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Family outraged after a Universal character made 'OK' symbol on 6-year-old's shoulder

OK hand sign added to list of hate symbols

Petition Unicode for deprecation of 👌 immediately.

This is not OK!

Lawyer: Dear judge, I will be using emoji's during my opening statement.

Judge: How do you propose to do that?

Lawyer: As the court may have observed, I've hired a number of actors wearing various emoji costumes, who are seated here in the courtroom today. When I need the jury to see a specific emoji, I will play a certain note on this flute here, and the associated emoji will stand up momentarily.

Judge: You may pro seed.

Yeap... From a practical standpoint, why not? Can't do any harm. Just keep Bill busy out in the rose garden or something.

There should be no doubt that would clinch the race

The key is Oprah. She's no dummy. Putting her out there as VP will repair almost 30 years of damage. Queen Bee diplomat with a great deal on scud missiles (still gotta pay tribute). America will be loved again. She is the chosen one.

I'm not really joking, eh? You people want a solution, this is it. Show me anything better. I dare ya!

Edit:

Lots of no votes against her here, and not a single solitary valid point. Oprah Derangement Syndrome is worse than that other one. Why do people cling so hard to broken bullshit? Are they that comfortable with it?

kik, blockchain scams, social media. Most startups fail to turn a profit and eat revenue before falling into obscurity. Many more are kept afloat by overly optimistic investors despite no revenue.

How can investors launch software startups that don't fail and aren't a bubble?

Simple. Let good programmers come up with ideas for businesses instead of venture capitalists. Good programmers know how much effort is required to do X. Instead of trying to get rich quick on gimmicks, make the next Visual Studio, Photoshop, Solidworks, or other robust tool that does a useful job well. The next great app to do X is probably a fad if it does nothing more than streamline an existing process. People love to cut out the middleman, so don't be a middleman. Provide something actually useful and not merely convenient. Provide a product, not a service.

(This entry is an opinion and the distribution of such is protected by the First Amendment per Reed v. Gilbert. It is not legally "financial advice" and any attempt to regulate it as such is unconstitutional.)

"We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative..."

Without seeing a copy of this letter, I will doubt it's actual existence, and believe that this is just regular tabloid bullshit. Maybe somebody will scare something up.

Edit:

In the AC's link below, you can watch Warren disqualify herself in one short instant.

And then Harris: Leave Joe Biden Alone! I guess some people are pretty selective on what crimes they'll prosecute.

Like the kid said, they keep gifting the GOP with this kind of stuff. One group is trying to "out-crazy" the other. There's a reason for this. Congress has to be finely tuned right down the middle so each side can blame the other in their little theater they play out. Still doesn't compare to the Brits. Just another example of the lowlife trash that win elections in the US.

It's in the queue! MartyB's final report on the rampant censorship on SoylentNews! Or, the rampant incompetence of SoylentNews. Or, how paranoia seeps deep into our psyches, poisoning our every move, no matter how innocent or unintended. Did Athanasius Kirchner accidently delete, or not post, a journal? Or, did The Mightly Broussaerd, in his role as alt-right sympathizing libertariantard, intervene in the free speech of SN? Well, I trust all who recognize the tagline "#Freearistarchus!!" know were I stand. This report will be as good as the report on whether or not Trump committed treason. And I expect no less from SoylentNews, after my experience of having been censored by the objections of the TMB, so it will be much the same. But this being the case, if any case can be made, such as the thousands of rejected aristarchus submissions, it does not look good for SoylentNews.

Janrinok is now rejecting aristarchus submissions in Swahili. Racist bastard!

I once read Schneier pretty regularly - at least once a month. Somehow, I've gotten away from his site. William Barr made his "I'm a dummy" speech on encryption in July - https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/23/william-barr-consumers-security-risks-backdoors/

Schneier has made comments on that speech twice now.

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/08/the_myth_of_consumer.html

The thing is, that distinction between military and consumer products largely doesn't exist. All of those "consumer products" Barr wants access to are used by government officials—heads of state, legislators, judges, military commanders and everyone else—worldwide. They're used by election officials, police at all levels, nuclear power plant operators, CEOs and human rights activists. They're critical to national security as well as personal security.

This wasn't true during much of the Cold War. Before the internet revolution, military-grade electronics were different from consumer-grade. Military contracts drove innovation in many areas, and those sectors got the cool new stuff first. That started to change in the 1980s, when consumer electronics started to become the place where innovation happened. The military responded by creating a category of military hardware called COTS: commercial off-the-shelf technology. More consumer products became approved for military applications. Today, pretty much everything that doesn't have to be hardened for battle is COTS and is the exact same product purchased by consumers. And a lot of battle-hardened technologies are the same computer hardware and software products as the commercial items, but in sturdier packaging.

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/07/attorney_general_wil.html

Barr also says:

Further, the burden is not as onerous as some make it out to be. I served for many years as the general counsel of a large telecommunications concern. During my tenure, we dealt with these issues and lived through the passage and implementation of CALEA the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CALEA imposes a statutory duty on telecommunications carriers to maintain the capability to provide lawful access to communications over their facilities. Companies bear the cost of compliance but have some flexibility in how they achieve it, and the system has by and large worked. I therefore reserve a heavy dose of skepticism for those who claim that maintaining a mechanism for lawful access would impose an unreasonable burden on tech firms especially the big ones. It is absurd to think that we would preserve lawful access by mandating that physical telecommunications facilities be accessible to law enforcement for the purpose of obtaining content, while allowing tech providers to block law enforcement from obtaining that very content.

That telecommunications company was GTE—which became Verizon. Barr conveniently ignores that CALEA-enabled phone switches were used to spy on government officials in Greece in 2003—which seems to have been a National Security Agency operation—and on a variety of people in Italy in 2006. Moreover, in 2012 every CALEA-enabled switch sold to the Defense Department had security vulnerabilities. (I wrote about all this, and more, in 2013.)

The final thing I noticed about the speech is that it is not about iPhones and data at rest. It is about communications—data in transit. The "going dark" debate has bounced back and forth between those two aspects for decades. It seems to be bouncing once again.

This 2016 essay 'The Value of Encryption' needs to be touched on if anyone doubts the necessity of encryption - https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/04/the_value_of_encrypt.html

And, finally, another 2016 blog that I'd like to see updated soon - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/worldwide_encry.html

The findings of this survey identified 619 entities that sell encryption products. Of those 412, or two-thirds, are outside the U.S.-calling into question the efficacy of any US mandates forcing backdoors for law-enforcement access. It also showed that anyone who wants to avoid US surveillance has over 567 competing products to choose from. These foreign products offer a wide variety of secure applications­ -- voice encryption, text message encryption, file encryption, network-traffic encryption, anonymous currency­ -- providing the same levels of security as US products do today.

Details:

There are at least 865 hardware or software products incorporating encryption from 55 different countries. This includes 546 encryption products from outside the US, representing two-thirds of the total.
The most common non-US country for encryption products is Germany, with 112 products. This is followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Sweden, in that order.
The five most common countries for encryption products­ -- including the US­ -- account for two-thirds of the total. But smaller countries like Algeria, Argentina, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Chile, Cyprus, Estonia, Iraq, Malaysia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Tanzania, and Thailand each produce at least one encryption product.
Of the 546 foreign encryption products we found, 56% are available for sale and 44% are free. 66% are proprietary, and 34% are open source. Some for-sale products also have a free version.
At least 587 entities­ -- primarily companies -- ­either sell or give away encryption products. Of those, 374, or about two-thirds, are outside the US.
Of the 546 foreign encryption products, 47 are file encryption products, 68 e-mail encryption products, 104 message encryption products, 35 voice encryption products, and 61 virtual private networking products.
The report is here, here, and here. The data, in Excel form, is here.

Press articles are starting to come in. (Here are the previous blog posts on the effort.)

I know the database is incomplete, and I know there are errors. I welcome both additions and corrections, and will be releasing a 1.1 version of this survey in a few weeks.

I know there are those who believe that only the government should have access to ̶g̶u̶n̶s̶ encryption.

Could it really be...

Biden?? [spooky music]

It's ok. He's expendable. The DNC can settle on Warren to keep interest high. And with a well divided congress she won't be a threat if she were to win.

But, then who's next? Schiff, Schumer, Pelosi, Barr, Giuliani, the whole cabinet? Anybody important?

The prez?? He'll skate, and now with more fired up support.

So then, sorry to ask twice, but who profits from this circus?

Oh what the hell...

Let's lay it on thick, just for fun.

Say "goodnight", Joe...

And everything your "whistleblower" gave you is second/third hand.

So, there ya go.. We can all go home now... Tune in the BBC and watch Brexit. Something noticeable will happen in a month.

The economy? Will probably get through Christmas alright.

Impeachment... Cui bono? Up to 1.4 mil for Facebook. And the campaign claims they gathered 8.5 mil in 24 hours. There will be an additional 10 mil spent across all media by the RNC and his campaign.

*sigh* I need a way to cash in on this.

Edit: Fixed the header to accommodate those who wish to believe I was unaware.