Cricut -- the leading brand of home use CNC machines -- has decided to alienate the people you'd think it would most want to embrace: its paying customers. Cricut machines allow users to upload designs and put their machines to work cutting materials from paper to cloth to metal to whatever will fit into the machines, giving hobbyists and craftmakers control of a small-scale manufacturing operation. They're pretty amazing. And they're pretty expensive.
They're also subject to a whole lot of rules -- some written and some unwritten. Cricut has made efforts to lock competitors out of the market by limiting cutting tool compatibility and restricting sheet size to increase sales of its own line of Cricut raw materials. Most designer paper comes in a standard 8.5" x 11" size. Sheet size in Cricuts is limited to 6.75" x 9.25", meaning off-the-rack, non-Circut-branded papers are about 20% useless.
[Cricut] has dropped a bombshell in the form of an update to the web-based design software that leaves their now very annoyed users with a monthly upload limit of 20 new designs unless they sign up for a Cricut Access Plan that costs $9.99 on monthly payments. Worse still, a screenshot is circulating online purporting to be from a communication with a Cricut employee attempting to clarify matters, in which it is suggested that machines sold as second-hand will be bricked by the company.
Well, that's at least two levels of suck contained in a single announcement. First, the decision to hit people who've already shelled out hundreds or thousands to Cricut with perpetual fees is inexplicable. Cricut isn't the only cutter on the market and a move like this just talks loyal users out of their loyalty and encourages them to explore their options. In exchange for smaller fees, Cricut seems willing to watch thousands of dollars exit the market for their competitors.
Second, the bricking of secondhand devices is pure bullshit. A Cricut is a Cricut. Anyone who bought one should have the right to sell it. And anyone buying one from a former user should rightfully expect it will be fully functional, not bricked by a company willing to compound its errors.
Fortunately, the company has listened to its users. It has dropped the rent program and said that anyone who buys a cutter before the end of this year will be grandfathered into the existing unlimited free program. Buyers who purchase one after December 31, 2021 will apparently be expected to purchase a subscription, which means this mini-debacle will be revisited later this year if Cricut refuses to drop its subscription program completely.
Cricut has also clarified that it's not moving forward with a plan to brick secondhand machines. New users will need to set up their own accounts, but the machines will function as normal.
All's well that ends well, I guess. But anyone outside of Cricut could have informed Cricut how this was going to play out. Chances are, some people inside Cricut realized that as well, but were overridden by those willing to ask what the market was willing to absorb, even if it meant shedding a few more reputation points.
In this 2019 video the fresh new face of the Republican Party, Marjorie Taylor Greene, says she "hopes" her fellow seditionists are able to overthrow the government peacefully, but they she and her followers will overthrow the government "the other way" if need be. — Read the rest
This one sounds boring, but stick with it because it's important. Because the US and the EU have vastly different privacy regulation regimes, there has always been some conflict over how (mainly) US internet companies handle data from the EU. For years, this was "settled" by a weird and mostly useless "EU-US data protection safe harbor" agreement, in which US companies would have to get "certified" that they kept EU-originated data protected at an "equivalent" level to how it would be protected in the EU when transferring it across the Atlantic to US-based data centers. It was a bit of a nuisance as a company (we went through the process ourselves), but in 2015 the entire safe harbor agreement was invalidated by the EU Court of Justice because of the NSA's ongoing snooping on data from those internet companies, as revealed by Ed Snowden.
The EU and US freaked out, and had a frantic negotiation to come up with a new "safe harbor" agreement with the catchier name of "Privacy Shield," but as we pointed out when it was announced, the problem wasn't the text of the agreement, but rather the NSA's surveillance practices with regards to internet data. Here's what I wrote four years ago:
The real issue here is mass surveillance overall. The only real way to fix this issue is to stop mass surveillance and go back to saying that intelligence agencies and law enforcement need to go back to doing targeted surveillance using warrants and true oversight. But, instead, the EU and the US keep trying to paper over this by coming up with a new agreement.
Since then, the Privacy Shield was challenged and the challenge took its sweet time to go through the courts -- again brought by Max Schrems, whose lawsuit had sunk the original safe harbor as well. And, now, finally, four years later exactly what we expected to happen has happened. The CJEU has invalidated the Privacy Shield agreement, by basically saying "hey, the US surveillance regime remains the same, and that was the problem all along." You can read the full decision if you want to get deep into the details.
But the short summary is that while the Privacy Shield framework offered a few ways for EU residents to seek redress from some forms of surveillance, the CJEU says that's not nearly enough:
While individuals, including EU data subjects, therefore have a number of avenues of redress when they have been the subject of unlawful (electronic) surveillance for national security purposes, it is equally clear that at least some legal bases that U.S. intelligence authorities may use (e.g. E.O. 12333) are not covered. Moreover, even where judicial redress possibilities in principle do exist for non-U.S. persons, such as for surveillance under FISA, the available causes of action are limited … and claims brought by individuals (including U.S. persons) will be declared inadmissible where they cannot show “standing” …, which restricts access to ordinary courts …
As you may recall, Executive Order 12333 is the tool under which the US does most of its foreign surveillance totally outside of the oversight of Congress. This has always been a massive problem, and here the CJEU is basically saying "if the US doesn't do wholesale surveillance reform, there's going to be a serious problem with transferring data from the EU to the US."
Now, there is some argument here that EU surveillance is just as bad, and it's perhaps more than a little silly that the CJEU basically ignores that as if it's not important.
Either way, the key point to all of this is that if US companies want to be able to transfer data over from the EU to the US long term (there are ways they can do it for now), the US government needs to vastly reform its surveillance practices. Well, assuming there was a competent government that actually cared about these things. I'm a bit worried that the current administration will just ignore this or use it to attack the EU, which would be somewhat disastrous for US internet companies.
I've seen some people saying that this is a ruling against the internet companies and their data collection practices, but that's not really accurate. The problem is not so much that -- it's how the NSA spies on people with that data (with or without cooperation of the companies). This really should lead to the US internet industry pressuring the US government to stop mass surveillance -- just like we said four years ago.
This is a compilation of security- and dash-cam footage of auto accidents with one of the vehicles digitally removed, thereby becoming "invisible". It is remarkably creepy and unsettling, like one of those science fiction blockbusters that starts with an ingenious and terrifying disaster/invasion/escape scene but then becomes normal and boring for the rest of the movie.
In the 36 years since Cindy Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" was an MTV staple, I had never listened to Robert Hazard's original version from 1979 that was only recorded as a demo. It's a totally different head. Totally.
Bangkok's Death Awareness Cafe takes its design cures from a mortuary, complete with funeral wreaths and caskets. Patrons sip cappuccinos, read death-related "inspirational" quotes on the walls, and then climb into the coffins to consider their ultimate fate. Sounds, er, fun? From Rumble:
Despite the macabre appearance, owner Professor Veeranut Rojanaprapa says there’s a deeper meaning behind the eatery - improving society by encouraging people to reflect on their life.
He said: ‘’We’re concerned about a big problem in Thailand. The problem of corruption, the young mothers and criminal gangs.
‘’After a study, we found out that the root of the problems are greed and anger. When people are greedy, then they are corrupt. When they are greedy, they have prohibited sex. When people are angry they do harmful actions.’’
Buddhist followers believe that if people are aware of death they will be less greedy and do more good in the world.
Billionaire Goldman Sachs alum Robert F Smith made headlines when he donated enough cash to pay off the student loan debt of the entire Class of 2019 at Morehouse College; but Smith is also an ardent supporter of the carried interest tax loophole, which allows the richest people in America to pay little to no tax on the bulk of their earnings, while working Americans (like the Morehouse Class of 2019 will be, shortly) pay their fair share.
Anand Giridharadas's latest book, Winners Take All, is a scorching critique of the way that gifts like Smith's are used to diffuse the political energy for real tax justice. In an excellent Twitter thread about Smith's gift, Giridharadas writes, "Generosity is great. But it‘s not a substitute for justice. Gifts like today’s distract us from what is really going on in our economy, and it can cover up the way in which the giver is fighting on both sides of a war. If plutes paid fair taxes, this gift might be unnecessary."
Despite his egalitarian streak, Mr. Smith is also every bit a private equity chieftain. He opposes increasing taxes on carried interest — the profits from private equity investments — and he believes the best way to lift up the poor is to create jobs.
Another day, another Facebook privacy mess. Actually, this one is a few different privacy messes that we'll roll up into a single post because, honestly, who can keep track of them all these days? While we've noted that the media is frequently guilty of exaggerating or misunderstanding certain claims about Facebook and privacy, Facebook does continue to do a really, really awful job concerning how it handles privacy and its transparency about these things with its users. And that's a problem that comes from the executive team, who still doesn't seem to fully comprehend what a mess they have on their hands.
The latest flaps both involve questionable behavior targeted at younger Facebook users. First there's a followup on a story we wrote about a few weeks ago, involving internal Facebook documents showing staffers gleefully refusing to refund money spent unwittingly by kids on games on the Facebook platform. Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, who broke that story, also had a much more detailed and much more damning followup, about how Facebook was clearly knowingly duping young children out of their parents' money.
Facebook encouraged game developers to let children spend money without their parents’ permission – something the social media giant called “friendly fraud” – in an effort to maximize revenues, according to a document detailing the company’s game strategy.
Sometimes the children did not even know they were spending money, according to another internal Facebook report. Facebook employees knew this. Their own reports showed underage users did not realize their parents’ credit cards were connected to their Facebook accounts and they were spending real money in the games, according to the unsealed documents.
For years, the company ignored warnings from its own employees that it was bamboozling children.
A team of Facebook employees even developed a method that would have reduced the problem of children being hoodwinked into spending money, but the company did not implement it, and instead told game developers that the social media giant was focused on maximizing revenues.
Yes, they not only called it "friendly fraud," but in an internal memo, they explained "why you shouldn't try to block it" (i.e., why you should let game developers scam kids out of their parents' money).
This reminds me so much of the early days of adware scammers, who pulled similar kinds of stunts -- and it's incredible to think that Facebook, which presented itself as a squeaky clean alternative to the open web where those kinds of scams piled up, was basically doing the same thing on a much larger scale. The Reveal article has much more on this, and is worth reading in full to see how the focus on revenue had the company deliberately look the other way as it scooped up cash from kids.
But rather than focus on that, we already need to move on to the more recent Facebook privacy scandal, which also (partially) involves kids. Last summer, we wrote about how Apple had booted Facebook's Onavo app from its app store. Facebook had marketed it as a privacy protecting "VPN," but it was really pretty blatant spyware. Indeed, late last year when yet another Facebook privacy scandal broke, it was revealed that Facebook had been using Onavo data to determine what competitive apps were most popular -- including giving it ideas on what apps to buy or (much more damning) what apps to hinder or block from Facebook.
Apparently, even having Apple boot the app didn't give Facebook the idea that maybe this spyware was going a bit too far. Instead, it now appears that Facebook "pivoted" into paying teens to install Onavo on iPhones in a way that routed around Apple's App Store blocks, by saying it was a part of "Facebook Research." And they hid this from Apple by using third party "beta testing" services:
The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe.
Facebook appears to have desperately wanted all of this data, if it was willing to go these lengths even after Apple had booted Onavo. After TechCrunch broke this story, Facebook claimed that it would stop that program on iPhones, while Apple claims it banned the app before Facebook itself could pull it.
For years, people like Jaron Lanier have argued that Facebook should pay its users for all the data they get -- but I think even people who wanted payment would balk a bit at how much access people were giving in exchange for $20/month in gift cards.
“By installing the software, you’re giving our client permission to collect data from your phone that will help them understand how you browse the internet, and how you use the features in the apps you’ve installed . . . This means you’re letting our client collect information such as which apps are on your phone, how and when you use them, data about your activities and content within those apps, as well as how other people interact with you or your content within those apps. You are also letting our client collect information about your internet browsing activity (including the websites you visit and data that is exchanged between your device and those websites) and your use of other online services. There are some instances when our client will collect this information even where the app uses encryption, or from within secure browser sessions.”
And, of course, the setup required you to keep the app running and spying on everything if you wanted to keep getting paid.
Facebook, in response to the TechCrunch story, did its standard PR tap dance, insisting that they weren't hiding anything (Apple's response suggests otherwise, as does the fact that Facebook specifically used these 3rd party services). But, once again, like with so many other Facebook privacy scandals, the reason why so many people get upset about this is because they were not open and transparent about what was going on, and that's why it's so surprising to everyone.
The only "good" news is that on the same day all of this came out, it was announced that Facebook has just hired two of its biggest privacy critics to work on privacy issues at the company: EFF's Nate Cardozo and Open Technology Institute's Robyn Greene (*Disclosure: I know both Nate and Robyn, and Nate did, very helpfully, represent us on one issue while he was at EFF.) I know some may cynically see this as Facebook trying to co-opt some of its critics, but both Nate and Robyn have incredibly strong track records on privacy, including being vocally critical of Facebook and its policies. Hopefully this is a sign that the company is actually taking these issues seriously (better a decade too late than never).
Check your state's laws. Many people also qualify to file their federal and state returns simultaneously thereby potentially streamlining the process even more.
edit: Lot of good references being given in the comments:
I found a used Baratza Encore for $40. Figured it’s a no brainer and picked it up. But I was having terrible grind quality, checked out their guides and couldn’t figure what was up. Talked to their customer support and they sent me out a free lower burr and burr holder, but unfortunately that didn’t make a difference.
So they told me to send it in for a free repair! And within a week I got it back. They replaced the gearbox with the newer one, and replaced basically all of the guts...for free! For a grinder made pre 2012. That’s insane! Welp they sold me as a customer for life.
pgmrdlm quotes a report from CBS News: For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology. On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
The Black Paintings stand out in art history for their dark composition and themes.
The biggest mystery, though, is that Goya painted them directly onto the walls of his home and never told anybody about them.
With such little information, all we can do is speculate about the 14 horrifying Black Paintings.
None
By 1819, the painter Francisco Goya had been through quite a bit. He had witnessed the chaos of war when Napoleon invaded Spain and the chaos in Spain as its government bounced back and forth between a constitutional monarchy and an absolute monarchy. He had become deathly ill a number of times, occasionally fearing he was going mad. One of these illnesses had left him deaf. Increasingly bitter about humanity, afraid of death and madness, Goya withdrew into a villa outside of Madrid called la Quinta del Sordo, or the Deaf Man's House.
In the villa, Goya would go on to paint some of his darkest and strangest works. They were painted directly on the walls of the house, and Goya didn't mention them to anybody as far as we can tell. They were pessimistic paintings that differed wildly from his earlier works, apparently created for his own sake. He never named them, but art historians have given descriptive titles to the works. Collectively, they are known as the Black Paintings.
The tenebrous meaning of the Black Paintings
The 14 Black Paintings are almost invariably painted with dark colors — they're not called the Hot Pink Paintings after all. The human figures are painted in an expressionistic style that depicts humans as pseudo-monsters, like the blurred, deformed faces in Women Laughing or the whispering goblinoid in Two Old Men. Goya had seen the cruelty that human beings inflicted on one another, and the faces of his human subjects reflect this interior monstrosity.
Aside from this, interpreting many of the Black Paintings is challenging. Goya hadn't intended to display them publicly and offered no explanation of their subjects. Many of the paintings' backgrounds are morphing shades of black or brown, lacking details we could use to orient ourselves, and even the titles are the inventions of art historians.
None
The painting with the clearest meaning, Duel with Cudgels, shows two peasants fighting each other with their legs stuck in a quagmire, unable to escape from one another except by beating their opponent to death. Most scholars agree that this represents Spain's violent civil war at the time: stuck in their home country, the only way forward for each side was victory.
But to understand the meaning behind The Witches' Sabbath, where a group stares in horrified fascination at a demonic goat-man, or Atropos (the Fates), where four jet-black figures hover above a landscape, you would have to ask Goya.
Goya's most horrific painting
The most famous of the Black Paintings is, without a doubt, Saturn Devouring His Son. For the unfamiliar, Saturn was a Roman god, one of the titans that came before the traditional gods who lived on Mount Olympus. He had come to power by overthrowing his father, Caelus, but it had been prophesied that one of his children would do the same to him. To avoid this, he consumed his children after they were born.
Roman mythology say that Saturn swallowed his children whole — later, they spring from his stomach after Jupiter (or Zeus in the Greek equivalent) escaped being eaten and fed his father a poison to make Saturn vomit up his siblings. Most paintings of this scene depict Saturn greedily swallowing his children whole.
In Saturn Devouring His Son, however, Saturn viciously chews on his partially eaten child — there's blood everywhere, and his child is clearly dead. The most striking detail, however, is Saturn's distress. Prior paintings of this subject show Saturn unsympathetically. But in Goya's version, he is crouched in the dark with a crazed, anguish look on his face. In Saturn Devouring His Son, the titan seems devastated to be eating his children to survive and looks as though he's gone mad.
It's easily the most terrifying painting in the collection. We can speculate that it deals with Goya's own fear of madness and death, but again, there's no record of what the painter truly intended. The mystery of what this meant to Goya is part of what has captured art historian's attention for a century.
Controversy
Despite the macabre attraction of this story, some scholars don't believe that Goya was truly the original artist of the Black Paintings. First, there is a stark difference between the Black Paintings and Goya's previous art. This can be explained away by the idea that the Black Paintings were private, experimental work; since they were not commissioned by the aristocracy, Goya was free to experiment.
But there are additional details that suggest Goya did not paint these images. La Quinta del Sordo was originally a one-story home, though the Black Paintings covered the walls of the first floor and a second floor that was added later. Historians have recovered renovation documents from Goya's time in the villa, none of which mention the addition of a second story. It's possible that the second floor was added after Goya's death — meaning the second-story Black Paintings would have been added afterwards as well.
Some theorize that this means Goya's son Javier created the Black Paintings. Javier's son, Mariano, would later inherit the house. Mariano had money problems, so its feasible that he attributed the Black Paintings to the famous Goya rather than to Javier to get a better price when he sold the villa.
This is a hotly contested theory, however. The artistic merit of the paintings makes them valuable regardless of the creator, and whoever that was — whether Goya or Javier — had no intention of making them public. Ultimately, they are dark, private ruminations whose murky history adds to, rather than subtracts from, their power.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry. The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says. The company is expected to announce the launch Tuesday. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing division, has been selling such text-analysis software to companies outside medicine for use in areas such as travel booking, customer support and supply-chain management. The technology's health-care application is the newest effort by Amazon to tap into the lucrative market.
Amazon officials say the company's software developers trained the system using a process known as deep learning to recognize all the ways a doctor might record notes. "We're able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details," including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, "with incredibly high accuracy," said Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services. During testing, the software performed on par or better than other published efforts, and can extract data on patients' diseases, prescriptions, lab orders and procedures, said Taha Kass-Hout, a senior leader with Amazon's health-care and artificial intelligence efforts. The project is called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which "allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more," according to a blog post. Dr. Kass-Hout says Amazon Web Services won't see the data processed by its algorithms, "which will be encrypted and unlocked by customers who have the key," reports WSJ.
Just over a week after a global problem with its multi-factor authentication (MFA) service plagued a number of users, another Microsoft MFA outage is impacting a number of customers. Many, but not all, of the customers reporting problems today seem to be U.S.-based. From a report: Starting around 9:15 a.m. ET, a number of Office 365 customers began reporting on Twitter that they were unable to sign into that service because of an MFA issue. Office 365 is one of a number of Microsoft services that uses Azure Active Directory MFA to authenticate. Around 10:15 a.m. ET, Microsoft's Azure status dashboard was updated to reflect the possibility of a cross-region potential outage impacting MFA. "Impacted customers may experience failures when attempting to authenticate into Azure resources where MFA is required by policy. Engineers are investigating the issue and the next update will be provided in 60 minutes or as events warrant," the dashboard status said.
A new proof from the Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan and a 2011 proof anonymously posted online are now being hailed as significant advances on a puzzle mathematicians have been studying for at least 25 years. Erica Klarreich, writing for Quanta Magazine: On September 16, 2011, an anime fan posted a math question to the online bulletin board 4chan about the cult classic television series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya . Season one of the show, which involves time travel, had originally aired in nonchronological order, and a re-broadcast and a DVD version had each further rearranged the episodes. Fans were arguing online about the best order to watch the episodes, and the 4chan poster wondered: If viewers wanted to see the series in every possible order, what is the shortest list of episodes they'd have to watch? In less than an hour, an anonymous person offered an answer -- not a complete solution, but a lower bound on the number of episodes required. The argument, which covered series with any number of episodes, showed that for the 14-episode first season of Haruhi, viewers would have to watch at least 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible orderings. "Please look over [the proof] for any loopholes I might have missed," the anonymous poster wrote. The proof slipped under the radar of the mathematics community for seven years -- apparently only one professional mathematician spotted it at the time, and he didn't check it carefully. But in a plot twist last month, the Australian science fiction novelist Greg Egan proved a new upper bound on the number of episodes required. Egan's discovery renewed interest in the problem and drew attention to the lower bound posted anonymously in 2011. Both proofs are now being hailed as significant advances on a puzzle mathematicians have been studying for at least 25 years. Mathematicians quickly verified Egan's upper bound, which, like the lower bound, applies to series of any length. Then Robin Houston, a mathematician at the data visualization firm Kiln, and Jay Pantone of Marquette University in Milwaukee independently verified the work of the anonymous 4chan poster. Now, Houston and Pantone, joined by Vince Vatter of the University of Florida in Gainesville, have written up the formal argument. In their paper, they list the first author as "Anonymous 4chan Poster."
This flow of especially pointless lawsuits doesn't appear be drying up -- fed mainly from the (revenue) streams maintained by 1-800-LAW-FIRM and Excolo Law. Neither does the flow of courtroom losses. These two firms are responsible for most of the lawsuits we've covered that attempt to hold social media companies responsible for international acts of terrorism.
The legal theory behind the suits is weak. Attempting to avoid Section 230 immunity, the suits posit that the presence of terrorists on social media platforms is a violation of various federal laws targeting terrorist organizations. Section 230 defenses have been raised by Twitter, Facebook, et al, but these usually aren't addressed by the courts because there's not enough in the terrorism law-related arguments to keep the suits alive.
According to Eric Goldman -- who has snagged the latest dismissal [PDF] -- this is the seventh time a federal court has tossed one of these suits. If you're familiar with the other cases we've covered, you know what's coming. The California federal court's decision quotes Ninth Circuit precedent from a similar lawsuit that said plaintiffs have to show a direct relationship between social media services' action and the act of terrorism prompting the lawsuit. In this case, the complaint fails to do so.
In Fields, the Ninth Circuit addressed what is meant by the phrase “by reason of an act of international terrorism.” It began by noting that the “‘by reason of’ language requires a showing of proximate causation.” Fields, 881 F.3d at 744. It rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that “proximate causation is established under the ADA when a defendant’s ‘acts were a substantial factor in the sequence of responsible causation,’ and the injury at issue ‘was reasonably foreseeable or anticipated as a natural consequence.’” Id. Instead, it held that, “to satisfy the ATA’s ‘by reason of’ requirement, a plaintiff must show at least some direct relationship between the injuries that he or she suffered and the defendant’s acts.”4 Id. (emphasis added).
And, although the facts of this case are a little different than the cited decision, the allegations in the plaintiff's lawsuit undermine its arguments about direct or proximal responsibility.
The instant case is somewhat different from Fields in that, here, Plaintiffs have made one allegation suggesting that Mr. Masharipov’s attack was in one way causally affected by ISIS’s presence on the social platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Mr. Masharipov was “radicalized by ISIS’s use of social media.” FAC ¶ 493. However, this conclusory allegation is insufficient to support a plausible claim of proximate causation.
Plaintiffs do not allege that Mr. Masharipov ever saw any specific content on social media related to ISIS. Nor are there even any factual allegations that Mr. Masharipov maintained a Facebook, YouTube, and/or Twitter account. Furthermore, there are allegations in the complaint suggesting that there were other sources of radicalization for Mr. Masharipov. See, e.g., FAC ¶ 337 (alleging that Mr. Masharipov “had previously received military training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2011”); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (stating that, “[w]here a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with’ a defendant’s liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of “entitlement to relief”’”). Finally, a direct relationship is highly questionable in light of allegations suggestive of intervening or superseding causes – in particular, Plaintiffs have alleged that, after becoming radicalized, Mr. Masharipov would have a “year-long communication and coordination [with] Islamic State emir Abu Shuhada” to carry out the Reina attack. FAC ¶ 334. Moreover, Plaintiffs fail to allege any clear or direct linkage between Defendants’ platforms and the Reina attack.
The allegations under another anti-terrorism law are no better. This argument posits the existence of terrorist-owned accounts is the same thing as providing support for terrorist acts or organizations. The court again finds the allegations don't approach the legal requirements for liability.
Here, Plaintiffs have failed to allege that Defendants played a major or integral part in ISIS’s terrorist attacks; for example, there are no allegations that ISIS has regularly used Defendants’ platforms to communicate in support of terrorist attacks. Also, for factor (4), i.e., the defendant’s relation to the principal wrongdoer, the Halberstam court indicated that a close relationship or a relationship where the defendant had a position of authority could weigh in favor of substantial assistance. Here, there is no real dispute that the relationship between Defendants and ISIS is an arms’-length one – a market relationship at best. Rather than providing targeted financial support,[...] Defendants provided routine services generally available to members of the public. As to factor (5), i.e., the defendant’s state of mind, the Halberstam court indicated that, where the defendant “showed he was one in spirit” with the principal wrongdoer, id., that could also weigh in favor of substantial assistance. Cf. NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 920 (1982) (noting that, “[f]or liability to be imposed by reason of association alone, it is necessary to establish that the group itself possessed unlawful goals and that the individual held a specific intent to further those illegal aims”). But here there is no allegation that Defendants have any intent to further ISIS’s terrorism.
The entire suit -- including state claims for wrongful death and emotional distress -- are dismissed with prejudice. The only thing left for the plaintiffs to do is appeal, and this decision quotes generously from this jurisdiction's appellate decision in a similar case, which should hopefully deter them from wasting any more of the Ninth Circuit's time.
Troy Hunt has a good essay about why passwords are here to stay, despite all their security problems:
This is why passwords aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable future and why [insert thing here] isn't going to kill them. No amount of focusing on how bad passwords are or how many accounts have been breached or what it costs when people can't access their accounts is going to change that. Nor will the technical prowess of [insert thing here] change the discussion because it simply can't compete with passwords on that one metric organisations are so focused on: usability. Sure, there'll be edge cases and certainly there remain scenarios where higher-friction can be justified due to either the nature of the asset being protected or the demographic of the audience, but you're not about to see your everyday e-commerce, social media or even banking sites changing en mass.
He rightly points out that biometric authentication systems -- like Apple's Face ID and fingerprint authentication -- augment passwords rather than replace them. And I want to add that good two-factor systems, like Duo, also augment passwords rather than replace them.
Rick Zeman writes: According to The New York Times, the Chinese are regularly listening to Donald Trump's cellphone calls (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). While he has two NSA-hardened iPhones, and a secure landline, he insists on using a consumer-grade iPhone -- even while knowing he's being eavesdropped upon -- because it has his contact list on it. "White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them," reports the New York Times. But, officials were also confident that "he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities"; in other words, security through ignorance. The article mentions the rationale is to be able to listen to his calls to find out what and whom influences him, and that the Russians also listen in, albeit with less frequency because of his unique relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Seattle is in the grips of a dire housing emergency (though the city has money to burn when it comes to subsidizing multi-billion-dollar sports teams); Amanda Ogle is one of the many people in Seattle living out of a car, in her case, a 1991 Camry.
Ogle's car was stolen, abandoned, and towed by Dick's Towing to an impound lot with a fee owing of $427 (which Ogle couldn't afford); Dick's Towing (sister company to Lincoln Towing, the City of Seattle's official towing partner) gave Ogle the wrong paperwork to give to the Seattle cops, creating a delays that sent Ogle to court, where she represented herself against Dick's. The court ordered her car returned, but Dick's had already sold off Ogle's car (which was also her home) for $150.
Ogle got a lawyer who represents poor people, they sent Dick's a letter, and Dick's got her car back, but refused to return it to her unless she promised not to sue them for screwing her over. Then they started charging her $75/day ($2300/month, "enough to rent the 27-year-old car its own apartment with granite countertops in a downtown high-rise") to store the car because she refused.
Finally, after the bill had hit $21,634, a judge ordered Dick's to pay $2,000 for every day that that her car was not returned to her. More than a year later, Dick's finally gave her car back.
Instead, Ogle found the Northwest Consumer Law Center, a tiny two-lawyer shop formed in Seattle recently to help the poor with consumer problems. An attorney there, Eggers, sent Lincoln a letter citing the judge’s order and asking for damages. Lincoln responded that it had bought the car back and Ogle could have it — but only if she first released any claims against the companies.
“So basically they were using the car as leverage to get out of any liability,” Eggers said. “The car is Amanda’s home, and it was the middle of winter. But to them it’s a bargaining chip.”
Lincoln then played tow-company hardball. The company started gouging her $75 per day to store the car. That’s $2,300 per month — enough to rent the 27-year-old car its own apartment with granite countertops in a downtown high-rise. By Monday, the bill, with tax, had reached $21,634.
“Additional fees may apply,” it says helpfully at the bottom.
But that day, Ogle went before another judge and asked him to hold Lincoln in contempt. The two sides had incredibly filed 21 different pleadings totaling more than 300 pages. Lincoln, in its filing, said that it had gone to “extraordinary lengths” to return the car to Ogle — by which it means offering her $1,000 to drop her lawsuit last spring.
New York is a great city that has been hollowed out by real-estate speculation, where the conversion of housing to safe-deposit boxes in the sky has pushed out the city's people and the city's businesses, who can't compete with financiers and oligarchs who value property as an investment, rather than as part of the fabric of a city.
But there's a paradox here: New York real estate is valuable because of the people who want to live there because of the vibrancy of the city -- but as the city is choked off from real activity, the value of the real-estate begins to fall. And once the fall starts, it accelerates: as with all bubbles, a crisis of faith in the market precipitates a panicked sell-off, which deepens the crisis.
That dynamic is playing out in New York today: September 2018 sales volume is down 39% from September 2017, with prices dropping by 9%; for every ten $10m+ home on the market, one sells (the ration is actually probably worse -- developers are keeping "ghost inventory" off the books to make the figures look better). There is a ton of super-lux property about to enter the market: 9 skyscrapers this year, and 20 more by 2020.
Garrett Derderian of Stribling thinks the real number is more like 1:15, since, he claims, developers have been lowballing their supply numbers, mindful that a full picture will send prices falling further. “They are holding back homes that they would otherwise be actively marketing, and which would therefore show up in inventory figures,” he says. Inventory figures are being “significantly manipulated” by the practice of excluding this so-called shadow inventory, according to Miller.
Prices for super prime homes have been falling steadily. “In the market north of $10m, you’re seeing prices off anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent from the peak in 2014,” says Miller. In the third quarter of this year, the average home sold above $10m went for 13 per cent less than its asking price, the biggest discount of any price bracket tracked by Stribling.
Last month, the White House released the "National Cyber Strategy of the United States of America. I generally don't have much to say about these sorts of documents. They're filled with broad generalities. Who can argue with:
Defend the homeland by protecting networks, systems, functions, and data;
Promote American prosperity by nurturing a secure, thriving digital economy and fostering strong domestic innovation;
Preserve peace and security by strengthening the ability of the United States in concert with allies and partners to deter and, if necessary, punish those who use cyber tools for malicious purposes; and
Expand American influence abroad to extend the key tenets of an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet.
The devil is in the details, of course. And the strategy includes no details.
...the National Cyber Strategy represents an abrupt and reckless shift in how the United States government engages with adversaries online. Instead of continuing to focus on strengthening defensive technologies and minimizing the impact of security breaches, the Trump administration plans to ramp up offensive cyberoperations. The new goal: deter adversaries through pre-emptive cyberattacks and make other nations fear our retaliatory powers.
[...]
The Trump administration's shift to an offensive approach is designed to escalate cyber conflicts, and that escalation could be dangerous. Not only will it detract resources and attention from the more pressing issues of defense and risk management, but it will also encourage the government to act recklessly in directing cyberattacks at targets before they can be certain of who those targets are and what they are doing.
[...]
There is no evidence that pre-emptive cyberattacks will serve as effective deterrents to our adversaries in cyberspace. In fact, every time a country has initiated an unprompted cyberattack, it has invariably led to more conflict and has encouraged retaliatory breaches rather than deterring them. Nearly every major publicly known online intrusion that Russia or North Korea has perpetrated against the United States has had significant and unpleasant consequences.
Wolff is right; this is reckless. In Click Here to Kill Everybody, I argue for a "defense dominant" strategy: that while offense is essential for defense, when the two are in conflict, it should take a back seat to defense. It's more complicated than that, of course, and I devote a whole chapter to its implications. But as computers and the Internet become more critical to our lives and society, keeping them secure becomes more important than using them to attack others.
The second alpha build of Percona XtraBackup 8.0.2 is now available in the Percona experimental software repositories.
Note that, due to the new MySQL redo log and data dictionary formats, the Percona XtraBackup 8.0.x versions will only be compatible with MySQL 8.0.x and Percona Server for MySQL 8.0.x. This release supports backing up Percona Server 8.0 Alpha.
Last year, Apple outraged independent technicians when they updated the Iphone design to prevent third party repair, adding a "feature" that allowed handsets to detect when their screens had been swapped (even when they'd been swapped for an original, Apple-manufactured screen) and refuse to function until they got an official Apple unlock code.
Now, this system has come to the MacBook Pros and Imac Pros, thanks to the "T2 security chip" which will render systems nonfunctional after replacing the keyboard, screen, case, or other components, until the a proprietary Apple "configuration tool" is used to unlock the system.
Apple does not tell its customers that the computers it sells are designed to punish them for opting to get their property repaired by independent technicians; the details of the T2 came from a leaked service manual.
“There’s two possible explanations: This is a continued campaign of obsolescence and they want to control the ecosystem and bring all repair into the network they control,” Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, told me on the phone. “Another is security, but I don’t see a security model that doesn’t trust the owner of the device making much sense.”
This past weekend signaled a shift in seasons and with it colder weather, shorter days, and pumpkin spice lattes…
If you are like most people, than you’ve probably found yourself crabby and irritable at work for no other reason than the weather? Research shows that seasonal changes impact our mood, influencing how we feel about work. For example, as summer ends and fall begins, daylight hours shrink and temperatures fluctuate between crisp mornings and hot afternoons.
So if you thought you were going crazy, rest assured that the “winter blues” is a real condition. It is sometimes also labeled as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which can lead to depression and reduced energy levels.
Why Do Seasonal Changes Impact Us?
Now the real question is why do our moods so often mimic the weather? Scientific research points to specific reasons for the impact. For example, researchers note time changes twice a year affect your circadian rhythm. It is more commonly known as your biological clock. Other evidence cites hormone problems and vitamin deficiencies, which can lead you to feel drained and unmotivated.
However, like the solutions available for the seasonal onslaught of allergies, colds, and the flu, there are similar remedies to improve work output.
Make Lifestyle Changes According to the Seasons
Whether we like it or not, a healthy lifestyle includes regular, vigorous exercise, and there’s evidence that exercise mitigates the effects of SAD. Additionally, wholesome food can help deliver vitamins and minerals that help the body combat seasonal changes and avoid sickness.
Colder temperatures and shorter days lead some to spend more time indoors and hibernate. Instead, try seeking out social activities away from home, especially if you work remotely. Reach out and help others, volunteer at your child’s school or a local shelter. These activities can be fulfilling while the social interaction combats the seasonal “blahs.” Also, consider joining a local Meetup group that shares similar interests, such as food group or a book club.
Alter Sleep Times Gradually Leading Up to Time Transitions
Setting clocks back or forward affects workers across the world. Some U.S. states have even stopped the practice because it’s been shown to increase hospital visits and car accidents.
Rather than just jump into the time difference the day it happens, one thing I do is adjust my sleep schedule a few weeks prior. I start going to bed 15-30 minutes earlier or later, depending on the season. This helps you adjust your body clock gradually. That way you avoid the productivity crash that can hit for several days after a time change.
Increase Light Exposure
Since change in light has been identified as one of the causes of SAD, look for ways to introduce more of it in your daily work routine. If you work from home, find the brightest spot in the house or take that laptop out to the patio or balcony.
Several years back I bought a sun lamp and put it near my desk. The light from this lamp is designed to mimic that of normal outdoor sunlight. I’ve found that using it over the course of several weeks it lifts my mood noticeably overall.
Many office workers achieve this effect by taking a break and walking outdoors. Some even work outdoors if there is space (and you’ve got a good jacket to keep you warm!).
Change Meeting Times to Match Energy Levels
Move your join.me meeting forward to a part of the day where everyone feels fresh and energetic. This could be mid-morning rather than late afternoon when in some regions it’s actually starting to get dark (I’m looking at you, Pacific Northwest). The afternoon can even be used for tasks that don’t require as much energy.
![This article is about Eta Carinae, a luminous blue hypergiant with anomalous Fe[ii] emission spectra. For the 1998 Brad Bird film, see The Iron Giant (film).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/common_star_types.png "This article is about Eta Carinae, a luminous blue hypergiant with anomalous Fe[ii] emission spectra. For the 1998 Brad Bird film, see The Iron Giant (film).")
The second alpha build of Percona XtraBackup 8.0.2 is now available in the Percona experimental software repositories.
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