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Democrats

After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email 372

Posted by timothy from the computer-crashed-whaddya-do dept.
As reported by the Associated Press, via US News & World Report, the IRS says that it cannot locate much of the email sent by a former IRS official over a two-year period. "The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups." Three congressional committees are investigating the agency because of the allegations of politically motivated mishandling of those applications, as is the Justice Department and the IRS's own inspector general. As the story says, "Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it." CBS News has a slightly different version, also based on the AP's reporting.

Comment I'd be more impressed if I heard of any of them (Score 4, Informative) 234

by Nova Express (#47159805) Attached to: Tech Worker Groups Boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower

"Bright Future Jobs, the Programmers Guild and WashTech."

Who, who, and who?

As of August 1999, the Programmers Guild had 400 members. Mighty important organization there, if you can't be bothered to offer membership numbers from this century. Which, to be fair, looks to be the last time their web page look was updated.

As far as I can tell, "Bright Future Jobs" is one person Donna Conroy.

WashTech is a union. No thanks.

I suspect that IBM, Infosys and Manpower won't even notice their "boycott."
Government

White House Pressures Legislators Into Gutting USA FREEDOM Act 284

Posted by Soulskill from the too-bad-everybody-moved-their-indignation-over-to-net-neutrality dept.
The U.S. House of Representatives has substantially reduced the effectiveness of the USA FREEDOM Act, a surveillance reform bill that sought to end mass collection of U.S. citizens' data. House Leadership was pressured by the Obama Administration to weaken many of the bill's provisions. The EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology had both given their backing to the bill earlier this month, but they've now withdrawn their support. CDT Senior Counsel Harley Geiger said, "The Leadership of the House is demonstrating that it wants to end the debate about surveillance, rather than end bulk collection. As amended, the bill may not prevent collection of data on a very large scale in a manner that infringes upon the privacy of Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism. This is quite disappointing given the consensus by the public, Congress, the President, and two independent review groups that ending bulk collection is necessary."

Robyn Greene of the Open Technology Institute added, "We are especially disappointed by the weakening of the language intended to prohibit bulk collection of innocent Americans’ records. Although we are still hopeful that the bill’s language will end the bulk collection of telephone records and prevent indiscriminate collection of other types of records, it may still allow data collection on a dangerously massive scale. Put another way, it may ban ‘bulk’ collection of all records of a particular kind, but still allow for ‘bulky’ collection impacting the privacy of millions of people. Before this bill becomes law, Congress must make clear—either through amendments to the bill, through statements in the legislative record, or both—that mass collection of innocent people’s records isn’t allowed."

Comment Translation (Score 1) 255

by Nova Express (#47050033) Attached to: The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence

"People didn't like my original piece and had points of view that disagreed with my own. Therefore they're wrong. Now I'll just double-down by calling my critics idiots whose ideas are based of science fiction stereotypes. Then I'll just wait for my critics to admit they were wrong and finally get around to praising my obvious genius."
Bug

The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say 373

Posted by timothy from the ok-and-you-can't-say-that-number-either dept.
bizwriter (1064470) writes "General Motors put together its take on a George Carlin list of words you can't say. Engineering employees were shown 69 words and phrases that were not to be used in emails, presentations, or memos. They include: defect, defective, safety, safety related, dangerous, bad, and critical. You know, words that the average person, in the context of the millions of cars that GM has recalled, might understand as indicative of underlying problems at the company. Oh, terribly sorry, 'problem' was on the list as well."
Earth

Studies: Wildfires Worse Due To Global Warming 379

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to scientists we can look forward to more devastating wildfires like the ones scorching Southern California because of global warming. "The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future.""

Comment Turnstile Jumping and Broken Windows Policing (Score 2) 389

New York City's crackdown on turnstile jumping was part of the Giuliani Administrations implementation of broken window policing. But reducing low level disorder and misdemeanor crime, broken windows policing makes the law abiding residents of neighborhoods feel safer.

"A government’s inability to control even a minor crime like graffiti signaled to citizens that it certainly couldn’t handle more serious ones."

Stopping and arresting turnstile jumpers in particular frequently turned up wanted felons, parole violators, and gangbangers with illegal guns. Arresting them not only took criminal predators, off the streets, it encouraged other criminals to leave their guns at home for fear of having them confiscated. This further reduced their abilities to commit criminal acts in places like subways, and reduced criminal gun incidents when members of rival gangs would bump into each other.

Comment Because fabs can run $10 billion each (Score 1) 345

by Nova Express (#47025539) Attached to: AMD Preparing To Give Intel a Run For Its Money

Actually running your own fab can give you tremendous economies of scale if you know you'll be running you part (or its die shrink successors) 24/7/365. The per chip costs are going to be lower.

But to build a state-of-the-art, 300mm, 14-nm fab with all the latest process technology can run you $10 billion. AMD doesn't have enough mnoney to make those bets anymore, and few companies do.

Going with a foundry means you earn less profit per chip sold, but it also let's you avoid that $10 billion up-front investment.

Comment First Swatting Victims Were Conservative Bloggers (Score -1, Troll) 350

Among the first instances of swatting I was aware of were conservative bloggers like Aaron Walker, Erick Erickson and Patrick Frey, all of whom were working to expose convicted felon and "Speedway Bomber" Brett Kimberlin.

There may have been earlier instances, but those are the first I'm aware of.
Democrats

Silicon Valley's Love-Hate Relationship With President Obama 131

Posted by Soulskill from the getting-along-because-the-alternative-is-worse dept.
theodp writes: "Covering President Obama's visit to Silicon Valley, the AP reports that the relationship between the White House, Silicon Valley and its money is complicated. Less than a year after David Kirkpatrick asked, "Did Obama Just Destroy the U.S. Internet Industry?", and just two months after Mark Zuckerberg gave the President a call complaining about NSA spying, Silicon Valley execs hosted two high-stakes Democratic Party fundraisers for the President. The White House declined to identify the 20 high-rollers who paid $32,400 per head to sit at the Tech Roundtable. The President also attended an event hosted by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, where the 250 or so guests paid $1,000 to $32,400 a head for bar service that featured wine, beer and cognac. The following day, Obama celebrated solar power at a Mountain View Walmart before jetting out of NASA's Moffett Field."
Government

DOJ Requests More Power To Hack Remote Computers 76

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs greater authority to hack remote computers in the course of an investigation. The agency reasons that criminal operations involving computers are become more complicated, and argues that its own capabilities need to scale up to match them. An ACLU attorney said, 'By expanding federal law enforcement's power to secretly exploit "zero-day"' vulnerabilities in software and Internet platforms, the proposal threatens to weaken Internet security for all of us.' This is particularly relevant in the wake of Heartbleed — it's been unclear whether the U.S. government knew about it before everyone else did. This request suggests that the DOJ, at least, did not abuse it — but it sure looks like they would've wanted to. You can read their request starting on page 499 of this committee meeting schedule."

Comment As Successful as the Kellogg-Briand Pact (Score 1) 138

by Nova Express (#46954697) Attached to: The Struggle To Ban Killer Robots

You know, the pact to outlaw war. Signed in 1928.

Didn't work out so well.

And even if it were signed by a significant number of nations, we could be sure the non-democratic ones would be violating the ban before the ink was even dry.

Unenforceable treaties are actually worse than worthless: they constrain good actors without deterring bad ones.

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