Mission Everywhere

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak : Leaked screener copies of big movies tend to surface at year's end, but didn't in 2022, probably due to more security, streaming, and shorter release windows   —  Screeners are advance copies of recent movies that are generally sent out to critics and awards voters for review. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/bpCZSlc

Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File Rep. Kathleen Rice said she warned Democratic leaders of electoral losses on Long Island before the midterms. During a Politico interview, Rice said leaders didn't heed her call and pointed to Biden's win in her district. Rep. Lee Zeldin produced strong coattails for down-ballot GOP candidates in his gubernatorial bid. For much of the 20th Century, Long Island was a well-known Republican stronghold, serving as a counterbalance to the strongly Democratic politics of New York City. From the 1990s through much of the past decade, Democrats made major gains in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, winning congressional districts and local offices that for years had favored Republican politicians. But in recent years, Republicans have clawed back some of their strength, winning the county executive and district attorney races in Nassau in November 2021, while also winning the district attorney race in Suffolk that...

Lily Hay Newman / Wired : A look at 2022's worst breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital takeovers, including at least two Twilio breaches   —  The year was marked by sinister new twists on cybersecurity classics, including phishing, breaches, and ransomware attacks. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/KsEpNIi

Insider investigated 175 recent homicides of transgender people. Insider Killings of transgender people doubled between 2019 and 2021, as anti-trans legislation and rhetoric accelerated. Most of the killers were young men in their teens and twenties, many of whom were intimate with their victims. At least 39 transgender people were killed in acts of intimate violence, by spouses, partners, boyfriends, housemates, dates, or clients. Only 28 killings out of 175 cases Insider examined resulted in murder convictions; only one resulted in a hate crimes conviction. Nearly two-thirds of victims were misgendered or misnamed by law enforcement. Starting in November, Insider published its series "Deaths in the family," a comprehensive investigation into five years of transgender homicides. It features infographics illustrating our starkest findings, including that homicides spiked just as states accelerated their introduction of anti-trans legislation, and eight long reads o...

Shared electric scooters came onto the scene five years ago with a promising vision of getting people out of cars and onto greener modes of transportation. Yet despite billions in VC money and plenty of hype , the future that micromobility companies promised still hasn’t quite arrived. In cities like Paris, most people aren’t replacing car trips with shared e-scooter jaunts in a meaningful way; the cost of riding scooters makes them an expensive option for last-mile transit connections and equitable access; and the public disclosures of Bird and Helbiz have shown us that achieving profitability is incredibly difficult. Plus, cities that allowed shared e-scooter companies in their midsts are increasingly making it difficult for scooter companies to operate sustainably. For the sake of traffic flow and carbon emissions , there need to be alternatives to cars. Are shared e-scooters the answer to that, or are they just another shitty option? What have we gained by introducing shared...

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch : Meta buys Netherlands-based Luxexcel, which uses 3D printing to make prescription lenses for smart glasses; Meta reportedly worked with Luxexcel on Project Aria   —  As Meta faces antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of VR fitness developers Within, the tech giant is making another acquisition. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/AJEmVN5

Wall Street Journal : Source: Sam Bankman-Fried will likely plead not guilty to fraud and other charges at a January 3 hearing; SBF returns to Twitter to deny he moved Alameda funds   —  Created with sketchtool.  —  FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is likely to plead not guilty to eight counts of fraud at a hearing next week … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/Ux0GXm6

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Some White House aides wanted President Donald Trump to "peacefully protest" outside of the Capitol in a glass box on January 6. Tony Ornato, a former aide and Secret Service agent, testified the idea was "ridiculous." Trump ultimately didn't join the crowd as they swarmed the Capitol building on January 6. White House aides floated the idea of having President Donald Trump "peacefully protest" in a glass box on a stage outside of the Capitol alongside supporters on January 6, 2021, newly-released testimony from the House January 6 Committee reveals. Tony Ornato, a former Secret Service agent and White House aide, testified in a deposition in late November that two White House aides— Bobby Peede and Max Miller — asked him if the president could join supporters and protest Congress counting of the electoral votes. "I ...

The first open-source equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has arrived, but good luck running it on your laptop — or at all. This week, Philip Wang, the developer responsible for reverse-engineering closed-sourced AI systems including Meta’s Make-A-Video , released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT. The system combines PaLM , a large language model from Google, and a technique called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback — RLHF, for short — to create a system that can accomplish pretty much any task that ChatGPT can, including drafting emails and suggesting computer code. But PaLM + RLHF isn’t pretrained. That is to say, the system hasn’t been trained on the example data from the web necessary for it to actually work. Downloading PaLM + RLHF won’t magically install a ChatGPT-like experience — that would require compiling gigabytes of text from which the model can learn and finding hardware beefy enough to handle the training workload. Like ChatGP...

Matt Levine / Bloomberg : Crypto created a toy financial system and had a toy financial crisis; in order to work in the long run, crypto must prove its real usefulness outside of finance   —  On Oct. 25, Bloomberg Businessweek published “The Crypto Story,” a cover-to-cover issue of the magazine that I wrote about what crypto is and what it all might mean. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/krgI0Pp

Ginni Thomas. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Virginia "Ginni" Thomas she regrets her text messages and posts sent in the wake of the 2020 election. The wife of Clarence Thomas said she was unclear what she meant when she warned Mark Meadows of a "coup." Ginni Thomas, 65, said the time after the election was an "emotional time" for her. Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told the January 6 committee that she regretted her post-2020 election texts and statements that warned of Democrats trying to steal the election, messages that sparked outrage and questions of Thomas' standing on the court. "I regret all of these texts," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, told the panel during a closed-door deposition in September. The transcript of her testimony was released on Friday morning. Thomas, who is 65, repeated multiple times that she regret words when she was "clearly emotional" as she traded messages ...

As Meta faces antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of VR fitness developers Within, the tech giant is making another acquisition. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it is purchasing Luxexcel , a smart eyewear company headquartered in the Netherlands. The terms of the deal, which was first reported in the Belgian paper De Tijd, have not been disclosed. Founded in 2009, Luxexcel uses 3D printing to make prescription lenses for glasses. More recently, the company has focused its efforts on smart lenses, which can be printed with integrated technology like LCD displays and holographic film. “We’re excited that the Luxexcel team has joined Meta, deepening the existing partnership between the two companies,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. It’s rumored that Meta and Luxexcel had already worked together on Project Aria , the company’s augmented reality (AR) research initiative. In September 2021, Meta unveiled the Ray-Ban Stories , a pair of smart glasses that can take photos an...

Setting up dual monitors can boost your productivity and free space. Nisian Hughes/Getty Images To set up dual monitors on Windows 10, connect the monitor to your PC and open "Display settings." On a Mac, you can connect another monitor to it using the "Display" menu in "System Preferences." You can set up your dual monitors to display the same image, or work separately. In an office, it's common to see people using multiple monitors at the same computer. It's a great way to expand your workspace and use lots of different apps at once. Luckily, dual monitors aren't just for professionals. You can set up dual monitors on your PC and Mac easily. You just need the monitors and cables to connect them. Important : You can set up dual monitors on a laptop, too. The laptop's screen will just count as one of the monitors. How to set up dual monitors on a Windows 10 computer 1. Connect both monitors to the computer tower or laptop yo...

Big thanks to Joyce Sidopoulos, Peter Barrett and Ken Goldberg for filling in the last few weeks . I’m excited by the boost this newsletter has been getting in recent months and wanted to keep the light on while I was out. Three weeks is the longest break I’ve taken for work in…ever, really. Went to a bunch of museums (do yourself a favor and check out Edward Hopper at the Whitney and Morris Hirshfield at the American Folk Art Museum — can’t recommend them enough) and spent a few days in Aruba, of all places. Still not sure why flights were so cheap, but if you’re ever looking for a nice place to stay on the island for $150 a night, let me know. There’s also a great animal rescue. Go make friends with a miniature donkey. The minute you get off the plane at JFK, however . . . Let’s just say the inner peace from meditating on a white sand beach every morning wears off even faster than the tan. Suddenly you’re tossed back into New York during travel season in 30-degree weather. If anyon...

Dylan Patel / SemiAnalysis : A look at India's plan to build a semiconductor supply chain, including via a ~$10B incentive program, issues with the Foxconn-Vedanta joint venture, and more   —  Overview of incentive program, 3 major proposals feasibility  —  With the politicization of the semiconductor industry reaching … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/YCTsghn