Trump wins audience!

Views of the speech

Three in four Americans who tuned in to President Trump's State of the Union address tonight approved of the speech he gave. Just a quarter disapproved.

How did the speech make you feel?

Eight in 10 Americans who watched tonight felt that the president was trying to unite the country, rather than divide it. Two-thirds said the speech made them feel proud, though just a third said it made them feel safer. Fewer said the speech made them feel angry or scared.

Wow. I guess I missed a chance to get to love Trump.

Hey, what's this stuff down at the bottom of the article in the strange-looking framed PDF box?

23 topics down, page 5 of 7:

Generally speaking do you describe yourself as…
32% Dem
12% Independent
55% Republican

Describe your political viewpoint:
19% liberal
29% moderate
49% conservative
3% not sure

Yeah. I guess if the majority of the people you survey are Republicans, you'll probably find that the majority of the people liked Trump's speech.

Thanks for the info, CBS.

Facebook Users Cry 'Censorship' After Being Told Which Russian Troll Pages They Liked

Nixon's 1974 SOTU:

Mr. Speaker, and Mr. President, and my distinguished colleagues and our guests: I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year. I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair. As you know, I have provided to the Special Prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.

And the time has come, my colleagues, for not only the Executive, the President, but the Members of Congress, for all of us to join together in devoting our full energies to these great issues that I have discussed tonight which involve the welfare of all of the American people in so many different ways, as well as the peace of the world.

I recognize that the House Judiciary Committee has a special responsibility in this area, and I want to indicate on this occasion that I will cooperate with the Judiciary Committee in its investigation. I will cooperate so that it can conclude its investigation, make its decision, and I will cooperate in any way that I consider consistent with my responsibilities to the Office of the Presidency of the United States.

History never repeats?

obNixon:

Friday I was at this amazing Asian grocery store, first time there. Checking out, I put my credit card in the little box at the register and it flashed my name and email address. Odd, I've never seen a checkout machine do that before - maybe my name, but never my email address. It asked me to confirm the amount. I hit OK to pay and headed out. Then, as I'm walking out, I get two emails from the store: one thanking me for joining their shoppers' club, and the other telling me about the weekly specials.

Just putting my credit card in the machine got me onto their mailing list!

Bleh.

... literally, with their own security cameras.

It's the summer of 2014. A hacker from the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has penetrated the computer network of a university building next to the Red Square in Moscow, oblivious to the implications. One year later, from the AIVD headquarters in Zoetermeer, he and his colleagues witness Russian hackers launching an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States. The AIVD hackers had not infiltrated just any building; they were in the computer network of the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. And unbeknownst to the Russians, they could see everything.

That's how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leaders of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won't be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

Hong Kong architects design housing made from water tubes.

Clever.

But an architect should surely know that the most efficient way to completely tile an area is with hexagons. And who wouldn't want to live in a beehive?

Though we won't know it.

[Daisy Ridley's face on someone else's body]

In December, Motherboard discovered a redditor named 'deepfakes' quietly enjoying his hobby: Face-swapping celebrity faces onto porn performers’ bodies. He made several convincing porn videos of celebrities—including Gal Gadot, Maisie Williams, and Taylor Swift—using a machine learning algorithm, his home computer, publicly available videos, and some spare time.

Since we first wrote about deepfakes, the practice of producing AI-assisted fake porn has exploded. More people are creating fake celebrity porn using machine learning, and the results have become increasingly convincing. Another redditor even created an app specifically designed to allow users without a computer science background to create AI-assisted fake porn. All the tools one needs to make these videos are free, readily available, and accompanied with instructions that walk novices through the process.

...

Deepfakeapp told me in a Reddit direct message that his goal with creating FakeApp was to make deepfakes’ technology available to people without a technical background or programming experience.

“I think the current version of the app is a good start, but I hope to streamline it even more in the coming days and weeks,” he said. “Eventually, I want to improve it to the point where prospective users can simply select a video on their computer, download a neural network correlated to a certain face from a publicly available library, and swap the video with a different face with the press of one button.”

Thus endeth humanity.

The vice article linked here is totally SFW. But the reddit it refers to is totally not. It's also totally chilling. Some of the videos there didn't turn out well, but they were mostly from first-timers just trying it out. Some of the others, though... there was no way I would have known it wasn't Daisy Ridley or Kristen Bell or whomever. It totally blows away this stuff.

It's a long established fact that Trump lies so often that nobody can believe anything the White House says. If you need evidence, WaPo counts 2140 "false or misleading claims" in his first year of office.

So, should anyone believe other countries won't take advantage of this ?

The US has always been divided on issues. But it used to be that the kinds of problems we argue about today were disagreements within a party or were not partisan at all - there were factions everywhere. But...

The current moment feels divisive because major policy and political questions are “sorted” between the parties — Republicans are mostly unified around one set of answers, and Democrats are mostly unified around another.

I blame Obama.