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Disease-based models help researchers understand how prison-admission rates are linked to the health of a neighborhood. Victor/Flickr “I know a lot of people…

Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

Last Call Updates:

• Apple adds 12 different iMac w/ Retina 5K models to its refurb store, up to $660 off
• iTunes Free App of the Week: Tangent, make pictures into unique works of art ($2 value)
• Former Apple Designer launches new iOS and Android connected timepiece
• Relive the most epic battles from the Final Fantasy series in Record Keeper for iOS/Android
• April’s Free Xbox Live Games: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Gears of War, more
• Poweradd Dual Layer iPhone 6 Protective Case $4 Prime shipped (orig. $26)
• Home: Maverick Wireless Grill Thermometer $50, LED light bulb packs 60% off, more

Headphones: Sol Republic Tracks Air Bluetooth $75, Klipsch Image X10 in-ears $80, more

WD Elements 750GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive: $39.95 shipped (orig. $100)

Daily Deals: iPad Air 2 $75 off, BenQ 3000L 3D Projector $320, HP 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive $35, more

Amazon announces unlimited Cloud Drive storage for all of your photos and files

JBL Spark Bluetooth Speaker $35 shipped (Reg. $130)

The software used by Pixar to create visual effects for movies like Toy Story, Up, and WALL-E is now free

Small States Review: Grado’s GR10e in-ear headphones hit every note, $299 giveaway

More new gear from today:

Call of Duty Strike Team for iOS/Android drops to its lowest price yet: $2 (Reg. $7)

Incase Apple Accessory Sale: Andy Warhol iPhone 5 case $10 (orig. $40), MacBook and iPad sleeves, more

• New! CyberPower 1000VA/600W LCD UPS $75 shipped (Reg. $100)
• New! $5 Mag subscriptions from Amazon: Organic Life, Runners, M/W Health, more
• New! Games/Apps: Diablo III Evil Edition from $20, iOS freebies, more
• New! D-Link PowerLine AV200 Mini Adapter Starter Kit $20 shipped (orig. $40), more
• New! Headphones: Audio-Technica ANC7B (refurb) $55, Philips Bluetooth $30

More deals still alive:

2K’s best iOS games are on sale from $3 ea: BioShock, XCOM, Civilization Revolution 2, NBA 2K15, more

• GoPro HERO4 Black 4K Action Cam $399 shipped ($100 off)
• Xbox Live Gold $36 (Reg. $60), PlayStation Plus $40 (Reg. $50)
• Save up to 20% on gift cards from Staples, Lowe’s, Applebee’s, Facebook, more
• $100 Sears Gift Card w/ email delivery for $85 (15% off)
• Razor scooters 50% off: electric and kick powered from $15 (orig. $30+)
• Magazine subs from $5/yr: Wired, ESPN, Rolling Stone, more
• Shower-Mate water resistant Bluetooth speaker $10 Prime shipped (orig. $30)
• Anker MFi iPhone 6 2850mAh battery case: $40 shipped (60% off)
• Alfred Hitchcock Blu-ray collection $99, Despicable Me Combo Pack $10, more
• JayBird BlueBuds X Sport Bluetooth Headphones $119 shipped (Reg. $170)
• Apple’s refurbished 3TB Time Capsule drops to $299 shipped (25% off orig)
• Save 10% on your Spring Break hotel at Travelocity
• Save 25% on all refurbished Olympus Digital Cameras
• Adobe Photoshop Elements + Canon Printer bundle for $50 (~$110 value)
• Toffee’s new iOS/MacBook accessories + discount for 9to5 readers
• LG Electronics 55-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED for $500 shipped (Reg. $800)
• Samsung 850 EVO 2.5-inch Internal SSDs: 250GB $100 (Reg. $135), more
• Incase 13-inch MacBook Air Hardshell Cases for $25 shipped (50% off)
• Groupon 10% off sitewide: iPhone 6 battery cases from $36, more
• Anker Astro 16000mAh External Battery w/ free Astro Mini 3200mAh $35 ($20 savings)
• Stop paying cable modem rental fees: Motorola SB6141 $58 shipped (Reg. $90)
• iPad Shoulder Bag by STM $13 Prime shipped (orig. $55)
• Seagate 5TB Desktop USB 3.0 External Hard Drive $129 Prime shipped
• $10 off a $30 purchase of classic and new board games
• iTunes Free App of the Week: Dark Echo ($2 value)

New products & more:

Here’s how to install Kano OS on your Raspberry Pi 2 for free

• The iDrink iPhone case includes a built-in breathalyzer, bottle opener and driving game
• InfiniteUSB cables offer an endless supply of USB ports for your laptop
• The Trefecta DRT is an electric bike even james Bond would ride
• Turn your selfies into dronies with this new iOS/Android controlled mini hexacopter
• This Minecraft Toolbox brings Steve’s tools to life thanks to Raspberry Pi
• Japanese accessory maker teases follow-up to the wildly popular R2-D2 virtual keyboard
• DJiT’s upcoming Mixfader might be the most portable iOS/Android DJ controller yet
• Atari’s new Fit app for iOS and Android rewards users w/ classic arcade games
• Bosch’s new REAXX table saw uses advanced sensors to protect your hands and its blade

Filed under: Tips and Tricks Tagged: 9to5Toys, Amazon Gold Box, Amazon Prime, app deals, bluetooth headphones, Daily Deals, free apps, Freebies, giveaways, PS4, Small States, USB 3.0, video games, WD, xbox one

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of Tips and Tricks, 9to5Toys, and Daily Deals.

What do you think? Discuss "9to5Toys Last Call: refurb iMacs w/ 5K display up to $660 off, iTunes Free App of the Week, iPad Air 2 $75 off, more" with our community.

I loved every opinionated moment of this interview with Fran Lebowitz about fashion. Where do I even start? Some choice bits:

Yoga pants are ruining women.

Shirts don't go bad, they're not peaches.

I feel very strongly that almost the entire city has copied my glasses.

Dry...clean. These words don't go together. Wet clean -- that is how you clean. I can't even imagine the things they do at the drycleaner. I don't want to know.

I have to say that one of the biggest changes in my lifetime, is the phenomenon of men wearing shorts. Men never wore shorts when I was young. There are few things I would rather see less, to tell you the truth. I'd just as soon see someone coming toward me with a hand grenade. This is one of the worst changes, by far. It's disgusting. To have to sit next to grown men on the subway in the summer, and they're wearing shorts? It's repulsive. They look ridiculous, like children, and I can't take them seriously.

Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut??

Of course, more people should wear overcoats than those damned down jackets. Please. Are you skiing, or are you walking across the street? If you're not an arctic explorer, dress like a human being.

I, myself, am deeply superficial.

Feeling good about an outfit is the point at which that outfit finally becomes good.

So good.

Tags: fashion   Fran Lebowitz   interviews

The end is finally in sight for Microsoft’s long-fraught Internet Explorer. At the Microsoft Convergence conference yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s head of marketing, said that the new flagship browser for Windows, which was announced in January and is codenamed Project Spartan, will not be associated with the Internet Explorer brand.

While Internet Explorer will still exist on Windows 10 for compatibility purposes, it will take a back seat to the new browser.

Microsoft has been working for years to salvage the Internet Explorer brand, which languished in the public eye thanks to releases like Internet Explorer 6, widely regarded as one of the worst tech products of all time. Releases over the last few years have fixed the product, but Microsoft has been unable to fix the browser’s reputation, despite a solid ad campaign.

The browser’s user share has suffered in recent years thanks to stiff competition from Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Apple’s Safari browsers, and Dean Hachamovitch, the longtime manager of the Internet Explorer team, left the company in December. The announcement that Project Spartan won’t be an Internet Explorer browser is Microsoft’s ultimate admission of failure in its efforts to change Internet Explorer’s image.

This article was originally published at http://qz.com/364122/microsoft-is-scrapping-internet-explorer/

Ok, this is one of the strangest photos I've ever seen. In the background, there's a building on fire and in the foreground, there's a football game going on like there's not a building on fire right there. From their photographic recap of 1965, In Focus has the story:

Spectators divide their attention as the Mount Hermon High School football team in Massachusetts hosts Deerfield Academy during a structure fire in the Mount Hermon science building on November 24, 1965. The science building was destroyed, and Mount Hermon lost the football game, ending a two-year-long winning streak.

Update: The photo above reminded some readers of this photo, taken by Joel Sternfeld in 1978.

You'll notice the fireman buying a pumpkin while the house behind him burns, although there's a bit more to the story than that.

In 1996, a building burned outside the stadium during the LSU/Auburn game:

(via @slowernet & @davisseal)

Tags: football   photography   sports

HBO will premiere the critically acclaimed authorized documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck later this year on May 4. Here's the trailer:

Looks promising. The film is directed by Brett Morgen, who also did the excellent The Kid Stays in the Picture documentary about Robert Evans. And the name comes from a late-80s mixtape made by Cobain.

Tags: Brett Morgen   Kurt Cobain   Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck   movies   music   Nirvana   trailers   video

There are only a dozen images so far, but this Tumblr comparing art from before the 16th century and contemporary images of hip hop is fantastic. My favorites:

Tags: art   music

If you run Windows on your PC and someone with an Indian accent calls your landline phone claiming to know something about your computer, read on.

Here’s the basic outline of what’s called the “tech support scam”:  Someone calls you from an Indian or North American phone number claiming to be a tech support specialist who knows that your machine is infected with a virus.  They convince you to open up a command window and type some commands. Those commands allow the scammer to take control of your machine, and then they do something nefarious, like hold you hostage for an outrageous support contract.  More here and here if you’re interested.

This scam has apparently been around for a long time. I had one of these calls a few months ago, and it was pretty clear that it had been a random call. The guy knew my name (I’m listed in the directory), but he didn’t know anything else.

Yesterday, I got another call, but the guy knew my Dell service tag number.  The service tag is a short alphanumeric code that’s unique to every Dell computer. That’s a pretty powerful piece of information if you’re trying to impersonate a Dell service rep.  It should be somewhat confidential – you can’t get my money with it, and you can’t directly hack my machine, but it enables a social engineering scam like my new friend “Bill” with a heavy Indian accent tried yesterday.

This might be a small potatoes scam enabled by  Bill’s cousin “Fred” who works at a call center and has lifted a few hundred service tags. Or it might be that someone has hacked Dell and downloaded everyone’s service tag and phone number. Since it doesn’t involve a credit card, we’ll probably never know.

What I do know is that yet another big US corporation has been sloppy and lazy with my personal data, and since it isn’t an enormous Sony- or Target-scale breach, they’ll pay no penalty for it.

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MSNBC just had a report on the amount of marijuana sold in Colorado last year, and told us that the 833 stores sold a total of 20 tons of weed. They then decided that the viewers needed something to visualize to understand how much 20 tons of weed was, so they flashed to a picture of…

Three elephants. Not those actual elephants above there, but three elephants. That was helpful, wasn’t it? Because looking at those three elephants, you totally understand how much 20 tons of weed looks like, because whenever Americans are trying to visualize weights and measures, we keep a handy copy of our avoirdupois to elephant conversion scale by our side. Just a couple months ago my doctor told me I could benefit by losing a little weight, and I asked him how much, and he told me about 1/20,000th an elephant.

Personally, I think something like this would have been more helpful:

And even that would not be really helpful, because it is context free. If you don’t know how much a “dose” of weed is (*COUGH COUGH* MAUREEN DOWD), you wouldn’t be able to compare it to the total amount sold. Up next on MSNBC, a visualization of our budget using flash animations of groups of hedgehogs and how much popcorn a child eats before age 16.

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The start-up and its investors see opportunities in the company’s more than 53,000 microcommunities.

So Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu wants the US to scrap negotiations with Iran over Iran’s attempt to get nuclear weapons.

Let us set the wayback machine to 2002…

I think we all know how well that worked out for the USA and the region.  Do we really want to expend more blood and treasure on this man’s recommendation?

And while we’re on the subject of US national security and Israel…

Jonathan Pollard was a spy for Israel.  He stole US secrets and sold them to the Israeli government.  Which government then passed some if not all of those secrets to the Soviet Union for the purpose of securing the release of Soviet Refuseniks to emigrate to Israel.  And that’s not just alleged in the Wikipedia link.  It’s something that was stated to me by two retired career senior US Intelligence personnel.  It’s also something that was verified by the Mitrokhin Archive.

And then there’s Israel murdering US military personnel in international waters during the USS Liberty incident.  They killed 34 US personnel, and wounded 171, and we won’t even get into the value of the ship itself.

ISRAEL IS NOT OUR FRIEND. They are, from time to time, an ally, but one we should see in the same light as they clearly see us, which is to say that they should be courted and supported when it is useful to US purposes to do so, and not when doing something else would be more advantageous.  Remember what that friend of Israel, Henry Kissinger said, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

 

I speak only for myself.  None of the other Front Pagers, nor John are responsible for what I post.

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After Benjamin Netanyahu's speech let me point you toward Jeffrey Goldberg's analysis. Let me also suggest, again, that differences on Iran policy correspond to answers to this one question: Whether the world of 2015 is fundamentally similar to, or different from, the world of 1938.

I've gone into the 1938 question before, here and here, but in light of the theme's centrality to this speech I'll do so one more time. No parallel from history is ever perfect, as Ernest May and Richard Neustadt so memorably argued in Thinking in Time. But as that book also demonstrated, the idea of recurring historic episodes has a powerful effect on decision-making in the here and now. Disagreements over policy often come down to the search for the right historic pattern to apply.

Over the years Benjamin Netanyahu has very explicitly said, "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany." For instance, see the the first minute of the clip below. Netanyahu said he was asked to give a young man a one-sentence summary of the world situation. Netanyahu answered with those six words.

In less explicit form, the idea that Europe on the eve of the Holocaust is the most useful guide to the world in 2015 runs through arguments about Iran policy. (Ted Cruz made the explicit comparison after the speech.) And if that is the correct model to apply, the right "picture in our heads" as Walter Lippmann put it in Public Opinion, then these conclusions naturally follow:

• The threatening power of the time—Nazi Germany then, the Islamists' Iran now—is a force of unalloyed evil whose very existence threatens decent life everywhere.

• That emerging power cannot be reasoned or bargained with but must ultimately be stopped and broken.

• "Compromisers" are in fact appeasers who are deluding themselves about these realities—Neville Chamberlain then, Barack Obama now—and increase danger for the world by wasting time before the inevitable showdown. The tellers of harsh truths—Winston Churchill then, Benjamin Netanyahu now—are trying to spare the world far greater dangers by encouraging action before it's too late.

• The appeasers' blindness endangers people all around the world but poses an especially intolerable threat to Jews. Six million of them were slaughtered because Britain, France, and especially the United States took too long to confront Hitler or even open their doors to refugees. Today's 8 million residents of Israel could be at existential risk if a mad regime, committed to their destruction, gains nuclear weapons. If a national leader says he intends to kill you, you take that seriously.

• As a result of all these factors, no deal with such an implacable enemy is preferable to an inevitably flawed and Munich-like false-hope deal.

That's what follows if the most relevant history is pre-Holocaust, pre-World War II Europe, and nearly everything in Netanyahu's speech can be read in this light. Also, and crucially, it means that the most obvious criticism of the speech—what's Netanyahu's plan for getting Iran to agree?—is irrelevant. What was the Allies' "plan" for getting Hitler to agree? The plan was to destroy his regime.

* * *

If, on the other hand, you think that the contrasts with 1938 are more striking than the similarities, you see things differently. As a brief reminder of the contrasts: The Germany of 1938 was much richer and more powerful than the Iran of today. Germany was rapidly expansionist; Iran, despite its terrorist work through proxies, has not been. The Nazi leaders had engulfed the world in war less than a decade after taking power. Iran's leaders, oppressive and destructive, have not shown similar suicidal recklessness. European Jews of 1938 were stateless, unarmed, and vulnerable. Modern Israel is a powerful, nuclear-armed force. Moreover, the world after the first wartime use of nuclear weapons, of course by the United States, is different from the world before that point. That is, all of humanity has faced an existential threat from nuclear warfare through the past 60 years. Eliminating the weapons is the only lasting protection; while they exist, deterrence has been the only way to keep them from being used.

So if it's not 1938, then other models of negotiation can apply, like those the United States used with the Soviet Union through the decades of the Cold War, or with China from the 1970s onward. Iran is then another problematic state, rather than a uniquely Nazi-style menace. (Recall that before the Iraq War Netanyahu made similarly absolutist claims about the undeterrable threat of Saddam Hussein.) Negotiations will therefore include, as they have with other states, a combination of carrots and sticks; a recognition of interests on all sides; and an understanding that negotiated progress is long, halting, and imperfect, but better than the alternative of no progress at all.

And if it's not 1938, analyses like this one, from the Arms Control Association after today's speech, have weight:

[Netanyahu] argues that the agreement-in-the-making would make it a near "certainty" that Iran pursues nuclear weapons because it would retain a nuclear program. This is just plain wrong.

The reality is that the agreement the P5+1 are pursuing would increase Iran's theoretical "breakout" time to amass enough enriched uranium gas enriched to bomb grade from today's 2-3 months to more than 12 months, and it would do so for over a decade. It would block the plutonium path to weapons.

* * *

Here's what I understand the more clearly after these past few weeks' drama over Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech. These differences in historic model are deep and powerful, and people with one model in mind are not going to convince people with the other mental picture. (Indeed after I rashly used the "is it 1938?" theme in a tweet, there was a little storm of responses in this vein: "@trueholygoat Serious question: Why do you hate Jews so much? @JamesFallows")

Unless Iran's behavior worsens in ways we have not yet seen, to me and others in the not-1938 crowd it will seem more comparable to other difficult states, for instance the old Soviet Union, than to Hitler's Germany. And unless its behavior improves in ways we have not yet seen, to Netanyahu and many others it will seem like the old threat in a new form, all the worse because of the nuclear element.

That is one more reality for negotiators to deal with. As Jeffrey Goldberg notes at the end of his post-speech report, Obama's task in trying to broker a deal is hard in the best of circumstances, and there's a reasonable chance that after this speech it has become harder.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/the-central-question-is-it-1938/386716/

VideoLAN has today launched several updates to VLC across its apps on iOS, Android, OS X, and every other platform where the app is available, marking the first time that the company has pushed such a massive coordinated release and the re-release of the iOS app. The new versions (with the main app numbered 2.2.0), include several features across the various platforms, and VLC says it took more than a year of volunteer work to put them together…

Among many others, one of the headlining features in this version is that VLC now automatically detects vertical videos and rotates them accordingly on some platforms. The new version includes other new features like the ability to resume video playback from where it left off on the desktop, much improved support for UltraHD video codecs, new hardware acceleration on some platforms, and new compatibility with a “very large number” of unusual codecs. (After all, that’s what VLC is known for, right?)

On iOS, today’s release (individually numbered 2.4.1) marks the return of the app to the App Store after disappearing around the time iOS 8 was released. The most important thing to note here is that support for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has been added, but the update also includes detection of external subtitles, support for streaming from Google Drive, media library search, UI and stability improvements, and the usual bug fixes among many other changes.

On Android, today’s release (individually numbered 1.1.0) is the first non-beta release for the platform. The update features a new aesthetic design that aligns with Google’s Material Design philosophy, a port of the app’s APIs to Android 5.0, gamepad controller support for navigation, support for pull to refresh, the ability to show videos as a list in portrait, and over 60 bug fixes.

A few platforms, including Android TV, Windows Phone, and Windows RT, are getting their very first public release today. The Android TV app is particularly notable—it’s very barebones in its current form, but surely development will continue.

VLC also took a moment today to announce that they’re working actively on version 3.0.0 for release “later this year.” “We’re working on many new features for VLC 3.0.0 to finish what we’ve started here,” Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN said.

Here’s the changelog, encompassing most of the important new features:

So, what’s new in VLC 2.2.0, codename WeatherWax?

• Fight the popular vertical video syndrome! VLC automatically detects rotated videos and rotates them using hardware acceleration (on compatible platforms)!
  This is supported for MP4/MOV, MKV and raw H264.
• Resume playback where you left off. Supported on all the mobile versions of VLC for quite some time, it is now available on the desktop.
• Vastly improved support for UltraHD video codecs like VP9 and H265, including encoding.
• New hardware acceleration mechanism, GPU 0-copy decoding, faster and implementations for Linux, Android, and Raspberry Pi. (Other OSes will have it in 3.0.0)
• Extensions: supported since a long time, we now feature an in-app downloader for the desktop, like Firefox
• Subtitles downloading extension
• Compatibility with a very large number of unusual codecs
• Vastly improved compatibility for problematic files in Ogg, MP4, and WMV.
• Support for Digital Cinema Package to play native movie theater formats.
• Experimental support of Interactive Menus of BluRays: BD-J
• On OS X, we’ve updated the interface for Yosemite compatibility.
• On Android, we rewrote most of the UI to match Google Material Design.
• This is the first public beta releases of Windows Phone, Window RT and Android TV.
• It is also the first non-beta release on Android.

And here’s a list of the new versions and links to their respective stores:

• VLC for desktop 2.2.0 on VideoLAN’s website
• VLC 2.4.1 for iOS on the App Store
• VLC 1.1.0 for Android on Google Play
• VLC 1.1.0 beta for Android TV on Google Play

Filed under: Apps, iOS Tagged: app, iOS, release, update, VLC

For more information about Apps, iOS, and iOS continue reading at 9to5Mac.

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Over at National Review, conservative blogger Jim Geraghty joins the crowd of pundits who are unimpressed with Scott Walker's recent answers to fairly easy questions:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker received a lot of completely undeserved grief from the national news media in the past weeks. But he may have made a genuine unforced error in one of his remarks today. Asked about ISIS, Walker responded, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.”

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Let's put aside the question of whether Walker deserves any grief for his weasely comments about evolution and President Obama's love of country. Fair or not, those actually seem like the kinds of questions presidential candidates get asked all the time. If Walker wants to be taken seriously, he should have better responses than he did.

But hey—maybe those really were gotcha questions and Walker should get a pass for answering them badly. ISIS, by contrast, certainly isn't. It's one of the preeminent policy challenges we face, and if you're aiming for the Oval Office you'd better have something substantive to say about it. As Geraghty suggests, generic tough-guy posturing does nothing except show that you're out of your depth.

At a broader level, the problem is that although Walker's anti-union victories are a legitimate part of his appeal and a legitimate part of his campaign story, he's become something of a one-note Johnny about it. His supposed bravery in standing up to union leaders and peaceful middle-class protestors has become his answer to everything. This is going to get old pretty quickly for everyone but a small band of die-hard fans.

Needless to say, it's early days, and Walker's stumbles over the past couple of weeks are unlikely to hurt him much. In fact, it's better to get this stuff out of the way now. It will give Walker an improved sense of what to expect when the campaign really heats up and his answers matter a lot more than they do now.

That said, every candidate for president—Democrat and Republican—should be expected to have a pretty good answer to the ISIS question. No empty posturing. No generic bashing of Obama's policies. No cute evasions. That stuff is all fine as red meat for the campaign trail or as part of a stemwinder at CPAC, but it's not a substitute for explaining what you'd actually do if you were president. Ground troops? More drones? Getting our allies to contribute more? Whatever it is, let's hear it.

Last semester, I began my math history class with some Babylonian arithmetic. The mathematics we were doing was easy—multiplying and adding numbers, solving…

The NY Times Magazine got Karl Ove Knausgaard (author of My Struggle) to "drive across America and write about it without talking to a single American", like some sort of introverted Tocqueville. He came unprepared:

I dialed the number of the driver's-license office at the Swedish Transport Agency, keyed in my personal identity number and sat down at the desk, scrolling through some Norwegian newspapers as I waited my turn.

A prerecorded voice came on and informed me about opening hours, then the line went dead.

What the hell?

Had they closed?

But it couldn't be later than 1 p.m. in Sweden.

I looked at the Transport Agency website. To my dismay, I discovered that it was a holiday in Sweden tomorrow, Trettondagsafton, the Feast of the Epiphany, and a half-day today.

That meant I couldn't get the driver's-license confirmation letter until three days from now at the earliest, more likely four.

Oh, no.

I wasn't even in the U.S. yet, I was just in Canada!

I lay back in bed and stared at the ceiling. I should email The Times and explain the situation. Maybe they had a solution. But I couldn't. I just couldn't bring myself to tell them that I'd undertaken this great road-trip assignment across the U.S. without my license. They'd think I was a complete idiot.

In any case, there was nothing I could do today.

And his thoughts on Detroit (emphasis mine):

I'd seen poverty before, of course, even incomprehensible poverty, as in the slums outside Maputo, in Mozambique. But I'd never seen anything like this. If what I had seen tonight - house after house after house abandoned, deserted, decaying as if there had been disaster - if this was poverty, then it must be a new kind poverty, maybe in the same way that the wealth that had amassed here in the 20th century had been a new kind of wealth. I had never really understood how a nation that so celebrated the individual could obliterate all differences the way this country did. In a system of mass production, the individual workers are replaceable and the products are identical. The identical cars are followed by identical gas stations, identical restaurants, identical motels and, as an extension of these, by identical TV screens, which hang everywhere in this country, broadcasting identical entertainment and identical dreams. Not even the Soviet Union at the height of its power had succeeded in creating such a unified, collective identity as the one Americans lived their lives within. When times got rough, a person could abandon one town in favor of another, and that new town would still represent the same thing.

Was that what home was here? Not the place, not the local, but the culture, the general?

Tags: Detroit   Karl Ove Knausgaard   USA

Kino Lorber Alexei German’s Hard to Be a God , 2013 “The Renaissance didn’t happen here,” the voice-over declares, in the opening minutes of Alexei German’s…

For years, rape kits piled up in Houston. Thousands and thousands of swaps, running back almost 30 years, sat untested. Victims heard nothing. Perpetrators went on with their lives and, in some cases, committed further crimes. Eventually, there were nearly 6,700 kits waiting to be processed.

Then, in 2013, Mayor Annise Parker launched a push to test the kits. The results are stunning: Tests turned up 850 matches in the FBI's national DNA database. Prosecutors have charged 29 people and obtained six convictions so far. Of course, the delay was costly: As the Harris County prosecutor noted, suspects in some cases committed other crimes, even as the untested kits that could have convicted them sat untested—including at least six further rapes. (Given a national backlog of rape kits, there might be even more.)

Houston's test result is good news, and it's the latest in a slow revolution in how authorities are handling rape kits. In 2014, Memphis, Tennessee, began moving to process a 12,000-kit backlog. An especially egregious case was Detroit, which discovered some 11,000 kits in an abandoned police facility in 2009 but has since begun an ambitious effort to solve the problem. While testing on those kits has proceeded slowly, it has already identified 100 serial rapists, according to prosecutors. In 2014, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed a law establishment timelines for rape-kit testing. Cleveland has sent 4,700 kits for testing. Las Vegas has 4,000. There's no definitive number, but estimates of the number of untested kits, nationwide, range from at least 100,000 to 400,000. Manhattan had a 17,000-kit backlog that it began clearing in 2000, yielding dozens of convictions as well as connections to other assaults in New York's other boroughs.

The problem, say advocates, is not just for the women and men who have been attacked and whose cases haven't been resolved. There's evidence of substantial rates of serial rape and of general serial criminality among rapists. When kits are not tested promptly, perpetrators are left at large to commit additional rapes that might have been prevented.

Investigators have often been reluctant to test in cases in which suspects are known to their accusers, choosing instead to test only kits from rapes perpetrated by strangers, said Linda Fairstein, a former New York sex-crimes prosecutor who's now on the board of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that works toward rape-kit reform. Investigators might not bother testing a kit in a domestic violence case, for example. Testing when DNA evidence wasn't necessary to secure a conviction seemed like a waste of time and money, and the public got most panicked about rapes by strangers.

But that's only a superficial tradeoff, Fairstein said, since someone who raped an acquaintance may well have other victims. Moving faster to test kits can actually be an effective way of preventing crime both in the city that holds them—as Houston's experience demonstrates—and to protect other jurisdictions.

"By spending a significant amount of money, you are identifying the most violent offenders that we have and you're preventing more crimes from occurring," Fairstein said. "It's really rare that you're going to come up with the single-rapist event. You'll find many of these guys in prison, you'll find them across state lines."

One common complaint is that there simply isn't the money—$500 to $1,000 per kit—to process so many kits. That's particularly disheartening in light of the billions spent on criminal justice in the U.S. every year. But where federal and local money are failing, other sources are starting to deliver. In addition to groups like Joyful Heart, there are more and more sources of funding. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced a program in November to use money seized via asset forfeiture to create grants for other cities to clear their backlogs. President Obama's fiscal-year 2015 budget included $41 million for a Justice Department program that helps cities clear their inventories.

All that's remaining, Fairstein argued, is for authorities to get serious about the issue.

"Stories like Houston and Detroit before it are breathtaking examples of how critical it is to get this work done," she said. "The money is basically there, and certainly the government can throw more money at it. The commitment to the issue of sexual violence in all its forms is what has been such a drag on getting this done."

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/how-many-crimes-could-clearing-the-rape-kit-backlog-stop/385943/

Barack Obama's closing remarks at the summit on Countering Violent Extremism on Wednesday were notable not only for the president's avoidance of words like "Islamic" and Muslim," but also for their emphasis on ISIS. The terrorist group merited a dozen mentions, more than double that of its rival, al Qaeda. "ISIL is terrorizing the people of Syria and Iraq, beheads and burns human beings in unfathomable acts of cruelty," Obama said. "We’ve seen deadly attacks in Ottawa and Sydney and, Paris, and now Copenhagen."

The group's confounding brutality (see The Atlantic's March cover story for more about that) has also made a profound impression on the American public, gradually turning a seemingly war-weary country in favor not only of airstrikes against the group, but also, according to a new CBS News poll, the deployment of ground troops. "For the first time, a majority of Americans (57 percent) favor the U.S. sending ground troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS," CBS reported.

The results track with the general sentiment that ISIS is "a major threat" to the United States, which rose from 58 percent in October to 65 percent earlier this week.

This uptick dovetails with a Gallup poll released on Wednesday in which terrorism increased six percentage points among issues listed by Americans as the most important problem facing the United States. Terrorism, as a national priority, is still fifth behind other listed problems, but it experienced the biggest gain between this year and last.

As Gallup pointed out, this was "the highest percentage to mention the issue since January 2010." (That 2010 poll came just weeks after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airplane over Detroit.)

Eight percent of Americans citing terrorism as the country's biggest issue doesn't seem like a lot, especially when compared with the 57 percent of Americans who now say they support sending ground troops to Syria and Iraq. But when you combine "terrorism" with "national security" and "Iraq/ISIS," the category comes just one point behind dissatisfaction with the government.

Last week, with a majority of Americans behind him, President Obama sent draft legislation to Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS. The authorization would include "limited" approval of ground troops for up to three years.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/a-first-a-majority-of-americans-back-ground-troops-against-isis/385650/

Alto's Adventure just came out this morning and is definitely my go-to iOS game for the foreseeable future. The game is a cross between something like Monument Valley (the audio and visuals are beautiful) and Ski Safari, which is still one of my all-time favorites.

Tags: iPhone apps   video games

A proposed ballot initiative to make daylight saving time a year-round thing in Colorado takes a big step forward next week with a hearing to set the title that could appear on the 2016 ballot — if 97,434 Coloradans sign a petition in the next six months to make it so.

 As part of Apple’s weekly App Store refresh, the company is currently highlighting iOS games for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that are paid apps with no in-app purchases, MacStories points out. The featured section is notable as in-app purchases have been a source of confusion and frustration for many consumers since their introduction despite being an added revenue source for developers and Apple.

Apple has made a number of moves to help its customers avoid issues that spring from the use of in-app purchases, especially in games, both at the request of various government agencies and on its own.

Most recently, Apple moved to change the way app prices are presented to users in its App Store.

Specifically, apps which were previously accompanied by a download button labeled free began showing labels saying “Get” to avoid presenting “freemium” apps with in-app purchases as totally free to use.

More broadly, Apple has faced class action lawsuits from consumers and disputes with the United States Federal Trade Commission over issues surfacing from the use of in-app purchases within free apps.

The company settled over a lawsuit with the FTC last year despite its position that it resolved issues that potentially made making purchases unintentionally on the App Store. At the time, Apple CEO Tim Cook relayed to the company its actions to protect consumers from making purchases unintentionally in the App Store.

Apple also prominently displays an In-App Purchase explainer at the bottom of the front page of the App Store, added in 2013, which highlights parental controls available in iOS to disable making in-app purchases and more.

While the featured section could become a permanent part of the App Store, Apple often uses the space to for one-off collections of apps without refreshing them.

Aside from issues with accidentally spending and misleading marketing over in-app purchases, though, some customers simply prefer the experience of paying upfront for an app and not worrying about needing to unlock more content later, which this week’s App Store feature also serves to address.

(Image via Twitter)

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apps Tagged: App Store, Apps, Games, in-app purchases, Pay Once & Play

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Amid a controversial period of independent American craft brewers selling out to big beer, Colorado-based Oskar Blues Brewery examining the possibility of buying smaller U.S. breweries.

A Republican-led effort in the state Senate to assert parents' authority to dictate what their minor children learn in school and determine health care they receive won preliminary approval Wednesday after a spirited debate.

The Denver Post Ride the Rockies on Saturday unveiled the route for the cycling event's 30th anniversary, with West cliffe being added as a tour stop for the first time.

Dish Network-owned streaming service Sling TV announced today that it will finally allow the general public to sign up and watch live TV from a variety of networks from a Mac or iOS device (through the free Sling Television app), along with several other devices.

Sling TV offers plans starting at $20 (with $5 add-ons available for some networks) that includes streaming and video-on-demand viewing options for live TV networks that usually require a pricey cable subscription, such as ESPN, TNT, Disney, TBS, CNN, and many more.

Dish also announced today that within the next few weeks it will be adding a whole new lineup of channels owned by AMC Networks. Sling users will be able to stream shows like The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul from AMC, or Doctor Who and Sherlock from BBC America. The deal also includes content from networks like IFC and SundanceTV. Shows from AMC Networks will be available as part of the base $20 plan.

You can sign up for Sling through the iOS app or via Sling.com on your computer.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: AMC Networks, app, sling tv

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Colorado's marijuana experiment was designed to raise revenue for the state and its schools, but a state law may put some of the tax money directly into residents' pockets, causing quite a headache for lawmakers.