Small stickers on the ground trick Tesla autopilot into steering into opposing traffic

Researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab have published a report detailing their successful attacks on Tesla firmware, including remote control over the steering, and an adversarial example attack on the autopilot that confuses the car into driving into oncoming traffic.

The researchers used an attack chain that they disclosed to Tesla, and which Tesla now claims has been eliminated with recent patches.

To effect the remote steering attack, the researchers had to bypass several redundant layers of protection, but having done this, they were able to write an app that would let them connect a video-game controller to a mobile device and then steer a target vehicle, overriding the actual steering wheel in the car as well as the autopilot systems. This attack has some limitations: while a car in Park or traveling at high speed on Cruise Control can be taken over completely, a car that has recently shifted from R to D can only be remote controlled at speeds up to 8km/h.

Tesla vehicles use a variety of neural networks for autopilot and other functions (such as detecting rain on the windscreen and switching on the wipers); the researchers were able to use adversarial examples (small, mostly human-imperceptible changes that cause machine learning systems to make gross, out-of-proportion errors) to attack these.

Most dramatically, the researchers attacked the autopilot's lane-detection systems. By adding noise to lane-markings, they were able to fool the autopilot into losing the lanes altogether, however, the patches they had to apply to the lane-markings would not be hard for humans to spot.

Much more seriously, they were able to use "small stickers" on the ground to effect a "fake lane attack" that fooled the autopilot into steering into the opposite lanes where oncoming traffic would be moving. This worked even when the targeted vehicle was operating in daylight without snow, dust or other interference.

Misleading the autopilot vehicle to the wrong direction with some patches made by a malicious attacker, in sometimes, is more dangerous than making it fail to recognize the lane. We paint three inconspicuous tiny square in the picture took from camera, and the vision module would recognize it as a lane with a high degree of confidence as below shows...

After that we tried to build such a scene in physical: we pasted some small stickers as interference patches on the ground in an intersection. We hope to use these patches toguide the Tesla vehicle in the Autosteer mode driving to the reverse lane. The test scenario like Fig 34 shows, red dashes are the stickers, the vehicle would regard them as the continuation of its right lane, and ignore the real left lane opposite the intersection. When it travels to the middle of the intersection, it would take the real left lane as its right lane and drive into the reverse lane.

Tesla autopilot module’s lane recognition function has a good robustness in an ordinary external environment (no strong light, rain, snow, sand and dust interference), but it still doesn’t handle the situation correctly in our test scenario. This kind of attack is simple to deploy, and the materials are easy to obtain. As we talked in the previous introduction of Tesla’s lane recognition function, Tesla uses a pure computer vision solution for lane recognition, and we found in this attack experiment that the vehicle driving decision is only based on computer vision lane recognition results. Our experiments proved that this architecture has security risks and reverse lane recognition is one of the necessary functions for autonomous driving in non-closed roads. In the scene we build, if the vehicle knows that the fake lane is pointing to the reverse lane, it should ignore this fake lane and then it could avoid a traffic accident.

Security Research of Tesla Autopilot [Tencent Keen Security Lab]

(via Ashkan Soltani)

Banksy's art authentication system displays top-notch cryptographic nous

Banksy's anonymity makes it hard to authenticate his pieces and prints, so Banksy has created a nonprofit called "Pest Control" that issues certificates of authenticity: you send them an alleged Banksy print and £65 and if they agree that it's authentic, they'll return it with a certificate that has a torn-in-half "Di-faced" fake banknote with Lady Diana's face on it, with a handwritten ID number across the bill.

As Clinton Freeman points out, this is a great piece of cryptographic engineering: faking a Banksy cert involves matching the tear precisely, and also requires that a would-be counterfeiter know what was written on the other half of the note, which is stored at Pest Control and is not made available.

Let’s say someone did manage to recreate a convincing copy of a print, certificate and the public half of the matching Di Faced Tenner. And you want to purchase this thing that looks like an authenticated print, so you head over to Pest Control’s website and make a change of ownership request. They contact who they have on file as the current owner of the work: ‘Hey, are you going to give your print to Joe Bloggs?’. Naturally the owner, unaware of the forgery and has no intention of selling their current print is going to be confused and reply ‘WTF are you talking about?’

Can an information system be art? Because, like I said, it’s flipping sweet, and all executed in Banksy’s trademark tongue in cheek style. This whole authentication process would easily be my favourite artwork by Banksy.

How Banksy Authenticates His Work [Clinton Freeman/Reprage] (via Evil Mad Scientist Labs)

The Boston Globe on breaking up Big Tech falls into the trap of tech exceptionalism

The Boston Globe has published a giant weekend package of responses to Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up the Big Tech monopolies.

I'm absolutely in favor of this proposal, but I'm concerned that the proponents for it have fallen into the trap of tech exceptionalism, the idea that tech is either intrinsically monopolistic (something you hear from Big Tech itself, as they insist that "network effects" and similar excuses mean that they are helpless to avoid monopolies), or more dangerous (see the rhetoric about how "algorithms" can produce influence campaigns that turn decent people into anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters or murderous jihadis), or both.

I think both of these are vastly overstated and that you don't need to believe in them to support the case for breaking up Big Tech. Big Tech is monopolistic because it grew up without any meaningful antitrust enforcement -- because the Apple ][+ and Reaganomics were born in the same 12-month period, because a generation of tech lawyers learned from the FTC's tame response to Microsoft that it was fair game, and because the investors who choose the boards of these companies are great fans of monopolies in every industry they back, not just tech.

And as to tech's ability to distort our thinking, the idea that this is due to some kind of machine-learning secret sauce is something that Big Tech itself promotes ("Buy our ad-tech and we'll sell your stuff to people who wouldn't buy it otherwise"), but I don't know why we'd conclude that these companies lie about everything except their sales literature. On the other hand, the fact that we have (effectively) one search engine that unilaterally decides what goes on the front page for every search query, and one App Store whose editorial policies decide whether certain political messages can or can't be shown to Apple users. These have massive, obvious effects on public opinion, and no mind-control is necessary to understand how that works.

The fact is that every industry needs antitrust enforcement: we need to break up Big Content (start by unwinding last week's Disney-Fox merger, then block the rumored pending merger between Simon and Schuster and Harpercollins), and Big Cable, and Big Finance, and all the other Bigs that have come to dominate us and whose distortions make Big Tech so much deadlier.

But the closest the Globe's package comes to acknowledging this is Mohamad Ali and Mike Baker's call to regulate Big Tech rather than break it up so that it can hold its own against Big Cable, rather than breaking up Big Cable too.

It's great to see pickup for Warren's proposal, but please, people, let's not believe Big Tech when they say they're different from everyone else.

So why haven’t the feds been tougher on Big Tech already? One reason laws have been slow to catch up with the tech giants is because conventional understanding of antitrust law has required regulators to show that market concentration has resulted in some kind of direct harm to consumers. In this way of thinking, harm to competitors, or even to the broader market, isn’t enough to trigger Justice Department intervention: There needs to be some way in which consumers are shown to be paying higher prices. Since most services offered by Facebook and Google are free to consumers, proving harm under that standard is close to impossible.

In the legal community, some scholars have called for a rethinking of antitrust law to keep pace with technological changes and to reemphasize harm to competition. That’s an evolving debate, and it’s clear that Warren and some other lawmakers agree that it’s time to expand interpretations of antitrust law.

Editorial: Elizabeth Warren says we should take a big swipe at Big Tech. She’s right. [Boston Globe Editorial Board/The Boston Globe]

Animated David Byrne/Big Suit enamel pin

PSA Press's $15 Stop Making Sense pin is jointed for moving Big Suit action, just like in the greatest concert movie ever made; I just bought one at Wondercon and it's superb.

Frazetta sweatta

The $100 Frank Frazetta Death Dealer Xmas sweater is licensed, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Frazetta museum in East Stroudsburg, PA.

Researchers find mountains of sensitive data on totalled Teslas in junkyards

Teslas are incredibly data-hungry, storing massive troves of data about their owners, including videos of crashes, location history, contacts and calendar entries from paired phones, photos of the driver and passengers taken with interior cameras, and other data; this data is stored without encryption, and it is not always clear when Teslas are gathering data, and the only way to comprehensively switch off data-gathering also de-activates over-the-air software updates for the cars, which have historically shipped with limited or buggy features that needed the over-the-air updates to fix them.

Tesla has a history of being secretive about the data its cars collect, fighting customer attempts to recover data from their cars, and selling a special cable needed to access limited car telemetry for $995. Tesla employees told CNBC that the company uses telemetry to secretly identify Tesla owners who tinker with or investigate their cars, and flags them for late software updates.

Two pseudonymous security researchers called GreenTheOnly and Theo recovered "hundreds" of wrecked Teslas from scrappers and junkyards and systematically investigated the data left behind on the cars. Much of the data that these junked Teslas store is not unique -- other manufacturers' "smart" car systems store mountains of driver data in the clear (this is especially a problem for rental and fleet cars, which harvest data from many different drivers). But Tesla does store more data than its rivals, and goes further than other manufacturers in disincentivizing independent security research through its alleged blacklisting system; the fact that Tesla also operates a robust bug bounty system reveals a deep ambivalence about independent scrutiny about its products.

But GreenTheOnly and Theo noted that in Teslas, dashboard cameras and selfie cameras can record while the car is parked, even in your garage, and there is no way for an owner to know when they may be doing so. The cameras enable desirable features like “sentry mode.” They also enable wipers to “see” raindrops and switch on automatically, for example.

GreenTheOnly explained, “Tesla is not super transparent about what and when they are recording, and storing on internal systems. You can opt out of all data collection. But then you lose [over-the-air software updates] and a bunch of other functionality. So, understandably, nobody does that, and I also begrudgingly accepted it.”

Tesla cars keep more data than you think, including this video of a crash that totaled a Model 3 [Kate Fazzini and Lora Kolodny/CNBC]

(Image: Theo)

(via Matt Blaze)

Facebook owns Netscape

AOL bought Netscape, renamed it New Aurora Corporation, sold it to Microsoft, who sold it to Facebook, where it is a "non-operating subsidiary." Netscape veteran JWZ writes, "That makes Facebook the current owner of the cookie patent, so I was hoping that this meant that they are now embroiled in the Forever War with ValueClick, but I now see that it was settled in 2010. Bummer!"

I want to go to the cast iron market in Brimfeld, Mass

I want to go there.

My favorite pan is a Wagner I got at Goodwill in San Francisco.

I especially like to refinish cast iron waffle irons.

(Thanks, David Wolfberg!)

Second try with my neglected sourdough starter

Sourdough is not the complicated, finicky bread baking technique some folks might like you to believe. Sourdough baking takes very little effort and is mostly an art of patience.

This loaf is an example of what you can achieve by barely paying attention to your starter. I left mine in the fridge for months, and then forgot it on the kitchen counter.

Here is the dough after its first rise, and before I spread it out for folding.

Here is the loaf in its proofing basket. It was VERY wet and took a lot of the flour of the basket.

Here is the finished second loaf baked from a starter that had been left on my kitchen counter, unfed, for over a week. Previous to ignoring the starter on my counter, I had left it in my fridge for well over 6 months.

Here are some details on preparation of a basic sourdough loaf.

Alex Jones's deposition over his role in the harassment of Sandy Hook parents is a total shitshow

As the lawsuit against Alex Jones for his role in directing and encouraging the vicious harassment of the parents of children murdered at the Sandy Hook shooting has led to a lawsuit, and that has led to discovery and depositions that reveal much about how Jones deliberately and cynically created the campaign of terror against the grieving parents -- and the role that organizations like the NRA play in the creation of cruel and destructive conspiracy theories about mass shootings.

The law firm of Farrar & Ball are representing the parents in the suit, and they've uploaded the video of their deposition of Jones, conducted by attorney Mark Bankston. It is a complete shitshow, as Jones spins, and does backflips, going back and forth on whether he believes that the Sandy Hook parents are part of a conspiracy or not, repeating conspiracy theories about shadowy figures in the woods and so on.

If you can't bear to watch the video, you can read a transcript.

Jones is asked about the supposed “deep research” he did on the shooting shortly after being read the official report:

Bankston: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, I’ve noticed on a lot of these answers you’ve said, “Well, I’m just going off what Mr. [Wolfgang] Halbig said.” So what I want to know is: When you talked earlier about how you did deep research, what was that? What deep research did you do?

Jones: Well, I mean, I did look at the news articles saying they were being very secretive about the case, that a lot of things were sealed, which is unusual. There were lawsuits involved with that, and I did do research on [Michael] Bloomberg putting out an e-mail the day before saying, “Get ready. There’s going to be a big event,” you know, just straight up, people waiting around for mass shootings or whatever. And just the way the media made a spectacle out of it right away is what really made me question. That scene like with the WMDs or babies in the incubators, I just saw the media so on it, so ready; and I thought that added credibility to it.

Bankston: Okay. I mean, I’m glad you brought up the Bloomberg thing. I remember there was a couple of episodes where you talked about this Bloomberg e-mail and you said to your audience that there was an e-mail that came out in the lawsuit where Bloomberg told his people: Get ready in the next 24 hours to capitalize on a mass shooting. That didn’t happen; that’s not a real e-mail, is it?

Barnes: Objection as to form.

Jones: I mean, I don’t think it’s exactly that; but there’s one similar to that.

Bankston: Yeah. I mean, what you said is not real.

We Got Alex Jones’ Deposition Video. It Was A Predictable Disaster For Him. [Sebastian Murdock/Huffington Post]

(Thanks, Kathy Padilla!)

Watch Betsy DeVos smirk and smile as she ignores questions about her attempt to gut the Special Olympics

Watch CNN's @ryanobles try to ask Betsy DeVos about proposed federal cuts to the Special Olympics. pic.twitter.com/69yzJsq5Hy

— Daniel Lewis (@Daniel_Lewis3) March 28, 2019

This week inherited wealthy person and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos tried to cut all Federal funding to the Special Olympics. Watch as she smirks and smiles while ignoring CNN's Ryan Nobles.

Brexit Crisis: Church of England to host Emergency Tea Parties

With the Prime Minister's Brexit deal failing for the third time to receive Parliament's blessing and the looming possibility of crashing out the EU without a deal, or a snap general election, or a second referendum, or another series of Parliamentary votes, or a general-purpose popular uprising, or alien intervention, the Church of England has a plan: tea parties.

Churches are being encouraged to host “informal café-style meetings” over the weekend of 30 March “to bring together people of all standpoints and encourage open discussion.” The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Justin Welby and John Sentamu, have today backed newly-commissioned resources to invite people to “get together and chat over a cup of tea and pray for our country and our future”.

Under the slogan “Together”, the packs include specially-chosen Bible passages, prayers and questions designed to prompt conversations. The introductory notes urge participants to have “respect for the integrity of differently held positions, encouraging communities which feel the same about the issues to use their imagination to consider the viewpoints of those who feel differently.”

Photo: AS Food studio / Shutterstock

Oklahoma Republicans introduce bill forcing doctors to warn abortion patients about the existence of an imaginary "reversible abortion"

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House Judiciary Committee approved Senate Bill 614, which forces doctors to counsel patients seeking medical abortions with false statements claiming the procedure is reversible; doctors who refuse to lie to their patients would be guilty of a jailable felony.

The law's backer is Rep Mark Lepak [R-9, (405) 557-7380), who falsely claimed that "medical science has developed a method for reversing the effects of a medication abortion and saving the life of an unborn child."

This belief is widespread among anti-abortion extremists, and has prompted the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to issue a statement in 2017 that reads, "Claims regarding abortion ‘reversal’ treatment are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards."

Four other Republican-led states (Arkansas, Idaho, South Dakota, and Utah) have passed laws requiring doctors to tell this lie to their patients and seven more are considering it, as part of a nationally coordinated, nonconsensual Handmaid's Tale LARP that made significant advances with the elevation to the Supreme Court of accused serial rapist Brett Kavanaugh.

Arizona was the first state to pass such a law, but it was later overturned after a court challenge because the law's proponents couldn't find a single credible expert to testify that "abortion reversal" was a thing.

The bills are grounded in a series of flawed and deeply unethical experiments performed by Dr. George Delgado of Southern California.

Anti-abortion extremists have made forcing doctors to lie to patients a centerpiece of their tactics: a string of state laws also require doctors to give medically unsupported warnings to abortion patients about a supposed (and unproven) link between breast cancer and abortion. These deceptive practices also extend to the creation of "crisis pregnancy centers" -- fake abortion clinics operated by anti-abortion extremists where women are deceived into thinking that they can get an abortion, and are then systematically lied to about the supposed risks of the procedure.

Other anti-abortion laws passed by state Republicans have included rules requiring doctors to sexually assault women seeking abortions by inserting medically unnecessary ultrasound wands into their vaginas.

For nearly a decade, Dr. Stephanie Ho has been providing abortion care in Arkansas, a state where lawmakers have worked steadily to curb abortion access under the pretense of “protecting” women. They’ve tried to ban medication abortion altogether and have devised informed consent materials that are medically inaccurate — including requiring doctors to counsel patients of the possibility of reversing medication abortion, a measure passed in 2015. “Basically, they’re using my mouth to lie to patients because they can’t do that themselves,” Ho told The Intercept.

The requirement is a dangerous intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, she argues. After giving patients the inaccurate information the state forces her to provide, she then backs up and tells them what is accurate. It has confused and infuriated a number of her patients, who have asked why the state makes her lie to them. “That’s a really hard conversation to have,” Ho said.

She penned an explanatory letter to provide to every patient in this situation. “By inserting themselves into our conversation [state lawmakers] have violated our first amendment rights to free speech and have intruded into the time-honored doctor-patient relationship that we share at this critical time in your life,” reads the letter. “It is, however, the current state law in Arkansas.”

Oklahoma Bill Would Force Doctors to Lie to Patients by Telling Them That Abortions Can Be Reversed [Jordan Smith/The Intercept]

War criminal and snowflake Erik Prince cancels Beloit College talk after student protests, threatens lawsuit

Genie Ogden writes, "Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince (previously) was invited to speak at Beloit College last night, by the right wing group Young Americans for Freedom. A couple of weeks ago, a Beloit student who is Muslim posted on the internet that he was angry - about the shootings of fellow Muslims in New Zealand, and then about the YAF bringing Erik Prince to speak. He was suspended. Fellow students were upset about his suspension, and protested in the hall where Prince was scheduled to speak last night. They banged on drums, and some of them piled their chairs on the stage. Erik Prince cancelled his speech and has threatened to sue." (Image: Tess Lydon/The Round Table)

The Chinese Communist Party's newspaper has spun out an incredibly lucrative censorship business

People.cn is a publicly listed subsidiary of The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party; its fortunes are rising and rising with no end in sight as it markets itself as an outsource censorship provider who combine AI and a vast army of human censors to detect and block attempts to circumvent censorship through irony, memes, and metaphors.

Analysts praise People.cn for its "precise grasp of policy trends," and the company's customers agree, using People.cn's censorship service to block content in apps and on social media.

Full-year net income is expected to have risen as much as 140 percent, People.cn said in late January, the biggest annual increase since 2011. That would mean net profit of as high as 214.8 million yuan ($31.93 million).

Revenue from its censorship business is forecast to have jumped 166 percent last year, the company said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Encouraged by surging revenue, People.cn is raising a bigger army of censors. This month, it signed a strategic deal with the government of Jinan in eastern Shandong province to help the city become China’s censorship capital.

Censorship pays: the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper expands lucrative online scrubbing business (via Naked Capitalism)

New York State goes after the Sackler family's opioid fortune, claims they funneled their Oxy millions through offshore laundries

The Sacklers (previously) are mostly known around the world as "philanthropists," with their names adorning the wings of galleries, museums and institutes of higher learning; but the Sackler family fortune came from their pharmaceutical company, Purdue, whose deceptive marketing and underhanded regulatory evasion for their highly addictive drug Oxycontin has led to the Oxy overdose deaths of 200,000 Americans so far, with another 200,000 overdoses from heroin and other opioids likely related to the addiction epidemic created by Purdue and the Sacklers.

The Sacklers are anxious to keep details of their criminal activities out of the press and the public eye -- they recently gave Oklahoma $270m to settle a claim rather than have it go to trial, and you only have to look at the recently unsealed deposition of family boss Richard Sackler to see why: it reveals that Purdue execs, led by Sacklers, took steps that addicted as many people as possible and went to elaborate lengths to avoid regulatory detection of their misdeeds.

Now the family has been sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose (heavily redacted) legal complaint claims that as the Oxy epidemic drew more legal attention, the Sacklers began to extract millions from Purdue via offshore money laundries that would hide their fortunes from US courts, going so far as to abolish Purdue Pharma's written quarterly reports and replacing them with verbal reports direct to board members, leaving no records to subpoena as fortunes were sent abroad.

The suit claims that the Sacklers incorporated a new pharma company, "Rhodes," to use as a "landing pad" if they had to shut down Purdue due to the legal claims and scandal around it. Rhodes has operated in the background since 2009, selling generic opioids, and now has a larger share of the market than Purdue did at its peak. Rhodes is owned by a trust whose beneficiary is the Sackler family. The New York AG says that Rhodes's aggressive pursuit of new addicts reveals that the Sacklers are not penitent for their complicity in the opioid epidemic, and have no intention of abandoning their deadly business model.

The suit also names the Sacklers' major distributors, claiming that they worked closely with pill-mill doctors and pharmacists to help avoid regulatory detection and interdiction.

A Sackler spokesperson said "We strongly deny these allegations, which are inconsistent with the factual record, and will vigorously defend against them."

By 2014, fearing that Purdue could face catastrophic financial judgments, the Sacklers directed Purdue to pay family members hundreds of millions of dollars a year in distributions, sending money to offshore companies, the lawsuit claims, an act of clear “bad faith.”

As a result of these distributions, the lawsuit says, “assets are no longer available to satisfy Purdue’s future creditor, the state of New York.”

The complaint takes a skeptical view of recent reports that the company is considering filing for bankruptcy. It charges that the company is actually conducting “a well-thought out and deliberate media campaign to intimidate the litigating states, including New York, by threatening to commence bankruptcy proceedings.”

The lawsuit also goes well beyond other cases in spelling out in granular detail how pharmaceutical distributors played a role in the opioid epidemic by ignoring blatant “red flags” that indicated mountains of opioids were being diverted for illegal use.

New York Sues Sackler Family Members and Drug Distributors [Roni Caryn Rabin/New York Times]

(via Naked Capitalism)

(Image: Edwardx, CC-BY-SA)

After the Parkland shooting, NRA official reached out to Sandy Hook denier to discuss possibility that it was an anti-gun conspiracy

NRA training instructor and program coordinator Mark Richardson is a veteran of the organization, having worked there since at least 2006; in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting, Richardson used his NRA email account to correspond with Infowars correspondent Wolfgang Halbig, a Sandy Hook denier who has pursued a career of harassing the grieving parents of the children murdered there and accusing them of being "crisis actors" in a "false flag operation" whose children were either imaginary or unharmed.

Halbig and Richardson pursued a lively correspondence, discussing their belief that the Parkland shooting was a hoax designed to provide cover for the confiscation of guns from musketfuckers and ammosexuals across America.

The emails were revealed through the discovery process in a lawsuit against Alex Jones brought by grieving Sandy Hook parents who have been harassed and threatened by Jones supporters who were weaponized by Jones's repeated insistence that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax and that the parents were anti-gun conspirators who had faked their losses and their grief.

Wolfgang,

You have included me with a lot of Information since the Sandy Hook Incident and I do appreciate it very much. Concerning what happened in Florida yesterday, I have been asking the question and no one else seems to be asking it. How is it that Cruz was able gain access to a secured facility while in possession of a rifle, multiple magazines, smoke grenades and a gas mask? To pull the fire alarm, he had to already be inside. Correct? When my Children were in school the only way into the school was through the front door and past the main office. We have been told that he was. Prohibited from entering the building With a backpack. No longer a student, why was he allowed in the building at all? Where was all the equipment, in his back pocket? Just like SH, there is so much more to this story. He was not alone. Just a few questions that have surfaced in the past 24 hours. Thank you for all the information And for what you do. STAY SAFE

Exclusive: NRA Official Sought Sandy Hook Hoaxer To Question Parkland Shooting, Emails Show [Sebastian Murdock/Huffington Post]

(Image: Mosaic 36, CC-BY)

British parliament rejects Prime Minister May's Brexit plan for third time

This time she'd promised to resign if they approved it, paving the way for new leadership to execute Prime Minister Theresa May's deal with the European Union for Britain to depart the bloc. Dangling the keys to Downing Street reportedly won over a few power-hungry Tories like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but not enough. Her Brexit deal was defeated again, for the third time.

The vote on Friday might have been Mrs. May’s last chance to succeed on the issue that has dominated and defined her time in office, and the result left open an array of possibilities, including renewed demands for her resignation and early parliamentary elections.

The defeat appears to leave the increasingly weakened prime minister with two unpalatable options in the short run: Britain can leave the bloc on April 12 without an agreement in place, a chaotic and potentially economically damaging withdrawal; or Mrs. May can ask European leaders – who have ruled out a short delay if her plan failed – for what could be a long postponement.

It wasn't quite the thrashing as the first two votes — 344 votes to 286 — but still so far off that the sheer surreal chaos of it all impresses once again.

Come see me this weekend at Anaheim's Wondercon!

This weekend, I'm wrapping up the tour for my new book Radicalized at Anaheim's Wondercon, where I'm giving a keynote appearance on Saturday at 4PM (Even if You're Paying for the Product, You're Still the Product, room 211), followed by a panel on Sunday at 11AM (Technology Is Cold; People Are Warm, Room 300B), followed by a signing from 1215PM-1PM (in the Author Signing Area). I hope you can make it! (Image: Brandon Locke)

Soviet space dog shoes

Belka and Strelka, who both survived their trip to orbit, are immortalized here on a pair of shoes.

Soviet Space Dog Shoes [$59, octophant.threadless.com]

How to save your ass if the Boeing 737 MAX you're flying decides to nosedive

In the extremely unlikely event that you end up piloting a Boeing 737 MAX jet and it decides to nosedive, here's a 20 minute tutorial from Mentour Pilot on how to turn off MCAS.

Don't forget your duty free!

Grooveless metal engineering

In this otherwise unsourced video (via Singaporean news site Mothership) we may enjoy seeing parts so finely engineered that when they are socketed together, they appear to become single blocks of metal.

Inexpensive adjustable smart phone stand for desktop

This desktop phone stand has a heavy base and a platform that swivels up to 45 degrees. The platform is coated with silicone rubber so as not to scratch your precious device. It also has silicone pads on the base to keep it from sliding around. I have an earlier discontinued model and use it every day.

AOC is going to Appalachia to talk to coal miners

After Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered a blistering rebuttal to Rep Sean Duffy's [R-WI] charge that the Green New Deal and environmentalism were "elitist" concerns that ignored the needs of rural people, Congressional Coal Caucus member Rep. Andy Barr [R-KY] invited her to visit Appalachian coal-towns and "go underground" to talk to people in the mining industry.

AOC has taken Barr up on his invitation, saying "It’s a complete injustice the cancer levels that a lot of these communities are confronting. We have to plan a future for all of our communities, no matter what. Failure to plan is planning to fail and I feel like we’ve been failing Appalachian communities for a very long time and it’s time to turn that ship around."

“We have to plan a future for all of our communities, no matter what,” she said. “Failure to plan is planning to fail and I feel like we’ve been failing Appalachian communities for a very long time and it’s time to turn that ship around.”

Ocasio-Cortez says Appalachia ‘close to my heart’ as she accepts Barr’s coal mine invite [Lesley Clark/McClatchy]

Former NSA contractor Harold Martin pleads guilty to 'willful retention of national defense information'

Former NSA contractor Harold Martin today changed his plea to guilty, on charges of willful retention of national defense information.

Harold Martin was originally charged with 20 counts of violating the Espionage Act. He now appears more likely to face up to a recommended 9 years in prison, after pleading guilty to only the one charge, and may get credit for time served.

Martin was arrested in 2016 on charges he stole an enormous amount of sensitive information and stored it on various devices he kept at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

From CBS News, Baltimore:

He initially pleaded not guilty.

The government recommended a nine-year-sentence. Martin has already served two and a half years, which he will get credit for.

He pleaded guilty to one count of stealing a top secret NSA document and leaving it in his car, and another copy in the living room of his Glen Burnie home.

His sentencing is scheduled for July.

And from a 2016 Daily Beast profile of Martin:

The retired Navy officer arrested for allegedly removing highly classified information from the National Security Agency worked with the organization's elite computer hackers, who specialize in using computer code to penetrate the systems of foreign nations, according to a former colleague and the man’s online resume.

Harold Thomas Martin, III, who goes by Hal, was also enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The university has a partnership with the NSA, in which the agency helps develop curriculum for the school and agency employees can take classes there.

Martin worked with NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit, sources with knowledge of his background told The Daily Beast. In his LinkedIn resume, Martin says he worked as a “cyber engineering advisor” supporting “various cyber related initiatives” in the Defense Department and intelligence community.

More from reporters on Twitter:

Martin has already served 2 1/2 years. He will get credit for that. He pleaded guilty to just 1 count of stealing a top secret NSA document and leaving it in his car—and another copy in the living room at his Glen Burnie home @wjz

— Mike Hellgren (@HellgrenWJZ) March 28, 2019

Former NSA contractor Hal Martin has pleaded guilty to one count of willful retention of defense information. Martin and government agreed to a 9-year sentence and for other 19 counts to be dismissed at sentencing in July. News via @scottmcalvert https://t.co/lwp1ElFHCt

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) March 28, 2019

Previously charged with 20 counts of violating the Espionage Act, it looks like former NSA contractor Hal Martin will face only 9 years in prison after pleading guilty to a single charge. https://t.co/xgyqCEbD2e

— Andrew Blake (@apblake) March 28, 2019

#BREAKING: Former NSA contractor Hal Martin pleads guilty to willful retention of national defense information; government recommends 9-year sentence. Sentencing is in July @wjz pic.twitter.com/lQIAzEWSvp

— Mike Hellgren (@HellgrenWJZ) March 28, 2019

NSA domestic surveillance debate returns to Congress with 'Ending Mass Collection of Americans’ Phone Records Act'

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA 19th District), Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI 3rd District), and Sen, Ron Wyden (D-OR) are introducing a bill to “finally abolish the last vestige of the NSA's post-9/11 domestic bulk phone records surveillance,” writes Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast.

The bipartisan legislation introduced today would permanently end the domestic metadata collection program, as awareness of the operational challenges and civil rights implications grows.

Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden sponsored the legislation. A companion version was introduced Wednesday in the House by congressional representatives Justin Amash and Zoe Lofgren.

The 'Ending Mass Collection of Americans’ Phone Records Act', as it's called, removes all remaining authority for NSA and FBI to collect phone records in the United States, “other than those identified by the specific selection term included in [a warrant] application.”

From Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast.

In particular, the bill would kill off what’s called the Call Detail Records program under an effort to restrict the domestic phone-data dragnet in the wake of Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations. Before the so-called USA FREEDOM Act became law in 2015, some civil libertarians warned that its privacy protections, watered down by intelligence officials and their allies, would prove inadequate. They turned out to be prescient: the FREEDOM Act led to an overcollection of call data so massive that the NSA announced last it was deleting the entire FREEDOM Act trove, which included some 685 million phone records.

The failure of the USA FREEDOM Act was significant enough that the Trump administration “actually hasn’t been using it for the past six months,” a national-security aide to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told the Lawfare podcast earlier this month.

That apparent shutdown prompted speculation in surveillance-policy circles that the NSA might have either migrated its domestic phone-data dragnets under authorities outside of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – something the NSA has repeatedly done with its post-9/11 warrantless surveillance efforts – or shut down the collection out of an assessment that analyzing call patterns at scale is an outmoded form of counterterrorism surveillance.

The debate over NSA surveillance has officially returned to Congress. @RonWyden, @DrRandPaul, @justinamash and @RepZoeLofgren introduce legislation to permanently end the domestic metadata program amid growing recognition of its operation challenges https://t.co/aIG3NXoHe0

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) March 28, 2019

Interesting thread on the sketchy legal process that led to the precursor to the nationwide PATRIOT Act Section 215 bulk collection programhttps://t.co/7ineIE88QO

— Jake Laperruque (@JakeLaperruque) March 28, 2019

Russian agent Maria Butina to be sentenced in U.S. on April 26

Convicted Russian spy Maria Butina, who admitted to working in the United States as an agent of the Russian government to infiltrate the NRA and influence U.S. conservative activists and Republicans, will be sentenced on April 26, said U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday.

The charges against Butina were not part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s now-concluded investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, Reuters reports. Her former beau Eric Erickson, in the photo below, remains in legal jeopardy with fate unknown.

Maria Butina, presumed Russian agent, and Paul Erickson, GOP political operative, pictured in an undated personal photo first published by ABC News.

From Reuters:

Butina, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia. She has remained in custody since her arrest in July 2018.

The 30-year-old native of Siberia wore a green jail jump suit during the brief hearing in Washington, but said nothing.

Chutkan said during the hearing that sentencing memos from prosecutors and Butina’s defense team will be due a week before the sentencing date. Prosecutors and defense lawyers approached the bench for a discussion with the judge, but the subject of those talks was not made public.

Butina has admitted to conspiring with a Russian official and two Americans from 2015 until her arrest to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and create unofficial lines of communication to try to make Washington’s policy toward Moscow more friendly. The NRA is closely aligned with U.S. conservatives and Republican politicians including President Donald Trump.

Chutkan in February had delayed the sentencing at the request of prosecutors, who said Butina was cooperating in their ongoing investigation. Butina’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, said at the time his client was ready for sentencing.

Russia in December accused the United States of forcing Butina to falsely confess to what it described as the “absolutely ridiculous charges” of her being a Russian agent.

Alexander Torshin, former deputy governor of the Russian central bank, is the Russian government official named in Butina’s U.S. legal case.

Eric Erickson is named to as “Person 1” court records that say he helped Butina figure out which American politicians to target.

How hedge funds, Goldman Sachs, and corrupt executives used Gymboree's chaotic bankruptcy to cash out while destroying the careers of loyal employees

Gymboree is one of the many companies acquired by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, through a "leveraged buyout" through which the company was loaded up with debt so that the hedge fund could cash out; the company was left with massive debts and cycled through a succession of incompetent, inexperienced grifter CEOs who eventually ran the company into bankruptcy.

As the company was going through bankruptcy, the board decided to exercise an obscure clause in its contracts to "terminate the severance plan," for all but a handful of favored execs on the leadership team (that is, the people who drove the company into bankruptcy). By doing this, the company was able to fire longterm employees who had stayed on in the runup to bankruptcy despite the obvious warning signs because they had been hired with the promise of generous severance.

One of those denied severance was Mera Chung, who was recruited to work at Gymboree by her former boss from Old Navy, where she had been a vice-president. Chung was promised control of Crazy 8, Gymboree's most successful brand, and even though she could see that the company was headed for insolvency, she stayed on the job so that she could continue to pay her household bills, which included the costs of caring for her elderly and infirm mother; Chung assumed that her contractually promised one-year severance would kick in if the company folded and that she would have a cushion while she sought other employment.

Instead, she was given no severance -- but watched as colleagues more favored by the company's board and its lead creditor, Goldman Sachs, were given secret severance payouts in the form of "retention bonuses" that nominally ensure that key personnel were available to ensure an orderly wind-down. Incredibly, at least three of Chung's "essential" colleagues who were given these bonuses immediately left for a luxurious vacation at the Sundance Festival, begging the question of exactly how essential they were.

Chung was an executive, but there were also 10,000 clerks at 800 Gymboree stores who have been denied severance thanks to the financial shenanigans of the hedge funds, financial engineers and investment bankers running Gymboree.

There's a class-action suit brewing over this, but that will be a long process with an uncertain outcome. In the meantime, a productive company full of talented and loyal workers has been liquidated in order to enhance the personal fortunes of a group of grifters who -- incredibly -- style themselves as "job creators.'

Ron Tyler, a friend of Chung’s and a law professor at Stanford, provided her with several legal contacts. “I think her devastation comes from the fact that she, after very carefully and persistently creating this extremely successful career, to have it end so dramatically and intentionally by her company,” Tyler says. “And she saw the writing on the wall. Had it not been for that [severance] agreement, she would have left before.”

Shortly after the bankruptcy, Chung felt an even deeper sting. One of the lawyers she consulted asked how many employees worked at Gymboree headquarters, and so Chung put the question to Lu. “She was laughing and said, ‘I’ll call you when I land, I’m going to Sundance,’” Chung says. Chung wrote to the trustee that Lu and three other members of the executive leadership team — Tricia Lesser, Shelly Walsh, and Parnell Eagle — had decamped to the Sundance Film Festival, weeks after being given a retention bonus to stay on at Gymboree. Thompson corroborated that Gymboree executives were at Sundance, though she didn’t name names.

Pictures from Lu’s Facebook account, since removed, place her in Park City, Utah, at the time of the film festival. One check-in still on Facebook places her there as well.

“It’s like a B-grade Netflix movie,” Chung says. “If they were so needed for retention, why were they able to go to Sundance?”

“She Lied to My Face”: Inside the Hectic Last Days of Gymboree’s Retail Bankruptcy [David Dayen/The Intercept]

Trump's U.S. Energy Secty. Rick Perry gave 6 secret authorizations to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia: Reuters

U.S. Department Of Energy Secretary Rick Perry gave “six secret authorizations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia,” Reuters reports, based on a copy of a document seen by reporters on Wednesday.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

“Many U.S. lawmakers are concerned that sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” Reuters reports:

The Trump administration has quietly pursued a wider deal on sharing U.S. nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia, which aims to build at least two nuclear power plants. Several countries including the United States, South Korea and Russia are in competition for that deal, and the winners are expected to be announced later this year by Saudi Arabia.

Perry’s approvals, known as Part 810 authorizations, allow companies to do preliminary work on nuclear power ahead of any deal but not ship equipment that would go into a plant, a source with knowledge of the agreements said on condition of anonymity. The approvals were first reported by the Daily Beast.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said in the document that the companies had requested that the Trump administration keep the approvals secret.

“In this case, each of the companies which received a specific authorization for (Saudi Arabia) have provided us written request that their authorization be withheld from public release,” the NNSA said in the document. In the past, the Energy Department made previous Part 810 authorizations available for the public to read at its headquarters.

A Department of Energy official said the requests contained proprietary information and that the authorizations went through multi-agency approval process.

[via]

Twitter update lets iOS users go ‘Lights Out,’ adds automatic dark modes

Today, Twitter announced expanded 'dark mode' options for iOS users. Previously, Twitter offered a blue/gray dark mode theme, but they've added a true black/white “Lights Out” mode, and an automated dark mode.

“Giving more people options to personalize their experience on Twitter based on what makes them most comfortable is what the latest update to Dark Mode is all about,” Bryan Haggerty, Senior Design Manager at Twitter, said in the company's announcement.

Dim: Dim is the current Dark Mode theme that we introduced in 2016 – a blue/grey color that still gives people a more comfortable way to enjoy Twitter for any environment you’re in and helps reduce eye strain in low lit environments.

Lights Out: Our new theme for Dark Mode, which is a pure black color palette that emits no light since the pixels are turned off. This is a great option for those who want an even darker theme for low lit environments that reduces eye strain, and can potentially help with saving battery.

Automatic Dark Mode: Now, Twitter for iOS devices can enable automatic dark mode to switch from light to the dark mode theme of their choice according to their timezone. This feature takes the burden off of people to make the adjustments. If you’re using Twitter all day long, it’s better on the eyes to have a tool that adjusts for the varying environments, contexts, and atmospheres you’ll experience throughout the day.

You should be able to launch the new modes with a close/reopen of the app, if updates are enabled.

It was dark. You asked for darker! Swipe right to check out our new dark mode. Rolling out today. pic.twitter.com/6MEACKRK9K

— Twitter (@Twitter) March 28, 2019

Pls put this on Twitter's tombstone: "It was dark. You asked for darker!" https://t.co/co8CfaAORu

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 28, 2019

Twitter has rolled out a new Physical Manifestation For How This Website Makes You Feel Mode. https://t.co/6eNJ3SDb78

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 28, 2019

[9to5Mac]

Leaked Apple docs describe support program for 3rd-party repairs, just as right-to-repair bills in 20 states would require

Documents from Apple leaked to reporters describe a program of support for third-party repairs, and the details sound like it was intended to comply with the requirements of a slew of new right-to-repair bills proposed in some 20 U.S. states.

From Jason Koebler at Motherboard:

As Apple continues to fight legislation that would make it easier for consumers to repair their iPhones, MacBooks, and other electronics, the company appears to be able to implement many of the requirements of the legislation, according to an internal presentation obtained by Motherboard.

According to the presentation, titled “Apple Genuine Parts Repair” and dated April 2018, the company has begun to give some repair companies access to Apple diagnostic software, a wide variety of genuine Apple repair parts, repair training, and notably places no restrictions on the types of repairs that independent companies are allowed to do. The presentation notes that repair companies can “keep doing what you’re doing, with … Apple genuine parts, reliable parts supply, and Apple process and training.”

This is, broadly speaking, what right to repair activists have been asking state legislators to require companies to offer for years.

“This looks to me like a framework for complying with right to repair legislation,” Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and a prominent member of the right to repair movement, told me on the phone. “Right now, they are only offering it to a few megachains, but it seems clear to me that it would be totally possible to comply with right to repair.”

PHOTO: Shutterstock

Cat post: Wait for the mlem

Wait for it.

Wait for the mlem.

:P

Here it comes

There it is.

:P

:P

[via]

U.S. government now caging asylum seekers under the international bridge in El Paso, Texas

Photographs we're seeing online today, including one by Mark Lambie of the El Paso Times, below, capture the desperation of the unknown number of men, women, and children currently penned in, inside cages, under the Mexico-US international bridge, in El Paso, Texas.

This should have been the featured photo. The United States government is penning in asylum seekers under the international bridge in El Paso. pic.twitter.com/8CDc5MOZjr

— Brooke Binkowski (@brooklynmarie) March 28, 2019

Hundreds of migrants are being held beneath the Paso Del Norte International Bridge in El Paso. CBP says it has run out of space to process the asylum seekers. In the El Paso Times' photo above, two boys look out from the fence at the bridge as protestors demand their release.

As reported yesterday, most are from Central America, many are families, and some are in urgent need of medical attention.

Border Patrol holding asylum seekers in tent under bridge in El Paso. Calls it a "transitional camp." More than half are families, most from Central America, “meaning their asylum requests and credible fear interviews must be heard,” reports @abcnews https://t.co/ekCRCyft9B pic.twitter.com/mAP6VVkDjr

— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) March 27, 2019

Let's be clear about what we are witnessing in these images.

The United States government under Donald Trump is creating impromptu wire fence concentration camps for asylum seekers, as part of a manufactured border crisis driven by the Trump administration's white nationalist, white separatist, white supremacist policies.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan visited El Paso today, El Paso Times reports, and said the border has hit its "breaking point."

The recent influx of Central American migrants has made the El Paso Sector the second-busiest location on the U.S.-Mexico border.

From today's edition of the El Paso Times:

The Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso immigrant advocacy group, said that the government should invest in staff and infrastructure "to make our asylum system in ways that uplift our values and humanity of all persons."

In a statement, the group accused McAleenan of painting migrants as criminals.

“Asylum seekers are not criminals,” the group stated. “Asylum is a lawful process and migrants need to have an ability to claim asylum. Denying migrants the ability to claim asylum at ports, as our laws are designed to work, may force them to cross without authorization but does not make them criminals or undermine their asylum claims in any way.”

The group added that they "invite Commissioner McAleenan to tell the Irish of the 1840s or the Italians of the 1890s that poverty and starvation are not reasons to come to seek the opportunity, welcome, and grace of these United States."

[via brooklynmarie]

The Economist's visual data journalist fixes magazine's "crimes against data visualisation"

Sarah Leo is a visual data journalist at The Economist. In this Medium piece, she gives some past examples of Economist charts and graphs that were confusing or misleading and shows her revisions.

Mistake: Truncating the scale

This chart shows the average number of Facebook likes on posts by pages of the political left. The point of this chart was to show the disparity between Mr Corbyn’s posts and others.

The original chart not only downplays the number of Mr Corbyn’s likes but also exaggerates those on other posts. In the redesigned version, we show Mr Corbyn’s bar in its entirety. All other bars remain visible. (Avid followers of this blog will have seen another example of this bad practice.)

Another odd thing is the choice of colour. In an attempt to emulate Labour’s colour scheme, we used three shades of orange/red to distinguish between Jeremy Corbyn, other MPs and parties/groups. We don’t explain this. While the logic behind the colours might be obvious to a lot of readers, it perhaps makes little sense for those less familiar with British politics.

Image: Medium

Creature from Black Lagoon attends confirmation hearing

Things keep getting weirder.

Look in the background during Interior Secretary Nominee David Bernhardt's opening statement.

Watch LIVE on C-SPAN3 https://t.co/i3oegv9okf pic.twitter.com/UiiaVfV8h2

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 28, 2019

I am wondering what statement the cosplayer would like us to take away from this. Evidently the Democrating Senators in attendance had a lot to say about candidate Bernhardt's ethics.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff blasts GOP stooges calling for his resignation

US Representative Adam Schiff responds to all 9 Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee calling for his resignation.

Baking with an ignored sourdough starter

Reviews of New York City's subway bathrooms

New York Times reporters Andy Newman and Ana Fota took one (and sometimes two) for the team by visiting subway station restrooms across New York City. It was a shitty job, but someone had to do it. I guess. From the New York Times:

Norwood-205th Street, Bronx
D line

The cracked concrete floor of the men’s room looked like it had not been mopped in years. But on the plus side, on the frigid day of our visit, the room was toasty hot.

So hot that someone had wedged takeout Chinese food between the scalding radiator and the wall, possibly to keep it warm — a full container of shrimp-fried rice and brown-breaded nuggets.

“That’s no good,” said the station supervisor, S. Hope, when we brought it to his attention. “That will melt and catch fire.” He threw it out.

In the women’s room, fire safety has apparently been learned the hard way. “No storage within three (3) feet,” read a sign on the floor beside a radiator covered in burn marks. The radiator was working fine, though. The environment was reminiscent of the tropical monkey habitat at the Central Park Zoo.

(Mr. Hope said the bathrooms are cleaned three times a day.)

The main door to the women’s room has a peephole to let you see who’s in the hall. But it does not lock. “People hert people,” reads graffiti on the door.

The women’s room offered another unexpected sight: a man, standing at the toilet. He apologized on his way out, but offered no explanation. Nor did he flush.

"Subway Bathrooms: Are They as Bad as You Think?"

(image: Ana Fota/NYT)

This robot is very skilled at tossing bananas

TossingBot is a robot that teaches itself how to pick up and toss objects with great accuracy. Eventually, the robot -- designed by researchers from Google, Princeton, Columbia, and MIT -- could lead to more efficient pick-and-place (grab-and-toss?) robots for factory automation, debris clearing at disaster sites, or perhaps package delivery. Right now though, the TossingBot is quite good at throwing bananas into bins. From IEEE Spectrum:

Part of what makes TossingBot so useful is that the tossing technique significantly decreases the time that the robot spends on the “place” part of a pick-and-place task. Rather than spending time putting an object down, objects are instead (as the researchers put it) “immediately passed to Newton,” and the toss also means that the robot’s effective reach is significantly longer than its physical workspace....

The interesting bit of TossingBot itself is a deep neural network that starts with a depth image of objects in a bin, and goes all the way through from successful grasp to parameters for the throw itself. Since the throwing of an object (especially an unbalanced object) depends heavily on how it’s being held, grasping and throwing are learned at the same time. By measuring whether a grasp is successful by whether a throw is successful, TossingBot learns to favor grasps that result in accurate throws. As you can see from the video, the learning process itself is fairly clever, and the robot can be mostly just left alone to figure things out for itself, managing 10,000 grasp and throw attempts in 14 hours of training time.

"Edge of the Knife" is a Canadian film made in a language spoken by only 20 people in the world

Sgaawaay K'uuna, or Edge of the Knife, is the first feature film to portray the Haida – a group of people from Haida Gwaii, aka the Queen Charlotte Islands (off the west coast of Canada's British Columbia). It's also the first film in which the characters speak entirely in Haida, a language which only 20 people in the world speak fluently (even though the Haida population is a few thousand, according to The Guardian). The actors had to learn the language in order to understand their lines.

Via The Guardian:

The film, set on Haida Gwaii in the 19th century, is based on an old Haida myth about a man who survives an accident at sea, only to become so weakened that he is taken over by supernatural beings.

It is part of a wider push to preserve the Haida language, including a new dictionary and recordings of local voices.

Edenshaw said Haida uses a lot of “guttural sounds and glottal stops” and that actors needed to learn it because it differs from English, let alone other languages: “When you upspeak to denote a question in English, that doesn’t exist in Haida. There is an upspeak, but the questioning portion … appears in the middle of the sentence.”

That was among the details that his cast of non-Haida speakers had to learn over many months before the shoot.

The film will be released in April.

A tour of part of Kim Dotcom's mansion, including the panic room where he was arrested

Now this is a bedroom suite. "But wait, there's more!" says mansion-explorer Erick Tseng. Even the panic room, which it took cops half an hour to find, is larger than most London apartments.

Conservative commentator: trans people will replace humanity with 'New Species' that's 'Human and Part Machine'

No-one can make you sound quite as great as your enemies can. Here's Dr. Paul Nathanson, responding to conservative host Laura Ingraham's suggestion trans people are merely destroying traditional families:

“I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogether, not simply re-writing it, they're basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species. Which is what, in fact, the transhumanists have been doing for the past half century. Using medical and other technologies to develop a new species.

“So the goal is really quite radical. We're not talking about people who want to simply do a bit of reform here and there, add a new category. They want, they must, in fact, destroy whatever is in order to replace it with what they think should be. We're talking about revolution, not reform.”

Then:

Ingraham asks: "And the new species will be looking like what? Will be part human part animal? I mean, will be human mostly…"

Nathanson said, "I think human and part machine," to which Ingraham replies "part machine, hmm."

Conservatives often see with a suprising clarity and openness before their political instincts kick in. Here they're noodling on 1985 or so in feminist posthumanism. If the enemy has long moved on, this still has the hauntological result of snapping everyone back to a long-ago moment that seems suddenly fresh again (yet weirdly rustic to those who were there). I've never met a trans-exclusionary feminist who has read Haraway, but now everyone will have to at least take a stab at it.

I vaguely recall that, in the 1990s, the tailors and chroniclers of cyborgs in feminist and posthuman fiction were leery of association with cyberpunk. Perhaps cyberpunk was a nostlagia-from-the-outset, always obvious ripe for for appropriation by the right. But we can see, in Ingraham's "Hmmm", why the right can only appropriate the look and feel of things.

So my question is: what would a cyperpunk look like today, now that the aesthetic is the stuff of fast fashion and fascist video games? Check out the cover art to Hawaray's cyborg manifesto, embedded above, from 1985 or so. Coulda been painted tomorrow.

Teen girl's DIY glitter-shooting unicorn horn prosthetic arm in museum exhibit

Jordan Reeves, 13, was born with a left arm that doesn't extend past her elbow. Last year, Jordan dreamt up a curious prosthetic arm that resembles a unicorn horn and shoots glitter out of its tip. Then, working with her prosthetist and technical designers at Autodesk, she designed and built the magical contraption.

"I wanted show people that our differences don't necessarily hold us back, in fact, they can give us more opportunity," Reeves told WGN9.

After receiving numerous awards for her ingenuity and founding a nonprofit, Born Just Right, Reeves was invited to display her prosthetic at the Chicago Musuem of Science and Industry's Wired to Wear exhibit.

"I love that I can show people that our differences aren't a bad thing... just look at how much fun it can be" Reeves said.

More on Jordan Reeves in Fast Company: "The Girl Behind The Sparkle-Shooting Prosthetic Arm Is Just Getting Started"

Footage of American freestyle canoeing master Marc Ornstein

Relaxing, and ever so slightly peculiar, is this footage of an American Freestyle Canoeing master at work.

American Freestyle canoeing is the art of paddling a canoe on flat water with perfect control of its movements. The canoe is usually leaned over to the side to help the boat turn sharply and efficiently and paddle strokes are taken on either side of the canoe depending on the individual move. Balance, paddle placement and turn initiation are a few keys to this control. Since the movements seem dance-like, some practice this art timed to music, which is the ultimate in control.

A redditor on Ornstein's unique abilities:

His backstroke tilted side-turn is probably the best you'll ever see. Not to mention he pretty much invented the inverted wind-slide. He was the first one to ever do it in the late 90s. I know some people are going to laugh, but it really is the most dangerous trick in the sport. People have sustained serious arm injuries and muscle tears attempting it. Sven Englewood almost drowned trying to perform it in the 2009 World Championships.

Anyway, guys like Ornstein are the reason Freestyle Canoeing has grown with such popularity in the last couple decades.

Shhh. Whatever you're about to say: Shhhhhhhh.

Also fits the sartorial-semiotic slot that the British and Chinese plug snooker into.

Of $208m in fines leveled against robocallers, the FTC has collected ... $6,790

The Wall Street Journal reports that robocallers go largely unpunished, with all those headline-grabbing fines virtually uncollected.

As syndicated to Fox News:

An FCC spokesman said his agency lacks the authority to enforce the forfeiture orders it issues and has passed all unpaid penalties to the Justice Department, which has the power to collect the fines. Many of the spoofers and robocallers the agency tries to punish are individuals and small operations, he added, which means they are at times unable to pay the full penalties.

“Fines serve to penalize bad conduct and deter future misconduct,” the FCC spokesman said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which can settle or drop cases, declined to comment.

The dearth of financial penalties collected by the U.S. government for violations of telemarketing and auto-dialing rules shows the limits the sister regulators face in putting a stop to illegal robocalls. It also shows why the threat of large fines can fail to deter bad actors.

I'd bet a dollar the only fines ever collected were from a tiny handful of otherwise legitimate callers who made stupid mistakes. Robocalls and the like will account for nearly half of all calls in 2019, according to the FCC.

The Cardiff giant, one of the greatest hoaxes of the 19th century

In 1869, two well diggers in Cardiff, N.Y., unearthed an enormous figure made of stone. More than 600,000 people flocked to see the mysterious giant, but even as its fame grew, its real origins were coming to light. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Cardiff giant, one of greatest hoaxes of the 19th century.

We'll also ponder the effects of pink and puzzle over a potentially painful treatment.

Show notes

Please support us on Patreon!

Study finds 95% of all Bitcoin trading volume is fake, designed to lure in ICOs

A report from Bitwise -- an investment firm lobbying for FEC approval for a cryptocurrency based exchange-traded fund -- found that 95% of the trading volume in Bitcoin was fake, ginned up through techniques like "wash trading" where a person buys and sells an asset at the same time.

The report analyzed 81 exchanges and concluded that the fake traffic was being generated by 71 of them, in order to lure in lucrative "initial coin offerings" and the associated fees, which can run to millions of (fiat) dollars.

Bitwise's hope is that by demonstrating to regulators that there is $273m/day worth of real trades lost in the torrent of $6b/day worth of fakes, that there was the need for a regulated, high-quality product that could assure investors that they were not being defrauded.

Note that while the study has been reported on by the Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review, it does not seem to be available on Bitwise's site, and I was unable to review its methodology.

There are at least a two important takeaways here. First, the real Bitcoin trading market is an order of magnitude smaller than is broadly reported. If you are eager to see mainstream adoption, perhaps that’s disappointing. On the flipside, however, if zeroing in on the exchanges operating honestly can move the needle with regulators and finally get an ETF approved, this bleak analysis might help spur the kind of adoption you’re hoping for.

#134: Fake Bitcoin trading [Mike Orcutt/Chain Letter]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

(Image: Bitcoin.it, CC-BY-SA)

Sting operation: the NRA explains to white nationalist Australian political party how to deflect gun control calls after a massacre

Australian Al Jazeera reporter Rodger Muller infiltrated a meeting between the US National Rifle Association and Australia's far-right/white nationalist party One Nation, where the NRA gave party bosses advice on how to reverse Australia's tough anti-automatic/semi-automatic gun laws (passed after a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35 people) and what to do to deflect public calls for gun control when the next mass shooting happens.

In the secret recording, two One Nation officials -- Chief of Staff James Ashby and Queensland party boss Steve Dickson -- seek up to $20 million from the NRA's US supporters to fund their gun lobbying in Australia.

NRA PR team members Lars Dalseide and Catherine Mortensen gave the One Nation official extensive advice on managing crisis communications following mass shootings, advising them to "say nothing," and to plant stories that smear gun-control advocates by "shaming" them with statements like "how dare you use their deaths to push that forward. How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"

The NRA flaks also described how they encourage friendly reporters to publish stories about violent crimes that suggest the victims would have been able to defend themselves if they had guns; they also described how the NRA ghost wrote op-eds in favor of looser gun laws that were published under local cops' by-lines.

The NRA also boasted about the viral "self-defense" videos they posted to social media.

The real meat of the meeting started when One Nation's Dickson asked for advice on spinning his belief that "African gangs" were "coming into the house with baseball bats to steal your car" and the NRA's Dalseide replied that "Every time there's a story there about the African gangs coming in with baseball bats, a little thing you can put out there, maybe at the top of a tweet or Facebook post or whatever, like with 'not allowed to defend their home', 'not allowed to defend their home'. Boom."

The story is fascinating as much as for what it reveals (that the NRA has no qualms about allying itself with explicitly racist overseas movements and using race-baiting to promote looser gun laws that would allow white nationalists like the man who murdered 50 people in New Zealand earlier this month to acquire arms); and for what it doesn't (that there are no hidden depths to the NRA playbook, it's literally just a bunch of obvious spin and garbage that anyone with half a brain can spot from orbit).

"Just shame them to the whole idea," said Lars Dalseide, another member of the NRA's public relations team. "If your policy, isn't good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward. How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"

Dickson responded: "I love that, thank you".

How to sell a massacre: NRA's playbook revealed [Peter Charley/Al Jazeera]

(via Naked Capitalism)

Office Depot, OfficeMax fined over faked malware scans

Office Depot, OfficeMax and other retailers will pay $35 million to the FTC over their use of fraudulent software that falsely reported malware infections on customers' PCs.

Customers who took their computers in for a free “PC Health Check” at Office Depot or OfficeMax stores between 2009 and November 2016 were told their computers had malware symptoms or infections — but that wasn’t true. The FTC says Office Depot and OfficeMax ran PC Health Check, a diagnostic scan program created and licensed by Support.com, that tricked those consumers into thinking their computers had symptoms of malware or actual “infections,” even though the scan hadn’t found any such issues. Many consumers who got false scan results bought computer diagnostic and repair services from Office Depot and OfficeMax that cost up to $300. Suppport.com completed the services and got a cut of each purchase.

It's likely that anyone reading this knows that handing over your computers to teenagers at big box stores is the exact opposite of computer security and the temptation to victim-blame will be overwhelming. Instead, consider this: if a human was held responsible they'd be jailed, but the humans who did this won't be getting in any trouble at all.

Generation Z in their own words

The New York Times asked youngsters what they liked and what they wanted. The results — perhaps as is to be expected — are unexpectedly insightful, uncannily familiar, and disturbingly unready for the consequences. [via Choire]

Millennials are killing McMansions

It all seemed so innocent when architecture grad student Kate Wagner started pushing her charming brand of millennial snark on us with her acerbic critiques of gaudy, poorly executed monster homes, but architecture is no laughing matter.

The Wall Street Journal has sounded the alarm that boomer-built McMansions in Arizona, Florida, and the Carolinas are selling at huge discounts relative to their asking prices, thanks to millennials' unwillingness to buy sprawling homes that need extensive electrical and plumbing work, come with many additional bedrooms for storing hoards of consumer junk, and tedious fripperies like "crown moldings, ornate details and Mediterranean or Tuscan-style architecture."

Also, millennials -- saddled with student debt, and drowning in nondiscretionary avocado-toast-related expenditures -- are broke af.

Millennials buying their first home today are likely to pay 39% more than baby boomers who bought their first home in the 1980s, Business Insider’s Hillary Hoffower previously reported.

The generation is also facing record levels of student-loan debt, making it hard to take on a mortgage loan, as Business Insider’s Akin Oyedele reported.

When millennials can finally afford to buy a home, it makes sense that they’d hold out for something that’s exactly to their taste.

Millennials don't want to buy baby boomers' sprawling, multi-bedroom homes, and it's creating a major problem in the real-estate market [Katie Warren/Business Insider]

(Image: McManion Hell)

(via Naked Capitalism)