Category: Uncategorized

This is a story I’ve been sitting on as I was waiting for more information on the matter. One of the major flaws in tech news (well, all news really) is that no one takes time to let the dust settle before reporting on something. Perhaps this is part of the plan for news sites that rely on ad impressions, but often this leads to follow-up stories days later that make the initial story either a complete lie, or at least meaningless. This story, however wild it may have seemed, looks to be absolutely true.
Facebook is blocking the Telegram app. …read more

An outright jaw-dropping report was released on Monday that draws attention to the staggering wealth of just a small handful of people.
The report, titled Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us, “exposes the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans and compares this wealth to the much more meager assets of several different segments of American society.”
Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, the authors of the report, described a compelling picture about the top 20 of those 400 people.
America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 …read more

Early and mid-December is always the best time for individuals to ask state legislators to introduce bills for the following year. There are already some states in which activists are working to get bills to improve the ballot access laws, including California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Efforts in many more states are needed.
Some state legislatures require legislators to introduce bills very early in the session. Indiana requires them to be introduced by the end of 2015 if they are to be considered during 2016. …read more

Baltimore, MD – When reporting on the case of police brutality victim Freddie Gray, the man that was killed by police in Baltimore earlier this year, a CNN writer described Gray as “the son of an illiterate heroin addict.” The article quickly drew backlash and CNN attempted to edit the article, but it was too late, screenshots of the article had already gone viral.
CNN president Jeff Zucker later said that it was simply a mistake and insisted that there was no intent to slander the dead victim Freddie Gray.
“This was a mistake, the digital team removed it last night and …read more

On November 3, 2015, Hartford, Connecticut, held a partisan city election. For city council, the city election law says that parties cannot nominate more than six candidates. Voters may only vote for six candidates. But the top nine vote-getters are elected. All seats are at-large.
The Democratic Party ran six nominees; the Working Families Party ran five nominees; the Republican Party ran three.
The six Democrats were elected. For the remaining three seats, three WFP nominees also won, outpolling all three of the Republicans. The three WFP winners were Cynthia Jennings, 2,076 votes; Wildaliz Bermudez, 1,801 …read more

At the Dark Android Project I’ve mentioned for some time that when it comes to using an encrypted messaging service, nothing beats TextSecure from Open Whisper Systems. Nothing else even comes close (as much as I appreciate Telegram for what it is). I call it the “Bitcoin-standard” of mobile encryption apps (my own little play on the phrase: the “gold standard”). Even Edward Snowden has given it his highest recommendation. Recently, as I reported here and was informing people for over year that it would happen on my tech podcast Sovryn Tech, TextSecure and the encrypted voice call app RedPhone …read more

Johns Creek, Georgia, held run-off elections for city council on December 1. Chris Coughlin, a Libertarian Party member, won the race for the special term, for city council post 2. But he lost the race for the full term. He won the special election with 59.1% of the vote but was defeated for the full term seat with 47.5%. See this story. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news. …read more

The Tennessee Secretary of State says 14 Republicans and 3 Democrats will be on the presidential primary ballot. See this story for a list of the names. Presidential candidates get on the primary ballot either by being discussed in major news media, or by submitting 2,500 signatures of registered voters. No candidate submitted a petition.
The 2016 Republican presidential primary will have more names than any past Tennessee presidential primary. Before 2016, the most crowded presidential primary ballot in Tennessee had been the 2004 Democratic ballot, which had eleven names. The Republican presidential primary ballots had …read more

(RT) — Turkey’s leadership, including President Erdogan and his family, is involved in illegal oil trade with Islamic State militants, says the Russian Defense Ministry, stressing that Turkey is the final destination for oil smuggled from Syria and Iraq.

The Russian Defense Ministry held a major briefing on new findings concerning IS funding in Moscow on Wednesday.
According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey.

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in …read more