63898877
submission
walterbyrd writes:
The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter.
The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.
The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”
The university has received $919,917 so far for the project.
63827847
submission
walterbyrd writes:
Microsoft Corp. is currently sitting on almost $29.6 billion it would owe in U.S. taxes if it repatriated the $92.9 billion of earnings it is keeping offshore, according to disclosures in the company’s most recent annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The amount of money that Microsoft is keeping offshore represents a significant spike from prior years, and the levies the company would owe amount to almost the entire two-year operating budget of the company’s home state of Washington.
63780673
submission
walterbyrd writes:
Fresh on the heels of the entire Munich and Linux debacle, another story involving Microsoft and free software has popped up across the world, in Chile. A prolific magazine from the South American country says that the powerful Microsoft lobby managed to turn around a law that would allow the authorities to use free software.
63723091
submission
walterbyrd writes:
A new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll.
"After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm," the authors write. "Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation.
63679593
submission
walterbyrd writes:
A research team led by University of Chicago scientists have discovered a new methodology to document quantum mechanical behavior of electrons contained in the flaws of diamonds. The scientists blasted a region of a diamond that contained a nitrogen atom with repeated, quick pulses of a laser beam, which enabled the team to control the quantum state of the area as well as observe the electron state of a single electron.
63395121
submission
walterbyrd writes:
The entire song is made of corporate jargon and buzzwords. The video is one of those fast-draw whiteboard scribes.
It's getting to the point where Weird Al Yankovic accelerates his brand trajectory using management philosophy (that last part ripped from a youtube poster).
63066507
submission
walterbyrd writes:
As longtime researchers of the STEM workforce and immigration who have separately done in-depth analyses on these issues, and having no self-interest in the outcomes of the legislative debate, we feel compelled to report that none of us has been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry's assertions of labor shortages.
62962459
submission
walterbyrd writes:
Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said this week that the gay community wants to repeal age of consent laws "so that adults would be able to freely prey on little children sexually," reports Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch.
62808541
submission
walterbyrd writes:
There's some pointed language in the announcement, which includes a canned quote from Mike Bracken, executive director of the Government Digital Service to the effect that “Using an open standard will mean people won’t have costs imposed on them just to view or work with information from government.”
62550099
submission
walterbyrd writes:
We believe it borders on insanity to train intelligent and motivated people in our universities — often subsidizing their education — and then to deport them when they graduate. Many of these people, of course, want to return to their home country — and that’s fine. But for those who wish to stay and work in computer science or technology, fields badly in need of their services, let’s roll out the welcome mat.
62365211
submission
walterbyrd writes:
And unlike a lot of comics deaths, it looks like this one is going to stick, because the comic in which it's happening will be ending its run next month, publishing just one additional issue after Archie dies. (August's final issue will pick up one year after his death to examine how his friends and loved ones have moved on in the wake of his death.)
And he won't just die. He'll die because he took a bullet to protect his good friend, gay senator Kevin Keller, as part of a storyline that examines issues of gun control.
62148241
submission
walterbyrd writes:
According to a report first published in German on Tagesschau on July 3 and followed up by an English language report on DasErste, Linux users are an area of specific interest for surveillance. The report details rules in the XKeyscore source code that identify visitors to the Linux Journal Website, the Tor Onion Router site as well as the Tails Linux distribution site. NSA's interest in Tor has been previously documented in an October 2013 report.
61812909
submission
walterbyrd writes:
Food production is responsible for as much as 25 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions that are heating up the planet. And meat tends to have a bigger footprint than fruits and vegetables do — partly because meat takes more overall energy to produce, but also because cows tend to burp up a lot of methane.
61561495
submission
walterbyrd writes:
SocialChorus, an "advocate marketing" firm working on behalf of Microsoft, has been offering to pay bloggers for promoting Internet Explorer. The campaign was exposed after popular blogger and Twitter designer Paul Stamatiou, who also contributes to TechCrunch as a guest writer, was approached by the company to write a paid piece.
61461835
submission
walterbyrd writes:
“Fast lane is how the internet is built today,” says Craig Labovitz, who, as the CEO of DeepField Networks, an outfit whose sole mission is to track how companies build internet infrastructure, probably knows more about the design of the modern internet than anyone else. And many other internet experts agree with him. “The net neutrality debate has got many facets to it, and most of the points of the debate are artificial, distracting, and based on an incorrect mental model on how the internet works,” says Dave Taht, a developer of open-source networking software.
