Comments filed with the FCC by AT&T, Frontier, Windstream and Ustelcom (an industry group representing telcoms companies) have asked the FCC to change the rules for its next, $20.4 billion/10… Read the rest of the article: Big Telco wants more federal money to offer slower rural broadband
The largest political party in America is the None of the Above Party, which garners more support than either the Democrats or the Republicans: that means that motivating eligible voters… Read the rest of the article: Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate among young people, who could determine the outcome of the 2020 election
Jerry Holliman received Bronze Stars for his military service in Iraq and Vietnam, where he was dosed with Agent Orange. Now 69, Hollman has survived multiple cancers, but lost both… Read the rest of the article: Med-tech company repossess veteran's artificial legs because the VA won't cover them
Bruce Schneier's Foreign Policy essay in 5G security argues that we're unduly focused on the possibility of Chinese manufacturers inserting backdoors or killswitches in 5G equipment, and not focused enough… Read the rest of the article: Schneier: "It's really too late to secure 5G networks"
Gregory Priore — former archivist for Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library — has pleaded guilty of stealing $8m worth of rare texts from the collection over a 25 year period, fencing them… Read the rest of the article: Newton's Principia Mathematica, George Washington's journal: archivist stole $8m worth of rare books from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action,, where I I discuss how the US government's unwillingness to enforce its own… Read the rest of the article: Podcast: Inaction is a form of action
Aestetix writes, "HOPE 2020 [ed: Hackers on Planet Earth, the triennial, astoundingly great hacker con put on by 2600 Magazine] is in a brand new location and will be bigger… Read the rest of the article: Tickets for Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) 2020 are now on sale!
Property of the People (previously) used Freedom of Information Act requests to force the Department of Homeland Security to reveal that it tracks members of the Valve Turners — a… Read the rest of the article: The DHS classes nonviolent environmental activists in the same "domestic terrorist" category as Dylan Roof and James Fields
Prior to being acquired by Charter, the cable company Spectrum aggressively marketed home security systems to its customers, inducing them to spend hundreds of dollars on proprietary cameras and other… Read the rest of the article: Charter/Spectrum sold customers expensive home security systems, then killed the program and left them high and dry
The International Olympic Committee — long a swirling cesspool of corruption, censorship, and reputation-laundering for repressive regimes — has attained a new low, issuing guidance to athletes competing at the… Read the rest of the article: Olympics warns athletes that kneeling, fist-raising and other political actions will be banned at the Tokyo 2020 games
About five years ago, I was trying to get a bunch of Big Tech companies to take the right side of an urgent online civil rights fight, and I called… Read the rest of the article: Top tech grads are increasingly unwilling to work for Big Tech, viewing it as a new, unethical Wall Street
Yesterday's column by John Naughton in the Observer revisited Nathan Myhrvold's 1997 prediction that when Moore's Law runs out — that is, when processors stop doubling in speed every 18… Read the rest of the article: The bubbles in VR, cryptocurrency and machine learning are all part of the parallel computing bubble
Via Bruce Sterling, the Chinese characters for "specific ethnic genetic attacks," "combat brain," "winning without fighting" and more.
Agency is the sequel to William Gibson's tour-de-force 2014 novel "The Peripheral"; as previously discussed, Gibson had to scrap large sections of the novel and rewrite it after Donald Trump… Read the rest of the article: William Gibson talks about scrapping and rewriting a novel after the 2016 Trump election
Machine learning systems are notorious for cheating, and there's a whole menagerie of ways that these systems achieve their notional goals while subverting their own purpose, with names like "model… Read the rest of the article: Wireheading: when machine learning systems jolt their reward centers by cheating
Jim Spanfeller (previously) is the private equity monster whose mismanagement of various former Gizmodo sites (notably Gawker, Splinter and Deadspin) has generated endless bad press from his own employees, who… Read the rest of the article: Departing Kotaku writers post a farewell message to their private equity asshole boss: "Sup dude. Suck it."
Maryland's Larry Hogan — a Republican who governs a blue state — is the most popular governor in America, with a 73% approval among state Democrats. He is also a… Read the rest of the article: America's most popular governor: the lavishly corrupt Larry Hogan [R-MD]
Privacy activst Murray Hunter's picture book Boris the Babybot tells the story of Boris, a robot whose job it is track all the babies and send their likenesses and preferences… Read the rest of the article: Boris the Babybot: a picture book about resisting surveillance
When the IRS proposed providing free, pre-completed tax-returns to US taxpayers, the big tax-prep companies like Intuit/Turbotax and HR Block lobbied like crazy to kill the plan, and instead proposed… Read the rest of the article: Howto: file your taxes for free without getting defrauded into paying a big tax-prep firm
The Good Liars — the comedy duo of Davram Stiefler and Jason Selvig — redecorated a Brooklyn armed forces recruiting center with posters featuring Donald Trump Jr and the slogan,… Read the rest of the article: Pranksters produce enlistment ads featuring Trump Jr: "I'm not enlisting but YOU should"
