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The fine pieces of shit over at Rolling Stone recently interviewed Billy Joel:

Critics used to give you a hard time. But it seems like in the past few years you've become cool.
Look, man, Trump is president, so all kinds of weird shit can happen.

What do you make of that?
I'm still flabbergasted. I try to stay out of politics. I am a private citizen and I have a right to believe in my own political point of view, but I try not to get up on a soapbox and tell people how to think. I've been to shows where people start haranguing the audience about what's going on politically and I'm thinking, "You know, this isn't why I came here." As a matter of fact, one of the biggest cheers of the night comes when we do "Piano Man" and I sing, "They know that it's me that they're coming to see to forget about life for a while," and the audience lets out this huge "ahhhh" and I say, "OK, yeah, don't forget that." We're more like court jesters than court philosophers.

Normally I wouldn't even pay attention to some celebrity spouting off on politics (Because who gives a damn?) but Joel absolutely nails what a whole lot of folks are thinking on the matter. Tip of the hat to the Piano Man for keeping it classy.

In the early 1980’s, GYGAX had been generating about $1 million per year in income. [Redacted] advised that GYGAX spent his money frivolously. GYGAX was involved in an unpleasant divorce and [Redacted] further advised that GYGAX was a drug abuser. GYGAX is approximately 55 years of age and is currently [redacted]. He lives on Madison Street in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and may be contacted at (414) xxx-xxxx. GYGAX maintains a mailing address as follows: P. O. Box 388, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. [Redacted] considers GYGAX to be eccentric and frightening. He is known to carry a weapon and was proud of his record of personally answering any letter coming from a prison. GYGAX set up a holding company in Liberia to avoid paying taxes. He is known to be a member of the Libertarian Party.

Oh dear.

In a break from my usual interests of business and geopolitics... Culturally we are still not above paying people anywhere from $50 to in this case, more than $100m for punching each other for the sake of entertainment.

Unbeaten boxer Floyd Mayweather will fight UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor in a much-discussed boxing match on Aug. 26 in Las Vegas, a well-placed source told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday.

Mayweather and McGregor both confirmed the fight on social media on Wednesday.

[...] It is a stunning development given that Mayweather, the greatest boxer of his era, had said he was retired after compiling a 49-0 pro record from 1996 through 2015. But with a fight which could pay each man in excess of $100 million, he reconsidered.

Mayweather is considered the greatest boxer of his generation and among the best of all-time. The fight with McGregor, in addition to paying him in excess of nine figures, will give him the opportunity to improve to 50-0.

Source: Yahoo! Sports

Samsung computer phones used to have a stock app called S Suggest. Then Samsung didn't renew the domain that control it. And made it possible for villains to register the domain and malware infest millions of computer phone users had they spotted the opportunity.

On parity in severity with CVE-2015-2865 from 2015-06-17 which will not crypto sign computer code sent in clear text.

That is unless the phone goes into mission impossible flight mode of self destruction as in 2016-09-08.

Germany is planning a new law giving authorities the right to look at private messages and fingerprint children as young as 6, the interior minister said on Wednesday after the last government gathering before a national election in September 2017. Ministers from central government and federal states said encrypted messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Signal, allow militants and criminals to evade traditional surveillance. "We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law," interior minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in the eastern town of Dresden.

It's not even sure that messages will be obvious to be.. well anything like they don't want to. A quick look how this can be done is "The Saint" from 1997 where the contractor gets jobs that way. The hard quote is "where authorities install software on phones to relay messages before they are encrypted" suppose the phone knows nothing. Not even the destination because another unit tells it via junk voice modulated with actual bits what to do. This is so incredible stupid technology wise and dangerous design of society. The last time themes like this were current. Neighbors told people in uniform that so and so did bad things. So they could snatch their belongings like a house for themselves. And the whole society went down the drain. Oh wait, actually it was repeated after the mustache times with the sickle times. Both failed. This also shows why bootloader locked phones is detrimental to real security.

Another way to do it is like this:
"is planning new law planning giving"
Lexicon:
r - law
s - is
t - giving
e - planning
c - new
It would be trivial to get the encoded meaning. But now suppose something like base64 etc is added on top with input data being something true binary etc.

For some mysterious reason Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, and Hungary almost all of them seem to have been spared the latest string of violent attacks. How can that be, Nobel prize awaits! ;)

China plans to send a 3 kg miniature ecosystem biosphere to the surface of the moon by using Chang’e 4 mission, incorporating a robotic lander and rover. When it departs in 2018.

The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the Moon, says Zhang Yuanxun, chief designer of the container. The whole event with the development of plants and insects on lunar surface will be live-streamed to the world, says the project’s chief designer Xie Gengxin.

Suitable temperature for plants and insects to survive and thrive is between +1 .. +30 ⁰C. But the moon’s surface temperature ranges between -170 ⁰C at night to +120 ⁰C in the day. To get around this problem, the container will be equipped with a insulation layer and light pipes to ensure the growth of the plants and insects inside. Specially designed batteries will be used to provide a consistent energy supply.

Meanwhile researchers at the International potato center (CIP) and UTEC, Peru technical university in Lima, investigates if it's possible to grow potato on the planet Mars.

In the future all you base are owned by China?

Trump's Name Will Be Bleeped Out In The Next "Broad City" Season

Would I have seen this important news if I hadn't accidentally opened BuzzFeed? I'm not so sure.

Russia protests: Opposition leader Alexei Navalny sentenced

Russia protests: Kremlin critic Navalny jailed, hundreds arrested

Will Navalny make it into the Kremlin or get shot in the night?

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed an actor and several members of the crew of Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope). They reminisced on the production of the film, which was released in May of 1977.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/ames/kepler/media-invited-to-nasa-s-kepler-and-k2-mission-science-conference

NASA invites members of the media to attend the fourth Kepler and K2 Science Conference to be held June 19-23. The weeklong science conference will take place at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

Probably a good time to look for exoplanet-related announcements.