A rite of passage. A few months ago I bought some $250 headphones from Apple. They were great. Today one of them fell out of my ear when I was taking off my mask, and disappeared into my jacket or the ether or whatever, but it's gone now. Oh well.

Investigators probing a massive hack of the U.S. government and businesses say they have found concrete evidence the suspected Russian espionage operation went far beyond the compromise of the small software vendor publicly linked to the attack. From a report: Close to a third of the victims didn't run the SolarWinds software initially considered the main avenue of attack for the hackers, according to investigators and the government agency digging into the incident. The revelation is fueling concern that the episode exploited vulnerabilities in business software used daily by millions [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. Hackers linked to the attack have broken into these systems by exploiting known bugs in software products, by guessing online passwords and by capitalizing on a variety of issues in the way Microsoft cloud-based software is configured, investigators said. Approximately 30% of both the private-sector and government victims linked to the campaign had no direct connection to SolarWinds, Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in an interview. The attackers "gained access to their targets in a variety of ways. This adversary has been creative," said Mr. Wales, whose agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is coordinating the government response. "It is absolutely correct that this campaign should not be thought of as the SolarWinds campaign." Corporate investigators are reaching the same conclusion. Last week, computer security company Malwarebytes said that a number of its Microsoft cloud email accounts were compromised by the same attackers who targeted SolarWinds, using what Malwarebytes called "another intrusion vector."

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Securities regulators said Friday they plan to closely review the actions of some brokerage firms [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] that restricted investors' ability to trade volatile stocks such as GameStop this week. From a report: The Securities and Exchange Commission's statement on Friday is the clearest indication yet that regulators are examining potential misconduct around the trading mania that swamped stocks such as GameStop, AMC Entertainment and Novavax. Robinhood Markets restricted investors' ability to purchase shares in GameStop and 12 other companies on Thursday as it dealt with the impact on its financial requirements of a surge in trading. Robinhood raised $1 billion to shore up its ability to clear and execute trades in those popular and volatile stocks, which the broker on Friday allowed clients to resume trading. Regulators also said they are on the lookout for potentially manipulative trading. This week's sharp price swings have been aided by bullish individual traders communicating on websites such as Reddit's WallStreetBets about which shares to buy. Traders drove up demand for stocks that other investors such as hedge funds had bet against, resulting in a "short squeeze" that ramped up the prices of GameStop more than 10-fold.

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Robin George Andrews, reporting for National Geographic: A 62-year-old adventure mystery that has prompted conspiracy theories around Soviet military experiments, Yetis, and even extraterrestrial contact may have its best, most sensible explanation yet -- one found in a series of avalanche simulations based in part on car crash experiments and animation used in the movie Frozen. In an article published this week in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers present data pointing to the likelihood that a bizarrely small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the gruesome injuries and deaths of nine experienced hikers who never returned from a planned 200-mile adventure in Russia's Ural Mountains in the winter of 1959. In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg -- nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II -- headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing and mountaineering expedition on January 23, 1959. One student with joint pain turned back, but the rest, led by 23-year-old engineering student Igor Dyatlov, continued on. According to camera film and personal diaries later found on the scene by investigators, the team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as "Dead Mountain" in the language of the region's Indigenous Mansi people. The nine -- seven men and two women -- were never heard from again. When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the expedition tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. Over the next few months, as the snow thawed, search teams gradually uncovered more spine-chilling sights: All nine of the team members' bodies were scattered around the mountain's slope, some in a baffling state of undress; some of their skulls and chests had been smashed open; others had eyes missing, and one lacked a tongue. Each body was a piece in a grim puzzle, but none of the pieces seemed to fit together. A criminal investigation at the time blamed their deaths on an "unknown natural force," and the Soviet bureaucracy kept the case quiet. The lack of detail about this shocking event, an apparent massacre that transpired in a deeply secretive state, gave rise to dozens of long-lived conspiracy theories, from clandestine military tests to Yeti attacks.

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As the U.S. investigation into the SolarWinds hacking campaign grinds on, lawmakers are demanding answers from the National Security Agency about another troubling supply chain breach that was disclosed five years ago. From a report: A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are asking the NSA what steps it took to secure defense networks following a years-old breach of software made by Juniper Networks, a major provider of firewall devices for the federal government. Juniper revealed its incident in December 2015, saying that hackers had slipped unauthorized code into the firm's software that could allow access to firewalls and the ability to decrypt virtual private network connections. Despite repeated inquiries from Capitol Hill -- and concern in the Pentagon about the potential exposure of its contractors to the hack -- there has been no public U.S. government assessment of who carried out the hack, and what data was accessed. Lawmakers are now hoping that, by cracking open the Juniper cold case, the government can learn from that incident before another big breach of a government vendor provides attackers with a foothold into U.S. networks. Members of Congress also are examining any role that the NSA may have unwittingly played in the Juniper incident by allegedly advocating for a weak encryption algorithm that Juniper and other firms used in its software. Lawmakers want to know if, more than a decade ago, the NSA pushed for a data protection scheme it could crack, only for another state-sponsored group to exploit that security weakness to gather data about the U.S. "Congress has a responsibility to determine the root cause of this supply chain compromise and the NSA's role in the design and promotion of the flawed encryption algorithm that played such a central role," Wyden and other lawmakers wrote to Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, in a letter made public Friday.

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SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Friday he expects mass production of self-driving vehicles to start in two years. From a report: While in the first year the production of units won't be in millions, in the next several years the cost per mile in fully autonomous cars will become very cheap, Son said, speaking at a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "The AI is driving for you. The automobile will become a real supercomputer with four wheels." SoftBank has stake in self-driving car maker Cruise, which is majority owned by General Motors, and has been testing self-driving cars in California. It has also funded the autonomous driving business of China's Didi Chuxing.

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Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead? From a report: I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata -- based on the volume of activity he was noticing there -- had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India. I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses -- ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection -- isn't an exact science, I wasn't certain that they would yield any scammers. But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.

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The NYT Daily podcast is sometimes very good, riveting even, and certainly useful. Esp covering the pandemic. But on politics, they are often in the woods. Taking something simple and not only making it sound complex, but saying that they're doing that. It's tricky. If I tell you right now there's no point reading further because you'll never understand what I'm saying, you might keep reading but you wouldn't understand. A certainty. Or if I say "You're not going to like this.." you won't like it. I've seen myself react this way. And later thought, hold on, I never got a chance to like it or dislike it! Oy.

Anyway the history of the filibuster. It's one of those things like stock options that people feel they can't understand and in yesterday's Daily podcast they didn't help demystify it. I can't believe the reporter and interviewer didn't understand, but they kind of pretended they were confused.

So here's a rough timeline of the advent and demise of the filibuster in the US Senate.

• It was a rule first adopted for the US Senate in 1917. It said this. If someone is talking endlessly, you can stop them, with 67 votes. A 2/3 majority. When you stop them, you can vote, and then a 51% majority rules. Simple. Before 1917 there was no way to shut up a speaker and start to vote, believe it or not. The vote to shut someone up is called cloture.
• In 1974 they made it so that when you're voting on money only, 51 percent rules. No filibuster allowed. You'll hear this referred to as "reconcilliation."
• In 1975, they dropped it to 3/5 or 60 votes.
• Then a key change. The speaker who wants to hold up the vote didn't actually have to take the floor and do the speaking. They just said they would do it if they had to. That was enough to prevent majority rule. One senator. That's pretty fucked up if you ask me. BTW, they call this a "virtual filibuster" on the Wikipedia page. Cool.
• In 2013, they made it so that it didn't apply to confirming cabinet members and judges, except for Supreme Court judges.
• And finally in 2017, they made it so it worked that way for Supreme Court judges too.

Sometimes it's the Repubs and sometimes the Dems. It's a dance. When it's the Dems it's the Repubs who forced them to do it. Not so sure about the other way. The Repubs are the obstructionist party and the flamethrowing party. The Dems are Charlie Brown, and the Repubs are Lucy, holding the football.

Right now the filibuster can only be used for non-budgetary laws. There's a lot to that. For example, if you wanted to overhaul health care in the US, you'd need a "filibuster-proof" majority which is a fancy way of saying you need 60 votes. Practically speaking neither party can get that many, so if it holds the current Congress can only pass legislation about money, and of course confirm judges.

Anyway the TL;DR version is that they're whittling it down, and probalby next time, it'll go away altogether, going back to where they were before 1917. Simple majority rule, speaking time limited by rule, not vote. I think everyone understands that's the fair way to go. Otherwise 40 percent of the Senate, which often is much less than 40 percent of the people, can stop anything from happening. That's what happened during the Obama presidency when teh Repubs controlled the Senate, and they are poised to do it again. But this time the Dems have it in their power to nuke the filibuster, and end the tyranny of the minority. And if they have the votes and guts to do it, they should. Because someday soon the Repubs will do it, and the first to do it, gets the greatest reward. They can change things so that it's unlikely the Repubs ever get a majority in the Senate again. And since they have been a solid minority party for quite some time, it's time for their party to end. Regroup, come back to earth and try to get a majority of the votes. They'll have to stop being authocratic authoritarian conspiracy theorist nutjobs to get the votes, one would hope. :-)

An airport for flying cars will thrust the English city of Coventry into the future later this year, with a project aimed at demonstrating how air taxis will work in urban centres. From a report: Urban-Air Port, a British-based start-up, has partnered with car giant Hyundai Motor to develop the infrastructure required for when flying cars take to the skies to ferry around people and goods. From November, visitors to Coventry will be able to see what a flying car airport looks like and see a passenger-carrying drone and an operational electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle on the landing pad. Urban-Air Port was selected by a government programme aimed at developing zero-emission flying and new air vehicles, winning a 1.2-million-pound ($1.65-million) grant to help fund the temporary installation of the airport in Coventry city centre.

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The investor who helped direct the world's attention to GameStop, leading a horde of online followers in a bizarre market rally that made and lost fortunes from one day to the next, says he's just a normal guy. From his profile by The Wall Street Journal: "I didn't expect this," said Keith Gill, 34 years old, known as "DeepF-ingValue" by fans on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum and "Dada" by his 2-year-old daughter. He said he didn't set out to draw the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, hedge funds, the media, trading platforms and hundreds of thousands of investors. "This story is so much bigger than me," Mr. Gill told The Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the unboxing this week of a volatile new stock market game. "I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement." To many of them, Mr. Gill -- who until recently worked in marketing for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance -- is the force behind the triple-digit gains in shares of the videogame retailer GameStop, up more than 900% this year through Thursday. On Wednesday, the stock jumped 135% to $347.51, a record, before plunging to $194 a share Thursday as online brokerages clamped down. At the start of the year, GameStop shares went for around $18. Many online investors say his advocacy helped turn them into a force powerful enough to cause big losses for established hedge funds and, for the moment, turn the investing world upside down. Mr. Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account Wednesday, showing a roughly $20 million daily gain on GameStop shares and options. "Your steady hand convinced many of us to not only buy, but hold. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary normal people. Seriously thank you. You deserve every penny," replied one Reddit user, reality_czech. The next day, Mr. Gill posted another screenshot -- showing about a $15 million loss. After Thursday's market close, his E*Trade brokerage account, viewed by the Journal, held around $33 million, including GameStop stock, options and millions in cash. "He always liked money," said Elaine Gill, his mother. As a child, she said, "he would get money from those scratch tickets that people didn't know they'd won. People would throw them on the ground... A lot of times there was still money on them." Mr. Gill's online persona -- he goes by "Roaring Kitty" on YouTube -- has drawn tens of thousands of fans and copycats who share screenshots of their own brokerage accounts. Mr. Gill said he wasn't a rabble-rouser out to take on the establishment, just someone who believes investors can find value in unloved stocks. He never expected to have a legion of fans debating his identity online, or millions of dollars in his trading account, he said. He was just a dad with an online hobby and a plastic kiddie slide on the front lawn of a Boston suburb.

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If I may boast a little, it's frustrating to know where things will eventually go, and wanting them to go there sooner, so we don't have to suffer while we're waiting.

Podcasting was like that. If I tried to explain it to any of its most avid supporters today, back in 2004, they would have ignored it as the rantings of a crazy software developer.

Now there's so much distance in time, and there are many more media things to do with networks, things that we need now.

But nothing's changed about listening. I can't get an idea on the air for the life of me. ;-)

Reddit is growing its role in the Ethereum ecosystem, with the goal of building out scaling tools for the blockchain network. From a report: The social media platform announced this week that it was expanding its work with the Ethereum Foundation to provide development resources to scaling tools. In the announcement, posted to the Ethereum subreddit, Reddit employee u/jarins said the move increases its commitment to the technology, and echoes its long-held "decentralized ethos." "In this new stage of our partnership, immediate efforts will be focused on bringing Ethereum to Reddit-scale production," the announcement said. "Our intention is to help accelerate the progress being made on scaling and develop the technology needed to launch large-scale applications like Community Points on Ethereum." This partnership could result in Reddit working on layer 2 scaling tools or pushing projects from a prototype stage to production. Reddit development resources, including a developer team, would be involved in this work. Ultimately, the idea is a project like Reddit's Community Points feature could be capable of supporting the site's millions of users (Reddit has over 50 million daily users as of press time, according to Wednesday's announcement). "Our blockchain efforts will be led by Reddit's Crypto team," the announcement said, adding the company currently has job openings for backend engineers.

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Robinhood restricted trading in cryptocurrencies on Friday, as the price of bitcoin and a meme-inspired token rose sharply. From a report: Users began reporting that the trading app had halted instant deposits for crypto purchases earlier in the day, meaning they could only buy the currencies with funds already deposited in their accounts. Such deposits can take up to five business days to clear, Robinhood said. "Due to extraordinary market conditions, we've temporarily turned off Instant buying power for crypto," a Robinhood spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CNBC. "Customers can still use settled funds to buy crypto. We'll keep monitoring market conditions and communicating with our customers." Robinhood's move to restrict crypto trading comes after dogecoin, a digital coin based on the popular "doge" meme, spiked as much as 800% Friday. The cryptocurrency was initially started as a joke but has since found some traction.

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I read on twitter earlier that women have feelings and men have opinions. I didn't respond because I would have gotten excoriated. This is the kind of bullshit you read on twitter all the time. I'd like to see this, gender hate, be made illegal. It kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when every time a male child shows emotion they're punished for it. And who is doing this regulating, creating such unhealthy beasts? A lot of times it's women, our mothers, aunts, friends, etc. Men are people, full people, with all the human features. When you present us as horrible inhuman beings you are doing the greatest harm.

When I was in high school a bunch of us asked to be excused from class at the same time. We went to the bathroom and flushed all the toilets at once. We figured the plumbing system hadn't been designed for that. The moral of the story is our whole system is designed that way. The stock market, the political system, the police, health care, the national guard. With 300 million people in the US, we could overload and destroy any system on any day, by coordinated action.