Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 03s of daytime. The moon is new today, with just .5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred twenty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes and colleagues are granted a patent for a type-writer:
The Scientific American article (unillustrated) had figuratively used the phrase “literary piano”; the first model that the trio built had a keyboard literally resembling a piano. It had black keys and white keys, laid out in two rows. It did not contain keys for the numerals 0 or 1 because the letters O and I were deemed sufficient:
3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L MThe first row was made of ivory and the second of ebony, the rest of the framework was wooden. It was in this form that Sholes, Glidden and Soule were granted patents for their invention on June 23, 1868[15] and July 14.[16]The first document to be produced on a typewriter was a contract that Sholes had written, in his capacity as the Comptroller for the city of Milwaukee. Machines similar to Sholes’s had been previously used by the blind for embossing, but by Sholes’s time the inked ribbon had been invented, which made typewriting in its current form possible.[13]
Recommended for reading in full —
A Washington Post exclusive reports on Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault, with reporting that the federal government knew of Putin’s direct orders to interfere against Clinton & on Trump’s behalf (emphasis added):
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.
David Frum considers The Lasting Damage of Trump’s ‘Tapes’ Bluff:
First, it confirms America’s adversaries in their intensifying suspicion that the president’s tough words are hollow talk. The rulers of North Korea will remember the menacing April 4 statement from the Department of State that the United States had spoken enough about missile tests, implying that decisive actions lay ahead—and the lack of actions and deluge of further statements that actually followed.
The Chinese will remember Trump’s retreat from his “two China” messaging during the transition. They will have noted that Trump has entirely retreated from his insistence that they restrain North Korea or pay some price—seeing instead his “At least I know China tried!” tweet of June 20.
The Russians have buzzed American aircraft and severed the deconfliction hot line over Syria. They have paid no real price for their attack on the integrity of the 2016 election—indeed, the president continues to exonerate them and to argue for relaxed sanctions….
Brian Whitmore asks What is the point of Putin’s flagrant lies?:
.@PowerVertical: What is the point of Putin’s flagrant lies? pic.twitter.com/orVfqYRZdJ
— RFE/RL (@RFERL) June 22, 2017
Greg Gordon, Ben Wieder, and Kevin G. Hall report that Elections officials outgunned in Russia’s cyberwar against America:
WASHINGTON – Local officials consistently play down suspicions about the long lines at polling places on Election Day 2016 that led some discouraged voters in heavily Democratic Durham County, N.C., to leave without casting a ballot.
Minor glitches in the way new electronic poll books were put to use had simply gummed things up, according to local elections officials there. Elections Board Chairman William Brian Jr. assured Durham residents that “an extensive investigation” showed there was nothing to worry about with the county’s new registration software.
He was wrong.
What Brian and other election officials across eight states didn’t know until the leak of a classified intelligence is that Russian operatives hacked into the Florida headquarters of VR Systems, Inc., the vendor that sold them digital products to manage voter registrations.
A week before the election, the hackers sent emails using a VR Systems address to 122 state and local election officials across the country, inviting them to open an attachment wired with malicious software that spoofed “legitimate elections-related services,” the report said. The malware was designed to retrieve enough additional information to set the stage for serious mischief, said the National Security Agency report disclosed by the Intercept, an investigative web site.
That wasn’t the only type of attack….
Why not end the work week with Zola the Dancing Gorilla?