Odds and Ends 

Is U.S. Embassy Attack in Baghdad Part of an Iran Trap?

JERUSALEMIf Irans grand plan in the Middle East is to push the Americans out and squeeze Israel into a corner, the first time that Israel has attacked Iranian-backed groups there. Two days after Kochavis speech, 32 targeting Kataib Hezbollah. The two incidents now bring into view both Israeli and American red lines trying to contain Irans role in the region. strong and sovereign Iraq, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And the U.S. military is in Iraq at the more than 1,000 airstrikes on as many as 250 Iranian…

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Odds and Ends 

R.I.P. Goofy Times

A strange new sensation has settled across the tech industry, one so foreign, so alien, it’s almost hard to recognize. A sense that some great expectations are being radically revised downwards; that someone has turned down a previously unquenchable money spigot; that unit economics can matter even when you’re in growth mode. Could it be … thrift? Well, OK, let’s not go that crazy. But we are witnessing a remarkable confluence of (relatively) parsimonious events. Last year’s high-profile tech IPOs are far from high-fliers: Uber, Lyft, Slack, Pinterest, and Peloton…

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Odds and Ends 

Healthcare startup Lyfebin exposed medical images

Healthcare startup Lyfebin exposed thousands of medical imaging files, such as X-rays, MRI scans and ultrasounds. The Los Angeles-based healthcare startup allows doctors and medical staff to store medical images in its “secure environment,” per its website, allowing patients and doctors access from anywhere. But the files were found stored in an unprotected Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage bucket, without a password, allowing anyone who knew the easy-to-guess web address access to the data. The files were dated between September 2018 to October 2019. After we reached out to warn…

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Headlines 

Storm cuts power to 1,000 homes and affects travel

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media captionStorm Brendan: What is causing the stormy weather? More than 1,000 properties were left without power as high winds swept across Wales, felling trees and causing disruption on the roads Western Power Distribution (WPD) said homes in Newcastle Emlyn and Cardigan in Ceredigion had been affected Gusts reached 79mph on Mumbles head in Swansea and the windy weather was due to continue late into the night. A school closed due to a power failure after a tree fell on power lines and…

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Headlines 

Men, Stop Trying To Tell Us How To Be Women

Olayemi Olurin Updated January 12, 2020 Felix Uresti Olayemi Olurin Updated January 12, 2020 Felix Uresti Lately, all I have been seeing is men giving advice to women and writing articles directed at women, all of which keep taking the form of lectures to women about how we dress, how scantily clad we are allowed to be, how we should feel about ourselves, how to be women, what makes us worthy of male attention, who we have sex with, how many people we have sex with, how men feel about…

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Odds and Ends 

Video From Jeffrey Epsteins First Suicide Try Destroyed, Feds Admit

In the latest screw up in Jeffrey Epsteins death case, federal officials revealed Thursday that video of the cell where the pedophile reportedly made his Epsteins death while he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The corrections officers who were supposed to be checking on Epstein every 30 minutes were charged in November with failing to do so and falsifying prison records to make it look like they had. Attorney General William Barr has said he personally reviewed security video that shows no one entered Epsteins area the night of…

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Headlines 

Meghan Markle plans to move to Los Angeles only after Trump leaves office, report

FILE – In this Tuesday Jan. 7, 2020 file photo Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex leave after visiting Canada House in London after their recent stay in Canada. In a stunning declaration, Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, said they are planning “to step back” as senior members of the royal family and “work to become financially independent.” A statement issued by the couple Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020 also said they intend to “balance” their time between the U.K. and North America. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, FILE)…

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Odds and Ends 

As DraftKings finds an exit, a reminder of what could have been

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today the big news that falls into our orbit is about DraftKings, a sports betting service focused on fantasy sports that will go public via a reverse merger. Not too long ago DraftKings and its erstwhile rival FanDuel were ubiquitous on television; now the two are fractions of what they once were. Let’s chat about what went wrong and what’s next. The ascent Both DraftKings and FanDuel raised modest sums…

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Headlines 

30 Thought-Provoking Digital Illustrations That Expose The Flaws Of Our Modern Society

Art has recently grown into a relatively strong medium to convey critique. Whether it’s of the way we live our lives, the way “things are done” in our society, or the way we abuse the planet (or abuse each other). In a world where a single picture can tell a thousand words—how information is much more consumed via imagery rather than language—art turns out to be an effective way to understand the scope of an issue and to call for change. This is the trajectory that artist and illustrator Davide…

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Odds and Ends 

Obama watches ‘Fleabag,’ which means he saw THAT scene

Former President Barack Obama shared his list of favorite movies and TV shows from 2019, and one, in particular, has caught the attention of . , as listed in Obamas tweet, has become well known as the one with the hot priest. But in most cases, if you watched season 2, you watched season 1. And if you watched season 1, you probably remember that a few minutes into the pilot episode, Phoebe Waller-Bridges character gets caught by her boyfriend masturbating to Obama giving a speech. ok i'm gonna try…

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