Link Roundup August 2017

John McCain did not kill Obamacare repeal for good. It could still come back.

Republicans can still open debate on the House health care bill again, introduce another health care amendment with a novel proposal (like Graham-Cassidy, which would block-grant Obamacare money to the states), and pass the bill with 50 or 51 votes. The only problem is that reconciliation authority lapses eventually. And no one is entirely sure when “eventually” is.

Ravens have paranoid, abstract thoughts about other minds

Although ravens may not seem similar to humans, the two species do have something in common -- their social lives. Like humans, ravens go through distinct social phases, from fluid interaction with other birds as adolescents to stable breeding pairs in adults. "There is a time when who is in the pack, who's a friend, who's an enemy can change very rapidly," said Cameron Buckner, lead author of the research. "There are not many other species that demonstrate as much social flexibility. "Ravens cooperate well. They can compete well. They maintain long-term, monogamous relationships. It makes them a good place to look for social cognition, because similar social pressures might have driven the evolution of similarly advanced cognitive capacities in very different species".

REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS BUY HEALTH INSURANCE STOCKS AS REPEAL EFFORT MOVES FORWARD

Conaway, who serves as a GOP deputy whip in the House, has a long record of investing in firms that coincide with his official duties. Politico reported that Conaway’s wife purchased stock in a nuclear firm just after Conaway sponsored a bill to deal with nuclear waste storage in his district. The firm stood to directly benefit from the legislation.

Comcast Sics Its Legal Goons on Net Neutrality Advocates

The full shady ordeal going on with the FCC’s comment section is complicated, but it’s generally understood that botnets are being used to make it appear that the public is in favor of the FCC’s proposal to end Title II protections of net neutrality. The FCC announced that it would honor the fake comments in its review process and it reopened its temporarily closed system to take in more public opinion until August 16th.

Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon

On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.

A year after failed coup in Turkey, Erdogan says 'behead traitors'

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, recently led a long trek through Turkey, about 250 miles over three-and-a-half weeks, to demand that the government loosen its stranglehold on the country's democracy. Called the "March for Justice" Kilicdaroglu was joined by throngs of disaffected citizens -- many angry with Erdogan -- in the walk from the capital, Ankara, to Istanbul. Kilicdaroglu kicked off the march after the imprisonment of one of his party's parliament members.

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales

Dairy Management runs the largest of 18 Agriculture Department programs that market beef, pork, potatoes and other commodities. Their budgets are largely paid by levies imposed on farmers, but Dairy Management, which reported expenditures of $136 million last year, also received $5.3 million that year from the Agriculture Department to promote dairy sales overseas.

Saving face: Facebook wants access without limits

Facial recognition’s use is increasing. Retailers employ it to identify shoplifters, and bankers want to use it to secure bank accounts at ATMs. The Internet of things — connecting thousands of everyday personal objects from light bulbs to cars — may use an individual’s face to allow access to household devices. Churches already use facial recognition to track attendance at services. Government is relying on it as well. President Donald Trump staffed the U.S. Homeland Security Department transition team with at least four executives tied to facial recognition firms. Law enforcement agencies run facial recognition programs using mug shots and driver’s license photos to identify suspects. About half of adult Americans are included in a facial recognition database maintained by law enforcement, estimates the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University Law School. To tap into this booming business, companies need something only Facebook has — a massive database of faces.

BIOHACKERS ENCODED MALWARE IN A STRAND OF DNA

Despite that tortuous, unreliable process, the researchers admit, they also had to take some serious shortcuts in their proof-of-concept that verge on cheating. Rather than exploit an existing vulnerability in the fqzcomp program, as real-world hackers do, they modified the program's open-source code to insert their own flaw allowing the buffer overflow. But aside from writing that DNA attack code to exploit their artificially vulnerable version of fqzcomp, the researchers also performed a survey of common DNA sequencing software and found three actual buffer overflow vulnerabilities in common programs. "A lot of this software wasn't written with security in mind," Ney says. That shows, the researchers say, that a future hacker might be able to pull off the attack in a more realistic setting, particularly as more powerful gene sequencers start analyzing larger chunks of data that could better preserve an exploit's code.

'Straight up bullshit': inmates paid $1 to clear homeless camps they once lived in

Portland declared an ongoing homelessness “emergency” in 2015; new data shows the county’s homeless population has grown 10% since then. Residents living near camps have complained vocally, and often, about trash and crime. The city of Portland pays a contractor, Pacific Patrol Services, $117,557 a year to clear homeless camps, some of which is done in conjunction with teams of inmates from the county jail. The Oregon department of transportation, or Odot, meanwhile, pays up to half a million dollars a year for jail inmates who take care of the land it owns along freeways, said spokesman Don Hamilton. These crews now focus exclusively on homeless camps, he said, whereas five years ago homelessness was only a minor focus.

The Lost Cause Rides Again

The distinction matters. For while the Confederacy, as a political entity, was certainly defeated, and chattel slavery outlawed, the racist hierarchy which Lee and Davis sought to erect, lives on. It had to. The terms of the white South’s defeat were gentle. Having inaugurated a war which killed more Americans than all other American wars combined, the Confederacy’s leaders were back in the country’s political leadership within a decade. Within two, they had effectively retaken control of the South.

An NSC Staffer Is Forced Out Over a Controversial Memo

“Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed,” the memo warns. It argues that this has led “Islamists [to] ally with cultural Marxists,” but that in the long run, “Islamists will co-opt the movement in its entirety.”

Trump Supports Plan to Cut Legal Immigration by Half

Under the current system, most legal immigrants are admitted to the United States based on family ties. American citizens can sponsor spouses, parents and minor children for an unrestricted number of visas, while siblings and adult children are given preferences for a limited number of visas available to them. Legal permanent residents holding green cards can also sponsor spouses and children. In 2014, 64 percent of immigrants admitted with legal residency were immediate relatives of American citizens or sponsored by family members

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday.

Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

Descriptions of its contents were tweeted publicly by Google employees, and it was described in detail to me by a Google employee, who requested anonymity because of the company's notoriously strict confidentiality agreement. (A lawsuit against the company was filed in a San Francisco court last year over the company's "spying program" to prevent leaks.)

Transgender YouTubers had their videos grabbed to train facial recognition software

He says his team did try to contact individuals whose videos he listed and ask their permission “as a courtesy,” but admitted that if someone didn’t respond, they might have been included anyway.

Raw Zucchini Linguini With Pesto

The local greenmarket (very tiny farmer's market held on the street) offers free recipes to encourage more purchases, and the ones I've tried are delicious, and I am very messy. So I'm saving some of them here before the papers disintegrate.

Ingredients:
2 medium zuccini
1 clove of garlic (choose minced garlic, imo)
3 tbs raw pine nuts
"a few handfuls" fresh basil
1 tsp lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbs kosher salt

1. Slice zucchini into thin "linguini" lines.
2. Toss zucchini with salt in colander and let sit. It'll let off water.
3. "Julienne" the basil (just chopping finely would have been better probably).
4. Put garlic, pine nuts and lemon juice into a bowl and crush into a paste. Or put into a food processor, I guess.
5. Add 3/4 basil to pesto, crush some more.
6. Add olive oil, mix into a "rustic" paste.
7. Drain/squeeze zucchini, put into a fresh bowl, toss with pesto paste and remaining basil.

Makes about three smallish bowls or two big ones.