In unusual step, Apple touts positive comments from early iPhone X reviews

In unusual step, Apple touts positive comments from early iPhone X reviews:

Apple has just issued a press release rounding up some positive comments from early reviewers of the iPhone X. This is an unusual step from the company, which is taking a different tack to reviews of this year’s flagship phone.

The press release has brief quotes from reviews by Buzzfeed, CNET, Creative Live Blog, the Evening Standard, Mashable, TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal …

more…

Should the Government Track Your Movements?

 

Should the Government Track Your Movements?

by A. Barton Hinkle

Reason.com Full Feed / 2016-12-28 11:00

If you are walking down a public street, should you expect people not to see you? Of course not. But suppose someone decides to follow you—and to make records noting the time and place of your movements. Is that the same thing as simply noticing you happen to be out and about? No. Most people would agree the second case differs from the first.

Yet a Fairfax judge unfortunately failed to pick up on that distinction recently when he ruled in favor of the county's use of license plate readers. Fairfax's police department uses automated license plate readers that can scan 3,600 plates per minute. The county compares the plates to a hot list of stolen cars and other vehicles that might have been involved in a crime. It also stores the image of every plate, along with the date, time and location of each plate recording, for 364 days.

Three years ago Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) issued an opinion informing law enforcement agencies around the state that such activity is impermissible. It's one thing to use the cameras to hunt down a specific vehicle. It's another thing entirely to hoover up data about countless ordinary citizens going about their daily business, and then keep it indefinitely. The use of license-plate readers during an immediate threat to public safety is acceptable, Cuccinelli said, but their passive use during routine patrols is not, and neither is the practice of storing data from them. The need for collecting the information should be established before they are used, he wrote.

Some police departments took heed of Cuccinelli's opinion. Others ignored the AG's advice completely. Fairfax was one of them. Harrison Neal, a resident whose license plate showed up in the county's database, challenged the county's policy on privacy grounds. Last month Fairfax Circuit Court judge Robert Smith issued a summary judgment in the county's favor. The Virginia Supreme Court will soon decide whether to review the matter. It certainly should.

Smith's reasoning is straightforward: License plates are not personal information. Plate numbers are not listed among other forms of personal data in the state's Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act. What's more, while other forms of information listed in the act—such as Social Security numbers—refer back to an individual, "a license plate number leads directly to a motor vehicle and nothing more." Other government data can tell you who owns the vehicle, but "a license plate does not tell the researcher where the person is, what the person is doing, or anything else about the person."

Well now. If that is true, then it negates the whole point of using license-plate readers. Such readers apparently would be worthless, except for once in a long while when they note the recent location of a stolen car. In cost-benefit terms, they would seem like a colossal waste, because LPRs cost around $20,000—each.

The police seem to agree that license-plate readers collect personal information, too. As Arlington Police Chief Douglas Scott said in response to Cuccinelli's advisory, "if we were limited by the Attorney General's opinion, (LPRs) wouldn't be worth the investment. To simply use (them) only for a stolen-auto hit ... kind of defeats the investigative purpose and the opportunity to have something like that."

Indeed. License plate readers have an "investigative purpose" precisely because they do not simply note license plates and nothing more. They also record location in time and space. And since most people usually drive their own cars, that means LPRs enable the government to track and record a person's movements. The vast majority of the time, agencies do so without any apparent justification. In one comparable case in California, more than 99 percent of the plates recorded in a database belonged to vehicles unconnected to any crime.

License plate readers that provided the authorities with no personal information would be pointless, because cars don't commit crimes; only people do. So one of two things seems to be true about license plate readers. Either they do not record any personal information, in which case they are worthless as a crime-fighting tool. Or they do record personal information—about tens of thousands of people who are not criminals, without any reasonable grounds for suspicion.

In short, they are either useless or they are an invasion of privacy. Which is it?

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Study Suggests Legalizing Pot Increases Adolescent Use, Except When It Doesn't

 

Study Suggests Legalizing Pot Increases Adolescent Use, Except When It Doesn't

by Jacob Sullum

Reason.com Full Feed / 2016-12-28 09:04

A new analysis of survey data finds that marijuana legalization was associated with more cannabis consumption among eighth- and 10th-graders in Washington but not among 12th-graders in that state or among Colorado students in any of those three grades. The study, published yesterday by JAMA Pediatrics, thus provides ammunition to both sides in the debate about how legalizing marijuana for adults affects adolescent use.

Voters in Colorado and Washington approved marijuana legalization in November 2012. Using data from the Monitoring the Future Study, U.C.-Davis epidemiologist Magdalena Cerdá and her colleagues looked at risk perceptions and past-month marijuana consumption in the three years preceding legalization (2010-12) and the three years following legalization (2013-15). They compared trends in Colorado and Washington to trends in the 45 continguous states that did not legalize marijuana for recreational use during this period. They found no significant differences in Colorado or among high school seniors in Washington. But eighth- and 10th-graders in Washington deviated significantly from the national trends in risk perceptions and marijuana use.

In Washington the share of students who said occasional marijuana use poses a great or moderate risk (a dubious claim) fell from 74.9 percent to 60.7 percent among eighth-graders and from 62.8 percent to 46.6 percent among 10th-graders. Those changes were more than twice as big as the average drops in the 45 comparison states. Past-month marijuana use by eighth-graders did not rise significantly in Washington, but it fell significantly in the other states. The prevalence of past-month marijuana use among 10th-graders did rise significantly in Washington, from 16.2 percent to 20.3 percent, while falling in the rest of the country.

Assuming that the deviations among eighth- and 10th-graders in Washington have something to do with legalization, Cerdá et al. say, the mechanism is unlikely to be diversion from legal buyers, since state-licensed marijuana stores did not open in that state until July 2014, halfway through the post-legalization study period. But they argue that legalization may have changed attitudes toward marijuana in a way that encouraged adolescent use. "Our findings suggest that legalization of recreational marijuana use in 2012 reduced stigma and perceptions of risk associated with marijuana use," the researchers write. "A shift in social norms regarding marijuana use may have, in turn, increased marijuana use among adolescents in Washington." They suggest that older students' attitudes were unaffected because they were already well-formed.

As for why there is no evidence of this phenomenon in Colorado, Cerdá et al. note that the medical marijuana industry had a firmer legal basis there than in Washington prior to 2013, which may have made it more visible and more likely to shape teenagers' views of the drug. "Colorado had a very developed medical marijuana dispensary system prior to legalization, with substantial advertising, to which youth were already exposed," they write. "Washington, on the other hand, did not provide legal protection to medical marijuana stores. Therefore, the degree of commercialization and advertising of these collectives was substantially lower than in Colorado."

That explanation seems pretty speculative, especially since Cerdá et al. note that medical marijuana laws are not associated with increases in adolescent marijuana use. In fact, they make a point of comparing Colorado and Washington to states that allow only medical use and find differences similar to those identified in the broader analysis, "indicating that the effects we found are specific to legislation permitting recreational use." It is plausible that legalizing marijuana for recreational use would have a bigger effect on adolescent attitudes and behavior than legalizing it for medical use does. But it seems suspiciously convenient that in Colorado, the state where recreational retailers have been operating the longest, the opposite is supposedly true.

It is also worth noting that Colorado, the state where Cerdá et al. found no significant change in adolescent marijuana use, is the example that prohibitionists preferred to cite until recently, based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). That survey measured an increase in marijuana use by teenagers after legalization in Colorado, but the change was not statistically significant. The latest NSDUH numbers indicate that marijuana use by Colorado teenagers declined after state-licensed marijuana retailers began serving recreational customers. According to NSDUH, adolescent marijuana use also fell in Washington during that period.

Judge Tosses Charges Against Backpage Execs, Tells Kamala Harris To Take It Up With Congress

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161210/09440536242/judge-tosses-charges-against-backpage-execs-tells-kamala-harris-to-take-it-up-with-congress.shtml

California judge Michael Bowman hinted -- with a tentative ruling issued last month -- that he didn't think much of Attorney General (now US Senator)[ ಠ_ಠ ] Kamala Harris' grandstanding, misguided, First Amendment-damaging attempt to prosecute Backpage executives for pimping.

Not only did Harris pretend Section 230 immunization didn't exist, she actively fought to have the executives prosecuted for the actions of others. The twisted legal rationale deployed by Harris didn't win over Judge Bowman, who noted Backpage had, at best, republished third-party content. If Harris wanted site owners to be punished for third-party content, she would have to ask the nation's legislators to fix it.....

Backpage Leaders Beat Pimping Charges as Court Affirms Importance of Immunity for Web Publishers of Third-Party Speech

 

Backpage Leaders Beat Pimping Charges as Court Affirms Importance of Immunity for Web Publishers of Third-Party Speech

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Reason.com Full Feed / 2016-12-10 07:20

Some good news for folks who value free speech and sex-worker safety and frown on prosecutorial overreach: Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman has sided with the current and former heads of Backpage in their battle against California Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris.

The defendants had been charged with pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping for running Backpage.com, an online classified-ad site that Harris has called "the world's largest online brothel" due to its ample "adult" and "escort" ads. But as Bowman noted in a preliminary decision in November, federal law specifically prohibits online publishers and publishing-platforms from being held criminally liable for user-generated content, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). "Congress did not wish to hold liable online publishers for the action of publishing third party speech," wrote Bowman at the time. "Congress has spoken on this matter and it is for Congress, not this court, to revisit."

Judge Bowman seemed set to dismiss the charges in November, but the AG's office asked for more time to prove that defendants—current Backpage Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Carl Ferrer and former heads Michael Lacey and James Larkin—had not simply presided over a publishing platform but actually altered user-posted ads in order to disseminate them more widely or to conceal the illegal nature of their offerings. Harris' office subsequently submitted 74 pages of info and internal Backpage emails to make the state's case. These documents mostly centered on how Backpage handled the aggregation and publishing of Backpage.com content on two affiliated sites, Evil Empire and Big City.

As Bowman summed it up: Prosecutors' "overall theory is that Backpage knew prostitution ads were placed on its main site and, in response, created two additional websites with the goal of encouraging that prostitution through increased ad placement." The state also contended that Backpage "manipulated" content in various ways—shortening headlines, cropping images—when it repackaged Backpage ads on the additional sites.

But after considering the state's new evidence, Bowman concluded in a December 9 decision that "defendants have, at most, republished material that was created by a third party." The judge pointed out that California's declaration in support of the defendants' arrest warrant even stated that EvilEmpire.com ads were "essentially identical" to their Backpage.com counterparts. "This demonstrates republication, not content creation," and "republication is entitled to immunity under the CDA," wrote Bowman.

The judge also blasted the state's assertion that removing possibly illegal content from user posts counted as criminally manipulating them:

Assuming that the People's assertion is true; that the ad went from expressing intent to advertise prostitution to express a desire to 'date,' the People are essentially complaining that Backpage staff scrubbed the original ad, removing any hint of illegality. If this was the alleged content 'manipulation,' the content was modified from being illegal to legal. Surely the AG is not seeking to hold Defendants liable for posting a legal ad; this behavior is exactly the type of 'good Samaritan' behavior that the CDA encourages through the grant of immunity.

Ultimately, the court "finds it difficult to see any illegal behavior outside of the reliance upon the content of speech created by others," wrote Bowman. "The whiff of illegality is detected only when considering the alleged content of the statements contained in the ads. ... Thus, the prosecution depends on consideration of speech provided by a third party."

The court granted defendants demurrer seeking to have the charges against them dismissed, vacated further court dates, and exonerated bond for each defendant. In his conclusion, Bowman once again wrote in boldface type that "Congress has spoken on this matter and it is for Congress, not this Court, to revisit."

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'Star In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy

 

'Star In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy

Slashdot / 2016-12-10 01:01

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but down here on Earth. Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this "star in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step toward making it happen. In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process. It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. The W7-X device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down to near absolute zero. The plasma -- at temperatures upwards of 80 million degrees Celsius -- never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that. David Gates, principal research physicist for the advanced projects division of PPPL, leads the agency's collaborative efforts in regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests verify that the W7-X magnetic "cage" is working as planned. "This lays the groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations expected in the near future," Gates said.

US Government Gives $11,000 Back To College Student Three Years After The DEA Took It From Him

 

US Government Gives $11,000 Back To College Student Three Years After The DEA Took It From Him

by Tim Cushing

Techdirt. / 2016-12-09 17:17

Another high-profile asset forfeiture battle has resulted in the government relinquishing its claim on seized cash and returning it to its owner.

In February 2014, DEA agents took $11,000 from Charles Clarke at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The DEA claimed Clarke's luggage "smelled" like marijuana. It may have been right (Clarke was a recreational marijuana smoker), but it didn't even bother to get a second opinion from a drug dog. Nor did it find any drugs or paraphernalia when it searched Clarke and his baggage.

It did, however, declare the $11,000 in college funds Clarke had saved over five years to be drug money. So, it took the cash from him and sent him on his way.

Normally, the burden of proof falls on the person whose property has been taken. That's how civil asset forfeiture works. The government files a claim against the seized property, cutting the original owner of the property out of the loop as much as possible. Fortunately, the judge presiding over the forfeiture dispute shifted the burden back on law enforcement after finding Clarke to be a credible complainant.

"Frankly, the fella sounds like he's telling the truth," U.S. District Court Judge William O. Bertelsman said in a hearing over how much information the U.S. government should be required to turn over to Clarke's lawyers. "He's not changed his story once in all the depositions and testimony that he's given even under the threat of perjury."

Bertelsman also ordered the government to show proof that the seized money was the result of criminal activity. This was obviously going to be a problem for the government, considering all it had to work with was some luggage that carried a hint of marijuana odor. That, and Clarke's cash, which it was in no hurry to give up, especially since it had to split the take thirteen ways.

While no further details have been released, it's probably safe to assume the government never came up with the proof Bertelsman was looking for. The Institute for Justice -- which represented Clarke in this case -- is reporting that the government is returning the seized cash to the college student.

"The United States government has agreed to give Charles Clarke back every penny of the $11,000 it seized from him at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in February 2014, plus interest. Charles is very pleased that he will get his life savings back and that the whole ordeal is now behind him."

All it would take to combat many questionable seizures would be a shift in the burden of proof. The process makes it almost impossible for those whose property has been seized to mount a successful attempt to reclaim it. The filing of cases as "Gov't v. Property" allows the seizing agency to run unopposed (as it were), since the seized property can't speak for itself and the property owner is tied up in bureaucratic paperwork with strict time limits that is wholly reliant on the seizing agency properly notifying seizure victims of the whereabouts of their cash, etc.

If the government can't come up with criminal charges, it very likely cannot come up with proof the money is tied to illegal activity. But too few courts are willing to shift the burden of proof, leaving the government to indulge in its perverted incentives.

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The Dangerous Holiday-Suicide Myth That Won't End - The Atlantic

November and December are actually the months with the fewest suicides. I post this not to diminish people posting suicide numbers but to remind people to be kind and pay attention to your friends and family year round. Depression and suicide are year round issues not just holiday issues.



The Dangerous Holiday-Suicide Myth That Won't End - The Atlantic

A common type of Internet story this time of year, other than the ones about how to bake holiday cookies and how to avoid gaining weight from said holiday cookies, is the one about how to handle holiday stress. You know, the existential crises brought on by solitude, or forced closeness, or whatever personal demons snow+presents+relatives+red cups summon. A common kicker for these studies of seasonal bleakness? “No wonder suicides spike around the holidays.”

It can be good to remind readers that, though most people feel merry during December, it’s also normal to get depressed during the holidays. What’s terrible and dangerous, though, is telling people—falsely—that suicides spike around this time.

According to the CDC, November and December are the months with the fewest suicides.......

Did Democrats Learn Anything From Their Attack on the Filibuster?

 

Did Democrats Learn Anything From Their Attack on the Filibuster?

by David Harsanyi

Reason.com Full Feed / 2016-12-08 23:03

I won't lie. After reading the CNN piece titled "Senate Dems, powerless to stop Trump nominees, regret 'nuclear option' power play," I experienced some deeply satisfying schadenfreude. Feel free to keep President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and those who implored Senate Democrats to blow up the filibuster a few years ago in your thoughts as President-elect Donald Trump names his Cabinet and judges. But be sure to remember how recklessness begets recklessness in Washington, D.C.

"I do regret that," Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted to weaken the filibuster three years ago, tells CNN. "I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency brake, to have in our system to slow down nominees."

It always was a terrific speed bump, senator. One of the reasons we value tradition, norms and process is that we don't know what the future holds. But, you'll note, these Democrats don't regret their vote for majoritarianism or power grabs. They regret that Trump (and it would be the same for Mitt Romney or any moderate Republican, for that matter) will now be able to operate under the rules they set for themselves.

It's worth remembering that Democrats didn't used a parliamentary procedure to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can move to confirmation votes with a simple majority for some grand ideological purpose. They did it for short-term political gains that no one will remember. Does any Democrat believe helping Obama name some left-wing populists to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which didn't even exist until 2011) and the National Labor Relations Board was worth it?........

German Intel chief: Russia is trying to 'destabilize' the country

 

German Intel chief: Russia is trying to 'destabilize' the country

Engadget Full RSS Feed / 2016-12-08 17:39

This is big: unprecedented, stark warning by Germany's BfV against aggressive Russian influence ops, false flags, APT28, goals—full text: pic.twitter.com/2H8RCKYZbW

— Thomas Rid (@RidT) December 8, 2016

In recent months, Germany has seen an "aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties," Maaßen said in his statement. This has been accompanied by an "enormous use of financial resources" to spread "disinformation" and sow discord both within the country and the wider EU

The BfV also reports that it has observed a significant jump in the activities of ATP 28, a Russian hacker group better known as Strontrium ("Fancy Bear"), which has been linked to the intrusion into the American Democratic National Convention earlier this year. What's more, the intelligence agency notes that so-called "false flag" operations conducted by this group have consistently pinned the blame on domestic activist organizations.

Taken together, the BfV has all but yelled "J'accuse!" (but, you know, in German) at Russia's intelligence apparatus. The BfV claims that the cyber-campaign aims to rile up extremist groups and weaken voter trust in the German government, just like it did in America. All, reportedly, performed in an effort to reduce the degree of economic sanctions currently being levied against Russia and "to influence the federal election next year," Maaßen wrote.

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