PRIVACY: Your smart TV may be prey for hackers and collecting more info than you realize, ‘Consumer Reports’ warns.

Consumer Reports just analyzed smart TVs from five big U.S. TV brands — Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL and Vizio — and found several problems. All can track what consumers watch, and two of the brands failed a basic security test.

How bad is the security? So poor, according to its report, that hackers were able to take over complete remote control of the TVs from Samsung and TCL’s branded Roku TV, which included changing channels, upping the volume, installing new apps and playing objectionable content from YouTube.

“What we found most disturbing about this was the relative simplicity of” hacking in, says Glenn Derene, Consumer Reports’ senior director of content.

The non-profit, which publishes a magazine and a website, partnered with a firm called Dissconnect to do the hack tests.

It was easy to break in, Derene said, because “basic security practices were not being followed.”

We own two smart TVs, because it’s impossible these days to buy something with a quality screen which isn’t “smart.” But neither one has any apps installed or is connected to the wifi, and both are used as dumb monitors for TiVo and Apple TV.

Even so, since both are wifi-equipped I have no idea what access third parties might be able to gain.

LIONEL CHETWYND: On Trump, Progressives Chose ‘Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards.’

OUCH: Tesla reports record loss in fourth quarter; Model 3 production still lagging.

Noting that the losses were the result of production costs on the Model 3, Efraim Levy of CFRA said, “The Model 3 production is the key to getting on a sustainable cash flow level. Once they get to correct levels, they will turn profitable.”

It might be awhile.

In a shareholder letter signed by Chief Executive Elon Musk and Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja, Tesla also once again applied the brakes to delivery expectations for the Model 3, the company’s heralded lower-cost electric car.

The new Model 3 — see our recent review of the car here — has been touted as an affordable battery electric vehicle, with a base MSRP of $35,000. More than 450,000 hopeful consumers placed refundable $1,000 deposits to claim them when Tesla first began taking orders in early 2016.

Crucial to the company’s success, the car has suffered significant delays in getting up to production speed and in getting to consumers.

Tesla on Wednesday advised that production rates of the Model 3 could be 2,500 cars a week by the end of March and 5,000 cars a week at the end of June. Last fall, the company had said it would be producing 5,000 cars a week by the end of 2017.
Analysts expressed skepticism about Tesla’s ability to meet those numbers.

Eventually, customers are going to expect to take delivery of their cars — or of refund checks for their deposits.

STEVEN GREENHUT: A Progressive Experiment That’s Doomed to Fail. “Formerly bankrupt Stockton teams up with foundation to see what happens when some residents are given a ‘universal basic income’.”

Mayor Michael Tubbs, an enthusiastic 27-year-old Democrat, has shown a keen interest in trying “new” things in the city. Last summer, for instance, he proposed paying people not to commit gun crimes, and now he’s working with some Bay Area entrepreneurs who are providing the funds to give some families $500 a month with no restrictions on how they spend the cash.

The Economic Security Project is backing the Stockton Experiment, based on its belief that “cash is an effective way” to rebuild the middle class and fight poverty. “Automation, globalization, and financialization are changing the nature of work, and these shifts require us to rethink how to create economic opportunity for all,” the group explains on its website.

Some conservatives have actually pitched a guaranteed-income concept. The thinking, advanced by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, is to “replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash  —  a negative income tax.” Such an idea, he added, “provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely.”

This is one of those cases where the concept makes a certain amount of sense in the philosophical realm, while being borderline crazy in the real world.

My inclination is to side with Friedman. If we must have a welfare state — and it seems politically that we must — it makes sense to make it as lean as possible. That said, I’m not sure the government of Stockton is competent enough to make anything work, sensible or not.

Either way, Stockton’s experiment might provide useful lessons about bad government, improved welfare, or both.

I have more on this over at Hot Mic.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: RUSSIANS at National Prayer Breakfast and Much, Much More.

OOPS: FBI Didn’t Notice Clinton Emails MARKED Classified, Wanted To Shut Down Probe Before Others Did.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Are Democrats destroying their own credibility?

Michael Barone:

On what issues are Democrats taking such risks?

(1) Their undisguised faith that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to steal the 2016 election. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think this happened or that it has or will come anywhere close to being proven.

(2) The Republican tax bill was a “scam” that was going to take money away from those with modest incomes. A look at the tax rate schedules in the Republicans’ bill should have told Democrats that this argument wasn’t sustainable, and perhaps they made it in the hope—which didn’t seem too far-fetched at the time—that enough Republicans would waver, the bill would never pass and their characterization, with predictable help from the mainstream media, would stick. But the bill passed, modest and low-income people are getting raises and bonuses, and just about everyone will get a bigger paycheck later this month.

(3) Their claims that the Republicans were responsible for shutting the government down last month over DACA. Democrats knew that DACA was widely popular, but overestimated its importance to voters. It turns out they didn’t want the government shut down to help even deserving illegal immigrants. It’s hard for the party of more government to lose an argument over who caused a government shutdown, but they managed to do it.

More at the link.

I understand that the party is currently in almost total thrall to its far-left progressive wing, but the last time they took such big risks with their trust and credibility it wasn’t until after they’d won back Congress.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: What is going on in the U.K.? There seems to be a run on ending life-sustaining treatment for the littlest patients.

HEALTH: Apple Watch heart-rate sensor can detect diabetes with 85 percent accuracy.

There is a caveat to that figure, however — it only stands for patients who have previously been diagnosed with diabetes already.

All the same, the study suggests that the Apple Watch could be a viable healthcare accessory moving forward. The research examined data from 14,000 Apple Watch owners, and determined that 462 had diabetes by using the heart-rate sensor in the watch. How was it able to do so? According to the 2015 Framingham Heart Study, diabetes patients have heart rates that vary from healthy individuals. As such, the Watch’s heart-rate sensor could theoretically detect these irregular heart rates, and consequently, identify a diabetes patient.

As TechCrunch points out, this is the same sort of sensor other fitness wearables use, which means that this capability likely isn’t restricted to the Apple Watch.

The Holy Grail of wearables for diabetes sufferers is an insulin measurer/injector which doesn’t need to prick the skin, and while this is a far cry from that, it is another step in the right direction.

TOM BEVAN: Dems Want to Win in 2018. They Shouldn’t.

By winning back the House, however, Democrats would take control of committees. This sounds good until you realize that the new Judiciary Committee chair would be under immediate pressure from the party’s liberal base to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would have great difficulty stemming this tide, because this is exactly what the vast majority of the base of their party wants: 76 percent of Democrats want their lawmakers to “begin the impeachment process against President Trump” if they win back control of the House of Representatives, according to a Quinnipiac University poll taken last month.

Here, history would be repeating itself, and not in a way that suggests a good outcome for Democrats. The problem, just as it was in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president, is that the country as a whole is against the idea. Pelosi has done a delicate dance for the past 13 months trying to tamp down impeachment talk among her most progressive members. Despite her efforts, in December 58 Democrats voted to lay out articles of impeachment against the president.

If Democrats win the House majority, it’ll be much harder for Pelosi to stem this tide among her members.

If Bevan is right, it might be worth losing the House for a couple of years just to watch the Democrats commit seppuku.

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A NOVEL, RIGHT? Longer winters are coming in reality and will partially blunt global warming for 50 years.

SPENGLER: Political Correctness on the Populist Right.

Poland’s Law and Justice Party government is right wing, Catholic and nationalist. It strongly opposes the European Community’s attempt to impose immigration quotas on its members, in alliance with anothother right-wing populists, Hungary’s Viktor Orban as well as the Czech Republic’s Miloš Zeman. But there is no difference whatever between the American Left’s witch hunt against “micro-aggressions” and the imposition of speech codes at American universities, and the new Polish law. They both criminalize speech that injures self-esteem, and they do so for exactly the same reason.

Read the whole thing.

PHOTO ESSAY: Chernobyl as you’ve never seen it before.

Infrared photography can be tricky to get just right — I had an old D70 converted to shoot it once upon a time — but the creepiness of the location is a perfect match for the weirdness of the format.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Justin Trudeau Says ‘Sorey, Eh’ About ‘Peoplekind.’

LAUREN SPAGNOLETTI: Best Oscar-Winning Films of the Last 40 Years.

I’d say that Braveheart, Silence of the Lambs, and Schindler’s List have held up quite well. Most of the others, not so much.

WE SURVIVED THE LIME SHORTAGE OF 2014, BUT NOW THIS… The world is facing a tequila shortage.

THE CRAZY YEARS: Department of Education Bans Daddy-Daughter Dances Citing Gender Bias.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Sriracha hot sauce guy is an American hero.

BACKLASH: Male Mentors Now Significantly Less Likely To Work With Women.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Feminist Philosophy Class Was ‘Indoctrination,’ Says Columbia Student.

But of course.

BILL GERTZ: Mattis Defends Plan to Deploy Small Nuclear Arms. “New weapons needed to counter Russia, China that are strategic competitors, not partners.”

WINNING: US projected to become net exporter of energy by 2022.

IT’S COME TO THIS: State lawmakers implore Tide to make less tasty-looking detergent pods.

UNEXPECTEDLY! New Minimum Wage Laws Will Eliminate More Than 260,000 Jobs in 2018.

If only there were some kind of easy-to-understand relationship between price and demand, maybe do-gooders wouldn’t keep making the same mistakes.

PRIVACY: Chinese Police Go RoboCop With Facial-Recognition Glasses.

China is already a global leader in deploying cutting-edge surveillance technologies based on artificial intelligence. The mobile devices could expand the reach of that surveillance, allowing authorities to peer into places that fixed cameras aren’t scanning, and to respond more quickly.

The devices, released late last year, were touted in state media this week as a means to help authorities during times such as the annual Lunar New Year migration that begins next week, when Chinese travelers flood train stations and airports.

The eyeglass-mounted camera is equipped with facial-recognition technology capable of “highly effective screening” of crowds for fugitives traveling under false pretenses, the official People’s Daily newspaper reported Monday. Its story included images of a policewoman wearing a sunglasses version of the device at a railway station in Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan province.

Creepy.