Visualization Of The Most Watched Television Series From 1951 – 2019

https://geekologie.com/2020/05/visualization-of-the-most-watched-televi.php

most-watched-tv-series-visualization.jpg
This is an ever-changing bar graph visualization of the most watched television series from 1951 to 2019. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t depressing to watch, and not just because most of the modern shows suck, but because I knew I didn’t have anything better to do with my time than watch all twelve minutes. "It’s five o’clock somewhere." It’s eight o’clock somewhere too. "What do you mean?" I’m already drunk, let’s order pizza. Keep going for the video.

Thanks to Jeffrey S, who informed me he was just happy Alf briefly appeared in 1989.

via Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome https://geekologie.com/

May 22, 2020 at 11:59AM

Yes, the Patriot Act amendment to track us online is real

https://www.engadget.com/yes-the-patriot-act-amendment-to-track-us-online-is-real-173055117.html

Just being able to calmly purchase toilet paper feels like reason enough to celebrate these days. But one thing a lot of people won’t be cracking champagne over this month is the renewal of the Patriot Act/USA Freedom Act — and its terrible inclusion of a provision to allow government collection of Americans’ internet browsing and search histories without a warrant.

That is, if Congress gets its collective shit together and passes it to the Oval Office for a signature. Right now, the Act has crossed the Senate and is going back to the House, with a fight over amendments already boiling over.

Yet, it was the one amendment that didn’t pass which has privacy fans ready to break their champagne bottles on a rock and use them as shivs. That amendment, from Senator Ron Wyden, would have specifically excluded internet browsing and search history from what the government is allowed to collect.

Wyden’s amendment would have countered Senate GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s amendment, which “will expressly permit the FBI to warrantlessly collect records on Americans’ web browsing and search histories,” reported Daily Beast with the scoop. The outlet added, “In a different amendment, McConnell also proposes giving the attorney general visibility into the ‘accuracy and completeness’ of FBI surveillance submissions to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court.”

To recap: McConnell added warrantless surveillance of Americans’ browsing and search, Wyden countered it with the Senate version of LOLNO, and then Wyden’s amendment failed by just one vote. Engadget senior editor Richard Lawler pointed out that “Washington senator Patty Murray would have voted yes, but was still flying back to D.C. when the votes were cast.”

“Under the McConnell amendment, Barr gets to look through the web browsing history of any American—including journalists, politicians, and political rivals—without a warrant, just by saying it is relevant to an investigation,” Wyden told Daily Beast.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to reporters following a closed Senate Republican policy lunch meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 19, 2020. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Yuri Gripas / Reuters

Citing the Wyden-Daines amendment, Rep. Zoe Lofgren said that “it’s now the House’s responsibility to curb this violation of Americans’ rights,” Politico reported. “I know it’s still within our grasp as lawmakers to push for the significant privacy reforms we need.” 

Because we have enough past experience that this kind of surveillance will be abused, and accountability, like Elvis, has left the Capitol building, the pushback on 2020’s version of NSA-PRISM is big enough to almost allow us a decadent sliver of hope. Organizations from the ACLU and DuckDuckGo to HumanRightsWatch and the NAACP have asked lawmakers (including Speaker Pelosi) to urgently add Wyden’s changes.

All of this is why you probably saw a bunch of histrionic headlines fly by saying the US government was going to play collect-them-all with our searches for “how to get off this planet” and our visits to websites about how to become an expat and not catch COVID-19 in ten easy steps. They weren’t wrong. But there are some interesting things you should know about how this kind of collection will probably be done.

You’re not alone if you instantly envisioned a giant NSA/FBI data warehouse in the middle of some ominous Fallout desert scene, where all of the country’s (and probably the world’s) phone calls were being Hoovered up and stored. So much data that it’s searched by agents and AI, sadly dispelling everyone’s favorite, the personal FBI agent meme.

This is probably the same fantasy some of the internet data surveillance ghouls are salivating over right now — Facebook-level access to our internet lives (Facebook being just a different flavor of slobbering ghouls). But why do the (surveillance) work when others have done it for you? I’m sure McConnell and company are thinking of it like how they’ve seen humans on TV simply go to the store for whatever it is that humans eat and drink. In this case the stores would be Google, Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else who has authorities showing up with warrants for internet search and browsing data. Just go to Big Browser! They’ll have whatcha need.

Those channels are already there: they are among the same government spying and data surveillance/collection problems for consumers and at-risk groups that existed before. Right now, there’s a step that must be satisfied unless those authorities want to be turned away by the people at those companies whose jobs it is to look at a warrant and say “yes this warrant is acceptable” or “nice try pal, this is not what you say it is.” (All of which ends up essentially paraphrased in company transparency reports.)

As Patriot Act/USA Freedom stands now, this step would be removed.

Revolution or protests. Hands holding smartphones

Interestingly, one “Big Browser” company has a feature that’s a useful tool in this context. Like the way Apple can’t “read” your iPhone’s data (specifically, Apple can’t decrypt it), Google can only share what it can “read.” You can password protect your Chrome data by following the instructions here

Anyway, to validate the concerns a lot of you are having about your surveillance and privacy defenses, it’s important to know that the company running your browser goes on your Patriot Act 2020 “adversary” list. Even though, in this instance, companies like Apple and Google (etc.) are the ones having changes forced on them — putting them in a position that’s sure to destroy user trust at scale. Engadget reached out to Apple and Google for comment on this matter and did not receive a response by time of publication.

Now, I know some of you are reading and saying, that’s it, I’m just going to use DuckDuckGo from now on, I know for a fact they oppose this and they’ve got my back. DuckDuckGo, a VPN, and a full-body condom ought to do it. Except you’ll need a VPN that already doesn’t cooperate with FISA warrants. It’s possible. Interestingly, NordVPN’s Warrant Canary has strong language stating it has never handed over user data. But to order those body condoms, you still need internet access.

That’s why your internet service provider (ISP) should probably go higher on your Patriot Act 2020 “adversary” list than Big Browser. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, T-Mobile, and Verizon after “T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T were selling their mobile customers’ location information to third-party data brokers despite promising not to do so,” according to Ars Technica. And in case you didn’t know the background on it, the EFF proved in court that “Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T [participated] in the NSA’s mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act.”

(If you want to get into the details of ISPs, DNS, and protecting data in that context, check out what Mozilla is trying to do in The Facts: Mozilla’s DNS over HTTPs)

In infosec lingo, when it comes to Patriot Act 2020, your ISP is an attacker in a privileged position. And right now we depend on the internet for, well, almost our very lives. Lives which require privacy — a human right.

2020 is many things, and one of those things seems to be an agonizingly long version of the infamous “Leave Britney Alone” video, except it’s us, and we’re at the tear-streaked breaking point over our data privacy. Now that we’re essentially trapped online most of our waking hours, we feel more used, stressed, poked, prodded, extorted, angry, tricked, and helplessly subjected to violations about our data than ever. It’s exhausting at a time when everything seems exhausting.

For now, we can focus on how to control the things we can, like doing privacy self-checks or take inventory of app settings. We get to know tools like VPNs and start to use things that end-to-end encrypt our communications — we practice doing things that shore up our defenses a bit more than before. 

While we do that, we’ll have to flex one of the less popular survival skills — we wait. The ghastly changes to the Patriot Act, a thing that was already a shambling disaster of failed protections and rights violations, may still face a challenge or two before getting an Oval Office signature. Though even if McConnell’s amendment doesn’t squeak through this time, we now know that lawmakers at the top want an unprecedented, Facebook-level of spying and control over our online lives. 

We just thought that trajectory was the stuff of implausible video games and far-out films — which, turns out, are a lot less entertaining to live through.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

May 22, 2020 at 12:42PM

Hacker Permanently Solves Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Drift With a Touchpad Upgrade

https://gizmodo.com/hacker-permanently-solves-nintendo-switch-joy-con-drift-1843605860

After shutting down its US-based repair centers over two months ago as a result of the pandemic, Nintendo is starting to reopen them again, which is good news for Switch owners still dealing with Joy-Con drift. Hacker Matteo Pisani came up with a different solution: a Switch without joysticks is a Switch that never experiences drift problems, so he upgraded his console with a touchpad instead.

It’s an idea that was not only inspired by an embarrassing hardware gaffe from a company otherwise known for quality consoles, but by the unorthodox approach to gamepads that Valve took with its now-deceased Steam Controller. In addition to a single joystick, the Steam Controller featured a pair of vibrating haptic touchpads that Valve promised provided as much precision as a mouse and keyboard. The Steam Controller didn’t take the gaming world by storm, but it did show that using a touch-sensitive control scheme for action games wasn’t a completely awful idea.

Pisani hadn’t actually experienced the Joy-Con drift problem with his Switch yet, but he figured this hack—which he’s exhaustively detailed in a Medium post—would ensure it was a problem he’d never encounter if he managed to pull it off. Starting with a transparent green Joy-Con housing (an unnecessary upgrade but one that certainly adds some retro charm for those who owned the lime green Donkey Kong 64-themed N64) he transplanted the guts of his Switch’s left Joy-Con while removing the joystick components in the process.

The electronics were upgraded with a digital potentiometer, a capacitive touchpad wrapped in a custom 3D-printed enclosure, and an Arduino Pro Mini (among other bits) which is used to translate the digital signals from the touchpad to analog joystick signals the Switch is expecting. The hacked Joy-Con isn’t as pretty as Nintendo’s original hardware, but Pisani plans to optimize and miniaturize the added electronics so that everything fits inside the Joy-Con enclosure, allowing it to be used either attached or detached.

Gamers used to the tactile experience of ramming a joystick in all directions will probably turn their nose up at this one, as will anyone who’s struggled to play an action game on a touchscreen device like a smartphone using virtual joysticks. The one advantage Pisani’s hack has is the touchpad’s circular design which provides tactile limits so you can feel when your finger has reached the edge, preventing it from accidentally moving out of range as often happens with virtual on-screen controls. It’s not perfect, but one thing’s for certain: it’s never going to experience annoying drift.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

May 22, 2020 at 09:00AM

New Airbus Blended-Wing Airplane Concept Looks Very Similar to a 1940s Design for a Futuristic Flyer

https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/new-airbus-blended-wing-airplane-concept-looks-very-sim-1841626404

Earlier this year, Airbus unveiled a sleek new concept aircraft with a blended wing that looked incredibly futuristic. And while it looks like it could have been ripped out of a sci-fi movie from the 2010s, the plane concept also has many elements of retro-futurism. Specifically, the plane looks similar to the proposed Northrop Flying Wing of the 1940s.

The new Airbus concept is called MAVERIC (Model Aircraft for Validation and Experimentation of Robust Innovative Controls) and was unveiled back in February by the company’s designers in Singapore.

The company has built a scale model that’s about 6.5 feet long and 10.5 feet wide and Airbus even posted a concept video of the aircraft to YouTube.

The MAVERIC looks cool, but if the design looks familiar to you, there might be a good reason. After World War II, Jack Northrop, designed something called the Northrop Flying Wing which promised Americans a highly futuristic flying experience was right around the corner.

In the 1930s, flying was still very much seen as an exceptional and expensive endeavor, albeit one filled with plenty of luxury. Why fly and throw away all of that money when trains could get you there just as well?

Aircraft designers wanted to change all that and provide an incredible flying experience to all Americans, promising that wealth and prosperity was coming to everyone. Enter the Flying Wing, which could seat 80 passengers and could put all of those newly idled airplane factories from World War II into good use for commercial passenger flights.

Popular Science even released an informative short film in 1948 about the hypothetical aircraft, which you can see looks very similar to the new Airbus design.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

May 22, 2020 at 08:30AM