Twitter appears to have officially killed off its legacy blue check marks, one of the last remaining vestiges of the pre-Elon Musk era. The legacy blue checks, which Twitter doled out to journalists, celebrities and other public officials for free to help curb impersonations and spam, were supposed to end April 1. Musk took to Twitter on April 11 — days after the legacy check marks should have disappeared — to shift the end date to April 20 or 4/20. Yes, that’s the day when folks honor weed because Twitter is now owned by a middle schooler. With the legacy checks gone, Twitter…
Author: mediahitman
Customers unknowingly purchased food items with sewing needles hidden inside after a juvenile employee inserted the needles into groceries, according to police in Pennsylvania. Troopers with Pennsylvania State Police Fogelsville said they were called to the Giant store in Trexlertown on Wednesday, April 19, after customers returned groceries with sewing needles. A spokesperson with Giant told McClatchy News the company learned of the “product integrity issue” on April 17 and “immediately investigated.” The company then contacted authorities “for further action and investigation,” she said in a written statement. “Based on an internal investigation and surveillance video, an employee – now…
A ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles cleared the Washington state Legislature on Wednesday and the governor is expected to sign it into law. The high-powered firearms — once banned nationwide — are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for most of the country’s devastating mass shootings. The ban comes after multiple failed attempts in the state’s Legislature, and amid the most mass shootings during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009. The Washington law would block the sale, distribution, manufacture and importation of more than 50 gun models, including AR-15s, AK-47s and similar style rifles.…
An international climate activist group has claimed responsibility for deflating tires on 43 SUVs in Boston’s tony Beacon Hill neighborhood — and leaving behind preachy notes warning vehicle owners: “Your gas guzzler kills.” In a blog post, the group, which calls themselves the Tyre Extinguishers and claims to have 15,000 members worldwide, explained that Wednesday night’s stunt was their first foray into Boston, and that activists only targeted “large, luxury gas powered SUVs.” The eco-warriors noted that they spared hybrid, electric and handicapped-marked vehicles. “SUVs and 4x4s are a disaster for our health, our public safety and our climate. Bigger…
Twitter will conceal so-called “hate speech” that violates its rules behind a warning screen that requires a click-through, the platform announced on Monday in a blog post. The new policy is supposed to give moderators more choices than simply the binary ‘leave up versus take down’ approach typical to most content moderation, Twitter said. In addition to being hidden behind a warning screen reading “Visibility limited: this Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct,” offending tweets will be excluded from search results, trends, and “recommended” screens, with other down-ranking options possible. Advertising will not appear near them. The new policy is meant to…
Traveling to space aboard a Soviet rocket made Rakesh Sharma realize the importance of caring for our own planet, he told RT in a new interview. While Sharma said that he looks forward to making contact with extraterrestrial life, he added that a certain kind of “alien” already lives on Earth. Sharma was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force when he was selected in 1982 to train with the USSR’s Interkosmos space program. Two years later he became the first Indian citizen to enter space when he blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz rocket bound for the Salyut…
Leading Russian software company Kaspersky has developed a portable device for detecting small drones. The Antidrone Portable is a security product intended for government and commercial use, the company said. The radio frequency detector weighs less than 5 kg and fits into a rolling suitcase. The operator uses a tablet based on Kaspersky’s Antidrone software to track drones with a graphical interface. The device can determine the exact location of most drone models within a kilometer-wide radius, along with the position of their operator, the company said. With a battery life of up to two hours, Antidrone Portable can be…
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in. “Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended. Justin Nelson, lead attorney for Dominion, told NBC News he hopes the settlement will restore faith in elections. “This alone can’t do it, right? But this shows that there is accountability, that we showed that if you are caught lying, you will be held responsible,” he said. Absent from the settlement details shared with the public…
The troubled Swiss bank Credit Suisse hampered the investigation into accounts possibly held by high-ranking German Nazis and SS officers, some of which turned out to be active for decades, the US Senate announced on Tuesday. The Senate Budget Committee published the findings on Holocaust Remembrance Day, after issuing its first subpoena since 1991 to obtain the results of the bank’s internal investigation. While the reports are incomplete, they revealed “nearly 100” previously undisclosed accounts linked to the Nazis, and raised new questions about Credit Suisse’s potential support for the so-called “ratlines” the defeated Germans used to flee Europe after 1945. “When it comes to investigating…
Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States. The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates…
A Russian jet accidentally bombed the Russian border city of Belgorod on Thursday evening, said Moscow’s defense ministry. Surveillance footage of the explosion was uploaded to Telegram by the Russian news outlet RBC. It shows a bright flash before a section of the street erupts in flames, and debris is thrown into the air. “During the flight of the Su-34 aircraft of the Aerospace Forces over the city of Belgorod, an abnormal descent of aviation ammunition occurred,” the ministry told the state media outlet TASS. Two women were injured in the blast, which left a 60-foot-wide crater in the city center…
A Weatherford, Texas, jury handed a sentence of life in prison to a man after he was convicted of his ninth DWI charge. Christopher Faran Stanford, 50, pleaded guilty to felony DWI and chose to allow a jury of his Parker County peers to decide his punishment. Stanford had eight DWIs prior to his guilty plea this week, four of which carried prison sentences in Tarrant, Dallas, Rockwall and Johnson counties, according to the Parker County District Attorney’s Office. “His record showed that he was going to continue endangering communities throughout the Metroplex unless he was locked up,” Parker County DA Jeff Swain said in a…
Our Other Articles: Spiral #1 – Spiral # 2 Northern lights enthusiasts got a surprise mixed in with the green bands of light dancing in the Alaska skies: A light baby blue spiral resembling a galaxy appeared amid the aurora for a few minutes. The cause early Saturday morning was a little more mundane than an alien invasion or the appearance of a portal to the far reaches of the universe. It was simply excess fuel released from a SpaceX rocket that launched from California about three hours earlier. Sometimes rockets have fuel that needs to be jettisoned, said space…
Yesterday, the New York Police Department debuted its latest set of high-tech policing equipment. We New York denizens will soon come face to face with robot dogs, daleks, and something new: A pneumatic gun that can fire a sticky GPS tracker at a moving vehicle. The launcher is called the Guardian-HX, made by a company called StarChase. It’s meant to create an alternative to the standard police pursuit, allowing cops to remotely track a fleeing vehicle without sending a squad of interceptors to tail it. But, in the hands of a department known for its surveillance abuses, the presence of any new tracking tech is worrying. The Guardian-HX launcher is…
Pork producers have been using customizable mRNA-based “vaccines” on their herds since 2018, without telling the public All customized mRNA “vaccines” are untested. Only the mRNA platform itself has been approved According to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, “there are no current mRNA vaccines licensed for use in beef cattle in the United States.” However, a lobbyist for the association claims to have “double-vaccinated” his own herd with an mRNA “vaccine” against bovine respiratory disease Iowa State University began trialing an mRNA “vaccine” against bovine respiratory syncytial virus October 1, 2021 Missouri House Bill 1169 would require labeling of products…
US carrier Southwest Airlines grounded all flights nationwide on Tuesday morning, blaming a “data connection issue” as passenger complaints piled up on social media. Some 1,700 flights were reportedly delayed in total – 40% of the airline’s schedule – with nine cancellations, according to the FlightAware tracking service. The problem was the result of “data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” the airline said in a statement. “A vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.” An all-clear message posted to the budget airline’s website explained Southwest “temporarily paus[ed] flight activity this morning to work on data connection issues.”
After a song featuring the AI-generated voices of the rappers Drake and The Weekend went viral on Monday, the world’s biggest record label demanded a reckoning from streaming platforms. The Netherlands-based Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents both artists, has already tried to block artificial intelligence programs from accessing its catalog, but that appears to be easier said than done. A song titled ‘heart on my sleeve’ clocked more than 15 million plays on TikTok, 625,000 on Spotify and over 230,000 on YouTube in just a few hours, before the platforms moved to take it down for copyright infringement. Drake…
The United Nations is discussing bringing some Russian banks back to the SWIFT payment system in order to help keep grain shipments from Ukraine going, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric has said. When asked during a briefing…if any progress had been made on Russia’s demands regarding the grain agreement, Dujarric said that UN officials were “trying to doggedly move the process forward.” Moscow warned…that the outlook for extending beyond May 18 the grain deal, which ensures the safe export of grain and fertilizer from several Ukrainian Black Sea ports, was “not good.” The Kremlin has demanded allowing Russian Agricultural Bank to…