Dec 212020
 

American prosecutors have charged a Zoom executive in an elaborate scheme to disrupt video meetings of activists who planned to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. The complaint and arrest warrant for Xinjiang Jin, a Zoom employee and the company’s liaison to Chinese law enforcement, were unsealed by the Department of Justice.  “As detailed in the complaint, Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and [Zoom] accounts in the names of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7a97p/zoom-executive-allegedly-doctored-child-porn-to-smear-tiananmen-square-memorial-activists

 2020-12-21  Comments Off on Zoom Executive Allegedly Doctored Child Porn to Smear Tiananmen Square Memorial Activists Motherboard
Dec 202020
 

The most exhaustive study on Medicare for All just came out. Its conclusion: a single-payer system would guarantee health insurance to all people while reducing overall health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Supporters hold signs as US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a health care rally at the 2017 Convention of the California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee on September 22, 2017 in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/medicare-for-all-singler-payer-health-insurance-cbo/

 2020-12-20  Comments Off on A New Congressional Budget Office Study Shows That Medicare for All Would Save Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Annually Jacobin
Dec 192020
 

The Socialist Workers Party candidate for Delegate to U.S. House from the District of Columbia, Omari Musa, polled 6,702 votes last month.  If he had polled as much as 7,500 votes, the SWP would now be ballot-qualified in D.C. Only once has the SWP been a qualified party in D.C.,  That was immediately after the 1976 election, when the SWP polled 11,237 votes for Dorothy Hawkinson, its nominee for City-Council-at-Large. Musa polled almost as many…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/12/19/socialist-workers-party-came-fairly-close-to-polling-enough-votes-in-district-of-columbia-to-be-ballot-qualified/

 2020-12-19  Comments Off on Socialist Workers Party Came Fairly Close to Polling Enough Votes in District of Columbia to Be Ballot-Qualified Ballot Access News
Dec 172020
 

On September 29, 2020, Joe Biden and Donald Trump squared off in what would be universally agreed to be the worst presidential debate ever. They traded barbs with minimal refereeing in a “series of extended brawls.” The shameful display of eroding norms took center stage for a horrified international audience.  Meanwhile, a legal controversy that just might make things better in the future has been slowly working its way through the courts. The case, Level…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote_joins_open_debates_lawsuit_in_petition_to_the_supreme_court

 2020-12-17  Comments Off on FairVote Joins Open Debates Lawsuit in Petition to the Supreme Court What’s New – Fairvote
Dec 162020
 

Far from being an unforeseeable disaster, the loss of Arecibo directly flows from decades of impoverishment of all activities that do not most directly channel the riches of labor into the overflowing coffers of the ruling class.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/16/arec-d15.html

 2020-12-16  Comments Off on The collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope World Socialist Web Site (en)
Dec 162020
 

Every day that emergency action is not taken to stop the pandemic means thousands of more deaths.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/16/pers-d16.html

 2020-12-16  Comments Off on For emergency action to save lives! Close schools and shut down nonessential production! Full compensation for workers! World Socialist Web Site (en)
Dec 162020
 

There’s a new article out in Computer Weekly talking about CVE-2019-9193. The PostgreSQL project has issued a statement saying that this is not a security vulnerability, and PostgreSQL core team member Magnus Hagander also wrote a blog about it, saying the same thing. If you’re curious about this issue, I suggest reading not only what Magnus wrote but also the comments section of that blog post, where you can see some of the perspectives that…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/4ZM

 2020-12-16  Comments Off on Robert Haas: CVE-2019-9193 Planet PostgreSQL
Dec 162020
 

In a recent post, I wrote about how the attention economy in use at big social networks hurts you. In this post, I’m going to suggest what to do about it. Mastodon and the Fediverse When you use email, you can send a message from an account at Google to one at Yahoo, Microsoft, or any of millions of businesses and organizations running their own mail server. Unlike, say, Facebook, email isn’t a single service,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10124-how-to-join-the-fediverse-and-cast-off-the-attention-economy

 2020-12-16  Comments Off on John Goerzen: How To Join the Fediverse and Cast Off the Attention Economy Planet Debian
Dec 152020
 

On January 1st, 2021, many books, movies and other media from 1925 will enter the public domain in the United States. Some of them are quite famous — jump ahead to see lists of those well known books and movies that you can enjoy on the Internet Archive — or take the scenic route with me. What does this all mean? Essentially, many items created in 1925 in the US that are still under copyright…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2020/12/15/1925-public-domain-riches/

 2020-12-15  Comments Off on January 1st brings public domain riches from 1925 Internet Archive Blogs
Dec 152020
 

By Howie Hawkins Democratic principles demand that the president should be elected by the people on the basis of one-person, one-vote. But today the Electoral College will elect the president based on an anachronistic anti-democratic 18th century system where some people’s votes count a lot more than others. For example, Wyoming has a population of 579,759 and three electoral votes. California has a population of 39,512,223 and 55 electoral votes. Do the math and you…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://howiehawkins.us/replace-the-electoral-college-with-a-ranked-choice-national-popular-vote-for-president/

 2020-12-15  Comments Off on Replace the Electoral College with a Ranked-Choice National Popular Vote for President Howie Hawkins for President | Angela Walker for Vice President
Dec 152020
 

In 2012, photographer Regina Valkenborgh, then a student at the University of Hertfordshire in England, created a series of makeshift pinhole cameras by lining drink cans with photographic paper. She forgot about some of them and one remained in place for 8 years before someone found it. — Read the rest

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/14/longest-photo-exposure-of-all-time.html

 2020-12-15  Comments Off on Longest photo exposure of all time Boing Boing
Dec 142020
 

Over more than 50 years, Lillian Michelson built one of Hollywood’s most famous libraries for film research. Need to know what an Igloo really looks like? How about a Siberian hut? Or the inside of a 15th Century jail?  For 50 years in Hollywood, generations of filmmakers would beat a path to the Michelson Cinema Research Library, where renowned film researcher Lillian Michelson could hunt down the answer to just about any question. She was…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2020/12/15/after-searching-for-a-decade-legendary-hollywood-research-library-finds-a-new-home/

 2020-12-14  Comments Off on After searching for a decade, Legendary Hollywood Research Library Finds a New Home Internet Archive Blogs
Dec 142020
 

Massive planets at far out distances from their stars are possible after all The Hubble Space Telescope has spied a previously unknown exoplanet with similar properties as our Solar System’s hypothetical object Planet Nine. This newly spotted body is living on the outskirts of another solar system 336 light-years away.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/12/11/planet_nine_hubble/

 2020-12-14  Comments Off on Don’t give up on Planet Nine yet: Hubble ‘scope finds just such a world a mere 336 light-years away The Register
Dec 142020
 

The Austrian socialist architect Josef Frank resisted modernists who wanted to make homes look like workplaces — an idea with new resonance in an age when so many of us are working from home and feel like we can’t escape from our work. Josef Frank design, 1932. (Photograph by Martin Gerlach / courtesy of Wien Museum) In 2020, millions of people have unexpectedly been forced to turn their homes into their workplaces. Not only have…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/socialist-architect-josef-frank-modernism-freedom/

 2020-12-14  Comments Off on Socialist Architect Josef Frank’s Modernism Was All About Freedom Jacobin
Dec 142020
 

Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. I am not the only one who thinks Bookshop.org is a false savior. It’s not just book publishing – the pandemic is also accelerating the death of print news media. Amazon may finally sell their ebooks to libraries.  The bad sex in fiction award will not be given out this year. Apparently the judges decided that bad sex is better than no sex. Google Play…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/12/14/morning-coffee-14-december-2020/

 2020-12-14  Comments Off on Morning Coffee – 14 December 2020 The Digital Reader
Dec 142020
 

The Congressional Budget Office studied the costs of Medicare for All and determined that it could cover everyone and cost $650 billion less annually than the existing US medical system.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#13_December_2020_%28Medicare_for_All_could_be_cheaper_than_the_existing_US_medical_system%29

 2020-12-14  Comments Off on Medicare for All could be cheaper than the existing US medical system Richard Stallman’s Political Notes
Dec 132020
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 11, 2020 For Further Information: Virginia Rodino, Press Secretary, virginia@howiehawkins.us Robert Smith, Deputy Press Secretary, robert@howiehawkins.us RELEASE: Abolish the Death Penalty Lame duck President Donald Trump is rushing through five federal death-penalty executions before he leaves office. Trump’s killing spree breaks a 130-year-old tradition of not executing prisoners during a presidential transition. In 2019, Trump began resuming executions in federal death penalty cases, which had not been carried out since 2003. With these…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://howiehawkins.us/abolish-the-death-penalty/

 2020-12-13  Comments Off on RELEASE: Abolish the Death Penalty Howie Hawkins for President | Angela Walker for Vice President