“Facing the prospect that President Trump could lose his re-election bid, his cabinet is scrambling to enact regulatory changes affecting millions of Americans in a blitz so rushed it may leave some changes vulnerable to court challenges,” reports the New York Times: The effort is evident in a broad range of federal agencies and encompasses proposals like easing limits on how…
Tag: Obama
Trump Pushes To Reap Biometric Data From Immigrants, Americans
Six million would-be U.S. immigrants face expanded collection of their biometric data, including iris scans, palm-, and voice-prints, facial recognition images, and DNA, under a proposed federal rule. The Department of Homeland Security also for the first time would gather that data from American citizens sponsoring or benefiting from a visa application. Bloomberg Law reports: Years in the making, the biometrics…
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…
‘The Future of American Industry Depends On Open Source Tech’
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Wired, written by Kevin Xu and Jordan Schneider. Xu is the author of Interconnected, investor and advisor of open source startups at OSS Capital, and served in the Obama White House. Schneider is the author of the ChinaTalk newsletter and host of the ChinaTalk podcast, posted on Lawfare. From the report: Open source…
Should the U.S. Pardon Edward Snowden?
Long-time Slashdot readers 93 Escort Wagon and schwit1 both shared the news that U.S. President Trump is “considering” a pardon for Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who “leaked a trove of secret files in 2013 to news organizations that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations” carried out by the agency, according to Reuters: U.S. authorities for years…
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…
What Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s VP Pick, Means For Tech
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: After months of speculation, Joe Biden has picked California Sen. Kamala Harris to be his vice-presidential running mate in the race for the White House. The choice fulfills a pledge from Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president, to name a woman to his ticket as he seeks to unseat Donald Trump in…
Is There a Sorting Algorithm Faster than Quicksort and Timsort?
When asked for the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers in 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama answered, “I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go.” But people are still searching for the best possible sorting algorithms, explains Slashdot reader scandum:
Long has the conviction been held that quicksort is faster than merge sort. Timsort (derived…
Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Twitter-Like Bitcoin Scam
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says YouTube has for months allowed scammers to use his name and likeness as part of a phony bitcoin giveaway similar to the one that was quickly extinguished by Twitter last week. Scammers used images and video of Wozniak, who left Apple in 1985, to convince YouTube users that he was hosting a live giveaway and anyone…