Florida's DMV (which include non-driver IDs) at $0.01/each.They're just one of many, many data-brokers who buy data from the state's DMV. So many, in fact, that the state turned over $77m in data-sales in 2017.These get sold for bill collection and insurance purposes, and are not supposed to be used for marketing, but these are data brokers and so they sell the data on, and then the data gets sold again, and again.We know that at least some of that data gets abused, turned into fodder for repeated robocalls and direct-mail solicitations, because of Sonia Arvin's experience with her developmentally disabled sister, who moved to Florida from Idaho to live with her. Sonia took her sister to get a non-driver ID so she could apply for Medicaid, and shortly thereafter, was inundated with direct mail, robocalls, and salespeople ringing their doorbells. Sonia's sister can't read or write and is not registered in any other databases, apart from Florida's DMV.A lawyer who represents data-brokers told WFTS that buying public data is the cheapest way to acquire it.Miami attorney Al Saikali, who advises his clients how to legally and ethically use public data for commercial purposes, said his clients are increasingly using public records laws to obtain information for a cheap price."We're only going to see this continue over time. Companies are going to continue to seek more data about you," Saikali said. "Companies are essentially paying for information, for leads, for lead generation."Saikali said consumers can limit the number of marketers contacting them by setting up a secondary email account to give government agencies — which are only checked periodically for renewal notices and other important information — and only giving a telephone number to government agencies when it's necessary. Read the rest