Share this
Citizens are protesting the government after a March 20 attempt by the country’s highest court to dissolve the national assembly, which would in turn weaken President Maduro’s opponents.
Police Illegally Obtained Journalist’s Phone Records Under New Metadata Program
Share this
The Australian Federal Police announced this week that they illegally obtained a journalist’s phone records under the Turnbull government’s new metadata retention plan.
The breach was accidental, according to the police, and happened as part of an investigation into a leak of police material.
The journalist was not notified about their data being accessed, due to the sensitive nature of the police work, AFP said.
“This was human error … . There was no ill will or malice or bad intent by the officers involved who breached the Act. But simply it was a mistake.”
AFP said their practices would now see “significant changes.”
Government Shutdown Averted
Share this
A temporary funding bill was approved by the House and Senate.
NSA Changes Surveillance Policy
Share this
Email and texts will no longer be collected just for mentioning a target of the agency, according to the NSA; only communications sent to and from a target will be collected
Wall Street Week Ending April 28
Share this
April 24: Wall Street rallied amid an outlook that a centrist will likely win the French presidential election.
April 25: Bull run amid strong earnings by Caterpillar, MacDonald’s. Nasdaq rose 41.65 point to close above 6,000 for the first time ever.
April 28: Stocks edged lower after first quarter growth turned out to be the weakest in 3 years. For the week, the big 3 indexes rose 1.5 – 2%
Graph: Yahoo Finance
Tillerson Warns UN About North Korea
Share this
The secretary of state warned the UN Security Council that failure to act now on North Korea may bring “catastrophic consequences.”
He called for “painful new sanctions” to pressure North Korea to give up it’s nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea tested another missile day of the meeting. Reportedly, the test likely failed.
Factum Arte Is Recreating Art for the Masses, as Well as Private Buyers
Share this
A team of software designers, technicians, conservators, architects, artists, artisans, working together as Factum Arte, are recreating works of art to be used by the public. Some of their work is already used by museums. The group makes its money by also producing works in the private market.
The goal of their public efforts are to give more people the chance to understand works of art and to help preserve them.
Workers at Factum Arte are now planning to replace works of art destroyed by ISIS. Their facsimiles are made from originals removed by Europeans in earlier eras from Iraq.
Because the works are not originals, there is less concern about damaging them, so they can be placed in their original setting, giving visitors what may be a more authentic experience of them.
How close are the facsimiles to the originals? In terms of resolution, around 100 microns (1 point of information per 1/10th of a millimeter), and technology continues to improve.
Young People Like Big Government, Pew Finds
Share this
According to a recent report by Pew Research, young people are more often in favor of big government that provides a lot of social services.
Pew’s research found that Americans from 18-50 are around 55% in favor of bigger government. Those over 50 and under 65 are the least in favor of bigger governments, and those over 65 also are more often in favor of smaller governments, but not as much as the 50-64s.
Who else prefers bigger governments? Relatively speaking, women, those with highschool education or less, and those with less than $30,000 in family income. Also, Republicans and Conservatives fairly strongly favor small government, while Liberals and left-leaning individuals strongly favor bigger government.
Trump: Historic Travel Expenses
Share this
The new president has so far racked up a travel bill of $20m.
The rate, accumulated over Trump’s first 100 days, if continued would cost $294 million after 4 years, or over half a billion after 8.
One of the top destinations for the president is his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which he calls the “Winter White House.”
For comparison, Obama spent $97m in 8 years.
Amazon Prime Doubles in 2 Years
Share this
Amazon Prime now has 80m subs. The increase has been steady in the last 2 years.
People like Amazon’s fast delivery, cheap prices, easy checkout, and good customer service.
Snapchat: Where Are We?
Share this
The app may be on every young person’s phone, but it’s losing money.
When it launched its IPO this year, it raised $3.4b.
But as of January, it’s lost $1.2b. Almost half of that loss was in 2016.
It was growing at 15m new daily users in the first 3 quarters of 2016, but the last quarter had just 5m new users.
Snapchat is trying to make money by employing industry experts, and they will be setting their sights on combating competitors who do basically the same thing as Snapchat — Instagram with Stories and WhatsApp with Status. They will also be trying to win away advertising investment from other platforms.
However, investment in video ads is growing steadily, adding about $5 per year since 2014. Growth expected to increase, and be worth $90m in 2020, up from today’s $75m.
Ricochet, A New Chat App, Aims to Be Even More Secure than Encryption
Share this
The chat app aims to hide even metadata, the graph of its users’ connections and activity (as opposed to just hiding the content of messages).
Ricochet applies Tor-like tech to cloak the user’s device, not just web destinations. Messages also do not use a central server to send messages, so the data does not exist there.
“There’s no record in the cloud somewhere that you ever used it,” John Brooks, the 25-year-old developer said of his app. “It’s all mixed in with everything else happening in Tor. You’re invisible among the crowd.”