Drawing lessons needed

That was then, this is now

PRIVACY: Is your computer watching you?

Malware turns PCs into eavesdropping devices

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have demonstrated malware that can turn computers into perpetual eavesdropping devices, even without a microphone.

In the new paper, "SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit," the researchers explain and demonstrate how most PCs and laptops today are susceptible to this type of attack. 

Using SPEAKE(a)R, malware that can covertly transform headphones into a pair of microphones, they show how commonly used technology can be exploited.

Creating a “super-vaccine” for flu?

Flu vaccine's effectiveness can be improved, new findings suggest

University of Texas at Austin

A team of engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin is reporting new findings on how the influenza vaccine produces antibodies that protect against disease, research that suggests that the conventional flu vaccine can be improved. The findings were reported in the journal Nature Medicine on Nov. 7.

The UT Austin team suggests that quadrivalent influenza vaccines -- which are currently recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against four virus strains and which may cost more for consumers and health insurers to use -- may not offer significant benefits over trivalent influenza vaccines. 

The team also discovered a new class of antibodies that are effective at offering the body protection from several influenza virus strains.

Trump's Carrier "Victory"

Far Right targets URI professor

Trump’s alt-right ‘fascist networks’ are targeting URI professor Erik Loomis

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Erik Loomis is on the front lines in the fight against fascism. While many of us fear what will happen during Donald Trump’s presidency, the University of Rhode Island history professor is already living it. 

He’s taking direct hits in the alt right’s assault on the free speech of the progressive left.

Since Donald Trump won the election, Loomis has twice been targeted by Trump-supporting organizations with efforts to stifle speech and possibly chill criticism of the president-elect.

Breitbart

This week, Breitbart accused Loomis of mourning the death of Fidel Castro and praising the US-defying Cuban dictator.

Loomis brushed off what he called an “attempt to intimidate” him.

DINOs rule

‘Progressive’ Rhode Island Politicians Have Gone the Way of the Dodo

By FRANK CARINI

Since Gov. Gina Raimondo got elected, her administration and our “blue state liberals” have clear-cut their way through Rhode Island.

They have promoted the destruction of woodlands in Johnston to make room for a corporate office park. Despite their vocal concerns about climate change, they support the bulldozing of an important section of forest in Burrillville to make way for a fossil-fuel power plant and the expansion of natural-gas infrastructure. 

They think chopping down 20 acres of trees in Hopkinton to make space for a travel plaza is a good idea.

The passing of environmentally friendly bonds, the building of the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Rhode Island waters, handing out grant-funding morsels for environmental projects and a fractured system of protecting open space doesn’t automatically make the Ocean State green or blue. 

A job plan focused “on putting cranes in the sky” isn’t particularly forward thinking, especially when much of the encouraged development largely ignores the state’s many vacant office buildings, big-box stores and old mills and instead charges into the forest, chainsaws a blazin'.

Jobs are important, but that doesn’t mean we should build stuff we don’t really need in places that weaken ecosystems and jeopardize public health. 

A progressive state would focus on building stuff people want in places that make both economic and environmental sense. 

How we elect Presidents

To see more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE

Think about it

The Future of Marijuana in Rhode Island

Monday: “Pot and Profit” forum at Rhode Island College
BY BETH COMERYIN THE PROVIPROVIDENCE DAILY DOSE

So how did things shake out for marijuana reform in the upheaval of the recent election? 

The President-elect has, in the past, indicated that marijuana regulation should be left to the states . . .  so we could work with that. But then he goes and nominates Alabama senator, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III — “good people don’t smoke marijuana” — to be his attorney general.

Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) issued a statement urging Sessions to embrace the policies of the man who is appointing him.

Politico evaluated 7 big areas where Jeff Sessions could change policy at DOJ including ‘marijuana.’

“[Sessions] has a wide variety of options when it comes to cracking down, if he chooses to do so,” said Erik Altieri, the executive director of NORML, a group that supports marijuana legalization. “That could range from simply raiding and shutting down state legal stores, bringing criminal penalties against the owners of those stores and it could be throwing up roadblocks when it comes to the implementation of these ballot initiatives.”

Moving back to the days when “America was great”

Black-white earnings gap returns to 1950 levels

Duke University

After years of progress, the median earnings gap between black and white men has returned to what it was in 1950, according to new research by economists from Duke University and the University of Chicago.

The experience of African-American men is not uniform, though: The earnings gap between black men with a college education and those with less education is at an all-time high, the authors say.

The research appears online in the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series.

The paper looks at earnings for working-age men across a span of 75 years, from 1940 to 2014. The earnings gap between black and white men narrowed during the civil rights era. 

Then, starting around 1970, the gap between black and white men's wages started widening once again.

"When it comes to the earnings gap between black and white men, we've gone all the way back to 1950," said Duke economist Patrick Bayer, who co-authored the paper with Kerwin Kofi Charles of the University of Chicago.

Trump's big new lie

There's No Evidence Our Election Was Rigged
by Jessica Huseman and Scott Klein for ProPublica

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to claim that he would have won the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

There is no evidence that millions of people voted illegally. If there were, we'd have seen some sign of it.

ProPublica was an organizing partner in Electionland, a project run by a coalition of organizations including Google News Lab, Univision, WNYC, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the USA Today Network. 

We monitored the vote with a team of more than 1,000 people, including about 600 journalism school students poring over social media reports and more than 400 local journalists who signed up to receive tips on what we found. 

We had access to a database of thousands of calls made to a nonpartisan legal hotline. 

We had four of the nation's leading voting experts in the room with us and election sources across the country. 

Thousands of people texted us to tell us about their voting experience.

We had an unprecedented real-time understanding of voting in the United States, and while we saw many types of problems, we did not see mass voter fraud of any kind — especially of the sort Donald Trump alleges.

Trump's claim tracks closely with an Infowars piece published less than a week after the election, claiming that 3 million votes were cast by illegal aliens. The website, run by conservative radio host and noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, attributed the number to an unsubstantiated tweet by Gregg Phillips, the founder of VoteStand, a voter fraud app. 

Trump nominee “consistently worked against” the right of all children to have a great public school in their communities

“Trump administration has demonstrated just how out of touch it is with what works best for students, parents, educators and communities.”

By National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García

The Trump administration has announced its plan to nominate Betsy DeVos, best known for her anti-public education campaigns, for the position of Secretary of Education.

Every day, educators use their voice to advocate for every student to reach his or her full potential.

We believe that the chance for the success of a child should not depend on winning a charter lottery, being accepted by a private school, or living in the right ZIP code.

We have, and will continue, to fight for all students to have a great public school in their community and the opportunity to succeed no matter their backgrounds or circumstances.

Betsy DeVos has consistently worked against these values, and her efforts over the years have done more to undermine public education than support students.

She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers — which take away funding and local control from our public schools — to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense.

Look over there!

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE

‘Spring Awakening’ opens this week

Teens grapple with sexuality, morality, rebellion in 19th Century Germany

Bonnie Bosworth

Left to right. Emily Carter from Scituate, Emma Walker, from Naples, Maine, Steven Carvalho from Pawtucket, and Ben Church from East Providence. Photo by Randy Osga

The University of Rhode Island Theatre Department announces the opening of “Spring Awakening,” book and lyrics by Steven Sater, Music by Duncan Sheik, based on the play by Frank Wedekind.

The original Broadway production opened in 2006 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York and in subsequent years the production garnered eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, four Drama Desk Awards and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

“Spring Awakening” is a celebration of youth and self-discovery that combines classic text and rock and roll.