Mahmoud

Rick and Morty Full Episodes: http://asw.im/8bC8us
It's family therapy time in this one broh. Classic stuff. Pickle Rick too.

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About Rick and Morty:
Rick and Morty is Adult Swim's most scientifically accurate animated comedy. Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, it catalogues the bizarre misadventures of a bored scientific genius/drunkard and his socially awkward grandson, Morty. Their exploits tend to have unintended consequences for Morty's dysfunctional family, especially his unfailingly mediocre father, Jerry. Watch Rick and Morty battle everything from interdimensional customs agents to Cronenberg monsters now, only at http://AdultSwim.com.

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Rick and Morty Origins Part One | Rick and Morty | Adult Swim
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Lowering the Bar:

In June, the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of an employee who objected to having his hand scanned because he said it would brand him with the Mark of the Beast. The EEOC sued on the employee's behalf, saying he was entitled to a reasonable accommodation for his belief that the scanning would mark him as a follower of the Antichrist. The employer refused to let him just enter his ID number on a keypad (which apparently doesn't present the same concern), and actually gave him a letter saying that under its interpretation of Scripture, it would be okay if he scanned his left hand and not his right. He quit instead. The Fourth Circuit said there was no dispute the employee's belief was sincere, and no reason not to accommodate it.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

From Beneath You It Devours

A fatberg believed to be Britain's biggest ever weighing a 130-tonnes and stretching more than 850ft-long has been found lurking under the streets of Whitechapel. [...]

Engineers have now started their three-week war against the disgusting fatberg using high pressure hoses to dislodge the muck which is then sucked up into a fleet of tankers.

Thames Water's head of waste networks Matt Rimmer said: "This fatberg is up there with the biggest we've ever seen. It's a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it's set hard. It's basically like trying to break up concrete. It's frustrating as these situations are totally avoidable and caused by fat, oil and grease being washed down sinks and wipes flushed down the loo."

The last huge fatberg, which was Britain's biggest until now, was discovered in Kingston-upon-Thames, south west London, in 2013.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Give me control of the shipping lanes and I'll make all the lightning you want.

When Joel Thornton at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues looked at records of lightning strikes between 2005 and 2016 from the World Wide Lightning Location Network, they noticed there were significantly more strikes in certain regions of the east Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, compared with the surrounding areas. Unusually, they occurred along two straight lines in the open ocean, which coincided with two of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Along these paths there were twice as many lightning strikes as in nearby areas.

"We were quite sure the ships had to be involved," says Thornton. But they still had to eliminate other factors that influence storm intensity, such as wind speeds and temperatures.

Once these had been ruled out, the team concluded that aerosols from the ships' engine exhausts were the culprit. Aerosol particles act as seeds, around which water vapour condenses into cloud droplets. In clean air there aren't many seeds, so the cloud drops quickly grow and fall as rain. But when there are a lot of seeds, like over busy shipping routes, a greater number of small cloud drops form. Since these are light, they rise up high into the atmosphere and freeze, creating clouds rich in ice.

It is this that leads to more intense thunderstorms: lightning only occurs if clouds are electrically charged, and this only happens if there are lots of ice crystals. [...]

Although lightning activity is higher over the shipping lanes, the amount of rainfall is no different to nearby regions.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Harvard’s Institute of Politics has invited Donald Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer and rescinded a similar invitation to whistleblower and trans activist Chelsea Manning.

In other words, hire the liar and fire the truth teller. 

Sam Smith - One of the most frustrating things about the Trump phenomena is how many unwealthy whites have fallen for his con. This is, unfortunately, not a new phenomenon. You can go all the way back to the Confederacy and find it flourishing. As one commentator put it, "poor whites supported slavery because it guaranteed that no matter how poor they might be, they would never be at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. Poor whites believed that supporting white unity and the planter class was a surer way of getting their interests addressed."

David Hackett Fischer described southern culture as accepting "hegemonic liberty," which is to say the more power you have the more liberty you have. Even if you are near the bottom of the pile, some one like Trump can become an aspiration rather than a threat.

There is one good way to change this view and that is to have a politics that directly addresses the needs of poor whites rather than, as is currently the case with liberals, disses them for how badly they have been fooled. It's been over four decades since the Democratic Party seriously included the needs of less wealthy white America in its agenda. As I wrote in 2006, "History joins common sense in arguing that if the Democratic Party were to return to a broad based politics based on the improvement of the economic, educational, and social conditions of average Americans it might once again become the dominant force in this country."

In fact, the initial election of Obama greatly increased the Democratic margin in the House, but that quickly collapsed with policies that even when, like Obamacare, they contained very helpful elements, became muddled in procedural issues that distracted from their underlying purpose. And no modern Democratic president came close to first 100-day session of Congress during which Franklin Roosevelt pushed through legislation that rescued the banking industry, established the Civilian Conservation Corps, passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, provided relief for millions of citizens, regulated Wall Street, created bank deposit insurance and set up the TVA.

The beauty of the helping the economics of the white working class is that you also help everyone - including black and latinos - while making ethnicity less of an issue. Otherwise, you shouldn't be surprised to find thing as Lyndon Johnson once described, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
That's definitely Phil Plait's great great great grandpa.

New comic!
Today's News:

It's become increasingly clear how much we've underestimated the Neanderthals, the archaic humans who evolved in Europe and went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Though we've long used them as a byword for a lumbering, beast-like lack of development and intelligence — compared, of course, to we glorious examples of Homo sapiens — evidence has come to reveal a greater similarity between us and Homo neanderthalensis than we'd imagined. Not only did they develop stone tools, they even invented a kind of "super glue," one that, as you can see in the NOVA segment above, we have difficulty replicating even today.

"Archaeologists first found tar-covered stones and black lumps at Neanderthal sites across Europe about two decades ago," writes the New York Times' Nicholas St. Fleur. "The tar was distilled from the bark of birch trees some 200,000 years ago, and seemed to have been used for hafting, or attaching handles to stone tools and weapons. But scientists did not know how Neanderthals produced the dark, sticky substance, more than 100,000 years before Homo sapiens in Africa used tree resin and ocher adhesives." But in a new study in Scientific Reports, "a team of archaeologists has used materials available during prehistoric times to demonstrate three possible ways Neanderthals could have deliberately made tar."

The process might have looked something like that in the video above, an attempt by archaeologists Wil Roebroeks and Friedrich Palmer to make this of oldest known synthetic material just as the Neanderthals might have executed it. Their only materials: "an upturned animal skull to catch the pitch; a small stone on which the pitch would condense; some rolls of birch bark, the source of the pitch; and a layer of ash, to exclude oxygen and prevent the bark from burning."

Image by Paul Kozowyk

They technically get it to work, managing to heat the bark to just the right temperature, but the experiment doesn't produce very much of this ancient super glue — certainly not as much as Neanderthals would have used to make spears, which might turn out to have been the very first industrial process in history. Innovation, in the 21st century as well as 250,000 years ago, does tend to come from unexpected places.

You can read more about archeologists latest theories on the making of Neanderthal super glue over at Scientific Reports.

via Gizmodo

Related Content:

What Did the Voice of Neanderthals, Our Distant Cousins, Sound Like?: Scientists Demonstrate Their “High Pitch” Theory

Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Never a First Human Being

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

New Study Reveals How the Neanderthals Made Super Glue 200,000 Years Ago: The World’s Oldest Synthetic Material is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

In July, the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium overruled dozens of members' objections to publishing a DRM standard without a compromise to protect accessibility, security research, archiving, and competition. (more…)

"An exhaustive knowledge of the evolutionary relationships linking all organisms (the whole biodiversity) would produce a tree-like structure, referred to as the Tree of Life (ToL)." - by Damien M. de Vienne

Code: on github, described in PLoS Biology

This year a bunch of us devs attended the second annual PyBay conference, proudly sponsored by, you guessed it, Shopkick! From the panel to the keynote to manning our booth, the speakers, attendees, and co-sponsors made PyBay 2017 a blast.

This year, PyBay accepted two talks from shopkick engineers, and we figured we should shed some extra light on the bits of shopkick in each of them.

The Packaging Gradient

Up first, The Packaging Gradient, presented by principal engineer Mahmoud Hashemi (aka yours truly), dove deep into the interconnected matrix of technologies used for shipping software. It highlights the big differences between shipping libraries and applications, as well as the finer gradiations within each of those.

At Shopkick we have hundreds of internal libraries, and at the end of the day we ship dozens of Python server applications. The talk touches on container-based packaging and deployment systems, like the ones Shopkick has been using since 2011. The talk even describes a bit about how we ship hardware, as part of manufacturing the beacons used for presence detection inside of retailers.

For more information, check out the blog post The Packaging Gradient is based on, or shoot me an email.

Best Practices in Legacy Codebases

For our second talk, Moving Towards Best Practices in Legacy Codebases, frameworks engineering duo Kurt Rose and Moshe Zadka draw upon their combined 35+ years of Python experience to bear on a nuanced-yet-practical approach to wrangling huge codebases.

Shopkick has always been a startup, with all that entails. Years of fast-paced development and experimentation can leave quite a bit of technical debt in its wake. Now, having committed to paying off that debt, how can we successfully upgrade our codebase while minimizing business impact? This talk covers what's worked for us so far.

Conferring conclusions

All in all, this year's PyBay managed to outdo 2016 by a healthy margin. Polling the six of us who attended, reviews are unanimous: tutorials were a fantastic resource, and the mix of talks was just right. Some favorites were Sandy Ryza's talk on solving NP-hard problems, Paul Ganssle's talk on timezone complications, and of course, the lightning talks.

In a repeat of last year's conference, we're talking to a couple lead developers to hang out with Shopkick on a longer-term basis. If you're in the Bay/Toronto and are looking to step up your development game, give us a shout!

In any case, we couldn't be happier to attend such a great regional conference.

Big thanks to Grace Law, SF Python, and the whole PyBay team who made it all possible. See you next year!

---

EVE Online is infamous for its scammers, pirates, and ne’er-do-wells, but this week all their scams were put to shame. A member of the game’s Council of Stellar Management and head diplomat of the Circle of Two alliance named The Judge stole all of the holdings of the 4,000-person alliance for himself. He took their…

Read more...

It remains unclear whether those responsible for stealing Social Security numbers and other data on as many as 143 million Americans from big-three credit bureau Equifax intend to sell this data to identity thieves. But if ever there was a reminder that you — the consumer — are ultimately responsible for protecting your financial future, this is it. Here’s what you need to know and what you should do in response to this unprecedented breach.

Some of the Q&As below were originally published in a 2015 story, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Security Freeze. It has been updated to include new information specific to the Equifax intrusion.

Q: What information was jeopardized in the breach?

A: Equifax was keen to point out that its investigation is ongoing. But for now, the data at risk includes Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses on 143 million Americans. Equifax also said the breach involved some driver’s license numbers (although it didn’t say how many or which states might be impacted), credit card numbers for roughly 209,000 U.S. consumers, and “certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers.”

Q: Was the breach limited to Americans?

A: No. Equifax said it believes the intruders got access to “limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents.” It has not disclosed what information for those residents was at risk or how many from Canada and the UK may be impacted.

Q: What is Equifax doing about this breach?

A: Equifax is offering one free year of their credit monitoring service. In addition, it has put up a Web site — www.equifaxsecurity2017.com — that tried to let people determine whether they were affected.

Q: That site tells me I was not affected by the breach. Am I safe?

A: As noted in this story from Friday, the site seems hopelessly broken, often returning differing results for the same data submitted at different times. In the absence of more reliable information from Equifax, it is safer to assume you ARE compromised.

Q: I read that the legal language in the terms of service that consumers must accept before enrolling in the free credit monitoring service from Equifax requires one to waive their rights to sue the company in connection with this breach. Is that true?

A: Not according to Equifax. The company issued a statement over the weekend saying that nothing in that agreement applies to this cybersecurity incident.

Q: So should I take advantage of the credit monitoring offer?

A: It can’t hurt, but I wouldn’t count on it protecting you from identity theft.

Q: Wait, what? I thought that was the whole point of a credit monitoring service?

A: The credit bureaus sure want you to believe that, but it’s not true in practice. These services do not prevent thieves from using your identity to open new lines of credit, and from damaging your good name for years to come in the process. The most you can hope for is that credit monitoring services will alert you soon after an ID thief does steal your identity.

Q: Well then what the heck are these services good for?

A: Credit monitoring services are principally useful in helping consumers recover from identity theft. Doing so often requires dozens of hours writing and mailing letters, and spending time on the phone contacting creditors and credit bureaus to straighten out the mess. In cases where identity theft leads to prosecution for crimes committed in your name by an ID thief, you may incur legal costs as well. Most of these services offer to reimburse you up to a certain amount for out-of-pocket expenses related to those efforts. But a better solution is to prevent thieves from stealing your identity in the first place.

Q: What’s the best way to do that?

A: File a security freeze — also known as a credit freeze — with the four major credit bureaus.

Q: What is a security freeze?

A: A security freeze essentially blocks any potential creditors from being able to view or “pull” your credit file, unless you affirmatively unfreeze or thaw your file beforehand. With a freeze in place on your credit file, ID thieves can apply for credit in your name all they want, but they will not succeed in getting new lines of credit in your name because few if any creditors will extend that credit without first being able to gauge how risky it is to loan to you (i.e., view your credit file). And because each credit inquiry caused by a creditor has the potential to lower your credit score, the freeze also helps protect your score, which is what most lenders use to decide whether to grant you credit when you truly do want it and apply for it.

Q: What’s involved in freezing my credit file?

A: Freezing your credit involves notifying each of the major credit bureaus that you wish to place a freeze on your credit file. This can usually be done online, but in a few cases you may need to contact one or more credit bureaus by phone or in writing. Once you complete the application process, each bureau will provide a unique personal identification number (PIN) that you can use to unfreeze or “thaw” your credit file in the event that you need to apply for new lines of credit sometime in the future. Depending on your state of residence and your circumstances, you may also have to pay a small fee to place a freeze at each bureau. There are four consumer credit bureaus, including Equifax, Experian, Innovis and Trans Union.  It’s a good idea to keep your unfreeze PIN(s) in a folder in a safe place (perhaps along with your latest credit report), so that when and if you need to undo the freeze, the process is simple.

Q: How much is the fee, and how can I know whether I have to pay it?

A: The fee ranges from $0 to $15 per bureau, meaning that it can cost upwards of $60 to place a freeze at all four credit bureaus (recommended). However, in most states, consumers can freeze their credit file for free at each of the major credit bureaus if they also supply a copy of a police report and in some cases an affidavit stating that the filer believes he/she is or is likely to be the victim of identity theft. In many states, that police report can be filed and obtained online. The fee covers a freeze as long as the consumer keeps it in place. Consumers Union has a useful breakdown of state-by-state fees.

Q: But what if I need to apply for a loan, or I want to take advantage of a new credit card offer?

A: You thaw the freeze temporarily (in most cases the default is for 24 hours).

Q: What’s involved in thawing my credit file? And do I need to thaw it at all three bureaus?

A: The easiest way to unfreeze your file for the purposes of gaining new credit is to spend a few minutes the phone with the company from which you hope to gain the line of credit (or research the matter online) to see which credit bureau they rely upon for credit checks. It will most likely be one of the major bureaus. Once you know which bureau the creditor uses, contact that bureau either via phone or online and supply the PIN they gave you when you froze your credit file with them. The thawing process should not take more than 24 hours, but hiccups in the thawing process sometimes make things take longer. It’s best not to wait until the last minute to thaw your file.

Q: It seems that credit bureaus make their money by selling data about me as a consumer to marketers. Does a freeze prevent that?

A: A freeze on your file does nothing to prevent the bureaus from collecting information about you as a consumer — including your spending habits and preferences — and packaging, splicing and reselling that information to marketers.

Q: Can I still use my credit or debit cards after I file a freeze? 

A: Yes. A freeze does nothing to prevent you from using existing lines of credit you may have.

Q: I’ve heard about something called a fraud alert. What’s the difference between a security freeze and a fraud alert on my credit file?

A: With a fraud alert on your credit file, lenders or service providers should not grant credit in your name without first contacting you to obtain your approval — by phone or whatever other method you specify when you apply for the fraud alert. To place a fraud alert, merely contact one of the credit bureaus via phone or online, fill out a short form, and answer a handful of multiple-choice, out-of-wallet questions about your credit history. Assuming the application goes through, the bureau you filed the alert with must by law share that alert with the other bureaus.

Consumers also can get an extended fraud alert, which remains on your credit report for seven years. Like the free freeze, an extended fraud alert requires a police report or other official record showing that you’ve been the victim of identity theft.

An active duty alert is another alert available if you are on active military duty. The active duty alert is similar to an initial fraud alert except that it lasts 12 months and your name is removed from pre-approved firm offers of credit or insurance (prescreening) for 2 years.

Q: Why would I pay for a security freeze when a fraud alert is free?

A: Fraud alerts only last for 90 days, although you can renew them as often as you like. More importantly, while lenders and service providers are supposed to seek and obtain your approval before granting credit in your name if you have a fraud alert on your file, they are not legally required to do this — and very often don’t.

Q: Hang on: If I thaw my credit file after freezing it so that I can apply for new lines of credit, won’t I have to pay to refreeze my file at the credit bureau where I thawed it?

A: It depends on your state. Some states allow bureaus to charge $5 for a temporary thaw or a lift on a freeze; in other states there is no fee for a thaw or lift. However, even if you have to do this once or twice a year, the cost of doing so is almost certainly less than paying for a year’s worth of credit monitoring services. Again, Consumers Union has a handy state-by-state guide listing the freeze and unfreeze laws and fees.

Q: What about my kids? Should I be freezing their files as well? Is that even possible? 

A: Depends on your state. Roughly half of the U.S. states have laws on the books allowing freezes for dependents. Check out The Lowdown on Freezing Your Kid’s Credit for more information.

Q: Is there anything I should do in addition to placing a freeze that would help me get the upper hand on ID thieves?

A: Yes: Periodically order a free copy of your credit report. By law, each of the three major credit reporting bureaus must provide a free copy of your credit report each year — via a government-mandated site: annualcreditreport.com. The best way to take advantage of this right is to make a notation in your calendar to request a copy of your report every 120 days, to review the report and to report any inaccuracies or questionable entries when and if you spot them. Avoid other sites that offer “free” credit reports and then try to trick you into signing up for something else.

Q: I just froze my credit. Can I still get a copy of my credit report from annualcreditreport.com? 

A: According to the Federal Trade Commission, having a freeze in place should not affect a consumer’s ability to obtain copies of their credit report from annualcreditreport.com.

Q: If I freeze my file, won’t I have trouble getting new credit going forward? 

A: If you’re in the habit of applying for a new credit card each time you see a 10 percent discount for shopping in a department store, a security freeze may cure you of that impulse. Other than that, as long as you already have existing lines of credit (credit cards, loans, etc) the credit bureaus should be able to continue to monitor and evaluate your creditworthiness should you decide at some point to take out a new loan or apply for a new line of credit.

Q: Can I have a freeze AND credit monitoring? 

A: Yes, you can. However, it may not be possible to sign up for credit monitoring services while a freeze is in place. My advice is to sign up for whatever credit monitoring may be offered for free, and then put the freezes in place.

Q: Beyond this breach, how would I know who is offering free credit monitoring? 

A: Hundreds of companies — many of which you have probably transacted with at some point in the last year — have disclosed data breaches and are offering free monitoring. California maintains one of the most comprehensive lists of companies that disclosed a breach, and most of those are offering free monitoring.

Q: I see that Trans Union has a free offering. And it looks like they offer another free service called a credit lock. Why shouldn’t I just use that?

A: I haven’t used that monitoring service, but it looks comparable to others. However, I take strong exception to the credit bureaus’ increasing use of the term “credit lock” to steer people away from securing a freeze on their file. I notice that Trans Union currently does this when consumers attempt to file a freeze. Your mileage may vary, but their motives for saddling consumers with even more confusing terminology are suspect. I would not count on a credit lock to take the place of a credit freeze, regardless of what these companies claim (consider the source).

Q: I read somewhere that the PIN code Equifax gives to consumers for use in the event they need to thaw a freeze at the bureau is little more than a date and time stamp of the date and time when the freeze was ordered. Is this correct? 

A: Yes. However, this does not appear to be the case with the other bureaus.

Q: Does this make the process any less secure? 

A: Hard to say. An identity thief would need to know the exact time your report was ordered. Unless of course Equifax somehow allowed attackers to continuously guess and increment that number through its Web site (there is no indication this is the case). However, having a freeze is still more secure than not having one.

Q: Someone told me that having a freeze in place wouldn’t block ID thieves from fraudulently claiming a tax refund in my name with the IRS, or conducting health insurance fraud using my SSN. Is this true?

A: Yes. There are several forms of identity theft that probably will not be blocked by a freeze. But neither will they be blocked by a fraud alert or a credit lock. That’s why it’s so important to regularly review your credit file with the major bureaus for any signs of unauthorized activity.

Q: Okay, I’ve got a security freeze on my file, what else should I do?

A: It’s also a good idea to notify a company called ChexSystems to keep an eye out for fraud committed in your name. Thousands of banks rely on ChexSystems to verify customers that are requesting new checking and savings accounts, and ChexSystems lets consumers place a security alert on their credit data to make it more difficult for ID thieves to fraudulently obtain checking and savings accounts. For more information on doing that with ChexSystems, see this link. 

Q: Anything else?

A: ID thieves like to intercept offers of new credit and insurance sent via postal mail, so it’s a good idea to opt out of pre-approved credit offers. If you decide that you don’t want to receive prescreened offers of credit and insurance, you have two choices: You can opt out of receiving them for five years or opt out of receiving them permanently.

To opt out for five years: Call toll-free 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) or visit www.optoutprescreen.com. The phone number and website are operated by the major consumer reporting companies.

To opt out permanently: You can begin the permanent Opt-Out process online at www.optoutprescreen.com. To complete your request, you must return the signed Permanent Opt-Out Election form, which will be provided after you initiate your online request. 

An anonymous reader quotes security researcher Brian Krebs: The web site that Equifax advertised as the place where concerned Americans could go to find out whether they were impacted by this breach -- equifaxsecurity2017.com -- is completely broken at best, and little more than a stalling tactic or sham at worst. In the early hours after the breach announcement, the site was being flagged by various browsers as a phishing threat. In some cases, people visiting the site were told they were not affected, only to find they received a different answer when they checked the site with the same information on their mobile phones. TechCrunch has concluded that "the checker site, hosted by Equifax product TrustID, seems to be telling people at random they may have been affected by the data breach." One user reports that entering the same information twice produced two different answers. And ZDNet's security editor reports that even if you just enter Test or 123456, "it says your data has been breached." TechCrunch writes: The assignment seems random. But, nevertheless, they were still asked to continue enrolling in TrustID. What this means is not only are none of the last names tied to your Social Security number, but there's no way to tell if you were really impacted. It's clear Equifax's goal isn't to protect the consumer or bring them vital information. It's to get you to sign up for its revenue-generating product TrustID. Meanwhile, one web engineer claims the secret 10-digit "security freeze" PIN being issued by Equifax "is just a timestamp of when you made the freeze."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi met his idol twice. And lived to animate the story. Enjoy.

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Bob Dylan Hates Me: An Animation is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Today I learned that you cannot block Mark Zuckerberg.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, "people trying to block a profile or Page may see an error message if it has been blocked many times within a short period." In other words, the official company line is that Zuckerberg and Chan's profiles may be deluged by Facebook users trying to block them.

That said, when we tried to block a few other pages that seem likely to be experiencing a similar torrent of blocking requests, [spoiler: Trump] we didn't encounter the same problem.

So you can prevent people from blocking you just by being staggeringly unpopular! Sweet!

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

One of my favorite events of the year returns in just couple of weeks. During Viva Calle SJ, miles of city streets will be completely shut down to let people walk, run, bike, or skateboard down the streets of San Jose.

Viva Calle features multiple activity hubs which are basically festivals-within-a-festival that highlight the local area. This year they will be located in Japantown, Roosevelt Park, the Mexican Heritage Plaza, Alum Rock Village, and Lake Cunningham Park. You can expect live music, vendors, food, activities, bike parking, and good times at each and every one. In between the activity hubs you will still find all sorts of interesting stops, hydration stations, and stores.

The route has changed again this year. It is now just a single line without branching out, and for the first time it will go straight down Santa Clara Street. At 7 miles and five activity hubs, it is the largest Viva Calle yet!

If you are one of the 50 million people that still play PokemonGo, the company that makes the game is leveraging Viva Calle as their first official event in San Jose. I'm about to out myself as a huge nerd, but I use the game when visiting someplace new to find hidden street art and all sorts of points-of-interest that even locals don't know about. It's like a hyper-local Tripadvisor for each block. The game will feature temporary stops and extra pokemon along the route as part of the event.

Viva Calle 2017 takes place on Sunday, September 17th from 10am to 3pm (streets are closed until 4pm). It is completely free and has no designated beginning or end as it's not a race. You can use the handy map below to locate the routes and festivities. For more info, head over here. Hope to see you there!

Here are my notes from the latest edition of Downtown Dimension:

• Adobe Systems will add a fourth tower across the street from its current three-tower headquarters in Downtown San Jose. The new building will allow Adobe to more than double its San Jose headcount and add another 3,000 employees.
• In a matter of a few months, Downtown has added multiple gourmet coffee shops including The Proper Cup at 1 S. Market, Chromatic at 17 N. Second, and Academic Coffee at 499 S. Street. Blue Bottle is also coming to 1 W. Santa Clara. This is in addition to Downtown's already stellar lineup of coffee shops: B2, Bel Bacio, Caffe Frascati, Devine Grind, Philz, Vero's, Voltair, Crema, Social Policy, and Ola's Exotic African Coffee and Tea.
• The MarketCenter has added two new stores, Blaze Pizza and a Wells Fargo Bank.
• Miami Beach Club at 417 S. First has opened a taco bar called Taco-a-go-go.
• Several new business have come to Paseo de San Antonio:
• Gong Cha Tea House replaced Quickly
• Spoonfish Poke is opening this month
• Tacomania has replaced Baja Fresh
• JuiceAlize juice cart is now part San Pedro Square at 153 W. Santa Clara St. on weekdays from 8:30am-3:30pm.
• Erik's DeliCafe now has a second Downtown location in Riverpark Tower I at 333 W. San Carlos.
• City Dance San Jose returns each Thursday from Aug 24-Oct 12, offering free dance lessons at Plaza de Cesar Chavez from 5:30pm-9pm.
• Silicon Valley Pride Festival will take place Aug. 26-27 at Plaza de Cesar Chavez and South First Street.
• Two Bay Area developers have teamed up to propose a 1 million SQFT office compace at 440 W. Julian (behind the San Jose MarketCenter and near SAP Center/Diridon Station).

To read the newsletter, click here!

Tim and Eric Full Episodes: http://asw.im/23OQs8
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Awesome 10 Year Anniversary Version, Great Job? premieres Sunday, August 27th at Midnight ET/PT on Adult Swim.

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Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is Adult Swim's number one gross-out comedy fever dream viewing experience. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are joined by special guests John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis, Weird Al Yankovic, Jeff Goldblum and more for a sketch comedy series that defies explanation, which is why this description is so unhelpful. Watch more Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! at http://AdultSwim.com.

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People prefer products that have faces on the packaging, especially when they are lonely, according to a study published online this month in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

From University of Oregon:

This finding, published online this month in the European Journal of Social Psychology, is rooted in people’s fundamental need to belong and their desire to form and sustain relationships. When humans lack these social connections, they often attempt to fill the void in other ways, including through their purchasing habits.

“Previous research linked our need for social connection with consumer behavior and judgment, but very little was understood about the role that visuals play in social connection and brand likability,” [Prof. Dr. Ulrich] Orth explained. “Our study builds on prior research by demonstrating that seeing a face in a brand visual increases a consumer’s liking of the brand, especially if they feel lonely.”

To be effective, the face on the label does not need to be as obvious as the one smiling back at [University of Oregon professor Bettina] Cornwell from the bag of potato chips in the hotel gift shop. Consumers often imagine humanlike characteristics in nonhuman visuals, a process also known as anthropomorphism. Orth explains that loneliness can enhance people’s tendency to exhibit this kind of “wishful seeing” and is most apparent in the case of faces.

“A lack of interpersonal relationships motivates people to actively search for sources of connection,” Cornwell said. “Individuals who are lonely are more likely to find faces in visuals because they so greatly desire this social connection.”

Image: Kevin Harber/Flickr

Hi folks,

This is a big news week in Matrixland: hot on the heels of releasing Matrix Widgets and Riot 0.12, we have another massive announcement to make!

We’ve been approached by Purism to partner up to provide the communications subsystem for their upcoming Librem 5 smartphone – for which they are launching a crowdfunding campaign starting today! The whole idea of the phone is to provide unprecedented privacy, security and autonomy by running an entirely FOSS Debian-based GNU/Linux stack (even including CPU & GPU drivers!), and we are incredibly proud and overexcited that the folks at Purism have asked the Matrix core team to provide the native dialler and messaging app for the phone.  Yes, this means that the phone will literally boot by default into Matrix for all its primary communications (although, being FOSS, you could of course use a different dialler if you wanted).  The intention is to be a very usable and flexible phone for folks who value freedom, privacy and simplicity over the (relative) quagmire of iOS or Android – and of course jumping way ahead of where Apple or Google are in terms of integrating next-generation communications into the very heart of the device.

This is unbelievably exciting, as Matrix’s vision from the outset has been to provide an open, decentralised and encrypted alternative to the Public Telephone Network – and the idea of devices emerging which are native to Matrix is a dream come true. It also gives us the excuse that we’ve been looking for to produce a truly excellent lightweight native Matrix client, built to run on both handset and desktop devices, complete with end-to-end encryption.  We’re not sure whether this is going to end up being Qt or GTK based yet, but expect to see the Matrix team getting a lot more involved in the current native Matrix client projects (nheko, Quaternion, ruma-gtk, matrix-glib-sdk, qmatrixclient etc) in future!

Depending on the success of the crowdfunding campaign, it may also give us scope to finally build out proper carrier-grade Matrix<->PSTN bridges: letting Matrix clients terminate and originate VoIP calls on the public phone network.  It’s long been an embarrassment that Matrix hasn’t had this given that pre-Matrix we spent our lives building commercial SIP gateways and softphones for telcos, and the ability to use Matrix as a proper VoIP softphone on dedicated hardware is incredibly appealing.  Obviously the phone will also support GSM calling, but the intention is to default to WebRTC calling using Matrix whenever the phone has good IP connectivity – making it truly an IP-first smartphone.

Now, this is obviously a very ambitious project, but we believe that Purism is able to deliver based on the work they’ve done already with crowdfunding and shipping Librem 15 and 13 laptops, shipping with as open a FOSS stack as is possible on contemporary hardware, complete with unique privacy features such as hardware kill-switches for Camera, Wifi, Bluetooth etc.  We met with them at GUADEC 2017 and subsequently heard trusted reports from DebConf 2017 of the quality of the hardware.  It seems that as the company has gathered experience their ambitious goals have become more and more attainable – and it’s also interesting that their dev team is significantly made up of core Debian developers (including Chris Lamb, the Debian Project Leader for 2017).  We’re particularly excited from a philosophical perspective that the Librem 5 is targeting the NXP (Freescale) i.MX6 or i.MX8 ARM-based processor and Vivante GPU – both of which can be run without any proprietary microcode or proprietary drivers.  From everything we’ve heard, this is going to be a spectacularly FOSS-friendly device.

So, if you’re interested in being first to own the world’s first ever Matrix-native phone, or if you want to support the creation of a kick-ass native Matrix desktop/handset client, or perhaps if you want carrier-grade VoIP in Matrix… then please head over to Puri.sm and join the campaign!  Needless to say, if the campaign is successful it will also significantly help Matrix’s current funding situation.

Finally, for more context, here’s a special mid-week episode of Matrix “Live”, featuring Matthew and Todd Weaver, the CEO of Purism, discussing the Librem 5 and what it means for both Purism and Matrix!

As always, feedback on this project is very welcome – come tell us in #matrix:matrix.org what you think!  And thank you, if you choose to support this campaign :)

Matthew, Amandine & the team.

Email I did not enjoy waking up to: "Why are you advertising on Breitbart?"

Apparently if you buy ads on Facebook, for Facebook, they will also push your ads out to nazi sites.

Both Facebook and Google weasel out of their culpability here by making you upload a by-inclusion blacklist: Facebook instructions. Google instructions.

Given that, I am surprised that it is difficult to find a comprehensive list of, "these sites are fucking nazis and you should blacklist them from your ads." Here's one. It seems like this list should be a lot longer. Let me know if you have a better resource.

When one searches for said blacklist, what one finds instead are are ten thousand breathless articles where some brand's PR flunky is quoted saying "we swear we are trying not to advertise with nazis, but the ads keep showing up there anyway and we can't make it stop." So that's awesome.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Screw it. I'm just gonna be immortal.

New comic!
Today's News:

Hey geeks of Seattle! Just one week left to get in your submission. We still need some more to make the show happen, so please poke your funny nerdy friends!

Kingsway is available on -
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/588950/Kingsway/
Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/kingsway
GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/kingsway
and Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Kingsway/details



Kingsway is the #1 operating system for daily tasks such as skeleton smashing and loot-organizing. Trouble sorting through all your potions and swords? Don't worry! Kingsway can help you manage, and with an easy to use interface you'll have time leftover for a peaceful stroll through the underworld.

KINGSWAY RPG OPERATING SYSTEM AVAILABLE NOW | Adult Swim Games
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Robust Physical-World Attacks on Machine Learning Models

Our algorithm can create spatially- constrained perturbations that mimic vandalism or art to reduce the likelihood of detection by a casual observer. We show that adversarial examples generated by RP2 achieve high success rates under various conditions for real road sign recognition by using an evaluation methodology that captures physical world conditions. We physically realized and evaluated two attacks, one that causes a Stop sign to be misclassified as a Speed Limit sign in 100% of the testing conditions, and one that causes a Right Turn sign to be misclassified as either a Stop or Added Lane sign in 100% of the testing conditions.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Yelp – Added a new filter option for venues nearby a PokéStop.

Why the Hatchet Men of 3G Spent $10 Million on a Better Oscar Mayer Weiner