The Anonymous hacking collective has petitioned the White House, using the US government’s open forum to ask for DDoS attacks to be registered as an official form of complaint – and requesting the convictions of previous DDoS attackers be wiped from their records. More »
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Anonymous Wants DDoS Recognised as an Official Form of Protest
Who cares what color the walls are when there’s beer in front of you? That’s exactly what the guys between Beertone thought, when they decided to put together a color chart that takes you on a journey through the entire spectrum of beer. Beertone explains: More »
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Forget Pantone, Here’s Beertone
The ever-booming social network and venue for the “pulse of the planet” delivered the news in a tweet, of course. [Read more]
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Twitter surpasses 200M active monthly users
Users can now send files from Google Drive that are 400 times larger than is possible in a traditional attachment. [Read more]
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Gmail, meet Google Drive — and behold 10GB file transfers
Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it (PDF) is a position paper just released by House Republicans, advocating for a raft of eminently sensible reforms to copyright law, including expanding and clarifying fair use; reaffirming that copyright’s purpose is to serve the public interest (not to enrich investors); to limit statutory damages for copyright infringement; to punish false copyright claims; and to limit copyright terms. This is pretty close to the full raft of reforms that progressive types on both sides of the US political spectrum have been pushing for. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Dems (who have a much closer relationship to Hollywood and rely on it for funding) are able to muster any support for this. Mike Masnick’s got good analysis of this on TechDirt, and notes that this is a huge shift from the House that, 10 months ago, was ready to pass SOPA. This document really is a watershed moment. Even if it does not lead to any actual legislation, just the fact that some in Congress are discussing how copyright has gone way too far and even looking at suggestions that focus on what benefits the public the most is a huge step forward from what we’ve come to expect. In many ways, this is the next logical step after the completion of the SOPA fight. Rather than just fighting bad policy, it’s time for Congress to recognize that existing copyright law is bad policy and now is the time to fix it. It comes as a surprise, but kudos to the Republican Study Committee — and specifically Derek Khanna, the policy staffer who wrote the document — for stepping up and saying what needed to be said, but which too many in Congress had been afraid to say for fear of how the entertainment industry lobbyists would react. House Republicans: Copyright Law Destroys Markets; It’s Time For Real Reform
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House Republicans release watershed copyright reform paper
It’s unlikely that you speak Mandarin, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need to at some point. Now, Microsoft has created software that can analyze your speech, translate it and then spit out a new recording of your very own voice speaking in a different language. More »
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Microsoft Can Convert Your Voice Into Another Language
The Royal Society, along with the Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy, and Royal Academy of Engineering, recently concluded a workshop called Human Enhancement and the Future of Work in which they considered the growing impact and potential risks of augmentation technologies. In their final report , the collaborative team of scientists and ethicists raised serious concerns about the burgeoning trend, and how humanity is moving from a model of therapy to one in which human capacities are greatly improved. The implications, they concluded, should be part of a much wider public discussion. More »
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Scientists raise the alarm on human enhancement technologies
It’s time for some American Democracy 101. Every election cycle, it frustrates me to no end that most news outlets spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the latest polls without explaining the significance those polls actually have on the outcome of a presidential election that isn’t truly decided by the voters. My Halloween wish this year was for someone to explain the electoral college to me, and Twin Cities journalist Frank Bures has obliged*. This piece has actually been around since 2000, but I think it’s a nice explanation of what the electoral college is, where it comes from, and why it’s going to matter to you tonight. The only votes that count in this election will be cast in mid-December by the 538 members of the electoral college. That’s who you and I will vote for on November 7: electors for Bush or electors for Gore, and their votes are the currency of presidential politics. Each state gets as many electors as it has representatives and senators. In all but two states, the winning party takes all the state’s electoral votes. …At first, in several states, there was no popular presidential vote. For decades after 1787, in states like Delaware, New York, and Georgia, the legislatures chose the electors. In South Carolina, there was no popular vote for the chief executive until 1860. But today, party loyalty prevents electors from acting as the free agents envisioned by the founders. In 99% of the cases, the electoral vote is a formality. …Electors tend to be either ordinary people—teachers, carpenters, middle managers, retirees, and lawyers’ or party activists sent to the state capital for half an hour of raw power. Some, like Marc Abrams, a 1996 Oregon elector I talked to in the course of researching this article” are blasé about choosing the most powerful man on earth. They voted in a room in the Capitol basement. It took about twenty minutes, and hardly anyone noticed they were there. When I asked Abrams how it felt, he said, “It was sorta cool. ” Read the full story at Byliner *Of course, I also wished for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. And for a million dollars to be placed, in my name, in a Swiss bank account. Image: doris day , a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from velvettangerine’s photostream
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Electoral College college
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is shaping up to be a groundbreaking event for film technology. First, we heard that Director Peter Jackson shot the film at 48 frames-per-second , and now he’s telling us that the film’s sound will be mixed for Dolby’s ultra-intense new Atmos system. More »
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The Hobbit Will Use Dolby’s Crazy 64-Speaker Atmos Sound