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United States

Oregon Signs Up Just 44 People For Obamacare Despite Spending $300 Million 586

Posted by samzenpus from the try-again-later dept.
cold fjord writes "The Washington Examiner reports, 'Oregon ... signed up just 44 people for insurance through November, despite spending more than $300 million on its state-based exchange. The state's exchange had the fewest sign-ups in the nation, according to a new report today by the Department of Health and Human Services. The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters. One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states. But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants. Another defense of the Obama administration has attributed the troubled rollout of Obamacare to the obstruction of Republican governors who wanted to see the law fail as well as a lack of funding. But Oregon is a Democratic state that embraced Obamacare early and enthusiastically.'"
Privacy

Credit Card Numbers Still Google-able 157

Posted by Soulskill from the information-is-not-good-at-judging-when-it-should-want-to-be-free dept.
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "In 2007, I wrote that you could find troves of credit card numbers on Google, most of them still active, using the simple trick of Googling the first 8 digits of your credit card number. The trick itself had been publicized by other writers at least as far back as 2004, but in 2013, it appears to still be just as easy. One possible solution that I didn't consider last time, would be for Google itself to notify the webmasters and credit card companies of the leaked information, and then display a warning alongside the search results." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

Comment Re:No ideal solutions (Score 1) 314

by computational super (#35126734) Attached to: Internet Is Easy Prey For Governments

And with that, the debate shuts down... this is the problem with any decentralized networking solution. If it's possible to get rid of the (insert objectionable content here), it's possible to use the exact same mechanism to get rid of the (insert government-disapproved content here). This is why a decentralized internet will never happen.

Comment Re:Their choice (Score 1) 764

by computational super (#34713064) Attached to: Amazon Censorship Expands

Oh, for God's sake. Mention "censorship" and bring out the etymology nazis...

If what Amazon is doing - refusing to sell something because they object to it on a moral basis - what is it? What word defines that act? "Amazon Private-company-selling-whatever-legal-products-they-wish Expands" isn't a very snappy title, after all. Neither is "Amazon Doing-something-that-is-unworthy-of-discussion-because-amazon-is-not-the-government-and-their-actions-are-not-covered-by-the-first-amendment Expands". "Censorship" is the best word we've got to describe that act, so until we can agree on a better word, we'll continue using it. Now can you please stop jamming up the entire fscking comments section with 500 repeats of "They're a private company!" every time we talk try to bring corporate censorship to the attention of people who do care?
Earth

Living Earth Simulator Aims To Simulate Everything 241

Posted by timothy from the why-didn't-the-mice-think-of-that? dept.
H3xx writes "An international group of scientists is aiming to create a simulator — nicknamed The Living Earth Simulator — that will collect data from billions of sources and use it to replicate everything happening on Earth, from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on highways. The project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world. Perhaps this is Asimov's concept of Psychohistory come to fruition."
Censorship

WikiLeaks Moves To Swiss Domain After DNS Takedown 488

Posted by Soulskill from the musical-dns-providers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Netcraft posted two reports on the movement of the WikiLeaks website today. First the site was taken down by EveryDNS, who terminated the DNS provision for wikileaks.org. A few hours later, WikiLeaks moved to a Swiss domain (wikileaks.ch). Netcraft suggests this move could be because the wikileaks.org domain was registered with a US company, which could be influenced by the US government. The new wikileaks.ch site is hosted in Sweden, but redirects all of its traffic to France. Strangely, WikiLeaks has chosen to use EveryDNS again for their new domain." This follows Amazon's removal of WikiLeaks from their cloud hosting, which has the EFF and others worrying about free speech on the net as various hosting providers receive political pressure to censor certain content. Amazon claims their decision wasn't influenced by a government inquiry, while Tableau Software freely admits that a public request from Senator Joe Lieberman prompted them to take down WikiLeaks data visualizations.

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