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After Initially Calling The New York Times' Report False, Facebook Confirms Most Claims Made in the Story (nytimes.com) 78

Posted by msmash from the new-lows dept.
Nellie Bowles and Zach Wichter, reporting for The New York Times: Joining a long tradition of companies and campaigns that drop bad news on holidays, Facebook on Thanksgiving eve took responsibility for hiring a Washington-based lobbying company, Definers Public Affairs, that pushed negative stories about Facebook's critics, including the philanthropist George Soros. Facebook's communications and policy chief, Elliot Schrage, said in a memo posted Wednesday that he was responsible for hiring the group, and had done so to help protect the company's image and conduct research about high-profile individuals who spoke critically about the social media platform. Mr. Schrage will be leaving the company, a move planned before the memo was released.

Facebook fired Definers last week, after a New York Times investigation published on Nov. 14. "Did we ask them to do work on George Soros?" Mr. Schrage wrote in the memo, a draft of which had circulated online earlier in the week. "Yes." He added: "I'm sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here." This is a change from just a few days ago, when Facebook wrote on Nov. 15 that the Times report was full of "inaccuracies." The same day, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, posted on her Facebook page that she had no idea the company had hired Definers.


Comment Re:What about all the browsers? (Score 1) 73

by Jodo Kast (#57678002) Attached to: Tumblr Removed From Apple's App Store Over Child Porn Issues
Wait, where's the proof that /. is going out of business?

I know it pales in comparison to it's former glory in the late 90's & early 2000's and is no longer "News for Nerds"; back when goatse.cx used to be shocking and not some typical photo you'd find on Tumblr or most porn sites these days.
Ahhhh...the good o'l days when programmers actually had to keep track of memory, pointers, file handlers, network sockets, etc. and weren't dumbed down to the point of calling some API or 3rd party library that did all the "hard" work. Back when Linus Toravalds could get away with his crap and not be bullied by emotionally stunted children and RTFM didn't make someone cry. Good Times! Good Times!

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Zip-A-Dee-A
My oh my what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headed my way
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Zip-A-Dee-A
Earth

We're Creating a Perfect Storm of Unprecedented Global Warming (popsci.com) 620

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: If we do nothing to reduce our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, by the end of this century the Earth will be as hot as it was 50 million years ago in the early Eocene, according to a new study out today in the journal Nature Communications. This period -- roughly 15 million years after dinosaurs went extinct and 49.8 million years before modern humans appeared on the scene -- was 16F to 25F warmer than the modern norm. [...] During the Eocene, it took more atmospheric CO2 to influence temperatures than it does today. In fact, if we don't change our behavior, 2100 will be as hot as the Eocene with much less atmospheric CO2 than was present at the time. A hotter sun means we get more bang for our CO2 buck. "Climate change denialists often mention that CO2 was high in the past, that it was warm in the past, so this means there's nothing to worry about," said lead study author Gavin Foster, a researcher in isotope geochemistry and paleoceanography at the United Kingdom's University of Southampton. "It's certainly true, that the CO2 was high in the past and that it was warm in the past. But because the sun was dimmer, the climate wasn't being forced as much [as it will be] in the future if we carry on as we are."

Comment Re:Who's buying? (Score 1) 659

by Jodo Kast (#53737353) Attached to: George Orwell's '1984' Tops Amazon's Bestseller List
You were beat one too many times with teh stupid stick, weren't you? That or your a Tumblr'ite. There are two sexes. That's it ... You've got asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction; the later requires an egg from a female and spermatozoa from a male. The offspring from sexual reproduction will either be male, female, or some genetic mutation of male/female. That's right, any other "sex" that you seem to think there are, are nothing more than mutants; and they're not the kind from the Fallout universe. Yes there are hermaphrodites in nature, in select species, but humans aren't really capable of hermaphroditic reproduction that I know of. I hate to break it to you, but things like gender dysphoria and transgenderism are classified as mental illnesses.

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