abitlikealice

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"But who will build the roads?"

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In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Re...

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Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen was the only person to have a private interview with Jack Ruby. She told friends about the JFK assassination, "If its the last thing I do I'm going to break this case." She never did. She was found dead in mysterious circumstances.

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A Connecticut man revealed shocking comments made by a Branford police officer this week who has openly defended door-to-door gun confiscation. After the tragic Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, Conn. lawmakers mandated that all “assault rifles” and “high capacity” magazines be banned, requiring all in circulation to be registered with the state. Fearing the obvious […]

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Google is preparing a fix for a battery depleting bug in the camera software on Android 4.4.2 devices, and in the mean time one way to stop the issue is to uninstall Skype.

Skype is randomly accessing smart phone cameras now?  Thanks, but no thanks...

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This transcript from Defense.gov of Donald Rumsfeld stating that a missile hit the Pentagon just got tremendous backing as the entire 9/11 hoax falls apart due in part to the newly released videos below which clearly shows that NO PLANE hit the...

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A city council meeting in Oakland, California started routinely around 5:30 on Tuesday evening with rubber stamped appointments, discussion of a community park report card, and a no-parking zone,...

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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox filed for Chapter 15 in the U.S. on Sunday, a chapter of the bankruptcy code that is designed to facilitate dealing with insolvency cases with parties in more than one country. Mt. Gox, which is based in Tokyo, filed for bankruptcy in Japan on Feb. 28. Meanwhile, the blog of Mt. Gox Chief Executive Mark Karpeles has been reportedly hacked, with the hackers posting an alleged balance sheet of the exchange's accounts.

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Unless Barack Obama is even a weaker president than he appears to be, the effusion of editorial emoting unleashed by the Ukraine crisis is unlikely to have any effect on U.S. policy. Pray, let that be the case. Should Obama’s advisers look for guidance to the opinion pages of the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, much less the Weekly...

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"We’ve spoken to insiders who have given their accounts of happenings inside MtGox. There’s too much to put into one post so this is part 1."

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America's prisons are dangerously overcrowded, and the war on drugs is mainly to blame. Over 50 percent of inmates currently in federal prison are there for drug offenses, according to an infographic recently released by the Federal Bureau of Pris...

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In his first extended comments to the public, Edward Snowden calls on the development community at South by Southwest to create more usable privacy and security tools. Read this article by Seth Rosenblatt on CNET News.

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Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Peter Lanza has avoided the press, but in September, as the first anniversary of his son’s rampage approached, he contacted me to say that he was ready to tell his story. Peter hadn’t seen his son for two years at the time of the Sandy Hook killings, but he constantly thinks about what he could have done differently and wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam. “How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he’s my son? A lot.”

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As in many other countries, online piracy is causing headaches for the Australian Government. A variety of anti-piracy strategies to deal with the problem have been suggested in recent years, but thus far without result.

Late last year Australia’s Minister for Communication invited several companies to share their thoughts on the reduction of regulation in the communication sector. The minister asked for input on a variety of issues including future legislation regarding copyright.

One of the companies that responded is Google, and TorrentFreak has obtained a previously unpublished copy of the company’s response.

In its letter Google warns the Government not to implement draconian ant-piracy legislation. The search giant notes that they believe piracy is mostly an availability and pricing problem, which is best tackled with innovation instead of legislation.

“We believe there is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem. We would encourage the Government to promote new business models and a free marketplace for legal purchasing of content,” Google writes.

“We would be disappointed if the Government decided to go down the route of overly harsh regulation to combat piracy without considering the evidence from around the world that this would likely be costly for businesses to implement and with little effect,” they add.

Besides the warning above, Google stresses that some of the current legislation is also problematic. For example, Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act is used to censor websites, which threatens the free availability of information.

“It appears that this law has been interpreted broadly by various Australian government agencies to include the take down of websites that are deemed illegal,” Google writes.

“Google believes that section 313 does not contain sufficient safeguards, and could potentially impact significantly on the availability of information and content on the internet through the over­broad blocking of websites.”

Google recommends that the Government should create more oversight by implementing measures to make these website takedowns more transparent.

In addition, Google is also worried about the lack of a safe harbor for Internet services, which can now be held liable for pirating users.

According to the company it is of “critical importance” that this gap is addressed, as the current uncertainty has a chilling effect on innovation among Internet services.

Google’s suggestions appear to stand in sharp contrast to the plans Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis unveiled a few weeks ago. In a speech to the Australian Digital Alliance forum, Brandis opted for a ”three strikes” graduated response  system for persistent pirates as well as wide scale blockades of infringing websites.

[abitlikealice]

"...The appendix contains some 35,000 fake twitter handles, belonging to the same botnet. And what they've tweeted."

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Secretary Jeh Johnson said the U.S. faces an increasing threat from homegrown, "lone-wolf" terrorists.

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A compelling argument that journalist Michael Hastings' car accident may not have been an accident after all.