Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

02 Dec 2010 23:32

tags

Tech: Knight News Challenge: Check out these crazy journalism ideas

  • OK, who’s the smart-aleck? This is only one of the 687 entrants to this year’s Knight News Challenge (a contest that funds very innovative journalism projects, most notably and successfully EveryBlock), and it’s easily the least likely to win. The call for entries was closed last night, so these are the entries. We’re personally gunning for our friends at The Ann, many of whom we worked with at Bluffton Today back in the heady, throwing-stuff-on-walls days of 2005 and 2006. (We’ve got your back, K-Pop!) Their application is here. Check out some of the other entrants that caught our eye: Newsroom data-organizing appliance Panda, dissident voice amplifier Crowdvoice.org, and Ninty (an ambitious crowdsourced audio news concept akin to making NPR a lot more like Pandora). Check out the entries yourself. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 22:54

tags

Tech: Amazon drops extremely lame excuse for dumping Wikileaks

  • It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy.
  • A statement from Amazon • Regarding their reasons for removing Wikileaks from Amazon Web Services. Pretty much everything we said about this whole thing last night still stands, even in the wake of all of this – namely, who is Amazon (which is running a service that should be impartial) to be making a judgment call here? This feels like an excuse more than anything else. They’ve created some major trust issues here. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 22:23

tags

Politics: Lame duck Alan Grayson creates more kibble for Fox News

  • Oh Alan … Lame Duck congressman Alan Grayson decided to make the most of his last month in office by calling out every single GOP loudmouth he could think of on the floor of Congress today, pointing out that all of them stand to gain by extending the Bush tax cuts – many of them in seven figures. Best bit: Noting that George W. Bush will make over $100,000 from his own tax cuts. This oughta get a lot of play on Fox News tomorrow morning. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 21:52

tags

Politics: Deficit committee may not have needed votes by tomorrow

  • Our debt crisis is a threat not just to our way of life but to our national survival. And the threat that we face is so real and so close that we do not have further time for gridlock or inaction. It’s necessary that we take strong, aggressive action now.
  • Idaho Sen. (and deficit committee member) Mike Crapo • Revealing that he, along with Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, would be voting in favor of the deficit committee’s proposal Friday. That means that, along with retiring Sen. Judd Gregg, three Republicans would be voting to send the proposal for a vote in Congress. Problem is, that brings the grand total up to around nine votes. Fourteen of the nineteen members need to vote yes. At least three other  Republicans (including our boy Paul Ryan) and one Democrat (Max Baucus) will vote against it. But that may not matter, according to committee co-chairman Alan Simpson. “Whether we get two votes or 18, this baby ain’t goin’ away,” he said. He’s right; the ideas will remain no matter what happens. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 21:22

tags

Politics: Oh Charlie: Mr. Rangel’s censure swift, kinda embarrassing

  • Assaulting a fellow member of Congress. Treasonous conduct. Selling appointments to a military academy. Bribing people. Committing acts of payroll fraud. Sexual misconduct with congressional pages (who, by the way, are 16 years old when working in Congress). And now the latest reason for a censure: Using rent-controlled apartments at extremely undervalued rates while not paying taxes, failing to report income on a property being rented out in the Dominican Republic, keeping tax loopholes that benefit major donors, fundraising with house letterheads, and overall general corruption. Charlie Rangel’s had a pretty busy past couple of years, hasn’t he? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 20:59

tags

Offbeat: Two can play that game: Dude rejiggers cheating girlfriend’s Netflix

  • One Reddit user decided to hit his cheating girlfriend where it hurts. So he went to Netflix and started ratings until he was able to come up with this really harsh list of I-know-you’re-cheating classics. Wait a second … Bambi? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 20:49

tags

Tech: Smelling a trend, Amazon invests in site kinda like Groupon

  • $6
    billion     the amount Google offered fast-growing deals site Groupon in a buyout offer last week
  • $175
    million     the amount Amazon invested in the similarly growing deals site Living Social earlier today source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

02 Dec 2010 12:24

tags

Tech: Bitly News gives short links the Hacker News treatment

  • Thinks we like: Bit.ly. Twitter. Hacker News. Bitly.tv. Now what if someone mashed up Bit.ly links found on Twitter to look like Hacker News, but with the ranking style that Bitly.tv uses? Well, friends, you’d have Bitly News. Which is the coolest thing we’ve seen today. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 11:08

tags

Tech: Protip: Don’t browse YouPorn if you wanna keep your privacy

  • 485 major sites exploit a privacy-exploiting browser hack source
  • » Wait, what about YouPorn?: See, YouPorn, one of the most popular sites on the Internet that nobody ever talks about going to, is the most-notable user of this particular hack, which scrapes your history using Javascript to see if you’re going to other sites, and even hijacks it. And don’t think because you don’t watch porn that you’re not getting traced – news sites, sports sites and many other safe-for-work sites also use the scary technique. (Update: In an earlier version, we linked to a site which appears to have been down much of the day. Sorry ’bout that.)
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Dec 2010 10:54

tags

Politics: McCain stands firm on “don’t ask” … even after that study

  • I am not saying this law should never change. I am simply saying that it may be premature to make such a change at this time and in this manner, without further consideration of this report and further study of the issue by Congress.
  • Sen. John McCain • Speaking during a Senate hearing today about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” McCain claims that repealing the law now would be “premature,” and points to numbers about Army and Marine combat units not being quite ready for the change. This is despite the fact that the military’s highest-ups have all made the case that the policy should change as soon as possible. Hm. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
top tags
older >>