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R. Kelly Contracts Ligma
Laziest SpaceX Hit Job to Date
After Elon Musk called a rescue diver a "pedo", all sorts of people have been crawling out of the woodwork to bash him. But this bit takes the cake:
SpaceX — which Musk touts as replacing NASA and colonizing Mars — has been a literal failure to launch. So many of its rockets have burned up or crashed that Musk, for reasons unknown, has made a blooper reel.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Northrop Grumman's Faulty Payload Adapter Reportedly Responsible for "Zuma" Failure
SpaceX celebrates its many failures in hilarious new blooper reel
I'll let you judge whether the other attacks in the article (mostly about Tesla) are accurate.
Man says horse gave him sexual consent by winking at him
A man has been jailed for having sex with a horse he claimed had given him consent.
Daniel Raymond Webb-Jackson broke into the stables and was caught on CCTV abusing the animal.
However, when questioned, the 31-year-old claimed the filly had agreed to sex because she smelt his crotch and winked at him.
Law Firm Kills WaPost Exposé of 60 Minutes Producer
‘60 Minutes’ Boss Hired Law Firm Over #MeToo Story
One of television’s most powerful men, 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager, hired a law firm that boasts about “killing stories” for a Washington Post investigation into him, three sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.
The story was a deep dive into what CBS managers knew about former anchor Charlie Rose’s alleged sexual misconduct, but due to the aggressive tactics of law firm Clare Locke, the sources said, the story was “effectively neutered.”
Clare Locke also did work for former Today show host Matt Lauer and current New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush, three sources say. Both men were accused in news publications of sexually harassing women. The law firm was also recently hired by David Pecker, the CEO and chairman of American Media Inc., parent company of the National Enquirer, to try and shut down a negative story from a newspaper, according to two sources.
That time Trump's BFF killed a bunch of airline passengers
Including Americans...
The G7 foreign ministers today issued the following statement in advance of the anniversary of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17:
We, the G7 foreign ministers, of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union, are united in our condemnation, in the strongest possible terms, of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a civilian aircraft flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014.
MH17 was carrying 298 crew and passengers, nationals of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
We fully support the work of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), an independent criminal investigation led by the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine. The JIT’s findings on Russia’s role in the downing of MH17 are compelling, significant and deeply disturbing. The G7 recalls that UN Security Council Resolution 2166 demands that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability. We are united in our support of Australia and the Netherlands as they call on Russia to account for its role in this incident and to cooperate fully with the process to establish the truth and achieve justice for the victims of MH17 and their next of kin.
In a rules-based international order, those responsible for unacceptable actions, such as the firing or launching of the BUK missile of Russian origin, which intercepted and downed a civilian aircraft, must be held accountable. To this end, we call on Russia to immediately engage with Australia and the Netherlands in good faith to explain and to address all relevant questions regarding any potential breaches of international law.We express once again our deepest condolences to the families of the victims of MH17. We stand together against the impunity of those who engage in aggressive actions that threaten the rules-based international order, anywhere, anytime, and under any circumstances.
Joint Statement From G7 Foreign Ministers on MH17
Ok Trump/Russia supporters, how do you rationalize this one?
"Red Sparrow" Mariia Butina Accused of Being Russian Agent
The gunslinging Russian woman accused of cozying up to American officials to infiltrate the U.S. political system — at the behest of her Kremlin-linked mentor and with the help of her American boyfriend — allegedly tried to trade sex for influence.
The "Red Sparrow" scenario was unveiled Wednesday in a government memorandum that laid out the reasons why prosecutors believe Mariia Butina, 29, should remain jailed until trial.
During a detention hearing in federal court on Wednesday afternoon, Butina pleaded not guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent and was again ordered held without bail.
Herpetology's #MeToo Moment
Another Russia Indictment
A criminal complaint was unsealed today in the District of Columbia charging a Russian national with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General.
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu, and Nancy McNamara, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
Maria Butina, 29, a Russian citizen residing in Washington D.C., was arrested on July 15, 2018, in Washington, D.C., and made her initial appearance this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was ordered held pending a hearing set for July 18, 2018.
According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017, Butina worked at the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank. This Russian official was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018.
The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by Butina to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law.
New Grow Light in Cannada
New Grow Light Technology Being Tested in Canada
A new, broad-spectrum light that mimics sunlight more closely than others is being tested in Canada, the Edmonton Journal reports. The light is manufactured by Edmonton-based G2V Optics and was originally designed to test solar cells at the University of Alberta.
Michael Taschuk, the developer of the light, previously managed a team of researchers at the University of Alberta. The lights have been in use at Endless Sky Canna Corp in British Columbia, Canada.
Endless Sky’s CEO Travis George reports that the lights are twice as effective as other grow lights the company has used.
Sudoku Puzzle Solver, Part 1 Of 9?
I sometimes write small programs over Christmas. I published a rotating torus and a fractal animation. A previous effort was a sudoku puzzle solver. This type of puzzle involves completing a 9×9 numerical grid (or a 16×16 hexadecimal grid for the particularly ambitious) while meeting the constraints that a digit may not be repeated in a row, column or box. While some people find this type of puzzle to be fun, I find it rather tedious and contrived. I also like to solve the general case. People have used many techniques to solve sudoku puzzles and perhaps the most ambitious was a spread-sheet with multiple layers and a very large number of conditional operators. (This is more akin to a Kohonen network or a deeper neural network.)
My technique is rather blunt: 81 levels of recursion. Superficially, this would appear to require an infeasible maximum of 9^81 attempts. However, the constraints of the puzzle bound this to something more akin to 9×8×7×6×5×4×3×2×1 attempts and it often takes far less attempts. Indeed, solving an empty grid requires relatively little computation.
Input (via stdin) is nine lines of text with any non-numerical string as a separator between digits. Use digit zero for unknown inputs. Output (via stdout) is nine lines of text followed by a count of the recursion calls:-
begin 644 sudoku-solver.pl.gz
M'XL(`/4*0EL"`YV3SV^;,!3'[_XKW(:F$+<!$DT-(IXF=9===DFE'9(<\L-I
MK+F`;-,13?SO>S8.(5%6:;L`[_F]S_=];=.["4LEPS7/PH))@1]_(-3#LW*;
M_RSQ+!?O3$+L/P>C*!X_3O#+GN'G/%.YU+Q\&Z(>K)JE>#3ZA)5>2=TD)M%3
M%&.U>F<([7+I>X)&J2>FDQB>A"8!_HTP]C1[*^AT]O+UV_?/*22^")XQJ@K!
MM1_.%]E"+C1^6)+PP98&IL;B*H.KI@D\"&E@@'N5?#L'OE<MJ6=0<_@R/36J
M$5+E&F^Y*FRUI1P,Y6"'.K1#?:2`<2%YIO$]OA\ZM0-Q&D;E5'&[R&[/E"7;
ME%(Q"Q+Y9B5\;\L*O0^HVO.=3D]I$70"F?_JAIO\;'6=5S:$?)EI0LPWWSDR
MI9/X.'C?&/>#M#MATX0!)-30C8LQJ[AN!F]0C4L+7-[0J`4Z/TZ+Q)9=8R:<
M1Q@*9J>@Y$K"Q,D;$[3)W24N!4::4N@)Q\%@]$1L"*4F'*<M<4!=C[M6YD)-
M(0?'WCDF;R=6K[#FPH].U-H\^@0!<Y[&:+]_D:1PIX)NWU$F2MM4?0T*)J!_
MD%Q@V_1_@V'7"/BZ&P?-;E5FKRYE_E+T+Z+'M[D/MH;&W<ZS.P+8$^#Z+;G6
7U:K6[:]D?YV6$$$K0G\`U/.'`+`$````
`
end
(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)
I may finish writing a web interface for this script so that I can spoil more enjoyment save more tedium among non-technical people. I planned to implement a stateful script which uses an HTML form. However, if anyone wants to extract digits from an image, that would be greatly appreciated. This would allow a sudoku puzzle to be solved by selecting an app on a smartphone and pointing the smartphone's camera at the puzzle. Or uploading an image via an HTML form. I like to solve the general case.
A friend suggested a solitaire card game solver. I give this serious consideration.
