Why American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas

A lack of dining options may have started Jewish Christmas, but now it's a full-fledged ritual.

Kent Wang / Flickr

If there’s a single identifiable moment when Jewish Christmas—the annual American tradition where Jews overindulge on Chinese food on December 25—transitioned from kitsch into codified custom, it was during Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s 2010 confirmation hearing.

How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail

Why worldview threats undermine evidence

Credit: Izhar Cohen

Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Only the hardiest remain at Dakota protest camp

A couple of the remaining activists that are left grappling with plunging temperatures that make conditions there more difficult at the protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, December 14, 2016. Picture taken December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Valerie Volcovici

Two weeks after a victory in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, most protesters have cleared out of the main protest camp in North Dakota - but about 1,000 are still there, and plan to remain through the winter.

These folks say they are dug in at the Oceti Sakowin Camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, despite the cold, for a few reasons. Most are Native Americans, and want to support the tribal sovereignty effort forcefully argued by the Standing Rock Sioux, whose land is adjacent to the pipeline being built.

Others say they worry that Energy Transfer Partners LP (ETP.N), the company building the $3.8 billion project, will resume construction without people on the ground, even though the tribes and the company are currently locked in a court battle.

Future decisions on the 1,172-mile (1,885-km) pipeline are likely to come through discussions with the incoming administration of Donald Trump, or in courtrooms.

“I’ve seen some of my friends leave but I will be here until the end and will stand up to Trump if he decides to approve the permit,” said Victor Herrald, of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, who has been at the camp since August.

Firefox 50.1.0 Lands in Ubuntu's Repos, Multiple Security Vulnerabilities Fixed

On December 13, 2016, Canonical published a new USN (Ubuntu Security Notice) advisory to inform users of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system about the availability of Mozilla Firefox 50.1.0 in the software repositories.

Mozilla released the Firefox 50.1.0 web browser a couple of days ago, and it looks like they patched a total of 13 security vulnerabilities, which could have been used by an attacker to crash the application or run programs as your login if the users were to open a malicious website.

"Multiple security vulnerabilities were discovered in Firefox. If a user were tricked in to opening a specially crafted website, an attacker could potentially exploit these to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, obtain sensitive information, cause a denial of service via application crash, or execute arbitrary code," reads USN-3155-1.

California threatens legal action against Uber unless it halts self-driving cars

Threat from the attorney general came shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said as ‘an important issue of principle’

Uber’s defiant stance appears to be setting the company on a collision course with California regulators in court. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

California’s attorney general Kamala Harris on Friday threatened legal action against the ride-sharing tech company Uber unless it “immediately” removes its self-driving from the roads in San Francisco.

The threat from the office of the outgoing attorney general was contained in a letter released to the public Friday shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said was “an important issue of principle”.

Twenty companies have been approved to test self-driving cars in California, according to the DMV. Uber is not one of them, and the company is refusing to abide by the same rules as its rivals – a defiant move that critics argue shows disregard for the law and public safety.

Friday’s development portends a dramatic confrontation between Uber and California state officials, amid mounting anger in San Francisco at Uber’s refusal to abide by the same rules as other companies.

Harris, a rising star in the Democratic party, was recently elected to the US Senate. The letter from attorneys in her office said they were acting on a request from California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV).

The DMV ordered Uber to either remove its self-driving cars from the road or obtain a permit on Wednesday, the first day the company began a trial of its self-driving taxis in San Francisco without permission.

The letter warns that if Uber does not remove the vehicles from the road until it obtains a permit, the attorney general will “seek injunctive and other appropriate relief”.

Earlier Friday, Uber made clear it had no intention of backing down.