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Discourse.net (10 unread)

• Joe Garcia Press Conference 6/1/13

  NBC-6 posts a video snippet from Garcia’s press conference this morning:

  Previously: The Garcia ‘Phantom Ballot’ Scandal — What We Know and Don’t Know (Updated)

  [...]
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• The Garcia ‘Phantom Ballot’ Scandal — What We Know and Don’t Know

  The Herald splashed it as a five-column lead across the front page this morning: Top Garcia aide quits over ballot plot.

  Here’s what we know so far:

  Cops raided the homes of two Joe Garcia campaign operatives: Giancarlo Sopo, 30, now Joe Garcia’s communications director and John Estes, 26, formerly his [...]
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• You Would Think a Cell Phone Company Would Want to Blanket an Airport

  Number of comments: 1
  

  Verizon, my current cell phone provider, has no signal at the American baggage claim area at MIA. No bars. No data. No phone. No texts. Nothing. Just a phone getting warm as it tries to punch out or pull in a signal.

  This isn’t a one-off thing today — I’ve noticed [...]

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• DRM, HTML5, and You

  EFF just took its first act as a full member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): it filed an objection to the W3C’s plans to put Digital Rights Management (DRM) into HTML5, the next version of the HTML standard. In a statement EFF said,

  DRM standards look like normal [...]

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• Rental Cars as a Civilization Advance (Herein Also of the Valuation of Locks)

  Number of comments: 10
  

  The ubiquity of rental cars are one of the great advances of human civilization. Think about it for a moment: you sign your name (and if you’re a member of a rental car company’s membership program, not even that) and you are given the keys to a vehicle that costs [...]

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• What They Said

  Number of comments: 4
  

  Some links today. Click through – there’s always lots more goodness waiting.

  Hullabaloo (Digby), QOTD: Robert Borosage: “There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater.” (See also, Daily Kos, [...]
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• A Georgian Grandmother’s Take on the TSA

  Number of comments: 6
  

  A student I know writes,

  My grandmother and I have a unique relationship. We talk about the usual family gossip, but we really get into it when we talk about politics. Why is this unique? Because my grandmother is in her eighties and she lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. Having spent my [...]

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• Crawford on Telco Monopolies

  Number of comments: 1
  

  Nice profile of Susan Crawford, highlighting her campaign against telco internet monopolies, by David Carr in today’s NYT.

  A taste of Telecom’s Big Players Hold Back the Future:

  Susan Crawford, a professor at [Cardozo School of Law], has written a book, “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in [...]

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• EFF Is Accepting Bitcoins Again

  EFF Will Accept Bitcoins to Support Digital Liberty. This follows a 2-year moratorium.

  One key difference from past practice: EFF will liquidate any Bitcoins it receives as soon as it gets them.

  EFF’s announcement pointed me to this recent (March 18, 2013) Fincen guidance document, Application of FinCEN’s Regulations [...]

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• The Red Lionfish of Politics

  Number of comments: 4
  

  How can this be?

  Most people are now familiar with President’s Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost of living adjustment. While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.

  Since Social Security benefits [...]

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