A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: news

Jul 02 2011
Mark Twain, probably

MSNBC’s PhotoBlog posted this photo taken by Mel Evans of the AP. The two gentlemen are Michael Aron and Jim Hooker, and this was taken as they signed off the final news broadcast of the New Jersey Network on Thursday, June 30. Teresa Masterson of NBC Philadelphia:

State-owned television network New Jersey Network will permanently go dark Friday, after more than a year’s fight against Gov. Chris Christie and the N.J. Senate’s decision to get out of the television business.

At midnight on Friday NJN will turn into NJTV, controlled by WNET, a New York television station. WHYY will also have control of five of NJN’s radio transmitters, reports WHYY’s Newsworks.org.

Christie decided a year ago that state funds should not be used to run a television station, which has been reporting news to the area for the past 40 years. The New Jersey Assembly rejected the proposal, but the state senate let the resolution to privatize NJN go through.

…

Under the deal with New Jersey, WNET will broadcast 20 hours a week of New Jersey-centric programming.

Many fear that with the loss of NJN’s hyper-local news coverage of the state of New Jersey, New Jerseyans will now have to depend on out-of-state news organizations to cover their state.

“As Benjamin Franklin said, we’re a barrel tapped at both ends: Philadelphia and New York,” NJN producer Michael Curtis told Newsworks. “No one tells the New Jersey story. We cover only New Jersey and why it’s important. We’re the information source for 8 million people. Now that story’s gone.”

I’m not really sure how I feel about this, since all the public television networks I’ve been familiar with over the years have never been state-owned. There’s really no good way to spin 130 lost jobs.

I wasn’t planning on posting anything about this, but something about that photo stuck with me.

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Jun 29 2011
Mark Twain, probably

NRC and industry rewrite nuke history

NRC and industry rewrite nuke history

When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story — insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows.

…

Regulators and industry now contend that the 40-year limit was chosen for economic reasons and to satisfy antitrust concerns, not for safety issues. They contend that a nuclear plant has no technical limit on its life.

But an AP review of historical records, along with interviews with engineers who helped develop nuclear power, shows just the opposite: Reactors were made to last only 40 years. Period.

…

In 1982, D. Clark Gibbs, chairman of the licensing and safety committee of an early industry group, wrote to the NRC that “most nuclear power plants, including those operating, under construction or planned for the future, are designed for a duty cycle which corresponds to a 40-year life.”

And three years later, when Illinois Power Co. sought a license for its Clinton station, utility official D.W. Wilson told the NRC on behalf of his company’s nuclear licensing department that “all safety margins were established with the understanding of the limitations that are imposed by a 40-year design life.”

Weeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllp. I am not a nuclear power alarmist, but shit like this does not help your credibility at all guys. Really. Cut it out.

Also, thumbs up to the Associated Press National Investigative Team for doing actual, real reporting on an issue related to nuclear power.

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Jun 15 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Nissan LEAF leaks position, speed information via its RSS reader

Nissan LEAF leaks position, speed information via its RSS reader

The Nissan LEAF all-electric car is full of technological firsts. One of which is a GSM cellular connection to the internet for providing voluntary telemetry information to Nissan, new charging stations, competitive driver rankings, and even RSS feeds. This is called Nissan CARWINGS.

Apparently when CARWINGS checks RSS feeds, it sends a bunch of parameters in the query string. Parameters like these:

“lat” and “lon” variables contain the current position of the vehicle, “speed” is the vehicle speed, “car_dir” is the direction of the car, and “lat_dst” and “lon_dst” is your destination configured in your navigation system”

All of these lovely values are being provided to any third party RSS provider you configure: CNN, Fox News, Weather Channel, it doesn’t matter!

Oh dear.

On the upside, this post does contain a demo of a cool location-based weather RSS feed, so uh, I guess it’s not all bad news for Nissan. (It’s all bad news for Nissan.)

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Jun 10 2011
Mark Twain, probably

SEC stops Web campaign to buy beer company

SEC stops Web campaign to buy beer company

Note that the title I have given this post is not the same as the title of the article, written by Marcy Gordon of the AP. I have redacted a pun for your protection.

It seemed like an innovative way to buy a beer company: Start an online campaign to purchase the iconic Pabst Brewing Co. and sell shares on Facebook and Twitter to cover the $300 million cost.

Michael Migliozzi II and Brian William Flatow found 5 million people who said they would invest a total of $200 million. But the federal government halted the venture after it informed the two men of one major oversight – they neglected to register the public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a violation of federal law.

…

By law, public stock offerings must be registered with the SEC before their promoters begin to sell shares. When they register to sell shares in a company, they must provide information about the company’s financial condition and other data to help investors decide whether they should buy in.

Genius! Except for that pesky thing where we live in a country with regulations.

Migliozzi and Flatow spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. And they created the BuyaBeerCompany.com web site, which included a countdown timer showing how much money had been pledged.

Prospective investors were told to hold off sending money until the company had $300 million in pledges. Once they reached that goal, promoters would contact them to collect the money and proceed to buy Pabst. In return, investors would receive a certificate of ownership and beer equal in value to what they had contributed.

SOLD

The SEC has an entire enforcement unit devoted to Internet surveillance with a staff of more than 200 people. The CyberForce has flagged numerous instances of unregistered securities sales online.

Colin:
Hell yeah.
Colin:
Securities fraud. Cyber securities fraud.
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Jun 10 2011
Mark Twain, probably

French media tweet and poke ban

French media tweet and poke ban

French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.

The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.

Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.

…

In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.

“Whereas the referral by naming the social network in question has the character of advertising, contrary to the provisions of Article 9 of the decree of 27 March 1992 forbidding covert advertising.”

Crack reporting from the BBC’s Department of Things You Can’t Make Up.

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Jun 04 2011
Mark Twain, probably

British spies to terrorists: make cupcakes not war

British spies to terrorists: make cupcakes not war

So that title of this article by Paisley Dodds of the AP is pretty terrible. But only because the actual gist of the story is somehow even better:

Britain’s spy agencies have a new message for terrorists: make cupcakes, not war.

Intelligence agents managed to hack into the extremist Inspire magazine, replacing its bombmaking instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

…

The quarterly online magazine, which is sent to websites and email addresses as a pdf file, had offered an original page titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” in one of its editions last year. The magazine’s pages were corrupted, however, and the instructions replaced with the cupcake recipe.

Colin:
Basically they should just hire LulzSecurity.
Colin:
And other 4chan-related hacking groups.
Colin:
“Alright go hack the bad guys instead of sony”
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Jun 02 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Using viruses to target drug-resistant bacteria

Using viruses to target drug-resistant bacteria

Look a post that has nothing to do with video games! No wait come back —

We are losing the war against infectious bacteria. They are becoming increasingly resistant to our antibiotics, and we have few new drugs in the pipeline. Worse still, bacteria can transfer genes between each other with great ease, so if one of them evolves to resist an antibiotic, its neighbours can pick up the same ability. But Matti Jalasvuori from the University of Jyvaskyla doesn’t see this microscopic arms-dealing as a problem. He sees it as a target.

…

Bacteriophages (or “phages” for short) are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, and some of them specialise on those that carry plasmids. These bacteria may be able to resist antibiotics, but against the phages, their resistance is futile.

It seems to be pretty effective. (Don’t miss the moment of refreshing honestly and humility from a researcher featured in the popular press.)

(Via Lukas Mathis.)

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May 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Legal reasoning called absurd in Nevada special congressional election

Legal reasoning called absurd in Nevada special congressional election

As you may have heard, one of the Senators from my state of Nevada, John Ensign, resigned earlier this month amid an affair and possible ethics violations. His seat was quickly filled by our governor through appointment of Dean Heller, one of our House members. Heller’s House seat was then to be filled by a special election, which our Secretary of State is organizing.

I haven’t really been paying attention to it that much but apparently there’s been a bit of a ruckus over how he’s handling said election:

The legal reasoning used by the state’s top election official to determine how candidates will be chosen for a special election to fill Nevada’s vacant U.S. House seat was “unreasonable and absurd,” a state judge said Monday.

…

Secretary of State Ross Miller said the Sept. 13 special election would be an open contest, with the 2nd Congressional District seat going to the candidate who gets the most votes.

Okay, well, I’m not entirely sure how that qualifies as capricious.

But he also set different rules for minor political parties and independent candidates, who would have to be designated by their party executive committee or file a petition with signatures of 100 registered voters to get on the ballot.

Oh, huh. There you go.

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May 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Study: Whites Believe Declining Prejudice Against Blacks Comes At Their Expense

Study: Whites Believe Declining Prejudice Against Blacks Comes At Their Expense

Those who have privilege often mistakenly name the erosion of that privilege “discrimination” rather than “equality”.

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May 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

US Supreme Court orders California prisoner release

US Supreme Court orders California prisoner release

Breaking news from Reuters:

The Supreme Court Monday ordered California to release tens of thousands of inmates or take other steps to ease overcrowding in its prisons to prevent “needless suffering and death.”

By a 5-4 vote, the high court told the nation’s largest state prison system to sharply cut its inmate population in stages over two years in one of the biggest prison release orders in U.S. history.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court majority that the medical and mental health care provided by California’s prisons had fallen below the standard of decency required by the Constitution.

Kennedy cited suicidal inmates being held for prolonged periods in telephone booth-sized cages, backlogs of up to 700 prisoners waiting to see a doctor for care and as many as 54 inmates sharing a single toilet.

Yowza.

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