Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“The two wings of Webb’s primary mirror had been folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket prior to launch. After more than a week of other critical spacecraft deployments, the Webb team began remotely unfolding the hexagonal segments of the primary mirror, the largest ever launched into space,” NASA said in a news release.
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“I believe the companies inhibit it because it gives the companies power, control, over everything. And I guess in a lot of people’s minds, power over others equates to money and profits,” Wozniak said in a video.
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“GETTR has existed as a Chinese language social media network linked to Guo Wengui,” Politico reports. “It was unveiled as a new platform by Jason Miller on Thursday.”
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Washington Post columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler makes the case for iOS Bill of Rights, allowing iPhone owners to break free of Apple’s “walled garden”.
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Ars Technica’s Timothy B. Lee has put together an incredibly good article that reiterates what security researchers and election integrity advocates have known for a long time: online voting is a terrible idea and should not be used for any elections for public office.
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“The novel coronavirus presents an unprecedented challenge for scientists: The speed at which the virus spreads means they must accelerate their research. But this is what the world’s fastest supercomputer was built for.” CNN explains.
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Here’s a roundup of coverage pertaining to Frontier Communications’ plan to sell off all of its assets in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
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“We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes writes, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “It is time to break up Facebook.”
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“Don’t continue to fall for his phony pleas for sympathy, his megalomania, and his well-established promiscuity with the facts,” Michael Weiss says to Assange sympathizers.
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“Members of Congress are fed up with the state of cellphone coverage in the United States, and on Wednesday, they weren’t afraid to lodge their complaints personally — with the leaders of some of the country’s biggest wireless networks,” The Washington Post reports.
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Required reading from the Associated Press’ cybersecurity writer: “Three privately held companies sell and service more than ninety percent of U.S. elections systems. But the companies have long stressed convenience for their customers over product security, security experts and elections officials say.”
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“President Obama’s campaigns used Yubikeys, which are security keys for protecting logins, during both the 2008 and 2012 elections as a defense against hackers, according to Yubico CEO and founder Stina Ehrensvärd.”
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The voting systems many states use are so insecure that children can hack them in just a few minutes, the BBC reports.
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“Though drivers may not realize it, tens of millions of American cars are being monitored,” reports The Washington Post, “and the number increases with nearly every new vehicle that is leased or sold. The result is that carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners’ knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.”
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Via The Associated Press: “The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said Friday.”
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Here’s a translation of what Comcast really meant when its publicity department pledged not to “block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content”
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“Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card? Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.”
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“Wiping out net neutrality would have big consequences,” writes Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “Without it, your broadband provider could carve internet access into fast and slow lanes, favoring the traffic of online platforms that have made special payments and consigning all others to a bumpy road. Your provider would have the power to choose which voices online to amplify and which to censor. The move could affect everything online, including the connections we make and the communities we create.”
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I am not aware of any law against reviewing food and describing it using the name of the company from which it was procured. Some
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“Major technology companies and civil liberties groups have joined Facebook in a closed courtroom battle over secret government access to social media records,” reports The Washington Post’s Ann Marimow.
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Action item: Visit GoFCCYourself.com. Click “Express” and demand the FCC to “keep strong net neutrality rules backed by Title II.”
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