Link Roundup March 2019

The Alphabet That Will Save a People From Disappearing

The brothers transcribed more and more books, still by hand, with no help but a supply of carbon-copy paper they received as a gift from their relative in the government. But the new alphabet wasn’t sitting too well with others in power. During his last year in college, Ibrahima was arrested and put in prison for three months. He says he was never told exactly why he was imprisoned—officers raided a Winden Jangen meeting one day and hauled him away, he recalls—but he suspects that his work had made some people nervous. “Maybe they feared that he was trying to instigate something bigger because they did not understand the script,” Abdoulaye said.

Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

The employees have been keeping tabs on repositories of code that are stored on Google’s computers, which they say is linked to Dragonfly. The code was created for two smartphone search apps — named Maotai and Longfei — that Google planned to roll out in China for users of Android and iOS mobile devices. The employees identified about 500 changes to the code in December, and more than 400 changes to the code between January and February of this year, which they believe indicates continued development of aspects of Dragonfly. (Since August 2017, the number of code changes has varied between about 150 to 500 each month, one source said.) The employees say there are still some 100 workers allocated to the “cost center” associated with Dragonfly, meaning that the company is maintaining a budget for potential ongoing work on the plan.

Oil Giants Invest $110 Billion In New Fossil Fuels After Spending $1 Billion On Green PR

The companies’ new tune on climate change rings loud on many of the most influential English-language news outlets. The New York Times regularly runs branded content from Exxon Mobil and Shell touting the firms’ investments in algae-based fuels and other low-carbon alternatives. The Washington Post this month published an advertisement from the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s top U.S. lobbying arm, pitching natural gas as where “the low- and no-carbon future starts.” The banners on energy and environmental policy newsletters sent by such outlets as Politico and Axios routinely feature the logos of Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, the privately held fossil-fuel conglomerate controlled by billionaire Republican mega-donors.

Leaked Memo Shows Kickstarter Senior Staffers Are Pushing Back Against Colleagues' Union Efforts

Attempts to guilt well-compensated staffers for exercising their right to organize belies what is arguably the main concern: money. “Our company is looking for funding to secure our financials, as we’ve heard in multiple All Hands communications. If we add a union into the mix, it could make it near impossible for Kickstarter to raise a round.” A Kickstarter spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company “been profitable since 2010, is debt-free, and is not in danger of running out of money” and that it has been “seeking an investor who is aligned with our mission to ensure our future sustainability.”

The Russian military used email phishing to target US election-related services, according to a leaked NSA document

Shortly after The Intercept published the NSA document, the US Department of Justice announced that the FBI had arrested a 25-year-old contractor in Georgia, Reality Leigh Winner, and charged her “with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.” The DOJ’s announcement did not mention The Intercept, and officials have not confirmed a connection between the article and the arrest. However, several key details between the article and an affidavit released by the DOJ, such as the date of the document in question, match up.

Computer printers have been quietly embedding tracking codes in documents for decades

By analyzing the dots in the top-secret document, researchers were able to conclude it came from a printer with a serial number of 29535218, model number 54, and that it was printed on May 9, 2017, at 6:20 a.m., at least according to the printer’s internal clock. In a case where a leaker had covered his or her tracks more carefully, or where the leaked documents had been printed by far more than six people, or perhaps printed on a non-government printer, the dots certainly could have come into play.

Supreme Court Disregards Due Process, Allows ICE to Detain Certain Immigrants Indefinitely

Tuesday’s ruling in Nielsen v. Preap revolves around a 1996 law designed to crack down on unauthorized immigration. One section of the statute compels the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain non-citizens without a bond hearing as the government awaits permission to deport them. This provision states that immigration officials “shall take into custody” any unauthorized immigrant who has committed a certain criminal offense “when the alien is released” from jail. (Qualifying offenses include crimes of “moral turpitude,” drug violations, and aggravated felonies.) Officials may not release these individuals prior to deportation unless they are participating in witness protection. ICE interprets this statute to permit it agents to arrest and detain any unauthorized immigrant who was convicted of a crime, then hold him without a bond hearing. It doesn’t matter if the immigrant was convicted a half-century ago and has fully rejoined his community; according to ICE, he remains subject to indefinite detention.

Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong

Jack refers to these formal university policies as “structural exclusion,” and the dining hall is far from the only example. Many low-income students at Renowned University also participated in a pre-orientation program Jack calls “Community Detail,” in which students administer janitorial services in the university dormitories. The program is offered during the summer and throughout the year as a stand-alone job. While the students are paid, many of them found that the work brought about enormous humiliation. These disadvantaged students were put in a position where they had to clean up soiled tampons, used condoms, and dried vomit from their classmates’ bathrooms to complete their custodial obligations. Some of the students described the intense shame they felt as they sat in class alongside students whose toilets they had just cleaned. Having students who need money clean the bathrooms of their more affluent peers reifies existing class boundaries.

A New Discovery Upends What We Know About Viruses

The closest example I can think of exists in cicadas. These noisy insects rely on a bacterium called Hodgkinia, which lives inside their cells and provides them with nutrients. But this one bacterium has fractured into several daughter species, each of which contains just a few of Hodgkinia’s full set of genes. None of these partial microbes can survive on its own; they only function as a set. But these daughter species are all still locked within the same cell, so they’re not truly distributed as the virus is. They are also problematic: If any of them were to disappear, the rest would also die out, as would their cicada host. Hodgkinia’s fragmented existence is a looming disaster—“a slow-motion extinction event,” according to John McCutcheon, who described it.

Documents Reveal ICE Using Driver Location Data From Local Police for Deportations

Records obtained by the ACLU of Northern California in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit detail ICE’s sweeping use of a vast automated license plate reader (ALPR) database run by a company called Vigilant Solutions. Over 9,000 ICE officers have gained access to the Vigilant system under a $6.1 million contract that the public first learned of last year. ICE has access to over 5 billion data points of location information collected by private businesses, like insurance companies and parking lots, and can gain access to an additional 1.5 billion records collected by law enforcement agencies.

When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower

On June 20, the company sued Tripp for $167 million. Later that day, Tripp heard from the sheriff’s department in Storey County, Nev. Tesla’s security department had passed a tip to police. An anonymous caller had contacted the company to say Tripp was planning a mass shooting at the Gigafactory.

An AI helped us write this article

We’ve made huge strides in natural language processing over the past decade. Translation has improved, becoming high-quality enough that you can read news articles in other languages. Google demonstrated last summer that Google Assistant can make phone calls and book appointments while sounding just like a human (though the company promised it won’t use deceptive tactics in practice).

Revealed: Facebook enables ads to target users interested in 'vaccine controversies'

In the past, Facebook has suggested that simply censoring anti-vaccine propaganda might be less effective than counter-speech providing accurate information.

When YouTube Red-Pills the Love of Your Life

Ellen thinks some of Steven’s behavior was born out of wanting to be provocative, but she also says that as he spent more time alone, the deeper he got stuck in this rabbit hole. “I didn’t know any of these right-wing characters until we started dating, and he kept sending me videos from them,” she tells me. “I had to learn about what they were saying, quickly, so that I could try to debunk his view, or at least challenge them. And usually when we would debate these topics, it would end up in tears.” That’s because, “When I would try refute him, he would flip out. He would say that I was hysterical, that I was stupid and acting on my emotions rather than the facts, that I didn’t want to open up my mind to anything other than my left-wing views.”

Fox News Rejects National Ad for Oscar-Nominated Anti-Nazi Documentary

Fox News has rejected a national advertising buy for a 30-second spot that warns viewers about the potential dangers of American fascism after an ad sales representative said network leadership deemed it inappropriate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Workers waiting ‘on call’ must be paid, court rules

Workers facing on-call shifts “cannot commit to other jobs or schedule classes during those shifts,” must make child care arrangements and have to give up time for recreation or socializing, said Presiding Justice Lee Edmon in the majority opinion. By contrast, she said, “unpaid on-call shifts are enormously beneficial to employers,” who can maintain a “large pool of contingent workers” and pay them only if they need them.

DSA Guidelines for Respectful Discussion

We have a limited amount of time for discussion and to accomplish the tasks before us. When in discussion, please ask yourself "Why am I talking (WAIT)?" Consider whether or not what you want to say has already been said, whether what you want to say is on topic or if there’s a better time and place to say it, and other methods for showing how you feel about the conversation (nodding your head, etc.)

North Dakota Seeks to Restrict Access to Public Records After Standing Rock Reporting Exposed Law Enforcement Abuses

The bill, known as Senate Bill 2209, would amend the North Dakota Century Code to bar the disclosure of public records involving “security planning, mitigation, or threats” pertaining to critical infrastructure facilities. It specifically forbids the release of any critical infrastructure “security systems plan,” which it defines as “records,” “information,” “photographs,” “videos,” and “communications” pertaining to the “security of any public facility” or any “privately owned or leased critical infrastructure.” Among several examples of critical infrastructure systems included in the bill are “utility services, fuel supply, energy, hazardous liquid, natural gas, or coal.”

Georgia Senate passes anti-abortion ‘heartbeat’ bill

There are currently about 20 lawsuits surrounding abortion — including several heartbeat laws — up for consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court that could be used to challenge the Roe v. Wade decision. The 1973 ruling established a nationwide right to abortion.

BBC News staff told not to tweet personal views after LGBT debate

Internal BBC LGBT representatives have also complained to senior management including Unsworth and editorial director Kamal Ahmed about the handling of the issue, contrasting the public-facing stance on the issue with internal pledges to make the BBC a welcoming place to work for LGBT employees. Many staff also contrasted the warning with the treatment of BBC political interviewer Andrew Neil, who has never apologised for publicly describing an Observer journalist on Twitter as a “mad cat woman”.

The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well.

It’s particularly important to audit the wealthy well, and not simply because that’s where the money is. That’s where the cheating is, too. Studies show that the wealthiest are more likely to avoid paying taxes. The top 0.5 percent in income account for fully a fifth of all the underreported income, according to a 2010 study by the IRS’ Andrew Johns and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than $50 billion each year in unpaid taxes.

Even Viruses Can Get Infected With Other Viruses

Suttle had unknowingly isolated CroV at least as far back as 1995. It would be another decade before other scientists realized that giant viruses even existed, and his lab spent years trying to study CroV. Over the years, he would start a student on the project. They would defrost a sample from storage. The CroV would grow and then mysteriously stop growing. “A couple years later, someone would come along to try again,” Suttle says. It wasn’t until DNA-sequencing technology improved and Matthias Fischer joined the lab that they finally figured out what was going on: Their samples also contained virophages that were “killing” the giant viruses. Freezing destroyed most of the virophages, but each time someone took the giant viruses out of the freezer and grew them in the lab, the virophages would start replicating and attacking the giant viruses. Suttle and Fischer published a paper describing all this in 2011.