Wednesday, July 31, 2019

MEdia Dragons saved the planet from the Asteroid: Can You Say…Hero?

“Like the seaweed that clings to each other after each passing boat separates them, so too a family will come together with the passing of each crisis.”
 ~Proverb

The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great. 
~ Abbie Hoffman 

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared"

Scientists Stunned By ‘City-Killer’ Asteroid That Just Missed Earth On July 25 Washington Post  Via  Rabi Laibl Wolf




Three teens push a woman’s car more than FIVE MILES after noticing she had broken down on the side of the road and couldn’t afford to pay for a tow truck 



I will be the Richest Man at the English Speaking Cemetery: The relationship between your age and your chance of success TED Talk – “Backed by mathematical analysis, network theorist Albert-László Barabási explores the hidden mechanisms that drive success — no matter your field — and uncovers an intriguing connection between your age and your chance of making it big.”… creative and scientific accomplishment do not depend on youth. [Rock my friends on!]


The winner of the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award has described the accolade as "kind of terrifying". 
Indigenous novelist Melissa Lucashenko was announced winner of Australia's most prestigious literary award on Tuesday for her novel Too Much Lip.
A good day for democracy Boris Johnson the showman needs to become a statesman. Can he?

A cache of Saul Bellow letters is discovered in the attic of a private residence — more evidence that the man was incapable of writing a boring sentence  


 Balkan cartel trafficking cocaine around the globe in private planes busted  

Operation Familia coordinated by the US DEA and Europol has seen a total of 16 arrests, 11 in Europe and 5 in Asia, and the seizure of more than one tonne of cocaine and €2 million in cash.


Big Brother is Watching You Watch:
‘Never-Googlers’ Take Extreme Measures To Avoid Data TrackingWashington Post. I must confess to not being this rigorous. My big issue is the avoidance of being GPS located. 
How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong Wired (David L). Who paid for this handwaving? The plan is there and the fact that execution is behind schedule doesn’t make it any nicer. 
200 Million Devices — Some Mission-Critical — Vulnerable To Remote Takeover ars technica. Honestly, I’m surprised the number isn’t much much higher. 


They’re rebuilding the Berlin Wall ...Not in Eastern Europe, but between Parramatta and Wentworthville. At least that’s what it looks like.

 A refugee pushed a boy under a train and reignited Germany's race debate







Firefighters walk next to a train at the main station in Frankfurt, Germany, where an 8-year-old boy was run over by a train and killed on Monday.

The alleged killer was a Swiss resident with psychiatric problems - but it adds to a recent spate of violence that has shocked Germans.
 


New technologies for the brain require ethical approaches to innovation  Well, this trailer for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is our first look at Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers and, hmm. I dunno. Hanks looks a little stiff to me, unnatural, but maybe no one could actually play such a beloved childhood figure in a convincing way. I was so young when I watched his show every day for years on end that Mr. Rogers’ movements and mannerisms were imprinted on my super-plastic preschool brain, never to be forgotten. Mr. Rogers tossed his shoe between his hands a little bit differently every day, but he never tossed it like Hanks does in that trailer. 

But who am I kidding, I will still see this movie. It’s based on Can You Say…Hero?, a piece that Tom Junod wrote about Rogers for Esquire magazine.  
Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has  weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he  weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds…. And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change-he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television-and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three. ‘I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”  
If you’ve never read it, you should…it’s a lovely piece of writing about a wonderful human. 

 

99 ACRES BANGALOW RETREAT- BYRON BAY HINTERLAND - Airbnb


  Aussie swimmer Mack Horton’s protest against Chinese rival and accused drug cheat Sun Yang could get super awkward for Gina Rinehart Business Insider. Kevin W: “I saw this guy’s antics during the whole presentation ceremony. Acted like a self-righteous dickhead.”
  Wall Street Journal Tax Report, When It Comes to Taxes, Sometimes It Pays to Say ‘I Don’t’ 




WHAT I'VE LEARNED: The AFP commissioner would not have wasted so much time on the staff minority who battled him at every turn.






The internet is surprisingly fragile, crashes thousands of times a year, and no one is making it stronger


Phys.org: “How could a small internet service provider (ISP) in Pennsylvania cause millions of websites worldwide to go offline? That’s what happened on June 24, 2019 when users across the world were left unable to access a large fraction of the web. The root cause was an outage suffered by Cloudflare, one of the internet’s leading content hosts on which the affected websites relied. Cloudflare traced the problem to a regional ISP in Pennsylvania that accidentally advertised to the rest of the internet that the best available routes to Cloudflare were through their small network. This caused a massive volume of global traffic to the ISP, which overwhelmed their limited capacity and so halted  Cloudfare’s access to the rest of the internet. As Cloudflare remarked, it was the internet equivalent of routing an entire freeway through a neighbourhood street. This incident has highlighted the shocking vulnerability of the internet. In 2017 alone there were about 14,000 of these kinds of incidents. Given it is mission-critical for much of the world’s economic and social life, shouldn’t the net be designed to withstand not just minor hiccups but also major catastrophes, and to prevent small problems turning into much bigger ones? Governing bodies such as the EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) have long warned of the risk of such cascading incidents in causing systemic internet failure. Yet the internet remains worryingly fragile…” 
  Library of Congress CRS Reports – Bankruptcy and Student Loans, July 1, 2019. “As overall student loan indebtedness in the United States has increased over the years
 

Top 7 tax breaks for public servants this tax time

   

Continuing our investigation into the death tax misinformation during the campaign. Facebook says it was 'not our role' to remove fake news during Australian election #auspol www.theguardian.com/tec…

 

Many of us have given up on the idea of carrying around a dedicated work phone. After all, why bother when you can get everything you need on your personal smartphone? Here’s one reason: Your work account might be spying on oyou in the background.  
When you add a work email address to your phone, you’ll likely be asked to install something called a Mobile Device Management (MDM) profile. Chances are, you’ll blindly accept it. (What other choice do you have?) MDM is set up by your company’s IT department to reach inside your phone in the background, allowing them to ensure your device is secure, know where it is, and remotely erase your data if the phone is stolen.From your company’s perspective, there are obvious security reasons for installing an MDM on an employee’s phone. 
But for employees, it’s difficult to tell what these invisible profiles are collecting behind the scenes, as they provide people at your company with invisible control over your device. That’s why when it comes to your phone, no matter how much you trust your IT department, it’s a good idea to keep work and pleasure separate…”  







FOLLOW THE MONEY: The ACLEI will investigate the alleged relationship between Australian Border Force, Crown Resorts, and international criminals.



xxx

Outraged Virgin slaps IP trolls over dirty movie download data demands



 

— FINDING GOD ON THE MOON — 50 YEARS AGO, BUZZ ALDRIN TOOK COMMUNION DURING THE MOON LANDING. AT WEBSTER PRESBYTERIAN, CONGREGANTS CONTINUE TO EXPLORE THE TIES BETWEEN RELIGION AND SPACE.  

HOW SCIENTISTS BUILT A ‘LIVING DRUG’ TO BEAT CANCER Wired