Archive for 2016
December 15, 2016
LATEST GIMMICK: To attract girls, turn STEM into STEAM by adding an “A” for Art.
UPDATE: From the comments: “This isn’t about including girls in STEM. It’s about including humanities teachers in all that wonderful STEM grant money.”
AND THIS IS JUST THE TRANSITION: Taiwan Is Both Exhilarated and Unnerved by Trump’s China Remarks.
The president-elect stunned the world on Sunday by suggesting he might abandon the One China principle, the bedrock understanding under which the United States established relations with Beijing and cut official ties with Taiwan nearly four decades ago. His apparent willingness to rethink longstanding American policy that prioritizes China over Taiwan has energized Mr. Lin, 28, and many like him. But it has also left them anxious, and asking:
What does it mean for one’s homeland to be put on the table by Mr. Trump, an inveterate deal maker, in negotiations with China’s Communist leaders, who are not known for making concessions easily?
“Many people in Taiwan worry that once Trump takes office, he’ll make a U-turn,” Mr. Lin said. “We are suspicious of his motivations.”
There’s been a lot of that since Trump entered the race more than a year ago — some fair, some not. But if nothing else, Trump’s presidency promises to be exhilarating, and he’s already unnerved all the right people.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Firm Cited for 23 Violations After Robot Kills Bride-to-Be.
OBAMA VOTER ANN ALTHOUSE ISN’T BUYING THE EMAIL SPIN: “The story is about the idiocy of falling for phishing! How is that ‘hard to see coming’? And what’s the point of tracing it? Just never fall for it and the problem is solved, wherever the hell it came from. The Russians don’t deserve special credit for devious genius. The Clinton campaign deserves to be lambasted for its shocking stupidity. And these are people who wanted to be trusted with the nuclear codes and who relied on the argument that Donald Trump is a dangerous ignoramus.”
THE ATLANTIC: Globalization Doesn’t Make as Much Sense as It Used To.
RIGGED: Michigan’s electoral integrity problems weren’t in Trump country. “Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of the city’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books. Voting irregularities in Detroit have spurred plans for an audit by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday.”
Related: Election Fraud in Detroit Looks ‘Organized, and Government Involved.’
Plus: “Last week it was also discovered (thanks to Jill Stein’s recount effort) that over 18,000 voters in Michigan cast ballots without identification last month, prompting the state House of Representatives to pass a voter ID bill during its lame duck session.”
It would be nice if one side effect of this election was stronger anti-fraud laws both with regard to voting, and vote-counting.
Plus: Electors are being harassed, threatened in bid to stop Trump.
F.I.R.E. SENDS A LETTER TO BABSON COLLEGE: Civil liberties group to Babson: Cancel hearing on pro-Trump duo.
The “(Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is deeply concerned about the threat to freedom of expression at Babson College posed by the pursuit of student conduct charges against two students over their display of a flag and involvement in speech celebrating the election of Donald J. Trump in the November 2016 presidential election,” the organization states in a letter to the college. “The continued pursuit of charges and a hearing, after Babson College’s own investigation cleared the students of much of the alleged conduct, is at odds with Babson’s promise to protect its students’ freedom of expression. … Accordingly, we call upon Babson College to cancel the December 16 hearing and publicly confirm that it remains committed to defending freedom of expression.” . . .
Babson President Kerry Healey and other administrators denounced the pro-Trump students before the case was investigated, and dozens of faculty signed a letter condemning the students.
The students have been called to appear before Babson’s Honor Board tomorrow.
Some enterprising reporters should call up the faculty who signed that letter and ask them why they proceeded in ignorance, and whether they feel differently now.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Malls should just name their public Wi-Fi networks “Danger” and be done with it.
Evan Robertson won his school science fair this year by proving just how thoughtless people can be on public Wi-Fi networks.
Evan, now 11, programmed fake Wi-Fi portals and took them to food courts shopping centers across the Austin, Texas, area and waited to see how many agreed to some pretty outrageous conditions. For the love of free internet access, they’d have to give their OK for the Wi-Fi owner to do things like “reading and responding to your emails, monitoring of input and/or output, and ‘bricking’ of your device.”
More than half of the shoppers shown these terms accepted them.
Attention holiday shoppers: public Wi-Fi networks are dangerous, especially during the Christmas season when so many people in one spot make for easy pickings, says Don Duncan, a security engineer with NuData Security.
Read the whole thing, which includes useful advice on how to stay wireless and safe during the holidays.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Sex Workers Talk About the Lies They Tell Their Loved Ones.
CATCHING UP WITH THE WORLD’S FOREMOST UTERUS DETECTIVE: The Seven Most Insane Andrew Sullivan Quotes About Obama From That New Republic Interview.
VIDEO: Tucker Twofer Tonight: One Heavy, One Light.
Maybe it’s just this lame season of The Walking Dead, but Tucker Carlson has become the best thing on TV.
WHAT YASMIN SEWEID’S PRETTY LITTLE LIES REVEAL ABOUT ‘FAKE NEWS’ MEDIA HYPOCRISY:
[S]ince Donald Trump’s election, social media users have been bombarded by a finger wagging media about a flood of fake news and misinformation spreading online which, the media claims. But the media isn’t taking a long hard look at themselves and asking how and why “fake news” has gained the audience it has. With little to no discretion and all too eager to push anti-Trump narratives, these news organizations hit the publish button on Seweid’s story with little to no hedging that, at that point, all they had was her account. And its faith in the story dies hard. When Buzzfeed published the story of Seweid’s arrest on Wednesday, the headline read “Woman Arrested For Allegedly Making Up Story of NY Subway Attack by Trump Supporters”, carrying more skepticism in the fact that she was arrested for fabricating the story, than Buzzfeed gave to its original report.
These editors, apparently not convinced that Donald Trump provides enough real life clickbait content, rushed off to prove their desired narrative of rampant Islamophobia and hate crimes. If newsroom editors want to lament the spread of fake news, perhaps they can start with how they and their journalists handled the Yasmin Seweid case. Likewise with rape victims in the viral media cases of Emma Sulkowicz, the University of Virginia Greek system or Duke Lacrosse, all this does is undermine their own narratives and most importantly real victims.
Maybe mainstream news outlets and networks will figure this out sometime into President Donald Trump’s second term.
Read the whole thing.
THE SAME WAY THE AMERICAN LEFT DID: How Europe’s left lost the working class.
YES IT DID: Google Made A Bad Bet On Clinton.
WAIT, WHAT? CIA Refuses to Brief Congress on Email Hacking. “Somebody had the time to leak it to the Washington Post, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress.”
It’s as if nobody’s willing to put their name on this story.
OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Now There Are Calls for Consent Before Kids Receive Hugs and Kisses from Grandma.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.
TERRORISM. EgyptAir crash: Explosives found on victims, say investigators.
A criminal investigation would now begin into the crash of the Airbus A320, Egypt’s civil aviation ministry said in a statement.
Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo plunged into the sea on 19 May killing all 66 people on board.
The cause of the crash has remained unclear.
No distress call was made beforehand but the cockpit voice recorder revealed the pilots had fought to put out a fire.
Automated electronic messages sent out by the plane showed smoke detectors going off in a toilet and in the avionics area below the cockpit, minutes before the plane vanished.
Recovered wreckage showed signs of damage caused by high temperature and there was soot on the jet’s front section.
It seems odd that no one has claimed responsibility.
CHANGE: FCC chairman to step down, handing GOP majority.
Ideally, the FCC would be stripped down to little more than a clearing house for the sale and allocation of useful radio frequencies.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? What Happens in Vegas, Stays in the Cloud: Wynn to Place an Amazon Echo in Every Room.
I’ll be at The Palazzo.
IN THE MAIL: 1001 Whiskies You Must Taste Before You Die.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save up to 50% on Select Toys.
And, also today only: Save up to 30% on Chocolates.
Plus: Save up to 50% on select Logitech PC accessories.
And: SiriusXM Satellite Radio SXPL1V1 Onyx Plus with Vehicle Kit, 31% off.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1316.
PRIVACY: Evernote’s privacy policy allows its employees to read your notes, and you can’t opt out.
Evernote’s CEO, Chris O’Neill, has responded to yesterday’s reports about the company’s privacy policy. His response both affirms and clarifies what was stated in our post above.
We recently announced an update to Evernote’s privacy policy that we communicated poorly, and it resulted in some understandable confusion. We’ve heard your concerns, and we apologize for any angst we may have caused. In response to the questions you’ve raised, let me be clear about what’s not changing and what is changing.
O’Neill goes on to explain that Evernote employees do not view the content of user notes except in very limited cases, such as where required by the law, troubleshooting, etc. The number of employees who are authorized to view this content is extremely limited by Evernote’s existing policies, and the CEO is personally involved in defining them. From this, users will not have the option of opting out of, and it’s been this way well prior to the recent privacy policy update.
What is changing, as O’Neill notes, is what we explained in our original post. Customers that opt in to machine learning may have their data viewed by Evernote employees to ensure that the features are working properly. However, O’Neill does clarify how this data will be accessed, and whether or not it is personally identifiable:
If you choose to participate in these experimental features, you’ll enjoy a more personalized experience. Select Evernote employees may see random content to ensure the features are working properly but they won’t know who it belongs to. They’ll only see the snippet they’re checking. Not only that, but if a machine identifies any personal information, it will mask it from the employee.
These are key details that were not properly explained in the initial update to the privacy policy, and it resulted in the outrage that we saw yesterday.
There would seem to be both plusses and minuses to Evernote’s terms of service, and it’s best that you know — stripped of the hype — exactly what you’re agreeing to.