Akein Scott, 19, was apprehended in the Little Woods section of eastern New Orleans, Louisiana. Police department spokeswoman Remi Braden told the Associated Press that no additional details would be made public until Thursday morning. … Read More
Student debt, job market creating ‘generation of wage slavery’
Poll results released last week reveal that 41 per cent of US college graduates from the past two years are working in positions that do not require a degree, according to a survey of 1,005 former students from consulting firm Accenture. Another 11 per cent of respondents said they are unemployed, seven per cent of which have not had a job since graduation. Almost two-thirds of those polled said they expected to need additional training before entering a career, while nearly fifty per cent believed their studies did not equip them for the working world. National unemployment remains stagnant at 7.6 per cent and graduates of 2011 and 2012 will soon be forced to compete with the graduating class of 2013 in the job hunt. Of those polled, 42 per cent expected to enroll in graduate school. Only 18 per cent of the class of 2013 thought finishing graduate school would be necessary. While useless school curricula and scarce job opportunities are the most obvious targets of blame for society’s disenfranchised youth, the cost of education and its corollary, student debt, have crippled an entire generation. Americans now owe more money on student loans than on credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as quoted by USA Today.Recent research has showed that students are borrowing twice as much as they did ten years ago (after adjusting for inflation). Lawmakers in Congress have given lenders, including the government, unprecedented collection power far more powerful than mortgage brokers and credit card companies. And student debt is one of the only kinds that can’t be unloaded in bankruptcy. “Students who borrow too much end up delaying life-cycle events such as buying a car, buying a home, getting married, and having children,” Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, told USA Today. That assessment, echoed by other experts, has financial forecasters wondering if the US economy’s slow recovery might only be temporary. Nick Pardini, an investor and financial blogger, told the paper the current climate is “going to create a generation of wage slavery.” Two-thirds of 2011’s college graduates completed their higher education owing money, with debt ranging up to an average $26,600 per person – a five per cent increase from the year before, according to the Associated Press.Still, college grads are in far superior shape than those without a degree, as 19.1 per cent of people with only a high school diploma were unemployed in 2011. “In these tough times, a college degree is still your best bet for getting a job and decent pay,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success. “But, as debt levels rise, fear of loans can prevent students from getting the education they need to succeed.” Despite the gloomy outlook for young people there is cause for hope overall. The US economy added 165,000 jobs in April, a boost from the monthly average of 138,000 over the six months prior. The growth could indicate that the slashed federal budget “does not mean recession,” John Silvia, a chief economist at Wells Fargo, told the Associated Press. … Read More
Google implements new measures to protect Chrome from malware
Google is implementing additional security measures to protect Chrome users from malicious browser extensions. Users will begin to see Safe Browsing malicious download warnings within the next week when attempting to download software that has been flagged as malicious, the search giant said in a recent blog post. … Read More
Samsung’s Smart Evolution HDTV upgrade kit coming in May for $299
Today Samsung is making good on a promise from earlier this year at CES with regards to the planned Smart Evolution Kit. The kit, which includes a Samsung Smart Remote, will contain a faster quad-core processor, a new GPU and additional memory that equipped televisions can utilize for faster multitasking… … Read More
Google Further Highlights Wrongful DMCA Takedowns
In 2012 copyright holders asked Google to remove a staggering 51.4 million links to allegedly infringing webpages. By the end of the year Google was removing around half a million links per day.
Recovering from a small lull over the Christmas / New Year period, rightsholders were back with a vengeance in 2013.
After a somewhat jittery start, in the week starting February 11 rightsholders asked for the removal of 3,790,409 URLs, smashing the previous weekly record of 3,502,153 set December 17 last year.
But even this new record was eclipsed March 11 with a record 4,043,382 takedown requests.
However, just because a takedown is requested, it doesn’t mean that Google always complies.
In December 2012, Google began providing additional detail on requests it refuses to process. Now the search giant is back with a new addition to its Transparency Report which reveals on a daily basis a selection of copyright holders and anti-piracy companies that have been told that their requests will not be honored.
The latest set of results dated yesterday feature URLs which allegedly link to Saturday’s big UFC event in Montreal which featured Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz.
Underneath each item is a line which states “Requested to be removed in request XXXXXX”, which is actually a convenient link to the actual takedown request listed in Google’s Transparency Report.
The main request, 535215, shows that anti-piracy outfit MiMTiD asked for 60 URLs to be removed. Google removed 32 but refused to process 17, with the rest pending. Exact reasons for the refusals are not provided, but a check of some of the URLs listed reveals that they don’t exist on the target site and/or Google’s search.
While this particular sample doesn’t appear to show any blatantly stupid takedowns, those that can be described in such terms can be found on a daily basis. These would often be submitted and forgotten, but now they have an opportunity to appear prominently on Google’s “featured” list for everyone to see.
There are some great examples, such as this one sent by the Federation Against Copyright Theft on behalf of the BBC. It requests the takedown of links to the BBC show Wonders of the Solar System. As can be seen in the screenshot below, among a selection of torrent sites FACT also asked Google to censor the page that advertises the show on the BBC’s own website.
The poor BBC were also targeted by anti-piracy company Audiolock. This outfit was concerned that the UK’s leading TV broadcaster was providing links to a pirated copy of The View’s album “Cheeky for a Reason“, but when in fact it only published a review. Google refused to remove the link, fortunately.
And going deeper into this particular takedown request from Audiolock shows that if it wasn’t for Google’s diligence then the band’s online presence would have suffered even more damage. The request from the anti-piracy outfit asked Google to remove 28 links to allegedly infringing content but the search engine rejected 98% as wrongful.
They include: Removing links to the band’s actual music on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, removing links to the album’s Wikipedia page, and censoring album reviews on almost two dozen sites including The Guardian, Independent, Metro, Drowned in Sound, Contact Music and NME.
The embarrassing thing for the anti-piracy groups is that Google’s tools allow you to keep digging to see exactly how far the rabbit hole goes and how awful it smells at the end. So we did.
It turns out that Audiolock have another customer called Hospital Records, which is one of the world’s most-loved Drum and Bass labels. In this takedown request for 25 URLs, Google denied 84%. Why? Well, Audiolock again tried to remove the label’s music from iTunes, Spofity and eMusic, and attempted to censor a whole bunch of legitimate reviews on some of the best Drum and Bass sites around.
But perhaps the most head-shakingly awful one of all can be found here, in which Audiolock tries (unsuccessfully) to take down legitimate tracks from electronic music store TrackitDown, a company which also runs its own successful music anti-piracy company. In fact, TrackitDown have been targeted by Audiolock on several occasions on behalf of at least five different labels.
After noticing the Google takedown, last week we reported on the plight of Torrentz, whose torrent-less homepage was removed from Google following a DMCA takedown from Paramount. We can report that Google reevaluated the report and concluded that the site’s homepage could be reinstated with immediate effect.
Google not only deserves praise for its Transparency Report but apparently its diligence in stopping takedowns that have the potential to damage artists, whose labels think they are handing over money to anti-piracy outfits in order to achieve completely the opposite.
Source: Google Further Highlights Wrongful DMCA Takedowns
Facebook rolls out jazzy news feed, fights irrelevancy
Facebook doesn’t want to be dismissed as an Internet has-been before its social network even enters its adolescence.In an effort to remain hip, it is infusing the focal point of its website with a more dynamic look and additional controls designed to empower its 1 billion users to sort streams of photos and other material into more organized sections that appeal to their personal interests.The changes unveiled Thursday are an attempt to address complaints that Facebook’s hub — the News Feed — is degenerating into a jumble of monotonous musings and disjointed pictures. This has come as users’ social circles have widened from a few dozen people to an unwieldy assortment of friends, family, businesses, celebrities, co-workers and fleeting acquaintances.That evolution requires a more nuanced approach than the computer-generated algorithms that Facebook has been relying on to pick out the most relevant content to display in each user’s News Feed. The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers equipped with high-quality cameras also is turning the News Feed into a more visual gallery, another shift that Facebook is tackling by carving out more space to display photos and video.Continue Reading… … Read More
Osama Bin Laden Photos Found By CIA After Freedom of Information Request
The Central Intelligence Agency recently found additional photos of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse, the Department of Justice acknowledged in a Friday letter.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch’s Michael Bekesha, Justice Department attorney Marcia Berman said that the CIA had located seven additional photos of the Al Qaeda leader’s body. Previously, the DOJ had told courts and FOIA requesters that just 52 pictures of Bin Laden existed, all of which remain classified.
“These additional images were not located during the CIA’s search for responsive records in this case,” Berman wrote in a letter filed in federal district court. “However, these images of Bin Laden’s corpse are of the same nature as the materials the CIA previously identified and discussed in the declaration of the Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, John Bennett, and would have been withheld in full for the same reasons discussed in Mr. Bennett’s declaration. In fact, Mr. Bennett has personally reviewed these seven additional images and confirmed that they continue to be properly classified for the reasons set forth in his declaration.”
