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Zzzzzzzz…….
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THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 7TH- ZEPPELIN’S END
This Day In History: July 7, 1980
In the late 1970s, the members of Led Zeppelin were plagued by misfortune. Singer Robert Plant was put out of commission by a serious car accident in 1975. When he had almost fully recovered two years later, his 5-year-old son died suddenly of an infection. Just days before little Karac’s death, drummer John Bonham was arrested for assaulting a concert security guard in a drunken rage.
While Bonham sank deeper into alcoholism, Jimmy Page was losing his own battle against drugs. The only member of the band who seemed relatively unscathed was bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, who avoided the fray living quietly at home with his wife and daughters.
As the decade drew to a close, the foursome got together to create what turned out to be their final studio album, “In Through the Out Door.” They embarked on a 14-date European tour to support it and made some serious changes to their stage show so they wouldn’t appear hopelessly dated in the age of Punk Rock. A tour of America was also on the docket. …
Your Complete Guide To The Possible Anti-Trump Rebellion At The RNC
The battle to control the Republican National Convention in Cleveland — and the fate of the party — has reached a turning point.
While the “Stop Trump” movement has unleashed a barrage of cross-country phone calls and emails to seek support for its proposals, a group of longtime Republican rule-makers, some working with the Donald Trump campaign, has quickly coalesced to try to block them.
Those Republican rule-makers are also going on offense by proposing what would be relatively historic changes to take some power away from convention delegates this year and close more primaries to non-Republicans the next time around.
Free The Delegates
There are no rules for the Republican convention. Not yet.
The rules will be determined the Thursday and Friday before the convention by the 112-member (aptly named) Convention Rules Committee. Traditionally, those rules control the convention and govern the next four years for the party.
Enter several anti-Trump GOP groups who broadcast their missions as their names: “Free The Delegates,” “Delegates Revolt,” “Unbind the Delegates” and “Courageous Conservatives.” …
How to Force Donald Trump to Release His Tax Returns
What if a convention rule change allowed delegates to reject any candidate on the first ballot who hasn’t made them public?
Next week, in advance of the Republican National Convention, a 112-member committee will meet to finalize the rules that will govern the proceedings in Cleveland. The most significant question before them concerns the obligations of GOP delegates. Will they be bound by election results in their respective states on the first ballot?
Or will a rule change free them to vote their consciences?
Some opponents of Donald Trump have been urging such a rule change. But according to the Washington Post, they are far short of the votes they need to win it. Were I on the rules committee, I don’t know how I’d vote––as I noted earlier this week, when asking readers if they thought that GOP delegates could legitimately deny the nomination to a man who won so many primaries, I am conflicted.
But there is a compromise rule change that I would support––one that the RNC rules committee would do well to consider as it weighs its obligations to the GOP and to voters. …
10 Truly Strange Cases Of Voyeurism
In 1984, Rockwell scored a major hit with the song “Somebody’s Watching Me.” In both the song and its music video, Rockwell, who was the son of Motown Records founder and CEO Berry Gordy, articulated a very basic fear—the fear of being watched. While the song’s protagonist is clearly dealing with a heavy case of paranoia, most of us share Rockwell’s sharp discomfort with voyeurism. Voyeurs are those people who get a thrill from witnessing something private. Sometimes, voyeurs can satisfy themselves with talking or writing about that which is deemed hush-hush, but on most occasions, voyeurs prefer to watch.
Psychologists have long established the link between sexual deviancy and voyeurism. Indeed, most definitions of the word “voyeurism” or “voyeur” will highlight the fact that practitioners receive a sexual thrill from their activities. A more disturbing association links voyeurism with sexual assault and even murder. According to Ann Rule in her popular true crime book The Stranger Beside Me, Ted Bundy liked to peer through the windows of potential victims for hours at a time. Other serial killers and serial rapists have shared the same compulsion and the same desire to be transgressive.
The following ten voyeurs might not be serial killers, but they’re clearly unhinged to a certain degree. Each one is guilty of a long list of crimes, ranging from indecency to creating long-lasting nightmares in the minds of their victims.
10. The Watcher
In the cushy suburbs of Westfield, New Jersey, sits a lovely home that contains six bedrooms and four bathrooms. By all appearances, the house seems perfect for young upper-middle class families looking for a nice halfway point between rural living and the frantic pace of nearby New York City. In 2014, when Derek and Maria Broaddus bought the home for $1.35 million, they probably thought that they were buying a nice, new, and quiet life. Unfortunately, the home included an unwanted intruder—The Watcher.
A mere three days after moving into the home, the Broaddus family, which includes Derek and Maria’s three children, received a chilling letter. The author called himself “The Watcher” and proclaimed that his grandfather had watched the home in the 1920s and that his father had watched the home during the 1960s. It was now his time to assume the mantle of The Watcher. More worrying was a second letter that contained two cryptic threats: “Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will,” and “I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.” …
‘The US? We’re in bad shape’: squeezed middle class tell tales of struggle
As Voices of America highlights issues that matter to voters, in North Carolina, talk of helping the middle class feels like an empty promise without a plan
Latonia Best at work at Edgewood Community Developmental School in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Life comes in threes for Latonia Best. She has three bachelor’s degrees, is raising three children on her own and has been working for three years as a special needs teacher.
Once upon a time, this middle-aged professional, who is putting her daughters through university too, would have been considered solidly middle class. Yet that full-time teaching job pays just $3,333.33 a month, a household salary that is now below official definitions of middle income – even when adjusted for the relatively low cost of living in a town such as Goldsboro, North Carolina, where she works.
When tax and medical insurance are deducted, her take-home figure drops by more than a third, after which money for food, housing, a car and college tuition has to be found. To make the numbers add up, she has to work three other jobs a week.
Sadly, her experience is far from unusual. Across the town of Goldsboro, like many other places in a country once famous for the width of its wealth, America’s middle class is struggling. The issue was one of the most prominent and persistent mentioned when Guardian US asked, as part of our Voices of America series, more than 1,300 voters to identify the single most pressing issue for them in the 2016 election campaign …
Let’s debunk this Social Security myth
Given the recent release of the Social Security trustees’ 2016 report on the status of the national retirement system, now seems like a good time to address a misconception that political candidates and ordinary citizens alike often repeat: Congress raids the Social Security trust fund and spends it on favorite pork-barrel projects.
This story evokes images of politicians striking deals behind the closed doors as they fritter away Americans’ hard-earned Social Security taxes, sure to leave us destitute in our retirement years.
But that’s just not accurate. The reality is that from 1983 to 2010, Social Security collected more FICA taxes from workers than the amount of actual benefits paid to retirees. This excess helped build a trust fund of $2.8 trillion by the end of 2015, a fund that will help pay for the benefits of baby boomers when they ultimately retire.
This surplus has been invested in special U.S. government bonds that are legally obligated to pay the stated, market rate of interest, and then repay the principal when they mature.
These special bonds are just part of the federal government’s overall funding. The assets in the Social Security trust fund represent about 15 percent of total government debt in 2016. …
Top 10 Unintended Consequences Of Prohibition
In January 1920, Prohibition came into effect, outlawing the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol in the United States. The US government fully expected that people would carry on as normal and find new ways to spend their time, but many unintended and unexpected consequences unfolded. Prohibition came to an end in December 1933, following increasing criticism from many platforms of US society.
In hindsight, it’s quite obvious that Prohibition didn’t work, and many scholars and commentators today have suggested that we learn its lessons and perhaps apply them to the much-debated drug laws of modern times.
10. Organized Crime Flourishes
It’s argued that not only did prohibition provide organized crime syndicates with a gap in the market in the 1920s, but it also increased their wealth and influence, which in turn allowed them to continue their ventures in other areas once the ban on alcohol was lifted. Prohibition essentially bankrolled organized crime’s expansion.
Those involved in organized crime were viewed as heroes by many, with some well-known gangsters having an almost celebrity status in their communities. Their frequently bloody crimes were overlooked, as they were providing hardworking people with what they wanted. Some previously law-abiding citizens even began to turn to crime syndicates for work, particularly those whose jobs in industries tied to alcohol production had become redundant. This trend only increased as the Great Depression took hold in the 1930s. …
Afghanistan: A Tragic Return To A War With No End
The Afghan army commander said the treacherous road to Marjah, in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, was now safe. His forces had driven out the Taliban a few days earlier, he added.
“The road is open, so no problem,” said Lt. Gen. Moeen Faqir. “Of course I hope you go there and find the reality and reflect it.”
Photojournalist David Gilkey and I traveled to Afghanistan many times. In our trip to eastern Afghanistan last year, we found an Afghan army willing to fight, but it was taking heavy casualties and still in need of considerable help. We wanted to find out what, if anything, was changing in a war America has largely forgotten since most U.S. forces left at the end of 2014.
What my colleagues and I encountered was both a horrifying personal tragedy and a microcosm of the larger war in Afghanistan. …
How the Average American Gets Their News
It’s bad news for publications.
What has already been a discouraging summer for online news now looks even worse. A new Pew Research study reveals yet another reason for journalists to fret about recent changes to Facebook’s editorial vision.
Last week, a Facebook vice president announced a major modification to how the company’s News Feed algorithm will rank stories. That algorithm chooses which 10 or 15 posts users see first when they log in, often culling this list down from a possible 1,500 statuses. The News Feed will now give pride of place to posts from users’ friends and family, instead of prioritizing content from professional news publishers.
Charlie Warzel, a tech reporter at Buzzfeed, cast the decision as a kind of election. Engineers examined what kind of posts people were clicking on and interacting with, and decided that people wanted to see less news. “Put simply, the users have spoken and news lost,” he wrote. …
THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER, BENJAMIN RUSH
56 men signed the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776. Among them were many of the most notable figures in American history, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. While there are certainly names on that list that the average American wouldn’t recognize (like Stephen Hopkins, who’s less famous than his cousin Benedict Arnold), there is at least one on there that every citizen should know, but many don’t: Benjamin Rush.
Beyond simply signing the Declaration of Independence, Rush was a war veteran, a passionate abolitionist, an advocate of public education, a controversial but extremely significant physician, a critic of George Washington and an early proponent of considerate treatment of mental illness. Here’s the story of the forgotten founding father, Benjamin Rush. …
The Evolution of HDDs in the Near Future: Speaking with Seagate CTO, Mark Re
In the recent months, Seagate has made several significant announcements regarding the future of HDD technology and unveiled a number of important products. In particular, late last year the company has said that hard disk drives would continue to evolve in the following 20 years, implying that Seagate is exploring multiple technologies to improve capacities and performance of HDDs. Additionally, Seagate introduced the first shingled magnetic recording (SMR) based consumer drives for mobile PCs, which marks a significant milestone in the development of the technology.
The Evolution Continues, New Challenges Arise
While solid-state storage devices are evolving fast in terms of performance and getting more affordable every year, they are not going to match hard drives in terms of cost-per-GB anytime soon. Still, with economic feasibility in place, HDDs are poised to keep evolving with larger capacities and better performance. Throughout the history of hard drives, the evolution of HDDs has involved multiple factors, including materials (platters), mechanics (motors, arm movers, internal structure, and so on), read/record heads, controllers and firmware.
…
Key trends in machine learning and AI
You can hardly talk to a technology executive or developer today without talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning or bots. Madrona recently hosted a conference on ML and AI, bringing together some of the biggest technology companies and innovative startups in the Intelligent Application ecosystem.
One of the key themes for the event emerged from a survey of the attendees. Everybody who responded to the survey said that ML is either important or very important to their company and industry.
However, more than half of the respondents said their organizations did not have adequate expertise in ML to be able to do what they need to do.
Here are the other top five takeaways from the conversations at the summit. …
6 Legal Loopholes That Criminals Love To Exploit
A lot of time and effort goes into crafting the laws of our society, because without said laws, everyone would just rape, murder, and download MP3s off the internet all day. It’s so much work, in fact, that every once in a while our devoted lawmakers will overlook a tiny little detail while crafting important legislation. But, hey, what’s the worst that could happen?
Oh, you have no idea …
#6. In Many States, It’s Totally Legal To Have Sex With A Corpse
In 2006, three Wisconsin men were caught trying to dig up the body of a recently deceased woman. Why the hell? Because one of them saw her obituary photo and decided it would be nice to have sex with her. He even brought condoms, because he wasn’t ready to be tied down with a bouncing baby zombie nine months later.
They were arrested, as you’d expect, and charged with attempted sexual assault, also as you’d expect. What you might not expect is that the judge dropped the assault charges, because it actually wasn’t illegal to fuck a corpse in Wisconsin.
If someone invites you to “an old-fashioned Wisconsin party,” be very scared.
…
After hiatus, in-the-wild Mac backdoors are suddenly back
Three new pieces of Mac-targeting malware access webcams, passwords, and more.
After taking a hiatus, Mac malware is suddenly back, with three newly discovered strains that have access to Web cameras, password keychains, and pretty much every other resource on an infected machine.
The first one, dubbed Eleanor by researchers at antivirus provider Bitdefender, is hidden inside EasyDoc Converter, a malicious app that is, or at least was, available on a software download site called MacUpdate. When double clicked, EasyDoc silently installs a backdoor that provides remote access to a Mac’s file system and webcam, making it possible for attackers to download files, install new apps, and watch users who are in front of an infected machine. Eleanor communicates with control servers over the Tor anonymity service to prevent them from being taken down or being used to identify the attackers.
“This type of malware is particularly dangerous as it’s hard to detect and offers the attacker full control of the compromised system,” Tiberius Axinte, technical leader of the Bitdefender Antimalware Lab, said in a blog post published Wednesday. “For instance, someone can lock you out of your laptop, threaten to blackmail you to restore your private files or transform your laptop into a botnet to attack other devices.” …
How to tell if your Android phone has the HummingBad malware
HummingBad is bad news. Luckily you can find out if you’re affected and do something about it.
Bad news: a malicious app has taken hold of about 10 million Android phones around the world, and it’s creepy.
Security specialist Check Point says the software, called HummingBad, can take root in your phone, collecting your personal data and making it act like you’ve clicked on ads that you haven’t.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to see if HummingBad has roosted with you and started selling your information to the highest bidder. You can also get it off your phone, though the fix is only a few steps removed from “kill it with fire.” Best of all, you can make a change to keep yourself away from this danger in the future.
How to find out if your phone has HummingBad
We live in an age of malicious mobile apps, and cybersecurity companies have taken note. They’ve produced apps that can detect bad actors on your phone and flag them for you. It works a little like antivirus software on your computer. What’s more, some of these services can tell just by what an app does that it’s up to no good.
You have a range of options when it comes to this protective phone software, from Check Point’s own Zone Alarm to apps created by the likes of Lookout, AVG and Avast.
The tools for catching HummingBad on mobile phones are now public information, so any service worth its salt will be able to detect it. …
10 Desert Animals With Brilliant Survival Adaptations
Deserts are some of the least hospitable places on Earth, deterring man and the majority of animal species found across the globe. However, necessity is the mother of invention and nature makes sure it is remarkable. Some of the most surprising and impressive animal adaptations in Earth’s history have been the result of evolution. In this account, we make a survey of animals that take advantage of harsh desert environments, surviving and even thriving through exceptional physical, behavioral and biochemical adaptations.
10. Kenyan Sand Boa
Boa constrictors are known as inhabitants of the rain forest, but the sand boa species are novel boas that have conquered the desert rather than stick to more humid environments. One of the smallest species of boa in the world, the Kenyan sand boa lives most of its life buried under the surface of desert sands or literally living under a rock.
In the cool of the morning and evening when the harsh desert sunshine fades, the Kenyan sand boa emerges from its lair to track, subdue, suffocate, and finally consume its prey whole. It is the sand-dwelling lifestyle of this species that has given rise to some remarkable behavioral adaptations relating to mating and feeding as the snake interacts with its desert environment.
The eyes and nostrils of the Kenyan sand boa are positioned on the head in a manner that limits intrusion of debris into these sensitive areas. Able to live beyond one year without food, this species uses the sand to its advantage while hunting in two ways. …
New security features make Windows 10 Anniversary Update a must
Microsoft wants enterprises to upgrade to Windows 10–and the Anniversary Update drives that home with security features that can no longer be ignored.
It doesn’t matter how big or how small your enterprise operation happens to be, the security of your information network should be of great concern to you on a daily basis. Some malicious person somewhere is attacking some enterprise’s network right now and chances are better than they should be that they will be successful. That’s just the way the world works in 2016.
Microsoft has been making major upgrades to the Windows 10 operating system to help enterprises combat the onslaught of attacks, but data breaches are still a common occurrence. For the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft is promising to add new and better security features that it hopes will make Windows 10 the only viable system choice for enterprises around the world.
Advanced protection
Microsoft is placing a lot of emphasis on the Edge browser, and the way it is constructed, to prevent security breaches. For the Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge will isolate Flash content outside the browser so attacks using those vulnerabilities will be less effective. Edge will also be altered so that neither it nor Internet Explorer will have access to so many Windows subsystems. That should help limit attacks that use vulnerabilities to noncritical systems that web browsers shouldn’t have ever been able to touch anyway. …
What It’s Like to Manage in the Mall of America
Brittany Berghorst, the store manager at Levi’s, talks about working retail long term and how she deals with the worst customers in the country’s largest shopping center.
Americans aren’t shopping in malls like they used to. In decades past, the mall was a symbol of suburban prosperity: Loitering around the halls was regular recreation for teens too young to do much else, brick-and-mortar buildings the obvious destination for shopping needs, and working in retail was a common first job.
But in recent years, sales at physical stores have lagged as Americans increasingly favor shopping online. Consumer spending is on the rise, but retailers are working harder to get people to spend money in their actual stores. Despite this, retail hiring is up, with the Labor Department reporting that retail salespeople and cashiers were the two most common occupations in the country making up roughly 6 percent of total American employment—more than before the Great Recession.
Brittany Berghorst works as a store manager at Levi’s in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Berghorst has worked in retail for more than eight years. I spoke to her about what it’s like to work in the largest mall in the country, and how working in retail has changed. The interview that follows has been edited and condensed for clarity. …
SETTING FIRE TO GLASS- THE “NOPE” CHEMICAL THAT IS CHLORINE TRIFLUORIDE
First discovered back in the 1930s, chlorine trifluoride is a rather curious chemical that easily reacts, sometimes explosively, with just about every known substance on Earth.
Just to get the ball rolling, here’s a few of the more unusual things chlorine trifluoride is known to set fire to on contact: glass, sand, asbestos, rust, concrete, people, pyrex, cloth, and the dreams of children…
Obviously the first question to answer here is how chlorine trifluoride is somehow able to cause asbestos, a substance that is known for being almost completely fire retardant, to catch on fire. Well, that’s because chlorine trifluoride is a more powerful oxidizing agent by mass than oxygen itself. Meaning it’s capable of rapidly oxidizing things that would normally be considered practically “impossible” to set aflame, like asbestos. Chlorine trifluoride is such an effective oxidizer that it can even potentially set fire to things that have seemingly already been burned up, like ash or spent charcoal. …
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