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Trump is reportedly going to summon two finalists for the position to the announcement, at 8 PM EST. There can only be one.

Neil Gorsuch.

Mushkin Announces Helix SSDs: 2.5 GB/s, 3D MLC NAND, SM2260, 2 TB Capacity

Saliva is dribbling down my shirt.

I don't think this is the first 2 TB SSD in the M.2 form factor, so not really worth a submission, but damn is that one heck of a drive. Note the 3 year warranty.

More stuff:

Crypt keeper wasp is a parasite of a parasite

FBI Releases Gamergate File

Dwave adiabatic quantum system can factor numbers up to 200,000 and a lot larger likely in the 40 bit range

Physicists patent detonation technique to mass-produce graphene

CRISPR genome engineering research institute expands into agriculture, microbiology

Medical first, children had cancer cured with genetically engineered T-cells from another person

New antibody suppresses spread of HIV-1 in infected individuals

Printed human body parts could be available for human transplants within a few years

Organovo bioprinting human tissue for drug testing and within 6 years for implanting human livers

Automation Is Coming for Our Porn Stars

Q&A: Michael Eisen bids to be first fly biologist in the U.S. Senate

Rusty Foster, the site's owner, said the site went down when its entire data center was decommissioned. While he promised to post a read-only archive, it's been a long time. We speculate that he did not have offsite backups.

Kuro5hin provided an outlet for our cynicism; for example I myself am responsible for the meme of "Ignorant Mother Fucker" - "Mother" and "Fucker" being two separate words, as I feel it sounds more obscene that way.

It also published much-longer essays and stories than one sees anywhere else. My own Living with Schizoaffective Disorder, first published there in 2003, is fifty pages in hardcopy form.

The problem I've got is that I'm bored out of my mind. I really like Soylent News, but it would be inappropriate for me to urge my fellow Soylentils to, for example, "Die In A Fire".

I need something more interactive than just reading what others have written. I like to write, I need a venue for my writing. I have my own website but it's not set up for discussion. "K5" provided that.

Bernie Madoff is cornering the prison market on Swiss Miss hot chocolate

“One of the most important things about this story is that it is a mistake to view him as an outlier,” Fishman told MarketWatch. “He profited from the way financial systems work, which is a point most people don’t really grasp. He wasn’t a freak. He was sustained by the system, embraced by it, because it profited from him.”

[...] Madoff’s multidecade scheme unraveled in 2008, when the market collapse in the financial crisis caused a number of his investors to pull their holdings, but Fishman said he “was never really caught.”

“The system never really rejected Bernie,” he explained, noting that Madoff’s 150-year prison sentence only came after he admitted the fraud to his sons, who, on the advice of a lawyer, alerted authorities. When questioned, Madoff confessed.

“It’s clear to me that if he hadn’t confessed there would have been years of expensive work to get him convicted,” Fishman said, referring to the cost of an investigation and a trial. “Who knows, maybe if he had pulled down the gates on his fund, gone out and raised money, he might have been able to continue.”

Never-before-heard Bernie Madoff tapes reveal details of ruinous Ponzi scheme

Fishman, who conducted three hours of interviews with Madoff personally, points out that while the fraudster ruined many lives, roughly half of Madoff’s investors still ended up in the black. “Yeah, he was a criminal talent, with God-given gifts in a sense, but Madoff was Patient Zero,” Fishman said. “What really makes him a pandemic is all the feeder funds [who introduced new clients to Madoff] and the banks,” Fishman told the Guardian. “They take him around the world. They recruit investors, in Latin America and through Europe, and they basically pour gasoline on this dumpster fire. Madoff could have been kind of a local swindler until he meets this massive distribution network.”

[...] When an investigator asked to see a report that a legitimate firm would have on hand in the course of its normal businesses, Madoff’s second-in-command, Frank DiPascali, stalled for time while downstairs others printed out a faked report, put it in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t be obviously warm from the printer, and “played football with it”, Schwartz says – tossing it back and forth across the room like a football to make it look weathered.

Set dressing was also important: on the credenza behind his desk, Madoff displayed a sculpture by the renowned artist Claes Oldenburg of a giant black screw, listing a little to one side. The 1976 sculpture, called Soft Screw, drew nearly $50,000 at Sotheby’s when Madoff’s assets were sold off after his disgrace.

When financial regulators visited his firm’s offices, Madoff put the Soft Screw away.

Ponzi Supernova

Secret Service agent may face disciplinary action over her anti-Trump Facebook posts

A senior official with the U.S. Secret Service may face disciplinary action after posting comments to Facebook suggesting that she would not "take a bullet" for President Trump. [...] O'Grady's comments were made in October, during the height of the presidential campaign and shortly after the release of a tape in which Trump made lewd comments about women. But they only came to light this week.

Great career move.

It looks like CBS could be running another fake news segment:

Red Cross Reports Major Blood Shortage, Urges Donations [video] (text version)

Every two seconds, someone in the United States needs a blood transfusion. Now a major blood shortage has the American Red Cross issuing an emergency call for donations. [...] The Red Cross is hoping more people get the message and roll up their sleeves. They say the nation is facing a shortage because of all the snowy, cold weather across much of the country.

Are you sure?

According to an investigative report by WPTV, blood donations stop being donations after the needle comes out of your arm. A blood brokerage firm CEO tells WPTV that your donated blood actually winds up getting sold, and sometimes for a very large profit.

Many in the blood industry characterize the money they receive for your donation as “reimbursement fees” for testing and administration. But the fact is that your blood donations are a very profitable commodity that, depending on demand and the location where you live, can bring in some serious cash to the blood organizations that have collected it.

Another thing most people don’t realize is that local blood drives don’t always keep their donations local. While many organizations try to use donations locally, if need or demand arises elsewhere, your blood can be shipped and sold out of state.

Finally, it may surprise many that lots of blood that is collected gets thrown away. a 2011 government sponsored survey found that around one in 20 units of donated blood was just thrown away. This could be because blood has a very short shelf life of just over 40 days, or the fact that blood “shortages” are not as common as they once were.

The Huffington Post reported in 2013 that because of advances in medicine, not as much blood is actually needed for operations as it once was. While there might not be a huge blood surplus, the supply is certainly stronger than it was just a few years ago. In response, blood drives are now being more targeted to specific blood types and needs.

THE BLOOD BROKERS by Gilbert M. Gaul

Last December [1988], the Community Blood Center in Appleton, Wis., made a public appeal for blood. Residents were asked to "dig farther, wider and deeper" than ever before to keep local blood supplies at desired levels. "We've never had it quite this tough," Alan W. Cable, executive director of the nonprofit blood bank, told the local newspaper. The citizens did dig deep; last year, 15,000 pints of blood were donated by Appleton residents to help save the lives of their friends and neighbors.

What they didn't know, though - don't know to this day - was that the same month the blood bank was appealing for blood, it sold 650 pints - half its monthly blood collection - at a profit to other blood banks around the country. Or that last year the blood center in Appleton contracted to sell 200 pints a month to a blood bank 528 miles away in Lexington, Ky. Or that Lexington sold half the blood it bought from Appleton to yet a third blood bank near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Which in turn sold thousands of pints it bought from Lexington and other blood banks to four hospitals in New York City. What began as a generous "gift of life" from people in Appleton to their neighbors ended up as part of a chain of blood brokered to hospitals in Manhattan, where patients were charged $120 a pint. Along that 2,777-mile route, human blood became just another commodity.

The buying and selling of blood has become big business in America - a multibillion-dollar industry that is largely unregulated by the government. Each year, unknown to the people who give the blood, blood banks buy and sell more than a million pints from one another, shifting blood all over the country and generating an estimated $50 million in revenues.

It is not uncommon for some blood banks to broker between 20 percent and 40 percent of what they collect. In Appleton, nearly half the blood collected from donors in the last two years was sold outside the area. In Waterloo, Iowa, the American Red Cross sold six of every 10 pints collected last year to other blood banks. They do it, blood bank officials say, to share a limited resource. Although they have a monopoly, blood banks in dozens of cities - Philadelphia among them - are unable to collect as much blood as they need. To cover their shortfalls, they buy blood from centers, such as Appleton, that collect more than they need.

Nobody disputes the value of sharing blood. But in the last 15 years, this trading in blood has become a huge, virtually unregulated market - with no ceiling on prices, with nonprofit blood banks vying with one another for control of the blood supply, with decisions often driven by profits and corporate politics, not medical concerns.

Maybe there is a shortage. But how can we be sure?

See also:

What many donors don't know: Their blood is sold

To be a Mac software consultant without actually owning a Mac has been awkward. I've been able to work recently because my client is lending me their equipment, but not all have been so cool.

I bought the 2.6 GHz Mac Mini for $699. I don't recall all that's in it as I picked it out a while ago. I also bought AppleCare for $99; in my experience, AppleCare is a good deal. Finally I bought a DisplayLink to VGA adapter so I can use it with my ancient crufty monitor.

Pakistan student: 'I was tortured by hardline Islamists'

A Pakistani student has said he was abducted and badly beaten by hardline Islamist students after posting tweets in support of five liberal bloggers who have gone missing. The student said he needed hospital treatment after he was blindfolded for several hours and tortured. No-one at Punjab University responded to his cries for help, he said.

The President of the United States has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. She will be released on May 17 of this year, rather than in 2045.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-commutes-bulk-of-chelsea-mannings-sentence.html