Mike Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
The New York Times is claiming in a long, front-page story today that recent fires killed "countless ancient redwoods" in California

The claim is false and should be immediately corrected

There is no evidence that the fire killed even a single ancient redwood tree //

As Shellenberger wrote back in August:

But every school child who has visited one of California’s redwood parks knows from reading the signs at the visitor’s center and in front of the trailheads that old-growth redwood forests need fire to survive and thrive.

Heat from fire is required for the release and germination of redwood seeds, and to burn up the woody debris on the forest floor. The thick bark on old-growth redwood trees provides evidence of many past fires.

The fact that the Trump campaign or other plaintiffs have raised many of the same factual claims in lower courts — which the various responses go into in great detail — is actually irrelevant as to Texas because those outcomes have no bearing on Texas’s entitlement to defend its own interests by raising the same or similar claims. There is always the potential that Texas will present the claims in a different manner, or that Texas has accumulated evidence that the earlier litigants lacked.

Further, many of the outcomes in the lower courts that the Defendant states place so much value in were not decisions on the merits, the were jurisdictional decisions or decisions based on a lack of standing on the part of the plaintiffs who brought them. //

The oppositions assure the Supreme Court that they conducted the elections and counted the votes in accordance with the statutes in each state. But simple denials of a plaintiff’s claims are not a basis to short-circuit a lawsuit. Plaintiffs are entitled to offer to the fact finder — the nine Justices in cases of “original jurisdiction” — evidence that contradicts the denials made by the defendant states and to contest the defendant states’ denials through cross-examination.

Many of the explanations offered by the defendant states are plausible and reasonable. If they are true they should hold up to scrutiny. If they do hold up to scrutiny, and the Supreme Court finds that Texas has not sustained its burden to prove the allegations it has made, that would act to reassure the country that Joe Biden’s election is not the product of fraud or corruption by partisan state and local actors. In that respect, the prospect of having the 2020 election forensically scrutinized by the Supreme Court should be welcomed by all.

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Coming from a family ownership situation, I treated each station as if it were my own. The attachment was personal because the work was mostly for clients who believed in engineering. A message on our telephone recorder said, “I am out working on one of America’s great radio stations.”

My wife Paula came into the business full-time after working as a legal secretary. She has a keen sense of character and it paid off. Her job was to run the office, freeing me to go out in the field 60 hours a week at 40 or more clients. //

I never wanted to own a station. The challenge of installing, troubleshooting and repairing equipment was more than enough. It is a great feeling to get all electrons flowing in the same direction, so to speak. //

Regarding the SBE Lifetime Achievement Award: I had no intention of seeking that or any other accolade. Life just worked out that way while keeping the “families” of stations the best they can be. Paula says she will bury me next to a transmitter when the time comes.

Attorney General William Barr knew months ago about investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, but kept the information from spilling into public view even as President Donald Trump publicly called for investigations into the son of the president-elect.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Barr was briefed before the spring about investigations into Biden, which Biden revealed in a statement on Wednesday issued through his father’s presidential transition team. //

According to The Journal, Barr took steps to avoid providing information to Republican members of Congress about the investigations.

“Congressional Republicans are furious that Barr never told us the news, even in confidence,” a source who works on Capitol Hill told the DCNF. //

Barr also hid the existence of John Durham being appointed special counsel in the Russia-investigation probe. That was also something the American people deserved to know about. Instead, the DOJ apparently did everything they could to ensure Joe Biden wasn’t tarnished before the voting began.

An elections supervisor in Coffee County, Georgia, demonstrated in recent videos posted online how Dominion Voting Systems voting software allows votes to be changed through an “adjudication” process. The process allows the operator to add vote marks to a scanned ballot as well as invalidate vote marks already on the ballot.

Adjudication should only serve to resolve issues of voters marking ballots incorrectly, such as filling the bubbles in a way that doesn’t clearly show who he or she voted for. Yet it appears a substantial number of ballots went through that process, at least in some Georgia counties.

Monday essentially will be the real presidential Election Day, or is scheduled to be, as electors gather in their respective state capitols to cast votes.

When voters pick their candidate for president on Election Day every four years, as well as in early and mail-in voting this year, they actually choose a slate of electors associated with a candidate.

Each of those electors later casts his or her vote for president on behalf of the state and according to its election results.

In past presidential election years, the day the Electoral College convenes to vote goes largely ignored, as most of the public stops paying attention after Election Day.

Every time you re-compress an MP3, some audio gets thrown away. I opened a FLAC file of this song in Adobe Audition, then saved it as a 128k MP3. I then opened the MP3 I just saved, and re-saved it as a 128k MP3 with a new filename. Repeated that process 300 times.

By the 5th generation, there are noticeable artifacts in the audio quality.

By the 10th generation, it sounds like crap. And the quality only gets worse. The audio sounds progressively worse the more times it's compressed.

It's like playing the game of "Telephone" in which a large group of people line up and the first person whispers something to the second person, who whispers it to the third person and so on. By the time the message gets to the last person, the meaning would have changed.

A similar process happens when an MP3 file gets compressed over and over. Each generation introduces new artifacts in the audio as the decoder imperfectly approximates what audio was thrown away. By the 300th generation, it's hard to understand the lyrics!

All of these positions require Senate approval, and during the Obama years all of these people were in position to know a little -- or a lot -- about Joe Biden's ne'er-do-well tag-along son. //

China, Ukraine, tax fraud, corruption, and federal investigations. After a year of partisan attacks and obfuscations, media smears and derision, and Big Tech censorship and de-platformings, this week the Hunter Biden protection chamber finally collapsed. //

Nominees before the Senate will have the choice to claim ignorance, cop up to the grimy details, or try to push back. No matter which door they choose, they’ll face some very awkward questioning. //

Far from a game, there are potentially serious ramifications — and a serious investigation is needed.

The good news for Republicans — hardly an artistic bunch — is they don’t even have to write a script. The script has already been written for them.

Four years ago Justices Thomas and Alito took the view that the Supreme Court cannot, in an exercise of discretion it has conferred upon itself, deny States a forum to litigate disputes with other states because, under the Constitution, the Supreme Court is the only forum where such disputes can be resolved.

What is unknown on this day is the views of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett on this key issue. //

The Texas Complaint is not slapped together. It is the result of extensive research and drafting. It was likely a work-in-progress for weeks, and I do not believe that work would have been undertaken on a lark as a political stunt.

Those on both sides of this partisan issue who are dismissing the Complaint as an unserious effort are failing to consider what I believe to be a crucial consideration in whether or not to allow Texas — and the other 18 states who have now joined — to “have their day in court.”

There is only one forum where Texas can present what it believes is evidence supporting the allegations it makes in the Complaint against the four defendant States. Only one tribunal has the authority to hear and consider witnesses and documentary evidence of this dispute.

Since United’s industry jolting move in late August to permanently eliminating domestic change fees, most other major U.S. carriers have followed in lockstep.

The latest move comes from Delta, which has announced that it will permanently eliminate change fees for all international flights leaving North America. //

Effective immediately, you’ll no longer pay the pesky $200 (or more) change fee when making a modification to any Delta-issued international ticket, excluding basic economy.

This includes all travel from North America to any destination abroad. Note that this only applies to Delta-issued tickets, so if you booked a Delta flight with Air France, for instance, your ticket will be guided by AF’s rules. //

Delta’s coronavirus waiver was due to expire at the end of 2020, but that’s now been extended to March 30, 2021. That means that nearly every ticket booked by April, including basic economy fares, is eligible for $0 changes. //

Of the Big 3 U.S. carriers, American and Delta will give you a future travel credit if you’re switching to a cheaper flight. United won’t.

#Q:

I am asking this because WhatsApp says it is end-to-end encrypted.

1. Are there any problems with sending a public key through WhatsApp?

2. There might be some objections to sending symmetric and private keys.

Under what circumstances can I send symmetric and private keys?

#A:

E2EE doesn't protect data at rest. Unlike Signal, WhatsApp doesn't encrypt internal message database. A forensic analysis can recover deleted messages in plain text if the lock screen password is known. WhatsApp daily chat backup encrypts message database with AES-GCM-256 key which is known to WhatsApp service (see How can WhatsApp restore local or Google Drive Backups?). Although, the chat backup is not possessed by WhatsApp service but Google Drive does if Google Drive backup is enabled. There you have no control of how it is used by state surveillance.

Apps with accessibility permission can see the content on the screen.

Sending passwords through Signal is somewhat safer if you implicitly trust the security of the device. Signal encrypts the message database with database encryption key which is itself encrypted with a key stored in hardware backed keystore (android 7+). That leaves deleted messages unreadable from forensic recovery even if the lockscreen password is known.

Private keys shouldn't be sent in any cases. It shouldn't be even available to you for sharing.