Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Microsoft are fucking with our Kernel and we need to do something about it

Ah yes, and Microsoft show's its ugly face.

http://techrights.org/2019/06/29/ousting-linus-torvalds/

Thanks @AvnSgt for sharing

Probiotic bacteria reduces the impact of white-nose syndrome in bats

Researchers did a field trial on the effect of probiotic bacteria on white-nose syndrome in bat populations. They found that it reduces the impact of the disease about five-fold.

Why Does the BLS Think That Taxes Tripled in 2013?

After posting some numbers for income and consumption among different generations this morning, I found myself diddling around with the Consumer Expenditure Survey later in the day. As I did so, I discovered some anomalies and peculiarities that made me wonder if the stuff I had posted was really very reliable. More about that later. […]

#Anonymous      #ThereWillBeNoBackingDown

https://youtu.be/mYalsVzbCXw

Latinx Voters Will Be a Core 2020 Voting Bloc. Are Democrats Paying Enough Attention?

Latinos are projected to account for more than 13 percent of eligible voters in 2020 — slightly more than the share of black voters.

The post Latinx Voters Will Be a Core 2020 Voting Bloc. Are Democrats Paying Enough Attention? appeared first on The Intercept.

It's good to circulate without being tracked. #QwantMaps

➫ https://www.qwant.com/maps https://www.qwant.com/maps

They should rename "Tracking Protection" on all Chrome/Chromium-based browsers to "Third-party tracking protection", because Google is still tracking you.

So, the US Government is probably the most intrusive one known to man. The people of America are without privacy. However, for a Government that is being so god damn intrusive, they're terrible at protecting their people from awful events?
So how do they justify this spying? Just look at how ridiculous this article is!

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/pentagon-heartbeat-identification/

Farmers Have a Secret Weapon to Save Your Food From Climate Chaos

This spring’s relentless storms severely delayed planting in the Midwest and will likely pinch this year’s corn and soybeans. Fifth-generation farmer Brian Corkill called 2019’s the wettest spring he’d ever seen in his 29 years of tending the land. Volatile, rainy springs are already on the rise in the upper Midwest, and will likely occur […]

Going the distance: Brain cells for 3D vision discovered

Scientists have discovered neurons in insect brains that compute 3D distance and direction. Understanding these could help vision in robots.

Students chowing down tuna in dining halls are unaware of mercury exposure risks

Some students are helping themselves to servings of tuna well beyond the amounts recommended to avoid consuming too much mercury. Researchers surveyed students on their tuna consumption habits and knowledge of mercury exposure risks, and also measured the mercury levels in hair samples. Hair mercury levels were closely correlated with how much tuna the students said they ate. And for some, the measurements were above what is considered a 'level of concern.'

OWC’s external USB-C SSD offers 2TB of storage, Thunderbolt 3 & insane speeds https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/06/25/own-envoy-pro-ex-with-usb-c/ #Thunderbolt3 #Accessories #Thunderbolt #Featured #Storage #Apple #News #OWC #SSD

Political Ploy by Mitch McConnell Blocks Attempt to Stop War With Iran

Though the amendment failed to pass, it represented a major bipartisan challenge to Trump’s escalatory Iran policy.

The post Political Ploy by Mitch McConnell Blocks Attempt to Stop War With Iran appeared first on The Intercept.

Toxic substances found in the glass and decoration of alcoholic beverage bottles

New research shows that bottles of beer, wine and spirits contain potentially harmful levels of toxic elements, such as lead and cadmium, in their enameled decorations.

Take two E. coli and call me in the morning

What if the bacteria in your daily probiotic were also able to detect diseases in the gut and indicate when something is awry? New research has created an effective, non-invasive way to quickly identify new bacterial biosensors that can recognize and report the presence of various disease triggers in the gut, helping set the stage for a new frontier of digestive health monitoring and treatment.

The Problem For Blue-Collar Workers Isn’t China, It’s Lousy Economic Recoveries

I think Brad DeLong makes a good point today. It’s true that we lost a lot of traditionally blue-collar-male jobs to China in the early aughts, but the trade deficits that crowded-out those jobs also had a mirror-image effect: Imports crowd-in traditionally-male blue-collar wholesale trade jobs, and finance traditionally-male blue-collar construction (and capital-goods manufacturing) jobs. […]

First Amendment Case Against Restrictive Copyright Law Can Proceed, Says Judge

A federal judge has ruled that litigation can go forward to determine whether Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act violates the First Amendment as applied. EFF brought this litigation on behalf of security researcher Matt Green, technologist bunnie Huang, and bunnie's company Alphamax, in order to vindicate the right to speak, learn, and innovate despite this overly-broad and harmful law.

Originally passed to combat infringement, the sweeping language of Section 1201 allowed courts to interpret its provisions to leave out critical speech protections such as the fair use doctrine. This has interfered with educational uses of copyrighted works, accessibility, security research, remix art, and even your ability to repair your own car or tractor.

The ruling is a mixed bag. While the "as-applied" First Amendment claims will go forward, the court did not agree that rulemaking by the Librarian of Congress is subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, even when the Librarian is performing an executive branch function rather than a congressional one. The court also did not agree that the Librarian's rulemaking is subject to the First Amendment scrutiny that applies when a government official is making determinations about what speech to permit. Finally, the court saw no need to adjudicate the claims that Section 1201 is overly broad, because it concluded that determining the constitutionality of the statute as applied to the plaintiffs will turn on the same issues as with other potential targets of the law.

The bottom line is that the case is going forward and we will continue the fight to help you understand and modify the devices in your life and remix the culture we all share.

Related Cases:  Green v. U.S. Department of Justice

Apple Goes All In on China

Farewell Mac Pro, we hardly knew ye: Apple Inc. is manufacturing its new Mac Pro computer in China, according to people familiar with its plans, shifting abroad production of what had been its only major device assembled in the U.S. as trade tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Beijing….With the previous Mac Pro model, […]

Biden and the Obama Admin Are Finally Getting the Reckoning They Deserve

Joe Biden could have sat this campaign out, retired, and been fondly remembered by the American public as Barack Obama's goofy yet loveable vice president. Instead, he chose to run for president one last time, and as a result guaranteed that he’ll be remembered for his actual record.

Thursday night was a rough one for Biden. It was always going to be, not just because the candidate—who has assiduously avoided unscripted media appearances since announcing his run—has a poor record of success as a campaigner. Biden’s deep-rooted role as a centrist “neoliberal” Democrat has saddled him with a long, checkered history for his opponents to pick apart.

And pick apart they did. Thursday's debate saw several of Biden's rivals assail him for a record that sits uneasily with the more progressive direction of today’s Democratic Party. And Biden—who entered the night as the clear frontrunner—didn’t do himself any favors by frequently stumbling over his words and even making nonsensical statements.

The first crack came on the subject of immigration. As Biden boasted of his immigration record (“We all talk about these things, I did it!”), moderator Jose Diaz-Balart reminded him that “the Obama-Biden administration deported more than three million Americans,” prompting a camera cut to a confused-looking Biden. This topic opened up space for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) to criticize not just Biden but the legacy of the Obama administration, explaining that she had “disagreed with my president” on the issue of unjust deportations.

Biden's defense of his record on immigration was wholly unconvincing. Biden said he would “surge immediately billions of dollars worth of help” into Central America to tackle the root causes of people fleeing, before referencing a “bipartisan agreement” he had secured at the very end of Obama's second term. Biden was likely referring to a plan inserted into the administration's 2016 budget request that came to be known as “Biden's billion.”

The trouble is, by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to abusive security forces in the region, and by setting aside funding for Central American governments to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border, Biden's bipartisan agreement both fueled the root causes driving people to flee and ramped up the cruelty they faced. This was not a first for Biden. He had, in his own words, been “one of the architects” of the Clinton-era Plan Colombia enacted in 2000, which combined increased militarization in Colombia with opening the country up to foreign investment. The plan resulted in not just heightened violence, but economic and environmental exploitation, further driving people out of the country, and was replicated in the Obama-era Alliance for Prosperity for Central America 15 years later, also spearheaded by Biden.

During his time as vice president, Biden didn’t engage in the kind of warm and fuzzy bromides about protecting immigrants that we heard Thursday night. As late as 2014, Biden bragged that the Obama-Biden administration was “enhancing the enforcement and removal proceedings” against migrants, and warned that anyone making the trip should “be aware of what awaits them” because it “will not be open arms.” Indeed, one need only read the stomach-churning details of an ACLU lawsuit over the treatment of migrant children from that year to understand that he was being serious. Biden paid lip service to “hav[ing] to deal with the root causes” then, too.

The next major hit Biden took was over his opposition to busing and defense of his friendly relationships with racists and segregationists. It was Harris, again, who took Biden to task over these positions, with Biden hitting back that he “did not praise racists, that is not true,” and that he “did not oppose busing in America.”

Neither of these statements is true. Biden's opposition to busing is, at this point, well-worn territory, but it's worth cycling through some of his statements on the matter: the claim that busing was “the atom bomb of anti-discrimination weapons”; “the single most devastating issue that could occur to Delaware”; that he'd made it “reasonable for longstanding liberals to begin to” oppose it as a policy; that it was a “liberal train wreck.”

That last claim came not in the 1970s but in his 2007 autobiography.

Biden's statement that he hasn't praised racists is clearly debunked by his recent defense of his positive relationship with dyed-in-the-wool segregationist Sens. James Eastland and Herman Talmadge. But that’s not all. In his 2003 eulogy for segregationist and notorious sexual predator Strom Thurmond, Biden called Thurmond “a brave man” who “truly wanted to help.”

Even centrist Michael Bennett got in on the action, rejecting Biden's prediction that Republicans will experience a sudden change of heart and wish to work with a Democratic president once Trump is out of office. Bennett also excoriated an Obama-era deal on taxes Biden boasted of making with Mitch McConnell as a “complete victory for the Tea Party.”

“It does sound as if you haven't seen what's been happening in the United States Senate over the last 12 years,” remarked moderator Chuck Todd.

But it was the second exchange with Harris on the issue of race that began a gradual unraveling for Biden throughout the night. Attempting to defend his record on civil rights, Biden rattled off a series of policies he'd been involved in before abruptly stopping of his own volition, saying, (perhaps allegorically), “My time's up, I'm sorry.”

Biden later appeared to defend the powerful and increasingly far-Right National Rifle Association (NRA), saying the “enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA.” In response to a question about what single issue he would prioritize upon winning the presidency, he oddly answered, “make sure that we defeat Donald Trump.”

Of course, Biden wasn't the only candidate to misrepresent his record on stage. Harris claimed the mantle of police accountability by mentioning her support for police body cameras, which likely came as news to civil rights activists in her home state of California who criticized her in 2016 for opposing measures for greater police oversight. And Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) cast herself as a tough-on-Wall Street politician, despite her well-documented history as a loyal ally to banking interests.

But Biden's misrepresentations, and the criticism he faced for his political history, are particularly significant given his now two-month-long reign as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Biden's domination of the early polls has been cited by commentators ranging from Jonathan Chait to Michelle Goldberg as evidence that the desire for change and bold progressivism among voters has been overstated since 2016. The attacks Biden faced last night, and his impulse to put a progressive spin on some unsavory parts of his history, suggest such arguments have been far too hasty.

The 2020 Democratic primary campaign will be long, and one single debate isn't likely to upend the candidates' standing. But Thursday offered a preview of what may well be in store for Biden in the months ahead: the longer he stays in pole position, the more his record will be excavated and the more attacks he'll face from his rivals. 

But the debate also indicated that cracks are forming in the Obama-Biden administration's invulnerability to Democratic criticism. As long as Biden stays in the race, his opponents will have more space to point out its flaws without going after the beloved former president himself. This may prove the most lasting legacy of Biden's campaign.