“A dangerous bill called the CLOUD Act would allow police at home and abroad to seize cross-border data without following the privacy rules where the data is stored.”
Read more: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/new-backdoor-around-fourth-amendment-cloud-act
“The Chinese Communist Party on Sunday proposed to abolish the two-term term limit for the president and vice-president, sparking an online backlash which it has been trying to control. Critics flooded Weibo and WeChat — China’s version of Twitter and WhatsApp — to protest the plan, but were swiftly met by the country’s censors. Various Chinese characters for terms like ’emigrate,’ ‘lifelong,’ and ‘I disagree’ were banned, alongside … the letter N.”
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-banned-letter-n-internet-114000473.html
“The nation state has survived wars, plagues, and upheaval, but it won’t survive digital nomads, not if people like Karoli Hindriks have something to say about it.”
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/digital-nomads-are-hiring-and-firing-their-governments/
“The world is a wonderful place, full of opportunity, and it is only getting better. So here are the facts to keep in mind every time the media, politicians, and your peers start dragging you into the pit of despair.”
“New South Wales’ authorities deactivated the card under Meow-Meow’s name after his surgery in April 2017 made headlines. However, since the chip implanted in his hand wasn’t registered to him, he was able to use it for almost a whole year — only downside was that he sometimes had to swipe his palm over the scanner more than once. It was only after he traveled back to Australia from a cyborg convention in the US that authorities were successfully able to cut off the card he’s been using.”
Read more: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/15/implanted-transit-pass-deactivated-australia/
“It took just a minute or two to launch the drone, fly it to the rescue site, and drop the pod. Any other day, reaching the teenagers could easily have taken three times as long. The drone’s camera also recorded the whole rescue.”
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-42731112
“Data centers may use more energy than all of the country’s homes in 2018, Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson from Icelandic energy company HS Orka told the BBC. Bitcoin mining thrives in Iceland, where energy is cheap, and internet connections use super fast fiber-optic networks. Additionally, Iceland’s cold climate plays an important role in ensuring crypto utilities don’t overheat.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-bitcoin-mines-are-booming-2018-2
“Investor Peter Thiel is moving his residence and business operations from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The decision underscores a growing divide between the outspoken tech industry conservative and Silicon Valley.”
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/peter-thiel-is-reportedly-exiting-silicon-valley.html
“These screenshots present a stunning display of unprofessional behavior not just by rank-and-file employees but managers and even a senior vice president, including overt discrimination, prejudice on the basis of race and gender, conflation of dissenting political views with racism and sexism, punishment of those who asked questions about what behavior was permitted, endorsement of politically motivated violence, and even an attack on the very notion of truth itself.”
Read more: http://quillette.com/2018/02/01/lawsuit-exposes-internet-giants-internal-culture-intolerance/
“Uber, Lyft, and several other firms critically involved in self-driving cars have their own ideas about how to improve personal transport — and one of the biggest involves you not being allowed to drive your car at all.”
