Dan Jones

On Wednesday, 15-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the UN plenary meeting at the COP24 climate talks in Poland. In it, she blasted world and business leaders for their political inaction on climate change, calling them immature (italics mine).

But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.

But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.

The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.

“You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.” Damn. Thunberg has been leading school strikes for climate justice in Sweden and is calling for worldwide strikes in schools today. She recently gave a talk at TEDxStockholm about her climate activism.

In October, Masha Gessen profiled Thunberg for the New Yorker.

Thunberg developed her special interest in climate change when she was nine years old and in the third grade. “They were always talking about how we should turn off lights, save water, not throw out food,” she told me. “I asked why and they explained about climate change. And I thought this was very strange. If humans could really change the climate, everyone would be talking about it and people wouldn’t be talking about anything else. But this wasn’t happening.” Turnberg has an uncanny ability to concentrate, which she also attributes to her autism. “I can do the same thing for hours,” she said. Or, as it turns out, for years. She began researching climate change and has stayed on the topic for six years. She has stopped eating meat and buying anything that is not absolutely necessary. In 2015, she stopped flying on airplanes, and a year later, her mother followed suit, giving up an international performing career. The family has installed solar batteries and has started growing their own vegetables on an allotment outside the city. To meet me in central Stockholm, Thunberg and her father rode their bikes for about half an hour; the family has an electric car that they use only when necessary.

Google wants to make it even easier for Android users to donate to a charity.

Google announced today that it is opening up the ability to donate directly to a charity through Google Play. Google will be baking the donation feature directly into Google Play, which will be rolling out over the coming days. It will also be available in Canada, Mexico, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Taiwan and Indonesia soon. What’s better is the fact that 100% of an Android user’s donation will be given to the charity of your choice.

Here’s the list of supported charities:

• American Red Cross
• charity: water
• Doctors Without Borders USA
• Girls Who Code
• International Rescue Committee
• Room to Read
• Save the Children
• UNICEF
• World Food Program USA
• World Wildlife Fund US

Bao, a short film by Domee Shi, was shown in front of The Incredibles 2 at theaters this past summer.

In “Bao,” an aging Chinese mom suffering from empty nest syndrome gets another chance at motherhood when one of her dumplings springs to life as a lively, giggly dumpling boy. Mom excitedly welcomes this new bundle of joy into her life, but Dumpling starts growing up fast, and Mom must come to the bittersweet revelation that nothing stays cute and small forever. This short film from Pixar Animation Studios and director Domee Shi explores the ups and downs of the parent-child relationship through the colorful, rich, and tasty lens of the Chinese immigrant community in Canada.

Pixar recently posted the entire short online on Twitter so you can watch it if you missed it in theaters.

Heartwarming moments are meant to be shared. Bring home behind-the-scenes, exclusive footage from Bao and 10 other critically-acclaimed shorts when you get the Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 3 on Digital, @Movies_Anywhere, and Blu-ray today: https://t.co/aNv3akp3OZ pic.twitter.com/hpnroh4xtm

— Disney•Pixar (@DisneyPixar) November 23, 2018

Shi, who is developing a full-length feature for Pixar, did an interview with the LA Times about her inspiration for Bao and its portrayal of the Chinese immigrant experience.

We also brought my mom in twice to do dumpling-making classes for the whole crew. That was really fun research because we actually filmed her hands kneading the dough and making the wrappers, and that was used as reference for the opening shots of the short.

Update: Bao is available on YouTube for a limited time…a much better way to watch it than a puny Twitter embed.

Helmed by someone with a knack for asking good questions & telling interesting stories and followed by nearly 100,000 people who have fascinating tales to tell, Nicole Cliffe’s Twitter account is an internet gem. Last night, Cliffe tweeted “Tell me your fav weird fact” and the replies kept me busy for quite awhile. Here are a few of my favorites:

“The low German (plauttdeutch) word for vacuum is Huulbessen. Literally translated it means Screaming Broom.” -@JayelleMo

“From the time it was discovered until now, Pluto hasn’t completed a single orbit. And it won’t for another 160 years.” -@TylerMoody

“Male giraffes will headbutt female giraffes in the bladder in order to make them pee, so that they can smell their urine and determine if the females are in heat.” -@anannabananacan

“Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were college roommates” -@msmessica

“The sound you think of Bald Eagles making is actually the screech of a Red Tailed Hawk. Eagles sound kind of like seagulls and that couldn’t stand, so they’ve been dubbed over forever.” -@Alison_Claire

“My grandfather grew up on coastal Maine, and said when he was a kid (1920s Maine at this point) the rich kids brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school and the poor kids brought lobster, since the lobstermen couldn’t afford to buy their kids peanut butter and jelly.” -@sgtjanedoe

“Samuel Beckett drove Andre the Giant to school sometimes.” -@WinchMD

“One of the foods with the highest amounts of naturally occurring umami (natural MSG) is BREAST MILK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” -@CiaoSamin

My weird fact would be that cabbage, kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, collard greens, and cauliflower are all the same species of plant.

You’ve probably seen people talking about a new threat to Android security. Apparently a rogue Android Trojan will use PayPal to steal $1,000 of your local currency at a time without much input from the user. However, most people have absolutely nothing to worry about.

The app, which is a battery optimization tool, has to be downloaded from a third-party source. It is not available on the Google Play Store. This already severely limits the danger as most people do not download apps outside of the Play Store.

However, Android’s security isn’t limited to having apps on the Play Store scanned. The operating system itself has plenty of safeguards to prevent security threats like this. Android won’t let you install third-party apps without bypassing a warning and enabling third-party sources, so if someone tries to do this, they’re acknowledging that what they are doing is dangerous.

The next level of security is permission control. The app won’t work without a user granting it permission to “Observe your actions.” This isn’t a simple permission either, but rather an accessibility service that must be manually toggled. This isn’t just a yes or no prompt.

If you’ve done all of that, then you’re in trouble. The app will send a notification pretending to be PayPal and claiming urgency and bring you into the official PayPal app. You log in and then it clicks various prompts to send the money to someone’s PayPal account.

Is this an actual Android issue? Absolutely not. A user would have to bypass multiple security barriers, complete with warnings, to get this scam to work. Most people wouldn’t even download an app outside of the Play Store, but those who will are usually not going to be providing said apps accessibility permissions. So if you read this story, don’t worry. There’s nothing for most people to fear. And if you get a call from the IRS asking for hundreds of dollars in gift cards, don’t you do it!

Plus battery optimization apps are criminally useless anyway.

Titled Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. To be releases on Netflix in 2020

InspiroBot is a computer program that can automatically generate “inspirational quotes”. If you want to annoy your friends on Facebook, this would be a good source.

💞🐶

Kashmir Hill, in an excellent piece for Gizmodo:

Then a man named Yul Kwon came to the rescue saying that the growth team had come up with a solution! Thanks to poor Android permission design at the time, there was a way to update the Facebook app to get “Read Call Log” permission without actually asking for it. “Based on their initial testing, it seems that this would allow us to upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all,” Kwon is quoted. “It would still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no permissions dialog screen. They’re trying to finish testing by tomorrow to see if the behavior holds true across different versions of Android.”

Oh yay! Facebook could suck more data from users without scaring them by telling them it was doing it! This is a little surprising coming from Yul Kwon because he is Facebook’s chief ‘privacy sherpa,’ who is supposed to make sure that new products coming out of Facebook are privacy-compliant. I know because I profiled him, in a piece that happened to come out the same day as this email was sent. A member of his team told me their job was to make sure that the things they’re working on “not show up on the front page of the New York Times” because of a privacy blow-up. And I guess that was technically true, though it would be more reassuring if they tried to make sure Facebook didn’t do the creepy things that led to privacy blow-ups rather than keeping users from knowing about the creepy things.

The Facebook executives who approved this ought to be going to jail. Facebook is to privacy what Enron was to accounting.

If you are a Google Allo user, then you may have noticed development on the app has quieted down as of late. It turns out that may have been a sign of bad things on the horizon.

According to a report on Wednesday from 9to5Google, Google is planning to announce the shutdown of Allo. The report is based on unnamed sources who are familiar with Google’s plans, but Google may delay any forthcoming announcement, so we may not hear about Allo’s fate anytime soon. Things have been honestly pretty rough for Allo ever since its lead, Amit Fulay, left Google to join the Facebook ranks earlier this year.

It turns out that most of the Allo team has moved on and is now working on Android Messages. That app has been consistently bringing over features from Allo for awhile now, so Google may be hoping that users are relying on Messages more than anything else these days. At least until the company’s RCS Chat service can get up and running in full force.

The news that Allo is shutting down comes hot on the heels that “Hangouts Classic” is also getting turned down in the near future as well. It certainly sounds like Google is starting to consolidate a bit more, shutting down the services it feels are starting to lag behind and putting a bit more focus on other, newer projects.

Do you still use Google Allo?

Consultant Tom Whitwell is back this year with 52 things he learned in 2018.

4. 35% of Rwanda’s national blood supply outside the capital city is now delivered by drone. [Techmoran]

13. US nuclear testing between the 1940s and 1970s may have killed as many Americans (from radioactive pollution) as were killed by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [Tim Fernholz]

26. Men who’ve experienced earthquakes are willing to take more risks and gamble more. Women show no such effect. [Chie Hanaoka & co]

51. Vanilla pods now cost $500/kg, roughly the same as silver. Madagascan farmers have briefly become vanillionaires, causing chaos in areas where the nearest bank might be a day’s walk away. [Annah Zhu]

Check out his lists from 2017 and 2016.

Image | This is from bluechair-webtoon.com!

Dunja Djudjic, writing at DIY Photography:

Earlier this year, Samsung was busted for using stock photos to show off capabilities of Galaxy A8’s camera. And now they did it again – they used a stock image taken with a DSLR to fake the camera’s portrait mode. How do I know this, you may wonder? Well, it’s because Samsung used MY photo to do it.

Not only is this outright fraud, they did a terrible job in Photoshop doctoring the image.

Djudjic:

Sadly, it’s nothing new that smartphone companies use DSLR photos to fake phone camera’s capabilities. Samsung did it before, so did Huawei. And I believe many more brands do it, we just haven’t found out about it yet. I’m pretty sure that Samsung at least bought my photo legally, even though I haven’t received the confirmation of it. But regardless, this is false advertising.

It’s undeniable that smartphone cameras are getting better (and there are more and more lenses with every new phone). But, we definitely shouldn’t trust the ads showing off their capabilities, or at least take them with a grain of salt.

I know one brand that does not do this.

Nobody wants it all.

image / twitter / facebook / patreon

For sharing:

Long-ways | Box-ways

Texts From Superheroes