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19 Feb 2011 22:48

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Tech: Google wants to improve search results by asking your friends

  • Question of the day: Do your friends make your search results better? A couple of days ago, when we were worried about Glenn Beck, Google announced an update to their social search that makes it easier to integrate your friend’s social streams from multiple networks into Google’s search results. If your friends suck and offer terrible advice, you need new friends. Which is also why you shouldn’t use this. But even if their advice is sound, does this cross a privacy line? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 22:30

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Politics: Timothy Geithner on GOP’s spending diet plan: This will hurt jobs

  • In our judgment, the continuing opposition…in the House would undermine and damage our capacity to create jobs and expand the economy.
  • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Claiming that the GOP’s spending-cut-heavy plan threatens to severely hurt job creation. Geithner’s advice? Strengthen the economic recovery, then focus on deficit-cutting. “I am very confident that the Democrats and the Republicans will come together on a program to not just reduce spending but reduce long-term deficits,” he continued. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 21:23

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U.S.: Are the Tea Partiers in Madison really that big a deal, anyway?

  • So how many Tea Partiers went to Madison today? While these crowds look reasonably large in size, they don’t appear to hold a candle to the 40,000+ union protesters going around Madison today. These arial shots seem to suggest much smaller crowds of Tea Partiers than pro-union folks. But guess which ones CNN decided to cover today? Take a guess. (photo from Americans for Prosperity’s Flickr stream) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 16:54

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World: Somali pirates have more than enough hostages to fill a Starbucks

  • 30 ships are currently being held by Somali pirates
  • 660 people are being held for ransom as we type
  • four U.S. citizens were captured on Friday source
  • » The latest incident: The people currently being held for hostage in the waters around Somalia were on a yacht called Quest, and included a couple known for traveling the world via yacht and handing out bibles to anyone who would take them on their journeys. If Americans get involved with this, they could damage the Somali’s business model of pilfering money from shipping and insurance companies. Because the U.S. won’t put up with this crap.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 16:32

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World: Libyan violence: The painful scenes journalists can’t directly report

  • Many of the dead and the injured are relatives of doctors here. They are crying, and I keep telling them to please stand up and help us.
  • A Libyan medical official • Describing the scene at a poorly-equipped hospital in the country. The official reported fifteen dead. As painful as this quote is, this one is nearly as gut-wrenching: “The blood of our martyrs is still leaking from coffins over the shoulders of the mourners,” said a protester in Benghazi, the epicenter of the current crisis, in the wake of an attack on protesters who were mourning during a funeral. Libya is a hard country to get accurate information from, because journalists are not allowed to freely work in the country. In other words, much of this information is coming from phone calls and informants and can’t be independently confirmed. Libyan protesters are facing a very tough road; stand with them. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 15:43

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Politics: Reader-submitted: One protester’s take on the Wisconsin issue

  • From someone who’s been there: Here’s a clip Tumblr user definitelynotcanon sent our way. Her friend Anna, who says in the clip that she’s never made a video blog, offers some perspective from the front lines of the protests in Madison, and wants to encourage better coverage of the entire issue. The important part is that the stripping of collective bargaining rights is the key issue here – not the current budget issue. We do have one point to make about all this: The part that she brings up about the special interest groups is actually inaccurate, as pointed out by Politifact. (It’s not spending on special interest groups, but tax breaks.) The heart of her argument still stands up, though. It’s OK though, because Ezra Klein has her back. After watching that, read this: source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Feb 2011 15:03

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Tech: Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s domains at all, guys

  • NO Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s URL-shortening source
  • » When clever names go bad: As we have noted in the past, Bit.ly’s name is tied very closely to Libya. However, as the Interwebs have gone down of late in the country, many are wondering if this means anything bad for the URL shortener market, which also counts owl.ly and ht.ly as potential victims, among others. We’ll let Bit.ly’s CEO, John Borthwick, take it from here: “For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses. Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya.” And plus, they have backup plans in place, like j.mp or bitly.com. So no, nothing to worry about.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

19 Feb 2011 14:49

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World: A tale of two conflicts: Bahrain, Libya seem headed in different ways

  • Bahrain In a major symbolic victory for protesters, the military has pulled out of Pearl Square in Manama, allowing the protesters to re-enter amidst much international anger over the violence against the peaceful protests.
  • Libya As fresh violence continues to break, at least 84 have died at the hands of the Libyan military, according to Human Rights Watch. “We’ve never heard of anything like this before. It’s horrible,” one eyewitness said to Al Jazeera. source
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