Archive for 2017
August 23, 2017
GOOD. Court Strips Immunity From Bite Mark Experts Who Put Wrong Man In Jail For 23 Years. “Bite mark analysis” was always junk science.
DOES CALLING PEOPLE NAZIS, WHITE SUPREMACISTS, AND RUSSIAN AGENTS COUNT? ASKING FOR A FRIEND:
THE SCORPION STINGS THE FROG, EVERY TIME: SPLC Shamelessly Fundraising Off Hate that it Does Nothing About.
HOW HAVE WE SURVIVED WITHOUT THIS? Arianna Huffington’s Phone Bed.
THIS IS CNN: CNN host reveals that journalists don’t like Trump.
It’s not clear why Mr. [Brian] Stelter wanted to raise the question of whether he and his colleagues are being honest. But there is certainly a question of just how uncomfortable CNN has been about raising issues related to President Trump’s health and character. “My impression is that since President Trump’s inauguration, there’s been a lot of tiptoeing going on,” added Mr. Stelter.
Perhaps he was referring to the program he hosted a month into the Trump presidency. Mr. Stelter called Mr. Trump’s words “a verbal form of poison” and said the President instills “fear in many people.” Then, appearing above a CNN headline saying, “TRUMP’S NIXON-ESQUE PRESS BASHING,” Mr. Stelter invited Carl Bernstein to tiptoe into the story. The former Washington Post reporter pronounced that Mr. Trump’s attacks on the press “are more treacherous than Richard Nixon’s ” and proceeded to reference Stalin and Hitler.
Stelter has certainly been making a name for himself lately.
BUT IT MAKES “RANGE ANXIETY” MORE OF A THING: Cheaper, Lighter, Quieter: The Electrification of Flight Is at Hand. But this is a trainer, so that’s not an issue.
SAFE HARBOR, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG:
It’s different when they do it — and the “because shut up” was delivered via suspension notice.
IT’S NO BETTER THAN TRUMP. IN FACT, IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS TRUMP. If The Left Won’t Acknowledge Leftist Violence, It’s No Better Than Trump. “It’s not difficult to simultaneously hate Nazis and communists. Perhaps our leftist commentariat should give it a try.”
TIME’S-A-WASTING: Ways and Means Chairman: GOP ‘Fully Committed’ to Tax Reform This Year.
21ST CENTURY CRIME: Metro Crackdown On Gum Chewing, ‘Manspreading’ Threatens Riders With Fines.
Riders who are found doing any of the following are subject to a fine of $75 per offense and could be escorted off the train or bus:
• Eating, drinking, smoking, vaping;
• Playing loud music;
• Disturbing others;
• Disorderly, lewd conduct;
• Placing chewing gum on seats;
• Loitering;
• Fare evasion;
• Occupying more than one seat or blocking a door; or
• Riding a bicycle or skateboard in a station.Riders who commit third, fourth and fifth offenses could face being banned for 30 to 90 days, officials said.
Easier and more fun just to drive.
NICE RIDE: Mercedes’ $2.8 Million Hypercar Gets Huge Power from a Tiny Engine.
The Project One gets most of its oomph from a turbocharged 1.6-liter V6 engine. That may seem minuscule for this sort of use case, but consider that this machine is a close cousin to the one that powered the car Lewis Hamilton drove to an F1 championship in 2015. Of course, some accommodations had to be made.
Many of these changes have to do with how, and how high, the engine revs. The engine in an “ordinary” Mercedes sports car, say the $158,000 AMG GTR, is sized and tuned to make max power around 6,500 rpm. This limits heat and wear, allows for slightly greater tolerances in internal equipment, heightens longevity, and limits vibration.
A Formula One racecar will more than double that number, reaching about 13,500 rpm, and the Project One’s engine is a lot closer to that primal scream than to the roar of the GTR. The small, free-spinning motor will redline at an outrageous 11,000 rpm.
700 horses out of 1.6 liters? We may have found the replacement for displacement: Money.
TEAR DUCT TRIGGER WARNING: Five Wartime Tearjerkers Millennials Should Know About.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Bushwick’ Trashes Texas, Right-Leaning Americans.
How did a B-movie bust like “Bushwick” get into the Sundance Film Festival?
The prestigious event allegedly accepts the best of the best from the indie world. Filmmakers’ careers can be made by getting their work screened in Park City, Utah.
Yet “Bushwick” debuted via Sundance all the same.
Did the film’s progressive premise punch its entry card?
Do you even need to ask?
IN THE MAIL: From Owen Stanley, The Promethean.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals
MEGAN MCARDLE: We Live in Fear of the Online Mobs: Internet shaming spreads everywhere and lives forever. We need a way to fight it.
This kind of private coercion is not entirely new, of course. Community outrage cost plenty of people their jobs or their businesses in the old days. But those were local scandals. Rarely would someone’s notoriety follow them if they moved to another city.
Over time more and more people have suffered national stigma that outlasts their 15 minutes of fame. Cable news accelerated this: Think of Monica Lewinsky in 1998. The internet transformed the degree of scrutiny, the extent of its reach, and the shelf life of the scandal, so much as to make it different not just in degree, but in kind.
Whenever a new form of power arises, we need to think about how to safeguard individual liberty against it.
In the early days of Twitter, I used to say that it was a bit like I imagined living in a forager band to be: You were immersed in a constant stream of conversation from the people you knew.
Ten years later, I still think that’s the right metaphor, but not in the way that I meant it then. Back then I saw Twitter as a tool for building social bonds. These days, I see it as a tool for social coercion.
Shut down Twitter. It’s the only way to be sure. For the children!
Related: Cloudflare CEO says his Daily Stormer takedown was “arbitrary” and “dangerous.” “I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet.”
So maybe if people wouldn’t react this way to Internet shame-storms, we wouldn’t see so many Internet shame-storms? Just spitballing here.
PRIVACY: AccuWeather caught sending user location data, even when location sharing is off.
We independently verified the findings, and were able to geolocate an AccuWeather-running iPhone in our New York office within just a few meters, using nothing more than the Wi-Fi router’s MAC address and public data.
When the location is enabled, it sends the down-to-the-meter precise coordinates of the user, including speed and altitude, back to the data firm.
That’s where Reveal Mobile comes in. The data firm isn’t an advertiser per se but helps provide data for advertisers. Reveal says it “turns the location data coming out of those apps into meaningful audience data,” and “we listen for [latitude and longitude] data and when a device “bumps” into a Bluetooth beacon,” according to a brochure on its website.
For its part, Reveal Mobile executives said on a call last week with ZDNet that though company does collect Wi-Fi data and MAC address information, it “does not use it” for location data.
Tech blogger John Gruber adds:
In other words, if you deny AccuWeather permission to use the Location Services APIs on you iPhone, they’ll go around your back and send your Wi-Fi router name and the router’s MAC address to these shitbirds at Reveal Mobile, and they maintain a database that maps Wi-Fi routers to locations.
To me this is a one strike and you’re out situation. Apple should remove this version of the AccuWeather app from the App Store, and any of you reading this who have it installed should delete it from your devices and never re-install it. How can you trust them?
You can’t.
AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ONCE SAID, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Why Fired Engineer James Damore May Have a Federal Case Against Google.
RECYCLING: You Can Actually Do Something Good With Those Eclipse Glasses.
Astronomers Without Borders has offered to take them off your hands so that children will be able to use them in future eclipses. The organization says it will soon announce a program dedicated to redistributing glasses to schools in Asia and South America, where there will be solar eclipses in 2019.
“This is an opportunity for schools to have a first-hand science experience that they might not otherwise have” Astronomers Without Borders President Mike Simmons told Gizmodo. “Many schools in developing countries don’t have resources for science education and this is a rare opportunity that inspires students and teachers and shows them that science is something they can do. It can be a ray of hope for young people who don’t otherwise see a path to a career like this.”
The organization’s mission is to provide astronomy-related education and equipment for developing countries. It raises money to buy new glasses for children, but it is hoping to use this opportunity to build a stockpile.
Nice.
Here’s the link.
ALSO, ESPN WON’T LET ANYONE NAMED GANDHI SPORTSCAST FOOTBALL GAMES: Ghana Will Remove Statue of ‘Racist’ Mahatma Gandhi From Its Oldest University. “The petition, which had more than 1,700 supporters on Thursday, cited letters Gandhi wrote during his time in South Africa as evidence that he advocated for the superiority of Indians over black Africans. It also took issue with his use of the derogatory term kaffir to refer to native Africans and criticized the lack of statues of African heroes and heroines on campus.”
THUGS IS THUGS: Antifa Stabs Man for Having ‘Neo-Nazi Haircut.’