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via @jenselter

5 Jen Selter .GIFs, & you can see her cam-toe in the first one »

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

War is Peace 
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Censorship is Transparency 

Many of you will have heard about how the White House recently celebrated National Freedom of Information Day by removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act. While interesting, it turns out that was merely a sideshow to the real news; that fiscal 2014 marked a record year for government censorship of documents that are supposed to be available on request.

Specifically, data released Tuesday showed that the U.S. government responded to 647,142 requests, a 4% decrease over the previous year, and that the backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end surged by 55% to more than 200,00.

More from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration set a new record again for more often than ever censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

 

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

 

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Can’t make this stuff up.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

 

The government responded to 647,142 requests, a 4 percent decrease over the previous year. It more than ever censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them, in 250,581 cases or 39 percent of all requests. Sometimes, the government censored only a few words or an employee’s phone number, but other times it completely marked out nearly every paragraph on pages.

 

The government’s responsiveness under the open records law is an important measure of its transparency. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas. It cited such exceptions a record 554,969 times last year.

Well in the UK, we know that protecting powerful pedophiles is considered a matter of “national security,” so who knows what this term even means anymore.

Additionally, isn’t it cute that the U.S. government is so concerned with public officials’ personal privacy, yet shows no concern about the privacy of the citizenry?

“What we discovered reaffirmed what we have seen all too frequently in recent years,” Pruitt wrote in a column published this week. “The systems created to give citizens information about their government are badly broken and getting worse all the time.”

 

The AP earlier this month sued the State Department under the law to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The government had failed to turn over the files under repeated requests, including one made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013.

 

Under the law, the U.S. is required to move urgent requests from journalists to the front of the line for a speedy answer if records will inform the public concerning an actual or alleged government activity. But the government now routinely denies such requests: Over six years, the number of requests granted speedy processing status fell from nearly half to fewer than 1 in 8.

 

The CIA, at the center of so many headlines, has denied every such request the last two years.

Least. Transparent. Ever.

*  *  *

For related articles, see:

Least Transparent Ever – Obama Administration Fighting to Prevent Release of C.I.A. Torture Report

Meet OIRA – The Secretive White House Office with Disturbing Regulatory Powers

“It’s National Security”…Government Transparency Hits Record Low in 2012 Under Obama

A team at Stanford's School of Medicine has reportedly uncovered a potent new treatment method for combating one of leukemia's most aggressive forms -- and they did it pretty much by accident. While survival rates for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leuke...

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3-D printers are powerful but limited tools: you can make anything you want, but only out of a specific kind of plastic. But combine that with a CNC machine that shapes metal, and a laser etcher for fine detail, and you have an all-in-one workshop that doesn't require you getting your hands dirty.

Read more...

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I'm trying to imagine what sort of party this could be with a guy in top hat and tails and a blow up doll. The mind boggles




And I have no idea how to tag this.

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FYI: Pac-Man is a bad guy.

Adam Sandler stars in a new movie called “Pixels” in which aliens attack the Earth in the form of some classic video game characters.

It’s the natural next phase in disaster movies of course, now that we’ve sufficiently covered everything else imaginable.

These include the yellow, ghost-eating menace, Donkey Kong, centipede and space invaders among others.

From the film’s description:

When aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth, using the games as models for their various assaults. President Will Cooper has to call on his childhood best friend, ‘80s video game champion Sam Brenner, now a home theater installer, to lead a team of old-school arcaders to defeat the aliens and save the planet.

It also stars Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad and Brian Cox.

The only way to stop Pac-Man is apparently having Tyrion Lannister drive around in brightly colored cars resembling the ghosts with their names on the license plates.

All that being said, it actually looks really entertaining and is scheduled for release on July 24.

The new movie was inspired by the 2010 short film below of the same name which you can watch below.

The post Trailer of the Day: Watch Pac-Man Eat a Fire Truck in ‘Pixels’ appeared first on The Daily What.

Talk of a massive bubble in the red hot world of private tech companies is getting louder of late. As we noted last week, Prem Watsa recently highlighted what he called excessive “speculation” in tech stocks and predicted that at the end of the day, habitually slapping billion-dollar valuations on unproven companies that often have little more than an app and a dream will end “very badly.” This comes on the heels of Mark Cuban’s warning that stretched valuations in private tech companies are far more dangerous than any perceived Nasdaq bubble 2.0, as at least with overvalued publicly traded firms there’s liquidity. 

Well, now that everyone is jumping on the “there’s no way that app is worth $50 billion” bandwagon, Bloomberg is out with a startling revelation: “Snapchat, the photo-messaging app raising cash at a $15 billion valuation, probably isn't actually worth more than Clorox.” 

No, probably not, but it sure is more fun than doing laundry, which is why it absolutely makes sense that the number VCs are putting on the app makes absolutely no sense. Here’s Bloomberg:

Here's the secret to how Silicon Valley calculates the value of its hottest companies: The numbers are sort of made-up. For the most mature startups, investors agree to grant higher valuations, which help the companies with recruitment and building credibility, in exchange for guarantees that they'll get their money back first if the company goes public or sells. They can also negotiate to receive additional free shares if a subsequent round's valuation is less favorable.

Ok so it’s all completely made up, which is what we suspected, but as Bloomberg discovered when they spoke to some of the billionaires involved in funding early stage tech companies, the term “valuation” doesn’t actually mean what sane people think it means. In fact, having to equate the amount of money one throws at something with an assessment of how much the business is actually worth turns out to be really inconvenient when it comes to fleecing employee shareholders and people who got in earlier which is why VCs would rather just not talk about it, but when pressed, here’s what they’ll say: 

“These big numbers almost don't matter," says Randy Komisar, a partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "Those numbers are just a middling shot at a valuation, and then it's adjusted later" 

Got it. So while we thought “valuations” were numbers that indicate how much something is worth, what they actually are are complete shots in the dark which, if necessary, can be “adjusted” later to reflect economic realities. The reason this makes sense is because these companies often command huge market shares in markets they made up and also because their founders are arrogant. Here’s Bloomberg again: 

Some VCs defend the practice by saying valuations are just a placeholder number, part of an equation fueled by other, more important factors. Those can include market share, growth projections, and a founder's ego. 

If those are the “more important factors,” what are the less important factors? 

“A tech startup's cash flow is less important than you might think. It's something investors look at for a sense of how quickly a startup is growing its revenue, if the company has any.” 

So just as the term “valuation” does not, as we mistakenly thought, indicate what something is worth, a business’s ability to generate cash flow is “less important” than we might have suspected, and it’s a good thing, because a lot of these business don’t make any money at all:

Financiers also look to find the number of people using the product, regardless of whether they pay for it. 

Another mistake the market often makes when thinking about valuing these companies revolves around the bad habit of factoring in costs, and especially operating costs, which, like cash flow, actually don’t matter:

Costs, especially operations costs, are largely ignored for fast-growing companies.

All of this makes complete sense of course, but it does lead us to wonder how valuations for the next Facebook are determined because ultimately, you’re still left with the annoying task of having to get a funding round done, and even if it’s just a “middling shot,” it’s still a shot you have to take. Fortunately, there’s one completely unbiased party who is always willing to step in and tell you how much the business is really worth: 

The number is typically set by the company…

 

A founder often starts off with a number in mind, based on the startup's last valuation, the valuations of competitors, and, for good measure, the valuation of the company's neighbor down the street.

The punchline to the whole thing is that when this highly scientific process ends up spitting out a number that doesn’t make any sense (so like when Snapchat is supposedly as valuable as Campbell’s Soup for instance), the VCs never get hurt because, in consultation with the founder, they make sure to put in ironclad “downside protection.” 

Buried in their corporate filings, startups tuck away all sorts of provisions that reward investors for accepting these mega-valuations. The practice is more regular and egregious in financing rounds for mature companies. Their capital requirements tend to be much larger, so they must turn to more sophisticated investment firms that demand these kinds of terms. Startups that are generous with these guarantees can garner much higher valuations.

 

Each provision covers different ways to make sure new investors get paid back, even if disaster strikes, if an initial public offering gives the company a market cap far less than its private number, or, more commonly, if the startup has to raise money again at a lower valuation. One stipulation, called senior liquidation preference, ensures that a certain group gets its money back before anyone else, including employees. Another class, called downside protection or ratchets, automatically grants additional shares in the event of a declining valuation, removing a great deal of risk that the stake will ever lose value.

 

And while company founders and VCs are busy making up numbers, employees (who may or may not have been lured into working for the companies with promises of stock option riches), get the short end of the stick because unlike the VCs, the value of their stake is based on real numbers: 

The valuation based on common stock, which is generally what employees receive, and it's calculated by professional auditors. That figure usually isn't anywhere close to the headline number.