Last month, printers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and elsewhere spontaneously disgorged a single sheet of paper bearing swastikas and rows of black and white text. Titled Samiz.dat, the printouts told the story of a man named Tyler, who in a near-future New York commits a mass murder in a synagogue. Fueled by a “pure hatred of niggers,” Tyler begins by killing “a single black in the temple” — whose presence is the result of a “kike slut” who believes in “race mixing propaganda” — then begins to shoot the rest of the “filthy Jew[s].”

At the end of the story, Tyler turns to…

“…a teenaged Jewess that was quivering in fear. Tyler grabbed a nearby tefillin and began furiously beating her with the straps. After rejoicing in her cries of pain, he used the hot flash hider of his Saiga to penetrate her virgin cunt and sear her insides before he began to rape her. Tyler's last moments were spent raping all three orifices of the virgin Jewess before killing her and himself. “I love Jews! Jews rock&033;” were Tyler&039;s last words. This atrocity happened as a result of MILLION DOLLAR EXTREME PRESENTS WORLD PEACE, Friday nights on Cartoon Network&039;s Adult Swim.”

Evidence strongly suggests the disturbing text is the work of Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, the notorious white nationalist hacker and troll who throughout the past year has made a sport of sending unwanted hate speech to thousands of unprotected public printers around the country. In March, he took immediate credit for printing, mostly using open printers at universities and colleges, some 30,000 flyers for the Daily Stormer, which describes itself as “The World&039;s #1 Alt-Right and Pro-Genocide Website.” Between two large swastikas, the flyer exhorts white men to “join us in the struggle for global white supremacy.” Then, earlier in August, Weev sent to thousands more printers the first issue of a “webzine” called Samiz.dat — for the underground protest literature in the Soviet Union — that advocated raping, torturing, and murdering the children of black people, Jews, and “federal agents.” On Twitter, Weev described Samiz.dat as “an underground … magazine for racially aware authoritarians published only to every open printer on the Internet.” The hack has inspired imitators.

Indeed, these printouts have become so commonplace that they no longer spur coverage. What is surprising about the newest issue of Samiz.dat, however, is that it explicitly promotes a weekly television show on a major cable network owned by Time Warner. Corporate media tends not to be an object of affection amongst white supremacists. (“I know you fucking Jews control the fucking media,” reads a line from the document.)

But then, World Peace is far from a typical television show. As BuzzFeed News reported last month, the members of Million Dollar Extreme (MDE), the sketch comedy troupe who created the show, are the preferred court jesters of the alt-right, the pro-Trump online movement that prizes offensive speech, believes white people in America are imperiled, and churns out memes at a metastatic pace. The alt-right is a leaderless movement that resists easy characterization; in fact, that is one of its defense mechanisms. Weev described even a sympathetic report by Breitbart on the alt-right as “The tireless attempts of you Jews to smear us decent Nazis.” But his preoccupation with white identity and white nationhood, his adoption of hate speech as a principle, and his commitment to trolling make him an important figure within the movement regardless of his public statements.

Indeed, while Samiz.dat may have read simply as terrifying speculative fiction to the passersby who discovered it, the document is full of in-jokes that would only make sense to committed members of the alt-right.

Tyler, the mass murderer, is a reference to a character created by MDE frontman Sam Hyde. In the story printouts, Tyler commands his victims to post to social media blaming Hyde for the shooting; that’s a reference to a series of hoaxes in which members of 4chan publicly named Hyde as the perpetrator of a series of real mass shootings. And Tyler&039;s last words, “Jews rock&033;”, are the name of a skit in a recent episode of World Peace.

So what apparently caused Weev to devote an entire issue of his “webzine” to promoting World Peace?

Though Adult Swim has a history of controversial guerrilla marketing, the network said in a statement that it had no part in the creation or dissemination of the promotion.

Instead, Weev seems to have been prompted by a request from Sam Hyde. On Aug. 16, Hyde&039;s Twitter account (which he previously told BuzzFeed News was managed by his “assistant”) asked his followers to help promote World Peace:

Within four hours, Weev wrote to another alt-right account that he had “already finished the postscript” — a printer language — “and i&039;m waiting for the scan to finish.” Then he posted a copy of the text of Samiz.dat to Pastebin.com. The UC Santa Cruz Police Department reported flyers had been sent to networked campus printers the following day.

Hyde is personally acquainted with Weev. The two accounts periodically interact on Twitter; Hyde (or his assistant) told Weev that he was “planning on sending” him a review copy of the MDE book How to Bomb the US Gov&039;t. On the Million Dollar Extreme subreddit — which Hyde, or his “assistant,” moderates — Weev bragged about the first issue of Samiz.dat, which mentioned Hyde by name. And in a Reddit AMA, Weev said that he had met Hyde only once, but that Hyde was “an awesome dude” who had offered to help him make videos. Weev added that when they met he asked for “a fanboy jpeg,” which may be the following image of the two heiling that periodically gets shared on the MDE internet:

Via reddit.com

Hyde responded to a BuzzFeed inquiry asking if he knew about the promotion ahead of time with a one word email: “nope.” Hyde later followed up with an expression of affectionate condescension for the reporter.

Despite repeatedly taking credit for Samiz.dat online and initially agreeing over Twitter DM to answer questions about the fliers, Weev attributed the publications to his “assistant.” He told BuzzFeed News that Hyde did not know about the publication ahead of time. When asked how he knew that, since his assistant was responsible for the publication, he responded, “Why would my assistant consult those disgusting race mixers from MDE about our plan to get the liberal media to attack them?”

But perhaps a more important question than the provenance of the letter is one about what it represents: Does a show that inspires neo-Nazi pamphleteering jibe with Time Warner&039;s avowed corporate values of “freedom of expression, diversity of viewpoints and responsible content?”

Time Warner did not respond to a request for comment.

Quelle: <a href="The Underground Neo-Nazi Promo Campaign Behind Adult Swim’s Alt-Right Comedy Show“>BuzzFeed

14. September 201614. September 2016

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High Schoolers Can Now Earn Scholarship Money By Caring For Family Members

Raise. me

On the website Raise.me, high school students can rack up scholarship money for a laundry list of activities found on almost every college application: good grades, community service, advanced placement classes.

Starting this week, they will also be able to earn hundreds of dollars for taking a job making sandwiches at at Subway or babysitting a younger brother after school. A job running the cash register at a family corner store could be worth as much as $2,000 — similar to the amount that a student would earn for a year's worth of straight A&039;s.

Raise.me says it now has almost 400,000 students signed up to use its services, and has made deals with 200 colleges ranging from ASU to Michigan State to Tulane. It generates revenue by charging colleges to use its platform.

With its new “family assistance scholarships,” Raise.me is hoping to enable a growing movement among selective colleges to recognize contributions by low-income students — those who are often shut out of the traditional college admissions horserace because of family obligations and limited opportunities. In addition to focusing on typical extracurricular activities like debate club and service trips, the schools say, they want to reward students who work jobs for pocket money and help their families out at home.

A group of selective colleges joined forces earlier this year to release a report, “Turning the Tide,” that recommended reshaping the admissions process to emphasize “ethical engagement” over personal achievement — rewarding students for helping their families and communities. The idea, in large part, was to recognize the achievements of low-income students and students of color.

Raise.me is hoping to help facilitate that shift. The San Francisco startup allows colleges to offer small, incremental grants — it calls them “microscholarships” — to students for accomplishments like getting A&039;s or leading school clubs. Students can begin to accrue money as high school freshmen, giving them thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars — conditional on their acceptance — before they even apply to a college.

Until now, though, the scholarships had been limited to rewarding students for traditional extracurriculars — those that the “Turning the Tide” report said too often amounted to an attempt to check off boxes, rewarding quantity over quality.

Raise.me scholarships are meant in part to serve as a guidepost, allowing students to see what things colleges value. Schools pick what they want to offer money for: a liberal arts school might encourage a student to take an extra year of a foreign language by offering a $300 scholarship; an engineering school, to pick AP calculus instead of a less rigorous class.

“It can be really intimidating to figure out what you need to do to become better prepared for college,” said Preston Silverman, Raise.me&039;s co-founder and CEO, particularly for students who don&039;t have access to counseling.

Penn State University offers Raise.me to a small group of Pennsylvania public schools — a mix of urban and rural — that have large number of low-income and first-generation students. Jacqueline Edmondson, the school&039;s associate vice president, said they were eager to add the “family assistance” scholarships, hoping both to reward students for non-traditional extracurriculars and to signal to them that Penn State prioritizes their contributions.

“We have students coming from low-income families who might have won money for participating in community service, for example, but they can&039;t afford that time,” Edmonson said. “They weren&039;t just working for themselves, they&039;re working for their families.”

The first class of Raise.me students at Penn State just finished their freshman year, Edmonson said, with higher average GPAs than students from their high schools who came without the scholarship money.

How America’s Top Colleges Plan To Fix The Admissions Process

Quelle: <a href="High Schoolers Can Now Earn Scholarship Money By Caring For Family Members“>BuzzFeed

14. September 201614. September 2016

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Meet The 15-Year-Old Behind The Proposed Hijab Emoji

A mockup of a potential hijab emoji.

Aphelandra Messer

Earlier this year, Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15 year-old student in Berlin, Germany, was trying to start a group chat on WhatsApp with her friends when she realized something important was missing.

Her friends decided to title the group chat by using an emoji that represented each of their faces. Her friends picked their hair and skin colors and created a cartoonish likeness of themselves. For Alhumedhi, who wears a hijab headscarf, this wasn't so easy. Though emoji has options for turbans, detective fedoras, police officer caps, and jolly red santa hats, there&039;s no option for the traditional headscarf worn by 550 million Muslim women, alone.

So Alhumedhi took matters into her own hands.

Unsure of what to do, Alhumedhi wrote a long email to Apple&039;s customer help but didn&039;t hear back. A few months later, though, she stumbled on a Mashable explainer about the Unicode Consortium, the technical organization that governs the evolution of emoji and handles new proposals.

Other third-party mobile sticker companies like Bitmoji have added hijabs.

Bitmoji

“I honestly didn’t know what to expect and kind of couldn&039;t believe they&039;d see it or even talk about it — all I wrote was a short paragraph,” Alhumedhi told BuzzFeed News.

But Unicode was intrigued. With the help of an emoji subcommittee member, Alhumedhi was shown how to create a formal emoji proposal and quickly drafted a detailed seven-page document, complete with usage examples and a history of the headscarf in popular society. “The most I’ve written are lab reports at school, so this was really a new experience for me,” she said. “But I had some help and followed the structure of other good proposals.”

An excerpt from the proposal:

* As of 08/26/2016, when typing “hijab” into the tags search bar on Instagram, you will receive 15.6 million photos. On the other hand, searching for “turban” you will receive 732,000 photos.

* Usage of this emoji will be predominantly in Muslim countries. This includes Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, where the Muslim population is 202 million. In Egypt, the 15th most populous country in the world, the percentage of women wearing headscarves is 90%.

The proposal caught the eye of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who has sponsored it and is helping Alhumedhi host a Reddit AMA to drum up support for the potential emoji today. There seems to be genuine interest from the outside as well; it already been requested over 100 times on the site EmojiRequest.com.

Alhumedhi plans to submit the proposal to Unicode soon; currently, she’s tweaking the proposal based on feedback she received from emoji subcommittee members. But given the help she’s received from the subcommittee, there’s little doubt it’ll be given very serious attention.

“I feel like it would be a huge achievement,” Alhumedhi told BuzzFeed News of the possibility that her proposal could someday find its way to millions of people’s phones around the world. “550 million woman pride themselves in wearing a headscarf — and it’s not just Muslims but Orthodox Jews and Christians, too. That there could be something to represent them — that this image could be given to people all around the world — it’s amazing and incredible if I could be the person to help do that.”

Quelle: <a href="Meet The 15-Year-Old Behind The Proposed Hijab Emoji“>BuzzFeed

13. September 201613. September 2016

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Samsung Lost An Entire HP In Market Value After Note 7 Disaster

Google Finance / Via google.com

Samsung's disastrously defective new Galaxy Note 7 has wiped about $25 billion off its market value, with its stock falling almost 11% in trading on Friday and Monday. It&039;s the worst two-day fall for the Korean electronics giant since 2008, according to Bloomberg data.

The blown launch of the Note 7, Samsung&039;s would-be iPhone competitor, will cost an estimated $1 billion in recall costs alone. But the true costs to the company could be much higher if its flagship brand struggles to recover from brutal headlines in the US — including a New York Post report Sunday that a 6-year old was taken to hospital with burns after a Note 7 exploded in his hands.

One industry analyst, John Donovan at BlueFin, even raised his estimate of how many iPhone 7s Apple would sell given the collapse of an important competitor. He said the “TMZ-like reporting environment” around the Note 7 and its defects has left Apple “primed to swoop in and take full advantage.”

Several airlines have told customers to not fly with their Note 7s charged or even on during the flight, while Delta said the devices could only be taken as carry-on luggage, and must be switched off during the flight.

Samsung stock fell 7% on Monday, meaning the company&039;s market value has fallen by more than the entire valuation of HP.

youtube.com

While the problems with the phone&039;s battery occasionally overheating and combusting have been known since early September when the company announced a voluntary exchange program, the bad news climaxed late last week when Samsung instructed customers to “power down their Galaxy Note7s and exchange them now.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday that consumers should turn off their Note 7s and not charge them. The phone was released in August.

Quelle: <a href="Samsung Lost An Entire HP In Market Value After Note 7 Disaster“>BuzzFeed

13. September 201613. September 2016

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LinkedIn Co-Founder Says He'll Pay To See Trump’s Tax Returns

BuzzFeed News / Getty Images

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman would like to see Donald Trump's tax returns, and he&039;s willing to pay up to $5 million for the opportunity.

On Monday, Hoffman pledged his support for a Crowdpac.com crowdfunding campaign aimed at pressuring Trump into releasing his tax returns. The campaign was started by a US military veteran named Pete Kiernan, who says he’ll donate the cash — almost $5,000 so far — to 10 veterans affairs groups if Trump releases his tax returns.

“Trump claims to love veterans,” reads Kiernan’s Crowdpac.com page, “and so we’re asking him to put his money where his mouth is.”

If Kiernan succeeds and Trump releases his tax returns, Hoffman — whose net worth increased by $800 million in a single day this year when Microsoft acquired LinkedIn — says he will quintuple the sum raised. So, if the Crowdpac campaign meets its goal of $25,000, and if Trump makes public documents that he’s so far vehemently insisted on keeping private, Hoffman would donate $125,000; the more money the campaign raises, the more Hoffman will donate, with a cap at $5 million.

In a post on Medium published Monday, Hoffman noted that $5 million is the same amount that Trump himself pledged to donate to charity during the 2012 election if President Obama agreed to his request to release college records and passport documents.

“Given Trump&039;s vocal support of veterans, I imagine he will recognize the great good that can come from Kiernan&039;s proposal,” Hoffman writes. “But taking Trump&039;s own 2012 offer to President Obama into account, I&039;d like to assist Kiernan in his campaign.”

It’s worth noting that Hoffman was an early investor in Crowdpac, which bills itself as a crowdfunding platform designed for political campaigns. Hoffman is a partner at Greylock Partners, but participated in Crowdpac’s $6 million Series A in early 2016 as an independent investor.

It’s also worth noting that this is not the first Crowdpac campaign Hoffman has publicly involved himself in — or even the first this month. Last week, Hoffman announced that he would donate $25,000 to a campaign to recall Judge Aaron Persky, who presided over the Stanford sexual assault case. As of this writing, that campaign has amassed $40,000 toward its $250,000 goal.

Though Hoffman, as an investor, stands to profit from Crowdpac’s success, some Silicon Valley luminaries see his investment in progressive political causes as a worthy use of his wealth:

The deadline for the Crowdpac campaign is Oct. 19, the date of the final presidential debate.

Quelle: <a href="LinkedIn Co-Founder Says He&039;ll Pay To See Trump’s Tax Returns“>BuzzFeed

12. September 201612. September 2016

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Instagram Rolls Out Custom And Default Keyword Filtering To Combat Harassment

Instagram

Today Instagram is rolling out two keyword filters to help limit abuse and harassment on its platform.

The tools, a custom keyword filter and a default keyword filter, allow you to filter out comments with either your own specific words (if you don't want to see comments with “asshole” in them, you add the word “asshole” to the custom filter) or comments with any of hundreds of offensive words Instagram built into its “default” filter.

Keyword filtering is becoming a popular anti-harassment tool. Twitter is working on a similar keyword filtering tool, according to a Bloomberg report. And Gab.ai, a new social network growing fast among conservatives, uses keyword filtering and muting as its only content moderation tools.

Filtering is lauded by some, since it puts editorial decisions in the hands of users, and not the platforms. However, for Instagram, the filters are an addition to its current terms of service — which explicitly prohibit hateful, discriminatory and other objectionable forms of content — and will not replace them.

The new filters, which are already available to verified users, roll out globally today.

Here&039;s Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom&039;s full blog post announcing the change:

When Mike and I first created Instagram, we wanted it to be a welcoming community where people could share their lives. Images have the ability to inspire and bring out the best in us, whether they are funny, sad or beautiful. Over the past five years, I&039;ve watched in wonder as this community has grown to 500 million, with stories from every corner of the world. With this growth, we want to work diligently to maintain what has kept Instagram positive and safe, especially in the comments on your photos and videos.

The beauty of the Instagram community is the diversity of its members. All different types of people — from diverse backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and more — call Instagram home, but sometimes the comments on their posts can be unkind. To empower each individual, we need to promote a culture where everyone feels safe to be themselves without criticism or harassment. It&039;s not only my personal wish to do this, I believe it&039;s also our responsibility as a company. So, today, we&039;re taking the next step to ensure Instagram remains a positive place to express yourself.

The first feature we’re introducing is a keyword moderation tool that anyone can use. Now, when you tap the gear icon on your profile, you&039;ll find a new Comments tool. This feature lets you list words you consider offensive or inappropriate. Comments with these words will be hidden from your posts. You can choose your own list of words or use default words we&039;ve provided. This is in addition to the tools we&039;ve already developed such as swiping to delete comments, reporting inappropriate comments and blocking accounts.

We know tools aren&039;t the only solution for this complex problem, but together, we can work towards keeping Instagram a safe place for self-expression. My commitment to you is that we will keep building features that safeguard the community and maintain what makes Instagram a positive and creative place for everyone.

Quelle: <a href="Instagram Rolls Out Custom And Default Keyword Filtering To Combat Harassment“>BuzzFeed

12. September 201612. September 2016

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Tesla Says Its Update To The AutoPilot Feature Would've Prevented A Deadly Crash

Joshua Brown's Model S after May&039;s fatal crash.

NTSB

Tesla will issue an update to its Autopilot software in the coming weeks that would have prevented the fatal Model S crash that is under federal investigation, CEO Elon Musk said Sunday.

Musk said that Autopilot, Tesla’s advanced driver assist system, will disengage if drivers ignore warnings to keep their hands on the wheel, and will rely more heavily on radars to trigger the brakes if an oncoming object is detected.

“I do want to emphasize this does not mean perfect safety. Perfect safety is really an impossible goal,” Musk told reporters on a conference call. “It’s really about improving the probability of safety.”

The update to Autopilot comes as the technology is under investigation by two federal agencies to determine whether the feature played a role in two recent crashes, including a deadly accident in Ohio in May.

In that fatal crash, “neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied,” Tesla said. The Model S, traveling at 74 mph with a 65 mph speed limit, hit the trailer and traveled under it before veering off the road, killing driver Joshua Brown.

Increasing the use of radars, alongside the car’s cameras, will help Autopilot detect not only the object directly in front of it, but also whatever is in front of that car, Musk said. To prevent false positives so Teslas on Autopilot don’t brake when they see overhead road signs, for example, the company is building a “geocoded whitelist” of fixed items cars should not stop for.

Elon Musk in October, 2015.

Beck Diefenbach / Reuters

Tesla has promoted its Autopilot technology as an incremental step toward self-driving cars. When drivers activate it, though, the display warns them to keep their hands on the wheel at all times. But people haven’t always followed that warning: There are plenty of YouTube videos of drivers sitting in Teslas while using Autopilot hands-free.

Musk said the company has noticed that Tesla drivers sometimes ignore as many as 10 warnings to keep their hands on the wheel within an hour. “We really want to avoid that situation,” he said on the conference call.

Beck Diefenbach / Reuters

Part of the Autopilot 8.0 software update will address that issue. For Teslas traveling slower than 45 mph while on Autopilot, drivers will be able to spend a maximum of five minutes hands-free before being reminded to keep their hands on the wheel. In Teslas moving faster than 45 mph on Autopilot, drivers will be reminded after one minute if they are not driving behind another vehicle, or three minutes if there is another car ahead. (Musk said the technology’s accuracy improves if the car is following another vehicle, hence the disparity.) Otherwise, the Autosteer system will disengage until the car is parked.

Musk claimed the update would make Tesla vehicles using Autopilot three times safer than other cars.

The update could affect the federal investigations surrounding Autopilot. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one of the agencies probing the fatal May crash, sometimes closes investigations if it determines a manufacturer has resolved the issue at hand and no further investigation is warranted. Bryan Thomas, a spokesman for NHTSA, said the agency is reviewing information from Tesla about the Autopilot update.

“We do not have an update on the Tesla investigation to share at this time,” he said.

LINK: Tesla’s Big Problem With Autopilot Feature May Come Down To Its Name

Quelle: <a href="Tesla Says Its Update To The AutoPilot Feature Would&039;ve Prevented A Deadly Crash“>BuzzFeed

Have you ever used the Stocks app? Or Keynote? Or the Apple Watch app?

Well, starting today, you can finally DELETE ‘EM.

Next, update to iOS 10 in Settings.

On Sunday evening, the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Elexus Jionde, a 22-year-old history graduate from Charlotte, North Carolina, tweeted:

Here are some sample tweets from Jionde’s tweetstorm: