Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d talk (briefly!) about the COVID-19 cancellations, but more extensively about Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and his, shall we say, interesting night in a South Beach Hotel; the Other Staffers are dealing … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d talk about the ammo and gun shortage in reaction to COVID-19, as well as an innovative strategy for keeping people working and happy; David tells us how to swage your own bullets; … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d talk about a defensive gun use that stopped a potential mass shooting, then discuss the assorted nuttery happening in relationship to the COVID-19 quarantine; Loveball returns to the show to talk about what … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d talk about some of the latest restrictions due to the COVID-19 lockdown, and then discuss how it’s affected the latest Magic: the Gathering expansion; David talks about some of the challenges you … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d discuss the increasing desperation of anti-gunners as they react to mass firearm purchases by Americans of all walks of life; Weer’d fisks a stand-up routine by Steve Hofstetter; David tells us how … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: It’s a “Nothing But Weer’d Beard Segments” show, so Erin takes over in order to have some time on-air! Erin and Weer’d discuss certain states relaxing their quarantine, Dick’s Sporting Goods feeling the consequences of … Continue reading →

Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d discuss the recent spree killing in Canada, and the conspicuous lack of information on it; David talks about gun parts that are great to have around; Weer’d interviews Logan Metesh of High … Continue reading →

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 191: A Primer to Prepare for the Connected Airport and the Internet of Things introduces the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) within the airport environment to leverage current and emerging technologies. IoT can be used to provide information and services to airport passengers with current and evolving technologies. Airports, airlines, and other stakeholders can use these innovative technologies and data to enhance the user exp...

Large-scale, complex airport construction projects have the same issues as construction projects on a smaller scale, but they present a series of specialized legal issues. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Legal Research Digest 38: Legal Issues Related to Large-Scale Airport Construction Projects focuses on those legal issues causing the most significant risks during planning, design, permitting, procurement, and construction.

Fast radio bursts last for such a short time that it is difficult to track down the source. Now astronomers have found one in our own back yard.

The post A Fast Radio Burst Has Been Detected From Inside The Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

"America's Funniest Home Videos" will resume the remainder of season 30 the following week at 7:00/6:00c.

The eight episode, half-hour series will be written by showrunner Alexandra Rushfield and will be produced by Rogen's Point Grey Pictures as part of their multiplatform partnership with Lionsgate.

Back when T-Mobile and Sprint were trying to gain regulatory approval for their $26 billion merger, executives repeatedly promised the deal would create jobs. Not just a few jobs, but oodles of jobs. Despite the fact that US telecom history indicates such deals almost always trigger mass layoffs, the media dutifully repeated T-Mobile and Sprint executive claims that the deal would create "more than 3,500 additional full-time U.S. employees in the first year and 11,000 more people by 2024."

About that.

Before the ink on the deal was even dry, T-Mobile began shutting down its Metro prepaid business and laying off impacted employees. When asked about the conflicting promises, T-Mobile refused to respond to press inquiries. Now that shutdown has accelerated, with estimates that roughly 6,000 employees at the T-Mobile subsidiary have been laid off as the freshly-merged company closes unwanted prepaid retailers. T-Mobile says the move, which has nothing to do with COVID-19, is just them "optimizing their retail footprint." Industry insiders aren't amused:

"Peter Adderton, the founder of Boost Mobile in Australia and in the U.S. who has been a vocal advocate for the Boost brand and for dealers since the merger was first proposed, figures the latest closures affect about 6,000 people. He cited one dealer who said he has to close 95 stores, some as early as May 1.

In their arguments leading up to the merger finally getting approved, executives at both T-Mobile and Sprint argued that it would not lead to the kind of job losses that many opponents were predicting. They pledged to create jobs, not cut them.

“The whole thing is exactly how we called it, and no one is calling them out. It’s so disingenuous,” Adderton told Fierce, adding that it’s not because of COVID-19. Many retailers in other industries are closing stores during the crisis but plan to reopen once it’s safe to do so."

None of this should be a surprise to anybody. Everybody from unions to Wall Street stock jocks had predicted the deal would trigger anywhere between 15,000 and 30,000 layoffs over time as redundant support, retail, and middle management positions were eliminated. It's what always happens in major US telecom mergers. There is 40 years of very clear, hard data speaking to this point. Yet in a blog post last year (likely to be deleted by this time next year), T-Mobile CEO John Legere not only insisted layoffs would never happen, he effectively accused unions, experts, consumer groups, and a long line of economists of lying:

"This merger is all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the New T-Mobile will be jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter. That’s not just a promise. That’s not just a commitment. It’s a fact....These combined efforts will create nearly 5,600 new American customer care jobs by 2021. And New T-Mobile will employ 7,500+ more care professionals by 2024 than the standalone companies would have."

That was never going to happen. Less competition and revolving door, captured regulators and a broken court system means there's less than zero incentive for T-Mobile to do much of anything the company promised while it was wooing regulators. And of course such employment growth is even less likely to happen under a pandemic, which will provide "wonderful" cover for cuts that were going to happen anyway.

Having watched more telecom megadeals like this than I can count, what usually happens is the companies leave things generally alone for about a year to keep employees calm and make it seem like deal critics were being hyperbolic. Then, once the press and public is no longer paying attention (which never takes long), the hatchets come out and the downsizing begins. When the layoffs and reduced competition inevitably arrives, they're either ignored or blamed on something else. In this case, inevitably, COVID-19.

In a few years, the regulators who approved the deal will have moved on to think tank, legal or lobbying positions at the same companies they "regulated." The same press that over-hyped pre-merger promises won't follow back up, because there's no money in that kind of hindsight policy reporting or consumer advocacy. And executives like John Legere (who just quit T-Mobile after selling his $17.5 million NYC penthouse to Giorgio Armani) are dutifully rewarded, with the real world market and human cost of mindless merger mania quickly and intentionally forgotten.

You may have seen the news reports this week that German prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Dmitry Badin for a massive hack of the German Parliament that made headlines in 2016. The reports about the German arrest warrant all mention that German authorities "believe" that Badin is connected to the Russian GRU and its APT28 hacking group.

The folks over at Bellingcat have done their open source intelligence investigation thing, and provided a ton of evidence to show that Badin almost certainly is part of GRU... including the fact that he registered his 2018 car purchase to the public address of a GRU building. This is not the first time this has happened. A few years back, Bellingcat also connected a bunch of people to the GRU -- including some accused of hacking by the Dutch government -- based on leaked car registration info.

There's much, much more in the Bellingcat report, but the final paragraph really stands out. Bellingcat also found Badin -- again, a hacker who is suspected in multiple massive and consequential hacks, including of email accounts -- didn't seem to be all that careful with his own security:

The most surreal absence of “practice-what-you-breach” among GRU hackers might be visible in their lackadaisical attitude to their own cyber protection. In 2018, a large collection of hacked Russian mail accounts, including user name and passwords, was dumped online. Dmitry Badin’s email — which we figured out from his Skype account, which we in turn obtained from his phone number, which we of course got from his car registration — had been hacked. He had apparently been using the password Badin1990. After this, his email credentials were leaked again as part of a larger hack, where we see that he had changed his password from Badin1990 to the much more secure Badin990.

Yes, the password for at least one of his email accounts... was apparently his own last name and the year he was born. The cobbler's kids go shoeless again.

The government loves its secrets. It loves them so much it does stupid things to, say, "secure the nation..." or "protect the integrity of deliberative processes" or whatever the fuck. We should not trust the government's reasoning when it chooses to redact information from documents it releases to FOIA requesters. These assertions should always be challenged because the government's track record on redactions is objectively awful.

Here's the latest case-in-point: Emma Best -- someone the government feels is a "vexatious" FOIA filer -- just received a completely stupid set of redactions from the Secret Service. Best requested documents mentioning darknet market Hansa, which was shut down (along with Alpha Bay) following an investigation by US and Dutch law enforcement agencies.

The documents returned to Best contained redactions. This is unsurprising given the nature of the investigation. What's surprising is what the Secret Service decided to redact. As Best pointed out on Twitter, the Secret Service decided public press releases by the DOJ were too sensitive to be released to the general public.

Here's one of the redactions [PDF] the Secret Service applied to a press release that can be found unaltered and unedited at the Justice Department's publicly-accessible website:

And here's what the Secret Service excised, under the bullshit theory that a publicly-released press statement is somehow an "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letter which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency."

“This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Make no mistake, the forces of law and justice face a new challenge from the criminals and transnational criminal organizations who think they can commit their crimes with impunity using the dark net. The dark net is not a place to hide. The Department will continue to find, arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate criminals, drug traffickers and their enablers wherever they are. We will use every tool we have to stop criminals from exploiting vulnerable people and sending so many Americans to an early grave. I believe that because of this operation, the American people are safer – safer from the threat of identity fraud and malware, and safer from deadly drugs.”

Um. Is Jeff Sessions being Yezhoved by the Secret Service? Does the agency consider him to be enough of a persona non grata after his firing by Trump to be excised from the Secret Services' official recollection of this dark web takedown? This insane conspiracy theory I just made up makes as much sense as anything the Secret Service could offer in explanation for this redaction. The redaction removed nothing but the sort of swaggering statement Attorney Generals always make after a huge bust.

Needless to say, Emma Best is challenging the Secret Service's redactions. Pithily.

I am appealing the integrity of the redactions, as you withheld public press releases under b5, which is grossly inappropriate.

Yeah. That's an understatement. The Secret Service has no business redacting publicly-available info. Even if this was a clerical error, it's so bad it's insulting. And that's why you can't trust the government on things like this: when it's not being malicious, it's being stupid.

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Remember when all we had to complain about were crappy rail services?

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Hearing loss caused by the death of sensory hair cells of the inner ear is an unfortunate side effect for many patients treated with aminoglycoside antibiotics or platinum-containing chemotherapy agents. In animal models, induction of heat shock confers substantial otoprotection against aminoglycoside- and cisplatin-induced hair cell death. In this issue of the JCI, Breglio et al. demonstrate that inner ear tissue released exosomes carrying heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) in response to heat stress. HSP70 acted by a paracrine mechanism that engaged the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) on hair cells to protect them from death. Exosomes and the HSP70/TLR4 pathway could thus provide treatment targets for the protection of hair cells from chemically induced death or from other insults, such as noise.