Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings
https://edu-cyberpg.com
Rich As Hell
https://RichAsHell.com
daily read https:twitter.com/cyberplayground
EARTH DAY
#EarthDay Celebrate Earth Day 4/22/1970
GO PLANT A TREE
The theme of this year’s celebration is ‘ Invest in your planet” which is a call for everyone to create a secure and moderate environment conducive for all.
Biden to issue Earth Day order to safeguard old-growth forests.
#RingoStarr @ringostarrmusic
Peace and love and remember Friday is earth day peace and love
https://twitter.com/ringostarrmusic/status/1517142193143566340
How to observe the Lyrid meteor shower in Western Pa., which should appear starting just after midnight tonight and run through dawn Friday morning
https://triblive.com/local/regional/how-when-to-observe-the-lyrid-meteor-shower-in-western-pa/
The Midwest has lost 57 billion metric tons of topsoil over the last 160 years, new study finds
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/environment/2022-04-08/the-midwest-has-lost-57-billion-metric-tons-of-topsoil-over-the-last-160-years-new-study-finds
WATCH OUT
“I have no faith we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power.” — Max Boot
Robert Reich “Perhaps there’s something wrong with a system that allows a 35-year-old, unelected, Trump-nominated judge — whom the American Bar Association deemed unqualified — to strike down the travel mask mandate for the entire country?”
Garlands fault: The Big Lie is here to stay: Republicans plot to overturn elections on every level
https://www.salon.com/2022/04/20/the-big-lie-is-here-to-stay-plot-to-overturn-on-every-level/
Biden Canceling Student Debt Could Help Party Avoid ‘Disaster’ Midterms
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-cancelling-student-debt-help-democrats-avoid-disaster-1699385
Amazon Europe Unit Paid No Taxes on $55 Billion Sales in 2021
https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-international/amazon-europe-unit-paid-no-taxes-on-55-billion-sales-in-2021
Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset.
“Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath”
https://www.amazon.com/Freezing-Order-Laundering-Surviving-Vladimir-ebook/dp/B09JPH6CW3/
It’s illegal for your boss to tell you can’t discuss wages. If your boss ever tells you not to discuss your salary with your co-workers, immediately start looking for another job. That’s a toxic place to work. When it’s safe, report them to the National Labor Relations Board because that’s also illegal.
MEDIA
CNN+ shutting down April 30th.
Reminder, they put 250 million into developing it. The CFO resigned.
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D: “These articles were all published by Reuters since they claimed to have cut ties with Russian news agency TASS. Every single one of these articles is just repackaged TASS content under the Reuters brand name — so basically, it’s Russian propaganda dressed up to look credible. https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1516920620705005569
WHAT NO FU-KING MEDIA is talking about
China Is Nearly Done Building a Taiwan Invasion Fleet
Western democracies need to address the exigent threat
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-nearly-done-building-a-taiwan-invasion-fleet_4414077.html
@micahflee I don’t think people fully appreciate just how much, after invading Ukraine, people are hacking Russia. There are multiple hacks a week and it’s only increasing. For first time in internet history Russia is fair game for cyber attacks, and this is what it looks like
https://mobile.twitter.com/micahflee/status/1516521193808875527
LEGACY MEDIA LIKE NYT keep using euphemisms like “concerned about electoral issues” to describe widespread Republican rejection of democracy. They are failing their readers when they don’t use words like fascist or fascism. They are Lying to everyone! STOP LYING
SHUTTING DOWN SHANGHAI 1 good thing happened:
Analyst #Ming-ChiKuo says that Apple’s previous desire to reduce its reliance on China has become “an action plan” since the country’s recent lockdowns.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/04/21/apple-looks-to-move-away-from-china-for-its-new-products-says-kuo
Gizmodo: We’re Publishing the Facebook Papers
We’re Publishing the Facebook Papers. Here’s What They Say About Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and Jan. 6.
Gizmodo has reviewed, redacted, and published more than two dozen leaked Facebook documents, the first of hundreds to come.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2022/04/were-publishing-the-facebook-papers-heres-what-they-say-about-donald-trump-the-2020-election-and-jan-6/
As part of an ongoing project to make these once-confidential records accessible to the general public, Gizmodo is today—for the first time—publishing 28 of the documents previously exclusively shared with Congress and the media. Meta declined to comment on the release.
We have undertaken this project to help better inform the public about Facebook’s role in a wide range of controversies, as well as to provide researchers with access to materials that we hope will advance general knowledge of social media’s role in modern history’s most troubling crises. Less than two weeks after Donald Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol, the results of a poll commissioned by Facebook itself showed what already felt anecdotally true to many: That a majority of Americans believed Facebook at least partly responsible for the events of Jan. 6.
The documents will reveal to you, for instance, an internal analysis of the many groups that Facebook knew to be prolific sources of both voter suppression efforts and hate speech targeting its most marginalized users. The records show the company was privately aware of the growing fears among users of being exposed to election-related falsehoods. The papers show that Meta’s own data pinpointed the account of then-President Trump as being principally responsible for a surge in reports concerning violations of its violence and incitement rules.
Today’s release is the first of a series of posts from Gizmodo to be published in tandem with legal and academic partners. Our goal is to minimize any costs to individuals’ privacy and any furtherance of other harms while ensuring the responsible disclosure of the greatest amount of information in the public interest possible. You can read more about our methodology and what we have redacted here.
Judge rules Donald Trump can keep running Bronx golf
https://therealdeal.com/2022/04/09/judge-rules-donald-trump-can-keep-running-bronx-golf-course/
Scott Dworkin “Here’s video of Marjorie Taylor Greene at the White House in late December 2020 saying she had a “great planning session for our January 6th objection. We aren’t going to let this election be stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats.” Expel and arrest Greene.
https://twitter.com/funder/status/1354919728888881158
FLORIDA
@TristanSnell: Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election by sweating on camera — and Trump’s sweat game on Piers Morgan looks to be at least 5 Nixons.
Stephen Colbert talks about the DeSantis-Mouse feud, and points out that not only is Disney the largest private employer in the state but also “Disney is also they only reason anyone goes to Florida.”
What we really need is the denazification of Florida. The repubs are a shrinking minority of theofascists. They are intent on destroying America because they failed to become the majority.
Florida House Democrats have taken over floor during informal recess now.
So far, no push from Republicans to get session going again
Does not seem like House Democrats plan on ending sit in anytime soon.
Announcing demands on floor.
Currently occupying the Florida House Chambers Floor. This is #ThePeoplesHouse we will not stand by and allow #DeSantis to eliminate Black districts. #StopTheBlackAttacks #FairDistricts
TECH
“Bitcoin changes everything. I don’t think there’s anything more important in my lifetime to work on.”
Jack Dorsey revolutionized media and payments.
Now he’s tackling his THIRD paradigm shift… the future of money.
How did we get here? A quick THREAD
https://twitter.com/cryptojobguy/status/1514698553788149764
Three-way digital currency taxonomy, with cryptocurrencies in a “hybrid” category.
https://kiffmeister.com/the-account-versus-token-based-digital-currency-taxonomy/
@AaronWi38550500
Wences Casares, of Argentinian aristocratic descent who later became a self-made decamillionaire founding a South American E*Trade-type company, spent $250,000 trying to hack bitcoin’s protocol as due diligence before buying at least $2M of bitcoin himself in 2012.
The Future of Bitcoin: What Lightning Could Look Like
Bitcoin’s overlay payment network is projected to improve over the next few years in areas ranging from network architecture to security and usability, and more. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/future-bitcoin-what-lightning-could-look
Lightning liquidity providers automate submarine swaps to fire whenever on-chain fees drop below a certain threshold.The Blockchain and the Lightning Network are not at odds, they are complementary systems. For the most part a payment channel’s strengths are the chain’s weaknesses and this is also true in the reverse.
https://medium.com/muunwallet/a-closer-look-at-submarine-swaps-in-the-lightning-network-4417a2e8f93c
For more technical breakdown of submarine swaps and HTLCs read this article: https://blog.muun.com/a-closer-look-at-submarine-swaps-in-the-lightning-network/
Nice overview of how one might start with KYC Bitcoin but then achieve pretty good forward privacy using mobile submarine swaps and Lightning
https://www.suresats.com/post/enhance-privacy-to-kyc-d-bitcoin-with-mobile-wallet-submarine-swaps
For the first time there’s a non-custodial Lightning wallet on iOS.
Uses Neutrino, Submarine swaps, and does all of the (IMO) right tradeoffs to deliver a seamless experience with the minimal levels of trust currently possible.
Crypto Exchange’s New Emoji Looks Like a Swastika and People Are Losing It
Binance launched an emoji apparently inspired by the ancient religious symbol on Hitler’s birthday, and Twitter users had a field day. April 20, is also Adolf Hitler’s birthday. After receiving criticism on social media, Binance changed the logo and admitted that it made a mistake.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvn4q3/crypto-exchanges-new-emoji-looks-like-a-swastika-and-people-are-losing-it
Smart contracts are incredibly dangerous. The risk from farming is almost never worth the APY unless you’re being very careful spreading out funds across protocols.
Marcus Hutchins on Twitter: “Fun fact: if you enable iCloud backup and don’t use backup encryption with a different password, someone can phish your iCloud login and basically clone your entire phone.”
BANKING
Israel Adds Yuan to $206 Billion Reserves in ‘Philosophy’ Change
The central bank of Israel just announced an investing philosophy change.
They’re dropping the US Dollar for Chinese Yuan.
Are you paying attention yet?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-20/israel-adds-yuan-to-206-billion-reserves-in-philosophy-change
@MorganStanley report released today focuses on the prospects of using the Lightning Network for retail purchases and on “the long-term transition towards payments and settlements using digital and cryptocurrencies instead of fiat currencies like the US dollar”. The report was sparked by the @jackmallers Miami announcement—MS points out that “one in six point of sale devices globally use software provided by NCR, so this announcement is significant even if only a small proportion of retail shops choose to add the crypto functionality”
Biden Has Nominated a Man from the Sandy Weill/Robert Rubin/Tim Geithner
School of Wall Street Hubris to Head Regulation at the Fed
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2022 ~
In addition to being a law professor at the University of Michigan, Michael Barr also holds the title as the “Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.” The Ford School sits in a […]
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/04/biden-has-nominated-a-man-from-the-sandy-weill-robert-rubin-tim-geithner-school-of-wall-street-hubris-to-head-regulation-at-the-fed/
Why Didn’t Vanguard, the Largest Mutual Fund Family in the U.S., Need to Borrow from the Fed while the Wall Street Titans Did?
For the past week, Wall Street On Parade has been crunching the cryptic data released by the Federal Reserve on March 31 that named the mutual funds that couldn’t meet redemption requests in their money market funds in March and April of 2020 without tapping loans from […]
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/04/why-didnt-vanguard-the-largest-mutual-fund-family-in-the-u-s-need-to-borrow-from-the-fed-while-the-wall-street-titans-did/
It’s Been More than Seven Months and Still No Investigative Findings on the Fed’s Trading Scandal
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2022
Robert Kaplan, Former President of the Dallas Fed
On September 7 of last year, Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Derby broke the story that “Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan made multiple million-dollar-plus stock trades in 2020, according to a financial
disclosure form provided by his bank….” […]
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/04/its-been-more-than-seven-months-and-still-no-investigative-findings-on-the-feds-trading-scandal/
HEALTH
“Not having to wear a mask on the plane but still having to take your shoes off at the TSA checkpoint is peak failure to assess risk.”
@k8_lister talking about Mediaeval sex on a podcast, talking to @GoingMedieval about Mediaeval sex.
https://pod.link/1612090432/episode/3e6bdfc553e682ffa6488d2fb0ae1322
The fertility paradox – poverty vs prosperity
https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/the-fertility-paradox-poverty-vs-prosperity/
Urine bugs may be a sign of aggressive prostate cancer
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-61150771
The Florida Department of Health just issued guidelines telling doctors to medically de-transition all transgender youth and banned them from social transition treatment, including “name, pronoun, and clothing changes.”
https://www.floridahealth.gov/_documents/newsroom/press-releases/2022/04/20220420-gender-dysphoria-guidance.pdf
Emotional abuse during childhood is linked to alcohol-related problems in later life through increased insomnia
https://www.psypost.org/2022/04/emotional-abuse-during-childhood-is-linked-to-alcohol-related-problems-in-later-life-through-increased-insomnia-62959
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to exclude residents of Puerto Rico from U.S. disability benefits programs.
Puerto Ricans seeking federal disability benefits strike out at Supreme Court
GEEKY TOPICS
Software Defined Radio (“Radio nerditry”)
http://websdr.org/
A WebSDR is a Software-Defined Radio receiver connected to the internet, allowing many listeners to listen and tune it simultaneously. SDR technology makes it possible that all listeners tune independently, and thus listen to different signals; this is in contrast to the many classical receivers that are already available via the internet.
International shortwave radio broadcasting is definitely a dying medium, and the number of countries with stations decreases every year. So if you want to experience this medium, the clock is ticking.
https://mobile.twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1516995086487334914
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961) | National Archives
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address
ECP NetHappenings
Kevin Wallace just said the magic words, “The people call Donald J. Trump,” and he just took his sworn oath to tell the truth.
Plenty of companies that are household names are making political contributions to the members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election.
Mike Johnson
@ElieNYC
Sam Bankman-Fried
WorldBank publishes report
WHY CAN’T WE GET RID OF FOX NEWS?