Tag Archives: Featured

According to the SEC, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had material nonpublic information about coronavirus impact. He and his brother-in-law dumped stock before the market dropped in March 2020.

After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.

ProPublica previously reported that Fauth, a member of the National Mediation Board, had dumped stock the same day Burr did. But it was previously unknown that Burr and Fauth spoke that day, and that their contact came just before Fauth began the process of dumping stock himself.

The revelations come as part of an effort by the SEC to force Fauth to comply with a subpoena that the agency said he has stonewalled for more than a year, and which was filed not long after ProPublica’s story.

In the filings, the SEC also revealed that there is an ongoing insider trading investigation into both Burr and Fauth’s trades.

It had previously been reported that federal prosecutors had decided not to charge Burr.

Burr’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions. Fauth’s lawyer and the SEC did not respond to questions. Fauth hung up on a ProPublica reporter.

According to the SEC, Fauth has cited a medical condition for why he cannot comply with the subpoena, even as he has been healthy enough to continue his duties at the National Mediation Board. In its filings, the SEC accuses Fauth of engaging in “a relentless battle” to dodge the subpoena.

In 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Fauth to the three-person board, a federal agency that facilitates labor-management relations within the nation’s railroad and airline industries. President Joe Biden reappointed him to the board.

On the day he received the call from Burr, Fauth sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of shares in six companies — including several that were hit particularly hard in the market swoon and economic downturn. According to the SEC, the first broker he called after hearing from Burr was out of the office, so he immediately called another broker to execute the trades.

In its filings, the SEC also alleges, for the first time, that Burr had material nonpublic information about the economic impact of the coming coronavirus crisis, based on his role at the time as chairman of the intelligence committee, as a member of the health committee and through former staffers who were directing key aspects of the government response to the virus.

The week after the trades, the market began its crash, falling by more than 30% in the subsequent month.

Burr came under scrutiny after ProPublica reported that he sold off a significant percentage of his stocks shortly before the market tanked, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions. The precise amount of his stock sales, more than $1.6 million, is also a new detail from this week’s SEC filings. In his roles on the intelligence and health committees, Burr had access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security and public health concerns.

Before his sell-off, Burr had assured the public that the federal government was well prepared to handle the virus. In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he said “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.”

That month, however, according to a recording obtained by NPR, Burr had given a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more dire preview of the economic impact of the coronavirus, warning it could curtail business travel, cause schools to be closed and result in the military mobilizing to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

Burr defended his actions, saying he relied solely on public information, including CNBC reports, to inform his trades and did not rely on information he obtained as a senator.

Alice Fisher, Burr’s attorney, told ProPublica at the time that “Sen. Burr participated in the stock market based on public information and he did not coordinate his decision to trade on Feb. 13 with Mr. Fauth.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Originally published on ProPublica by Robert Faturechi and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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AI, Apps, Photography, Software, Tech

PhotoShop is Maxxed NFT with “NFT Prep” feature on the way from Adobe

October 27, 2021 Eric Cho

The Verge interview with Adobe’s CPO, has mega details

In a new, extensive, Verge interview podcast with Adobe’s CPO, Scott Belsky, a a ‘Prepare as NFT’ system launch for Photoshop was confirmed for the end of the month.

The idea is to maintain a kind of proof of originality system to help prevent fake NFTs (minting non-fungible tokens) from being minted and sold by imposters. The final choice is in the buyers hands at this stage, but having a way for creators to prove authenticity would be a big step.

Since this week Adobe is also holding its annual conference, called Adobe Max, there are also a bunch of new features arriving for Creative Cloud and a slew of app including Photoshop.

Big news! We've partnered up with @Adobe and @ContentAuth to enhance attribution of NFTs on Rarible. 🔎 Now collectors can see if the wallet used to design an NFT was the same one used to mint it as part of the Content Authenticity Initiative (#CAI) – https://t.co/EnWOAilv5g
— Rarible (@rarible) October 26, 2021

Intersecting worlds collide with Adobe in them all…

Adobe has been around, amazingly, since 1982, and millions of digital creatives and content creators use their products.

Photoshop is so entrenched that it has long achieved verb status: if you want to enhance a photo, for example to enlarge your backside or smooth out your skin, just “photoshop it”. And over use is derided as a “photoshopped” persona or image.

Premiere Pro and After Effects, especially the latter, get a lot of pro and semi-pro use for video production. Many, many Pro photographers use Lightroom. The upgrade system for Adobe products and the creative cloud, such as the recent AI and neural engine assisted effects drive change and upgrades at a furious pace.

With the entire content, image and video creation industry becoming more and more vital to networked human communications, tracing and verifying authorship and authenticity are becoming more and more crucial.

Adobe is moving, with caution due to the issues that could arise, into the area on multiple fronts. As per the Verge article;

My ETH from the #Banksy #NFT purchase was just returned to me, ethical hacker proving a point?https://t.co/idDNEsEIhK
— Pranksy 📦 (@pranksy) August 31, 2021

“With what Adobe is calling Content Credentials, creators will be able to link their Adobe ID with their crypto wallet and mint their work with participating NFT marketplaces. The software company says the feature should be compatible with popular NFT marketplaces including OpenSea, KnownOrigin, SuperRare, and Rarible. A ‘verified certificate’ that comes with minting an NFT with Photoshop’s Content Credentials will prove that the source of the art is authentic.”

Put Proof of Vaccination ID into your Wallet with iOS 15.1 Upgrade

Video October 26, 2021 Kat Lee

Finally: the whole package – and a convenient way to prove vaccination status

Now that the iOS 15.1 update is available for the general public featuring the ability to add your proof of vaccination status to the Health app and then create a vaccination ID card in Apple Wallet.

Many businesses, venues, restaurants, and more are requiring proof of vaccination for entry. For example California is the first state where proof of COVID vaccination or negative test for indoor events over 1,000 people.

The new feature in iOS 15.1 is made possible by the support Smart Health Cards which are valid for California, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, Hawaii, and some Maryland counties, as do Walmart, Sam’s Club, and CVS Health.

Therefore, using this system you would be able to to look up their information in state databases, if you are in any of the states listed above, but if you were vaccinated through at Walmart or CVS it will also be feasible to add your information to the Health and Wallet.

Once you have gone to the web site for your state, for example in California it would be found at https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov where you can type in personal information such as name and date of birth to get access to your records and status.

Though iOS 15 already had the ability to download the information to your Health app, and you could do that since the official launch of iOS 15, the last step, adding an ID to your wallet from the health app has not been possible until the new upgrade to iOS 15.1.

The record is locked to your name and can only be used by you. There will be a QR code that you will first download to your health app on the iPhone, then, once it is in the health app there will be a prompt to allow you to “add to wallet”. By clicking that link a vaccination ID car, with the QR code will be generated and added to your wallet.

iOS 15.1 is available under > General > software update in your phone’s Settings app starting today.

Tap the download link on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Tap Add to Health to add the record to the Health app.
Tap Done.

Once the ID is in the health app a button / prompt appears “add to wallet”.

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News, Observation, Politics, Tech

Scammers Are Using Fake Job Ads to Steal People’s Identities

Video October 26, 2021 Creative Commons

Above: Photo Illustration /Adobe Stock / Unsplash / Lynxotic

Scammers Are Using Fake Job Ads to Steal People’s Identities

It has become a ubiquitous internet ad, with versions popping up everywhere from Facebook and LinkedIn to smaller sites like Jobvertise: Airport shuttle driver wanted, it says, offering a job that involves picking up passengers for 35 hours a week at an appealing weekly pay rate that works out to more than $100,000 a year.

But airports aren’t really dangling six-figure salaries for shuttle drivers amid some sudden resurgence in air travel. Instead, the ads are cybercriminals’ latest attempt to steal people’s identities and use them to commit fraud, according to recent warnings from the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and cybersecurity firms that monitor such threats. The U.S. Secret Service, which investigates financial crimes, also confirmed that it has seen a “marked increase” in sham job ads seeking to steal people’s personal data, often with the aim of filing bogus unemployment insurance claims.

“These fraudsters, they’re like a virus. They continue to mutate,” said Haywood Talcove, chief executive of the government division of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, one of several contractors helping state and federal agencies combat identity theft. (ProPublica subscribes to public records databases provided by LexisNexis.)

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

This particular mutation is an emerging threat, Talcove and others said. The numbers are small so far, but they’re rapidly increasing. In March, LexisNexis detected around 2,900 ads touting unusually generous pay, using suspicious email domains and requiring that one verify one’s identity upfront. The total had grown to 18,400 by July, and then to 36,350 as of this month. Talcove said these figures are based on a small sample of job ads and that the real number is likely much higher.

This form of scam is surging at a moment when targets for job application fraud abound. Millions of Americans are quitting jobs and looking for new ones. An all-time high percentage of workers — 2.9% — quit their jobs in August, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Meanwhile, huge numbers of laid-off workers are still looking for work, making for a historic churn in the labor market.

The ads reflect a tactical adjustment by cybercriminals. A massive wave of unemployment insurance fraud during the pandemic prompted authorities to heighten identity verification requirements. In most U.S. states, cybercriminals can no longer simply input stolen identity information into government websites and frequently collect unemployment insurance aid. Now, applicants whose names are used to apply for unemployment benefits often need to verify on their phones that they’re the ones seeking assistance, a process similar to two-factor authentication.

That means scammers may need help from their victims — and sometimes they go to elaborate lengths to mislead them. Some fraudsters recreate companies’ hiring websites. One fake job application site uses Spirit Airlines’ photos, text, font and color code. The phony site asks applicants to upload a copy of both sides of their driver’s license at the outset of the process and sends them an email seeking more information from a web address that resembles Spirit’s, with an extra “i” (spiiritairline.com). Spirit Airlines did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Other job scams are less elaborate and have more visible signs of inauthenticity. One fake ad for airport shuttle drivers on Facebook was posted by a woman who purported to be working at Denver International Airport. Diligent readers may have noticed that the only location linked from the woman’s Facebook profile was a Nigerian city called Owerri. (A spokesperson for the Denver airport reported the profile to Facebook after an inquiry by ProPublica, and the ad is no longer active.)

In other instances, unsolicited job offers simply land in applicants’ inboxes after they’ve uploaded their résumés to real job search sites, which scammers can access if they pose as potential employers. Jeri-Sue Barron has received a slew of emails since the start of the pandemic informing her that she was preapproved for a variety of jobs she hadn’t even applied for. Barron, a retiree in suburban Dallas, had uploaded her résumé to several job hunting sites in hope of finding some part-time work to supplement her Social Security income. She then received multiple job offers with nary a request for an interview. One email originated from a school in India’s Kerala state; another came from a Croatian website she’d never heard of. “They started coming in from places that were weird,” said Barron. “You almost don’t want to find out the next stage.” She ignored the offers.

As with fake unemployment claims more broadly, the fraud is being facilitated by an underground infrastructure, including online forums where cybercriminals share advice on how to perfect their techniques. A person using the handle “cleverinformation” on a U.K. forum called Carder put together a how-to video that recommends posting fake job ads using a generic job application that can be modified to collect personal data. In September, someone going by “mrdudemanguy” on another forum, known as Dread, offered this advice to a person seeking stolen identities: “Pretend to be a local business and post some job ads. When they send in their résumé, call them and ask some basic job application questions. Make them think they’ve got the job as long as they can do a background check. For the background check request they send you photos or scans of ID documents.”

In response to a query from ProPublica, mrdudemanguy did not answer questions about sharing fake ads and instead focused on explaining the source of his recommended technique and its success. “I have not tried this method myself,” he wrote. “It’s just a method that I know other people do and it does work. It can be done in any part of the world, the country does not matter. As long as the job ad looks legitimate, a person looking for a job will be likely to apply.” Questions sent to cleverinformation yielded a similar response. “It’s effective,” the person said, noting that it’s an underused technique. The person added: “Trying to start a group chat where we share our knowledge.”

The ubiquitous ad for airport shuttle drivers was discussed in a similar forum. One version of it was posted in a Telegram channel of a Nigerian scam group called Yahoo Boys Community, along with instructions on what to tell applicants to get them to share their Social Security number, photographs of their driver’s license and other personal details. The post urged the group’s 5,000 members to ask applicants generic questions via email and offer them the gig — but only if they first shared their personal documents to land the plum job. “Once the client gives you the details, buzz me on WhatsApp and let start work on it Asap,” read the July message, whose initiator could not be identified.

Job application scams have been around in various forms for years. Some entice applicants to buy equipment or software from the scammers in preparation for a nonexistent job. Others try to trick victims into working for free or reshipping goods bought with stolen credit cards. But, according to law enforcement agencies, using fake job ads to steal identities and using them to cash in on government benefits is a new wrinkle.

Alexandra Mateus Vásquez fell for one such scam in December 2020. An aspiring painter, Vásquez was thinking of quitting her sales job at a suburban mall near New York City. She applied for a graphic designer position at the restaurant chain Steak ‘n Shake via the widely used job website Indeed. She was elated when what appeared to be a Steak ‘n Shake representative invited her via Gmail to participate in an email screening test for the job.

Conducting an interview via email initially struck Vásquez as odd, but she proceeded because the questions seemed standard. They included queries like “How do you meet tough deadlines?” according to emails she shared with ProPublica, and she provided earnest answers. Hours later she received an email offering her the job and asking for her address and phone number so a formal offer letter could be dispatched. The offered pay was attractive: $30 per hour. When the letter arrived, it sought her Social Security number, too. Vásquez provided all the requested information.

Soon Vásquez was invited for a background check, via online chat, with a supposed hiring manager. She found herself trading messages with an account that had a blurry photograph of an old man and the name “Iran Coleman” attached to it. (Several other applicants described similar experiences in a discussion about the Steak ‘n Shake job on the hiring site Glassdoor.)

The person claiming to be the Steak ‘n Shake’s hiring manager requested copies of Vásquez’s personal records to verify her identity. She shared photographs of her New York state ID and her green card but grew suspicious when the person asked for her credit card number, too. As Vásquez hesitated, she got a call from ID.me, an identity verification vendor used by 27 states to safeguard their unemployment insurance programs. The company asked if she was applying for jobless aid in California. That’s when she realized she was being scammed. “I was so disappointed,” Vásquez said. “I really believed that that position was real.”

Steak ‘n Shake did not respond to messages seeking comment. (ProPublica was able to reach Iran Coleman, the purported Steak ‘n Shake manager cited in the scam. He said the Louisville Steak ‘n Shake he used to manage is closed and he hasn’t worked there since at least 2014. He said he hadn’t updated his cursory LinkedIn profile, which lists him as a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant manager, in years. Coleman said he now manages three Waffle House restaurants. “I feel for that person,” he said of Vásquez when informed of her experience.)

Vásquez reported the incident to the police and contacted the Social Security Administration, which informed her that it had denied multiple requests to create an account in her name. (A spokesperson for the agency said privacy laws preclude it from discussing individual cases.) She then gave up on her job search. “I started doubting if all the jobs I’m applying for are real,” she said. Vásquez recently launched a website to begin selling paintings online and still hopes to become a design professional.

Blake Hall, chief executive of ID.me, said the company has rolled out language on its systems that informs users when their identities are being used to apply for unemployment insurance benefits and warns them not to proceed if they are being offered a job. Hall said it’s ultimately up to users to heed such warnings. “We will do as much as we can to make it clear that they’ve been scammed,” he said, “but ultimately protecting somebody from themself is a really tall order.” He compared his company to a goalkeeper who also needs help from other members of the team, in this case the job websites where criminals post fake ads.

The Better Business Bureau said in an alert last month that Indeed, LinkedIn and Facebook topped the list of online platforms where users reported spotting fraudulent job advertisements that duped them.

Indeed removes tens of millions of job listings that do not meet its quality guidelines each month, according to a company spokesperson, and it declines to list employers’ jobs if they do not pass those guidelines. In July, the site published a blog post detailing how to spot scam job ads. “Indeed puts job seekers at the heart of everything we do,” the spokesperson said.

LinkedIn removed 10 fake airport shuttle job postings after they were pointed out by ProPublica. A spokesperson said that posting bogus job ads is a “clear violation” of LinkedIn’s terms of service and said the company is investing in new ways of spotting them, such as hiring more human reviewers and expanding a work-email verification system for potential employers.

Facebook took down some of the airport shuttle posts after ProPublica alerted the service, but the company did not respond to questions about its processes for spotting and removing fake ads.

In recent months, the social media platform has also been plagued with fraudulent pages masquerading as state unemployment agencies. Some states complained to the U.S. Department of Labor that Facebook was slow to act on their requests to remove such pages, according to a March email from the department to state workforce agencies disclosed under a public records request. A Department of Labor official said that in March the agency set up a new process for states to report fake unemployment insurance websites to Facebook and that “to date, Facebook has been responsive in taking down fraudulent pages” reported by states.

New ones, however, keep popping up: A fake version of California’s Employment Development Department Facebook page was live as of Oct. 12. The agency confirmed the page was not its own, and it was removed from Facebook shortly after ProPublica’s inquiry.

Even if online platforms clean up their job postings, other identity theft scams are proliferating. On Oct. 15, the FBI issued an alert warning about fake websites that cybercriminals created to resemble the state unemployment websites of Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Criminals use the sites to steal victims’ sensitive personal information, according to the FBI.

Originally published on ProPublica by Cezary Podkul and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

Humanity ‘Way Off Track’: WMO Says Atmospheric Carbon at Level Unseen in 3 Million Years

October 26, 2021 Creative Commons

The new report has “a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP 26,” said the head of the World Meteorological Organization.

Carbon dioxide concentrations reached a new record high in 2020, with comparable levels not seen for roughly 3 million years, the United Nations weather agency said Monday.

“There is no time to lose.”

The findings came in the latest edition of the World Meteorological Organization’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released a week before COP 26—the U.N. climate summit—kicks off in Glasgow.

According to WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas, the report holds “a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators” headed to the summit.

The bulletin said globally averaged levels of CO2, as well as two other potent greenhouse gases—methane and nitrous oxide—were all up from the previous year.

CO2 reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2020—149% of the pre-industrial level. The increase from 2019 levels came despite pandemic-triggered lockdowns triggering an approximately 5.6% drop in fossil fuel CO2.

Methane stood at 262% and nitrous oxide at 123% of pre-industrial levels, the report said.

“At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” he said in a statement, warning, “We are way off track.”

“The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere breached the milestone of 400 parts per million in 2015. And just five years later, it exceeded 413 ppm,” Taalas added. “This is more than just a chemical formula and figures on a graph. It has major negative repercussions for our daily lives and well-being, for the state of our planet, and for the future of our children and grandchildren.”

Greenhouse gas levels are at new records. Again
Concentration of CO2 in 2020 was 149% of pre-industrial times
Economic slowdown from COVID-19 had no real impact
We are set for a 🌡️ increase much higher than #ParisAgreement target of 1.5°C-2°C.https://t.co/LQ5sVilzcE #COP26 pic.twitter.com/S0NHxa5jg9
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) October 25, 2021

“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer,” said Taalas. “The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now.”

The report also warned that land and oceans’ ability to continue serving as carbon sinks, sucking up about half of CO2 emissions, could be negatively affected by climate crisis-related changes such as wildfires.

Urging countries to turn “commitment into action,” Taalas said, “There is no time to lose.”

Dave Reay, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, also tied the bulletin’s findings to the upcoming U.N climate summit.

“The true success, or failure, of COP 26 will be written in our skies in the form of greenhouse gas concentrations,” he said in a statement. “This new report from the WMO provides a brutally frank assessment of what’s been written there to date.”

“So far,” he said, “it’s an epic fail.”

“Will this 26th COP find success where the previous 25 have fallen short?” Reay asked. “Our atmosphere will bear witness.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

Any Lawmaker Involved in Planning Jan. 6 Insurrection ‘Must Be Expelled,’ Says AOC

October 25, 2021 Creative Commons

Organizers of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol say that several congressional Republicans and White House officials helped plan former President Donald Trump’s coup attempt.

In response to new reporting that several congressional Republicans and White House officials were “intimately involved” in planning the January 6 Capitol attack—part of former President Donald Trump’s far-reaching election subversion plot—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday night demanded the expulsion of any lawmaker who aided and abetted the violent assault on U.S. democracy.

“Any member of Congress who helped plot a terrorist attack on our nation’s Capitol must be expelled,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “This was a terror attack. 138 injured, almost 10 dead. Those responsible remain a danger to our democracy, our country, and human life in the vicinity of our Capitol and beyond.”

Any member of Congress who helped plot a terrorist attack on our nation’s capitol must be expelled.

This was a terror attack. 138 injured, almost 10 dead. Those responsible remain a danger to our democracy, our country, and human life in the vicinity of our Capitol and beyond. https://t.co/D0qLlaFjTh
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 25, 2021

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) tweeted in response to the Rolling Stone report that her “resolution to investigate and expel the members of Congress who helped incite the deadly insurrection on our Capitol,” House Resolution 25, “is just waiting for a vote.”

My resolution to investigate and expel the Members of Congress who helped incite the deadly insurrection on our Capitol is just waiting for a vote.

It’s inexcusable to wait any longer.

Pass H.Res 25. https://t.co/HimDSDNc1I
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) October 25, 2021

On Sunday night, the magazine detailed “explosive allegations” about the January 6 riot, wherein a right-wing mob fueled by Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen stormed the halls of Congress in an attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Amid an ongoing probe led by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Rolling Stone has spoken with two unnamed individuals who were “involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification, which took place at the White House Ellipse,” and who are cooperating with the panel’s investigators. According to the magazine:

These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.

Among other things, the magazine reported that prior to January 6:

The two sources say they engaged in “dozens” of planning conversations, in which Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) participated or “had top staffers join”;
The two sources say they “interacted with members of Trump’s team.” That includes former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, “who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence,” as well as Katrina Pierson, a former member of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns whom one organizer called “our go-to girl” and “our primary advocate”;
Gosar, “who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters,” allegedly “dangled the possibility of a ‘blanket pardon’ in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.”

Both organizers received “several assurances” about the “blanket pardon” from Gosar, one source told Rolling Stone.

“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” said the source, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval… in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.”

“I was just going over the list of pardons and we just wanted to tell you guys how much we appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing,” Gosar said, according to the organizer.

The magazine has separately obtained documentary evidence that on January 6, both organizers were in contact with Boebert and Gosar, whose office is being investigated by the House select committee.

In addition, Rolling Stone reported, “both Brooks and Cawthorn spoke with Trump at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. In his speech at that event, Brooks, who was reportedly wearing body armor, declared, ‘Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.’ Gosar, Greene, and Boebert were all billed as speakers at the ‘Wild Protest,’ which also took place on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.”

One of the leading organizers of the latter event was Ali Alexander, leader of Stop the Steal, a key group promoting efforts to challenge Biden’s victory. In a since-deleted livestream broadcast, Alexander said that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped develop the strategy for the so-called “Wild Protest.”

At a December 2020 Stop the Steal event in Phoenix, Alexander called Gosar, one of the main speakers, “my captain,” and he also heaped praise on Biggs, describing him as “one of the other heroes.”

Both sources maintain that ahead of January 6, “the plan they had discussed with other organizers, Trump allies, and members of Congress was a rally that would solely take place at the Ellipse, where speakers—including the former president—would present ‘evidence’ about issues with the election. This demonstration would take place in conjunction with objections that were being made by Trump allies during the certification on the House floor that day,” Rolling Stonereported.

During his speech at the Ellipse, however, Trump encouraged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol, and before he had finished talking, the barricades were being stormed.

According to the two organizers, Alexander had agreed to not hold his “Wild Protest” at the Capitol, but when it appeared that the event may materialize, Meadows—one of four Trump allies subpoenaed by the House select committee—was made aware of concerns about the potential for violence.

Although there were earlier indications that the Trump administration and members of Congress “played some role in the Jan. 6 events and similar rallies that occurred in the lead-up to that day,” Rolling Stone noted, “the two sources say they can provide new details about the members’ specific roles in these efforts.”

“The sources plan to share that information with congressional investigators right away,” according to the magazine. “While both sources say their communications with the House’s Jan. 6 committee thus far have been informal, they are expecting to testify publicly.”

Just hours after the violent right-wing attack they helped foment through baseless allegations of voter fraud was contained, 147 GOP lawmakers—including more than two-thirds of House Republicans plus several Senate Republicans—voted in the early morning of January 7 to overturn election results in key states, attempting to disenfranchise millions of voters in the process.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) on Sunday urged people to “never forget” Trump’s failed coup attempt.

291 days ago terrorists ransacked the US Capitol and *hours later* 138-of-202 (68%) House republicans voted to make trump a dictator. They tried to finish the rioters’ job and end democracy. Never forget it.
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BillPascrell) October 25, 2021

Yale historian Timothy Snyder, meanwhile, warned that “a failed coup is a trial run for a successful coup.”

“Instead of just a person who makes a disorganized attempt,” said the expert on authoritarianism, “we now have that person, plus institutional machinery, time to plan, and the Big Lie.”

Since last year’s election, GOP lawmakers at the state level have weaponized lies about electoral fraud to legitimize anti-democratic electoral review mechanisms and a nationwide campaign of voter suppression, prompting University of Pennsylvania political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. to declare in a recent essay that maintaining Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress is necessary to prevent 2022 or 2024 from marking “the end of the proceduralist democracy to which we’ve been accustomed.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Apple, iOS 15, OS Software, Safari

Resetting the Safari Address Bar in iOS 15.1 and other stress reducing tips

October 25, 2021 Madison Santel

The biggest iOS update in years comes with a learning curve to match

According to analytics company mixpanel, the adoption of iOS 15 is much slower than iOS 14 a year ago. Speculation in the media for the cause of the reluctance is a few “bugs” that they also widely reported.

The fear of bugs is a good reason to take a major iOS upgrade at a slower pace, and this is probably a large part of the reason, for most people. On the other hand, after our review of both iOS 15 and iOS 15.1 (beta version) it is also true that this year’s free upgrades have a steeper learning curve than in the past.

Paradoxically, this is due to the fact that both the sheer number of new features, along with the ground breaking and innovative nature they have, are responsible for the cost and the benefit of taking the plunge.

The big 2 year transition to Apple Silicon is driving the pace of software progress

While iOS, iPad OS and macOS gradually converge as they grow (along with the Peripherals like Apple TV, Apple Watch, etc) the new features and upgrades to existing apps and actions are in the midst of an explosion.

Although this is great news, and the productivity improvements are, in some cases remarkable, especially if you use your apple devices for work and business, with so many new features there’s bound to be some reluctance to fight through the brain fog that can come with having to learn new unfamiliar habits.

Perhaps the best known example of this so far is the famous “address bar relocation” backlash that happened as a result of the new feature allowing the address bar to be at the top of the safari page on iPhone, or at the bottom, closer to our thumbs.

Initially there was no opt-out and it was bottom only (while it was still in the beta testing stage) and due to a rumored backlash from users this was upgraded to the current system where this “radical” new design is an option, with the more familiar previous layout also available. (see video below for details on how to switch back to the “old” style).

In the grand scheme of things going backwards is rarely better

This example of resistance to UX change, even by the “elite” beta users is a telling example of just how all pervasive the new software features are in iOS 15, and how much we will all need to learn new “tricks” to get the most out of the changes and added functionality.

It is also a long standing Apple tradition to try to make things, in both hardware and software design, that “just work” and do not require an “owners manual” or how-to guide to figure out.

While this, in the best case, is miraculous and we “get” the new features in an intuitive metaphorical heartbeat, more often recently, there is a frustrated moment of near panic when we find ourselves in a software dead-end, with no obvious back button or option menu to select from.

For this reason, it appears that the usefulness and necessity of how-to videos and guides, the very ones that Apple is in the business of making unnecessary, are more important than ever.

How-To guides get a new lease on life, thanks to Apple

Thankfully, Lynxotic, and others are on the case and we are working overtime to provide the next generation of DIY documentation, both in video and article form for iOS 15.1, macOS 12 Monterey, iPad OS 15.1 and beyond.

It’s great to be able to absorb new features and design upgrades intuitively and without the need for a separate learning project to educate ourselves enough to use the devices we are already using.

However, with the massive and increasingly more powerful potential of the new Apple Silicon fueled software upgrades, proactive learning may be something that is not just a necessary evil.

It is looking, rather, like it will be semi-permanent and highly fruitful activity we will want to add, willingly, to our overburdened existences.

At least for a couple of years during the transition to a much better future in the life of the Apple device & software ecosystem.

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News, Observation, Politics, Social Media, Tech

Profits Before People: ‘The Facebook Papers’ Expose Tech Giant Greed

October 25, 2021 Creative Commons

“This industry is rotten at its core,” said one critic, “and the clearest proof of that is what it’s doing to our children.”

Internal documents dubbed “The Facebook Papers” were published widely Monday by an international consortium of news outlets who jointly obtained the redacted materials recently made available to the U.S. Congress by company whistleblower Frances Haugen.

“It’s time for immediate action to hold the company accountable for the many harms it’s inflicted on our democracy.”

The papers were shared among 17 U.S. outlets as well as a separate group of news agencies in Europe, with all the journalists involved sharing the same publication date but performing their own reporting based on the documents.

According to the Financial Times, the “thousands of pages of leaked documents paint a damaging picture of a company that has prioritized growth” over other concerns. And the Washington Post concluded that the choices made by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as detailed in the revelations, “led to disastrous outcomes” for the social media giant and its users.

From an overview of the documents and the reporting project by the Associated Press:

The papers themselves are redacted versions of disclosures that Haugen has made over several months to the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging Facebook was prioritizing profits over safety and hiding its own research from investors and the public.
These complaints cover a range of topics, from its efforts to continue growing its audience, to how its platforms might harm children, to its alleged role in inciting political violence. The same redacted versions of those filings are being provided to members of Congress as part of its investigation. And that process continues as Haugen’s legal team goes through the process of redacting the SEC filings by removing the names of Facebook users and lower-level employees and turns them over to Congress.

One key revelation highlighted by the Financial Times is that Facebook has been perplexed by its own algorithms and another was that the company “fiddled while the Capitol burned” during the January 6th insurrection staged by loyalists to former President Donald Trump trying to halt the certification of last year’s election.

CNN warned that the totality of what’s contained in the documents “may be the biggest crisis in the company’s history,” but critics have long said that at the heart of the company’s problem is the business model upon which it was built and the mentality that governs it from the top, namely Zuckerberg himself.

On Friday, following reporting based on a second former employee of the company coming forward after Haugen, Free Press Action co-CEO Jessica J. González said “the latest whistleblower revelations confirm what many of us have been sounding the alarm about for years.”

“Facebook is not fit to govern itself,” said González. “The social-media giant is already trying to minimize the value and impact of these whistleblower exposés, including Frances Haugen’s. The information these brave individuals have brought forth is of immense importance to the public and we are grateful that these and other truth-tellers are stepping up.”

While Zuckerberg has testified multiple times before Congress, González said nothing has changed. “It’s time for Congress and the Biden administration to investigate a Facebook business model that profits from spreading the most extreme hate and disinformation,” she said. “It’s time for immediate action to hold the company accountable for the many harms it’s inflicted on our democracy.”

“Kids don’t stand a chance against the multibillion dollar Facebook machine, primed to feed them content that causes severe harm to mental and physical well being.”

With Haugen set to testify before the U.K. Parliament on Monday, activists in London staged protests against Facebook and Zuckerberg, making clear that the giant social media company should be seen as a global problem.

Flora Rebello Arduini, senior campaigner with the corporate accountability group, was part of a team that erected a large cardboard display of Zuckerberg “surfing a wave of cash” outside of Parliament with a flag that read, “I know we harm kids, but I don’t care”—a rip on a video Zuckerberg posted of himself earlier this year riding a hydrofoil while holding an American flag.

While Zuckerberg refused an invitation to tesify in the U.K. about the company’s activities, including the way it manipulates and potentially harms young users on the platform, critics like Arduini said the giant tech company must be held to account.

“Kids don’t stand a chance against the multibillion dollar Facebook machine, primed to feed them content that causes severe harm to mental and physical well being,” she said. “This industry is rotten at its core and the clearest proof of that is what it’s doing to our children. Lawmakers must urgently step in and pull the tech giants into line.”

Happening now: we are outside UK parliament with a visual protest against Facebook’s treatment of children and its business model which puts profit before public safety. (1/7) #PeopleVsBigTech pic.twitter.com/37UA18PL3r
— Ekō (@Eko_Movement) October 25, 2021

“Right now, Mark [Zuckerberg] is unaccountable,” Haugen told the Guardian in an interview ahead of her testimony. “He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety.”

Correction: This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the context of the comments made by Jessica González of Free Press, who responded to the revelations of a second whistleblower not those of Frances Haugen.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JON QUEALLY and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Business, News, Observation, Politics, Tech

When Amazon Takes the Buy Box, It Doesn’t Give It Up

October 25, 2021 Creative Commons

Many merchants sell the exact same item, including Amazon, which picks a winner–often itself

When you shop on Amazon for a widely available product—a pair of Crocs, say, or Greenies dog treats—Amazon will pick among the merchants that offer the item and give one of them the sale when you hit “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now.”

In e-commerce, this is called winning the buy box. Amazon said its “featured merchant algorithm” picks the winner, instantly weighing available sellers’ past performance, price, delivery speed, and other factors.

Researchers at Northeastern University studying price changes on Amazon found that the merchant that won the buy box—which Amazon calls its “featured offer”—changed for seven in 10 products over a six-week period in 2016.

Five years later, we found that’s no longer the case.

When The Markup compared snapshots of 1,200 popular products 12 weeks apart, we found that the buy box was much less dynamic. The seller changed for fewer than three in 10 products in our sample.

The products we analyzed all appeared on Amazon’s first search results page of popular searches, meaning they receive prominent exposure to customers. We collected the data from an I.P. address in Washington, D.C.

Among the competing sellers for commonly available goods is Amazon itself. And when Amazon gave itself the buy box on products that other merchants also sold, it remained the buy box seller 12 weeks later for 98 percent of those products.

Overall, Amazon dominated the buy box when multiple sellers were available. We found that Amazon chose itself as the winning merchant of the “featured offer” for about 40 percent of products, while the next highest seller got the buy box in just half of one percent of popular products in our sample.

It’s hard to say why Amazon is changing the buy box winner less frequently than five years ago, said Christo Wilson, an associate computer science professor and one of the Northeastern University researchers who completed the 2016 study.

“The negative take,” he said, would be that “the market is becoming less competitive or that it’s easier for an incumbent to just sort of squat and remain stable.”

Amazon spokesperson Nell Rona declined to answer questions for this story. During congressional inquiry Amazon officials said the company doesn’t favor itself in the buy box or consider its profits in that decision.

They did acknowledge, however, that whether a product could be delivered quickly for free to Prime members is a factor in picking the seller for the buy box. Merchants typically pay extra fees for Amazon’s shipping service—Fulfillment by Amazon—to get that designation.

We found that the merchant Amazon selected for the buy box for almost every product—nine-in-10 of them—used Amazon’s shipping service. When we checked again three months later, less than 8 percent of products had changed shippers from Amazon to a third-party or vice versa.

The European Commission announced an investigation last November into whether Amazon’s criteria for the buy box results in preferential treatment for Amazon’s retail offers or sellers that use Amazon’s shipping service, which the commission said would be an abuse of Amazon’s dominant market position under E.U. antitrust rules.

In a May 2021 lawsuit, the Washington, D.C., attorney general wrote that “Amazon’s selection methods for the Buy Box winner consider factors that further reinforce Amazon’s online retail sales market dominance,” such as whether the seller uses Fulfillment by Amazon. In a court filing, Amazon responded that the lawsuit “fails to allege essential elements of an antitrust claim and, in any event, the conduct it attacks has been held by courts to be procompetitive.” The suit is ongoing.

Wilson said automated pricing algorithms may be playing a role in what The Markup found. It may also be a broader shift on the marketplace away from sellers competing to sell the same product to sellers developing their own branded products that only they are allowed to sell.

That shifts the competition away from the buy box to the search rankings, he said.

The Markup also found that Amazon gave its house brands and exclusive products a leg up in search results, above competitors with higher star ratings and more reviews, which are an indication of sales. Wilson reviewed our methodology for this investigation.

It was while testing the accuracy of findings for our main investigation that we discovered the stability of the buy box. There was a two- to four-week delay between when The Markup gathered search results and product pages. We gathered a sub-sample of listings a second time 12 weeks later to examine the effects of the delay and found they were minuscule.

“I would have thought that given that these [are] identical products and given that they are competing with similar costs, that there would be a little bit more turnover,” said Florian Ederer, an associate professor of economics at the Yale School of Management.

Shoppers can click on a link that will allow them to see more offers for a product, in addition to the one featured in the buy box. But e-commerce experts say most don’t bother: They estimate that more than 80 percent of sales on Amazon go through the buy box.

“Amazon talks about its marketplace as though it were a market,” said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the small business advocacy group Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has been critical of Amazon’s size and effect on retail competition in the U.S.

“This is not a market,” she added. “This is an artificial environment that Amazon controls, and it’s set up certain parameters that lead to certain outcomes.”

This article was originally published on The Markup by Adrianne Jeffries and Leon Yin was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

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Apple, iOS 15, iPad, iPhone, OS Software

Now with iOS 15.1 you can put Proof of Vaccination ID into your Wallet

Video October 25, 2021 Kat Lee

When the iOS 15.1 update drops for the general public (likely soon as it’s already been seeded to beta testers since Monday) it will feature the ability to add your proof of vaccination status to the Health app and then create a vaccination ID card in Apple Wallet.

Though iOS 15 already has the ability to download the information to your Health app, and you can do this today, the last step, adding an ID to your wallet from the health app will not be possible until you have upgraded to iOS 15.1.

iOS 15.1 is likely to be available under > General > software update in your phone’s Settings app starting today.

Tap the download link on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Tap Add to Health to add the record to the Health app.
Tap Done.

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Hot-Lynx

Rolling Stone: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff

October 24, 2021 Madison Santel

Above: Collage by Lynxotic, from photos by various sources

Stunning allegations as revealed to Rolling Stone, including a promise of a “blanket pardon” from the Oval Office…

The Jan. 6th congressional investigations are beginning to yield more explosive results, according to statements made by some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies, who have communicated with house investigators and have shared new details about the Jan. 6 attacks and what took place when the Trump supporting crowds stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Rolling Stone reports that two of the planners spoke with them extensively in recent weeks and that “explosive allegations” were detailed, stating that multiple members of Congress were “intimately involved” in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss, as well as the violent events at the U.S. Captol on January 6th.

“Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses.”

Apple Unleashes the Beasts with M1 Pro and M1 Max Powered Laptops

Video October 23, 2021 Wiley Simms

If you can grub up the cash you will want these insanely great machines

Better sell some Crypto, perhaps all your Shiba and Dogecoin, cause the beasts are loose, beefy and pricy.

In the scheduled “unleashed” event today, broadcast virtually from Cupertino, Tim, Craig and the gang managed to surprise, not with the fully expected hardware items unveiled, but with the specs and otherworldly power of what they so aptly dubbed the Beasts.

The event was billed as being about music and creativity, and yes there were new AirPods and HomePod Minis, but without any doubt it was the incredible mac upgrades, in the form of 14” and 16” MacBook Pros that stole the show.

The format was no different than previous recent virtual events, but the details that exposed the extent and depth of the technological leap forward blew the format off it’s own hinges.

Although every spec was touted, from the screen upgrades, to endless new ports, to upgraded battery life, still the focus and excitement returned, again and again, to the Beasts: the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips and the system architecture built for them.

The animal analogy is no flight of zoological fantasy, with, at the high end, the M1 Max having 6x the speed and power of the current M1 – which already blew away reviewers and users with it’s own shocking ability to best what came before.

The party is on, but without a doubt, it is also exclusive

There are only two “downside” caveats, both kind of interrelated reverse compliments: There was no Mac Mini announcement, which is extremely sad for the great unwashed (like me!) and the prices are almost more beastly than the machines themselves.

A fully Maxxed out 16” MacBook Pro comes in at a hefty $6099, though that is with 8TB of SSD storage and 64GB of unified memory). Even a more modest configuration, dropping the SSD storage down to 4TB, while retaining the exalted 64GB unified, the toll is still $4299.

These are no everyday machines, but truly in the realm of Pro, in both specs and financial exclusivity.

And, hey, Apple has been here before, so an M1 Max based Mac Mini is likely to be delayed, if for no other reason, than to make sure that as many Pro users drop in for the whole mobile package – rather than building a budget system with money saved on 3rd party monitors and other practical cost cutting tricks.

All in all there’s an excitement in Today’s unleashing that slams into the core of any creative professional’s very being. Beastly power is tantalizingly within reach, all for a mere four to six thousand dollars… Or 1/10th of a BitCoin.

Live Text in iOS 15 shocks people with its utility and power

Video October 22, 2021 Madison Santel

Master the ways you can use it and information gathering on iPhone will never be the same

We are all cyborgs now, to paraphrase Elon Musk when speaking about his neural network project, neuralink. The implication is that we rely so heavily on the iphone in our pocket that it has been come a literal extension on our minds and bodies, like a bionic arm.

With live text features and functions using iPhone (or iPad) in iOS 15 and 15.1 there is a new and very powerful addition to our already amazing arsenal of sensory extension. But the use of these new powers is not always obvious, and since the iPhone comes without a user manual, or rather an infinite number of them via YouTube and the web, learning just how far this feature can take you is a journey in itself.

In typical Apple fashion, if there are 10 ways to use live text then there are 100

The first thing that is not immediately apparent but becomes clearer on repeated use is that you can extract text, including most handwriting, from any existing photo. It can be a photo you took to store some text (like a menu posted behind the deli counter or a for sale sign in front of the house you might want to bid on).

Less obvious is that you do not need to take a photo at all to activate the live text recognition options. You can just point the camera at the “thing” that has text on it that you want to extract. But taking this to it’s most extreme logical conclusion Apple has made it possible to access the camera from within various apps specifically to make it less of a hassle to get the text directly from that app you plan to store it in or send it from.

Examples in the video below include the Notes app, the Messages app (formerly iMessage) and the mail app.

It will also allow you to go directly to the phone app or Apple Maps to “act” on information that you gather, from any camera access node or from the camera app – such as extracting a phone number from a business card or a billboard and then just clicking call, or sending an address from either of those examples into Apple Maps and immediate get directions.

These are just a few of the “live” uses of the feature that come up amazingly often in real life. More detailed use cases will be in both the video below and in subsequent videos on this feature, already in the works.

iOS 15.1 is filled with features that have a myriad of use cases, almost too many to list or describe

Every year when a major upgrade is sent down from on high, there is adapting to do and bugs to avoid. Sometimes it seems like the effort to learn how to use the new features is nearly on par with the gains in productivity from the better performing software. Three steps forward and two steps back, as it were.

This is not the case with iOS 15 – it’s more like 10 steps forward and only four steps back! Seriously, there are so many new features that it is completely reasonable to want to slowly adapt to the improvements, no matter how exciting they may be.

But in the case of live text, as well as the extensive upgrades to nearly all the built in apps for iPhone, iPad and Macs, the future will reward those of us that proactively evolve with the software’s upgraded abilities.

For those that use iPhones and iPads with a mac laptop or desktop, the changes coming with iOS 15.1 and macOS 12 Monterey (scheduled to go public next week) are just the beginning of an intense evolution toward what we have been calling the “Apple OS ecosystem singularity”.

The added power from improved hardware in all Apple devices, along with the ever converging and evolving ability to interact with one another via software upgrades, is going to make the world feel like a very different (better?) place a year or two from now.

It’s only a question of if we, with our non-bionic brains and bodies, can adapt to the new powers that come our way fast enough to gain from them before the next wave of changes hits us with new challenges of adaptation.

Apple Articles:

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News, Observation, Politics

The Trump Administration Used Its Food Aid Program for Political Gain, Congressional Investigators Find

October 21, 2021 Creative Commons

The Food to Families program, touted by Ivanka Trump, gave tens of millions of dollars to unqualified firms and was also used to promote then-President Trump.

A $6 billion federal program created to provide fresh produce to families affected by the pandemic was mismanaged and used by the Trump administration for political gain, a new congressional report has found.

As a ProPublica investigation revealed last spring and as the new report further details, the Farmers to Families Food Box program gave contracts to companies that had no relevant experience and often lacked necessary licenses. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which released its report last week, found that former President Donald Trump’s administration did not adequately screen contractor applications or identify red flags in bid proposals.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

One company that received a $39 million contract was CRE8AD8 LLC (pronounced “Create a Date”), a wedding and event planning firm. The owner compared the contract to his usual work of “putting tchotchkes in a bag.”

In response to the report, the firm’s CEO said in a statement, “We delivered far more boxes/pounds than many other contractors and as a for-profit company, we’re allowed to make a profit.”

The congressional report also highlighted the application of an avocado grower who was initially awarded a $40 million contract before it was canceled after a review. Under the section of the application that required applicants to list references, the farmer wrote, “I don’t have any.”

The Food to Families program was created by the Department of Agriculture in the early days of the pandemic to give away produce that might have otherwise gone to waste as a result of disruptions in distribution chains. The boxes included produce, milk, dairy and cooked meats — and many also included a signed letter from then-President Trump.

The program was unveiled in May 2020 by Ivanka Trump. “I’m not shy about asking people to step up to the plate,” the president’s older daughter said in an interview to promote the initiative.

According to congressional investigators, Ivanka Trump was involved in getting the letter from her father added to the boxes. The USDA told contractors that including the letter was mandatory. Food bank operators told the investigators the letter concerned them because it didn’t appear to be politically neutral.

On the first day of the Republican National Convention in August 2020, President Trump and his daughter headlined a nearby event to announce an additional $1 billion for the food box program. Then-Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue also spoke at the event and encouraged attendees to reelect the president.

A federal ethics office later found that Perdue’s speech violated a federal law that prohibits officials from using their office for campaign purposes. The USDA at the time disputed the notion that Perdue was electioneering, saying that Perdue’s comments merely “predicted future behavior based on the president’s focus on helping ‘forgotten people.’”

The yearlong congressional investigation also identified problems with the deliveries themselves, including food safety issues, failed deliveries and uneven food distribution. Some contractors also forced recipient organizations to accept more food than they could distribute or store.

Committee chair Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a statement that the mismanagement of the program is another example of the previous administration’s failures.

“The Program was marred by a structure that prioritized industry over families, by contracting practices that prioritized cutting corners over competence, and by decisions that prioritized politics over the public good,” he said.

ProPublica also found that the Trump administration hired a lobbyist to counter the criticism that contracts were going to unqualified contractors.

President Joe Biden ended the program in May.

Representatives of the former president did not respond to a request for comment.

Originally published on ProPublica by Bianca Fortis and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Business, Coronavirus, News, Observation

Exposed: How Pfizer Exploits Secretive Vaccine Contracts to Strong-Arm Governments

October 21, 2021 Creative Commons

“Pfizer has used its monopoly on a lifesaving vaccine to extract concessions from desperate governments,” said the report’s author, urging action from the Biden administration.

Pfizer has used its position as a producer of one of the leading Covid-19 vaccines to “silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk, and maximize profits” through secret contracts with countries around the world, according to a Public Citizen report published Tuesday.

“The contracts consistently place Pfizer’s interests before public health imperatives.”

“Behind closed doors, Pfizer wields its power to extract a series of concerning concessions from governments,” report author Zain Rizvi, law and policy researcher at Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, said in a statement. “The global community cannot allow pharmaceutical corporations to keep calling the shots.”

The new report begins by noting February reporting about accusations of Pfizer—an American pharmaceutical giant that developed its mRNA vaccine with the German firm BioNTech—”bullying” Latin American governments during contract negotiations for doses.

Public Citizen obtained unredacted term sheets, drafts, or final agreements between Pfizer and Albania, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the European Commission, and Peru. The consumer rights advocacy group also examined redacted contracts with Chile, the U.S., and the U.K.

You can read our first story on Pfizer’s vaccine contracts in Latin America here. We found Pfizer had asked some countries to put up sovereign assets as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases. (Published February.)https://t.co/c0Y8qDIW4z
— Rosa Furneaux (@rosafurneaux) October 19, 2021

Based on those contracts, the report identifies six tactics Pfizer is using to serve the company rather than public health in the midst of a deadly pandemic:

1. Pfizer Reserves the Right to Silence Governments

The Brazilian government complained earlier this year that the company insisted on “unfair and abusive” terms but ultimately accepted a contract that “waived sovereign immunity; imposed no penalties on Pfizer for late deliveries; agreed to resolve disputes under a secret private arbitration under the laws of New York; and broadly indemnified Pfizer for civil claims.”

Brazil also agreed to a nondisclosure provision similar to those found in contracts with the European Commission and the U.S. government.

2. Pfizer Controls Donations

Again using Brazil as an example, the report points out that the South American nation must first get a go-ahead from Pfizer to accept donations or buy its vaccines from others. The country is also barred from “donating, distributing, exporting, or otherwise transporting the vaccine outside Brazil without Pfizer’s permission.”

3. Pfizer Secured an “IP Waiver” for Itself

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla “has emerged as a strident defender of intellectual property in the pandemic,” the report says, noting his opposition to a proposal that members of the World Trade Organization who signed on to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waive IP protections for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments during the crisis.

“But, in several contracts, Pfizer seems to recognize the risk posed by intellectual property to vaccine development, manufacturing, and sale,” Public Citizen explains. “The contracts shift responsibility for any intellectual property infringement that Pfizer might commit to the government purchasers. As a result, under the contract, Pfizer can use anyone’s intellectual property it pleases—largely without consequence.”

4. Private Arbitrators, Not Public Courts, Decide Disputes in Secret

While the U.K. contract requires that disputes are settled by secret panel of three private arbitrators under the Rules of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, the report says, “the Albania draft contract and Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, and Peru agreements require the governments to go further, with contractual disputes subject to ICC arbitration applying New York law.”

5. Pfizer Can Go After State Assets

“Pfizer required Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Peru to waive sovereign immunity,” the report highlights, detailing that the doctrine can sometimes protect states from companies trying to enforce decisions reached by the previously noted secret arbitral panels. Some of the contracts enable the company to “request that courts use state assets as a guarantee that Pfizer will be paid an arbitral award and/or use the assets to compensate Pfizer if the government does not pay,” according to Public Citizen.

6. Pfizer Calls the Shots on Key Decisions

“What happens if there are vaccine supply shortages? In the Albania draft contract and the Brazil and Colombia agreement, Pfizer will decide adjustments to the delivery schedule based on principles the corporation will decide” the report notes, concluding that “under the vast majority of contracts, Pfizer’s interests come first.”

Public Citizen calls on world leaders, especially U.S. President Joe Biden, to “push back” against Pfizer’s negotiating tactics and “rein in” its monopoly power.

According to the group, the Biden administration can “call on Pfizer to renegotiate existing commitments and pursue a fairer approach in the future” as well as “further rectify the power imbalance by sharing the vaccine recipe, under the Defense Production Act, to allow multiple producers to expand vaccine supplies.”

The U.S. administration “can also work to rapidly secure a broad waiver of intellectual property rules,” the report adds, declaring that “a wartime response against the virus demands nothing less.”

https://twitter.com/zainrizvi/status/1450499674436214784?s=20

In response to Public Citizen’s report, Sharon Castillo, a spokesperson for Pfizer, told The Washington Post that confidentiality clauses were “standard in commercial contracts” and “intended to help build trust between the parties, as well as protect the confidential commercial information exchanged during negotiations and included in final contracts.”

Castillo also said that “Pfizer has not interfered and has absolutely no intention of interfering with any country’s diplomatic, military, or culturally significant assets,” adding that “to suggest anything to the contrary is irresponsible and misleading.”

Meanwhile, Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, accused Pfizer of “taking advantage of countries’ desperation” with the far-reaching contracts.

“Most of us have sacrificed during the pandemic; staying distant to protect family and friends,” Maybarduk said Tuesday. “Pfizer went the other way, using its control of scarce vaccines to win special privileges, from people that have little choice.”

This article was originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT was republished under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Hot-Lynx

Congress want Amazon to Prove Bezos didn’t give perjured Testimony

October 18, 2021 Wiley Simms

While still CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos testified in Congress by video conference on July 29, 2020. Now, there are at least Five members of a congressional committee alleging that he and other executives may have lied under oath andmisled lawmakers.

In a press release by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee the lawmakers state that they are giving Amazon a “Final Chance to Correct the Record Following a Series of Misleading Testimony and Statements”.

CurrentAmazon CEO Andy Jassy, who, in July, succeeded Bezos is being asked to respond to the discrepancies, including information found by The Markup published in a recent article

After Docs ‘Show What We Feared’ About Amazon’s Monopoly Power, Warren Says ‘Break It Up’

October 18, 2021 Creative Commons

Leaked documents reveal the e-commerce company’s private-brands team in India “secretly exploited internal data” to copy products from other sellers and rigged search results.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday renewed her call to break up Amazon after internal documents obtained by Reuters revealed that the e-commerce giant engaged in anti-competitive behavior in India that it has long denied, including in testimonies from company leaders to Congress.

“These documents show what we feared about Amazon’s monopoly power—that the company is willing and able to rig its platform to benefit its bottom line while stiffing small businesses and entrepreneurs,” tweeted Warren (D-Mass.) “This is one of the many reasons we need to break it up.”

Warren is a vocal advocate of breaking up tech giants including but not limited to Amazon. The company faces investigations regarding alleged anti-competitive behavior in the United States as well as Europe and India. The investigative report may ramp up such probes.

Aditya Karla and Steve Stecklow report that “thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents examined by Reuters—including emails, strategy papers, and business plans—show the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India, one of the company’s largest growth markets.”

“The documents reveal how Amazon’s private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from Amazon.in to copy products sold by other companies, and then offered them on its platform,” according to the reporters. “The employees also stoked sales of Amazon private-brand products by rigging Amazon’s search results.”

In India, Amazon stoked sales of private-brand products by manipulating its search results so that the products would appear ‘in the first 2 or three … search results’ when customers were shopping on https://t.co/OA0tY09fhk, an internal document shows https://t.co/1FMsAX0pza
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 13, 2021

As Reuters notes:

In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favor them.
But the internal documents seen by Reuters show for the first time that, at least in India, manipulating search results to favor Amazon’s own products, as well as copying other sellers’ goods, were part of a formal, clandestine strategy at Amazon—and that high-level executives were told about it. The documents show that two executives reviewed the India strategy—senior vice presidents Diego Piacentini, who has since left the company, and Russell Grandinetti, who currently runs Amazon’s international consumer business.

While neither Piacentini nor Grandinetti responded to Reuters‘ requests for comment, Amazon provided a written response that did not address the reporters’ questions.

“As Reuters hasn’t shared the documents or their provenance with us, we are unable to confirm the veracity or otherwise of the information and claims as stated,” Amazon said. “We believe these claims are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.”

“We display search results based on relevance to the customer’s search query, irrespective of whether such products have private brands offered by sellers or not,” the company said, adding that it “strictly prohibits the use or sharing of nonpublic, seller-specific data for the benefit of any seller, including sellers of private brands.”

Warren was not alone in calling for the breakup of Amazon following the report.

“This is not shocking. But it is appalling,” the American Economic Liberties Project said in a series of tweets. “Independent businesses have sounded the alarm for years—providing evidence that Amazon stole their intellectual property.”

4/ Months later, in April 2020, @WSJ revealed that Amazon had been stealing from independent businesses to create competing products.https://t.co/ZgsNmtExIJ
— American Economic Liberties Project (@econliberties) October 13, 2021

“We said back in 2020 that a perjury referral was in order—and it still is,” the group added, highlighting testimony from Bezos and Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel. “But Amazon will remain an anti-business behemoth, flagrantly breaking the law and daring policymakers to stop them.”

Highlighting a report from a trio of its experts, Economic Liberties added that “it’s time to break Amazon up.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Crypto, Videos

Pi is not just the Secret of the Universe, it Might also be the Future of Cryptocurrency

Video October 17, 2021 Danny Leeds

Crypto converts are obsessed with price – Pi is not yet released but has a more important goal before an initial value is set: 100 million users / miners

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain are here to stay.

But does the world need yet another cryptocurrency?

Can a stable, safe currency be created that is more than just another speculative playground?

What if a coin could be mined by millions, even billions on their cell phones?

What if the mining proceeds were shared equitably by all?

What if transactions and trading could be administered and verified by the same billion users that are also the holders, traders and miners?

And what if the Pioneers would be able to use the Pi network to communicate and trade and brainstorm with each other?

Would that be a utopian fantasy?

The future is uncertain but Pi addresses many of the shortcomings of the current system

There are now so many crypto coins that just the names or the underlying concepts are difficult to list, let alone understand. With over 6,000 as of August 2021, it is not likely that very many will survive in the long term.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain and the origins and technical backdrop that led to the current explosion of interest in buying, trading, owning and mining is maddeningly complex for beginners. For that reason please follow links from this page or see some of our previous articles for more information and background.

It’s natural that most of the attention by the media is focused on the top 10, even the top 2 cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and Ethereum / Ether. Both are well established, and Bitcoin having a market cap (total of all outstanding coins multiplied by the current price in fiat dollars) of over 800 billion, is highly likely to survive

One issue for all crypto, however, is the way that they are mined, and how the blockchain ledger is maintained. The proof of work system for Bitcoin has pros and cons that have people debating if it can ultimately remain the standard.

Ethereum is undergoing a complex transition away from a similar system to a new variant, and this is touted by many as likely to lead to its ultimate superiority while others don’t see that as a given.

Above: Photo credit Pi / 1998 Artisan Entertainment

Price wars are getting all the attention but an alternative is quietly amassing millions of adherents

Meanwhile Pi (π), a little known alternative coin with a radical underlying concept, created by it’s core team based at Stanford, has a few very unique features. These deviations from the norm make for a new direction in how cryptocurrency can function. And the launch via a proprietary 3 phase plan is also unique and worthy of note.

While many alt-coins are fly-by-night fast buck scams, launched in weeks or even days, little more than an exercise in crypto-branding as an end in itself (Jake Paul has an NFT game coin launching September 1st, nuff said) Pi (π) is conceived with the polar opposite of this “wild west-fly-by-night” ethos.

Simply put, Pi (π) is a new cryptocurrency. Its claim to fame is that it was designed from the ground up to be “mined” by its users on their cell phones. It was also designed to be the most egalitarian and evenly distributed coin in terms of ownership.

Above: Photo credit Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

The founders, a group of P.H.D.s out of Stanford, wanted to design a next generation cryptocurrency that would solve some of the problems of the first generation, notably Bitcoin.

Perhaps due to the frenzy and mania surrounding the price increase, measured against the dollar, for Bitcoin and others, there has been precious little in the media taking the idea of wealth distribution among crypto coin holders (hodlers in the jargon of alt coins) and almost nothing about using millions (and eventually billions) cell phones to mine and what benefits could potentially be derived from doing exactly that.

One obvious benefit, which seems to solve the issue of massive amounts of electricity, particularly “dirty” electricity as opposed to sustainable power from solar, etc., currently used for Bitcoin mining.

A second related issue is the massive expensive machinery needed to mine even a single Bitcoin (currently around $50,000 in value) and the natural concentration of those mining proceeds going into the hands of a tiny number of huge companies.

Further, there is the problem of transaction difficulty and speed (slow) due to the system and the computer power required to maintain the blockchain ledger.

And with the massive and vast run up in price, that phenomenon that everyone’s so excited about, has put billions in USD$ value into the hands of early adopters and very few others, which is not desirable if you are one of the billions of people on earth who do not own any Bitcoin.

In phase 3 the potential of Pi will begin to be realized

The live launch of Pi (π) will come in stage three and until then the coin can not be bought or traded. The status of the project is currently in phase 2, known as Testnet, with over 23 million “pioneers” who mine and hold Pi on their cellphones.

A deeper level of the eventual expansion of the project, with a goal of 100 million users set, with an eventual billion user base not out of the question, is the fact that this base would automatically represent a “private” and separate internet of sorts.

There are plans in the works for trading, bartering and interacting much in the way social media and the web work today but without any intermediaries such a Zuckerberg, and no restrictions on interaction and transactions, other than the security built in to the system.

If this, or a similar system with the same goals and objectives, were to take off and take hold the level of potential impact on the world and especially existing the financial structures and even internet and social media communication would be mind boggling, to say the least.

Phase 3, known in Pi world as “Mainnet” is when the cryptocurrency will officially launch and be ascribed an initial value.

Here is an edited description for Phase 3 from the Pi official website:

When the community feels the software is ready for production, and it has been thoroughly tested on the testnet, the official mainnet of the Pi network will be launched. After this point, the faucet and Pi network emulator of Phase 1 will be shut down and the system will continue on its own forever.

Future updates to the protocol will be contributed by the Pi developer community and Pi’s core team, and will be proposed by the committee. Their implementation and deployment will depend on nodes updating the mining software just like any other blockchains.

No central authority will be controlling the currency and it will be fully decentralized. Balances of fake users or duplicate users will be discarded. This is the phase when Pi can be connected to exchanges and be exchanged for other currencies.

In development for over 2 years, the white paper was initially published on March 1st 2019, by the aforementioned team of Standford PhDs behind Pi.

Pi is built on a unique concept from a legitimate source, looking to solve important problems

Currently there are 7,916 (as per CoinGecko) and if you want to dig deeper into why that number is not undisputed, and how the realm is still expanding at a very rapid pace, this is a good article to look into that.

However, the only question that matters for this article is why Pi is different than the rest and why the world might need it, even with so many contenders and pretenders already in the queue.

Pi is being developed at Stanford by a team headed by Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis, Head of Technology. A Stanford PhD and instructor of Stanford’s first decentralized applications class; combining distributed systems and human computer interaction to bring cryptocurrency to everyday people.

The primary and first raison d’être for Pi is built into its definition according to the Pi Network web site:

”Pi is a new cryptocurrency for and by everyday people that you can “mine” (or earn) from your phone”

Simple enough, but groundbreaking in consequence when seen from the perspective of the challenges and solutions that are being developed and promoted among the many others in the crypto space.

”Mining crypto is hard. Investing in crypto is risky. Too many of us are left out of the cryptocurrency revolution.”
— Pi Network

One big issue that has been on the radar relating to the future of crypto is how various mining (proof of work), ( proof of stake) or farming (proof of space & time)

Bitcoin is the top crypto currency and uses proof of work mining, Cardano is a coin that is based on proof of stake, as are also lesser known alt coins, including Polygon, Tezos, Polkadot and EOS. These proof of stake coins could all be overtaken in importance, however, by the project called Ethereum 2.0, which would take the second largest cryptocurrency which would be an alternative version of Ethereum that is based on proof of stake, rather than proof of work, as is currently the case for Ethereum (1).

Finally Chia is the most prominent example of farming using hard drive space and processing to maintain proof of space and time.

The current state of cryptocurrency conceptual frameworks and how Pi is different

Rather than going into a complex and contentious discussion of the various methods and coins listed above, suffice it to say that proof of work, which was built for Bitcoin and is the most established and recognized method for a blockchain solution to maintaining the security and privacy of the a cryptocurrency.

One of the reasons that these alternatives are cropping up, beyond the speculative frenzy and profit motives that accompanied the price peak in crypto earlier this year (2021), is the somewhat overblown outcry regarding the energy intensive process of proof of work mining as it is currently the norm for bitcoin mining.

This is a concern, and added to it is the fact that the most profitable method for mining bit coin is have an extremely large ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) farm which has reduced the goal of decentralization (DeFi) to a very large extent.

For these reasons and more, Pi is being developed to be the first truly decentralized crypto coin that is mined via cell phone and that does not therefore require special, extremely expensive, gear or huge amount of electricity.

Over 70,000 March in Brussels to Demand Green New Deal, Urgent Climate Action

Video October 13, 2021 Creative Commons

“What do we do when we destroy the planet?” asked one demonstrator. “We have nothing else.”

Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Brussels on Sunday to demand Belgium’s elected leaders and others from around the world finally dispense with proclamations, broken promises, and half-measures and instead “act” on the climate emergency.

“We need a Belgian Green New Deal and we propose more than 100 concrete solutions to make it happen.”

With U.N. climate conference (COP26) set for next month in Glasgow, the estimated 70,000 or more people who took part in the march offered a dramatic show of force for the nation’s climate movement.

Zanna Vanrenterghem of Greenpeace Belgium told The Brussels Times on Sunday that her government’s climate pledges so far “are not ambitious enough,” but that words are no longer enough. “It is one thing to talk about climate,” she said, “and another to take concrete action.”

Ahead of the march, Vanrenterghem said the message from the Klimaatcoalitie (Climate Coalition), which she co-chairs and that organized the march, was a simple one: “We demand ambitious, solidarity-based and coherent measures. We need a Belgian Green New Deal and we propose more than 100 concrete solutions to make it happen.”

Up to 70 000 people took on the streets of #Brussels today for the #climate strike.

The first mobilization since the pandemic exceeded all expectations and sent a strong message to leaders ahead of #COP26 🌍

What a moment of unity ✊🏼 #BackToTheClimate https://t.co/cUN1HapgXq
— Annika Ojala (@ojala_annika) October 10, 2021

According to the Associated Press:

Thousands of people and 80 organizations took part in the protest, aiming for the biggest such event in the European Union’s capital since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which stopped the climate movement’s weekly marches in its tracks.
Cyclists, families with children and white-haired demonstrators filled city streets, chanting slogans demanding climate justice and waving banners in English, French and Dutch. One carried a stuffed polar bear on her head, and others were dressed as animals endangered by human-caused climate change.

The crowds was large—with the march often stretching further than the eye could see—and participants each sharing their various reasons for attending. Signs and banners said things like “Destroy the System/Not the Planet”; “Walk the Talk”; and “Protect What You Love.”

Lucien Dewanaga, a marcher who spoke with AP, asked the question: “What do we do when we destroy the planet? We have nothing else. Human beings have to live in this world. And there is only one world.”

I’m at Belgium’s climate march and it’s fucking massive#ClimateCrisis #BackToTheClimate #klimamars #ClimateActionNow!!! pic.twitter.com/Da7CNXCVL5
— Robbie Blake (@RobbBla) October 10, 2021

According to Vanrenterghem, extreme weather within Belgium and elsewhere in the world over the past year have offered only more reasons for leaders to turn lofty rhetoric into the concrete policies that scientists say are necessary to stave off the worst impacts.

“The tough climate actions of the past few years have put the climate crisis high on the political agenda,” she said. “Now is the time for politicians to turn their promises into concrete action.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by COMMON DREAMS STAFF and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

A Quarter of All ‘Critical’ US Infrastructure at Risk From Flooding: Report

October 13, 2021 Creative Commons

“Our nation’s infrastructure is not built to a standard that protects against the level of flood risk we face today, let alone how those risks will grow over the next 30 years as the climate changes,” said one expert.

Underscoring the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions and invest in public goods to better prepare communities across the United States for escalating extreme weather, a new report released Monday finds that one-quarter of the nation’s “critical” infrastructure is already susceptible to flooding that renders it inaccessible, with risks projected to increase in the coming decades.

Described as the first-ever nationwide evaluation of community-level vulnerability to flooding, the report—Infrastructure on the Brink, compiled by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group that specializes in environmental risk assessment—highlights localities where housing, commercial real estate, transportation networks, schools, hospitals, power plants, and other pieces of infrastructure face operational flood risk in 2021.

The analysis also explores how spatial patterns of flood risk are expected to change over the next 30 years, as the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency exacerbates sea-level rise and extreme rainfall events, which pose direct and indirect threats to the safety and well-being of people throughout the U.S.

“It is clear, now more than ever,” the report states, “that the ways and places in which we live are likely to continue to be impacted by our changing environment. One of the most important implications in this development is the vulnerability of our national infrastructure.”

Using a unique national database that contains parcel-level flood risk information—combining hazards, exposure, and vulnerability—as well as over 20,000 flood adaptation measures, the report maps Americans’ current and future flood risks based on their proximity to coasts and flood plains plus the estimated impacts of flood-damaged infrastructure at the broader scales of neighborhoods, zip codes, cities, and counties.

As the authors note, “Individuals whose homes were spared the impact of a particular flood event are increasingly likely to find their local roads, businesses, critical infrastructure, utilities, or emergency services affected.”

The report assesses risk to (1) residential properties; (2) roads; (3) commercial properties; (4) critical infrastructure (airports, fire stations, hospitals, police stations, ports, power stations, superfund/hazardous waste sites, water outfalls, and wastewater treatment facilities); and (5) social infrastructure (government buildings, historic buildings, houses of worship, museums, and schools).

Defining risk as “the unique level of flooding for each infrastructure type relative to operational thresholds,” the report finds:

Risk to residential properties is expected to increase by 10% over the next 30 years with 12.4 million properties at risk today (14%) and 13.6 million at risk of flooding in 2051 (16%);
Two million miles of road (25%) are at risk today and that is expected to increase to 2.2 million miles of road (26%) over the next 30 years (a 3% increase over the next 30 years);
Commercial properties are expected to see a 7% increase in risk of flooding from 2021 to 2051, with 918,540 at risk today (20%) and 984,591 at risk of flooding in 30 years (21%);
Currently, 35,776 critical infrastructure facilities are at risk today (25%), increasing to 37,786 facilities by 2051 (26%), a 6% increase in risk; and
Compounding that risk, 71,717 pieces of social infrastructure facilities are at risk today (17%), increasing to 77,843 by 2051 (19%), an increase of 9% over that time period.

The report comes in the wake of several highly destructive flooding events that affected various parts of the U.S. this summer, including one in Tennessee in August as well as the inundation of New York City’s subway system in July and again in September during Hurricane Ida—deadly and costly disasters that exposed how ill-prepared the country is to reduce extreme weather-related infrastructure damage and the ensuing consequences.

The new analysis also points to earlier catastrophes, such as Hurricane Sandy, which hit the New York City metropolitan area in 2012 and “flooded hospitals, crippled electrical substations, overwhelmed wastewater treatment centers, and shut down power and water to tens of millions of people.”

“Our nation’s infrastructure is not built to a standard that protects against the level of flood risk we face today, let alone how those risks will grow over the next 30 years as the climate changes,” Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of the First Street Foundation, said in a statement.

“This report highlights the cities and counties whose vital infrastructure are most at risk today and will help inform where investment dollars should flow in order to best mitigate against that risk,” Edy added.

According to the report:

There are significant differences at the county and city level in the amount of risk that exists today and into the future. Most importantly, there are a group of counties and cities that have persistent patterns of vulnerability across multiple dimensions of physical risk from flooding. These areas tend to be in regions with well-established flood risk, such as coastal flood plains along the Gulf and Southeastern coasts of the U.S., but also in less well-known flood zones, such as in the Appalachian Mountain regions of West Virginia and Kentucky.
To that point, 17 of the top 20 counties in the U.S. which are most at risk (85%) are in the states of Louisiana, Florida, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Additionally, the top cities at risk of flooding persistently show up in the states of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. The analysis further uncovered a high degree of vulnerability in some of the major population centers in the U.S., including New Orleans, Miami, Tampa, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Even as extreme storms and material insecurity become more common and severe—rendering continued inaction far more expensive than prevention—congressional Republicans and a handful of conservative Democratic lawmakers swimming in corporate cash continue to fight against the Build Back Better Act, a President Joe Biden-endorsed proposal to invest trillions in strengthening climate action and expanding the nation’s relatively underdeveloped welfare state.

Opposition to greening the nation’s physical infrastructure and improving its social infrastructure increases disaster vulnerabilities and worsens impacts, particularly in marginalized communities, experts say, although the inverse—simultaneously addressing the intensifying crises of climate and inequality—is also possible.

“The decarbonization question, the infrastructure question, and the inequalities question are the same question,” Daniel Aldana Cohen, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, tweeted last week. “Only an epic struggle from the left, combining mass organization, mobilization, and technical expertise—across borders—can provide a good answer in the 2020s.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Apple, Apple Services, iPhone, Mac, News, OS Software, Tech

Apple announces ‘Unleashed’ event: unveiling of MacBook Pros, Mini and Airpod Pro 3s are likely

Video October 12, 2021 Wiley Simms

Eagerly awaited M1x chip expected to star and be unleashed in new Macs

For the second time in October Apple is hosting a virtual event to reveal new products and software. On October 18, 2021 at 10 the show will start, streamed as usual, from Apple Park.

Virtual events have become the norm since the pandemic restricted the possibility for live audiences. A bright side for this is that the production values for the virtual event have improved drastically in the last year and that makes for great streaming and online consumption after the fact in various forms of edited clips and screen shots.

Coming hot on the heels of the big iPhone 13 extravaganza earlier this month, this is turning out to be a big year for long awaited new products, and the M1x will potentially be the crowning achievement of the year.

Already a hit in the initial release the M series was received with a near ecstatic reaction with many in a state of awe when the upgraded capabilities were tested and measured in the wild.

As is widely known, the Intel i-7 chip was the workhorse for many years, with added cores and clock speeds helping somewhat, but with the M1 there was finally something that could usher in a new era of processors, particularly when used with optimized software from Apple and others.

With the M1x (with being the projected moniker with the actual designation to be confirmed on the 18th) there could be an even larger leap into faster, more efficient processor performance.

Gear lined up according to rumors and best intel on the street

Highly anticipated are MacBook Pros, with various larger screens and possible other hardware upgrades in addition to the new M1x, a mac mini with updated specs would be huge and many have pointed to an AirPod 3rd generation with unknown improvements.

As is often the case, if there are additional announcements they are likely to be big surprises and very interesting, the consensus is so all pervasive that is there is any deviation (like the absence of any of the above) it is going to be a shock.

The tweet from Apple Mktng SVP Greg Joswiak has a fun video that sets the tone for the virtual presentation and is likely to be followed with great content live streamed on Oct. 18th, with the option to tune in later for replays.

Unleashed! These next six days are going to speed by. #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/0ops2bVPvl
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) October 12, 2021

Even without surprises this will be a very important event with immense repercussions for all mac users. We will be covering the action live with additional details so please stay tuned.

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1447956448961392642/pu/vid/640x640/LqTEYtgCvSlcxu9F.mp4?tag=12

While Americans Sleep, Our Corporate Overlords Make Progress Impossible

October 10, 2021 Creative Commons

Both the Republicans and the Democrats vote as if the nation’s middle-class taxpayer is a sleeping sucker.

by Ralph Nader

“Polarization” is the word most associated with the positions of the Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The mass media and the commentators never tire of this focus, in part because such clashes create the flashes conducive to daily coverage.

Politicians from both parties exploit voters who don’t do their homework on voting records and let the lawmakers use the people’s sovereign power (remember the Constitution’s “We the People”) against them on behalf of the big corporate bosses.

The quiet harmony between the two parties created by the omnipresent power of Big Business and other powerful single-issue lobbyists is often the status quo. That’s why there are so few changes in this country’s politics.

In many cases, the similarities of both major parties are tied to the fundamental concentration of power by the few over the many. In short, the two parties regularly agree on anti-democratic abuses of power. Granted, there are always a few exceptions among the rank & file. Here are some areas of Republican and Democrat concurrence:

1. The Duopoly shares the same stage on a militaristic, imperial foreign policy and massive unaudited military budgets. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Pentagon budget was voted out of a House committee by the Democrats and the GOP with $24 billion MORE than what President Biden asked for from Congress. Neither party does much of anything to curtail the huge waste, fraud, and abuse of corporate military contractors, or the Pentagon’s violation of federal law since 1992 requiring annual auditable data on DOD spending be provided to Congress, the president, and the public.

2. Both Parties allow unconstitutional wars violating federal laws and international treaties that we signed onto long ago, including restrictions on the use of force under the United Nations Charter.

3. Both Parties ignore the burgeoning corporate welfare subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts turning oceans of inefficient, mismanaged, and coddled profit-glutted companies into tenured corporate welfare Kings.

4. Both Parties decline to crack down on the nationwide corporate crime spree. They don’t even like to use the phrase “corporate crime” or “corporate crime wave.” They prefer to delicately allude to “white-collar crime.”

Trillions of dollars are at stake every year, yet neither party holds corporate crime hearings nor proposes an update of the obsolete, weak federal corporate criminal laws.

In some instances, there is no criminal penalty at all for willful and knowing violations of safety regulatory laws (e.g., the auto safety and aviation safety laws). Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is trying to find just one Republican Senator to co-sponsor the “Hide No Harm Act” that would make it a crime for a corporate officer to knowingly conceal information about a corporate action or product that poses the danger of death or serious physical injury to consumers or workers.

5. Both Parties allow Wall Street’s inexhaustibly greedy CEOs to prey on innocents, including small investors. They also do nothing to curb hundreds of billions of dollars in computerized billing fraud, especially in the health care industry. (See, License to Steal by Malcolm K. Sparrow and a GAO Report about thirty years ago).

6. The third leading cause of death in the U.S. is fatalities from preventable problems in hospitals and clinics. According to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study in 2015, a conservative estimate is that 250,000 people yearly are dying from preventable conditions. Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has an effort remotely up to the scale required to reduce this staggering level of mortality and morbidity. Nor is the American Medical Association (AMA) engaging with this avoidable epidemic.

7. Both Parties sped bailout of over $50 billion to the airline industry during Covid-19, after the companies had spent about $45 billion on unproductive stock buybacks over the last few years to raise the metrics used to boost executive pay.

8. Both Parties starve corporate law enforcement budgets in the Justice Department, the regulatory agencies, and such departments as Labor, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. The Duopoly’s view is that there be no additional federal cops on the corporate crime beat.

9. Both Parties prostrate themselves before the bank-funded Federal Reserve. There are no congressional audits, no congressional oversight of the Fed’s secret, murky operations, and massive printing of money to juice up Wall Street, while keeping interest rates near zero for trillions of dollars held by over one hundred million small to midsize savers in America.

10. Both Parties are wedded to constant and huge bailouts of the risky declining, uncompetitive (with solar and wind energy) nuclear power industry. This is corporate socialism at its worst. Without your taxpayer and ratepayer dollars, nuclear plants would be closing down faster than is now the case. Bipartisan proposals for more nukes come with large subsidies and guarantees by Uncle Sam.

11. Both Parties hate Third Parties and engage in the political bigotry of obstructing their ballot access (See: Richard Winger’s Ballot Access News), with hurdles, harassing lawsuits, and exclusions from public debates. The goal of both parties is to stop a competitive democracy.

12. Both Parties overwhelmingly rubber-stamp whatever the Israeli government wants in the latest U.S. military weaponry, the suppression of Palestinians and illegal occupation of the remaining Palestinian lands, and the periodic slaughter of Gazans with U.S. weapons. The Duopoly also supports the use of the U.S. veto in the UN Security Council to insulate Israel from UN sanctions.

13. Continuing Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich’s debilitating internal deforms of congressional infrastructures, the Democrats have gone along with the GOP’s shrinking of committee and staff budgets, abolition of the crucial Office of Technology Assessment’s (OTA) budget, and concentration of excessive power in the hands of the Speaker and Senate leader. This little noticed immolation reduces further the legislature’s ability to oversee the huge sprawling Executive Branch. The erosion of congressional power is furthered by the three-day work week Congress has reserved for itself.

14. Even on what might seem to be healthy partisan differences, the Democrats and the GOP agree not to replace or ease out Trump’s Director of the Internal Revenue Service, a former corporate loophole tax lawyer, or the head of the U.S. Postal Service, a former profiteer off the Post Office who will shortly curtail service even more than he did in 2020 (See: First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, by Christopher W Shaw).

Right now, both Parties are readying to give over $50 billion of your tax money to the very profitable under-taxed computer chip industry companies like Intel and Nvidia, so they can make more profit-building plants in the U.S. These companies are loaded with cash. They should invest their own money and stop the stock buyback craze. Isn’t that what capitalism is all about?

Both Parties vote as if the American middle-class taxpayer is a sleeping sucker. Politicians from both parties exploit voters who don’t do their homework on voting records and let the lawmakers use the people’s sovereign power (remember the Constitution’s “We the People”) against them on behalf of the big corporate bosses.

Sleep on America, you have nothing to lose but your dreams.

Originally published on Common Dreams by RALPH NADER and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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