Google fined another $1.7 billion

Google’s European fines are now up to $9.5 billion in the last three years.

European Union regulators have hit Google with a $1.68 billion (1.49 billion euro/£1.28billion) fine for or blocking rival online search advertisers. It is the third multi-billion dollar EU antitrust penalty for Google’s parenting company Alphabet in just two years. The European Commission, which said the fine accounted for 1.29 percent of Google’s turnover in 2018, said in a statement that the anti-competitive practices had lasted a decade.

The EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, announced the results of the long-running probe at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

‘Today’s decision is about how Google abused its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than the AdSense platform,’ Vestager said.

The commission found that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, breached EU antitrust rules by imposing restrictive clauses in contracts with websites that used AdSense, preventing Google rivals from placing their ads on these sites.

Today’s EU case concerned AdSense for Search, which placed a Google search bar on the website in question, then used any searches made through it to tailor the content of adverts that users were shown.

For example, if a user searched for ‘shoes’, they would be shown articles about shoes as well as adverts for shoes. But Google also made publishers sign contracts which initially forbid them from using a rival search engine on the same site, and later forced them to make Google’s search the most prominent used on the site. Google also required publishers to reserve the most profitable advertising spaces for adverts they supplied, and forced them to seek written approval any time they wanted to change the way rival adverts were displayed

The EU found these restrictions stifled innovation and denied rivals the chance to compete.

Google ‘prevented its rivals from having a chance to innovate and to compete in the market on their merits,’ Vestager said.  ‘Advertisers and website owners, they had less choice and likely faced higher prices that would be passed on to consumers.’

Last year Vestager hit the company with a record $5bn (£3.8bn / €4.3bn) fine following an investigation into its Android operating system. In 2017, she slapped Google with a $2.84bn (£2.1bn / €2.42bn) fine in a case involving its online shopping search results.

I strongly suspect this is why YouTube appears to be much less inclined to interfere with European-based AdSense accounts than US-based ones. Given that the EU has been willing to fine Alphabet a cumulative $10 billion for interfering with rival corporations, imagine how high the fines for consumer actions could be.

The tech giants are under the mistaken impression that the contracts they impose on everyone that declare they can do anything they want at any time to anyone are going to hold up in court. As Indiegogo is already learning, that is absolutely not true; to the contrary, the mere fact that they blithely impose these “agreements” on everyone without any input from the other parties is actually one of the more powerful legal weapons against them.

What their lawyers don’t seem to have grasped is that the legacy terminology that was perfectly sufficient when a free service was provided does not supersede centuries of contract law precedent once money starts changing hands.

Migration is genetic genocide

Martin van Creveld has taught you this. I’ve repeated the warning over and over again. Now genetic science is making it indubitably clear that mass migration is not only war and replacement, but genetic genocide.

Since the beginning of human migration, the Iberian Peninsula—home of modern-day Spain and Portugal—has been a place where the cultures of Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean have mingled.

In a new paper in the journal Science, a group of 111 population geneticists and archaeologists charted 8,000 years of genetics in the region. They paint a picture that shows plenty of genetic complexity, but that also hints at a single mysterious migration about 4,500 years ago that completely shook up ancient Iberians’ DNA.

The team searched DNA evidence for clues to how and when various populations became part of the Iberian Peninsula’s gene pool. They sequenced the genomes of 271 ancient Iberians, then combined that information with previously published data about 132 other ancient peninsula dwellers.

Beginning in the Bronze Age, the genetic makeup of the area changed dramatically. Starting in about 2,500 B.C., genes associated with people from the steppes near the Black and Caspian seas, in what is now Russia, can be detected in the Iberin gene pool. And from about 2,500 B.C. much of the population’s DNA was replaced with that of steppe people…. Though 60 percent of the region’s total DNA remained the same, the Y chromosomes of the inhabitants were almost entirely replaced by 2,000 B.C. That suggests a massive influx of men from the steppes, since Y chromosomes are carried only by men.

“It looks like the influence was very male dominated,” says Miguel Vilar, a genetic anthropologist who serves as senior program officer for the National Geographic Society.

Who were these men—and did they come in peace?

They obviously didn’t come in peace. They invaded the land, slaughtered the men, and raped the women. That’s what mass migration inevitably entails, and why it the large-scale movement of peoples is actually considerably WORSE than simple international war between nation-states.

Just ask the American Indian.

Mailvox: free trade and satanic sovereignty

They have no response to the free mobility of trade argument and they know it. It’s very amusing to see how they are thrashing about and repeating their rhetorical dogma as if it is even relevant. A reader emails concerning a pair of Gene Epstein’s appearances on Tom Woods’s show:

Vox Day if you think that people should not buy foreign goods, foreign made goods, then exercise your individual sovereignty and stop buying foreign made goods. There is no argument there. The only argument is, do you have a right to not tell me to buy foreign goods. Of course you do not. But you certainly have the right to tell others, join me, in not buying foreign made goods.That’s your choice. So in a way, there should be no argument, between the likes of us and Vox Day, so long as he recognizes that he has no right to pass a law forcing us to not buy foreign made goods. So that approach, the understanding of individual sovereignty, I think is at the core of any vision that you want to live.”
– October 31, 2018

To which I respond: the concept of individual sovereignty is quite literally satanic. And a nation absolutely has the right to pass a law forcing its nationals to not buy foreign-made goods or utilize foreign-provided services, because if it does not do so, it will cease to be a nation. And every nation has the right to a) exist, and, b) defend itself.

When you had me on to address the protectionism of VOX DAY awhile back, I made the same point. My point, in this case again, is that Dan(McCarthy) is free to start a company called Buy American. A website that would sell consumer goods that are domestically produced and that back ventures that only employ American workers. He might get Ross Perot himself, who is still alive, to back it, along with the Sharks( TV Show Shark Tank). I would not participate, mainly because I regard myself as a Citizen of the World and from that position, I observe that the poor people of the world do not reside in the U.S. but in countries like China and I regard it as an inspiring win-win, that stores like Walmart can lift the living standards of Americans by selling them cheap goods, made by cheap labor abroad , while also lifting that cheap labor out of grinding $2 a day poverty.

So as a libertarian, I would have no right to object to Dan’s privately backed, buy American, American nationalism, conservatism venture. But what Dan is actually proposing, again, as VOX DAY was, as so many of the protectionists do, always, is to use the iron fist of government to force me to buy American against my will. As a flexible libertarian, I will tell Dan that he bares a very heavy burden of proof, if he wants to deny my rights in this way.

So our disagreement is hardly a level playing field, but even if there were a level playing field between us, Dan’s arguments are not convincing. So again, having established that Tom, and again, it’s the sort of thing I want us all to say to socialists and protectionists, the free market offers you the opportunity to practice your values. Get enough people to agree with you and you’ll become a powerful force in the free market. We might disagree but we have no right to object to what you are doing, so long as you do not impose the iron fist of government on us. Now, of course, now we can get to the consequentialist side of the argument….

Notice that Gene Epstein is not an American. He has no interest in the American nation. He is, to the contrary, “a Citizen of the World”. So, he has absolutely no rights that Americans need to respect. Protectionism is not merely beneficial economically, it is not merely necessary for a nation to thrive, it is a necessary policy for any nation that wishes to survive.

DNA supports a Jack the Ripper theory

DNA isn’t just useful for exploding fairy tales about evolution by natural selection, but can help unravel historical mysteries too:

Research by Jari Louhelainen, senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University, and David Miller, reader in molecular andrology at the University of Leeds, claims to shed new light on the notorious serial killer. In an abstract of their research published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Louhelainen and Miller explained they used what is, to their knowledge, the only remaining physical evidence linked to the murders, recovered from one of the Ripper’s famous victims at the scene of her death.

Jack the Ripper is thought to have claimed the lives of at least five women in the Whitechapel area of London between August and November 1888. However, the identity of the notorious murderer remains shrouded in mystery.

Science Magazine reports that the scientists analyzed a blood-stained shawl from Catherine Eddowes, the fourth of the so-called “canonical five” Jack the Ripper victims. Eddowes was killed on Sept. 30, 1888, and her badly mutilated body was found on Whitechapel’s Mitre Square.

The scientists’ genetic testing linked Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber living in London, to the crimes, according to Science Magazine. Although identified as a Jack the Ripper suspect, police are said to have lacked sufficient evidence to charge Kosminski for the murders.

I thought that name sounded familiar. He’s been one of the leading candidates from the start. And, of course, Kominski wasn’t Polish at all, but (((Polish))).

Aaron Kosminski was a Polish born Jew who emigrated with his family to England in 1881. Born in 1865 in the Polish town of Klodawa, which was then part of the Russian Empire, Kosminski’s family fled to England to escape persecution by the Russian government.

Kosminski lived with his 2 brothers and 1 sister in the heart of Whitechapel, and was said to have worked as a hairdresser. His home, which was listed as being on Greenfield Street, was in the direct vicinity of where Elizabeth Stride was murdered in the early morning hours of September 30, 1888.

I’m not even a little bit surprised Kominski would turn out to be the culprit, in light of the police notes that the one of the only eyewitnesses refused to testify on the grounds of the man he had seen was a fellow Jew.

Swanson goes on to note in the memoirs that the witness would not testify because he was also Jewish and did not want to carry the guilt of presenting evidence responsible for the execution of a fellow Jew.

One can’t help but notice that the New York Post article goes out of its way to omit all reference to the killer’s nationality, despite the fact that it is highly pertinent to the case.

Amazon bans black history books

At least Amazon waited until Black History Month was over before banning four books by black authors about black history:

The banning of four Nation of Islam Black history books by Amazon, the largest bookseller in the world, provides a perfect opportunity to examine the wickedly racist ways Jewish power is wielded in America. Amazon provided no warning, no reason, no hearing, and no opportunity to respond—it was a blatant mockery of Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos’s own creed, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It is, however, perfect proof of what The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: the mental resurrection of Black people will anger our oppressors and cause them to react punitively and viciously.

This is just another exhibit in the growing divide between the Democratic establishment and the grass roots of the party. This is why some Republicans are foolishly calling for what they describe as a Jexodus, which is insanely stupid if one considers what happened when the neocons were welcomed into the conservative movement.

Premium content test

I’ve uploaded a 90-minute extended audio sample of Cuckservative to UNAUTHORIZED in the book section. Subscribers should be able to access and download it. The sample contains what I consider to be the three most important chapters, on the myth of the melting pot, the history of the US conservative movement, and Churchianity.

I’m thinking of adding two new Premium sections for subscribers. One is video book reviews in which I’ll review a book I’ve read; I find it easier to talk about books in that context than write about them. The other is history readings that I consider to be particularly important. I highlight stuff all the time while I’m reading that never makes it to this blog, and that might be a good way of actually getting the information out to interested parties. The reason this strikes me as important is that the only video I’ve had banned from YouTube, and my only strike – now expired – was nothing more than a reading from The Byzantine Empire by Charles Oman.

Year Zero is an ever-present goal of the godless, which is why they hate history. I think it therefore behooves us to preserve it. Anyhow, if you’re Unauthorized, let me know if the Paid Only access works for you and what you think of the two proposed new sections.

Attack in Utrecht

It appears those dreaded white supremacist eco-fascists have struck again, this time in Utrecht, Holland:

A gunman has opened fire inside a tram and at several other locations in the Dutch city of Utrecht, authorities say.

Several people have been injured and one is feared to have died, media reports say.

Police say the gunman is still at large. Trains and trams have stopped running and schools have been asked to keep their doors closed.

Counter-terror police reportedly say the shooting “appears to be a terrorist attack”.

In response, the Netherland Antilles have announced new gun control legislation….

UPDATE: Dutch police are reporting that the white supremacist eco-fascist responsible for the shootings is a Turk.

Evolution is out of time

I discussed this a bit on last night’s Darkstream, but because my grasp of the technicalities of how genetics work is close to nonexistent, I didn’t even try to delve into the details. It’s much better to simply read the linked articles; I leave it to those more versed in the subject to determine how valid the reports of the massive gap between the oft-reported 98 percent estimated similarity between the chimp and human genomes and what genetic scientists are actually seeing now as their ability to analyze the various genomes improves.

The first exhibit is an interview with a creationist geneticist, which will no doubt be improperly dismissed by scientistry fetishists with an appeal to the genetic fallacy.

Dr. Tomkins: My motivation started when I arrived here and was given the task of researching the human-chimpanzee similarity issue because people ask about this in churches. They hear the claim that humans and chimps are 98 to 99{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} similar. People want to know if that’s true. Before working here, I’d not investigated that issue. I ran a genome center for over five years and investigated various plants and animals but never the human-chimpanzee comparison. I went into it with an open mind and began reading all the literature on the subject—this started about eight years ago. I looked at the top six scientific publications that proposed a 98 to 99{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} DNA similarity between modern humans and modern chimpanzees.

Brian: A 98 to 99{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} genetic similarity between modern humans and modern chimps—why is that important?

Dr. Tomkins: It’s very important to theoretical evolutionists. The 98 to 99{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} claim is a theory—it’s speculative. They need a similarity that close to have humans and chimps evolve in the alleged three- to six-million-year timespan from a supposed human-chimpanzee common ancestor. Their statistical models need that 98 to 99{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} similarity.

Brian: What did you find in the literature?

Dr. Tomkins: The first thing I noticed when I began reading these articles was that researchers were throwing out a lot of data. They were cherry-picking the areas of DNA between humans and chimps that were highly similar and throwing out areas, including areas that would not line up properly. Areas that don’t line up are dissimilar. When I researched the data, I was coming up with DNA similarities between 81 to 86{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} when I included the dissimilar data. I published a paper on this.1 This is way outside the realm of theoretical evolution.

Brian: What should the evolutionary community say about this?

Dr. Tomkins: They have reacted to a lot of my research since that first paper. There’s a lot of DNA sequence data that is publicly available in databases. I began working with the data myself, and over a number of years I refined my techniques. I used an algorithm developed by evolutionists that turned out to be a bad algorithm—so there’s been a lot of trial and error. But I finally got to the point where I published a paper in 2016.2 It was the most comprehensive study I’ve done yet, and I looked at all 101 data sets that went into originally building the chimpanzee genome.

I sampled 25,000 sequences at random from each of the data sets and then began analyzing and comparing them to human. Over half of the data sets were extremely similar to human, and the other half were extremely dissimilar to human. It appeared the initial chimpanzee genome was contaminated with human DNA, which is a huge problem in genomics.

There’s a number of studies by secular researchers showing that many public DNA databases, from bacteria to fish, have significant levels of human contamination. Human DNA literally gets into the samples. Contamination is a major issue. Human DNA comes from researchers’ fingers, coughing, sneezing, etc., and it gets into the samples. Now researchers are taking greater steps to alleviate that problem. This was especially prevalent back in the earliest phases of genome projects, when the chimpanzee was sequenced.

Brian: Wouldn’t some of the human DNA that made it into the raw data affect the results of any comparison analyses?

Dr. Tomkins: It has a huge effect because the chimpanzee genome is stitched together using the human genome as a scaffold. It’s like a puzzle—researchers used the human DNA “picture on the box” to assemble the chimp genome. The chimp DNA sequences used were all about 750 bases long. Not only was the chimp genome built using the human genome as a guide, it also has human DNA contamination in it, so it showed a lot of similarity from the contamination.

Brian: Even with those factors in place that skewed the data to a more human genome, is it closer to the 98{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} or the 86{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} maximum you observed?

Dr. Tomkins: It’s difficult to determine because it is a flawed product. I based my research on human-chimp similarity on the half of the data sets that appear to have much less human DNA. Based on my work, I’m seeing not more than an 85{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} DNA similarity of chimpanzee to human, and that’s a maximum. It’s probably less than that.

The second exhibit is even more interesting, because an evolutionary biologist who is the Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at the University of London has been seeing much the same thing in his review of the various chimp-human genomic studies:

When assessing the total similarity of the human genome to the chimp genome, we also need to bear in mind that roughly 5{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} of the human genome has not been fully assembled yet, so the best we can do for that 5{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} is predict how similar it will be to the chimpanzee genome. We do not yet know for sure. The chimpanzee genome assembly is less well assembled, so in future we may assemble parts of the chimpanzee genome that are similar to the human genome – this is another source of uncertainty to keep in mind.

To come up with the most accurate current assessment that I could of the similarity of the human and chimpanzee genome, I downloaded from the UCSC genomics website the latest alignments (made using the LASTZ software) between the human and chimpanzee genome assemblies, hg38 and pantro6. See discussion post #35 for details. This gave the following for the human genome:

4.06{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} had no alignment to the chimp assembly
5.18{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} was in CNVs relative to chimp
1.12{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} differed due to SNPs in the one-to-one best aligned regions
0.28{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} differed due to indels within the one-to-one best aligned regions

The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b}

In order to assess how improvements in genome assemblies can change these figures, I did the same analyses on the alignment of the older PanTro4 assembly against Hg38 (see discussion post #40). The Pantro4 assembly was based on a much smaller amount of sequencing than the Pantro6 assembly (see discussion post #39). In this Pantro4 alignment:

6.29{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} had no alignment to the chimp assembly
5.01{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} was in CNVs relative to chimp
1.11{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} differed due to SNPs in the one-to-one best aligned regions
0.28{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} differed due to indels within the one-to-one best aligned regions

The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 82.34{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b}.

Thus the large improvement in the chimpanzee genome assembly between PanTro4 and PanTro6 has led to an increase in CNVs detected, and a decrease in the non-aligning regions. It has only increased the one-to-one exact matches from 82.34{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} to 84.38{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} even though the chimpanzee genome assembly is at least 8{e5873ef35c49232e29b64cdfe957a2c94da2fd9855660473ec610b770b20216b} more complete (I think) in PanTro6.

I have already shown that it is highly improbable that the speed of mutational fixation is sufficient to account for the estimated 98 percent similar relationship which needs to account for 30 million fixed mutations since the Last Chimp-Human Common Ancestor, so this massive increase in the observed difference between the two genomes, which is presently calculated to end up somewhere between 84.38 to 93.43 percent, is enough to not only drive the final nail in the Neo-Darwinian coffin, but wrap it in iron bands, encase it in concrete, and drop it into the Marianas Trench.

Because what we’re seeing here is inept statistical wizardry that involves everything from contaminated evidence to cherry-picked data and the ridiculous assumption that literally ALL of the remaining unknown areas will, in the future, be found to perfectly align with orthodox Neo-Darwinian theory. And the priests of TENS are still desperately clinging to that improbable assumption even though it was only proved to be correct for 25.5 percent of the area that was filled in over the course of the seven years that passed between the publications of PanTro4 and PanTro6.

Of course, no one here will be even remotely surprised to observe that Prof. Buggs’s original 2008 prediction was too low because, in the 2005 paper upon which he relied, the biologists got the math wrong.

Wait, what?

Did John Kasich really echo Q’s version of the death of John McCain? On CNN, of all places?

I’d always assumed that rumors of secret military tribunals executing traitorous politicians were absurd on their face, especially considering that the God-Emperor still hasn’t locked her up, but on the other hand, look at the absolute lack of expression on the reporter’s face. It’s like he’s totally focused on not drawing any attention to Kasich’s astonishing little slip there. That, to me, is an absolutely fascinating response.

Of course, CNN would be one of the safest places to make a mistake of this magnitude, considering how few people actually watch it these days.