Thursday, April 19, 2018
Anon
Entertainment Weekly
“The reason I made the film is because I always wanted to do a movie about privacy and the fact that there was never a war for privacy, because we already lost — we gave away our privacy without a fight, all for convenience.
And Anon kind of takes that conflict to its logical conclusion. We are already lifelogging in our own way and becoming slightly biotech or syn-bio, because we’ve all got these phones in our hands and basically documenting our lives. Amanda Seyfried’s character is trying to go off-grid in a world where that shouldn’t be. And Clive Owen’s character is trying to track her down, tracking down a woman who basically doesn’t exist.
… it’s like Cambridge Analytica on crack. This is the ultimate hack in a way, where in this world you’re able to hack a human being, and so, we have our whole lives documented. And then, of course, there are measures and countermeasures where people can be hacked and their memories can be hacked or removed, which is also kind of scary.”
“The reason I made the film is because I always wanted to do a movie about privacy and the fact that there was never a war for privacy, because we already lost — we gave away our privacy without a fight, all for convenience.
And Anon kind of takes that conflict to its logical conclusion. We are already lifelogging in our own way and becoming slightly biotech or syn-bio, because we’ve all got these phones in our hands and basically documenting our lives. Amanda Seyfried’s character is trying to go off-grid in a world where that shouldn’t be. And Clive Owen’s character is trying to track her down, tracking down a woman who basically doesn’t exist.
… it’s like Cambridge Analytica on crack. This is the ultimate hack in a way, where in this world you’re able to hack a human being, and so, we have our whole lives documented. And then, of course, there are measures and countermeasures where people can be hacked and their memories can be hacked or removed, which is also kind of scary.”
Anon Director Andrew Niccol
North Shore Kauai Historic Rainfall | 28 Inches in 24 Hours
Pacific Business News
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will donate $1 million to support relief efforts on Kauai after severe floods hit the island's North Shore over the weekend.
“Kauai has become our family’s retreat and sanctuary,” the couple said in a statement. “We are heartbroken by the floods and are committed to helping the community recover and rebuild an even stronger one.”
Zuckerberg, who owns hundreds of acres of land on Kauai’s North Shore, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will donate the money to three organizations: the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Kauai Habitat for Humanity and Kauai Economic Opportunity. Hawaii News Now said that Zuckerberg and Chan have already made donations to the American Red Cross and Malama Kauai this week to support flood relief efforts.
Once the damage to the island is fully assessed, Chan and Zuckerberg will evaluate additional community needs to determine how to allocate the remaining funds in order to restore and rebuild the island over the long-term.
Actor Ben Stiller (who owns a home on Kauai) tweeted out an appeal for donations.
And billionaire eBay founder and Kauai land owner Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, have contributed $100,000 to disaster relief — and set up a special fund through the Hawaii Community Foundation, which also donated $100,000.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will donate $1 million to support relief efforts on Kauai after severe floods hit the island's North Shore over the weekend.
“Kauai has become our family’s retreat and sanctuary,” the couple said in a statement. “We are heartbroken by the floods and are committed to helping the community recover and rebuild an even stronger one.”
Zuckerberg, who owns hundreds of acres of land on Kauai’s North Shore, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will donate the money to three organizations: the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Kauai Habitat for Humanity and Kauai Economic Opportunity. Hawaii News Now said that Zuckerberg and Chan have already made donations to the American Red Cross and Malama Kauai this week to support flood relief efforts.
Once the damage to the island is fully assessed, Chan and Zuckerberg will evaluate additional community needs to determine how to allocate the remaining funds in order to restore and rebuild the island over the long-term.
Actor Ben Stiller (who owns a home on Kauai) tweeted out an appeal for donations.
And billionaire eBay founder and Kauai land owner Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, have contributed $100,000 to disaster relief — and set up a special fund through the Hawaii Community Foundation, which also donated $100,000.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Monday, April 16, 2018
Dan Scavino | Trump’s Director of Social Media
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| Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters |
The New York Times
by Robert Draper
Last July, President Donald Trump was sued in federal court over his Twitter habits. It wasn’t the tone or content of Trump’s approximately 37,300 tweets that had landed him in trouble. Instead, it was the possible unconstitutionality of the way he uses one feature of the platform: the block button.
The plaintiffs, represented by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, were seven individuals — ranging from a freelance journalist to a New York comedian to a Texas police officer — who had sent negative replies to an @realDonaldTrump tweet and were subsequently blocked by the president. Though Trump’s Twitter account purports to be a personal one, the plaintiffs argued, his writings invariably involved government business and executive opinions — making his posts a public forum to which all American citizens should be guaranteed access.
Though @realDonaldTrump reads like the unabridged representation of a singular man’s impulses, three other defendants were named in the suit, which is expected to be ruled upon in the Southern District of New York in the coming months. One of them was Hope Hicks, long a public face of Trump World, the 29-year-old former model who spent the past three years as Trump’s media liaison before leaving the White House in late March. A second was Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s designated mouthpiece. But the third, unlike Hicks and Sanders, was someone most Americans have never heard of: a man named Dan Scavino Jr.
Scavino was another of the “originals” on Trump’s 2016 campaign, and I saw him numerous times on the trail, but I could never quite ascertain what he was doing to further his boss’s presidential ambitions. Aggressively nondescript, Scavino could often be seen in a suit at the side of the stage, taking photos of the immense rally crowds with his iPhone and later, while scowling at his laptop aboard Trump’s 757, posting the images to Facebook. The other fixtures on Trump’s plane — Hicks, the campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, the policy adviser Stephen Miller and the security director Keith Schiller — had roles that, in a famously unorthodox campaign, at least seemed familiar. But Scavino’s sole task, from what I could tell, was to document Trump’s popularity. Continue reading at The New York Times
by Robert Draper
“It’s so great that I have Twitter now, because I can knock the crap out of people. I have my own printing press now!”
Donald Trump
Last July, President Donald Trump was sued in federal court over his Twitter habits. It wasn’t the tone or content of Trump’s approximately 37,300 tweets that had landed him in trouble. Instead, it was the possible unconstitutionality of the way he uses one feature of the platform: the block button.
The plaintiffs, represented by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, were seven individuals — ranging from a freelance journalist to a New York comedian to a Texas police officer — who had sent negative replies to an @realDonaldTrump tweet and were subsequently blocked by the president. Though Trump’s Twitter account purports to be a personal one, the plaintiffs argued, his writings invariably involved government business and executive opinions — making his posts a public forum to which all American citizens should be guaranteed access.
Though @realDonaldTrump reads like the unabridged representation of a singular man’s impulses, three other defendants were named in the suit, which is expected to be ruled upon in the Southern District of New York in the coming months. One of them was Hope Hicks, long a public face of Trump World, the 29-year-old former model who spent the past three years as Trump’s media liaison before leaving the White House in late March. A second was Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s designated mouthpiece. But the third, unlike Hicks and Sanders, was someone most Americans have never heard of: a man named Dan Scavino Jr.
Scavino was another of the “originals” on Trump’s 2016 campaign, and I saw him numerous times on the trail, but I could never quite ascertain what he was doing to further his boss’s presidential ambitions. Aggressively nondescript, Scavino could often be seen in a suit at the side of the stage, taking photos of the immense rally crowds with his iPhone and later, while scowling at his laptop aboard Trump’s 757, posting the images to Facebook. The other fixtures on Trump’s plane — Hicks, the campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, the policy adviser Stephen Miller and the security director Keith Schiller — had roles that, in a famously unorthodox campaign, at least seemed familiar. But Scavino’s sole task, from what I could tell, was to document Trump’s popularity. Continue reading at The New York Times