An anonymous reader writes: Cord cutting is not a new concern for the pay TV business but a recent massive sell-off in media stocks has many in the industry worried. Cable, satellite and TV companies suffered their worst-ever quarterly subscriber declines losing more than half a million accounts, sending stocks tumbling. Researchers say this may be the beginning of the end for the pay TV business. According to analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson: “A year ago, the Pay TV sector was shrinking at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. A year later, the rate at which the Pay TV sector is declining has quickened to 0.7 percent year-over-year. That may not seem like a mass exodus, but it is a big change in a short period of time. And the rate of decline is still accelerating.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Continued Cord Cutting Hits the Pay TV Business Hard
New submitter garyisabusyguy writes with word that, according to London’s Sunday Times, “Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services, ” and suggests this non-paywalled Reuters version, too. “MI6 has decided that it is too dangerous to operate in Russia or China, ” writes the submitter. “This removes intelligence capabilities that have existed throughout the Cold War, and which may have helped to prevent a ‘hot’ nuclear war. Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
HughPickens.com writes Diane Cardwell reports in the NYT that many utilities are trying desperately to stem the rise of solar power, either by reducing incentives, adding steep fees or effectively pushing home solar companies out of the market. The economic threat has electric companies on edge. Over all, demand for electricity is softening while home solar is rapidly spreading across the country. There are now about 600, 000 installed systems, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. In Hawaii, the current battle began in 2013, when Hawaiian Electric started barring installations of residential solar systems in certain areas. It was an abrupt move — a panicked one, critics say — made after the utility became alarmed by the technical and financial challenges of all those homes suddenly making their own electricity. “Hawaii is a postcard from the future, ” says Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a policy and advocacy group based in California. But utilities say that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts. “At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don’t keep that balance things go unstable, ” says Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility’s main control room. But the rooftop systems are “essentially invisible to us, ” says Ching, “because they sit behind a customer’s meter and we don’t have a means to directly measure them.” The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. “Hawaii’s case is not isolated, ” says Massoud Amin. “When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there’s going to be problems.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The practice of pricing fuel with a fraction of a penny is thought to have started around the 1930s. While we can’t be sure who was the first to price fuel this way, it seems to have become relatively commonplace across the United States all the sudden around the same time. So what happened? In short- taxes and the Great Depression. Read more… 
New details have emerged about exactly how Hillary Clinton secured the homebrew private email servers she used as Secretary of State. The punchline? Clinton didn’t encrypt her emails or use a certificate for her first three months running the State Department. Read more… 
Hillary Clinton’s burgeoning presidential campaign is not off to a good start. Just a day after papers reported that the former Secretary of State would make a bid for the nation’s highest office in April, The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton used only her personal email address while serving as Secretary of State . This is bad. Read more… 
In Old Havana’s last remaining internet cafe, an hour online costs about almost a quarter of an average monthly salary. But armed with some piecemeal networking equipment and rebellious sensibilities, some Cuban youths have taken connectivity into their own hands . Read more… 
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. The sign was meant to draw the attention of world leaders, reporters and others who were in Lima, the Peruvian capital, for a United Nations summit meeting aimed at reaching an agreement to address climate change. Greenpeace issued a statement apologizing for the stunt at the archaeological site and its international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, flew to Lima to apologize for scarring one of Peru’s most treasured national symbols. “We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody, ” says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. “Let them apologize after they repair the damage.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.