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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#180001: Mar 28th 2017 at 8:35:21 PM

Someone on the internet mentioned changing Earth's albedo artificially using white sheets. I don't know how effective that is.

Here in Massachusetts, there's a lot of support for solar and wind power in both the public and the state government. They're drawing up a bill for Mass power to be 100% green by 2035.

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#180002: Mar 28th 2017 at 9:38:01 PM

Are we seriously going to deny that trump had contact with Russia? What the hell? The writing's on the wall. He did.

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#180003: Mar 28th 2017 at 9:41:30 PM

[up]Not unless you can prove it. Oh, I know he did, and you know he did, but in our glorious new reality of alternative facts, nothing's the truth unless it's absolute, unquestionable truth, and even then that's not a guarantee.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#180004: Mar 28th 2017 at 10:07:53 PM

To be a Fly on the wall in the FBI Counterintelligence HQ...

New Survey coming this weekend!
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#180005: Mar 28th 2017 at 10:21:13 PM

"This is longstanding precedent at the DNC and has happened during multiple Chair transitions," said DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. "The process was started before the election of the new Chair. From the beginning, Tom has been adamant that we structure the DNC for future campaigns. Current and future DNC staff will be integral to that effort. Over the last few months, the DNC staff has done incredible work under immense pressure to hold Trump accountable." Perez has spent his first weeks on the job in "active listening mode," hearing from Democrats in Washington and in small group meetings across the country before making any big moves.

"What we're trying to do is culture change," he told NBC News between stops of a listening tour in Michigan on Friday. "We're repairing a plane at 20,000 feet. You can't land the plane, shut it down, and close it until further notice."

Earlier this month, Perez held a meeting to discuss the issue with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sanders, both of whom supported Rep. Keith Ellison in the DNC chair race.

Schumer, pointing to Ellison and Sanders, told Perez, "If he's happy, and if he's happy, then I'm happy," according to two sources.

Perez has included Ellison in many of the DNC's public events so far, but the party's charter makes no provision for a deputy chair, so Ellison does not have vote on the DNC. That could be fixed by naming the Minnesota congressman to one of the 75 slots the chairman gets to appoint to the national committee.

Ellison's political director has also been helping to oversee staffing decisions in some key departments in the DNC, according to several sources.

Good PR move, Perez.

Link.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#180006: Mar 28th 2017 at 10:55:30 PM

About using white sheets to combat climate change, you may want to check the antropogenic climate change thread.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#180007: Mar 29th 2017 at 4:40:25 AM

And according to this article, Hispanic turnout stayed the same but Trump gained 2 % extra of the Hispanic vote compared to Romney:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442384/hispanic-turnout-disappoints-democrats-undermines-permanent-majority-theory

Dude... That's fucking National Review.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#180008: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:13:07 AM

Border wall funding likely to be put on hold

President Trump's funding request for a border wall will likely be put on hold, Senate Republican leaders signaled Tuesday.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, announced at a leadership press conference that Trump's supplemental funding request will wait until later in the year.

He said the Senate and House leadership are very close to negotiating a bill to fund government for the rest of 2017.

Adding a supplemental spending bill requested by Trump to pay for military activities and a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would complicate the talks and should be dealt with at a later date, Blunt added.

I guess this is good...?

i'm tired, my friend
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#180009: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:20:45 AM

I think it might be somewhat likely that funding just doesn't happen. A big chunk of the Republicans in Congress have this area that approaching the debt ceiling is the worst thing ever and the cuts they're making aren't even going to approach the cost of the wall. Especially if Trump keeps being the most expensive president ever.

I do have a feeling that Congress is going to be forced into confronting the spending on Trump because he is a completely unprecedented cost because he is, again, the most expensive president in American history.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#180011: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:39:12 AM

"The site at https://mobile.twitter.com/yashar/status/846855991987781633/video/1 has experienced a network protocol violation that cannot be repaired."

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#180013: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:44:47 AM

Could Melania have her own security, even if she wanted to?

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#180014: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:45:26 AM

Can we get a petition together to force her to eat dinner at Mc Donald's? Because that would be great.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#180015: Mar 29th 2017 at 6:59:17 AM

This link should work

Sorry bout that.

edited 29th Mar '17 7:00:18 AM by TacticalFox88

New Survey coming this weekend!
CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#180016: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:13:31 AM

Puerto Rico Warning Congress Its Health Crisis Will Impact U.S. States

Puerto Rico is warning state and federal officials it is about to run out of Medicaid money, which will plunge it into a major health crisis, while Puerto Ricans in the U.S. have planned protests in several U.S. cities against a ordered austerity plan.

Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans in seven cities planned to stage demonstrations against the debt restructuring plan devised by the Financial Oversight Board, with input from Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. It makes major cuts to its government agencies and calls for worker furloughs and pension cuts. The protests were scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico.

The plan by the congressionally appointed oversight board is intended to help pull the commonwealth out of its economic crisis and begin paying off the $70 billion it owes. The plan was approved last Monday in New York

Puerto Rico could use up all its funding for Medicaid, the health care program for the poor and elderly, pushing it off the Medicaid "cliff" in a matter of months.

Puerto Rico Medicaid and Medicare rates are about half of what states get, though the Affordable Care Act tried to remedy some of that. But nearly all that money is in danger of being exhausted.

A subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee was reviewing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority's $9 billion debt and its plan for dealing with it. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the full committee, said in a statement they planned to urge assistance for the island, question the debt restructuring plan and "call for an end to Republican overreliance on privatization as a means of fiscal austerity." Roselló was among those testifying on Wednesday morning.

Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., who is the only member of the state's delegation of Puerto Rican descent, said he feels a "special duty to help our brothers and sisters on the island."

Christina Mandreucci, a spokeswoman for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Rubio and a congressional task force working on stimulating economic growth for Puerto Rico have warned congressional colleagues that Puerto Rico's Medicaid funding "is detrimental to economic growth on the island and he is committed to continuing to work with leadership, the administration and the state on a solution."

This was from over a week ago...but still, this problem well precedes the AHCA. (The title has unfortunate implications of its own...)

edited 29th Mar '17 7:14:53 AM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#180017: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:21:33 AM

I don't know if there are other threads to discuss this but here is what popped up on my EFF news feed regarding the US and privacy concerns. Add the hyperlinks on this article this time.

     Five Creepy Things Your ISP Could Do if Congress Repeals the FCC's Privacy Protections 

Call Congress and help keep creepy ISP practices a thing of the past!

Why are we so worried about Congress repealing the FCC’s privacy rules for IS Ps? Because we’ve seen IS Ps do some disturbing things in the past to invade their users’ privacy. Here are five examples of creepy practices that could make a resurgence if we don’t stop Congress now.

5. Selling your data to marketers

Which IS Ps did it before? We don't know but they're doing it as you read this!

It’s no secret that many IS Ps think they’re sitting on a gold mine of user data that they want to sell to marketers. What some people don’t realize is that some are already doing it. (Unfortunately they’re getting away with this for now because the FCC’s rules haven’t gone into effect yet.)

According to Ad Age, SAP sells a service called Consumer Insights 365, which “ingests regularly updated data representing as many as 300 cellphone events per day for each of the 20 million to 25 million mobile subscribers.” What type of data does Consumer Insights 365 “ingest?” Again, according to Ad Age, “The service also combines data from telcos with other information, telling businesses whether shoppers are checking out competitor prices… It can tell them the age ranges and genders of people who visited a store location between 10 a.m. and noon, and link location and demographic data with shoppers' web browsing history.” And who is selling SAP their customers’ data? Ad Age says “SAP won't disclose the carriers providing this data.”

In other words, mobile broadband providers are too afraid to tell you, their customers, that they’re selling data about your location, demographics, and browsing history. Maybe that’s because it’s an incredibly creepy thing to do, and these IS Ps don’t want to get caught red-handed.

And speaking of getting caught red-handed, that brings us to…

4. Hijacking your searches

Which IS Ps did it before? Charter, Cogent, Direc PC, Frontier, Wide Open West (to name a few)

Back in 2011, several ISPs were caught red-handed working with a company called Paxfire to hijack their customers’ search queries to Bing, Yahoo!, and Google. Here’s how it worked.

When you entered a search term in your browser’s search box or URL bar, your ISP directed that query to Paxfire instead of to an actual search engine. Paxfire then checked what you were searching for to see if it matched a list of companies that had paid them for more traffic. If your query matched one of these brands (e.g. you had typed in “apple”, “dell”, or “wsj”, to name a few) then Paxfire would send you directly to that company’s website instead of sending you to a search engine and showing you all the search results (which is what you’d normally expect). The company would then presumably give Paxfire some money, and Paxfire would presumably give your ISP some money.

In other words, IS Ps were hijacking their customers’ search queries and redirecting them to a place customers hadn’t asked for, all while pocketing a little cash on the side. Oh, and the IS Ps in question hadn’t bothered to tell their customers be sending their search traffic to a third party that might record some of it.

It’s hard to believe we’re still on the subtle end of the creepy spectrum. But things are about to get a whole lot more in-your-face creepy, with…

3. Snooping through your traffic and inserting ads

Which IS Ps did it before? AT&T, Charter, CMA

This is the biggest one people are worried about, and with good reason—IS Ps have every incentive to snoop through your traffic, record what you’re browsing, and then inject ads into your traffic based on your browsing history.

Plenty of IS Ps have done it before—AT&T did it on some of their paid wifi hotspots; Charter did it with its broadband customers; and a smaller ISP called CMA did the same.

We don’t think this one requires much explaining for folks to understand just how privacy invasive this is. But if you need a reminder, we’re talking about the company that carries all your Internet traffic examining each packet in detail1 to build up a profile on you, which they can then use to inject even more ads into your browsing experience. (Or, even worse—they could hire a third-party company like NebuAd or Phorm to do all this for them.) That’s your ISP straight up spying on you to sell ads—and turning the creepiness factor up to eleven.2 And speaking of spying, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention…

2. Pre-installing software on your phone and recording every URL you visit

Which IS Ps did it before? AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile

When you buy a new Android phone, you probably expect it to come with some bloatware—apps installed by the manufacturer or carrier that you’re never going to use. You don’t expect it to come preinstalled with software that logs which apps you use and what websites you visit and sends data back to your ISP. But that’s exactly what was uncovered when security researcher and EFF client Trevor Eckhart did some digging into Carrier IQ, an application that came preinstalled on phones sold by AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

This is even creepier than number three on our list (watching your traffic and injecting ads), because at least with number three, your ISP can only see your unencrypted traffic. With Carrier IQ, your ISP could also see what encrypted (HTTPS) UR Ls you visit and record what apps you use.

Simply put, preinstalled software like Carrier IQ gives your ISP a window into everything you do on your phone. While mobile IS Ps may have backed down on using Carrier IQ in the past (and the situation led to a class action lawsuit), you can bet that if the FCC’s privacy rules are rolled back there’ll be IS Ps be eager to start something similar.

But none of these creepy practices holds a candle to the ultimate, creepiest thing IS Ps want to do with your traffic, which is…

1. Injecting undetectable, undeletable tracking cookies in all of your HTTP traffic

Which IS Ps did it before? AT&T, Verizon

The number one creepiest thing on our list of privacy-invasive practices comes courtesy of Verizon (and AT&T, which quickly killed a similar program after Verizon started getting blowback).

Back in 2014 Verizon Wireless decided that it was a good idea to insert supercookies into all of its mobile customers’ traffic. Yes, you read that right—it’s as if some Verizon exec thought “inserting tracking headers into all our customers’ traffic can’t have a down side, can it?" Oh, and, for far too long, they didn’t bother to explicitly tell their customers ahead of time.

But it gets worse. Initially, there was no way for customers to turn this “feature” off. It didn’t matter if you were browsing in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, using a tracker-blocker, or had enabled Do-Not-Track: Verizon ignored all this and inserted a unique identifier into all your unencrypted outbound traffic anyway. According to the FCC, it wasn’t until “two years after Verizon Wireless first began inserting UIDH, that the company updated its privacy policy to disclose its use of UIDH and began to offer consumers the opportunity to opt-out of the insertion of unique identifier headers into their Internet traffic.”

As a result, anyone—not just advertisers—could track you as you browsed the web. Even if you cleared your cookies, advertisers could use Verizon’s tracking header to resurrect them, which led to something called “zombie cookies.” If that doesn’t sound creepy, we don’t know what does.

As you can see, there’s a lot at stake in this fight. The FCC privacy rules congress is trying to kill would limit all of these creepy practices (and even ban some of them outright). So don’t forget to call your senators and representative right now—because if we don’t stop Congress from killing the FCC’s ISP privacy rules now, we may end up with a lot more than five creepy ISP practices in the future.

I have a few problems with that, the first one is how the US is looked after as the precedent for those types of laws abroad, my country went to some internet reform laws and it was drafted exactly like the US internet laws were, in fact they were inspired by it. So anything that furthers deregulates and removes any notion of fairness over the internet service provider's practices isn't exactly something I am not going to take issue with.

The second one is how not only the issue of where our data is, where it is going and how owns it is already blurry, further deregulation will make legal practices that could be potential violation of the user's privacy and create more vulnerable weak spots for data theft and other network attacks like Phishing, specially since the trackers and cookies not only can't be turned off but also carry more data that they shouldn't be carrying and the user doesn't know the extent of the data being broadcasted.

Third, it makes the use of safety and privacy features like ad-block, HTTPS, do-not-track apps and private browsing useless, forcing the user to deal with bloated web browsing because you can no longer effectively block ads, imposed by a service you're already paying for and nullify any protection of the data you have.

The issue of legally adding software exclusively to track and transmit data on mobile devices also opens up room for applications that are essentially a backdoor for companies and maybe governments to access your mobile and see what is in it, all without the user's knowledge and consent.

Inter arma enim silent leges
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#180018: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:26:08 AM

Like I said before, they are welcome to snoop on my Angry Birds: Friends and Words With Friends games if they want. Not sure what value it'll give them...

And I already pretty much have given up on mobile browsing except for sites that I know won't run ads, because mobile browsers are basically unregulated minefields.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
Luigisan98 A wandering user from Venezuelan Muscat Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: I <3 love!
A wandering user
#180020: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:38:13 AM

[up] I would like to see the look of the LGBT traitors' faces who voted for Trump and see how much he played them like a damn fiddle.

The only good fanboy, is a redeemed fanboy.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#180021: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:38:22 AM

That's the thing. I doubt Trump actually hates LGBT people, but he clearly doesn't care. So he has no reason to protect them.

carbon-mantis Collector Of Fine Oddities from Trumpland Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: Married to my murderer
Collector Of Fine Oddities
#180022: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:38:39 AM

The makers of the bogus Planned Parenthood "fetal tissue for sale" video that is so oft-cited by Trump and his ilk are now each facing more than a dozen felony charges.

Their video persuaded Texas to convene a grand jury to pursue charges against planned parenthood, but after reviewing the evidence the jury dropped the case against PP and instead turned on the videomakers themselves and indicted them. The Texas case was forced to be dropped but California is picking it up now.

justhelping Since: Dec, 2016
#180023: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:54:45 AM

Why can't the US have a real conservative party? The GOP right now is without a doubt the shittiest and most incompetent conservative party in the world. I know there are intelligent and policy-making conservatives out there. Where are they? Why can't I vote for them?

edited 29th Mar '17 7:55:36 AM by justhelping

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#180024: Mar 29th 2017 at 7:57:58 AM

Senate Intel Committee May Interview Ex-UK Spy Christopher Steele

The Senate Intelligence Committee is in talks to interview Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who compiled the dossier that alleges a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, three sources with direct knowledge told NBC News.

Senate doing God's work.

New Survey coming this weekend!
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#180025: Mar 29th 2017 at 8:02:01 AM

[up] At this point, I wonder if the Senate could just do all of the investigating, considering the House appears to be Compromised.


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