onfocus

“For small and medium companies, I generally recommend cloud services, because they don't have the people or the skills to run their own systems as securely,” Bellovin said. “But there are real but imponderable risks to one company controlling so much of the net.”

Nope, worth pondering!

"Matt Masterson, a former senior U.S. cybersecurity official who tracked 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security, said Powell’s fundraising success demonstrates one reason so many people continue to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election: It can bring in cash."

The Big Lie is so profitable that fines won’t even make a dent in it. Only criminal charges will slow it down. I’m not holding my breath.

"The U.S. Constitution protects free speech; however, it does not necessarily protect deceptive speech coupled with harmful action. This distinction potentially removes barriers to accountability for social media platforms that fail to address misinformation. Laws could require procedural safeguards and reporting about misinformation without censoring speech or treating Facebook or Google like a publisher."

More questions than answers here but this article has some useful distinctions to think about including this idea that harmful action that includes speech is not protected.

"The main reason for the big increase in total wage and salary income is that 5,675,000 Americans who were unemployed when this year began had found new jobs by November. With support from the rounds of pandemic stimulus enacted in December 2000 and January 2021, the jobless rate fell from 6.3 percent last January to 4.2 percent in November, or by one-third over 11 months. Following the Great Recession, it took six years for the jobless rate to fall by one-third."

Democrats can't get a message out. Even if all mass media outlets are owned by Republicans (they are) there should be a way to interrupt the media cycle with this kind of news. Instead we just hear about how terrible the economy is over and over.

"It's a remarkable foreign policy reform, but also a remarkable failure of both government communication and media coverage. A hugely significant change in foreign policy has happened — and almost nobody is paying attention."

This was news to me.

"But for much of the arguments, Justice Barrett did seem ready to reverse Roe. For instance, she repeatedly suggested that pregnant people had no need for abortion because they could simply put their children up for adoption."

The supreme court is taking away health rights and personal autonomy and framing it as neutrality. This stolen majority is doing the job it was put there to do. Where are Democrats?

Update: oh, here they are. Tweeting.

"'For most advertisers, having an ad placed on a Steve Bannon-affiliated outlet is the stuff of nightmares,' said Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Check My Ads, an ad industry watchdog. 'The fact that ad exchanges are still serving ads should tell brands that their vendors are not vetting their inventory, and I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers who have found themselves on War Room request refunds.'"

Alternate title: how Google profits from online hate.

Tim Heidecker with probably the bravest parody ever. I think so. Just go back 10, 20 years and you'll realize how upside down it is out there.

"Wirecutter continues to bring in record revenue for the Times, which is sitting on over $1 billion in cash. Yet our members have seen next to no financial benefit from their vital contributions to this success. Times management has offered paltry guaranteed wage increases of only 0.5%, despite soaring inflation and cash flows."

I'm a big fan of Wirecutter and I'm sad that I won't be able to use the site this holiday season. It sounds like the people who produce it are not being fairly compensated for a stellar product.

"Brooks was released on $1,000 bail, however, despite being charged with running over a woman with his car — the same method he allegedly used to murder five people on Sunday. The district attorney's office has already admitted that this bail was 'inappropriately low,' and promised to open an internal review. Sadly, however, this is no surprise to anyone who has witnessed the long-standing problems of law enforcement failures around domestic violence."

Domestic violence is violence. We should be treating it as a serious offense with serious consequences.

"After a nearly monthlong civil trial, the jury in U.S. District Court deadlocked on two key claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during the two days of demonstrations."

Four years later. The wheels of justice are slow, but hopefully this means less incentive for violence in the future.

"But, he was the guy who was there. And he didn’t irrevocably screw it up. He didn’t get in the way. He didn’t turn the whole process into some kind of political Rorschach test."

Yep, so true. We have many things to be thankful for. Also true that we need more progress.