Enough with the conspiracy theories about Justice Scalia’s death

I read this earlier today:

"As a former homicide commander, I am stunned that no autopsy was ordered for Justice Scalia," William O. Ritchie wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday, according to reports. After seeking to cast doubt on the conclusion of the deputy U.S. marshals who responded to a call from the ranch, he added, "My gut tells me there is something fishy going on in Texas."

My gut tells me there is some fishing for attention going on in the head of the former D.C. police officer who said that.

Why?

Let’s consider this:

1. Why?
2. Why??
3. Why???

Was it a Liberal conspiracy to get President Obama one more lasting decision about the future of United States legal policy?

Was it a “Conservative” conspiracy to give Congressional Republicans and presidential candidates something “meaningful” to “stand up” to Obama about?

Was it Ancient Aliens?

There was no autopsy, they say! There was a pillow above his head, they say! The President was told long before anyone else, they say (as if the President doesn’t get most of the news before everyone else…)!

Conspiracy theorists demand: “What is your proof Scalia wasn’t murdered?”

These stupid theories remind me of one of the frequent arguments levied against atheists: “What is your proof that there is no god??”

Who proved god exists in the first place?

Pillows

Many articles note the ranch owner who found Scalia said there was a pillow above his head, and many conspiracy theorists point to this as suspicious. I sleep with a pillow over my head every night, and another one underneath it, using the two to drown out the sounds of an increasingly conspiratorial world so I can maintain my slumber all night long.

No conspiracy. Just a light sleeper.

Politics aside

I disagreed with much of Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court jurisprudence but his presence on the Court was invaluable to the development of United States law and the debates from which it springs.

He articulated his positions in such a way that I (almost always) respected them, even when I found it hard to believe someone so intelligent was seriously asserting them. He was rarely conclusory, giving reasons for his views, and whether you agreed with those reasons or not, that’s more than most politicians (and lawyers) usually do.

His death is a loss, but there are few more certain paths to some sort of immortality than thirty years on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Photo: Then-nominee Antonin Scalia, right, with President Ronald Reagan in 1986, via Wikipedia

Google begins rolling out free internet to public housing in Fiber cities

This is a big deal. I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for years and talked to a lot of kids and adults about their desire to get online. Philly isn’t yet on Google’s Fiber expansion roadmap, but this is a great development.

Retiring founder wants $1M for his SCOTUS audio archive

Oyez is a robust archive of audio recordings and other information spanning much of the history of the Supreme Court of the United States. Its founder Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor Jerry Goldman is looking for a buyer as he nears retirement. Jess Bravin reports at the Wall Street Journal:

The sticking point, however, isn’t the annual budget; Harvard Law School, for one, has offered to pick up the operating cost. But Mr. Goldman also wants to be paid for the sweat he’s put into his baby–or at least the intellectual property it represents—something he estimates is worth well over $1 million.

Here comes an entitled opinion right here: A decision to somehow “close down” Oyez if no one is willing to put up six or seven figures for it would be morally bankrupt and stain Professor Goldman’s otherwise admirable legacy.

LucasFilm to toy vendors: No Rey

Michael Boehm at Sweatpants and Coffee:

The insider, who was at those meetings, described how initial versions of many of the products presented to Lucasfilm featured Rey prominently. At first, discussions were positive, but as the meetings wore on, one or more individuals raised concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products. Eventually, the product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise, said the insider.

I want to be infuriated and surprised by this revelation, but I’m just infuriated.

U.S. DOT paving way for self-driving cars

Chris Ziegler reports at The Verge:

DOT and NHTSA will develop the new tools necessary for this new era of vehicle safety and mobility, and will seek new authorities when they are necessary to ensure that fully autonomous vehicles, including those designed without a human driver in mind, are deployable in large numbers when demonstrated to provide an equivalent or higher level of safety than is now available.

This is far more progressive than I expected the federal government to be on the autonomous transportation vehicle front, primarily for safety reasons. It’s good news.

Aside: DOT or Klingons?

The featured image above is a photo of the U.S. DOT headquarters building in Washington, D.C. I first looked at the DOT logo as a potential image for this post, but it looked too much like the Klingon symbol:

[gallery type=“square” size=“medium” link=“none” columns=“2” ids=“2289,2290”]

Huh. Weird.

More than 13,000 untested rape kits in Florida

This bit sent shivers down my spine:

After Detroit processed a backlog of 11,000 rape kits, police identified more than 100 serial rape suspects.

Why shivers? Because it instantly prompts me to wonder how many women were raped who wouldn’t have been raped if these kits were more efficiently processed.

Bill Cosby charged with sexual assault in Pennsylvania

The TV legend is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand when she visited his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. A probable cause affidavit filed by investigators this week alleges that Cosby “sought to incapacitate” Constand by giving her a mix of pills and wine that sent her slipping in and out of consciousness and left her unable to consent to sexual activity. Priligy brand and generic Priligy effectiveness reviews read on http://howmed.net/priligy-dapoxetine/.

Ms. Constand settled her civil case against Mr. Cosby but the latter’s statements in a deposition taken for that case and released to the public by request of the press triggered the Montgomery County District Attorney’s obligation to prosecute Cosby.

Is sending porn illegal in Pennsylvania?

Dave Davies writes on his WHYY blog, Off Mic:

It's right there in the state crimes code; it's a third-class misdemeanor to "sell, lend, distribute, transmit, exhibit, or give away or show any obscene materials to any person 18 years of age or older..." (There's a separate statute prohibiting distribution of pornography to anyone younger than 18.)

He’s right, you can find it at 18 Pa . C.S. 5903. Davies goes on to explain the difficulty of defining “obscenity,” a function of the concept’s basis in community standards which can vary from community to community.

Katie Floyd’s 3 Tips For Family Tech Support

Great advice for every geek dreading the holiday “Can you help me with my computer?” conversations.

Laser-armed fighter jets by 2020

Thom Patterson writes for CNN:

Here's how Air Force special ops might use them: The commander of USAF special ops, Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, said last September that by 2020 he wants them on C-130J Ghostrider gunships for landing zone protection.

The laser weapons would take out possible threats like enemy vehicles, or disable infrastructure such as cell towers.

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night (more on that coming in an article later) so laser weapons seem an appropriate story to share today.

Machine Intelligence In The Real World

[...] Textio is a text editor that recommends improvements to job descriptions as you type. With it, I can go from a 40th percentile job description to a 90th percentile one in just a few minutes, all thanks to a beautifully presented machine learning algorithm.

I respect Human Resources professionals. Their job can be shitty. But so can their job descriptions. The prospects who know what you mean by “incumbent” are probably too pedantic and detail-oriented to apply to the likely underpaid and/or intellectually vapid position you’re hiring for. The ones who don’t know what you mean don’t actually know what they’re applying to, which makes them terrible prospects.

If machine learning can remedy that, I hope it gains wider use. But I don’t think machine learning is necessary to stop writing the kind of drivel that passes for a job description these days. It’s a classic failure of capitalism: when demand dramatically outstrips supply, quality decreases without consequences to the supplier. This goes for jobs, treatment by employers, and even job descriptions. They were never exactly the pinnacle of eloquence, but I’ve seen a serious decline in the past year or so.

Many legal filings written by attorneys are also full of reader-hostile jargon and nonsense clearly included because the lawyer’s writing professor said it should be included, or because the named partner at their first firm always used it. It’s one of the most infuriating and offensive aspects of modern U.S. professional culture as far I’m concerned:

“We do it this way because we do it this way, because the people before us did it this way, that’s why we do it this way.”

Never, ever say that to me. It triggers an almost instinctual, lizard-brain contempt in me and an assumption that whoever said it is incapable of critical thinking or analytical reasoning, and I can be a real asshole when I think that about someone.

“A slower-track school where they do well”

I’m just going to leave this Justice Scalia quote right here:

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African­ Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less­-advanced school, a slower-­track school where they do well.

Further reading:

• The Supreme Court might destroy affirmative action because this white woman’s grades weren’t good enough - Slate
• A Colorblind Constitution: What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Is Really About - ProPublica
• Fisher v. University of Texas - Wikipedia
• SCOTUSBlog case file on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

Israeli Supreme Court Rejects Family Petition To Bury Trans Woman As Their “Son"

Peleg, who was 31, had long been concerned about a battle with her ultra-orthodox family after her death. Their beliefs forbid cremation, and she worried they would attempt to have a religious burial under her male name. Peleg paid for her own cremation in March 2014 at the one funeral home in Jerusalem that performs the service, and filed a will with an attorney a day before her suicide and asked that he fight for her wishes if her family attempted to interfere.

This is heartening. No one should be driven to suicide by discrimination against who they are, but the ultimate insult is ignorance of one’s post-death wishes, because when are we more vulnerable than in death?

Adele’s ‘25’ on Pandora

Pandora confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that every track from Adele'e new album is available through its radio service. That's not going to be a particularly great way of listening to 25 — because Pandora is a radio service, it means you can't choose what to listen to and will have to wait for a station to play the new songs — but it does mean that Adele's album is streaming in some form. You just have to be really, really patient to hear it all.

Pandora’s strange licensing niche usually works against it but here, despite the inability to listen through the songs in order, Pandora has something like an exclusive.

I wonder if Adele’s lawyers told her that keeping it off the on-demand streaming services means the track order she chose will not be the one many people hear the first time they hear the songs.

I don’t know how much that matters to modern musicians, or to someone like Adele, who doesn’t really have a customer acquisition problem.

For the, er, record, I prefer to listen to an album in order if possible.

Vizio TVs spy on you, here’s how to disable it

Vizio’s technology works by analyzing snippets of the shows you’re watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix. Vizio determines the date, time, channel of programs — as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then connected your IP address - the Internet address that can be used to identify every device in a home, from your TV to a phone.

This is a damn good reason not to buy a Vizio TV. I won’t rant about opt-out/opt-in again. But I found Vizio generally had a good price-to-quality ratio: not top shelf hardware, but not top shelf prices, either. So this shadiness is a shame.

A shamey-ness?

Anyway, props to Samsung and LG, who, according to Julia Angwin at ProPublica, require user consent before enabling the sort of tracking Vizio turns on by default.

Disable Vizio "Smart Interactivity"

Vizio obviously knows how shady its default spying is because they have a page named after the feature which begins with information on how to turn it off:

VIA TV Interface

1. Press the MENU button on your TV's remote.
2. Select Settings.
3. Highlight Smart Interactivity.
4. Press RIGHT arrow to change setting to Off.

VIA Plus TV Interface

1. Press the MENU button on your TV's remote or open HDTV Settings app.
2. Select System.
3. Select Reset & Admin.
4. Highlight Smart Interactivity.
5. Press RIGHT arrow to change setting to Off.

Is the Russian kamikaze sub misinformation or an inadvertent warning to the West?

Apparently,

The screen capture depicts a project called "Ocean Multipurpose System 'Status-6.'" The weapon would apparently be delivered by a nuclear-powered underwater drone, carried externally by a nuclear submarine. The drone would be capable of depths of up to 3,280 feet and capable of speeds of up to 65 miles an hour. It would also have a range of 6,213 miles.

A weapon like this could take out the transatlantic data cables as mere collateral damage…

Russian Ships Too Close to Data Cables for U.S. Comfort

The first of two this-is-really-concerning posts you’ll find here today:

The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry global business worth more than $10 trillion a day, including from financial institutions that settle transactions on them every second. Any significant disruption would cut the flow of capital. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications.

I hope there are ways for at least economic, government and military organizations to route around those cables via satellite if necessary…

Apple has learned nothing from Microsoft’s Surface - The Verge

iPad sales are indeed down, but it does not follow from that fact that iPad use is down. This Time article did the yeoman’s work of aggregating some data about iPad sales. The bottom line is that in the five years since the iPad’s 2010 launch, Apple has sold more than 258 million of the tablets. That’s more iPads in the wild than people living in Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Egypt, Germany, Iran, Turkey, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Thailand, France, United Kingdom, or Italy (thanks Wolfram|Alpha).

My dad has an Android tablet and a Windows PC. Since he got the tablet (which, interestingly from a marketing perspective, he insists on calling an iPad) he does nothing on the PC except pay bills, and that’s primarily because most of the apps you use to pay bills on mobile devices are, to put it mildly, user-hostile antichrists of design and experience.

He is a sample of one, but my dad isn’t even your typical cutting edge older gentleman. For example, he was on Aol dial-up until sometime around 2013, and refuses to use a non-clamshell mobile phone. So his taking so quickly to using a tablet implies to me that the replacement of PCs by iPads and other tablets may be closer than Tom Warren of The Verge thinks, although still far off.

I don’t see my dad using an iPad Pro though because most of his use is on the couch as a second screen. I suspect that the second screen use case coupled with the price point will dampen iPad Pro sales outside of the geek and artist demographics.

When is time to take antitrust action against Comcast?

It’s hard to read about U.S. comeptition law without wondering when Comcast is going to face consequences for its clear abuse of its market power.

China hack attacks on US continue despite commercial spying pact

If this surprises you, I’ve got a real-life, fully functional totally Back to the Future hoverboard to sell you…

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

Well this is concerning:

A pair of researchers at ANSSI, a French government agency devoted to information security, have shown that they can use radio waves to silently trigger voice commands on any Android phone or iPhone that has Google Now or Siri enabled, if it also has a pair of headphones with a microphone plugged into its jack. Their clever hack uses those headphones’ cord as an antenna, exploiting its wire to convert surreptitious electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that appear to the phone’s operating system to be audio coming from the user’s microphone. Without speaking a word, a hacker could use that radio attack to tell Siri or Google Now to make calls and send texts, dial the hacker’s number to turn the phone into an eavesdropping device, send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

You can disable Siri whenever your iOS device is locked by going to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode > Allow Access When Locked and toggling the Siri switch to the “off” (as in not green) position. This doesn’t guarantee a hack like the one deascribed above won’t work on your device, but it does guarantee you’ll see Siri doing something weird and can thus be alerted to the hackery.

Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online

According to the report by Reuters at The Guardian:

More than 30% of Germans online use such software, many more than the 5% of internet users globally in 2014, according to Dublin-based analytics and advisory firm PageFair, which develops “ad blocker-friendly” advertising.

My basic position on ad blocking is that it’s a permissible response to shitty or intrusive advertising but whatever tool you use should have a whitelisting feature. I don’t know what the ultimate solution to this debate will be but I know that Bild.de publisher Axel Springer’s approach is unwise.

It’s so easy to find well-done news on the internet these days that Axel Springer is only hurting itself with the new policy. Instead of focusing on taking only high-quality advertisements that aren’t obnoxious or classless and minimizing the concomitant tracking, Bild.de is walling itself off from 30 percent of its native-language audience.

In short, someone at Axel Springer should be fired.

CFPB proposes ban of class action prohibitions in arbitration clauses

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a press release today:

In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Congress required the CFPB to study the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial markets and gave the Bureau the power to issue regulations that are in the public interest, for the protection of consumers, and consistent with the study’s findings. The CFPB’s study – released in March of this year – showed that arbitration clauses restrict consumers’ relief for disputes with financial service providers by allowing companies to block group lawsuits.

The study also found that, in the consumer finance markets studied, very few consumers individually seek relief through arbitration or the federal courts, while millions of consumers are eligible for relief each year through group settlements. According to the study, more than 75 percent of consumers surveyed in the credit card market did not know whether they were subject to an arbitration clause in their contract. Fewer than 7 percent of those consumers covered by arbitration clauses realized that the clauses restricted their ability to sue in court.

The March 2015 CFPB report on this issue (PDF) said:

The Bureau understands that class lawsuits have been subject to significant criticism that regards them as an imperfect tool that can be expensive and cumbersome for all parties. However, the Bureau notes that Congress, state legislatures, and the courts have mechanisms for managing and improving class procedures over time. On balance, the Bureau believes that consumers are significantly better protected from harm by consumer financial service providers when they are able to aggregate claims. Accordingly, the Bureau believes that ensuring that consumers can pursue class litigation related to covered consumer financial products or services without being curtailed by arbitration agreements protects consumers, furthers the public interest, and is consistent with the Study.

Class action lawsuits can be a pain in the ass for everyone involved and the only winners are the plaintiffs' lawyers. But the mere possibility of a class action may be enough to prevent predatory behavior on the part of service providers.

‘Happy Birthday’ copyright held invalid

Until now, Warner has asked for royalties from anyone who wanted to sing or play "Happy Birthday to You" --- with the lyrics --- as part of a profit-making enterprise. Royalties were most often collected from stage productions, television shows, movies or greeting cards. But even those who wanted to sing the song publicly as part of a business, say a restaurant owner giving out free birthday cake to patrons, technically had to pay to use the song, prompting creative renditions at chain eateries trying to avoid paying royalties.

I hope this is the death knell of every non-‘Happy Birthday’ song all of those tchotchke-full restaurants have been forcing their underpaid and overworked waitstaffers to sing to uncomfortable diners.

The Government Is Selling Thousands of Homes to Hedge Funds Without Their Owners' Knowledge

Jared Bennett reports at The Atlantic:

It was a great deal for Oaktree. The fund bought the pool of mortgages for about two-thirds of the $105.7 million HUD estimated the homes were worth. [Julius] Uwansc, who now faces foreclosure through the new servicer of the loan, Selene Finance, was unaware that any of this had transpired.

“Whatever deal that went on between Bank of America, Selene and HUD is not known to me,” he says. Uwansc maintains he has complied with the terms of his modification and has filed lawsuits against both Bank of America and Selene.

I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for almost seven years. Many of the programs run by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development are poorly understood, even by the executives who are tasked with making use of them in their own cities. But many of those programs are also beneficial to the community, when properly utilized, and when the agencies involved take the time to explain the benefits to all of the stakeholders involved, from potential residents to the mayor.

Read the article at The Atlantic for full context, but it sounds to me like the program tdhis article covers, the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, or DASP, is not being sufficiently overseen and participating investors are taking advantage of “flipping” strategies and rental demand, especially in cities full of once-again-rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, like Philadelphia. The demolition of high-rise public housing buildings colloquially (and, I would suggest, derogatorily) known as “projects” and construction of row-home style mixed-income residential developments, had decreased crime, outstanding rent, utility costs and other “key performance metrics” even before I left in 2013.

The switch in Philadelphia from high-rises to row homes reduced inventory but a simultaneous improvement in re-certification procedures, expanded homeownership counseling and planning assistance and other administrative changes dampened the negative effects of that reduction. That doesn’t change the fact that residents should constantly be kept in the loop about the status of the mortgage for their home, especially who owns it and when the creditor to whom they owe payments has changed.

Consider this:

Oaktree paid $68.6 million for the 803 Baltimore mortgages [including Julius Uwansc’s], about 65 percent of the $105.7 million HUD says they were worth. That means even if the company doesn’t collect a dime on any of the mortgages, even after legal fees and other expenses, it can more than make its money back by foreclosing and selling the homes. (Oaktree declined to comment on the outcomes of loans bought through DASP.)

(emphasis added)

Oaktree’s declining to comment says perhaps far more than any comment could have said. I suspect the component of the DASP program, a core component, that allows companies like Oaktree to purchase mortgages in bulk at a discount is precisely what incentivizes foreclosing as quickly as possible and with minimal effort to remediate the default.

This is a worrying example of something I saw frequently while I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority: rarely do the interests of borrowers and residents align with those of the local, state and federal agencies tasked with providing financial and logistical assistance. In fact, the perverse reality of funding for such programs is that the more successful they are, the less likely they are to get an increase in or even flat year-over-year funding.

It is, therefore, beneficial to those administering the programs and running the larger organizations of which the programs are a part to achieve a balance between minimally visible progress and maximizing future funding eligibility. Yes, there are sometimes performance incentives on such programs, but they are not the norm, and it doesn’t look like there are any here, and if there are they are not being sufficiently enforced.

Don’t take my word for it, read Jared Bennett’s article at The Atlantic in full.

Image by Flickr user respres