Mozilla and Chrome have collaborated to include HD voice and video standardization in their next browser releases. I.E. you will be able to Skype with these browsers - pun intended.

Almost the entire faculty at Seattle's largest public school have decided to boycott their regional testing standardization, saying it “produces specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources”.

"In other words, the west is once again at war with the very forces that it trained, funded and armed. Nobody is better at creating its own enemies, and thus ensuring a posture of endless war, than the US and its allies. Where the US cannot find enemies to fight against it, it simply empowers them."

This happens all the time, and on this scale shouldn't be surprising. This is definitely one of the reasons Google is trying to identify who is real and who isn't. "Real" online activity would be given more weight than unconfirmed or anonymous activity.

Wikileaks is approaching 50K in bitcoin donations, circumventing the credit card embargoes against them.

Bitcoins are currently trading at around 13 bucks.

Glenn Greenwald helps form Freedom of the Press Foundation:

"The primary impetus for the formation of this group was to block the US government from ever again being able to attack and suffocate an independent journalistic enterprise the way it did with WikiLeaks. Government pressure and the eager compliance of large financial corporations (such as Visa, Master Card, Bank of America, etc.) has - by design - made it extremely difficult for anyone to donate to WikiLeaks, while many people are simply afraid to directly support the group."

A direct quote from Instagram's updated terms of service:

"To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

According to Der Spiegel, Iranian government is going to require ID to access the Internet.

"The FBI, if they thought they had a reason, could find out where you are and read your email, with relatively little oversight. Don't think they can? This is what happened to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, an active four star general and two women. Even after this incredible invasion of privacy, the FBI has determined that no crime was likely committed and charges are unlikely to be filed.

Want to know what a national security state looks like? Look around."

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It's obviously not high up on their list to add a feature that cuts into revenue and that nobody respects anyway.

Obama is not undoing/untangling Bush's terrible policies. He is doubling down on them and increasing the amount of terror the US is causing in the world.

A good, thoughtful complaint from +Danny Sullivan about the trend away from search term visibility for websites.

B.O.R.I.S. The Crusher Oatmeal Imperial Stout is for sure my favorite local beer. I think I drank them out of stock at B-Spot.

This isn't going anywhere and I am a little surprised Google went so far as to implement it. You can't expect people to manage activity external to their own website. Directionally, this flies in the philosophical face of penalties for "over-optimization" and gaming. Of course SEOs will like it because it gives them something else to do.

#SEO

Sending troops back to Iraq. But nobody cares because Obama is better than Romney.

"Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."

According the US Military, Wikileaks is an enemy of the state on the level of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Note that Wikileaks as an organization has not ever committed any acts of violence nor promoted them, but merely attempted to provide a platform for whistleblowing.

Under NDAA, anyone could easily be viewed as a threat to the state even by just reading Wikileaks. And then indefinitely detained, tortured, etc....

Gary Johnson polling at 10% in Ohio - a schwing state.

ChickfilA, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Chick-fil-A: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Chick. fil. A.

If you decide to try this out, let me know who wins for you.

Damn you, Europe!

Wow.

At best, Keynes cannot predict markets. So then how can you act in a preemptive way?

"The actual unemployment rate has been consistently above Romer and Bernstein’s worse case scenario for the economy – and by a considerable margin."

I like how this just happens and everyone's like "OK, cool."

EDIT: only one, unreliable source of this information

We are all currently watching the GOP attempt to distance themselves from their own stances on how they view women. The Republican party leadership is in shambles, with strange, medieval views of human beings and a repressive, mean-spirited view of how our society should function. We cannot be a productive society with the old white boys' club continually dominating the conversation. How can anybody truly value this dishonest hand-waving as leadership? If you have women in your life, how could you possibly imagine intentionally grappling with a state that minces words around a concept as vile as rape? Who support this and why?

SHOCKER: "One thing that makes TrapWire a particularly interesting company is that its president, chief of operations and director of business development are all former employees of the Central Intelligence Agency."

So the police pull some kids over - no reason has been given for this. One of the kids has an outstanding warrant for marijuana possession - a non-violent crime that affects nobody. Then they find "a small amount" of marijuana on him and arrest him.

So of course this kid shot himself in the temple. In the back of a police car. After being searched for a gun. Twice.

*While handcuffed behind his back.

Three different medical examiners, the local court system and the entire police department are ALL on board with this

This is insanely awesome.

Picture of Curiosity taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The descent stage blast pattern around the rover is clearly seen as relatively blue colors (true colors would be more gray)."

Subsidize beef, soy and corn and then tell people not to eat it.

"We hope they continue to follow the hypermedia approach that other major sports leagues are taking (and you should count MLS in that group, because they're better than anybody) but as long as all the power is centralized, incidents like yesterday's Facebook fiasco are bound to happen again."

The thing about Romney is you can pretty much find him supporting any given position on almost any given topic if you look around long enough. What makes this piece so strange is how right-centrist, pro-business Obama is.

"If you turned off the geysers of Enceladus, the great E-ring of Saturn would disappear within a few years," says McKay. "For a little moon, Enceladus has quite an impact."

Emphasis mine:

Gandhi felt that this protest would dramatize Purna Swaraj in a way that was meaningful to the lowliest Indians. He also reasoned that it would build unity between Hindus and Muslims by fighting a wrong that touched them equally.

After the protest gathered steam, the leaders realized the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, “it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released.”

Amazing that we can "see" solar systems 10,000 light years away.

This is both an interesting story and an interesting look at economics. I love how Twitter plays a hilarious role between two unlikely combatants across the globe.

Mittens. Always zero steps ahead of the game.

Louis CK seems like the only one adapting to the new market models. He has sold his last two shows direct through his website and is now doing an entire tour through direct sales on his website. The very first show? Severance Hall baby. We're in! +Jessica Malloy 

Asia makes up 44% of all Internet users yet has the second lowest Internet penetration rate in the world.

If you try to control a marketplace that you don't understand...

<ski instructor>

You're gonna have a bad time.

"Due process just means that there is a process that you do."

How on earth do people expect #Apple to make #Siri work well without analyzing the usage and results? If they just threw away the data the service would not work.

These guys are making a concerted and impressive attempt to oust #SOPA creator and sponsor Lamar Smith from a district he dominates. Regardless of the outcome, I am pretty impressed that a group of people who don't know each other were able to organize and be effective in this way.

Why have any private banks at all at this point? Why not just let elected officials run the banks?

There will be petty, greedy, and selfish people who attempt to exploit any and every sociopolitical system you can come up with. That's because they exist.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a US official as saying "Every Yemeni is armed, so how can they differentiate between suspected militants and armed Yemenis?"

Wait, isn't that the definition of a war?

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+Mozilla Firefox to introduce click-to-play option to block default loading of plugins like Java and Flash when surfing. +Opera and +Google Chrome already have this feature, but it is not on by default.

Amazing to see a judge demonstrate an understanding of a simple, fundamental concept. The trend is more often the opposite, with the UK recently ordering their ISPs to block DNS lookups to the pirate bay domain, a shockingly ignorant and impotent act of censorship.

"The Judge continues by arguing that having an IP-address as evidence is even weaker than a telephone number, as the majority of US homes have a wireless network nowadays. This means that many people, including complete strangers if one has an open network, can use the same IP-address simultaneously."

More cool stuff from our overlords.

Cool!!! Thanks FBI!

Nice fake headline. If he opposes it, why wouldn't he veto it? It sounds to me like he just wants the bill to be written his way. From the article:

"The Obama administration opposes Cispa," he told the Guardian. "The president has called for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. There is absolutely a need for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation.
....
Ross refused to be drawn, however, on whether the White House would consider vetoing the bill were it to pass through Congress."
#stopcispa

This is not a form of brainwashing

This is not a form of brainwashing

This is not a form of brainwashing

Cool social contract, bro.

Privacy, as you know it, is over whether you want it to be or not. Basically, everything will soon be recorded.

I found this interesting digging around trying to identify some of the change in gas prices here in the states. The first link below is a breakdown of pricing by the California Energy Commission (nice resource btw). If you look at the recent climbs in price the glaring difference is in the refinery take. In the second link below we can see one guy's take on this: EPA shutdowns of refineries. I am not expert on this topic, am not politically motivated and am interested in anyone's opinion who has knowledge.

Ernest Hemingway and son Gregory in 1941

Great troll, or greatest troll?

"With sobering facts that like, one wonders why any of this story needs to be fictionalized in the first place."

Apart from the confused word position typo, this is a big problem with documentaries and pseudo-journalism. Sensationalism later discredited ruins the entire story and confuses the issues in play.

Google will be combining their individual product privacy policies tomorrow. Is this a scary event?

Who had the worst outfit on the red carpet last night!

This is fascinating.

Take a second to notice how this works. Try to ignore the points both the Young Turks and Lou Dobbs make and rather focus on the larger, more general effect of what is happening here.

1. It immediately sets up a false dichotomy of liberal vs conservative. Everybody will fall into line either agreeing disagreeing because the opinion is so heavy-handed and absolute. There is no room for a third opinion or nuance when complex concepts are reduced like this. You've just been boxed up into one of two camps whether you wanted to be or not.
2. The vilification placed upon the topic creates an atmosphere of hatred and despair (large, sweeping agendas that out of our control). This is responded to with ridicule and return vilification. The dialogue is never about anything real but rather more focused on loaded meta concepts (liberal Hollywood, agendas and indoctrination, and also massive outrage).
3. The outrage is a poor response, this is exactly the desired effect of this kind of "story". A strongly divided and angry group of people cannot be rational and effective as a collective society. This is a validation of the false dichotomy and perpetuates the myth of a black and white world.

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- Game Theory http://www.game-theory-class.org/
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I have to wait 40 years? :(

One, it is fascinating how shockingly accurate the serial number approach was. Although in hindsight this makes sense.

Two, not sure if it's relevant in today's types of warfare, but I assume this kind of data is not available or encoded somehow on military equipment.

Three it's funny how way off the intelligence was, like by an order of magnitude. Is that paranoia? Why were they so far off?

Hoisted by ya own petard, lady.

This is cool. If you watch the video, the balloon pops at about the 1:12 mark.

I actually like G's new privacy policy, it's simplified now across products and it hasn't changed anything. Now instead of several policies all saying they may share data between G products, there's just one policy saying they may share data between products. It's maybe three pages long and accessible (as opposed to, say, Apple's 3 billion page itunes privacy policy).

"But the defining power that had everyone so up in arms about SOPA — shutting down websites with no trial — is one that already exists in quite a robust form, as any thwarted visitors to Megaupload will discover."

Seriously, this is very impressive for a candidate to lay out his exact plan in such detail. Honest question: do the other challengers have anything this detailed laid out?

He can finally go back to his executive duties in Texas like praying for rain and failing to stop teen pregnancies.

Absolute nightmarish scenario watching him proudly discard due process while the crowd nervously twists up and down, unsure what exactly is going on. The confusion is palpable, especially when he violates the right-left rhetoric only long enough to agree with Obama when it comes to shredding the constitution.

#Obamney2012

‎"Non-electable" Ron Paul is surging in S. Carolina, a state he has "no chance" to win.

#Obamney2012 I coined it first.

"This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests."

This is a pretty awesome mashup.

MOAR WAR!! WE NEED MOAR WAR!!

Mildly inpsired by +Eric Howerton, here is a thought experiment: if you hate top ten lists but like thought experiments, are you morally obligated to NOT post an interesting top ten thought experiments article?

This is awesome. You can find out what senators voted for this piece (of shit) legislation here:
http://freakoutnation.com/2011/12/16/the-86-senators-who-voted-to-pass-ndaa-need-to-occupy-the-unemployment-line/

Amazing how customers can influence business with their money. It's like some kind of magic!

Ben Huh from ICanHazCheezburger is also boycotting GoDaddy:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/cheezburgers-ben-huh-if-godaddy-supports-sopa-were-taking-our-1000-domains-elsewhere/

There really isn't a coherent or even acceptable response from George Will, and Paul Ryan just looks like the pawn he is.

Christopher Hitchens, Kim Jong Il, and....

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"#GodIsNotGreat who ever created that trending topic MUST die today!!"

This is useful material for any high school teachers out there looking to clearly demonstrate the concept of irony.

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Why Do People Who Think God Is Real Respond To #GodIsNotGreat Twitter Tag With Threats Of Extreme Violence?

A dissenting piece on Hitchens from Greenwald. Fairly poignant and reflexive considering how little Hitchens cared for eulogy and preferred honesty over pageantry or custom.

"Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life."

Sad to lose him. I guess he's in heaven now, though.

Good one via Reddit comics.

The top 100 products on Amazon by customer rating. These are hand-picked according to the website's own criteria (which they explain in the "more info" link). Pretty good if you are looking for gifts.

This is really depressing.

Cattle

Whoa.

"The most journalistically baseless reason to provide anonymity is to allow U.S. officials to disseminate official government claims with no accountability — that’s called serving as a propaganda vehicle — and that is exactly what the Post does here."

Self-Portrait (via reddit pics)

Awesome pic of the Michigan State vs Tar Heels game on the USS Carl Vinson (via reddit sports)

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Holy shit

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720 double flips off the kicker with a Redlake N3 high speed camera at 1,000 frames per second.