Salon.com > Facebook http://www.salon.com Wed, 03 Jul 2013 01:14:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Poet takes revolution from Facebook to the world http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/poet_takes_revolution_from_facebook_to_the_world/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/poet_takes_revolution_from_facebook_to_the_world/#comments Sun, 30 Jun 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13325803 “The official media is so ignorant about what happens in Syria,” says poet Maram Al-Masri. “Civilians are in a very bad situation.” Her goal for her most recent collection, published in May, is to bring what Syrians are saying on social media to the world, even as the nation plunges deeper into chaos.

 Since January 2013 the UNHCR has registered almost 1 million Syrian refugees – an average of 250,000 people each month. Officials acknowledge that the real number of refugees is probably much higher. In addition, more than 4 million people have been internally displaced. According to the CIA World Factbook, Syria’s population is around 22 million people, meaning nearly 30 percent of Syrians have been displaced by the current violence. “I’m working in my poetry to tell the truth about my people” says Al-Masri. “The outsiders are stealing the revolution from Syrians. Hezbollah and foreign extremists are getting involved. I want the international community to give my people medicine and milk, help them survive. What can poetry do in front of all this murder? If the poet doesn’t speak, who will do it? Poetry is about freedom; it has always been about freedom.” 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/poet_takes_revolution_from_facebook_to_the_world/feed/ 0 Social media’s wildest 24 hours http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/social_medias_wildest_24_hours/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/social_medias_wildest_24_hours/#comments Wed, 26 Jun 2013 19:27:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13338043 For 24 hours, the world of social media rocked like a roller coaster off its tracks. The outbursts of rage over the Supreme Court's decision to annul a key section of the Voting Rights Act Tuesday morning had barely subsided before environmentalists began obsessively tweeting every nuance of President Obama's climate change speech a few hours later. As afternoon became evening, Wendy Davis' filibuster in the Texas Legislature became a legend-in-the-making, complete with a stunning chaotic denouement watched in real time streaming video by hundreds of thousands. The following morning, a rolling tide of ecstasy and joy swept across the Internet within seconds of the news that the Supreme Court had ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

Of course, I should be clear: This was my world of social media. We are filtered by whom we follow and friend. If I associated with a different motley crew, the cries of joy and rage could easily flip places. Social conservatives believe that what happened in Texas Wednesday night was a travesty of democracy and that Jesus is weeping in dismay over the prospect of a flood of gay marriage in California. And they're on Twitter too.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/26/social_medias_wildest_24_hours/feed/ 2 Mormons to use technology in missionary work http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/mormons_to_use_technology_in_missionary_work_2_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/mormons_to_use_technology_in_missionary_work_2_ap/#comments Tue, 25 Jun 2013 21:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13336831 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The common image of Mormon missionaries has long been two young men wearing white shirts and ties walking through neighborhoods, knocking door-to-door.

But in a few years, that image may be replaced by one of young Mormons sitting with an iPad, typing messages on Facebook.

Recognizing the world has changed, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leaders announced Sunday night that missionaries will do less door-to-door proselytizing, and instead, use the Internet to recruit new church members.

The strategy shift reflects the growing importance of social media and people's preference to connect over sites such as Facebook rather than opening their homes to strangers, church leaders said.

"The way in which we fulfill our responsibilities to share the gospel must adapt to a changing world," said Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during a presentation to mission presidents in Provo, Utah, that was broadcast worldwide.

The move is the latest example of the LDS church's gradual embrace of the digital age, and a recognition that door-to-door proselytizing is not the most effective way to expand church membership, church scholars said.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/mormons_to_use_technology_in_missionary_work_2_ap/feed/ 1 Are you ready for Buddha 2.0? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/24/are_you_ready_for_buddha_2_0/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/24/are_you_ready_for_buddha_2_0/#comments Mon, 24 Jun 2013 15:47:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13335338 Does the Dalai Lama have a position on Facebook?

That's just one of the questions my mind wandered to after reading Noah Shachtman's terrific new Wired story on meditation, enlightenment and Silicon Valley: "Enlightenment Engineers: Meditation and mindfulness are the new rage in Silicon Valley. And it's not just about inner peace -- it's about getting ahead."

A few selected gems:

  • "The technology community of Northern California wants return on its investment in meditation. 'All the woo-woo mystical stuff, that’s really retrograde,' says Kenneth Folk, an influential meditation teacher in San Francisco. 'This is about training the brain and stirring up the chemical soup inside.'”
  • "Buddhists have been preaching for centuries that we are all fundamentally interconnected, that the differences between us literally do not exist. That is the basis of Buddhist compassion. And there is no place where this interconnectedness is more obviously revealed than on Facebook."
  • "The source code for spiritual awakening is open to anyone."
  • "Steve Jobs spent lots of time in a lotus position; he still paid slave wages to his contract laborers, berated subordinates, and parked his car in handicapped stalls."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/24/are_you_ready_for_buddha_2_0/feed/ 7 App of the Week: Pause http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/app_of_the_week_pause/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/app_of_the_week_pause/#comments Sun, 23 Jun 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13333630 Can I make my iPhone eat its own tail? I've been obsessed with this question ever since I learned of the existence of Pause, an app that boldly encourages users to "Pause the digital. Start the real."

Never mind the philosophical quandary one confronts when grappling with the notion that just because something is "digital" it is not "real." If we are sent mean texts, do we not bleed? If that Facebook status update tickles us, do we not laugh?

More to the point, Pause is an app designed to make you use your smartphone less. Which leads us straight into the jaws of paradox. By using Pause, we acknowledge that we are spending too much time on our phones. But our mechanism for controlling this character flaw is another app that we must download onto our phone? Pause's purpose is to get you to spend less time on such things as Pause. This is discombobulating.

Pause is painfully simple. Load the app, pick a set amount of minutes in which you will do something "real" (like go for a bike ride, or write a blog post about an app) and then switch your phone to Airplane Mode. An alarm will ring when your time is up and you can rejoin the wireless world.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/app_of_the_week_pause/feed/ 2 Are Google and Microsoft buying their way out of net neutrality? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/are_google_and_microsoft_buying_their_way_out_of_net_neutrality_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/are_google_and_microsoft_buying_their_way_out_of_net_neutrality_partner/#comments Fri, 21 Jun 2013 17:26:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13333148 The Daily Dot

For those of you who believe in net neutrality, the practice of insulating the Internet against the influence of private corporations and making certain a user’s connection speed isn’t dependent on his or her tax bracket, we’ve got some bad news for you. 

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, large corporations including Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are paying major ISPs to get faster connections.

That could mean, quite simply, if you don’t use these companies, with their greased rails, your Internet connection might suck. Worse than usual, that is. But there are other implications as well.

Netflix, whose need for big tubes in that series of tubes is obvious, has been trying to get broadband companies to allow them to connect specialized equipment to reduce the stutter in Web video. The reaction from those companies? Pay us.

Already Comcast receives $25-30 million per year for expedited access—a fast lane, let’s say. Not a huge amount given the size of the company, in fact about 0.1 percent of its yearly revenues, but a clear precedent.

But isn’t this the very thing the U.S. government’s “open Internet” rules guard against? Only in spirit. The letter of the law remains quite unravished.

Current Federal Communications Commission rules disallow the prioritizing of one company’s traffic over another on a given provider’s "last mile" of line into a consumer’s home. The rest of the route seems to resemble the Wild West, the rules for which are vague at best.

It isn’t just consumer choice that is limited when net neutrality is abandoned, say its proponents. It also raises the barriers to entry for new online companies. This issue is likely to grow more urgent as more and more companies compete to bring on-demand entertainment to consumers’ homes, with estimates of Internet video doubling by 2017.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/are_google_and_microsoft_buying_their_way_out_of_net_neutrality_partner/feed/ 3 Facebook to add video to Instagram http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_to_add_video_to_instagram_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_to_add_video_to_instagram_ap/#comments Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13332082 NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook is adding a video service to its popular photo-sharing app Instagram, following in the heels of Twitter's growing video-sharing app, Vine.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says users will be able to record 15-second clips by tapping a video icon on the app. They can also apply filters to the videos to add contrast, make them black and white or different hues.

Vine, which launched in January, has 13 million users. Instagram has 100 million users, up from 20 million when Facebook bought the company more than a year ago.

If users like it, Facebook's move could propel mobile video sharing into the mainstream.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_to_add_video_to_instagram_ap/feed/ 0 Facebook security chief joined NSA in 2010 http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_security_chief_joined_nsa_in_2010/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_security_chief_joined_nsa_in_2010/#comments Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:59:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13331833 The New York Times revealed Thursday an interesting detail about Silicon Valley and government employment history: Facebook's former chief security officer now works for the NSA. The news serves as further erosion to the line in the sand, tenuously etched between tech giants like Facebook, Google and Yahoo and the intelligence agencies to which they provide vast swathes of user data daily. The NYT reported:

When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.

Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.

... Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/20/facebook_security_chief_joined_nsa_in_2010/feed/ 1 Internet trolls love feminist writers http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/internet_trolls_biggest_target_feminist_writers_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/internet_trolls_biggest_target_feminist_writers_partner/#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:25:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13330700 PolicyMicWhat is it like to be a woman on the internet? More specifically, what is it like to be a feminist woman on the internet? From the amount of hateful, sexist, and outright violent messages I and many feminist activists and writers receive on a daily basis, it’s not easy.

As a white, straight, middle-class, able-bodied, cisgender woman, I know that because of the myriad privileged identities that I hold, the attacks I receive often pale in comparison to others. And yet, every time I submit a piece or send a tweet, I brace myself for the reality that some of the ensuing responses will be incredibly sexist and demeaning, perhaps even violent. It seems that being a woman who speaks her mind about injustice is unacceptable for many inhabitants of the internet.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/internet_trolls_biggest_target_feminist_writers_partner/feed/ 176 About that braggart on the train: What she should have done http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/about_that_braggart_on_the_train_what_she_should_have_done/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/about_that_braggart_on_the_train_what_she_should_have_done/#comments Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13326768 Dear Reader,

Some stuff makes you feel dirty. Like this Steph Strayer/ Man Bragging about Cheating on his Wife on Commuter Train/ Facebook Photo Posting Gone Viral/ Public Shaming/ Ethical Slugfest/ Gender Resentment Cesspool/ Mom Strikes Back at Dirtbag Pig Man thing.

After a week of that I feel like an old rabbi in a raincoat shuffling out of a peep show. It had everything.

So what was it about this episode that caught our emotions?

  • Fear of being in a similar situation. Many of us don’t trust our spouses. It’s a primal fear that the person we sleep with will be somebody else out there. Think of those commuter train scenes in “Mad Men.”
  • Solidarity with the woman for striking out. Women are powerless and mistreated in a thousand different ways every day and it feels good to see one strike out.
  • Satisfaction at a man getting his just deserts. Many of us have been bullied and it feels good to see some guy get it in the neck.

The narrative is deliciously compelling. Why? Because it involves:

  • The powerless taking power
  • An annoying person getting his comeuppance

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/about_that_braggart_on_the_train_what_she_should_have_done/feed/ 51 My first Father’s Day without my father http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/my_first_fathers_day_without_my_father_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/my_first_fathers_day_without_my_father_partner/#comments Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13326481 ProPublica My sister and I took our positions in the funeral home's family room and greeted hundreds of mourners who had come to pay their respects. Everything seemed as it had four months earlier at our mother's funeral. The ubiquitous tissue boxes. My navy pinstriped suit. The ripped black ribbon, a Jewish tradition, affixed to my lapel.

But this time, we were accepting condolences after the death of our dad, who stood next to us such a short time before.

It's hard enough to lose one parent. Losing two within months is incomprehensible. When I left my parents' Michigan apartment last month, I couldn't believe it would be for the last time. I've replayed phone messages so that I could hear their voices again. And each morning, I look at Dad's watch on my wrist, thinking it should be on his.

Two days before my dad died, I celebrated the first Mother's Day without my mom. Now, I'm marking the first Father's Day without my dad.

As I've mourned my parents, I've been struck by how many stories I've heard about husbands and wives dying soon after their spouses. One of my high school teachers lost both parents within a year; so did a journalist friend in Los Angeles. My rabbi told me his parents died only months apart.

My mom buried both of her parents within the same week in April 1979, when I was 5. My zaydee died first, unable to fathom life without his wife, who lay dying in the hospital. My bubbe died during his funeral two days later.

I wondered whether there was more to this than coincidence, and sure enough, there's a well-documented "widowhood effect." Those who lose a spouse are about 40 percent more likely to die within six months than those with living spouses. The effect has been found in a host of countries, across a range of ages, in widows and in widowers – though men are more likely to die soon after losing spouses than women are.

S.V. Subramanian, a professor of population health and geography at Harvard University, co-wrote a review published in 2011 that looked at more than a dozen studies on the effect. "We never say that grief is a disease," he told me. "But what some of this research is showing is that at older ages, grief can make you more vulnerable to mortality."

Subramanian said his uncle's parents died within days of one another.

There are a variety of theories about why this happens. Perhaps it's the emotional toll – the grief that accompanies a broken heart. Perhaps there's a practical explanation – a wife or husband may have provided support in the form of reminders to take medication. Perhaps it's that a surviving spouse may be less active and feel less of a sense of responsibility after a partner is gone, contributing to a decline in health.

For my dad, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, his heartbreak was evident from the start. I'd never seen him cry as he did in the minutes after we disconnected the ventilator keeping my mother alive back in January. He typically kept his emotions well contained, and it was agonizing to watch him overcome by grief.

"My sweet, sweet wife of 42 1/2 years has just passed," he wrote on Facebook hours later. "She was a wonderful wife, mother, and grandma. There is a hole in my heart."

Then he stopped talking about it. He changed topics when my sister and I asked how he was coping. Instead, he talked of moving to the Jewish senior apartments, going on a dialysis cruise, starting a new business, visiting our family in New Jersey.

My dad's health problems may have caught up with him even if my mom hadn't died. He had heart disease, diabetes, renal failure and congestive heart failure. Last summer, his heart stopped and he had to be on a ventilator, but he pulled through.

Whether by coincidence or not, his health began to slide further after my mom's death. He fell in the bathroom and cut his foot, a problem for diabetics like him. When the toes didn't heal properly, he had to have them amputated.

He joked that he and his toes had had a good run and wondered if the toe fairy would come for a visit.

My father maintained his humor even on the morning of his death. When my sister called to ask him, "Who's the best dad in the world?" he responded, "I don't know, but when you find him, can you have him give me a call so I can get some pointers?"

I can't help but think about the pain behind that facade – how much he missed my mom, the woman he shared his life with and relied on for more than four decades.

In the end, I was relieved that my sister and I didn't have to decide whether to disconnect life support, a decision that caused so much anguish and pain in my mom's final days. My dad died quickly: He went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived. He was 68.

There's some solace in the idea that my parents are together again. But that doesn't make this Father's Day any easier.

I'll cherish the time with my wife and kids. We'll probably go for bagels, as we do every weekend, and maybe we'll head to the Jersey Shore. I wish that I could share the day's highlights with my dad. I want to tell him that his 6-year-old grandson has learned how to play checkers (and is actually decent) and that our 3-year-old is building symmetrical Lego spaceships. I want him to know that the baby boy my wife is expecting in November seems to be doing well.

Could I have made more of my time with my parents? Will my children remember them? How I can live a life worthy of their legacy? If I can be as kind and generous a parent as they were, that will be a start.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/my_first_fathers_day_without_my_father_partner/feed/ 5 Now the dead can send Facebook messages too http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/if_i_die_facebook_app_erases_digital_footprint_post_mortem_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/if_i_die_facebook_app_erases_digital_footprint_post_mortem_partner/#comments Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13326474 The Tyee As a little girl, Jamie Cuthbertson, now 26, had a fear of being eaten by insects -- spiders especially. After her 17-year-old cousin was killed by a drunk driver, young Jamie's thoughts turned to her own mortality. She talked with her mother Pauline about how she could keep the carnivorous insects out of her coffin when she died.

Soon after, she declared to her parents at their Brampton, Ontario home that she'd come up with a solution to her phagophobia.

"I want to be cremated," she said. "That way I don't have to worry about the bugs eating me."

Jim Cuthbertson looked down at his 10-year-old daughter and reluctantly told her that there are also bugs that live in and feed on ashes.

Sixteen years later, this memory re-surfaced as Jamie sat down to prepare what will be her last digital will and testament using the If I Die app.

The resulting three-minute video shows Jamie smiling into her webcam, her long bangs framing her dark brown eyes. "A bug-proof coffin is totally worth it," she says. "You can also throw in some of my favourite things and photos of the people and animals I loved."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/if_i_die_facebook_app_erases_digital_footprint_post_mortem_partner/feed/ 1 PRISM software works just like Facebook ads http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/prism_software_is_technically_the_same_as_tailored_facebook_ads_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/prism_software_is_technically_the_same_as_tailored_facebook_ads_partner/#comments Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13326747 International Business Times

The National Security Agency has been involved in intelligence-gathering schemes since its inception in 1949, but 21st century technology has advanced far beyond the wiretap and the codebook. Modern intelligence gathering, like the recently unveiled PRISM program, is the product of the “big data” era.

“There’s nothing surprising technically” about programs like PRISM, data-mining expert and KDNuggets editor Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro said in a phone interview.

Most technology experts can’t speak with too much certainty about a program they haven’t seen, like PRISM, but based on publicly available information, something like PRISM has been possible for years. The same innovations in software and hardware that aid your Google query or help advertisers track your habits online -- like when you examine a book on Amazon and then see an ad for that book pop up later on Facebook -- also allow the NSA to sort through reportedly tens of billions of pieces of information a month.

One of the major components of PRISM is believed to be an open-source database called Apache Accumulo, which the NSA began working on in late 2007. Originally called CloudBase, Accumulo is built on top of a software framework called Apache Hadoop and is similar to Google’s BigTable storage system. (If you would like to buy Accumulo for yourself, some of the developers that worked on the project with the NSA sell a commercial version through their company.

“Accumulo’s ability to handle data in a variety of formats -- a characteristic called ‘schemaless’ in database jargon -- means the NSA can store data from numerous sources all within the database and add new analytic capabilities in days or even hours,” Derrick Harris wrote for GigaOM.

Some of the other advances aren’t necessarily of the hardware or software variety. The science of studying networks has been growing by leaps and bounds, allowing analysts to tease relationships from seemingly unrelated data points.

“If the NSA just has the metadata -- who calls whom -- that’s sufficient to determine the status of people,” Piatetsky-Shapiro said. “You don’t necessarily need the conversation if you have the network.”

Piatetsky-Shapiro pointed to a humorous Slate article published Monday that imagined British agents flagging Paul Revere as a person of interest based on his relationships with other colonial independence agitators.

“Rest assured that we only collected metadata on these people, and no actual conversations were recorded or meetings transcribed,” Duke University sociologist Kieran Healy wrote for Slate. “All I know is whether someone was a member of an organization or not. Surely this is but a small encroachment on the freedom of the Crown’s subjects.”

The leaks have also highlighted the degree to which almost all Internet communication is part of a giant interconnected and tangled web. For example, online, the difference between a foreign communication -- which the NSA might flag, and a domestic one, which it shouldn't, can sometimes get a little hazy.

“One interesting tidbit from the Guardian leaks is how much the U.S. is the center of global communications,” Piatetsky-Shapiro said. Internet communications often “take the cheapest route.” So, because the U.S. has so much available capacity, an email from, say, Pakistan to Canada, could be routed through America.

When one imagines how the NSA might go about analyzing the content from all the different types of communications it has stored, a line of spooks in a darkened room poring over emails is not what comes to mind these days. The customer service industry is already using language-processing algorithms to break down spoken and written sentences. By breaking down sentence structures and weighing the words contained in any of the various modes of communication, it’s possible for a program to organize messages by “intent.” It’s not too big a leap to assume that whatever actual conversations the NSA does capture would be sifted by a similar algorithm.

“If that stuff’s being used in the commercial world, it’s logical to assume they’d be using it as well,” Forrester Research analyst Glenn O’Donnell said in a phone interview.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/prism_software_is_technically_the_same_as_tailored_facebook_ads_partner/feed/ 2 Netflix, Facebook — and the NSA: They’re all in it together http://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/netflix_facebook_and_the_nsa_theyre_all_in_it_together/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/netflix_facebook_and_the_nsa_theyre_all_in_it_together/#comments Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:28:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13325324 On June 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that for the last few years the National Security Agency has been relying on a software program "with the quirky name Hadoop" to help it make sense of its enormous collections of data. Named after a toy elephant that belonged to the child of one of the original developers of the program, "Hadoop," reported the Journal, is a crucial part of "a computing and software revolution ... a piece of free software that lets users distribute big-data projects across hundreds or thousands of computers."

"Revolution" is probably the most overused word in the chronicle of Internet history, but if anything, the Wall Street Journal undersold the real story. Hadoop's importance to how we live our lives today is hard to overstate. By making it economically feasible to extract meaning from the massive streams of data that increasingly define our online existence, Hadoop effectively enabled the surveillance state.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/netflix_facebook_and_the_nsa_theyre_all_in_it_together/feed/ 26 Facebook rolls out hashtags http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/facebook_introduces_hashtags_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/facebook_introduces_hashtags_ap/#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13324696 NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook is introducing hashtags, the number signs used on Twitter, Instagram and other services to identify topics being discussed and allow users to search for them.

Facebook Inc. said in a blog post Wednesday that users will be able to click a hashtag to see a feed of discussions about a particular topic. For example, typing a number sign in front of "ladygaga" or "sunset" will turn the words into a link that users can click on to find posts about Lady Gaga or sunsets.

Facebook said hashtags are a first step toward making it easier for users to find out what others are discussing. The company is not giving exact details about other tools it might introduce. If Twitter's use of hashtags is any indication, Facebook will likely incorporate them into its advertising business.

"We'll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world's conversations," wrote Greg Lindley, product manager for hashtags, in the post.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/facebook_introduces_hashtags_ap/feed/ 3 Google bolsters mapping service, purchases Waze http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/google_bolsters_mapping_service_purchases_waze_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/google_bolsters_mapping_service_purchases_waze_ap/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13323702 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Google is buying online mapping service Waze in a $1.03 billion deal that keeps a potentially valuable tool away from its rivals while allowing it to gain technology that could improve the accuracy and usefulness of its own popular navigation system.

The acquisition announced Tuesday ends several months of speculation as Waze flirted with potential buyers interested in its rapidly growing service. Waze blends elements of a social network into its maps to produce more precise directions and more reliable information about local traffic conditions.

Google Inc. is believed to have trumped two of its fiercest foes, Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., in the bidding for Waze, which is based in Israel but also maintains a Palo Alto, Calif., office near all three of the Silicon Valley giants.

"We evaluated many options and believe Google is the best partner," Waze CEO Noam Bardin wrote in a Tuesday blog post.

Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but The Associated Press confirmed the sale price with a person familiar with the negotiations. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the matter. Google isn't expected to disclose the price until it discusses the transaction in a formal regulatory filing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/google_bolsters_mapping_service_purchases_waze_ap/feed/ 0 European leaders express outrage, but are they really OK with letting the NSA “do their dirty work”? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/compliance_and_outrage_europes_complicated_relationship_with_nsa_spying/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/compliance_and_outrage_europes_complicated_relationship_with_nsa_spying/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:08:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13323169 European leaders have been swift and vocal in expressing concern over the National Security Agency's sprawling surveillance and hoarding of communications data inside and coming from the U.S. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated she will bring up the issue of European communications swept into the dragnet when she meets with President Obama next week; the Guardian highlighted comments registering outrage from politicians and officials around the world. The AP reported that on Tuesday, the European Parliament will discuss the revelations with the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm.

“We have always been firm on data protection within the EU and when negotiating with third countries, including the U.S.,” said caucus leader Guy Verhofstadt of the Alde group of liberal parties. “It would be unacceptable and would need swift action from the EU, if indeed the U.S. National Security Agency were processing European data without permission.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/compliance_and_outrage_europes_complicated_relationship_with_nsa_spying/feed/ 2 Why is the NSA spying on PalTalk? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/why_is_the_nsa_spying_on_paltalk_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/why_is_the_nsa_spying_on_paltalk_partner/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13322772 The Daily Dot There was something amiss about the National Security Administration’s description of their tactics and targets in scanning Internet data, as related by the Washington Post: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” Eight of these brands are (in)famous. One is not.

Just what is PalTalk, and why are intelligence agencies listening in on it?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/why_is_the_nsa_spying_on_paltalk_partner/feed/ 7 Down with free parking! http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/#comments Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13320721 OnEarth In the multi-level parking garage that sits directly across the street from where I’m typing these words, in the heart of Manhattan’s business-filled Flatiron District, an hour of parking will set you back $27.03. I’m told by the friendly attendant there that he almost always has spaces available. Still, if you’re willing to drive around for a while and hunt for a hard-to-find metered spot on the street, you might be able to zoom your way into one just as its previous occupant is zooming out of it.

To celebrate your accomplishment, you really should treat yourself to lunch. I’d recommend the house-ground wagyu beef cheeseburger with triple crème Brie and caramelized onion aioli at Alison Eighteen, a nearby restaurant -- though at $17, it doesn’t come cheap. Still, with the amount of money you just saved by parking at a $3.50-per-hour spot on the street, you’ll have no trouble covering the lunch bill. And while you’re savoring your $23.53 in savings, as well as the last of your “frites” (they don’t call them “fries” when you’re paying this much for them), ponder this question: What, do you suppose, is the “fair market value” of a one-hour parking spot in this part of town?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/down_with_free_parking_partner/feed/ 5 Rand Paul vows to take NSA spying to SCOTUS http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/rand_paul_vows_to_take_nsa_spying_to_scotus/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/rand_paul_vows_to_take_nsa_spying_to_scotus/#comments Sun, 09 Jun 2013 14:18:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13321277 On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY., his libertarian tendencies in top gear, vowed to to challenge the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance powers in the Supreme Court through a class-action lawsuit.

"I’m going to be asking all of the Internet providers, all of the phone companies, to ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe things will change in Washington,” Paul said.

Here's where Paul's free market libertarianism falls short, though: Although Internet giants like Facebook and Google have denied their participation in the top secret PRISM program, these firms have an established history of acquiescing to government demands for user data. Paul's idea that tech corporations will join en masse misses the cemented practice of communications corporations working in cahoots with government efforts to render every individual trackable. Perhaps, however, Paul's gambit will pay off if  Internet providers and phone companies believe the public relations benefits of fighting the NSA outweigh the burden of public outrage at the government's sprawling dragnet.

Via Fox News Sunday:

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