Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Yahoo has the following story: Jake Reilly’s ‘Amish Project:’ 90 Days Without a Cell Phone, Email and Social Media Could you live without daily electronic conveniences — Twitter, Facebook, email, texting and more — for 90 days? Jake P. Reilly, a 24-year-old copywriting student at the Chicago Portfolio School, did just that. My immediate reaction [...]
If you thought that Newt Gingrich’s idea for a Moon Base that eventually becomes an American state was a bit wacky, back in the 90s the former Speaker was talking about resurrecting the dinosaurs: The former House speaker has long been known for his boyish enthusiasm for subjects like dinosaurs, zoos and outer space. And [...]
A Federal Judge deals with the clash between individual rights, law enforcement, and technology.
The Supreme Court issued a somewhat muddled ruling on GPS tracking today.
It’s not just low wages that have kept technology manufacturing jobs out of the United States.
Within an hour last evening, I passed along and retracted two breaking news stories on Twitter.
The blackout campaign by Internet content providers continues to have an impact on Capitol Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called off a vote on controversial anti-piracy legislation Friday — the surest sign yet that a wave of online protests have killed SOPA and PIPA for now and maybe forever. Reid canceled the procedural vote [...]
Members of Congress are responding to the protests against SOPA and PIPA by withdrawing their support for the bills.
The Obama Administration has halted, for the moment, a pipeline project that has become a political football.
Wikipedia’s English language site will be offline for 24 hours tomorrow to protest two controversial online piracy bills.
If you so much as mention a Presidential candidate on Facebook, your post or comment (even if it’s private) will be shared with Politico: [E]very post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out [...]
Ars Technica reports: Under voter pressure, members of Congress backpedal (hard) on SOPA. It appears that members of both the House and Senate are starting to feel some serious pressure on this issue. For a SOPA FAQ, see Reddit (h/t: mistermix). And amusingly, the main author of SOPA, Lamar Smith (R-TX) was caught violating copyrights [...]
Aaron Swartz has been arrested for downloading too many academic journal articles.
It was five years ago today that Steve Jobs made an announcement that revolutionized the cell phone industry: Now we’ve got a world where the innovations that jobs introduced are commonplace on every smartphone, and where smartphones are more than just those things that businessmen carry around. We literally have the world at our fingertips [...]
Are carbon emissions saving us all from a cold, cold fate?
Can the government force a criminal defendant to reveal a computer password? A Federal case in Denver is dealing with that question right now.
This is a very cool infographic that shows just how old the Earth itself actually is: Even the simplest forms of life didn’t exist until 4am. Sexual Reproduction has only been around since about 6pm. The Dinosaurs didn’t live and die off until late evening, and Humanity itself has been around for roughly 1 minute, [...]
Depending on when you ask the question, the answer you’re thinking of may not be correct: Earth has two moons, a group of scientists . One is that waxing and waning nightlight we all know and love. The other is a tiny asteroid, no bigger than a Smart Car, making huge doughnuts around Earth for [...]
For those of us who grew up in the 80s as the HIV/AIDS epidemic was just starting, this is the kind of news that you’d never thought you’d see: Canadian researchers received approval Tuesday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin testing an experimental and potentially breakthrough HIV vaccine on human subjects with [...]
Welcome technological change, or crony capitalism?
Congressional Republicans got a major concession as price for averting a government shutdown: saving the incandescent light bulb, at least now.
As I noted yesterday, there were reports that physicists at the Large Hadron Collider were preparing to announce something major regarding one of subatomic physics’s most elusive particles. Well, there was an announcement today but it wasn’t anything definitive: Physicists will have to keep holding their breath a little while longer. Two teams of scientists [...]
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe think they might be close to confirming the existence of the most elusive particle in theoretical physics: High noon is approaching for the biggest manhunt in the history of physics. At 8 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning, scientists from CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, [...]
The Kepler Space Telescope has been searching for planets outside our Solar System for some time now, but it hasn’t found a planet that could be habitable until now: The search for Earth-like planets circling other stars is heating up, but the latest discovery is not too hot at all. It’s not too cold, either. [...]
When you campaign in a Republican primary in Iowa, that means pandering to the evangelicals and social conservatives. For Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, that means telling them you’re in favor of undermining the teaching of evolution in America’s science classrooms. Here’s Bachmann: BACHMANN: I think what you’re advocating for is censorship on the part [...]
Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Matthew Yglesias is arguing How Technology Helps Hollywood and Hurts Pro Sports: It used to be that a sporting event only had to compete for my eyeballs against whatever other TV programming happened to be on right at that moment. Oftentimes a regular season Mavericks-Celtics game or an ALCS [...]
Over at his new digs at Forbes, Alex Knapp passes along some intriguing new information about a report that shook the scientific world in September: The OPERA collaborative in Italy, which stunned the physics community in September by claiming they had detected neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, has completed a second run [...]
The Associated Press is trying to fight Twitter rather than engage it.
A new iPhone app allows you to visit an Apple Store, make a purchase, and leave , with virtually no interaction with another human being: If you’d like to get in and out quickly when shopping at the Apple Store, grab the Apple Store app. Version 2 now provides a mobile self-checkout option so you [...]
Via the Miami Herald: Political hackers are one of Latin America’s newest headaches Cyber-crime has been prevalent in Latin America since the dawn of online transactions. But many nations are struggling with a new threat: politically-motivated hackers. [...] Just this year, groups claiming to be affiliates of Anonymous — perhaps the largest and most well-known [...]
Here’s Mitt Romney on climate change in June: It seemed like a straightforward question on a second-tier issue: Would Mitt Romney disavow the science behind global warming? The putative Republican presidential front-runner, eager to prove his conservative bona fides, could easily have said what he knew many in his party’s base wanted to hear. Instead, [...]
A new patent granted to Apple raises once again the question of how far patent protections should extend.
Google+ was supposed to be a Facebook killer. If their social media icons are any indication, it’s not happening.
A cute protest sign based on a blog quip has created a minor internet sensation.
The Air Force has released some details about the virus that has infected the country’s drone fleet: The Air Force did provide a few details about the malware. They said it was first noticed on “a stand-alone mission support network using a Windows-based operating system.” And they called it “a credential stealer,” transmitted by portable [...]
California’s Governor has vetoed a bill that would have reversed a very misguided decision by that state’s Supreme Court.
Less than a month after announcing that it was splitting its DVD and streaming services into separate companies with separate subscription methods, Netflix has done a complete 180 and will keep both services under the same roof: Abandoning a break-up plan it announced last month, Netflix said Monday morning that it had decided to keep [...]
The apple logo with Steve Jobs’ profile instead of the bite mark is going viral.
