Friday, February 28, 2020

Just The News: Michael Flynn seeks total exoneration, not pardon, says his attorney

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Michael Flynn seeks total exoneration, not pardon, says his attorney
By Sophie Mann. Last Updated: February 27, 2020 - 9:50pm

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, told Just the News this week that she is seeking total exoneration of her client from the Department of Justice in a case that has dragged on for years.

“We don't want a pardon," she told the site's CEO John Solomon for his podcast John Solomon Reports. "We want an exoneration."

While emphasizing that her client wouldn’t dismiss the idea of accepting a pardon, Powell made clear that she and Flynn have set their sights higher.

“We want this case dismissed in the interest of justice,” she said.

And while you're at it, counter-sue for legal fees and court costs.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Mother of all movie spoilers

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If you're hyper-sensitive about movie spoilers (in general, not for any specific film), stop reading now.

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Another example of why you shouldn't believe the news

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Anyone who regularly listens to Dan Bongino's podcast (or the corresponding YouTube channel) probably already knows about "the Bongino Rule". Whenever you run across "breaking" news that is damaging to President Trump, wait 24-48 hours before repeating it because it is almost always debunked within a day.

This week provided us with yet another example of this. (h/t to RedState.com via the Bongino Report)

Shocker: That ‘Bombshell’ About Trump Offering Julian Assange a Pardon to Cover-Up for Russia Was Total Garbage
Posted at 1:30 pm on February 21, 2020 by Bonchie

Apparently, that “bombshell” report that Donald Trump had nefariously offered Julian Assange a pardon to cover up for Russian hacking of the DNC was absolute garbage. I know, I know, it’s shocking and totally unexpected that our news media could make such a “mistake.”

Washington Free Beacon: Left-Wing Young Turks Refuses to Recognize Employees’ Union

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Left-Wing Young Turks Refuses to Recognize Employees’ Union
Alex Griswold -

The Young Turks, a left-wing and pro-Bernie Sanders YouTube network, is refusing to recognize its employees' new labor union.

A week after TYT Union was formed to represent production and post-production workers at the popular liberal channel, the group announced that company leadership had refused voluntary recognition of the union. The refusal, which comes after Sanders proposed penalizing companies that refuse to recognize unions, is the latest instance of a left-leaning news outlet resisting unionization among its employees.

The irony is delicious.

Thursday, February 06, 2020

Appleinsider: Philips Hue smart bulb allows hackers to attack your network

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Philips Hue smart bulb allows hackers to attack your network
By Malcolm Owen, Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 04:50 am PT (07:50 am ET)

Owners of Philips Hue smart bulbs are being urged to check its firmware, after the publication of a vulnerability in how the accessories communicate with each other over Zigbee could allow an attacker to gain control over the whole home network.

I'm glad to see that Philips is going to be releasing a patch to close this attack vector, but this also underscores something I've been saying for a long time: IoT is not mature enough to be considered safe and reliable. Far too many smart appliances have been designed with little or no thought to security, and customers are the ones paying the price.

I love the concept of smart appliances, and I would love to have a home full of them, but there's no way I'm going to install them when there's a very real risk that doing so will allow criminals and hackers access to everything else on my LAN. I hope this tech will be secured in the future, but it certainly is not today.

Dry Bones: Pelosi Rips it Up

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Pelosi Rips it Up
Thursday, February 06, 2020

Pelosi Destroys Government Document, Violating Federal Law Click here to read the law

Absolutely true, but of course, nobody would be petty enough to prosecute over this.

And I would assume that there are plenty more copies, including one officially archived by the US government in order to guard against the destruction of individual copies.

But it's still an amusing observation.

Monday, February 03, 2020

IEEE Spectrum: To Make Solid Electrolytes, Start With a Liquid

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To Make Solid Electrolytes, Start With a Liquid
03 Feb 2020 | 20:05 GMT. By Sandy Ong

A solutions-based synthesis can make thin yet strong electrolytes for solid-state batteries

New batteries are often described with comparatives: they’re safer, lighter, or longer-lived than today’s versions. Solid-state batteries—those which contain no liquid—can make two such claims. With inorganic electrolytes, they’re much less likely to catch fire than traditional lithium-ion batteries, which have organic electrolytes. And by swapping out graphite for lithium as the anode, you can get a massive increase (up to 10-fold) in energy density, making solid-state batteries look especially promising for electric vehicles.
...
While Liu’s project officially ended on 31 January, the team is now in talks with a different federal funding agency and an industry player to continue their work. The goal is to create a working prototype for a solid-state battery with a two ampere hour (Ah) capacity—similar to the capacity of most smartphone batteries today—at a target cost of below US $100 per kilowatt hour (kWh) within the next two to three years.

Cool new tech. Maybe we'll see these in our phones, tablets and laptop computers in a few years.

Sunday, February 02, 2020

Something must have just frozen over

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Schumer launches major push to prevent bridge strikes that have plagued Westchester County for decades. Senator calls on leading GPS developers to integrate data warning commercial vehicle drivers of road restrictions, promote driver safety & decrease traffic
2.23.20

Currently, GPS applications — Google Maps, Apple Maps & Waze — do not contain data warning commercial drivers of roadway restrictions such as maximum vehicle height. In the last decade, the King Street bridge in Westchester County has been struck ~150 times.

With no end in sight to major uptick in bridge strikes, Schumer urges smartphone-nased GPS application developers to implement a warning system for commercial vehicle drivers to alert them of restrictions & hazards.

Schumer to GPS industry: One more bridge strike is one too many.

This is probably the first time I've ever agreed with anything coming out of Chuck Schumer's office.

It would seem to me that roadway restrictions (height, weight, width, noise, etc.) should be something that app makers can add to the map database. The information should already be available, because it's printed in commercial road atlases.

Once added to the database, it shouldn't be that hard to update the app (or release a commercial version) where you tell it about your vehicle (size, weight, trailer count/size, etc.), allowing the app to remove routes where it is impossible, dangerous or illegal to drive that vehicle.

Hopefully, the app makers won't have to to a lot of redesign in order to add this feature. It seems that makers of standalone GPS devices already have this capability in their truck-oriented devices.