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Former Idaho Trooper Daniel Howard Charged With Murdering Kendy Howard

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Former Idaho Trooper Daniel Howard Charged With Murdering Kendy Howard

The last Facebook post that Kendy Howard ever made was one of those online quizzes that predict the future.

“Kendy, 2021 will bring you a single but happy life,” it read.

The 48-year-old Idaho mother of two commented with three letters: “Lol.”

Later on the night of Feb. 2, 2021, Howard was dead. Her husband, a disgraced former state trooper Daniel Howard, called police and told them the medical clerk shot herself.

Two long years later, Daniel Howard, 57, has been charged with murdering Kendy, and also with domestic assault. He surrendered to the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office on Friday night.

Kendy’s adult daughter, Brooke Wilkins, posted about her relief on Facebook.

“The last two years have felt like a lifetime,” shewrote. “Full of doubts and unanswered questions. The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind. This is only the beginning but my heart hurts a little less today.

“I am so thankful and appreciative to everyone who has worked towards this and has kept my moms memory alive. It means more than I can ever put into words.”

It was not clear if Daniel Howard has an attorney. His Facebook page still bears a profile photo of himself and Kendy.

News stories and public records show he has a long history of shady behavior.

He was suspended from the Idaho State Police in 2014 after being accused of stealing ammunition, using a fake name in a motorcycle title application, and possession of an untagged deer, according to The Coeur d’Alene Press.

In a separate case, according to the newspaper, he was charged with stalking, assault, and property damage for a campaign of intimidation he waged against a man he believed was having an affair with Kendy.

“Damaging Wood’s property with corn syrup, stealing his guns, stealing his mail, placing the anonymous letter in Wood’s mailbox, placing the graffiti on his lawn, following him in a patrol car, pointing a rifle at him and even shooting his roof with a shotgun were done in a way to cause the most emotional damage to Wood but limit any physical evidence the perpetrator was Daniel Howard,” a detective wrote in an affidavit.

The cases were wrapped up with a guilty plea to two of the charges, for which Howard got a suspended sentence of three years in prison, 120 days in jail and 600 hours of community service.

Kendy’s daughter said on Facebook that at the time of her death, her mother was planning to file for divorce—after years of domestic violence.

“The marriage was always bad. But it became terrible the last couple years,” Wilkins wrote. “She was coming to work with bruises. She would do anything not to be home when he was. He would threaten to kill himself if she wanted to leave.”

Her mother started gathering her financial paperwork, speaking to attorneys, and looking for houses in her hometown, she wrote.

“A week before her death law enforcement was called to escort her out of the house. She woke up with him standing above her wearing all black and gloves. While talking to him she was able to get her phone and make a call. She didn’t want to talk to law enforcement just wanted out,” Wilkins said.

She said the couple went their separate ways for the weekend, and friends begged Kendy not to return to the house. But she did not think he would do anything worse than hit her.

“He came home February 2nd and she didn’t make it to February 3rd,” her daughter wrote. “My mom who never touched guns was found naked in her bathtub-killed with a gun.”

Kendy’s lengthy obituary—which said she was “was well known for her bright smile and outgoing personality”—didn’t mention Daniel Howard.

It’s not known why it took two years for authorities to charge Howard. On the second anniversary of her death, her daughter said she was still waiting for justice.

“Most days I remember you and I’m sad. Today I remember you and I’m so angry. I’m angry that someone decided that your life was disposable. I’m angry that he has tried to erase you while pretending to grieve you,” Wilkins wrote.

“Today equals two years of waiting. Waiting for a criminal to be held accountable for all the hurt he caused you. Before this I couldn’t have imagined the pain and frustration people have to deal with when they are in these legal situations. ”

She added, “You deserved so much more out of life. Mommas shouldn’t be scared to go home. Your light lives on. But there is a big hole here without you… You didn’t get to live your life free without someone trying to kill your spirit. I love and miss you so much. It doesn’t get easier. I have just learned to live life differently.”

Kendy’s own Facebook page, which is still up, was full of photos of friends and family, recipes, music videos, and memes. One chillingly prescient post three days before her death was a repost of a quote: “If I’m ever murdered, feel comfort in the fact that I ran my mouth until the bitter end.”

She included a three-letter comment: “Lol.”

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What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem

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What went wrong with 'the Metaverse'? An insider's postmortem


It’s now two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta, ushering in a brief but blazing enthusiasm over “the Metaverse”, a concept from science fiction that suddenly seemed to be the next inevitable leap in technology. For most people in tech, however, the term has since lost its luster, seemingly supplanted by any product with “artificial intelligence” attached to its description. 

But the true story of the Metaverse’s rise and fall in public awareness is much more complicated and interesting than simply being the short life cycle of a buzzword — it also reflects a collective failure of both imagination and understanding.  

Consider:

The forgotten novel

Ironically, many tech reporters discounted or even ignored the profound influence of Snow Crash on actual working technologists. The founders of Roblox and Epic (creator of Fortnite) among many other developers were directly inspired by the novel. Despite that, Neal Stephenson’s classic cyberpunk tale has often been depicted as if it were an obscure dystopian tome which merely coined the term. As opposed to what it actually did: describe the concept with a biblical specificity that thousands of developers have referenced in their virtual world projects — many of which have already become extremely popular.

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Snow Crash.

You can see this lack of clarity in many of the mass tech headlines attempting to describe the Metaverse in the wake of Facebook’s name change: 

In a widely shared “obituary” to the Metaverse, Business Insider’s Ed Zitron even compounded the confusion still further by inexplicably misattributing the concept to TRON, the original Disney movie from the 80s.

Had the media referenced Snow Crash far more accurately when the buzz began, they’d come away with a much better understanding of why so many technologists are excited by the Metaverse concept — and realize its early incarnation is already gaining strong user traction.  

Because in the book, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that’s simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. In other words, it’s more or less like Roblox and Fortnite — platforms with many tens of millions of active users. 

But then again, the tech media can’t be fully blamed for following Mark Zuckerberg’s lead.

Rather than create a vision for its Metaverse iterating on already successful platforms — Roblox’s 2020 IPO filing even describes itself as the metaverse — Meta’s executive leadership cobbled together a mishmash of disparate products. Most of which, such as remotely working in VR headsets, remain far from proven. According to an internal Blind survey, a majority of Zuckerberg’s own employees say he has not adequately explained what he means by the Metaverse even to them.

Grievous of all, Zuckerberg and his CTO Andrew Bosworth promoted a conception of the Metaverse in which the Quest headset was central. To do so, they had to overlook compelling evidence — raised by senior Microsoft researcher danah boyd at the time of the company acquiring Oculus in 2014 — that females have a high propensity to get nauseous using VR.

Meta Quest 3 comes out on October 10 for $500.
Meta Quest 3.

Contacted in late 2022 while writing Making a Metaverse That Matters, danah told me no one at Oculus or Meta followed up with her about the research questions she raised. Over the years, I have asked several senior Meta staffers (past and present) about this and have yet to receive an adequate reply. Unsurprisingly, Meta’s Quest 2 VR headset has an estimated install base of only about 20 million units, significantly smaller than the customer count of leading video game consoles. A product that tends to make half the population puke is not exactly destined for the mass market — let alone a reliable base for building the Metaverse. 

Ironically, Neal Stephenson himself has frequently insisted that virtual reality is absolutely not a prerequisite for the Metaverse, since flat screens display immersive virtual worlds just fine. But here again, the tech media instead ratified Meta’s flawed VR-centric vision by constantly illustrating articles about the Metaverse with photos of people happily donning headsets to access it — inadvertently setting up a straw man destined to soon go ablaze.

Duct-taped to yet another buzzword

Further sealing the Metaverse hype wave’s fate, it crested around the same time that Web3 and crypto were still enjoying their own euphoria period. This inevitably spawned the “cryptoverse” with platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox. When the crypto crash came, it was easy to assume the Metaverse was also part of that fall.

But the cryptoverse platforms failed in the same way that other crypto schemes have gone awry: By offering a virtual world as a speculative opportunity, it primarily attracted crypto speculators, not virtual world enthusiasts. By October of 2022, Decentraland was only tracking 7,000 daily active users, game industry analyst Lars Doucet informed me

“Everybody who is still playing is basically just playing poker,” as Lars put it. “This seems to be a kind of recurring trend in dead-end crypto projects. Kind of an eerie rhyme with left-behind American cities where drugs come in and anyone who is left is strung out at a slot machine parlor or liquor store.”

All this occurred as the rise of generative AI birthed another, shinier buzzword — one that people not well-versed in immersive virtual worlds could better understand.

But as “the Metaverse” receded as a hype totem, a hilarious thing happened: Actual metaverse platforms continued growing. Roblox now counts over 300 million monthly active users, making its population nearly the size of the entire United States; Fortnite had its best usage day in 6 years. Meta continues plodding along but seems to finally be learning from its mistakes — for instance, launching a mobile version of its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds.  

Roblox leads the rise of user-generated content.
Roblox.

Into this mix, a new wave of metaverse platforms is preparing to launch, refreshingly led by seasoned, successful game developers: Raph Koster with Playable Worlds, Jenova Chen with his early, successful forays into metaverse experiences, and Everywhere, a metaverse platform lead developed by a veteran of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

At some point, everyone in tech who co-signed the “death” of the Metaverse may notice this sustained growth. By then however, the term may no longer require much usage, just as the term “information superhighway” fell away as broadband Internet went mainstream.  

Wagner James Au is author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For 

GamesBeat’s creed when covering the game industry is “where passion meets business.” What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you — not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings.

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Social media blocks are “a suppression of an essential avenue for transparency”

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In this photo illustration the word censored is seen displayed on a smartphone with the logos of social networks Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube in the background.

Once praised as the defining feature of the internet, the ability to connect with physically distant people is something that governments have recently been seemingly intent on restricting. Authorities have been increasingly pulling the plug, putting over 4 billion people in the shadows in the first half of 2023 alone

Social media platforms are often the first means of communication to be restricted. Surfshark, one of the most popular VPN services, counted at least 50 countries guilty of having curbed these websites and apps during periods of political turmoil such as protests, elections, or military activity.

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Former Myanmar colonel who once served as information minister gets 10-year prison term for sedition

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Former Myanmar colonel who once served as information minister gets 10-year prison term for sedition

BANGKOK (AP) — A former high-profile Myanmar army officer who had served as information minister and presidential spokesperson in a previous military-backed government has been convicted of sedition and incitement, a legal official said Thursday. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Ye Htut, a 64-year old retired lieutenant colonel, is the latest in a series of people arrested and jailed for writing Facebook posts that allegedly spreading false or inflammatory news. Once infrequently prosecuted, there has been a deluge of such legal actions since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

He was arrested in late October after a military officer from the Yangon Regional Military Command reportedly filed a change against him, around the time when some senior military officers were purged on other charges, including corruption. He was convicted on Wednesday, according to the official familiar with the legal proceedings who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities.

Ye Htut had been the spokesperson from 2013 to 2016 for President Thein Sein in a military-backed government and also information minister from 2014 to 2016.

After leaving the government in 2016, Ye Htut took on the role of a political commentator and wrote books and posted articles on Facebook. For a time, he was a visiting senior research fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a center for Southeast Asia studies in Singapore.

After the army’s 2021 takeover, he often posted short personal vignettes and travel essays on Facebook in which he made allusions that were generally recognized to be critical of Myanmar’s current military rulers.

The army’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the military and police responded to with lethal force, triggering armed resistance and violence that has escalated into a civil war.

The official familiar with the court proceedings against Ye Htut told The Associated Press that he was sentenced by a court in Yangon’s Insein prison to seven years for sedition and three years for incitement. Ye Htut was accused on the basis of his posts on his Facebook account, and did not hire a lawyer to represent him at his trial, the official said.

The sedition charge makes disrupting or hindering the work of defense services personnel or government employees punishable by up to seven years in prison. The incitement charge makes it a crime to publish or circulate comments that cause fear, spread false news, agitate directly or indirectly for criminal offences against a government employee — an offense punishable by up to three years in prison.

However, a statement from the Ministry of Legal Affairs said he had been charged under a different sedition statute. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

According to detailed lists compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog group based in Thailand, 4,204 civilians have died in Myanmar in the military government’s crackdown on opponents and at least 25,474 people have been arrested.



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