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The Internet

Can Web-Based Protests Be a Force for Change? 76

Posted by Soulskill from the we-come-a-long-way-since-"sign-my-petition" dept.
Lucas123 writes: "Several high profile protests have circulated across the Web in the past few weeks, garnering social and news media attention — and even forcing the resignation of one high-level executive. There are two components driving the trend in Internet protests: They tend to be effective against Web services, and online networks allow people to mobilize quickly. According to a study released last month by Georgetown University's Center for Social Impact Communication, active Web useres are likely to do far more for a cause than simply 'like' it on a website. And, because a few clicks can cancel a service, their actions carry weight. But there may be a coming backlash as people can grow tired of online activism; and corporations may also take a more proactive stance in response to them."

Comment Re:Knowledge (Score 1) 1037

by Garridan (#46677205) Attached to: How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion
Real actual skeptic here (I think). Is the internet reducing religious affiliation because people are being exposed to different opinions? Or is the internet addictive, and does it subsume all of its occupants' time? Atheists are so eager to claim success that they don't even remember to check for confirmation bias and apply occam's razor.

Religious affiliation is correlated with increased mental health and a strong local community. The outspoken minority of religious fucks make the rest look bad to the undiscriminating outsider (oblig).

From where I stand, it looks like people are getting more extreme than their churches. They want to subjugate and punish and judge, and go against all the good parts of their religions. So they are leaving the churches in droves, and taking their hatred and ignorance to the internet. This may be a result of sampling bias (see oblig link above), and begs for good science to be done.

Comment Re:This is what Thatcher was good at (Score 0, Troll) 712

Maybe that's because Stalin was a totalitarian, which totally jives with the conservative mindset. Want to know who else conservatives didn't celebrate the demise of? Hitler. Is that because conservatives are evil? No. It's because they're too blind with greed to recognize any evil other than "taxes" (which they desperately depend upon to keep their businesses solvent).

Comment Re:god damnit (Score 1) 46

by Garridan (#46450819) Attached to: Court Denies NSA Request To Hold Phone Records Beyond 5 Years

I wonder... could we force them to keep metametadata? Y'know, summaries of what fields were copied out of what databases of what companies on what days? That way, we could still have a snowball's chance at proving that individual customers had their privacy impinged. Of course, this is all rhetoric: no, we can't force them to keep anything, and no, we wouldn't have a snowball's chance at proving shit against the fed. Fun idea, though, having a government that behaves responsibly.
Earth

Meat Makes Our Planet Thirsty 545

Posted by samzenpus from the water-dissolving-and-water-removing dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Mames McWilliams writes in the NYT that with California experiencing one of its worst droughts on record, attention has naturally focused on the water required to grow popular foods such as walnuts, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, almonds and grapes. 'Who knew, for example, that it took 5.4 gallons to produce a head of broccoli, or 3.3 gallons to grow a single tomato? This information about the water footprint of food products — that is, the amount of water required to produce them — is important to understand, especially for a state that dedicates about 80 percent of its water to agriculture.' But for those truly interested in lowering their water footprint, those numbers pale next to the water required to fatten livestock. Beef turns out to have an overall water footprint of roughly four million gallons per ton produced (PDF). By contrast, the water footprint for "sugar crops" like sugar beets is about 52,000 gallons per ton; for vegetables it's 85,000 gallons per ton; and for starchy roots it's about 102,200 gallons per ton.

There's also one single plant that's leading California's water consumption and it's one that's not generally cultivated for humans: alfalfa. Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one primary destination: cattle. 'If Californians were eating all the beef they produced, one might write off alfalfa's water footprint as the cost of nurturing local food systems. But that's not what's happening. Californians are sending their alfalfa, and thus their water, to Asia.' Alfalfa growers are now exporting some 100 billion gallons of water a year from this drought-ridden region to the other side of the world in the form of alfalfa.

Beef eaters are already paying more. Water-starved ranches are devoid of natural grasses that cattle need to fatten up so ranchers have been buying supplemental feed at escalating prices or thinning their herds to stretch their feed dollars. But McWilliams says that in the case of agriculture and drought, there's a clear and accessible actions most citizens can take: Changing one's diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual's food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent. 'It's seductive to think that we can continue along our carnivorous route, even in this era of climate instability. The environmental impact of cattle in California, however, reminds us how mistaken this idea is coming to seem.'"
Government

Snowden Says No One Listened To 10 Attempts To Raise Concerns At NSA 273

Posted by timothy from the in-violation-of-the-go-along-to-get-along-directive dept.
As reported by the Washington Post, Edward Snowden denies in no uncertain terms the idea that he failed to go through proper channels to expose what he thought were troubling privacy violations being committed by the NSA, and that he observed as a contractor employed by the agency. The article begins: "[Snowden] said he repeatedly tried to go through official channels to raise concerns about government snooping programs but that his warnings fell on the deaf ears. In testimony to the European Parliament released Friday morning, Snowden wrote that he reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing." Further, "Elsewhere in his testimony, Snowden described the reaction he received when relating his concerns to co-workers and superiors. The responses, he said, fell into two camps. 'The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to "rock the boat," for fear of the sort of retaliation that befell former NSA whistleblowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake.' All three of those men, he notes, were subject to intense scrutiny and the threat of criminal prosecution."
Privacy

White House "Privacy Tour" a Flop On Its First Leg At MIT 83

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the thanks-to-officials-flipping-out dept.
v3rgEz writes "After the Snowden revelations, President Obama promised greater transparency on how the federal government collects and uses data on its citizens, including a three-leg 'privacy tour' to discuss the balance between security and privacy. Well, the first leg of the tour is up and — surprise, surprise — it's not much of a conversation, with official dodging questions or, in one case, simply walking out of the conference." There's a video of the workshop at MIT, and the article says not all of it was spent watching politicians be politicians: "The review, led by White House counselor John Podesta ... is not confined to intelligence gathering but is meant also to examine how private entities collect and use mass quantities of personal information, such as health records and Internet browsing habits. On the latter subject, the conversation was robust. Experts from places like MIT, Harvard, Nielsen, and Koa Labs traded pros and cons, and proposed high-tech compromises that could allow people to contribute personal information to big data pools anonymously. "

An Anonymous reader also wrote in that "Outgoing National Security Agency boss General Keith Alexander says reporters lack the ability to properly analyze the NSA's broad surveillance powers and that forthcoming responses to the spying revelations may include 'media leaks legislation.' 'I think we are going to make headway over the next few weeks on media leaks. I am an optimist. I think if we make the right steps on the media leaks legislation, then cyber legislation will be a lot easier,' Alexander said."

Comment Re:What's the point of this? (Score 4, Insightful) 117

by Garridan (#46365109) Attached to: Agbogbloshie: The World's Largest e-Waste Dump
Right... so... you want to be sheltered from the worst news from the unprivileged, because you feel powerless to stop it? Tell that to the people in that situation, with significantly less power to stop it! Yes! Let's not talk about the bad things in the world unless the newspiece has a button that you can personally click to solve that problem. That's exactly how problem-solving works. Who knows why the press never thought of that!

Comment Re:Southland here we come (Score 3, Interesting) 20

by Garridan (#46325311) Attached to: Seafloor Carpet Mimics Muddy Seabed To Harness Wave Power
No, the downside is that the muddy seafloor is chock full of life. The energy absorbed by that seafloor churns the mud, continually stirring around nutrients, plankton, eggs and sperm, algae, etc. A huge amount of sealife spawns in this mud -- stop churning it, and you kill everything there. And as these things usually go... killing a huge number of species tends to open a door to noxious, invasive, damaging monocultures.

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