Hasta La Gadget!

The Republican-led Arizona state Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would permit the government to seize protesters’ assets and prosecute them under a racketeering law designed to target organized crime.

Senate Bill 1142 seeks to limit political demonstrations by expanding the definition of a “riot” to include actions that damage property, and making rioting an offense that can be prosecuted under racketeering statutes. If the measure passes in the GOP-controlled state House and is signed into law, protesting in Arizona would be on par with terrorism.

Republican lawmakers say the legislation is intended to limit the influence of paid protesters, a popular conservative conspiracy-theory scapegoat for grassroots demonstrations that have been intensifying since the election of President Donald Trump. There’s no evidence of any paid protest movement.

The legislation is written in a way that would allow protesters to be charged ― even if they don’t do anything. As the Arizona Capitol Times reports, racketeering laws permit police to arrest people for planning to commit a crime ― before anything has actually happened. Even those who don’t participate in a demonstration could be charged. The bill’s fact sheet explains that “an overt act is not required” to prove conspiracy. 

The state could seize assets for restitution. As the Phoenix New Times observed: “Plan a protest, lose your house.”

“The purported purpose for this bill isn’t based in reality,” Steve Kilar, the communications director for the Arizona ACLU, told HuffPost in an email. “The bill’s supporters are using the false ‘paid protestors’ argument to connect this bill to what is commonly the purpose of anti-racketeering laws: targeting the financial incentives of criminal enterprises.

“But if this bill were to pass, ‘riot’ would join ‘terrorism’ as the only racketeering crimes in Arizona that would not require a financial incentive,” Kilar said.

If this bill were to pass, ‘riot’ would join ‘terrorism’ as the only racketeering crimes in Arizona that would not require a financial incentive.

The bill’s implications for free speech apparently are of little concern to state Sen. Sonny Borrelli, the primary sponsor.

Borrelli said in comments published by the Phoenix New Times that the First Amendment is “not absolute,” and that his bill would protect “the civil liabilities of the citizens.”

It’s true that there are limits on free speech ― yelling fire in a theater, for example. Still, the ACLU isn’t sold on Borrelli’s argument.

“There’s no doubt this proposal would chill the public’s right to free speech and assembly because it could allow police and prosecutors to go after the organizers of peaceful protests if a handful of participants engage in unlawful acts,” Kilar said. “Furthermore, the conduct this bill allegedly addresses is prohibited by existing law and there’s no evidence that additional deterrence is necessary to prevent rioting or the incitement of riot.”

The bill passed the state Senate on a party-line vote, with all 17 Republicans voting in favor, and all 13 Democrats opposed. 

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Thousands of nearly invisible sweat pores live amongst the spiraling ridges on your fingertips. They only reveal themselves if you’re patient enough to wait for them to start working. Luckily, the good folks of YouTube’s Timelapse Vision Inc. channel were kind enough to create footage of sweating fingerprints that…

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As it stands there are quite a few companies who are working on self-driving technology, and we’re sure that all these companies have their own way to go about implementing the technology.  However Alphabet’s Waymo (which was formerly Google’s self-driving car division) seems to believe that some of these companies might have stolen its technology.

Waymo has recently filed a lawsuit against the likes of Otto and are suing them for allegedly stealing the company’s design for its laser-based radar system. For those unfamiliar, Otto is a self-driving truck company that was co-founded by former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski. The company was later acquired by Uber, which is kind of how Uber got caught up in this lawsuit as well.

According to the lawsuit, Waymo is claiming that Levandowski had downloaded 14,000 highly confidential files to an external hard drive before he left the company. One of those files was the design of Waymo’s lidar circuit board. According to correspondence between Otto and Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development and Department of Motor Vehicles that was obtained by Waymo, Otto stated that they are using a custom lidar that was built in-house.

Waymo believes that this is evidence that Uber and Otto are using a circuit board that “bears a striking resemblance” to the company’s proprietary design. Uber and Otto have yet to respond to the lawsuit or offer up a comment, but in the meantime Waymo is seeking damages as a result of this alleged theft.

Waymo Sues Otto And Uber For Allegedly Stealing Their Technology , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

With Hearthstone releases, Blizzard has alternated between Adventures and Expansions, but in 2017 Blizzard decided to shake things up by sort of folding Adventures into Expansions, and choosing to release 3 full-sized content blocks. Sounds good if you’re an avid Hearthstone player looking for more cards to build your decks with.

Unfortunately it seems that playing Hearthstone this year could potentially cost players a lot more real-life money. In a calculation put together by Redditor FliccC (via Engadget), it has been calculated that if players were to purchase 90% of Hearthstone’s cards in 2017 using real-life money, it would cost them about $670. This is versus the $440 or so in previous years to buy the same percentage of content.

Of course since it is entirely possible to gain new cards and Hearthstone packs without real-life money, there’s a good chance you could spend much less than what’s been calculated. However for more hardcore gamers who don’t have the patience or time to farm gold, the increase in costs of about $230 is actually pretty huge and is about 50% more than what they paid the previous year.

Some gamers might be able to justify paying this much for a game that they love to play, but in case you can’t, then maybe it’s time to bite down hard and just start farming all that gold if you’re trying to avoid spending as much real-life money as possible.

Playing ‘Hearthstone’ This Year Could Cost You $670 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Image credit – Andrew Cunningham/ArsTechnica

Apple has touted the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard, as opposed to it being a secondary display. To a certain extent it actually makes sense because if you’re typing and don’t want to break from it to use the touchpad on the laptop or your mouse, the Touch Bar could potentially provide some shortcuts that will save you time.

Now obviously using Touch Bar with browser apps such as Safari makes sense, but if you’re more of a Chrome user then you’ll be pleased to learn that Google has added support for Touch Bar in the latest Chrome beta. This support has been added to Chrome’s Canary channel which means that we’re probably still quite a ways from it finding its way to the public build.

This might also explain why some of the features seem to be a bit lacking. So far what Google has done seems pretty static. We have your usual assortment of navigational buttons like Back, Forward, Refresh, New Tab, and Favorite. There is another button that automatically moves your cursor to the address bar so that you can type URLs or search easily.

However other than that, it is pretty static, at least compared to Safari where the Touch Bar can change dynamically to show bookmarks, switch between open tabs, and so on, but like we said these features are found in Chrome Canary so it is possible that Google will keep updating the feature in the future. In the meantime what other features would you like to see from Chrome’s Touch Bar support?

Latest Chrome Beta Adds Support For Touch Bar , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.