Flutterby™! From 2018-04-01 to 2018-04-30

What ever happened too pleasing customers?

[ related topics: Photography ]

We have a new addition to the household... Bagheera is adjusting slowly.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design ]

The filter pump works!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Charlene vacuuming out the pool

[ related topics: Photography ]

The knob I made to control the swim current

[ related topics: Photography ]

What New York Should Learn From the Park Slope Crash That Killed Two Children:

A couple of weeks after the crash, we learned that she had reportedly hit another pedestrian in September and sped off. Paperwork that would have led to a deeper review had gone unfiled. Like Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, she was recognizably unfit to handle a dangerous machine, known and perhaps flagged by the authorities but not stopped, leading to violent, preventable death. And a lot of people seem to think of a driver’s license in near-purist Second Amendment terms: as a right that can be revoked under only the most extreme circumstances.

But the article talks about all the failures, including road geometry.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Civil Liberties New York ]

Included more so I can find it again than any real content: Ralph Peters: Why I Left Fox News:

Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave.

My error was waiting so long to walk away. The chance to speak to millions of Americans is seductive, and, with the infinite human capacity for self-delusion, I rationalized that I could make a difference by remaining at Fox and speaking honestly.

[ related topics: Microsoft Ethics Law Current Events Civil Liberties ]

Hot damn! Six or seven new dancers, two squares, lots of good energy, fun night calling for the Vallejo Pioneers square dance club!

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

You might have seen that Panera Bread leaked millions of customer loyalty records:

... including names, email and physical addresses, birthdays and the last four digits of the customer’s credit card number ...

The researcher who originally found the hole follows up with No, Panera Bread doesn't take security seriously. talking not just about Panera's weak-sauce response (they, uh, didn't rise to the occasion), but about the reporting process and how journalism also failed here.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any email saying "Any time but Tuesday morning" will garner a response that says "Tuesday morning is *perfect* for me, see you then!"

Well worth a read, even though it's difficult, and it's shit like this that's gonna make it harder to deal with gang problems, and that demonstrates that when the police are operating like just another gang it's not safe to turn to them: A Betrayal — The teenager told police all about his gang, MS-13. In return, he was slated for deportation and marked for death.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Law Enforcement ]

We have current!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Pretty sure that's not the right shape... Changing buses just after the Golden Gate Bridge.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Public Transportation ]

New from Cambridge probably not Analytica: are you gullible? Answer these questions to find out! O_o http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/...ihood-to-fall-for-internet-scams

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Invention and Design Current Events Net Culture ]

Reminder to only trust open-source apps that do end-to-end encryption, and even then be skeptical: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App.

Also, running Messenger is likely telling Facebook metadata about your other phone usage, including call logs and such.

[ related topics: Current Events Cryptography ]

So while the US is quite ready to deport an MS13 gang informant who will almost certainly be killed if he's deported, ICE won't deport the last Nazi war criminal in America.

During the first three months of ICE’s 2018 fiscal year, the agency deported 56,710 people, 46 percent of whom had not been convicted of a crime. This year, ICE expects to deport 209,000 people (PDF). It is highly unlikely that Palij will be among them—even though Palij is a war criminal, the last Nazi war criminal living in the United States.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History ]

Practical Attacks with DNS Rebinding, including how to find the local network devices, ways to work around same origin policies...

Change the default passwords on your routers and printers and stuff, kids.

[ related topics: Children and growing up broadband Work, productivity and environment ]

Good morning from Schollenberger Park

[ related topics: Photography ]

More view from the morning run

[ related topics: Photography ]

Walking with my head turned and eyes closed until I get around the buggy side of the spoils pond

[ related topics: Photography ]

Something to think about when the census comes around: Secret use of census info helped send Japanese Americans to internment camps in WWII.

Also something to think about in the context of social media and data aggregation.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media ]

‘Black Panther’ expected to be first film shown in Saudi Arabian cinema after 35-year ban lifts

Let's see: movie about nation which is rich based on natural resources, has several internal violent factions, and a history of deciding leadership by combat... I wonder why Saudi Arabia decided to let that one in?

[ related topics: Movies Current Events ]

Interesting... The Guardian: Humans produce new brain cells throughout their lives, say researchers:

“The exciting part is that the neurons are there throughout a lifetime,” said Dr Maura Boldrini from Columbia University in New York and first author of the new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. “It seems that indeed humans are different from mice – where [neuron production] goes down with age really fast – and this could mean that we need these neurons for our complex learning abilities and cognitive behavioural responses to emotions,” she said.

The Scientist: Abundant Neurogenesis Found in Adult Humans’ Hippocampi:

Adult human hippocampi are home to thousands of immature neurons, researchers report today (April 5) in Cell Stem Cell. The result runs counter to a paper published last month in Nature that found no evidence of neural precursor cells or immature neurons in adults. Such contradictory findings raise questions about researchers’ understanding of neurogenesis in human adult hippocampi, which are central to learning and memory.

The authors of the previous Nature study are sticking by their guns and saying it's an easy mistake to make. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Nature and environment Invention and Design Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Guns Education New York Archival ]

Ah, cloud computing: This instance seems flakey, let's roll the dice and see if we get a reliable NIC in the next one!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Low tide, but the normally tidal Petaluma river is really flowing in this storm!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Molly Ringwald: What About “The Breakfast Club”? Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.

[ related topics: Movies Sociology California Culture ]

A little bit of a dive into various propaganda operations: Newsweek: what is the truth about the chemical weapons attacks on Syrian civilians?

[ related topics: Guns ]

A little reading on understanding abusive relationships, "trafficking", and sex work: Sara Fenix: How Backpage saved my life

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment ]

The Stages of Consent Culture for Dance Communities.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Community ]

Why FOSTA's restriction on prostitution promotion violates the First Amendment. F

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Civil Liberties Archival ]

Nature Books and Arts: Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire

[ related topics: Books Nature and environment Archival ]

In light of SESTA and FOSTA, How Backpage Saved My Life:

OK MY NON-SEX WORK FRIENDS LISTEN UP I’m gonna tell you the story of how Backpage helped keep me safe during one of the scariest most dangerous times of my entire life

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Work, productivity and environment ]

Freedom to Tinker: Four cents to deanonymize: Companies reverse hashed email addresses points out that companies which used hash email addresses as public identifiers aren't doing anything for security.

Email addresses can be harvested from various sources, and you can run 450 Billion MD5 hashes per second on an Amazon EC2 instance, which means that "...hashing all five billion existing email addresses would take about ten milliseconds and cost less than a hundredth of a cent."

[ related topics: Books Privacy Invention and Design Civil Liberties Sports Cryptography Databases Government ]

Good morning from Helen Putnam Park above Petaluma

[ related topics: Photography ]

Just so I can find it: Washington Post: To search Michael Cohen’s home and office, the FBI had to clear a higher-than-normal bar

U.S. Attorneys » Resources » U.S. Attorneys' Manual » Title 9: Criminal » Obtaining Evidence » Searches of Premises of Subject Attorneys

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Oregon Trail is changing so that we share less of your private dysentery information

Server upgrade/sidegrade, holler if you see anything weird, s'il vous plait.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Washington Post: No one wants to listen to the sex workers, on the Backpage shutdown.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Washington Post: Members of Congress can’t possibly regulate Facebook. They don’t understand it.

[ related topics: Politics ]

While members of Congress were asking Mark Zuckerberg to explain this confounded difference engine contraption called Facebook, it turns out the kids are alright and have long since adapted to the new panopticon: 'Mischievous Responders' Confound Research On Teens.

American Educational Research Association: Inaccurate Estimation of Disparities Due to Mischievous Responders: Several Suggestions to Assess Conclusions

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Invention and Design Machinery ]

Wait, if life is non-toxic, how come everything that's alive dies?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

Typo of the moment: "nom-toxic"

Mark Zuckerberg: "you are not allowed to have a fake account on Facebook"

[ related topics: Photography ]

Huh. Perl to generate SQL insert statements piped into psql is extremely dramatically faster than using DBI and inserts in a for loop...

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Databases hubris ]

Thinking about all of the amazing product and innovation opportunities that would open up if Facebook and Google were for-pay rather than ad supported...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Organizations eventually come to perpetuate the problem which they were created to solve: Dog rescuers, flush with donations, buy animals from the breeders they scorn

[ related topics: Graphics Dogs ]

Boehner Joins Marijuana Board After Years of Opposition to Legalization.

Half of me is like "it's good to see that perspectives grow and change and someone can find enlightenment in their 60s", half of me is thinking this is the most brazen regulatory capture and casual racism we could imagine.

Via a lot of places, but this link comes by way of Sensible Endowment.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Libertarian Current Events Race ]

If people are up in arms over what Facebook does with their quiz data, wait 'til they learn what the Blockchain means to their financial transactions...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Pacific Standard: In the fight for free speech, sex workers have been left behind — With SESTA, Congress gets it backwards: Speaking isn't dangerous for sex workers. Censorship is.

"Adult content used to be the free speech issue. Now it's fucking Nazis," Nix 66, a cam sex worker and domme, tells me by email. "I have no idea why Nazis are defensible, and I'm not."

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Free Speech Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Sen. Bob Corker says the GOP tax law may be one of his ‘worst votes’ if new report is correct. Gee, you mean maybe reading the bill and waiting for the CBO report before voting on something would be a good idea? Color me stunned.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design Current Events ]

RT Mary Numair @MaryNumair:

A tiny house is basically a well laid-out bedroom. Thus, a regular sized house is basically filled with multiple tiny houses. Therefor, all regular sized houses are basically tiny neighborhoods. How am I doing on time

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask:

Analyst report notes that Gilead’s hep C cure will make less than $4 billion this year.

CNBC: Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?':

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

Goldman Sachs is catching up to alt medicine...

Encoding data into dubstep drops. Using amplitude shift key modulation to encode steganography into bass rhythm.

[ related topics: Music Weblogs ]

The level of propaganda war we're in the middle of is truly astounding. Is Russia Today expecting that people will take this claim of Sky News behavior (with a still, not a video) at face value, or will they see the name behind it and assume propaganda, or... This is the Princess Bride's poisoning of Vizzini scene played out IRL: https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/984875902294282240

[ related topics: History Current Events Video ]

This year's build for the Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Boats Machinery ]

Our ignominious defeat in this year's Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge... https://youtu.be/nxI1Rz89iq8

[ related topics: California Culture Boats Machinery ]

Why Your LARP’s Safety System Will Fail: A Hacker’s Guide to Engineering Player Safety. A need little perspective opener on building community guidelines and codes of conduct.

[ related topics: Community Douglas Adams ]

How much each vote actually counts for in the US, a map.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

A report from a student at Madison Young's porn school:

I’m also here to explore a budding porn movement that the school represents, one about sexual empowerment and openness for people of all orientations and body types. There are now dozens of film festivals around the world—from Dan Savage’s nationwide HUMP! Film Festival to COVEN in Berlin to New York’s CineKink—that perpetuate this movement, a celebration of human sexuality in all its rich and slightly sticky tapestry. ...

Erotic Film School — A 30 Hour Certification Program for the New Pornographer

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Software Engineering New York ]

Upon 2020: Why smart contracts are not for you (or me). On paying $70k for legal services and getting paperwork with misspelled company names, and how that model doesn't really extend well to code...

[ related topics: Weblogs Law ]

Video from the Sunday kid's build Wooden Boat Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9nikRfRIQ

[ related topics: Movies Boats Machinery Video ]

The thing about mapping and representing real world data is how much energy gets put into schemas to allow us to let people call something whatever they want. Preferred pronouns are a trivial problem once you've dealt with maps or vehicle type data...

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Just another Sonoma County morning

[ related topics: Photography ]

A little wild turkey

[ related topics: Photography Food Birds ]

Greta is skeptical.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Migration Accelerator: Labor Mobility, Housing, and Aggregate Demand Greg Howard, MIT Job Market Paper, October 24, 2016:

Labor mobility affects how local shocks affect labor markets because people move to more prosperous areas. The traditional view, associated with Blanchard and Katz (1992), argues that migration mitigates these shocks, and relies on the assumption that inmigration makes local labor markets slack. In this paper, I empirically test that assumption by constructing an instrument for domestic inmigration based on previous migration patterns and current outmigration in other places. I document that within U.S.-migration causes a large local labor market boom, the opposite prediction of the traditional view. The effect is large: a migration shock equal to one percent of the MSA’s population causes a fall in the unemployment rate of half a percent. This is a surprising result in theory, but I show increased housing demand leads to two additional channels which can explain this finding. First, housing is a durable good, so the labor demand for construction is front-loaded. Second, a house price increase induces additional consumption by non-migrants. I show these channels are present in the data and account for the total effect. Finally, I use these estimates to conclude that migration amplifies local labor demand shocks by 15 percent.

[ related topics: Heinlein Machinery Fabrication Economics Real Estate Model Building ]

Dangerous Meta: BEST PRACTICES, a repost of 12 YEARS OF WEBLOGGING.. Some good lessons about using social media today, originally posted December of 2011.

[ related topics: Weblogs Journalism and Media ]

This PSA About Fake News From Barack Obama Is Not What It Appears

Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele has a warning for viewers about trusting material they encounter online.

Cool tech demo. And, yeah, good message. Via MeFi

[ related topics: Current Events Video ]

Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H&R Block and Intuit Are Still Lobbying Against It.

Beware the "Free File Act"

[ related topics: Politics Government ]

Paul Erdős' amphetamine consumption (Reddit), a graph of Paul Erdos's number of publications over time, with the portions of his life in which he used amphetamines noted.

From the "Personality" section on his Wikipedia page:

After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use.

[ related topics: Drugs Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Mathematics ]

Media which accept political ads have a vested interest in creating contentious elections and in amplifying bogus issues.

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media ]

A huge free-to-play game makes fun of its addicted players, and they love it

What’s interesting about Fate/Grand Order is that the game’s marketing features a vicious caricature of dedicated players. She’s a slobbering, lecherous, gambling-addicted little monster.

Fans love her.

[ related topics: Games Consumerism and advertising Marketing Gambling ]

I thought the Endless Pool was gonna be mainly a Charlene thing, but dang it's nice to get a good swimming rhythm going and not have to worry about pool length. I may be a swimmer again...

James Comey Told Barack Obama That His Use of the Phrase “Mass Incarceration” Was Insulting to Law Enforcement Officers.

By way of this Twitter thread which also lays out a lot of the ways that Comey's beliefs are scary.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

"How did you spend your light today?" "Sitting waiting for Ansible to finish installing enough Python packages to run itself."

[ related topics: Monty Python Python ]

You know a holiday's gone mainstream when the AP seems to be annually re-running the story of the origin of 420: https://apnews.com/a0feafd1ae784b848aa4674783eb8c5d

[ related topics: Sports ]

Any of y'all with experience in motion control: I'm trying to price out building a vertical lift swim spa cover. The Covana is just under $10k. I think the Parker HST linear actuators would work perfectly, about 8' of total throw, about 4' retracted, about 100 lbs working load each (with some force left over for acceleration) but it seems like overkill to have something with half a millimeter of repeatability for a project that's just gonna move from extent to extent.

Any hints on:

1. Getting a distributor to talk to me for a project that'll take 4 units and done.
2. Possible other solutions, including other manufacturers whose products aren't as Googleable, or that might be more weather safe.
3. Approximate pricing, so I know whether this is even worth bothering with before I do more engineering.

I tagged Larry over on Facebook...

[ related topics: Weblogs Bay Area Work, productivity and environment ]

The Sex Trafficking panic is based on myths:

Good data is hard to come by in an industry kept largely in the shadows. That’s why, from 2012 to 2014, we spent nine months walking a stretch of road in Las Vegas well known as a gathering point for sex workers and their customers. We were part of a team who tailed along with those sex workers as they plied their trade, ducking into cars and alleyways to sell their services. We handed out condoms and other harm-reduction material, and we had a definite purpose — we were researchers, paid through an Obama-era grant from the US Department of Justice.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law Enforcement Douglas Adams Gambling ]

Five examples for avoiding the C++ preprocessor. From using constexpr to some simple operator overloading to allow for stacking of bit significant enums and a few other things about modern C++ it'd be useful for me to internalize.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Maybe Saddam Hussein actually did buy from Niger, but then had it covered in ganache?

(Edit: Originally autocorrupt changed to "covered in panache", to which Elf Sternberg replied that ""Covered in Panache" is the name of my Prince tribute band!")

[ related topics: Photography Dictators ]

Lofty Pursuits aka Public Displays of Confection (their mail order busines) has some competition to their video channel.

How to Make Handmade Candy With Panda Design (YouTube video). The coordination between the two candymakers is a joy to watch.

The company is Candy Labs.

[ related topics: Movies Graphic Design Video ]

Porsche exec arrested over Volkswagen's 'Dieselgate'

[ related topics: Business History Current Events Eric's Life Currency ]

Oregon Grew More Cannabis Than Customers Can Smoke. Now Shops and Farmers Are Left With Mountains of Unwanted Bud.

Hey, look, agriculture growing commodities is a crappy business to be in!

Much like grapes, I predict a split market, with big brands selling aggregated commodity grades (eg: the central valley wine brands, 2 Buck Chuck, Gallo and the like) and a boutique "wine country" like premium tourist experience.

[ related topics: Current Events Wines and Spirits Beer California Culture Economics ]

Serving on a jury gave me tremendous respect for the critical thinking skills and rationality of my fellow citizens. Nextdoor has destroyed all that, and more.

Hedgehog O'Brien: I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year....

Via Reverend Doctor Kestrel.

[ related topics: Health Terry Pratchett ]

18 year old who hacked CIA Directory John Brennan's AOL account when he was 15 sentenced to 2 years. There's probably a lesson from Brennan and Deutch &c about where we should get our CIA directors from... https://gizmodo.com/cyber-terr...a-director-john-brenn-1825443902

[ related topics: moron Pop Culture ]

Twitter partners seem kinda confused about me. The real reason I'm scared of big data is how often it's so badly wrong...

[ related topics: Photography ]

I... I... guess I've always encountered female dryers?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Spoofing cell networks and GPS signals with a $5 USB to VGA adapter. Using USB 3.0 VGA adapters based on the Fresco Logic FL2000 chip as a sofware defined radio transmitter.

Osmo-fl2k:

After reverse-engineering the USB protocol of the FL2000 in 2016, Steve Markgraf discovered through experimentation that it is possible to operate the FL2000 in a way that both horizontal and vertical synchronization are disabled, thus creating a continous stream of samples. This work resulted in osmo-fl2k, which so far was used to transmit low-power FM, DAB, DVB-T, GSM, UMTS and GPS signals.

https://github.com/steve-m/fl2k-examples

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Maps and Mapping Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Largo Florida cops used dead man’s finger in attempt to access his phone:

[The victim's fiance Victoria] Armstrong, 28, happened to be at Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in Clearwater the day two detectives showed up with Phillip’s phone, she said. They were taken to Phillip’s corpse. Then, they tried to unlock the phone by holding the body’s hands up to the phone’s fingerprint sensor.

Via JWZ.

Beware of using biometrics for authentication.

[ related topics: Weblogs Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

The Industrial Apocalypse of 'Frostpunk' Is More Truth Than Fiction. An interesting review of the new game Frostpunk, and what it says about the fading of heavy industry in the United States.F

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design ]

RT Marnanel Thurman -- #fbpe @marnanel, Replying to @stavvers

I think the problem is there's no emoji for penis, which I find really strange

Marnanel Thurman -- #fbpe @marnanel

Although Unicode *does* contain Egyptian hieroglyphs "D52 phallus" and "D53 liquid issuing from phallus"

But I thought the interesting bit was this commentary on 130b9:

julia hamilton @theacaciahouse

it's a sign contraction (sorry to be a nerd) - combining the sounds represented by the penis sign (mt) & the rope (s).

Sooo that's a common thing in Egyptian hieroglyphs, then?

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture ]

BGP hijack used to implement MitM DNS attack against at least MyEtherWallet.com

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

All the geeks on my social media feeds seem to be excited about some film that's coming out at the end of the week... But this one doesn't seem to be playing anywhere near me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0fa6fAFj3A

[ related topics: Movies Journalism and Media ]

The Renegade Game Designer Who Aims to Challenge the Industry’s Attitudes Toward Sex. Says Robert Yang:

The game industry’s stance is that sex (and especially sexual violence) is okay as long as your game uses it solely for titillation, and never because it cares about the issue. That’s really fucked up. They specifically ban games like mine that are about consent, intimacy and sexual cultures — unless, of course, I add 40 hours of gun combat to it.

[ related topics: Erotic Games Sexual Culture Guns ]

Bloomberg: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry. Apparently China is adding 1,900 new electric buses a week, every thousand buses means 500 fewer barrels of oil per day, and that's making an impact on global fuel demand.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Public Transportation ]

Wiping and rebuilding my Windows 10 VM because I didn't have enough virtual hard drive space to install the OS update.

[ related topics: Microsoft Space & Astronomy ]

There's a meme floating around Twitter about "5 words that describe programming", and Shadow found a great one: RT bletchley punk @alicegoldfuss:

meat telling sand to think

[ related topics: Software Engineering Marketing Boats ]

Exploring the Utility of Memes for U.S. Government Influence Campaigns Vera Zakem, Megan K. McBride, Kate Hammerberg (PDF)

[ related topics: moron ]

How the Border Patrol faked statistics showing a 73 percent rise in assaults against agents:

Almost the entire increase — 271 purported assaults — was said to have occurred in one sector, the Rio Grande Valley, in South Texas. A large number of the assaults supposedly occurred on a single day, according to charts and details provided by Christiana Coleman, a CBP public affairs spokesperson. In response to questions from The Intercept, Coleman explained in an email that “an incident in the Rio Grande Valley Sector on February 14, 2017, involved seven U.S. Border Patrol Agents assaulted by six subjects utilizing three different types of projectiles (rocks, bottles, and tree branches), totaling 126 assaults.”

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Mathematics ]

Why boring streets make pedestrians stressed and unhappy.

[ related topics: Writing ]

Interesting process of figuring out how to use xslt on Windows machines to get arbitrary code execution past Windows Defender Application Control (aka Device Guard): WMIC.EXE Whitelisting Bypass - Hacking with Style, Stylesheets:

[ related topics: Microsoft History ]

Former police officer arrested for 51 rapes and 12 murders. Joseph James DeAngelo is suspected of the crimes attributed to the "East Area Rapist", "Golden State Killer" and the "Original Nightstalker".

This seems to have been a cold case for 30 years. Michelle McNamara, Patton Oswald's late wife, had a long-researched book on the killer titled I'll Be Gone In The Dark published posthumously. An excerpt: Letter to the Golden State Killer.

Bruce Harrington, brother of one of the murder victims, speaks. He was a driving force in keeping interest in the case active.

MeFi thread.

[ related topics: Books Law Law Enforcement California Culture Video Marriage ]

No, officer, I don't think that warrant is outstanding, just kind of mediocre.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

Zoom for conference calls mostly kinda works, but why does the fan on my graphics card max out every time I start the client?

[ related topics: Graphics Conferences ]

Dear phone video: When I hit "record", I want you to keep recording until I hit "stop". Not randomly quit after half an hour or so...

[ related topics: Video ]

RT Hermione Danger @kelseybew:

How my boyfriend got pulled over by the police for giving a beggar at 7-11 change: A Thread.

Related but disconnected incident: On Nextdoor in Petaluma, a black man just described getting profiled and harassed by a member of the Petaluma PD, and the police chief has chimed in and is just digging himself in deeper and deeper. It's pretty bad...

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

A little thread reposted from Twitter:

The lessons of 2016 through the present are that the psy ops on social media are far more sophisticated than we previously thought. Maybe even more than we have the ability to comprehend. Even interactions w/people we personally know are being A/B tested to see what reaction they bring in us. That sort of large scale gaslighting reduces the value of online interaction. We start to create smaller more insular communities to figure out what we can trust, because even if it's someone we know, we can't be sure that we're seeing enough of their expression to get a correct impression. When we are steeped in deliberate lies, nihilism is a rational response. When every interaction must be viewed through a skeptical lens, even relatively close people become suspect. Paranoia must become the norm and when paranoia is the rational response to human interaction, then it's totally rational that we depersonalize and other "everyone", and terrorism to defend niche belief structures follows logically.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Journalism and Media Community ]

Sometimes they kinda tolerate each other...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Good morning from Schollenberger Park

[ related topics: Photography ]

They're going backwards, hopefully eating fewer bugs than I am.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Definition of Voltage and Current (ElectroBOOM101-002). (Surprisingly few unibrow on fire moments...)

[ related topics: Movies Pyrotechnics ]

Suicide, violence, and going underground: FOSTA’s body count — No traffickers were harmed in the enforcing of this law.

Google's "Director of Engineering" Hiring Test. In which a clueless recruiter queries a candidate who's too smart for the job...

[ related topics: Weblogs Heinlein ]

Twitter thread in which Jensen Harris posits some questions for candidates considering startups.

Julia's Linux Drawings, some cute introductions to concepts you should know.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Just a place to hang a bunch of links about stem cell treatments for joint pain.

The NIH points to http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/

Sitting in The Drawing Board, watching the Butter And Eggs day parade. Nothing at all compensation about that chainsaw...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Microsoft: The facts about a recent counterfeiting case brought by the U.S. government:

Mr. Lundgren’s scheme was simple. He was counterfeiting Windows software in China and importing it to the United States. Mr. Lundgren intended the software to be sold to the refurbisher community as if it was a legitimate, licensed copy of Windows. It was not. The evidence in the case shows Mr. Lundgren used his knowledge of the PC recycling community to scam the very community he claimed to champion and to evade the law. Had he simply wanted to help this community, why did he set up an entire counterfeit production operation in China to make the CDs appear legitimate? And why did he charge for his counterfeit product and try to make a profit at the expense of the community he was ostensibly trying to help?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Music Microsoft Software Engineering moron Theater & Plays Law Work, productivity and environment Television Community ]

RT Wolfgang Goerlich @jwgoerlich:

People say they're leaving a lasting legacy for their kids. Sweet sentiment.

But I'm in IT. Legacy is painful. Legacy is expensive. We work hard to get off of legacy systems.

So I ask, "why? Don't you like your kids? What did they ever do to you!?"

[ related topics: Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment ]

Why we need to get away from DNS. Domain names are just rented, real identity should probably be based on public keys. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...whos-had-it-since-94-so-he-sues/

That thing where you buy the big trims and ends value pack of bacon, let it spend all afternoon in the smoker, and then think one or two pieces before you put it away can't hurt...

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

Relevant to Dan & TC's bandwidth bet: /.: Comcast Won't Give New Speed Boost To Internet Users Who Don't Buy TV Service.

• Houston Chronicle: Comcast increases speeds again, but only for customers with cable TV
• NASDAQ press releases: Comcast Increases Internet Speeds for Some Video Customers in Houston
• NASDAQ press releases: Comcast to Increase Internet Speeds for Some Video Customers in Oregon/SW Washington
• Ars Technica: Comcast won’t give new speed boost to Internet users who don’t buy TV service — Comcast keeps losing TV subscribers, but it has a new way to fight cord cutting.

In the brave new glorious future, we will all be subsidizing sports.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture broadband Invention and Design Television Net Culture Video Economics ]

Charlene and I have been having a lot of discussions about housing policy, and I think this is relevant: RT François Chollet @fchollet

🌉 SF bay area:

area: 18,040 km2

population: 7.8M

density: 425.7/km2

1BR rent: $3.3k

🗼 Tokyo bay area:

area: 14,034 km2 (22% less)

population: 37.8M (385% more (4.85x))

density: 2,631/km2

1BR rent: $1k (70% less)

I wonder how they do it. Ah, I guess we'll never know🤔

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Real Estate ]