The Stream Protection Rule. Pffft.

The Stream Protection Rule is an update to existing mining regulations. It compels companies to restore the “physical form, hydrologic function, and ecological function” of streams after mining operations are complete. And, it calls for monitoring pollution levels in streams near surfaces mines.

In Appalachia, mining companies regularly blow the tops off mountains to access stores of coal beneath, a practice known as “mountaintop removal.” They dump the debris into valleys below, filling rivulets and contaminating downstream water supplies. Mining firms have decapitated more than 500 mountains in Appalachia and buried some 2,000 miles of streams, according to Appalachian Voices, an environmental advocacy group.

This poses a threat to wildlife and people who live nearby. Numerous studies link mountaintop removal to higher rates of cancer and heart disease among residents of neighboring communities.

[…]

“The rule spells out best practices for reclaiming land and reforesting with native species. It strengthens protections for ephemeral streams that are necessary for good water quality and quantity downstream,” said Davie Ransdell, a retired surface mine inspector for the state of Kentucky. “In my view, it’s also a job generator, since it prevents mining companies from just pushing material over the hill and into streams below.”

[…]

Lawmakers will likely vote Wednesday to overturn the rule, using the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress the power to scrap executive actions issued in the last 60 working days.

“I would encourage the House to act quickly so that we can send this resolution to the president’s desk as soon as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a statement. Throughout his career, McConnell has opposed coal mining regulations. He also blamed what he called “Obama’s War on Coal” for the decline of the mining industry, although energy experts say it is largely the low cost of natural gas that is responsible for coal’s demise.

According to the Center for American Progress, the 27 representatives that sponsored or co-sponsored the Congressional Review Act bill received nearly $500 million from mining interests last year.

And there you have the bottom line of rethugs everywhere. Their only line – how well will their pockets be lined? They don’t give a fuck about the planet, they don’t give a fuck about clean water, they don’t give a fuck about wildlife, and they don’t give a fuck about people other than themselves. The full story is at Think Progress. In the same vein, the rethugs are looking to help big oil by making bribery and a lack of transparency okay again:

The House will vote as early as Wednesday to nullify a rule that makes it harder for U.S. oil companies to engage in bribery and corruption in developing countries.

In June 2016 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized the “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers” rule, requiring oil, natural gas, and mining companies to publicly disclose the billions of dollars they pay to foreign governments for drilling rights around the world. This rule — meant to promote transparency and fight corruption — now faces the prospect of repeal as Republicans look to rollback a myriad of Obama administration rules.

“On the same day as the Senate is considering the nomination of former Exxon CEO as next Secretary of State, the House of Representatives is deciding whether or not to vote to license the bribery and corruption that the oil industry has lived off for decades,” Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. office at Global Witness, said in a statement. “We cannot stand by while the interests of a few powerful oil companies trump the safety and values of our country. We need this law to protect investors, developing countries, and our own national security interests.”

That story is here.

Nano Lord Voldemort.

587eef62ea4f7.image

Auburn Engineering graduate student Armin VahidMohammadi won first place in a national research organization’s Science as Art competition for his depiction of an engineered nanomaterial as a character from the “Harry Potter” movie series.

VahidMohammadi, a doctoral student in materials engineering, created a digitally enhanced image of his research that bears a resemblance to Lord Voldemort, the villain in the “Harry Potter” series. After submitting the image for consideration to the Materials Research Society’s Science as Art competition, he won first place out of 168 submissions. The award comes with a $400 cash prize.

“I am honored to have my work showcased and recognized by such a prestigious organization,” VahidMohammadi said. “It was exciting that the competition allowed me to connect materials science with popular culture in a way that the general public can appreciate.”

Held since 2006, the Science as Art competition offers materials engineers and students the opportunity to transform their research into images renowned for their aesthetic qualities.

Using a scanning electron microscope, VahidMohammadi was examining particles of an engineered nanomaterial when he noticed a particular particle that resembled Lord Voldemort. He colorized the image and digitally enhanced it by adding eyes and teeth.

The particle pictured is known as Ti2C, which is a member of a family of two-dimensional, layered materials called MXenes. Ti2C has a wide array of applications, including as electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors. The particle shown in the image is five microns in length, or roughly 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Very cool work, this! It would make a great poster.

Via OANOW.

The Glass Room.

The Glass Room installation view. All photos courtesy of Tactical Technology Collective and the artists.

The Glass Room installation view. All photos courtesy of Tactical Technology Collective and the artists.

The Glass Room, a pop-up exhibition organized by Tactical Technology Collective, a Berlin-based non-profit working to promote technological activism, done in collaboration with Mozilla, the non-profit behind the popular web browser of the same name.

The glitzy and pristine white space was filled to the brim with tech-inflected artworks, many of which were disguised as objects you would typically find in a high-end tech store. But the sterile appearance was ultimately a façade; there was no consumer tech for sale within the space. The works were joined by the desire to expose viewers to the malicious underbelly of the wonderfully convenient Information Age.

2

Separated into different categories depending on the type of issues explored in the works, the pieces were as compelling as they were harrowing. Forgot your password? by Aram Bartholl consists of a series of books where the artist compiled the 4.6 million passwords leaked by Linkedin in 2012 within their pages.

3

Located in the Data Detox Bar section of the exhibition, Julian Olivier and Danja Vasiljev’s Newstweek is a device that manipulates online news headlines that you don’t like or don’t fit your narrative into ones that are more “appropriate” to your sensibilities.

4

In Unfitbit by Surya Mattu and Tega Brain, a FitBit is attached to objects like a metronome or a drill to trick the device into thinking you are working out, thus selling fake, inaccurate data to your health insurance that hopefully lowers your premium.

5

“The Glass Room was inspired by two things: First, a desire to make the questions raised by living in a data society tangible and accessible using real projects, humor, and good design. Secondly, to use the language of commerce as a way to critique our enthusiasm for new technologies,” says Stephanie Hankey, a co-founder of Tactical Technology Collective and an organizer of the event.

[…]

Although The Glass Room has already concluded, full documentation of the works can be found on the project’s website, along with a series of informative resources, and a hilarious 8-day “Data Detox Kit” meant to cleanse you of your over-connectivity and oversharing tendencies.

Check out more of Tactical Technology Collective’s projects and exhibitions here.

You can see and read more at The Creators Project. I wish I could have seen this one in person, it’s bloody brilliant.

Facebook, Oh Facebook XV.

allen-shooting-300x225

A days-old argument between two groups of people that escalated on Facebook led to a shooting Allen Tuesday night.

The Allen Police Department said that disagreement was between nine people from South Dallas and seven from Allen.

Sergeant John Felty said the Dallas group drove to a home on Hawthorne Drive near South Jupiter Road in Allen for a confrontation. He said it was about to end peacefully when someone fired shots.

“Well I can’t imagine what would be so important that it would end like this. It is a tragedy,” he said.

Four people were shot and taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Officers detained eight of the nine from Dallas and the other, who police believe fired the shots, is in custody.

“The good news is… if there is any good news in this… is that the people that are responsible for this are detained or in custody,” he said.

The fact that the shooting stemmed from a Facebook argument was not lost on authorities.

“We’ve had social media disagreements for quite some time but never to this degree where it turns into a shooting,” said Fenty.

Oh good. Great Americans are going to drag their guns out over FB arguments now. If this shit continues, there won’t be all that many people left to worry about, will there? I know how infuriating people can be, who doesn’t know that? Even so, grabbing a gun is not a good idea because someone on the internet pissed you off. If we start killing people on that basis, there really won’t be anyone left.

Via WBAP.

A Pre-Loaded Porn Nanny.

Chris Sevier (WZTV).

Chris Sevier (WZTV).

There is a state-by-state campaign underway in the United States to pass legislation that would require laptops and all internet-connected devices to come preloaded with an unspecified porn blocking mechanism.

It’s a mission led by Chris Sevier, a Tennessee man and Christian music producer who previously sued Apple for his alleged porn “addiction” and fought marriage equality by filing a stunt lawsuit asking for the right to marry his laptop. He’s an attorney who was disbarred in his state for “mental infirmity or illness” — and, despite the outrageousness of Sevier’s back story, let alone the nature of the legislation itself, the push to block porn across the country appears to be gaining some traction.

A bill of this kind has been pre-filed in South Carolina — but Sevier says that North Dakota and Indiana will soon pre-file a version of the bill ahead of the next legislative session. He claims that, in total, sponsors from 27 states have agreed to introduce a version of the bill, which Sevier drafted. The text varies somewhat state by state, but the overall aim is largely the same: to force manufacturers of “products that distribute the internet” to sell their devices with technology that broadly blocks pornography as well as websites that facilitate the sale of sex. Consumers can opt out of the block if they are over the age of 18 and pay a $20 fee to the state.

Oh, North Dakota, always eager to be regressive. I thought repubs didn’t care for the whole “nanny government” they constantly whined about over the last eight years. Oh right, that’s whenever there was any sort of program meant to help people. I guess nannyism is just dandy if you’re using it for oppressive measures.

“The reason why this bill is constitutionally sound, this isn’t like a prohibition. It just makes it by default, it’s blocked,” Sevier told Vocativ. “There are a lot of adults who don’t want access to that stuff.”

The push behind the bill — which is titled, the “Human Trafficking Prevention Act” — is largely being done in the name of fighting human trafficking. What, you might ask, does human trafficking have to do with pornography? Sevier argues that “pornography is an advertisement for prostitution,” and that it “erodes consent,” “promotes sexual voyeurism,” and “cultivates female objectification.”

The big ol’ fly in the legislative ointment is that Sevier makes no distinction between those who have been forced into sex work, and those who are consensual sex workers. For the conservative minded, yes, there is a difference, a very big difference.

The bill also gestures toward the alleged social harms of pornography and the need to protect children from obscene materials. (As for the harm of pornography, several studies have contradicted the common anti-pornography claim that adult content is linked to domestic violence and sexual abuse. There isn’t reliable evidence to support the existence of “porn addiction.”) In addition to blocking regular porn, Sevier highlights that it would also filter out “revenge porn” and child porn, which is already illegal. Despite a lack of evidence, Sevier sees consensual adult pornography as a gateway to child porn and abuse. “It sends them down a slippery slope where before you know it, they’re starting to get more and more into hardcore forms, like worse and worse, like grosser and grosser, and the next thing you know they’re on a plane flying to Thailand to molest a child,” he said.

There’s no stupid quite like conservative stupid. If you find the idea of fucking a child repugnant, all the porn consumption in the world is not going to cause you to suddenly decide to do that. Also, a whole lot of hetero couples find sharing porn increases their fun and intimacy, many of them conservative. Regardless of orientation, who gives a shit if people enjoy porn? I don’t care. Then again, unlike the majority of christian conservatives, I don’t spend my time with my nose in other people’s crotches.

Sevier’s text relies on state obscenity laws regarding the display of adult or “girlie” magazines. Commonly, states require brick-and-mortar vendors to place “obscene” material behind blinders. Sevier argues that the manufacturers of digital devices should be held to the same standards. (Although, it’s worth noting that if you want access to an adult magazine at a 7-11, all you have to do is buy the magazine — you don’t have to pay an additional fee to uncensor the product that you’re purchasing.)

[…]

Apply these same standards to all of the internet, and it’s easy to imagine not just hardcore pornography being filtered out, but also art and sex education materials. It’s a critique Sevier has anticipated. “There’s a lot of scenarios where a parent, a grownup, or a minor could possibly be okay without having access to that content,” he said. “If they really want access and they’re over 18 they have to go get the filter removed. There are a lot of people that are gonna say, ‘Yes, there might be a few things I’m going to miss out on, but I really don’t need that stuff.’”

You know what stuff I can do without? Prudish assholes so afraid of human bodies and sexuality that they attempt to legislate everyone else’s choices. Yet another reason to get the fuck out of this country.

There’s more at Vocativ.

Sunday Facepalm.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

Pendejo-elect Trump, who at one point said hacking may have been the work of someone sitting on their bed weighing 400 pounds, and more recently said it was time to let it go and move on, has now declared himself an expert in hacking, and in a move already seen too many times to have become boring, promised a secret which will be revealed on Tuesday or Wednesday. If there’s one thing we know already, it’s that Trump doesn’t know jack shit about computers, and there’s no juicy secret with special sauce waiting in the wings to be revealed.

He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”

Sigh. No, you don’t know anything about hacking, Donny, not one teeny, tiny thing. No, hacking is not hard to prove. Also, proving hacking and proving exactly who did the hacking, not the same thing, your dipshittedness. Of course, clarity isn’t exactly Donny’s middle name. As for this whole “I know things other people don’t know”, oh, grow the fuck up already. This childish isht is already beyond annoying, I cannot cope with the thought of years of this “I know something you don’t know, na na na!” garbage, especially when it isn’t so. Donny keeps saying this, and every time, it turns out there’s no there there. In the earlier post, linked above, he didn’t know about the imposed sanctions, because he never knows about anything.

Mr. Trump, who does not use email, also advised people to avoid computers when dealing with delicate material. “It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Mr. Trump said.

“I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe,” he added. “I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.”

:Laughs: Oh, I just can’t wait to see how that one is going to turn out after Jan. 20th. This fucking idiot is going to be in charge of some very complex systems indeed, and doesn’t know one thing about them, but hey, he can tweet! The idiot knows more than all the intelligence agencies (not that there’s much boasting to be done there, but still), and doesn’t understand that hacking isn’t something done solely by the so-called bad guys. Hacking is not dependent on someone using email, either. There is every possibility that in the coming years, an eyeroll will actually prove fatal.

Trump also said “I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” which is beyond laughable, given his penchant for spreading baseless bullshit and lies all over the place, insisting they are true, such as insisting President Obama’s birth certificate was a fake, and that thousands of American Muslim people in NJ celebrated the 9/11 attack. Pretty much everything Donny says is unsubstantiated at the least, and an outright lie at the worst.

Via The NY Times.

Sean Spicer is also sprinkling his stupidity all over:

“Why aren’t we talking about the other influences on the election? Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time?” Spicer said in response.

Y’know, just because someone is intelligent enough to perform well in a debate, and did things like prepare, doesn’t mean it was cheating.

“No one is asking those questions. The fact is that everyone wants to make Donald Trump admit to certain things. When do we talk about the other side, which is what did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished?”

Yes, Donny does need to admit to things, people tend to hold presidents accountable, so best get used to it. So, Clinton tried to influence the election, but Donny didn’t do that at all, no. FFS, couldn’t they at least get someone with a modicum of intelligence in their team? This level of stupid is too close to fatal.

Via Think Progress.

More Jobs? No, More Lies.

President-elect Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President-elect Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump made a huge announcement: because of his presidency, Sprint has decided to bring back or create 5,000 jobs in the United States, while satellite startup OneWeb will create another 3,000.

The claim, however, was false. Those jobs are part of a $50 billion investment from SoftBank, which owns 80 percent of Sprint and has made a large investment in OneWeb, that was previously announced as part of a deal with a Saudi investment fund before Trump won the presidency. Meanwhile, not all of the jobs promised by Sprint will be at the company itself, but instead at contractors.

But it’s in both the company’s interests and Trump’s to create glowing, if misleading, headlines about cooperation between the administration and the corporation.

For Sprint, cozying up to Trump is almost certainly related to the hope that it can get approval of its previously failed attempt to merge with T-Mobile. Sprint was in the process of making a bid to buy T-Mobile in 2014, and thus combining the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the country, but ended up abandoning the plan in the face of regulatory opposition from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Both agencies have stated an intent to keep four major carriers in the country, rather than let them combine, under current leadership.

While Sprint has been able to remain solvent since then, it hasn’t turned an annual profit since 2006 and has more than $30 billion in total debt. SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, who personally met with Trump after the election and re-announced his company’s intents to invest in the United States from Trump Tower, has made it clear that he sees consolidation as a must for getting the company to profitability. “We need scale,” he told Bloomberg in 2014. And he still reportedly has his eyes on T-Mobile.

If the FCC and DOJ become more friendly to mega-mergers under Trump, that would be an enormous win for the company. And even before Sprint started currying favor with Trump, his administration has been shaping up to be just what the company is looking for. One of the president-elect’s top policy advisers on technology has suggested abolishing the FCC altogether and is a proponent of industry mergers, writing, “Telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies.” Other advisers are staunchly against net neutrality regulations that aim to keep the internet a level playing field but have been opposed by giants like AT&T and Verizon.

Rarely monopolies. Right. In what fucking universe? Have people forgotten Ma Bell already? It wasn’t that bloody long ago.  Living rural, I already get screwed royally when it comes to net access, and I’m capped, too. No streaming for me, I can’t afford it. Whether or not I’ll be able to afford net access at all once the incoming administration guts everything, who knows? I really hate interesting times.

There’s much more at Think Progress.

Cool Stuff Friday.

The Sleeping Gypsy 1897, by Henri Rousseau. Courtesy Wikimedia.

The Sleeping Gypsy 1897, by Henri Rousseau. Courtesy Wikimedia.

A reflection on the lost art of lying down by Bernd Brunner. What do you do to put yourself in a reflective, unhurried state of mind?

ant
The Queen Does Not Rule: The ant colony has often served as a metaphor for human order and hierarchy. But real ant society is radical to its core.

We know now that ants do not perform as specialised factory workers. Instead ants switch tasks. An ant’s role changes as it grows older and as changing conditions shift the colony’s needs. An ant that feeds the larvae one week might go out to get food the next. Yet in an ant colony, no one is in charge or tells another what to do. So what determines which ant does which task, and when ants switch roles?

The colony is not a monarchy. The queen merely lays the eggs. Like many natural systems without central control, ant societies are in fact organised not by division of labour but by a distributed process, in which an ant’s social role is a response to interactions with other ants. In brief encounters, ants use their antennae to smell one another, or to detect a chemical that another ant has recently deposited. Taken in the aggregate, these simple interactions between ants allow colonies to adjust the numbers performing each task and to respond to the changing world. This social coordination occurs without any individual ant making any assessment of what needs to be done.

One of nature’s most physiologically fascinating creatures, mantis shrimp are not only the fastest attackers in the animal kingdom, but they also possess what might be the world’s most interesting and impressive set of eyes. Each mantis shrimp eye has three ‘pupils’, with receptors for 12 distinct colours – yet another world record. But perhaps the most amazing aspect of mantis shrimp eyes are their ability to detect polarised light – largely invisible to humans – which they use to signal to other mantis shrimp that a burrow is occupied from afar, preventing close-quarters showdowns to the death. Taking the mantis shrimp’s lead, scientists are hoping to use a camera that detects light polarisation to catch certain kinds of cancer early.

Via Aeon.

Dance dance automation: music from the factory floor.

The Reality of Oil Spills.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community's land. Barbara Fraser.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community’s land. Barbara Fraser.

Hunching his shoulders against a driving rain Pastor Dahua scrambled down a muddy bank and stepped across a pool of blackened water to a makeshift shelter that marked the place where crude oil had spilled from an oil pipeline.

The spill in Monterrico, the community of Kukama and Urarina people of which Dahua is president, is one of 10 that have occurred since January along the pipeline that runs from oil fields in the Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to a port and refinery on the Pacific coast.

The rain worried Dahua. Between November and May, water levels in Amazonian rivers rise by 30 feet or more, flooding villages and forests. If the spill was not cleaned up by the time the flooding began in earnest, Monterrico’s only water supply—a stream that crossed the pipeline near the end of the oil spill—could be contaminated.

Monterrico is one of dozens of communities affected by recent spills. Even more people are exposed to contamination from 40 years of oil operations that dumped oil and salty, metals-laden water into rivers, streams and lakes in Peru’s oldest Amazonian oil fields.

Government agencies have identified more than 1,000 sites needing cleanup, but have a budget of only about $15 million for testing and remediation. Experts say that is just a fraction of the amount that will be needed.

Anger over the sluggish pace of efforts to address decades of pollution and neglect have come to a head in Saramurillo, on the bank of the Marañón River, a few hours by boat downstream from Monterrico.

Hundreds of people from more than 40 indigenous communities converged there on September 1, blocking boat traffic on the Marañón River, a key transportation route in the northeastern Peruvian region of Loreto, where there are virtually no roads.

Despite an initial meeting with government officials in October, the protest dragged on into December, amid tensions among both the protesters and the travelers and merchants trapped by the blockade.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

This in depth look at the reality of oil spills, and their impact on Indigenous people is very necessary reading. The impact of such is not at all limited to Indigenous people, and the more Indigenous people fight against having pipelines on their land, the more the impact of spills will spread, further and further out, into a horrible web of contamination.

Everyone needs to stand up against fossil fuels, now more than ever, with the new climate change denying, fossil fuel loving administration poised to take over.

The full story is at ICTMN.

Zero Gravity Space Art, And You Can Be A Part!

The Creators Project follows Israeli artist Eyal Gever on his mission to create a sculpture in space.  We see how Gever and his team, in collaboration with a special project team at NASA, explore what it means to be human through zero gravity and 3D computer technology. We get an inside look at the complications the artist and scientists face in selecting an everlasting subject and how to create the actual artwork in space. It’s a most ambitious endeavor for mankind. Gever lands on the importance and delight of human laughter and figures out how to make sound sculptures to launch into space.

Download the #LAUGH app here: www.laugh.ai/download.

Description

– Create a #Laugh star with just the sound of your voice
– Vote for your favourite star to be created in space
– Hurry! You have until midnight on the 31st December 2016 to get the most ‘likes’ and have your star 3D-printed in space, aboard the International Space Station!

Find out more here: www.laugh.ai

“The earliest cave paintings were of human hands which were a way of proclaiming and celebrating the presence of humanity. #Laugh will be the 21st century version of that, a mathematically-accurate encapsulation of human laughter, simply floating through space, waiting to be discovered.”

Eyal Gever 2016

This is just too cool for words!

Via The Creators Project.

RNC Emails Hacked; Russia Held Them Back.

Two women look at their cell phones in front of portraits of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, as they arrive at the Union Jack pub in Moscow, Russia, to watch a live telecast of the U.S. presidential election on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko.

Two women look at their cell phones in front of portraits of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, as they arrive at the Union Jack pub in Moscow, Russia, to watch a live telecast of the U.S. presidential election on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko.

Yet explosive new reporting from the Washington Post tells us that the CIA informed U.S. senators last week that it was “quite clear” from a “growing body of intelligence from multiple sources” that Russia’s goal was to elect Trump.

The “consensus view,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators, according to the Post, is that “it is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”

The New York Times also reported Friday evening that intelligence agencies have “high confidence” that Russian cyberattacks had the goal of helping Trump because the Republican National Committee was hacked. The data and email traffic was not released. The hacked emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and sent to WikiLeaks gained international headlines for weeks, causing headaches for the Clinton campaign and the resignation of the DNC chair after internal party squabbles became public.

[…]

The idea that Russia actively put its thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor in a very close election where he prevailed in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by almost three million votes alarms more than Democrats.

Trump has shocked people across the political spectrum with his laudatory praise for Russia and Vladimir Putin and his desire to diminish NATO. One of his first staffing choices was former general Michael Flynn for National Security Advisor, who equated a Russian propaganda media outlet to CNN. For secretary of state, he is considering congressional Putin advocate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and someone who may be closer to Vladimir Putin than anyone in America: ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

“[Tillerson] has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,” security expert John Hamre told the Wall Street Journal this week.

Think Progress has the full story.

Ware the Talking Toys.

toys

Kids say a lot of random, unsolicited, or just plain personal things to their toys while playing. When that toy is stuffed with just fluff and beans, it doesn’t matter what the kid says: their toy is a safe sounding board. When their playtime companion is an internet-connected recording device that ships off audio files to a remote server without even notifying parents — that’s a whole other kind of problem.

[…]

A lot of parents will skim the above, shrug, and think it’s no big deal, because isn’t everything connected now? There’s a big problem with these particular toys though, and that’s a third party, Nuance, who happens to be a defense contractor. You might want to think twice about inviting them into your house to listen to every word.

Nuance is a giant company best-known — to consumers, at least — for its Dragon-branded suite of speech-to-text dictation software. The company also has a significant presence in healthcare dictation, and is — like more large corporations than you’d think — a defense contractor that sells products, including “voice biometric solutions,” to military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies.

And here’s where it starts to get more complicated: both toys are also governed under Nuance’s general privacy policy, which says, “We may use the information that we collect for our internal purposes to develop, tune, enhance, and improve our products and services, and for advertising and marketing consistent with this Privacy Policy.”

It continues, “If you are under 18 or otherwise would be required to have parent or guardian consent to share information with Nuance, you should not send any information about yourself to us.”

Yes, it’s very interesting, that warning being on toys marketed to 4 year olds and up. There’s a lot to this story, and if you’ve found these items on your sproggens’ wish list, you might want to find alternatives. Full story here.