Biden Orders Sweeping Review of Government Science Integrity Policies

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: President Joe Biden today created a task force that will conduct a 120-day review of scientific integrity policies across the U.S. government, including documenting instances in which “improper political interference” interfered with research or led to the suppression or distortion of data. The review is part of a lengthy memorandum from Biden on his…

In Hidden Message on White House Website, Biden Calls For Coders

The recently updated website for President Joe Biden’s White House carried an invitation for tech specialists savvy enough to find it. From a report: Hidden in the HTML code on www.whitehouse.gov was an invitation to join the U.S. Digital Service, a technology unit within the White House. “If you’re reading this, we need your help building back better,” the message said….

US President-Elect Biden Starts New Twitter Account, Criticizes Policy on POTUS Account

“This will be the account for my official duties as President,” tweeted U.S. president-elect Joe Biden on Thursday — but from a new account at @PresElectBiden (which will transition to @POTUS after Wednesday’s inauguration). But Bloomberg reports Biden is still “clashing with the social media company over its decision to deny the incoming administration millions of existing White House followers.” Biden’s…

Open-Source Developer and Manager David Recordon Named White House Director of Technology

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team announced that David Recordon, one of OpenId and oAuth’s developers, has been named the White House Director of Technology. Recordon most recently was the VP of infrastructure and security at the non-profit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation. Before that, Recordon was Facebook’s engineer director. There, he had led Facebook’s…

Obama Says Social Media Companies ‘Are Making Editorial Choices, Whether They’ve Buried Them in Algorithms or Not’

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that the extent to which social media companies claim they “are more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic” is not “tenable,” he told the publication in an interview published Monday. From a report “They are making editorial choices, whether they’ve buried them in algorithms or not,” the former president said in…

What Biden’s Victory Means For Net Neutrality – and for Ajit Pai

“A victory by Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election could usher in an abrupt change in the nation’s telecommunications policy, restoring so-called net neutrality regulation,” Bloomberg recently reported: Biden hasn’t talked much about the FCC during the campaign, but his party’s platform is specific. It calls for restoring net neutrality rules put in place under then-President Barack Obama when Biden…

US Formally Withdraws From Paris Climate Agreement

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The United States officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, casting the stakes of the still-undecided presidential election in planetary terms. With the completion of the formal withdrawal process, which Trump began in June 2017, the U.S. became the only country in the world not to participate in the global effort…

Twitter Orders Politicians, Journalists To Fortify Passwords Before Election

Twitter will require certain political candidates, elected officials and journalists to beef up their passwords, the company said Thursday, in an effort to head off any more breaches of high-profile accounts as the 2020 election draws near. From a report: The change comes two months after an embarrassing cyberattack in which hackers exploited Twitter employees’ credentials to wrest control of dozens…

Surprise News About Superhero Actor Chadwick Boseman Becomes Most-Liked Tweet Ever

Yahoo News reports:
On Friday, Chadwick Boseman’s family posted a final tweet on his Twitter account, announcing that he had died after a four-year battle with colon cancer. Twitter confirmed on Saturday afternoon that this tweet from Boseman’s account is now the most-liked tweet on Twitter of all time… “The 43-year-old’s death shocked many in Hollywood who were unaware he had spent…

DNC, RNC To Test Limits of Virtual Events as Election Enters Final Stage

The Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, long mainstays of the US presidential election cycle, have been forced online, creating the biggest test yet for conducting life remotely during the coronavirus. From a report: Robbed of the energy of convention halls, the parties will seek to re-create that enthusiasm in high-production streaming events that beam their luminaries from around the country to…