Events

Via Bruce Schneier, your car does not respect your privacy anymore: Mozilla recently reported that of the car brands it reviewed, all 25 failed its privacy tests. While all, in Mozilla's estimation, overreached in their policies around data collection and use, some even included caveats about obtaining highly invasive types of information, like your sexual history and genetic information. As it turns out, this isn’t just hypothetical: The technology in today’s cars has the ability to collect these kinds...

I mentioned that my office recently went back to a Tuesday through Thursday schedule downtown. Since our final return to office (RTO), I'd gone in twice a week, usually Wednesday and Thursday. I actually prefer a Friday and Monday schedule, but since the rest of my team comes in mid-week, I have to go in then. The additional day actually costs additional money. The Sun-Times reported yesterday that RTO costs employees about $51 per day on average. Perhaps; but it costs me about $80 per day, broken down...

We have unusual wind and sunshine for mid-November today, with a bog-standard 10C temperature. It doesn't feel cold, though. Good weather for flying kites, if you have strong arms. Elsewhere in the world: The right wing of the US Supreme Court has finally found a firearms restriction that they can't wave away with their nonsense "originalism" doctrine. Speaking of the loony right-wing asses on the bench, the Post has a handy guide to all of the people and organizations Justice Clarence Thomas (R) and...

I actually had a lot to do today at my real job, so I pushed these stories to later: Sure, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is a crazy Christianist who has fantasies about Israel, but not exactly the fantasies you'd expect from his kind. Speaking of Christianist loonies, Josh Marshall doesn't think they've learned anything at all from yesterday's blowout in Ohio. Julia Ioffe takes a look at the "horror in the Holy Land" while Eric Levitz examines the fraught language around the war. Molly White...

And cue the "Dems in disarray" headlines, which reminds me that reporters don't choose headlines, publishers do. (At least the New Republic has some cooler heads.) Seriously, though, the Democratic Party did awfully well last night, winning another four years for Kentucky governor Andy Bashears, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat, and control of both houses of the Virginia legislature: Eight years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, a House Republican conference in turmoil and one very big Supreme...

We've switched around our RTO/WFH schedule recently, so I'm now in the office Tuesday through Thursday. That's exactly the opposite of my preferred schedule, it turns out. So now Tuesdays feel like Mondays. And I still can't get the hang of Thursdays. We did get our bi-weekly build out today, which was boring, as it should be. Alas, the rest of the world wasn't: The XPOTUS has vowed revenge on everyone who has wronged him, pledging to use the US government to smite his enemies, as if we needed any more...

Remember how it snowed six days ago? Today it didn't: Unrelated, I'm monitoring some frustrating slowness with the Daily Parker. I'm not sure what's going on. Doubling the VM memory didn't seem to help. I've been thinking of writing my own blog engine again (as I have for about 15 years), so maybe this will give me the push I need.

Tomorrow, Ohio citizens will vote on Issue 1, which would amend the state constitution to protect reproductive rights. But if you read the state Board of Elections explainer—the language that will actually appear on the ballot—you might not know WTF the amendment does. That is by design; Republican-ruled state legislatures have learned the hard way that an issue with 65% support will probably pass if people know what they're voting for. Here's the actual proposed amendment, which would become Section 22...

Climate advocate Rollie Williams looks at the legacy of the 2008 Chicago parking meter deal: Contra Williams, many Chicagoans, including The Daily Parker, saw the problems with the deal at the time, and how it just got worse over a very short time. But spend 25 minutes with Williams' video. He takes you through all the immediate problems as well as how it prevents Chicago from adopting more climate-friendly and pedestrian-friendly changes to its streetscape.

Just a couple to mention: A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried of committing the largest fraud in US history. He faces up to 110 years in prison. House Republicans passed a bill that would provide $14 billion in funding for Israel's war with Hamas by taking it from IRS tax evasion enforcement, a move so cynical that Paul Krugman likens it to "the Big Lie." ("Starving the I.R.S. has long been a Republican priority; what’s new is the party’s willingness to serve that priority by endangering national...