Why Do White Women Support Republicans? Because They Are Republicans.

Immediately after the midterms ended and the media started reporting that a majority of white women voted for Republicans Ted Cruz in Texas (59 percent), Ron DeSantis in Florida (51 percent), and Brian Kemp in Georgia (76 percent), the calls for white women's heads started rolling in on social media. White women didn't vote for those candidates in higher numbers than white men, but instead of calling out men, progressive white women started self-flagellating and promising to make other white women, collectively, "do better." Others were less conciliatory, like the actor Heather Mattarazzo, who tweeted that white women should “choke to death on the white supremacist patriarchal cock.”

None of the people issuing either mea culpas or threats seem to have actually voted for Cruz or DeSantis or Kemp or Trump, but apparently they think they can sway those who did by using some combination of shame and bullying, including the Women's March, which tweeted:

This tweet was not well received, at least if the 4,800 replies—the vast majority of which are some variation of “fuck off”—are any indication. As one woman replied, "I’m going to just take a stab in the dark here, but I’m not sure if condescendingly telling an entire demographic of women that they have a lot to learn and need growth is a good strategy."

While I understand the impulse to blame anonymous populations for our problems and defeats, it's not hard to see why people bristle at this kind of message. Blaming white women for not electing Democrats is based on the false presumption that white women are a homogenous population, that we are all supposed to be allies for the great feminist cause. When the right does this—treating, for instance, all Arabs (and Indians, Pakistanis, and Sikhs) as criminals when a Muslim extremist commits an act of violence—those of us on the left tend to object, and for good reason: Punishing the collective for the actions of the few is how we get things like the Muslim ban, the border wall, racial profiling, and vague demands that all Muslims get together and condemn ISIS attacks in unison. It’s ridiculous thinking: People are individuals, and we should treat them like it—and that even includes white women.

White women are not a monolith. We don't all know each other. We don't all go to the same church or yoga class. Some of us, in fact, don't go to church or yoga at all. White women, like all populations, are a large, unwieldy group made up of individuals with an array of concerns and values, and less than half (48 percent) of white women lean Democratic. The fact that conservative women voted for Republican candidates should be no more surprising than the fact that liberal women voted for Dems, regardless of their race.

There are reasons not to blindly shout about "white women" when you’re pissed about the outcome of the election. For one, why the hell aren't you shouting at white men? They vote for Republicans at even higher rates than white women. This women-blaming rhetoric reeks of misogyny, which may be ironic considering it comes primarily from progressive women. Regardless, it won’t fix anything. The way to win races is to actually appeal to voters (or to suppress them), and the only way to appeal to voters is to either try and change their opinion (and good luck with that) or to meet them where they already stand.

by Katie Herzog, The Stranger |  Read more:
Image: Twitter

What You Have to Fear From Artificial Intelligence

These days, advancements in artificial intelligence are not only making rich people billions of dollars, but inspiring wild-eyed fear-mongering about the end of civilization. Those concerned include Elon Musk, who has said that the technology could eventually produce an “immortal dictator,” and the late Stephen Hawking, who warned that the sudden explosion of artificial intelligence could be “the worst event in the history of our civilization.” Generally, the fear is that we will produce machines so intelligent that they are capable of becoming smarter and smarter until we no longer have control over them. They will become a new form of life that will rule over us the way we do the rest of the animal kingdom.

As a professional in the AI industry, I can tell you that given the state of the technology, most of these predictions take us so far into the future that they’re closer to science fiction than reasoned analysis. Before we get to the point where computers have an unstoppable “superintelligence,” there are much more pressing developments to worry about. The technology that already exists, or is about to exist, is dangerous enough on its own.

Let me focus on some real-world developments that are terrifyingly immediate. Of the many different kinds of artificial neural networks, algorithms modeled after a rough approximation of how groups of neurons in your brain operate (which make up what is commonly called AI) I will focus on two: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs).

GANs are good at making counterfeit images, and thus videos as well. A GAN is made up of two neural networks that have each been “trained” on what a certain thing looks like, like a bathroom or an animal or a person of a certain identity. When the training is complete, one network is told to start generating new images of the thing on its own. The other network is presented with a stream of these counterfeit images with real images interspersed and tries to guess which are fakes. Human input tells each network its successes and failures. Each then adjusts itself to try to do better and they push each other to greater and greater heights of success. RNNs work with data that exists as an ordered sequence, such as a record of daily high temperatures in a city, or the words in a paragraph. Processing and generating written and spoken communication are two of the tasks RNNs are most commonly used for.

A computer program that can generate convincing images, or another that can understand human speech and generate it, might not seem world-shaking. But as these “counterfeiters” steadily improve, the implications are immense. GANs can produce photorealistic images and videos of nonexistent people. Magazines and advertisers can simply replace real people with generated pictures, saving money on photo shoots which require lighting, sets, technicians, photographers, and models. Stock photos will no longer be of people pretending to be students, professionals, workmen, etc. They will be computers pretending to be people. Many of the images you see on the internet will be of people who literally do not exist. If that sounds implausible, realize that it’s just another small step in the kind of fakery that occurs already through Photoshop and CGI. It just means that instead of starting with a photo, you can start by asking the computer to generate one. (...)

These people do not actually exist

If you think “fake news” is a problem now, just wait. When an image can be generated of literally anyone doing literally anything with perfect realism, truth is going to get a whole lot slipperier. The videos will soon catch up to the images, too. Already, it’s possible to make a moderately convincing clip that puts words in Barack Obama’s mouth. Fake security camera footage, fake police body camera footage, fake confessions: we are getting close. Marco Rubio has worried that “a foreign intelligence agency could use the technology to produce a fake video of an American politician using a racial epithet or taking a bribe” or a “fake video of a U.S. soldier massacring civilians overseas.” More worrying is what the U.S. military and police forces could do with it themselves. It didn’t take much deception to manipulate the country into supporting the invasion of Iraq. Fake intelligence is going to become a whole lot more difficult to disprove.

AI-generated images and videos are not just going to cast doubt on reporting, but will pose a major challenge for the legal system. Photographic evidence in trials will always be in doubt once generated images can’t be distinguished from real ones by human experts or other AIs. They can also be used as alibis, with claims that the real images are the counterfeit ones. In this dizzying world of forgery and illusion, how is anyone going to know what to believe? So-called “deepfake” videos will make Donald Trump’s claims of “fake news” that much more plausible and difficult to counter.

Mimicking ordinary human speech is coming to be a cinch. Google recently unveiled a new AI assistant that can talk like a person. It even puts “ums” and “uhs” where they need to go. Called Duplex, it can run on a cell phone, and not only sounds like a human but can interact like one. Duplex’s demo used it to call a hair salon and make an appointment. The woman on the line had no idea she wasn’t talking to a person. Google says it is building Duplex “to sound natural, to make the conversation experience comfortable.”

Imagine how tomorrow’s technology could have worked in 2016. Two days before the election, a video appears, showing Hillary Clinton muttering “I can’t believe Wisconsin voters are so stupid,” supposedly caught on a “hot mike” at a rally in Eau Claire. It circulates on Facebook through the usual rightwing channels. Clinton says she never said it, and she didn’t. It doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to tell it’s fake. The fact-checkers look into it, and find that there never was an event in Eau Claire, and that Clinton had never even been to Wisconsin. It doesn’t matter. By that time, the video is at 10 million shares. The “Wisconsin can’t believe you’re so stupid” shirts are already being printed. Clinton loses, Trump becomes president. Catastrophe. (...)

By far the most serious and most frightening AI development is in military technology: armed, fully autonomous attack drones that can be deployed in swarms and might ultimately use their own judgment to decide when and whom to kill. Think that’s an exaggeration? The Department of Defense literally writes on its websites about new plans to improve the “autonomy” of its armed “drone swarms.” Here’s FOX News, which seems excited about the new developments:

No enemy would want to face a swarm of drones on the attack. But enemies of the United States will have to face the overwhelming force of American drone teams that can think for themselves, communicate with each other and work together in hundreds to execute combat missions…. Say you have a bomb maker responsible for killing a busload of children, our military will release 50 robots – a mix of ground robots and flying drones…Their objective? They must isolate the target within 2 square city blocks within 15 to 30 minutes max… It may sound farfetched – but drone swarm tech for combat already exists and has already been proven more than possible.

The focus here is on small quadcopter drones, designed to be deployed en masse to kill urban civilians, rather than the large Predator drones used to murder entire rural wedding parties in Muslim countries. DARPA’s repulsive Twitter account openly boasts about the plan: “Our OFFSET prgm envisions future small-unit infantry forces using unmanned aircraft systems and/or unmanned ground systems in swarms of >250 robots for missions in urban environment.” The Department of Defense is spending heavily in pursuit of this goal—their 2018 budgetary request contained $457 million for R&D in the technology. Combined with our new $275 million drone base in Niger, the United States is going to have a formidable new capacity to inflict deadly harm using killer robots.

Perhaps more telling, the Department of Defense is also spending heavily on counter-drone systems. They know from experience that other entities will acquire this technology, and that they’ll need to fight back. But while the offensive murder technology is likely to be incredibly effective, the defensive efforts aren’t going to work. Why? Because a swarm of cheap drones controlled by AI are almost unstoppable. Indeed, the DoD counter-drone efforts are pathetic and comically macabre: “The Air Force has purchased shotgun shells filled with nets and the Army has snatched up the Dronebuster, a device used to jam the communications of consumer drones…the Army and Navy are developing lasers to take down drones.” Lord help me, shotgun shells with nets! And if a drone is autonomous, communications jamming doesn’t do anything. If you were facing a swarm of drones, communications jamming would disrupt their coordination, making them less effective, but there would still be hundreds of drones trying to kill you.

It’s ironic, given all the fear that powerful members of the tech industry and government have about killer AI taking over the world, that they are silent as we literally build killer robots.

by Ryan Metz, Current Affairs |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. For proof, look no further than today's news: White House Releases Doctored Video To Back Up Attack on CNN Reporter (With video - TPM).]

Handmade Bamboo Furniture

Li Zikai
[ed. Soothing video despite the laborious effort involved.]

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Rolling Stones

America Is No Longer Attracting The Top Minds In Physics

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, America emerged at the pre-eminent place to be for physics research in the world. Of the 209 people to ever win the Nobel Prize in Physics, a whopping 93 of them claimed United States citizenship: triple that of Germany, the next-closest country. This was reflected not only at the highest levels of prestige and accomplishment in research, but also in education.

The United States of America became the most desired place in the world to study physics at the highest levels. From fewer than 20 PhDs a year in 1900 to around 500 per year in the 1950s, we now award nearly 2,000 PhDs in physics every year. Moreover, since the 1990s, international students, representing some of the best and brightest talent the world has to offer, represent almost half of those degrees.

Yet, according to the American Physical Society, the past year has seen an alarming, unprecedented drop in the number of international applications to physics PhD programs in the United States. In an extremely large survey of 49 of the largest physics departments in the country, representing 41% of all enrolled physics graduate students in the United States, an overall decrease of almost 12% in the number of international applicants was observed from 2017 to 2018.

This was a tremendous surprise, as no such study was even planned. The impetus for this study was prompted by a small number of American Physical Society members contacting the Office of Government Affairs to report a substantial decrease in the number of applications from international students. Upon completion of this survey, it was found that although some departments noted no decrease at all, many of the most prestigious institutions saw a drop of up to 40% in international applications. (...)

It is well understood that the best places in the world to learn and research physics and astronomy are the places that ought to attract the best students. But the converse is also true: the places that attract the top students from around the world also rise up to become the best places for education and research as well. As the president of the American Physical Society, Roger Falcone, recently said:

"Physics students want to come to the United States from all over the world because they know their educational and career opportunities here will be extraordinary. Our country's research, technology, and economy have been enormously strengthened by a positive attitude towards such immigration of students. We should continue to be a welcoming place, and to embrace open and global mobility for people."

Yet given the sudden severe drop, it is clear that the United States is at risk at no longer attracting the best and brightest minds in physics. (...)

The elephant in the room, of course, is the tremendous shift in United States politics and, specifically, the country's attitude towards foreigners and non-citizens since early 2017.

This policy shift has affected far more than just physics and astronomy, of course. "The current administration's 'America First' mantra is causing [international students] a great deal of anxiety and fear," said Earl Johnson of the University of Tulsa. Across the board, international enrollment is down across colleges and graduate schools in the United States, as the number of F-1 visas precipitously dropped by 17% last year. From 2016 to 2017, the United States saw a decrease of nearly 80,000 F-1 visas in a single year, with the largest drop coming from China and India. The government's tougher stance on issuing H-1B work visas, making it more difficult for international students to remain in the United States and find work, may play a role as well.

Furthermore, students from countries that are affected by the current administration's travel ban, such as Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia have seen historic lows in the number of visas issued to them. As Francis Slakey, the Chief Government Affairs Officer at the American Physical Society, bluntly stated, "The US is at high risk of no longer attracting the best minds in physics."

by Ethan Siegel, Forbes | Read more:
Image: NASA/JPL

What I've Learned About Men From Countless Hours of Tinder

In 2014, I started Tinder Live! – a comedy show exploring the crazy world of Tinder. This means that in the last five years, I’ve spent many, many hours browsing the app (so much so in fact that I am relieved there’s no way to know how many hours I lost on there).

Like many people, I’ve had multiple profile versions, and deleted and undeleted my profile countless times. It’s come to the point where I frequently see the same men and think, “You’ve come up like five times now buddy, what’s going on, are you OK?”

Through all this swiping, I like to think I’ve learned a lot about men. To be fair, “men” in this case can mean men I’ve never met but see a lot on Tinder, men I did meet on Tinder and men I talked to on Tinder but never went out with. Here’s what I learned, using an admittedly broad brush because it’s what dating apps push you to do: sense a pattern and then become upset by how persistent the pattern is, leading you to believe (usually falsely) that everyone is the same.

They don’t want to be ‘just’ pen pals … but they also don’t want to meet

This blows my mind. So many men on Tinder will bemoan becoming pen pals, say they don’t want their time wasted and just want to meet already, but will also think that their saying “Hey” and asking you how your Sunday was, the end, should be enough conversation for you to invest $50 and two hours getting ready and traveling to a bar to see if they’re worth your night out.

I guess the idea here is to have no connection at all, and presume this guy is the total package, and to spend a few hours in person seeing if you’re wrong because, eh, what’s a waste of a night of your life? I don’t get this, I’ll never get this, and I hate it.

They might want casual sex, but aren’t willing to admit it

I’ve seen so many men try to find a cute, chill way to say in their bio that casual sex is fine I guess, but they’d prefer a connection lol no big deal or not haha whatever: here’s a quote from The Office. It’s such a bummer and so relatable. Because while men are busy trying to be coy about whether or not they want something more, so are women.

But what if, WHAT IF, we were both honest and both got what we truly wanted?

They seem super interested – then they ignore you

I don’t know if it’s in an effort to play it cool, but even men who “super like you” will not message you. They won’t message you first, leaping at the chance to because OMG you liked them back and they liked you so much! And they might not even message you back if you message them first.

Nope, they super liked you, just to let you know they’d … what? Super bang you? I have no idea, but it really bums me out.

They either really love online dating – or really hate it

I’m convinced the guys who match with you and never message you just love online dating because they like having a capsule full of women who would, in their minds, definitely sleep with them. Which is bizarre because when I swipe right, it’s because someone’s face – combined with my very vague idea of who they are – is enough to get me to the next level. I want to know how they speak, how they treat me, how their mind works, what jokes they tell, what they do, who they are, how they’d be to date. And then maybe, maybeI’ll meet them and see if I wanna meet them again.

I don’t think I’ve ever swiped right on someone and thought, “10/10 would fuck. I don’t even need to know if this guy has a brain, or if he hates gay people, or has a swastika tattoo. Nope, my vagina says yes!” But whatever you need to tell yourself, dudes.

And then there are the yellers. These are the guys whose profiles just say, “I’m on here to get off this app. Please don’t waste my time. If you can’t carry a conversation, swipe LEFT!!!”

I get it. Spend long periods of time on any dating app with the intention of finding even the most fleeting meaningful connection and you’re bound to get to a point where you’re tempted to make your profile, “OMG if you don’t want to meet someone on here swipe left, seriously, WTF I’m a good person!!!!!!!”

The yelling and aggression aside, it’s comforting for me to know that some men are as fed up as women are with the games and the flakiness and the waste of time that dating apps can be.

by Lane Morgan, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Katia Temkin

Quantum Political Scientists Hypothesize Country Headed In Both Right And Wrong Directions Simultaneously

PASADENA, CA—Upending the conventionally held assumption that the United States must exclusively be moving along a single good or bad path forward, quantum political scientists at the California Institute of Technology published a paper Thursday hypothesizing that the country is, in fact, headed in both the right and wrong directions simultaneously. “Rather than inhabiting a single reality where the nation’s future looks bright or an opposite one where Americans are struggling like never before, our research suggests that these two conditions actually exist concurrently in a state of superposition,” said lead researcher David Rimbaud, adding that, according to their analysis of quantum wave function and Gallup polls, the nation’s best days were found to lie, paradoxically, both ahead of and behind it. “In addition, our research has revealed for the first time that this country is currently changing beyond all recognition while at the same time remaining the same as it’s always been. Similarly, the United States was found to be both a beacon of freedom and hope in the world and an antagonist to those very same hopes and freedoms. Though seemingly contradictory, all of these scenarios are equally true.” Rimbaud added that in both divergent realities, China was still the world’s dominant economic force.

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Key Takeaways From The 2018 Midterms (The Onion)]

The scent of green papaya (1993) dir. by Trần Anh Hùng

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I Voted in the Last Frontier

Alaska wins election stickers race
[ed. Cute, but look where the votes went. Even salmon lost (ADN).]

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Robert Riggs, Zoot Suit 1947
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Mobile Laundry for the Homeless Goes International

A mobile laundry and shower service for the homeless has begun international expansion after being inundated with requests from struggling cities around the globe.

Four years ago two young Australian men saw a gap in the market and fitted out a van with a washer and dryer, driving it to parks, churches and drop-in centres in a bid to bring hygiene services to the homeless community on their own turf.

Lucas Patchett, co-founder of Orange Sky, said washing was initially viewed as a low priority for the community, and there was widespread scepticism about the plan.

“When we dreamed this up it was a world first, and we had a lot of practical issues to overcome. How would we power the machines, where would we dispose of the waste water?” says Patchett.

“But we strongly believed that access to hygiene was a basic human right.”

There are more than 100,000 homeless Australians, and the population has complex needs. Patchett says Orange Sky has been able to forge bonds with the community by bringing the vans to its doorstep, and because it has no agenda besides the straightforward, free services it offers.

Health benefits of the mobile laundry include halting the spread of mould, scabies and bed bugs, but Patchett says it is the mental health boost that is most significant.

“We’re not preaching anything, or teaching anything or pushing anything. But it does take an hour to wash and dry someone’s clothes and during that time people tend to hang around. That’s when the conversations start.

“Ninety-nine percent of the day, these people are walked past and ignored and not even looked at, and that can have a huge impact on psyche and sense of self-worth. So we just say g’day and offer something really practical that makes people immediately feel more confident to engage with the broader society.”

There are now 27 Orange Sky laundry and shower vans operating in Australia, using generators and solar power to run the machines. Operated by volunteers, they do around 15-20 laundry loads and showers each day.

A number of other mobile laundry services have launched around the world, including in several US states, Brighton in the UK and Athens, Greece, where 20,000 people are homeless. Orange Sky has also been asked to provide services to Singapore, Hong Kong and other British cities.

According to Auckland council, at least 1,000 people sleep rough in New Zealand’s biggest city every night, and Orange Sky’s expansion has been welcomed by those caring for the community, saying the service has been embraced.

The New Zealand housing and urban development minister, Phil Twyford, said Orange Sky offered rough sleepers something many New Zealanders took for granted, and was one part of giving them back their dignity and self-respect.

“While superficially the service is about clean clothes and showers, the main benefits are the social interactions,” said Twyford.

by Eleanor Ainge Roy, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Orange Sky Laundry

Of America and the Rise of the Stupefied Plutocrat

Of America and the Rise of the Stupefied Plutocrat (LitHub)
Image: 'Mash' via

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R.E.M.

TSA to Test New Scanning Technology

The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead to test technology that is designed to screen multiple airport passengers at the same time from a distance of up to 25 feet away.

The technology, described as “passive terahertz” screening, is one of several advances that the TSA and airlines hope will help U.S. airports handle the growing demand for air travel that is already creating bottlenecks and frustration at airports across the country.

The TSA has purchased several terahertz screening devices from Britain-based Thruvision to test in a TSA facility near Arlington, Va. If the devices pass the initial tests, they may be used on a trial basis at U.S. airports, said Kevin Gramer, vice president of Thruvision Americas.

The screening device, which is about the size of an old-fashioned PC computer tower and weighs about 50 pounds, reads the outline of people to reveal firearms and explosives hidden under their clothes.

Unlike the TSA’s existing full-body scanners that bounce millimeter waves off of passengers to spot objects hidden under their clothes, Gramer said, the passive terahertz technology reads the energy emitted by a person, similar to thermal imaging used in night-vision goggles.

“It’s 100% passive. There is no radiation coming out of our device,” he said. “You don’t have to stand directly in front of the device.”

As a result, Thruvision boasts that its technology can screen up to 2,000 people an hour and detect a concealed device at a distance of up to 25 feet. Initially, the system can be used in addition to the existing full-body scanners already deployed at airports, but Gramer said the device can eventually replace parts of the TSA’s security screening system.

by Hugo Martin, LA Times |  Read more:

Image: via
[ed. If you can't trust TSA, who can you trust. See also: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (MIT Technology Review)]

The New Canon

What's the most influencial book of the last 20 years?

Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness.

We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as the most influential book published in the past 20 years. (Some respondents named books slightly outside our time frame, but we included them anyway.) We asked them to select books — academic or not, but written by scholars — from within or outside their own fields. It was up to our respondents to define “influential,” but we asked them to explain why they chose the books they did. Here are their answers.

Paul Bloom | Eric Klinenberg | Peniel Joseph | Johanna Hanink | Jackson Lears| Leon Botstein | Sheena Iyengar | Noliwe M. Rooks | G. Gabrielle Starr | Amy J. Binder | Susan J. Douglas | Mari Matsuda | Steven Shapin | Mark Greif | Ashley Farmer | Nakul Krishna | Richard Delgado | Jonathan Holloway | John L. Jackson | Deborah Tannen | Amitava Kumar

The Case for a Better World

To be taken seriously as the “most influential book” written by an academic, a work has to transform the way many of us make sense of the world, and so has to have influence beyond a narrow circle of scholars. If the average reader of The Chronicle Review has never heard of a book, it shouldn’t be a contender. Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic. Moving down a tier, there is Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures and Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. Superb and influential books, but written many decades ago.

Maybe influential books of this sort don’t exist anymore. Or maybe we can identify only those books that really have had a major influence after enough time has elapsed; if you’re interested in 1998-2018, ask again in 50 years.

by Paul Bloom, Chronicle of Higher Education |  Read more:

Image: Lincoln Agnew

[ed. One shocking omission: The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.]

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order

WASHINGTON—Saying his latest executive order was legal due to an “underutilized but totally feasible workaround,” President Trump claimed Tuesday that he could overrule the U.S. Constitution by means of the relatively obscure “no one will stop me” loophole. “My critics say a constitutional amendment or at least an act of Congress is necessary to end birthright citizenship, but what they don’t realize is that a seldom-evoked administrative guideline ensures I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, because zero people will stand in my way,” said Trump, adding that the largely unheard-of clause allows him to circumvent normal legal proceedings because it’s not like anyone in any branch of government remains effective enough to prevent him from doing so. “Though few modern presidents have made use of it, this loophole has always given the nation’s chief executive unilateral power over the Constitution. Its provisions dictate that the president can sidestep any checks and balances on his power once he has abused his authority so many times that no one can keep track anymore.” Trump added that while his opponents may try to challenge his executive order in court, the loophole also states that by then he will have achieved his immediate political aims.

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: Stock photo
[ed. See also: here and here (Current Affairs)

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How to Buy a Used Phone Without Getting Fleeced

Apple, Samsung and Google have all launched their new phones. Everyone in the world is itching to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but not you. You’re a deal hunter, and while everyone else is paying $1,000 or more for a shiny new device, you’re buying a used version of last year’s almost-as-good model for a fraction of the cost. Here’s how to get a deal without getting scammed.

Make sure the phone isn’t blacklisted

Unfortunately, buying a used phone is tricky, said Ben Edwards, chief executive of used-tech marketplace Swappa. “Phones are unique in that their value relies on being able to connect to a cellular network, and their usability can change over time,” Mr. Edwards said. “If you buy a bike on Craigslist, it’s not like the seller can do something a month later that makes the bike not work. But if you buy a used phone, and it’s later reported as stolen, it’ll be blacklisted.”

When a carrier blacklists a device — which can happen if the device is reported as lost or stolen, or if someone sells it while it’s still on a payment plan — it can’t be activated on any carrier. That means you’ll be stuck with a $400 paperweight.

So instead of buying a phone with cash, use a form of payment that comes with some sort of buyer protection. For example, PayPal — which processes payments on eBay, Swappa, Gazelle and many other online marketplaces — provides 180 days of purchase protection, so you can return the device if the phone gets blacklisted within the first few months.

Even then, it’s a good idea to first verify the phone’s status if you can. Swappa does this (among other quality checks) for every phone listed on their site, but if you’re buying on a site with looser restrictions, likeeBay, ask the seller for the IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) number or MEID (mobile equipment identifier). Here’s how to find the IMEI of an iPhone, and here’s how to do so on Android.

Then, punch the number into your carrier’s website (Here are the pages for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) — you can also enter it into Swappa’s all-in-one checker here. It will let you know if the device has been reported as lost or stolen, and if it’s eligible for activation. It will not tell you if a phone is currently under financing, though Mr. Edwards said Swappa performs this check manually for every phone listed on the site, and if a phone is still under financing, the seller won’t be able to list it.

Some sellers may prefer to keep the IMEI private, and that’s fine — as long as you have a return policy and buyer protection, you can check the IMEI after receiving the phone. You’ll just have to go through the hassle of returning it if something goes wrong.

If you’d rather buy locally and hold the device before handing over your hard-earned cash, Mr. Edwards recommends checking the IMEI in person. “When I was buying phones on Craigslist, I would always insist on meeting in a carrier store for the transaction,” he said. “Then the carrier can check to see if it’s blacklisted.”

Again, none of this is foolproof since a phone can be reported lost, stolen or unpaid-for after you’ve purchased it, but it’s a good thing to check before you do.

Buy the right model for your carrier

These days, many phones are compatible with multiple networks. But there are two caveats: You need to make sure the device isn’t software-locked to another carrier, and you need to make sure its hardware is optimized for your carrier.

When you buy a phone directly from Verizon, AT&T or another carrier, it usually comes “carrier locked.” That means that phone will only be usable on Verizon, AT&T or whatever carrier you bought it from unless you ask them to unlock it.

If you’re buying a used phone, you want to make sure it isn’t locked to a carrier other than your own. If you’re on AT&T, you can’t buy a phone that’s locked to Verizon. You’ll either want an AT&T-branded phone or a phone that’s listed as “unlocked” by the seller.

In addition, “some phones have a few different numeric models that work better on some carriers than others,” Mr. Edwards said. “For full and optimal compatibility, you need to pay attention to the specifics.”

That means you shouldn’t just search for “iPhone 7” and buy the cheapest listing that pops up. The iPhone 7 A1660 may look nearly identical to the A1778, but the former works on all carriers, while the latter lacks support for some of the technologies used on Verizon and Sprint. In other cases, you may run into “international” models, which can lack support for certain features (like Samsung Pay, in the case of the international version of the Galaxy S7).

When you punch the IMEI into your carrier’s website, it will tell you if a phone is generally compatible with their network, but it will not tell you if it is optimal for their network. If a certain model is compatible with Sprint’s network but doesn’t support all of its LTE bands, your carrier’s IMEI checker will not tell you — and you may not get the best possible speeds.

If you aren’t sure which model numbers are compatible with your network, check on the manufacturer’s website, or Google around to find out which model your carrier sells; then, search for that on your marketplace of choice.

by Whitson Gordon, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Dmitry Kostyukov