When Carla Gibson first landed a server job at Molly’s Landing, she thought it would just be a way to earn a little extra money.

“I already had two other jobs, at a Red Lobster and at a bar,” Gibson recalled. “I was kind of a workaholic back then. But Molly’s Landing was someplace special, and I realized that from the start.

“For one thing, it was a high-end kind of place — I got my first ever $100 tip working at Molly’s,” she said. “Working there was really a nice experience.”

Molly’s Landing, which has been an iconic restaurant along the Oklahoma stretch of Route 66 since it opened almost 40 years ago, was severely damaged Nov. 24 in a fire that officials said claimed the life of an individual. The victim’s name has not yet been released.

Gibson, who owns and operates Gibby C’s South in Your Mouth restaurant in Claremore, announced on her Facebook page that she is willing to hire some of the 22 employees of Molly’s Landing for her own recently opened restaurant.

“I’ve already had four young men who came by yesterday, and I got them jobs,” Gibson said. “We’re already fully staffed, but my crew has been taxed with overtime as we’re still trying to work all the kinks out of our systems, so more help is always welcomed.

“Right now, we’re open Wednesday through Sunday, but once we get the new people trained, we may open an extra day to keep everyone working,” she said.

A crowdfunding campaign has raised about $15,000 so far to benefit the 22 employees of Molly’s Landing, according to the organizers.

Molly’s Landing opened in January 1985, but opening a restaurant was not what brought owner Linda Powell to Oklahoma from Phoenix, Arizona, a year previously. It was a boat.

A 1991 story in the Tulsa Tribune recounted that Powell’s brother told her about a boat he thought she might want to buy.

The vessel, a 119-foot-by-38-foot pushboat called the Molly Smith, had guided barges up and down the Mississippi River for almost 30 years. It was retired in the late 1970s and had been donated to a church in Houston, which was looking to unload the craft after a recent hurricane made owning a boat problematic.

The Tribune story detailed how Powell sold her Arizona property, agreed on a deal for nine acres that would become the site of Molly’s Landing, and closed the deal for the Molly Smith, which — in something of an ironic twist — was transported to the Kerr-McClellan Navigational Channel in Catoosa as part of a barge tow.

“Where other people see 200 tons of floating rust,” the 1991 Tribune story stated, “Linda Powell sees a luxurious restaurant. She hopes to make her vision — a pushboat turned floating restaurant on the United States’ most inland port — a reality within the next two years.”

That dream never materialized, but Molly’s Landing, which started out as a club before being converted into a full-service, high-end restaurant, soon became one of the region’s most popular dining establishments. Powell was later joined by sons Doug Powell and Russ White to help run the restaurants.

While the food was of high quality — premium steaks along with fish and seafood dishes, rarely seen items such as grilled quail — the look of Molly’s Landing projected a sort of rural bohemian ambiance.

A 1991 review in the Tulsa Tribune described the restaurant’s unique decor as “an instant party” located within “a barn-size log cabin with a porch overlooking the Verdigris River. Decorations from floor to ceiling beams make the place seem ready for a weird garage sale: sacks of peanuts, bad paintings, an endocrine gland chart, signs, flags, deer antlers, a sombrero, deer antlers, a duck decoy, an aquarium, milk can, grindstone, a calf’s foot and strings of tiny, festive lights. The menus are painted on canoe paddles.”

The canoe paddle menus later gave way to more conventional formats, but Molly’s reputation as a serious steakhouse remained. In 2006, the restaurant was recognized by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry as a Made in Oklahoma Restaurant of the Year, in recognition of its use of locally produced products, including cheeses, wines, seasonings and the mushrooms used in one of its most popular appetizers.

The restaurant has also been praised for its willingness to contribute to local charitable causes. From 2002 to 2016, the restaurant was the host to the Ultimate Murder Mystery, a bimonthly dinner theater company.

In a 2006 Tulsa World feature on the restaurant, Russ White said one reason for the restaurant’s success was its employees and his family’s commitment to treating those employees well.

“We latched on employees who have been with us for years,” White said. “It really is a big family around here, and that makes it easier when it’s bad or when it’s slow.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/8552498

After six years of reviewing a variety of Wyze security cameras at Wirecutter, we’ve made the decision to suspend our recommendation of them from all our guides.

On September 8, 2023, The Verge reported an incident in which some Wyze customers were able to access live video from other users’ cameras through the Wyze web portal. We reached out to Wyze for details, and a representative characterized the incident as small in scope, saying they “believe no more than 10 users were affected.” Other than a post to its user-to-user online forum, Wyze Communities, and communication to those it says were affected, the company has not reached out to Wyze customers, nor has it provided meaningful details about the incident.

We believe Wyze is acting irresponsibly to its customers. As such, we've made the difficult but unavoidable decision to revoke our recommendation of all Wyze cameras until the company implements meaningful changes to its security and privacy procedures.

The concern is not that Wyze had a security incident—just about every company or organization in the world will probably have to deal with some sort of security trip-up, as we have seen with big banks, the US military, Las Vegas casinos, schools, and even Chick-fil-a. The greater issue is how this company responds to a crisis. With this incident, and others in the past, it’s clear Wyze has failed to develop the sorts of robust procedures that adequately protect its customers the way they deserve.

We spoke about this incident to peers, colleagues, and experts in the field, such as Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University; Jen Caltrider, program director at Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included; and Wirecutter senior staff writer Max Eddy. All of them agree the central issue is that Wyze has not proactively reached out to all its customers, nor has it been adequately accountable for its failures. “When these sort of things happen, [the company has to be] very open and transparent with [the] community as to why they screwed up,” Lightman explained. “Then the company has to say, ‘Here’s exactly what we’re going to be doing to rectify any potential situation in the future.’”

If this were the first such incident, we might be less concerned. However, it comes on the heels of a March 2022 Bitdefender study (PDF), which showed that Wyze took nearly three years to fully address specific security vulnerabilities that affected all three models of Wyze Cams. The company did eventually alert customers of the issue, and it notably guided them to stop using the first-generation Wyze Cam because “continued use of the WyzeCam after February 1, 2022 carries increased risk, is discouraged by Wyze, and is entirely at your own risk”—but that was long after the serious vulnerability was first discovered and reported to Wyze, on multiple occasions, without getting a response.

The fundamental relationship between smart-home companies and their customers is founded on trust. No company can guarantee safety and security 100% of the time, but customers need to be confident that those who make and sell these products, especially security devices, are worthy of their trust. Wyze’s inability to meet these basic standards puts its customers and its devices at risk, and also casts doubt on the smart-home industry as a whole.

In order for us to consider recommending Wyze’s cameras again, the company needs to devise and implement more rigorous policies, as most of its competitors already have. They need to be proactive, accountable, and transparent. Here’s what we expect from Wyze in the event of a security incident:

• Reach out to customers as soon as possible: Send an email to all customers, send push notifications in the app, put out a press release, broadcast in the Wyze Communities online forum.
• Describe the issue in detail and state precisely who was affected (and who wasn’t).
• Explain specifically what steps are being taken to aid affected customers and what if any actions the customer needs to take on their own.
• Follow-up with customers to let them know the issue has been resolved.

For anyone who has Wyze cameras and intends to continue using them, we recommend restricting their use to noncritical spaces or activities, such as outdoor locations. If you are looking for an alternative, better camera options are available—even for smart-home users on a budget.

This isn’t the first time Wirecutter has pulled a smart-home device due to concerns over accountability. In 2019, in response to a data breach at Ring, we retracted our endorsement of all of the company’s cameras. We eventually returned to reviewing Ring gear, and in some cases recommended them to our readers, after the company made a series of significant improvements to its programs and policies.

We continue to recommend Wyze lighting, since we consider them lower-risk, lower-impact devices—a security breach of a light bulb, for instance, wouldn’t give someone a view of your living room. Should Wyze change course and adopt more substantial policies like those above, we will be happy to resume testing and considering them for recommendation.

After six years of reviewing a variety of Wyze security cameras at Wirecutter, we’ve made the decision to suspend our recommendation of them from all our guides.

On September 8, 2023, The Verge reported an incident in which some Wyze customers were able to access live video from other users’ cameras through the Wyze web portal. We reached out to Wyze for details, and a representative characterized the incident as small in scope, saying they “believe no more than 10 users were affected.” Other than a post to its user-to-user online forum, Wyze Communities, and communication to those it says were affected, the company has not reached out to Wyze customers, nor has it provided meaningful details about the incident.

We believe Wyze is acting irresponsibly to its customers. As such, we've made the difficult but unavoidable decision to revoke our recommendation of all Wyze cameras until the company implements meaningful changes to its security and privacy procedures.

The concern is not that Wyze had a security incident—just about every company or organization in the world will probably have to deal with some sort of security trip-up, as we have seen with big banks, the US military, Las Vegas casinos, schools, and even Chick-fil-a. The greater issue is how this company responds to a crisis. With this incident, and others in the past, it’s clear Wyze has failed to develop the sorts of robust procedures that adequately protect its customers the way they deserve.

We spoke about this incident to peers, colleagues, and experts in the field, such as Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University; Jen Caltrider, program director at Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included; and Wirecutter senior staff writer Max Eddy. All of them agree the central issue is that Wyze has not proactively reached out to all its customers, nor has it been adequately accountable for its failures. “When these sort of things happen, [the company has to be] very open and transparent with [the] community as to why they screwed up,” Lightman explained. “Then the company has to say, ‘Here’s exactly what we’re going to be doing to rectify any potential situation in the future.’”

If this were the first such incident, we might be less concerned. However, it comes on the heels of a March 2022 Bitdefender study (PDF), which showed that Wyze took nearly three years to fully address specific security vulnerabilities that affected all three models of Wyze Cams. The company did eventually alert customers of the issue, and it notably guided them to stop using the first-generation Wyze Cam because “continued use of the WyzeCam after February 1, 2022 carries increased risk, is discouraged by Wyze, and is entirely at your own risk”—but that was long after the serious vulnerability was first discovered and reported to Wyze, on multiple occasions, without getting a response.

The fundamental relationship between smart-home companies and their customers is founded on trust. No company can guarantee safety and security 100% of the time, but customers need to be confident that those who make and sell these products, especially security devices, are worthy of their trust. Wyze’s inability to meet these basic standards puts its customers and its devices at risk, and also casts doubt on the smart-home industry as a whole.

In order for us to consider recommending Wyze’s cameras again, the company needs to devise and implement more rigorous policies, as most of its competitors already have. They need to be proactive, accountable, and transparent. Here’s what we expect from Wyze in the event of a security incident:

• Reach out to customers as soon as possible: Send an email to all customers, send push notifications in the app, put out a press release, broadcast in the Wyze Communities online forum.
• Describe the issue in detail and state precisely who was affected (and who wasn’t).
• Explain specifically what steps are being taken to aid affected customers and what if any actions the customer needs to take on their own.
• Follow-up with customers to let them know the issue has been resolved.

For anyone who has Wyze cameras and intends to continue using them, we recommend restricting their use to noncritical spaces or activities, such as outdoor locations. If you are looking for an alternative, better camera options are available—even for smart-home users on a budget.

This isn’t the first time Wirecutter has pulled a smart-home device due to concerns over accountability. In 2019, in response to a data breach at Ring, we retracted our endorsement of all of the company’s cameras. We eventually returned to reviewing Ring gear, and in some cases recommended them to our readers, after the company made a series of significant improvements to its programs and policies.

We continue to recommend Wyze lighting, since we consider them lower-risk, lower-impact devices—a security breach of a light bulb, for instance, wouldn’t give someone a view of your living room. Should Wyze change course and adopt more substantial policies like those above, we will be happy to resume testing and considering them for recommendation.

Read this Register article today and was wondering if anyone here still use Usenet newsgroups? And if so, what are your top recommended newgroups to subscribe to?

TULSA, Okla. - Several hundred fish died last weekend in the pond at Hunter Park, with the City of Tulsa blaming hot weather and a possible algae bloom.

Those conditions can cause the oxygen in the water to drop, suffocating the fish.

City workers with nets cleaned up the pond Monday, after the fish kill was reported.

A few dead fish remained Tuesday, along the bank.

Parks staff didn't find any other aquatic animals injured or killed, but the City said teams will check the pond for the next few weeks.

The state regularly stocks the pond with sunfish, catfish and bass, as part of a “Fishing at Home” campaign.

Elliot Nelson has to pause for a moment to figure out just how many restaurants he has opened in the past 19 years.

“I think it’s around 15 or 16,” Nelson said, during a conversation in the dining area of Jimmy’s Chophouse, the newest addition to the McNellie’s Group of which Nelson is the founder and CEO.

Named in honor of his father, Jimmy’s Chophouse is something of an homage to flavors and experiences from Tulsa’s culinary past, drawn from Nelson’s memories of visiting steakhouses such as Eddy’s and Jamil’s, the Italian Inn and the Celebrity Club.

The new restaurant is already earning high praise from diners, as well as getting one of the highest ratings of any new restaurant this year from the Tulsa World. But Nelson and the McNellie’s Group are not resting on laurels.

Three new restaurants are in the works and are projected to be open by the summer of 2024.

First up will be City Hall Steak & Cocktail, which is planned for a spring 2024 opening. The restaurant will be at 123 E. Main St. in downtown Jenks, taking over a building that had once served as the town’s city hall.

When the project was announced, the new restaurant was described as having “a blend of modern design and vintage accents that celebrate the building’s unique history. The atmosphere will be ideal for intimate dinners, special occasions, business meetings, gatherings with friends or just a glass of wine at the bar.”

“That one is going to be closer to the traditional steakhouse than Jimmy’s,” Nelson said. “Steaks are certainly a main thing at Jimmy’s, but the menu here has a fairly broad variety of dishes,” Nelson said. “The focus at City Hall will be more on steak.”

City Hall Steak & Cocktail is part of a citizen-led effort to rebrand the city’s historic Main Street as The Ten District, a reference to that particular corner of Main Street being 10 miles from downtown Tulsa, Bixby, Sapulpa and Broken Arrow, and also 10 blocks west of the Arkansas River.

Another project in the works is Maple Ridge Grocery, which will offer breakfast, lunch and dinner in a space near the intersection of 18th Street and Cincinnati Avenue. Nelson said he hopes this restaurant will be open by March of 2024.

“The building used to be a print shop,” Nelson said. “It’s just a block or so away from (Council Oak Elementary) school, and I envision parents dropping off their kids, and then swinging by for a coffee or breakfast. It’s also going to be on my way home from the office, so I can imagine people leaving work and stopping by there.”

The third project is a proposed Italian restaurant that will be part of the Santa Fe Square development at the corner of Second Street and Elgin Avenue downtown, which will likely open in the summer of 2024. Nelson is one of the developers of this multi-use location.

Although a few of the concepts the McNellie’s Group has opened over the years have closed (the Mexican restaurant El Guapo, which had locations downtown and in south Tulsa, for example), the majority of the company’s restaurants are still open.

That includes Nelson’s first endeavor, McNellie’s Pub, which opened in 2004 and has since expanded to three locations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

The original location, at 409 E. First St., is now part of a bustling landscape of restaurants, clubs and other businesses. But that was not the case when Nelson first opened his version of an Irish pub.

“I remember there was a welding shop on one side and a machine shop on the other,” he said, laughing. “It was pretty rough going the first couple of years. I think the thing that really saved us was that we were one of the first places to capitalize on the craft beer trend. It was something that got people to come downtown to an area that, at that time, wasn’t all that inviting.”

One of the McNellie’s Group restaurants plays off the less-than-savory reputation of that neighborhood: Red Light Chicken, which opened last year in the spot that formerly held El Guapo, is named for the fact that one of the city’s most notorious brothels once occupied the building next door (a painting of Pauline Lambert, owner of the May Rooms, adorns one of the walls in the restaurant).

It has been a busy couple of years for the McNellie’s Group. Besides Jimmy’s Chophouse and Red Light Chicken, the company has opened a stand-alone location of its popular Mother Road Market restaurant, Howdy Burger, on 11th Street; Mr. Kim’s, a uniquely personal reinterpretation of the traditional Korean steakhouse; and Bar Serra, an upscale bar and cafe that is the first new restaurant concept to open in Utica Square in nearly a decade.

When asked if opening some 20 restaurants in 20 years, among other projects, is enough, Nelson gave a quiet laugh.

“Well, there are still voids in the Tulsa dining landscape that we can fill,” he said. “But at this, we have so many employees who have been with us for a long time, and who have real ownership in the company. All our restaurants are wholly owned subsidiaries, and this allows us to offer more chances for ownership for them.

“Our employees work so hard, and put so much into the successes we’ve had, and we want to provide as best we can the opportunity for them to retire comfortably,” Nelson said. “We’re just trying to be the best employer we can.”

Google is reportedly planning to introduce a new Android feature that will let users link their various Android devices together, similar to Continuity features across the Apple ecosystem. Android expert Mishaal Rahman posted about the potential feature, noting that it could allow Android devices that are signed into the same Google account to communicate with each other.

This could enable features like “Call Switching,” which allows users to jump between connected devices during calls, and “Internet Sharing,” which Android Authority speculates could be an easier way to quickly set up a personal hotspot across the linked devices. Apple has a similar call-switching feature called “iPhone Mobile Calls” that allows users to make and receive calls from Apple devices like Macs and iPads signed into the same Apple ID, providing they’re on the same network as the user’s iPhone.

Android Authority also notes, however, that Apple’s “iPhone Mobile Calls” feature doesn’t allow users to receive calls from another iPhone. The wording for Google’s “Call Switching” feature (as seen in the screenshot provided by Rahman) suggests that it could be used to switch between different Android devices, including phones. So you might be able to pick up a call on a phone and transfer it to another linked phone or something like the Pixel Tablet. We won’t know for sure until Google officially announces this, but if it’s genuine, then this could be useful for folks who need to carry more than one phone.

Rahman claims that the “Link Your Devices” menu will appear under Settings > Google > Devices & Sharing in the device settings once the feature is officially released. Google has yet to announce the Android device linking feature, let alone a release date. We have reached out for comment from Google and will update this story should we hear back.

Google is reportedly planning to introduce a new Android feature that will let users link their various Android devices together, similar to Continuity features across the Apple ecosystem. Android expert Mishaal Rahman posted about the potential feature, noting that it could allow Android devices that are signed into the same Google account to communicate with each other.

This could enable features like “Call Switching,” which allows users to jump between connected devices during calls, and “Internet Sharing,” which Android Authority speculates could be an easier way to quickly set up a personal hotspot across the linked devices. Apple has a similar call-switching feature called “iPhone Mobile Calls” that allows users to make and receive calls from Apple devices like Macs and iPads signed into the same Apple ID, providing they’re on the same network as the user’s iPhone.

Android Authority also notes, however, that Apple’s “iPhone Mobile Calls” feature doesn’t allow users to receive calls from another iPhone. The wording for Google’s “Call Switching” feature (as seen in the screenshot provided by Rahman) suggests that it could be used to switch between different Android devices, including phones. So you might be able to pick up a call on a phone and transfer it to another linked phone or something like the Pixel Tablet. We won’t know for sure until Google officially announces this, but if it’s genuine, then this could be useful for folks who need to carry more than one phone.

Rahman claims that the “Link Your Devices” menu will appear under Settings > Google > Devices & Sharing in the device settings once the feature is officially released. Google has yet to announce the Android device linking feature, let alone a release date. We have reached out for comment from Google and will update this story should we hear back.

Wanted to see how everyone in the community felt about the using the android navigation bar buttons vs using gesture control.

I've used the navigation buttons since they released on android and just recently started trying to use the gesture based navigation. It's been a little difficult for me to adapt to it so far, but curious what others experience has been.