White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made a public statement in response to the Washington Post and other news organisations stories this week that Trump told Russian officials information he say he shouldn’t have, denying the news. McMaster stated: “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The President and the Foreign … Read more
Microsoft issued a large Windows update days after the WannaCry malware pandemic infected thousands of computers and led to a huge wave of Windows users updating their OSs to close the SMBv1 exploit left open by Windows until March when a leak of NSA intel made the vulnerability, as well as the NSAs exploit tool, … Read more
The government, which enforces strict censorship of media, has decided it needs its own online encyclopedia. Wikipedia, like many other popular free information sources on the internet, is blocked in China. China’s encyclopedia will not be like Wikipedia, though. It will not allow public edits, and its editors will be hand-picked by the government. The … Read more
Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales is creating Wikitribune, a news version of Wikipedia where he hopes news will be more fact-based than what he sees elsewhere. He will be hiring many journalists for the initial phase, and see how things develop from there. Wikitribune will not focus on doing original journalism. It will use the same … Read more
Info on money — revenues and expenses — at all levels of U.S. government is being made freely available in a new website by former Microsoft CEO and current L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. The website is USAFacts.org. Ballmer was not satisfied with the information available through web search. He said the project involved organization … Read more
Facebook has acknowledged that they are exploited by governments in manipulating public opinion, and also said they would try to do something about reducing these types of “information operations.” Governments use Facebook to amplify a view, sow distrust, and spread confusion, according to the company. Recently, Facebook made an attempt to cut down this use … Read more
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 … Read more
A formal judgement has approved the administrative measure, indicating that a permanent restriction is now in place for all language editions of the online encyclopedia in Turkey. Some are pointing towards Wikipedia’s depiction of Erdogan as a dictator as a cause: “Erdoğan detractors have noted that under Erdoğan, more journalists have been incarcerated in Turkey … Read more