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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 9 declined, 5 accepted (14 total, 35.71% accepted)

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Politics

Submission + - US Cybersecurity Bill Amendment Pushes Government Datacenter Consolidation

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: As the 2012 Cybersecurity bill begins to take shape, there's at least one bipartisan provision in the offing: Senate Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Tom Coburn have offered up an amendment that pushes federal agencies to consolidate duplicative datacenters.

There's already a Federal Datacenter Consolidation Initiative in the works — one that the Government Accountability Office estimates would save $2 billion by 2015 — but agencies have been slow to act. The Bennet-Coburn amendment would set a timeline and require agencies to report back on their progress. Seems like a no-brainer — and for once, both Democrats and Republicans (along with GAO, which has publicly called for legislation along these lines) agree on that.
Politics

Submission + - New Obama Administration Sanctions Target Syrian and Iranian Tech Capacity

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: This morning, President Obama is set to unveil a new executive order that will allow the U.S. to specifically target sanctions against individuals, companies or countries who use technology to enable human rights abuse. Especially as repressive regimes more effectively monitor their dissidents online (rather than simply blocking access), the sanctions focus on companies that help them do that.

President Obama is set to announce the sanctions in a speech at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. — which will be livestreamed starting at 9:45AM EDT.
The Internet

Submission + - US to Release International Cyber Strategy Today

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: Today, the Obama Administration will be releasing its first-ever strategy for "international cooperation in cyberspace". Following on Friday's release of the White House domestic cybersecurity proposal, this strategy document will govern how the U.S. behaves on the international stage — including around big issues like internet governance and internet freedom.

The strategy's unveiling, which will be keynoted by Hillary Clinton with remarks by Secretaries Holder, Locke and Napolitano, will be streamed live on whitehouse.gov starting at 3:00PM EDT today.

Submission + - Health of Every U.S. County Ranked

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: Out today from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin are the 2011 County Health Rankings. These rankings are the most detailed ever look at county-level health data, and some of the factors they measure — mortality, morbidity — are what you'd expect. But others are more surprising: motor vehicle crash deaths, excessive drinking, education, air pollution and access to healthy foods.

The data (including downloads of the underlying dataset) are available at countyhealthrankings.org.
Security

Submission + - Why North Korea Isn't Behind The Cyberattacks

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: Anonymous cyber policy blogger Cyberwonk makes a provocative claim about the July 4 cyberattacks on South Korea and the U.S.: that North Korea may not have launched them.

"The press loves a good villain, and so the story seems to make intuitive sense: the nuke-testing, IBCM-firing, SCUD-launching North Koreans launch a cyberattack in yet another moment of classic brinksmanship to protest the United Nations, US imperialism, ROK aggression, and prove their own might. The progression is obvious. Right? Not really."

Cyberwonk's six reasons why we may have it wrong start with two fundamental problems: cyber attacks, unlike missle launches, don't enhance Kim's standing inside a completely unwired country. And if he wanted to make waves outside his own borders, he would have claimed credit for the attacks — which he didn't.

Education

Submission + - Online Calculator: More education, lower mortality

Submitted by Healthily Anonymous
Healthily Anonymous writes: The Robert Wood Johnson foundation just released a study on education, income and health. And perhaps it isn't too great a surprise that the three are linked.

"Compared with children living with someone who has completed some college, children in households without a high-school graduate were more than four times as likely--and those in households with a high-school graduate twice as likely--to be in suboptimal health."

But one fascinating part of the study isn't in the report at all. It's an interactive "calculator" of sorts produced by the study's authors, which lets users select their area — down to the county level! — and see the average levels of education and mortality. They can then adjust education levels and watch as the number of expected deaths each year changes. If, for example, you increase the levels of education in the Bronx to match those in Manhattan, you could expect a 28% drop in yearly deaths — from 3142 to 2262 per year.

Education

Submission + - Study: More education, lower death rates?

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has released a study that looks at the links the education and income of a parent and the health of his or her child. The result, according to the LA Times, is this:

"When it comes to children's health, family income matters. So does education."

The study also includes an interactive calculator that lets users modify the levels of education in their area and see what happens to mortality rates. From the article:

"For California, for example, the chart says 61% of adults have some college education and that there are 309 deaths per 100,000 people. If that were to go up by 5 percentage points, there would be 294 deaths per 100,000 people. Factor in the size of California's population, and the difference is significant."
Democrats

Submission + - How Obama Could Win

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: From, of all places, the Yale Daily News, comes an idea that could change the way campaigns are run — and, for that matter, win an election. Two students spent time in New Hampshire going door-to-door for Obama, only to be disillusioned with a system that had drawn too many volunteers: as a result, it reminded, reminded again, and finally annoyed voters, all trying to secure their attendance on election day. They propose an alternative: harness the extraordinary volunteer energy the Obama campaign in particular has produced to do public service. It's an added benefit, they argue, that doing so could win him the presidency.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Stallman Attacked by Ninjas (yale.edu)

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: When RMS took the stage to address the Yale Political Union, Yale's venerable parliamentary debate society, it was already an unusual speech: instead of the jacket and tie customary there, he sported a T shirt, and no shoes. But then he was attacked by ninjas. Apparently some students took it into their head to duplicate an XKCD webcomic before a live audience — luckily, though, Stallman didn't resort to violence. Instead, he delivered an excellent speech about DRM.
The Internet

Submission + - Buckley on upstart student journalists

Submitted by sprint
sprint writes: William F. Buckley Jr, the famous (infamous?) conservative intellectual, like many, is no lover of traditional political journalism, or moneyed politics, and his latest column makes no bones about that. But he's found a cause to champion against the mainstream media: the revolutionary — to hear him tell it — folks at TheScoop08, who claim to want to change the way political journalism and politics happen in this country. Whether or not they'll manage that, they're getting a lot of attention from the devotees of the man many call the founder of neoconservatism.
Television

Submission + - Internet Conquering American Idol?

Submitted by vivIsel
vivIsel writes: All sorts of media outlets have been a-buzzing by the saga of Sanjaya Malakar, an American Idol contestant who might just be headed for victory — but the thing is, he can't really sing. Thanks to the efforts of a lot of Indian-American patriots, some teenyboppers, and perhaps most importantly, the blogosphere and related entities, Fox's television behemoth (American Idol is the most-watched show in America) might be headed for an embarrassing moment. At least, that's what Dave Della Terza, the founder of votefortheworst.com is hoping for. The Times is covering the story, as is the Washington Post. The Boston Globe has its own cynical take on the affair.

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