Here is a Maine sample ballot for November 2020, showing the ranked choice voting system for both President and Congress. This is the first ballot in U.S. history to use RCV for president in a general election. … Continue reading →
Alma Bowman, a 54-year-old woman in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, was scheduled for deportation on Monday. For over two years, Bowman has been held at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center, the site of growing concern about medical neglect and coerced gynecological procedures performed on nearly 60 women. She has been a key witness, for attorneys and journalists, of a doctor performing the allegedly unnecessary or overly aggressive procedures. She is also a U.S. citizen, according to…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/11/02/ice-medical-misconduct-us-citizen-deportation/
Enlarge / Sixty Starlink Internet communication satellites from SpaceX are seen in the night sky over Vladivostok. (credit: Yuri SmityukTASS via Getty Images) NASA has formally commented (PDF) on a request by a US company to build a megaconstellation of satellites at an altitude of 720km above the Earth’s surface, citing concerns about collisions. This appears to be the first time that NASA has publicly commented on such an application for market access, which is pending…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1718837
Someone said to me earlier today, “You’re up early on a post-Halloween morning.”I replied, “It wasn’t Halloween, it was just March 245th. I do not acknowledge this illegitimate Halloween.”Previously, previously, previously, previously.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/11/illegitimate-halloween/
Enlarge (credit: Washington State Department of Agriculture) By now you’ve surely seen the pictures: A dozen humanoid forms encased in full-body, white nylon suits are working on scaffolding at the base of a saran-wrapped tree by the red glow of headlamps, one of them raising a plexiglass vacuum tube between its blue-gloved hands in triumph. Inside, 85 wasps, each the size of a human thumb, are piled against one another in cold-induced slumber. No, these…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1718580
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/11/face-changing-led-mask/
In the final days of the election, the Democratic Party and its affiliates are going all out to insist that workers and youth opposed to Trump must subordinate their struggles to electing Biden.
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/31/pers-o31.html
It wouldn’t be October without Halloween, and it wouldn’t be Halloween without some spooky music. There’s no instrument spookier than a Theremin, which also happens to be one of the world’s first electronic instruments. Leon Theremin plays his namesake instrument. Image via Linda Hall Library You’ve no doubt heard the eerie, otherworldly tones of the Theremin in various 1950s sci-fi films, or heard the instrument’s one-of-a-kind cousin, the Electro-Theremin in “Good Vibrations” by the Beach…
On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts will have the chance to pass Question 2, which will produce Ranked Choice Voting for most state and federal offices. That reform will give voters the chance to rank their preferences when casting their ballot for candidates — an opportunity which is especially important when more than two candidates are running. In this year’s primary in the Fourth Congressional District, for example, there were nine candidates competing to become the Democratic nominee.…
Enlarge (credit: Intel) Researchers have extracted the secret key that encrypts updates to an assortment of Intel CPUs, a feat that could have wide-ranging consequences for the way the chips are used and, possibly, the way they’re secured. The key makes it possible to decrypt the microcode updates Intel provides to fix security vulnerabilities and other types of bugs. Having a decrypted copy of an update may allow hackers to reverse engineer it and learn…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1717957
On October 26, both U.S. Senators from New York, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, asked voters to vote for Joe Biden on the Working Families line, not the Democratic line. See this story. In related news, on October 27, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both criticized the New York Democratic Party for putting out a campaign brochure that shows pictures of them. The brochure asks voters to vote for Democrats on the Democratic…
Citing concerns over election-related “chaos” and “violence,” Facebook is preparing—in collaboration with the US intelligence state—advanced software tools for implementing a censorship regime during November 3 and its aftermath.
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/27/cens-o27.html
The campaign to recall Kshama Sawant is led by the Democratic Party with the active support of Republican and far-right elements.
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/27/sawa-o27.html
Enlarge (credit: YouTube / Getty / Aurich Lawson) A popular tool used for archiving YouTube videos, YouTube-dl, is gone from GitHub after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a claim arguing that the code is inherently illegal under copyright law. GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, removed 18 projects on Friday that previously hosted versions of YouTube-dl, a Python library that allows for the downloading of YouTube video and audio files. Those repositories now…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1717117
Eli Valley:Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/10/barrett-confirmation/
Liberal writers sympathetic to the corporate education reform movement are beating the drum about reopening schools, claiming to stand up for low-income students. But attacking teachers and their unions does nothing for poor and working-class students — it simply scapegoats the people who have dedicated their lives to actually helping those students. The neoliberal solution to poverty, embraced by centrist Democrats and Republicans alike, is “equality of opportunity, not equality of results.” (Daniel Pockett /…
Enlarge / There could soon be an easier way to tell how hot that chili pepper is. (credit: Azman Mohamad / EyeEm via Getty Images) Capsaicin is the compound responsible for determining just how hot a variety of chili pepper will be; the higher the capsaicin levels, the hotter the pepper. There are several methods for quantifying just how much capsaicin is present in a pepper—its “pungency”—but they are either too time-consuming, too costly, or…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1716412
EFF, joined by several leading civil liberties and immigrant rights organizations, recently filed a comment calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would exponentially expand biometrics collection from both U.S. citizens and noncitizens who apply for immigration benefits and would allow DHS to mandate the collection of face data, iris scans, palm prints, voice prints, and DNA. DHS received more than 5,000 comments in response to the proposed…
Massive public records request reveals scale of warrantless surveillance Never mind the Feds. American police forces routinely “circumvent most security features” in smartphones to extract mountains of personal information, according to a report that details the massive, ubiquitous cracking of devices by cops.…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/10/21/us_phone_cracking/
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) Streaming platform Twitch this week surprised many of its users when it sent out a huge batch of copyright takedown emails. These messages not only didn’t tell streamers what supposedly infringing content they posted, but it also said that Twitch had simply deleted content outright without giving users a chance to appeal. Many Twitch “partners”—the folks who make actual money from their Twitch participation—received emails on Tuesday warning…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1716208