Technology in the News

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California governor signs bill legalizing bitcoin

RT

June 29, 2014

California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill making alternative currencies, including bitcoin, lawful in the state.

The bill repeals the provision of the old legislation, which banned the use of "anything but the lawful money of the United States." Authors of the amendment labeled the old regulatory regime as "stagnant" and lagging behind Californian "growing and innovative payments market." "This bill makes clarifying changes to current law to ensure that various forms of alternative currency, such as digital currency, points, coupons, or other objects of monetary value do not violate the law when those methods are used for the purchase of goods and services or the transmission of payments," the comments to the bill read.

Germany Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns

countercurrentnews.com

June 29, 2014

Today Germany broke the news to the world that they will cancel a national contract with Verizon Communications.

This comes as part of the continued fallout from revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, who leaked the truth that American intelligence agencies have been routine accessing global data provided by telecom companies. One of the most upset amongst nations has been Germany, where the personal cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel was reportedly tapped by United States intelligence agencies.

Washington Correspondent Mason Insists Journalists Would 'Gallop After' IRS If Any 'Proof of a Scandal'

newsbusters.org

by Brent Baker

June 29, 2014

If only there were an Obama scandal for journalists to cover.

Almost exactly two years after the Washington Post's Dana Milbank ludicrously claimed "the media would love to have an Obama scandal to cover," on Sunday's MediaBuzz on FNC, veteran DC journalist Julie Mason encapsulated the attitude of the Washington press corps which has little interest in the IRS scandal, insisting that "every journalist in town would love if there was proof of a scandal, they would be galloping after it."

Facebook unethical experiment: It made news feeds happier or sadder to manipulate people's emotions.

slate.com

by Katy Waldman

June 28, 2014

It intentionally manipulated users' emotions without their knowledge.

Facebook has been experimenting on us. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to study "emotional contagion through social networks." The researchers, who are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California-San Francisco, tested whether reducing the number of positive messages people saw made those people less likely to post positive content themselves. The same went for negative messages: Would scrubbing posts with sad or angry words from someone's Facebook feed make that person write fewer gloomy updates?

Copyright Troll Malibu Media Allowed To Get Six Strikes Info From Comcast

techdirt.com

by Mike Masnick

June 27, 2014

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how Malibu Media was up to its old tricks again, demanding six strikes data from Comcast as part of its evidence gathering for its copyright trolling.

Apparently, no one fought the request, so a magistrate judge has granted Malibu Media's request and told Comcast to comply with the forthcoming subpoena. When the six strikes plan was first put into place, many people worried that the information from it would be used in lawsuits, but people hadn't realized that it might also get abused by copyright trolls. All the more reason to question whether or not such a program is a good idea. When you have a system that allows "strikes" to be issued with no due process at all, which can then be used by a company currently responsible for 40% of all copyright lawsuits -- nearly all of which they're really using to shake down settlement fees -- it should make you wonder if the six strikes program is really such a good idea.

The Gadget That Will Make You Feel Like Being A Jedi Is Just Months Away

businessinsider.com

June 24, 2014

The Myo armband can control electronics around you based on your gestures.

After years of tweaking, the technology that will make you think you're a Jedi - or maybe Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" - is gearing up for its launch later this year. Canadian company Thalmic Labs attracted millions of potential customers last February when it introduced a video for the Myo armband, which lets you control electronic devices with simple hand and arm gestures. The original video, which Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak called "very cool and impressive," is embedded below. Thalmic is venture backed and launched last February.

This is Why You Should Always Videotape the Police | The Free Thought Project

thefreethoughtproject.com

June 20, 2014

"I now have a policy to film every police officer that stops to avoid being brutally beaten and arrested for no reason."

If you choose to record the police you can reduce the risk of terrible legal consequences and video loss by understanding your state's laws and carefully adhering to the following rules. 7 rules for recording police...

Privileged Purveyors of State Violence Seek to Ban - Or Cage - Their Critics

lewrockwell.com

by William Norman Grigg

June 18, 2014

Not surprisingly, in this is the age of Homeland Security Theater, cops and their fellow travelers often seek to provoke comments that can be construed as "threats" or "incitement" - and then demand that Facebook shut the supposedly offensive page.

Although government-aligned media outlets generally are faithful stenographers for the coercive caste, the same is not true of social media. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have fatally undermined the official narrative that law enforcement is a noble calling by offering critics the means to document and publicize the criminal violence and pervasive corruption that characterize the profession. Thus it's not surprising that police are seeking to ban Facebook pages that document police misconduct and demand accountability. "There are anti-anti-police pages starting whose main purpose isn't to engage the anti-police pages intellectually, but just to report and get them banned," warns LRC reader Buddhadev Chakraborty. "Examples of these pages are Stop the Cop Haters, and Night of Blue Lights."

Can Ignorance Protect Your Privacy?

reason.com

by Jacob Sullum

June 18, 2014

A ruling against warrantless tracking assumes that people don't know how cellphones work.

Do you know how your cellphone works? If not, it's probably best not to find out. You can lose your constitutional rights that way. That is the implication of a recent federal appeals court decision that said the government needs a warrant to obtain cellphone location records. While the conclusion is welcome, it can be reconciled with Supreme Court precedents concerning voluntarily disclosed information only by assuming that people do not understand that their cellphones are also tracking devices.

No more Radiohead: YouTube to ban indie labels that don't sign on to subscription service

RT

June 17, 2014

Thousands of music videos are expected to soon disappear off of YouTube because the independent record labels behind those artists are not involved in new deals being cut by the Google-owned streaming site.

According to The Financial Times, YouTube will announce within a matter of days that videos on the site featuring recording artists from certain independent labels will be blocked, lest those labels sign licensing agreements that'll let those songs to be included on a new service coming soon from Google. When the forthcoming service, YouTube Music Pass, is finally launched later this summer, subscribers are expected to be able to not just stream videos from one of the world's most popular sites, but back up that content to enjoy later on even when an internet connection isn't available - a feature currently offered by competing, pay-to-list music services like Spotify and Rhapsody, but not YouTube. To get as much, however, customers will have to fork over a small fee, and so far independent labels have refused to agree to the licensing agreements involved.

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