Referred to under the label "4/26"—tomorrow's date—contributors have assembled a number of supposed facts and conjectures that they believe amount to evidence that the US is in imminent danger of a nuclear strike from North Korea. All of this supporting information has been brought together by one user into a meta-post about 4/26 which, with well over 2,000 upvotes, is by far the hottest conspiracy on /r/conspiracy as we published this story.

The crux of this conspiracy stems from Operation Gotham Shield, an actual training exercise taking place in New York and New Jersey to test preparedness for a nuclear attack as part of FEMA's National Exercise Program. Although details of the program were made publicly available by FEMA months ago, to the conspiracysphere Gotham Shield is a potential false flag operation in which the U.S. government will attempt to pass off a genuine nuclear attack from Pyongyang as a routine exercise.

While sites like ZeroHedge and InfoWars have been happy to run with this claim—the latter especially shrieking at its audience to prepare for nuclear war—the author of the Reddit post has thrown a curveball with the suggestion that Gotham Shield is merely a distraction from a nuclear launch off the coast of California . In the post, the poetically named Fuckaduckfuckaduck writes:

"What if North Korea's nuclear test isn't their usual underground test? What if it's a "test' of their newly unveiled submarine based ballistic missiles... from a sub off the coast of the U.S.?"

By way of supporting information he provides an extensive list of historical explosions, earthquakes, airplane crashes and scientific discoveries that also happened on April 26 (although the logic of why this would influence North Korean military planning is left to the reader to decide), washed down with a series of references to tinfoil favorite Operation Jade Helm, which Alex Jones "revealed" as President Obama's secret plan to impose martial law and steal all the guns in Texas.

But the original post also hedges on the likelihood of the events actually taking place, a sentiment the author echoed in a Facebook chat with Motherboard, writing:

"I do not think anything will happen tomorrow. But I think this stuff is important to know and be aware of. It is all part of a bigger plan methinks. These people at the top play chess, not checkers." 

FEMA, for its part, has called all of this a load of nonsense, telling Motherboard in a lengthy emailed statement: 

"We've been planning Gotham Shield 2017 for about a year.

FEMA plans and conducts exercises with other federal agencies and states throughout the year, on a variety of natural & manmade disasters (to include hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.)

The Gotham Shield 2017 exercise is a four-day functional exercise focused on interagency and multi-state coordination during an Improvised Nuclear Device detonation in northern New Jersey. [...]

This forum will expand the ability to coordinate at a local and national level, further developing relationships that will support more effective response and recovery operations during a nuclear incident."

It's unlikely to be a satisfactory answer for the denizens of /r/conspiracy and the wider Alex Jones echo chamber, but with less than seven hours to midnight, the truth about 4/26 will be known soon enough.

"I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote.

This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat. The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying responded with this dystopian message:

"ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration … at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' … create violations."

In January of this year, Järlström was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered."

*

An excerpt from one of the letters sent to Järlström by the Oregon engineering board.

It started in 2013, when Järlström's wife was caught running a red light by a camera near their home. Järlström spent a year looking into the timing of yellow lights and red light camera statistics, and learned that cameras were catching people who were running yellow lights.

The original paper that determined yellow light timing, written in 1959, is too simplistic for the modern world, he said. And yet the original calculations in them are still used all around the world.

A screengrab from the final fine order sent to Järlström.

"They only looked at a vehicle traveling safely directly through an intersection, however the equation they developed is not used for turning lanes," Järlström told me. "When you make a turn you slow down but that's not accounted for in their solution, so people are getting caught in red light cameras for making safe turns."

Järlström, understandably, wanted to get feedback on his findings. And so he reached out to the engineering board, his local sheriff, and 60 Minutes. He was even invited to give a talk about his research in front of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Anaheim, California. He also spoke to Alexei Maradudin, the last surviving author of that 1959 paper: "He wants me to continue with this, it's amazing that I have his support," Järlström said.

The engineering board cited each time Järlström used the word "engineer" or "engineering" in emails he sent to them.

To be clear, Järlström is doing this work in his free time, for free, and does not have any control over the red lights in Oregon or anywhere else. In 2014, he sued the City of Beaverton over the length of its yellow light lengths, but that case was quickly thrown out because a judge said he lacked standing to challenge it because "for purposes of standing, Plaintiff must allege that the short yellow-light intervals create a credible threat of imminent injury to him."

"I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," Järlström said.

Some of Järlström's calculations.

And yet, the engineering board in Oregon says he should not be free to publish or present his ideas. Tuesday, Järlström and the Institute for Justice sued the engineering board in federal court for Violating his First Amendment rights.

"Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic rights," Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told me. "It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."

Järlström, for his part, said he never expected anything like this to happen when he moved to the United States from Sweden 20 years ago.

"When I got the first letter, it was this feeling of being violated and shocked that someone can be treated like this in the USA for sharing their ideas," he said. "I've done this freely, self-funded, as a civil service. I want to show these ideas to the public and I'm getting surpassed. It's been a civil rights violation since day one."

Below is Järlström's correspondence with the Oregon engineering board and the official fine notice it sent him.

mats4 by Jason Koebler on Scribd

mats3 by Jason Koebler on Scribd

mats2 by Jason Koebler on Scribd

mats1 by Jason Koebler on Scribd

Check.

Mate.

One of the most illustrious games of the Sega CD and easily the most well known of the maligned 'full motion video' games, Night Trap follows the Sega Control Attack Team (or, uh, SCAT for short) as they monitor and defend a bodaciously 90s sleepover party being attacked by slowly lurching vampires. It's important you know that they are undead ghouls and not ninjas or members of one of those black-light puppeteering groups, which you might have assumed otherwise.

To protect those wily teens from vampiric rituals, you have to "trap" the demons throughout the house. Switching from security camera to security camera, waiting for the moment they step close to a fake wall or trap door, all filled with purple light and glorious fog. It plays like an obtuse version of Five Nights at Freddy's, except with a theme song sequence that freezes the controls so you can appreciate it in full, thereby making the game unwinnable. That theme can be downloaded on the remastered game's site.

A Kickstarter for an HD remaster failed in 2014, but the underdog FMV genre is having a bit of a moment, spurred initially by the success of games like Her Story. Perhaps that's why the game we deserve, if not willing to crowdsource, is being brought to the PlayStation 4, a console that doesn't have to compress video files into annihilation. Even with major Hollywood talents backing the 90s FMV craze, the games largely exist as embarrassing relics. Maybe the modern gaming world can do them justice. Perhaps the plot-driven, TV-actor fuelled genre failed to impress in the 90s, but the sophisticated game laureate in 2017 should know that these stories are as essential as vampires with long grabby arm things tip-toeing around looking for someone, anyone, in a crop top.

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Reports of the upcoming service—which is set to be rolled out in 29 days once its crowdfunding campaign ends (it's unclear how much they plan to raise)—exploded across social media channels yesterday and today, to tentative acclaim:

But not everyone's on board with the idea of turning an untrained public into an editing force.

David Kaplan, an adjunct journalism professor at NYU and contributing editor at Newsweek, told Motherboard that while he applauds WikiTribune's intent, he is "skeptical the model will do much to solve the problem of fake news."

"At some level, crowdfunded journalism is an oxymoron," he wrote in an email. "The best journalism requires editorial judgment, selectivity, curating. The idea that reportage and analysis can be done by anybody—just as long as professionals oversee 'neutrality' and 'facts'—strikes me as unrealistic."

The service is purportedly "100 percent ad-free" and paywall-less to guarantee the neutrality of the news and is free to access for all readers. However, those who choose to subscribe will have the chance to suggest topics they would like to see covered.

The underlying concept is that "community and journalists are equals," the WikiTribune site reads. Basically, the public will not be relegated to the comment section but will have the chance to play an active role in the creation of news.

"WikiTribune is news by the people and for the people," Wales told The Verge.

In the wake of a fake news storm that came to head to a head during the last US election, many news providers have stepped up their game to weed out false or unreliable coverage. Facebook offered tips to users for spotting suspicious information. And today, Google's joined the fray by pledging to improve its search engine algorithm and provide users tools to report misleading or offensive content.

In the meantime, we may still have to contend with pizzagates.

Despite much of the basic research in deep learning being done in government-funded university labs, private corporations like Google and Facebook have largely been responsible for bringing the technology into our daily lives. It's safe to assume that this will continue, and big shots like Bill Gates have begun thinking about how to control the technology's rollout and to protect workers who may see their jobs automated. For Gates and politicians who agree, this means a robot tax, but there are other ideas out there, like the government forcing companies that use robots to pay into a public trust.

The exact methods of control are undecided, but the Royal Society survey, conducted by market research firm Ipsos, makes it clear that people want the government to implement some sort of controls.

Read More: How to Keep Our Robots, Lose Our Jobs, And Prosper

Of the nearly 1,000 UK adults who responded to the survey, 37 percent said the private sector should develop AI with its own money, but with government-imposed regulations and rules in place. Another 34 percent said the government should fund the research as well, which would usually imply some government-set research priorities. Just 12 percent of respondents said the private sector should be allowed to develop AI without rules.

We're already seeing how AI is getting away from us. For example, algorithms used to decide who is allowed bail during court proceedings may have unexamined racial biases (leading some experts to call for the open-sourcing of the code), and study after study has shown that similar biases can show up in our machines in unexpected ways, and with potentially disastrous consequences for people.

Government control over AI will probably rub some hardcore free market-types the wrong way, but it's more or less how society has functioned for a long time. Laws are (ideally) codified manifestations of what we have collectively decided is acceptable and what is not, and science is beholden to these rules. In 2004, human cloning was made illegal in Canada. The US has a law that limits how genetic data can be used. When cars were invented, we made laws about how they should be manufactured and operated.

There's probably not a single technology that exists today and doesn't have some sort of law governing its design or use. And, save for the nightmare hell-world of copyright law, that's largely a good thing.

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Najin, born in 1989, is Sudan's daughter, and Fatu is his daughter with Najin, making her both Sudan's daughter and granddaughter. This shallow gene pool, combined with the females' infertility with older age and 44-year-old Sudan's low sperm count, has prompted conservationists to cast a wider dating net so he can save his critically endangered subspecies from total erasure.

Over the past 40 years, northern white rhinos have been poached to extinction in the wild. Their horns are considered extremely valuable in Asian medicinal markets, and the demand has reduced the known world population to Sudan and his daughters. Captured at three years old, Sudan is the last northern white rhino born in the wild.

Sudan at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in 2010. Image: Michael Dalton-Smith/Digital Crossing Productions

Fortunately, however, southern white rhinos—the most abundant rhino subspecies on Earth—can interbreed with their northern brethren (northern and southern white rhinos are the two subspecies of the white rhino species, in case you want to get phylogenetic about it). There are around 20,000 southern white rhinos left in the wild, and around 17,000 females that could potentially carry Sudan's species-saving calf.

As amazing as it would be to have Sudan swipe through all these eligible bachelorettes, Tinder and the Ol Pejeta Conservancy have another goal in mind for "The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World," as the campaign calls Sudan.

The rhino's profile is designed to raise awareness and generate donations that can support research into assisted reproductive technologies, like in-vitro fertilization (IVF), that could leverage Sudan's ailing sperm into a bunch of adorable infant rhinos, with mothers that may never even meet their baby daddy. The goal is to raise nine million dollars for this cause.

Read More: China's 'Tinder for Dancing Grannies' Is Sparking a Dance Revolution

Scientists have never artificially inseminated rhinos before. "This represents the last option to save the species after all previous breeding attempts proved futile," said Richard Vigne, CEO of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, in a statement. "Ultimately, the aim will be to reintroduce a viable population of northern white rhino back into the wild which is where their true value will be realized."

Sudan's Tinder profile, linked to a donation prompt, is available in 190 countries and over 40 languages as of April 25. "I don't mean to be too forward," his bio reads, "but the fate of my species literally depends on me."

It's a solid pickup line, and when followed up by "I like to eat grass and chill in the mud" and "5,000 lbs if it matters," Sudan seems downright charming. It was definitely a smart move not to lead with the whole "I had a daughter with my daughter" angle.

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Motherboard recently reported hackers had targeted two companies that sell spyware to the everyday consumer—Retina-X and FlexiSpy. Hackers made off with a mix of over 130,000 customer records, as well as company documents and even text messages and photos captured by Retina-X's malware.

A week later, and affected customers say neither company has informed them about the data breaches, with one company allegedly telling staff to lie to victims who inquired about the hack.

Ten FlexiSpy and Retina-X customers told Motherboard via email that they had not received any notifications about the hacks.

"Your email is the first I've heard of this," one Retina-X customer said.

"No, PhoneSheriff [one of Retina-X's products] has not told me anything about it," said another.

One person was even a customer of both Retina-X and FlexiSpy.

"I haven't received any notification or communication from either company about their data breaches or the fact that my details were compromised," the customer said.

Both companies sell malware marketed to monitor children or employees, and in FlexiSpy's case, to spy on spouses. However, consumer malware has repeatedly appeared in cases of domestic violence.

The type of data obtained by hackers. Image: Motherboard

At least in Retina-X's case, the lack of customer outreach doesn't appear to be down to incompetence. An alleged email obtained by Motherboard seems to show a Retina-X employee telling staff not to inform customers about the hack, even when specifically asked for details.

"If any visitor asks if we have been hacked, then let them know this: Our server was not wiped because of a hack. We had a corrupted OS due to a hard disk failure. The drive had to be reformatted and reloaded for the server. Everything is running fine," the employee, called Arun, writes. Motherboard verified that the mail server mentioned in the email's headers was accurate.

A Retina-X customer support representative gave that exact same response during a live chat, according to someone who posed as a customer and asked about the hack. 

"Please make sure you all are aware of the appropriate response. The response is only for those who specifically mention a 'hack' or 'data breach'. A simple mention of downtime or inability to login should NOT receive this response. Please make sure that the response is not sent to someone who did not specifically mention the word 'hack' or 'data breach'," the email continues. When a hacker wiped Retina-X's servers in around February, Retina-X posted a warning to customers, claiming that the company had suffered a hardware failure.

Neither Retina-X or FlexiSpy responded to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Max Hoppenstedt and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting.

This story has been updated to add that a Retina-X customer support representative reportedly gave someone the same response that the company asked its employees to give in case people asked about the hack.

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On their spring break, students from Fountain Valley High School in Orange County delivered two climate change textbooks to Rohrabacher's district office in Huntington Beach last week: Charles Fletcher's Climate Change: What the Science Tells Us and David Archer's Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast .

"We all walked up to his office, knocked on the door, called the intercom, and left a message to explain we're high school students from his district," Vian Nguyen, 17, who helped organize the effort, told me. "We said we'd like to share our concerns with him about climate change. The camera saw us, but nobody came out."

Nguyen said she and her classmate, Serena Chow, are members of their high school's ecology club and got about 10 other students to help deliver the books through a series of group chats. The club reached out to 314 Action—a new nonprofit that's hoping to get scientists to run for elected office—and local scientists at nearby University of California, Irvine, to help them with the protest.

Nguyen said she's hopeful that constituent pressure will force Rohrabacher to reconsider his climate change stance, but said she'll be ready to vote him out of office with her first ever vote in 2018 if he doesn't.

"We believe in climate change, and as constituents, we want to be represented effectively and fairly," she said. "I will be able to vote in the next election. Based on that day, I wouldn't give him my vote."

Seven of the students called the office and several spoke with staff there, but Rohrabacher's staff kept the door closed and wouldn't allow them to deliver a petition with 12,000 signatures asking Rohrabacher to reconsider his stance on climate change. Eventually, the staff allowed Miles Anderson, one undergraduate student from Orange Coast College, to enter the office alone. Rep. Rohrabacher's office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Image: Kevork Abazajian

Kevork Abazajian, an associate professor of physics and astronomy and the California coordinator for 314 Action, says that the publishers donated the textbooks. Though the action was something of a stunt, he says it's important to engage with lawmakers as often as possible about their stances on climate change.

"It's kind of a win-win for those who want climate action to be taken," Abazajian said. "Either he gets intransigent and is like 'screw you guys,' which hopefully gets him out of office in 2018, or he says, 'Look, my constituents are upset about this and we should talk to them.'"

Image: Kevork Abazajian

The students say they looked at their first piece of activism as a potential way to make positive change.

"We weren't there for any mean intentions, we just wanted to inform him about the issues, and we wanted him to hear our voices," Julia Lam, 16, told me.

Ted Bordelon, a spokesperson for 314 Action, said the failure of many representatives to take scientific consensus seriously is exactly why it's targeting Rohrabacher in the 2018 elections, as well as other Republican climate change deniers in the science committee such as Texas Rep. Lamar Smith.

"If Dana Rohrabacher put as much effort into understanding climate science as he did into avoiding talking to his constituents," he said, "he would know that climate change wasn't caused by dinosaur farts."

"Here in the state of Colorado as our tree rings demonstrate, we've had droughts long before there were very many people here."

Man-made climate change is an issue that, if acknowledged, would "divide America," Rep. Scott Tipton said.
[ThinkProgress]

Call him: (202) 225-4761 | Email him

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO-04)

"Sen. Inhofe was the first person to stand up and say this global warming is the greatest hoax that has been perpetrated. The evidence just keeps supporting his view, and more and more people's view, of what's going on."
[ThinkProgress]

Call him: (202) 225-4676 | Email him

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO-05)

"The federal government should not cripple our economy and burgeoning domestic energy industry with more onerous fees and regulations designed to curb the possibility of climate change hundreds of years in the future."
[Colorado Public Radio]

Call him: (202) 225-4422 | Email him

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO-06)

"Climate change is naturally occurring. What influence do we have over that, we certainly need to look into, but that's subject to debate."
[The Atlantic]

Call him: (202) 225-7882 | Email him

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO)

"Well, I've said all along climate is changing… This is an important issue and I don't think you can say yes or no. I believe climate is changing, but I disagree to the extent that's been in the news that man is changing…"
[MSNBC]

Call him: (202) 224-5941 | Email him