firehose

When it comes to coercive sterilization, most people think of China. But India sterilizes 4.6 million women each year—37% of sterilizations that take place globally, as Bloomberg reports. Here’s how India stacks up, as captured by this Bloomberg graphic:

Even though the central government officially abandoned contraceptive targets, including sterilization, in 2000, states still hold health workers to these under threat of salary cuts or firings, says Human Rights Watch. It reports that in Madhya Pradesh, one gynecologist was performing 250-300 sterilizations a day. In another camp, the surgeon continued to carry on sterilizing patients after he ran out of anesthetic, reports Bloomberg.

It’s barbaric, but not unprecedented. From 1975 to 1977, Indira Gandhi instituted “the Emergency,” which required sterilization of fathers of two or more children. The government has continued to struggle with high birth rates; it produces 18 million new Indians each year—with a population of 1.2 billion. By 2021, India will blow past China as the planet’s most populous (pdf) country. That explosive population growth strains resources and the government’s ability to provide public services.

The government’s latest strategy is to focus on sterilizing women, rather than men. In poorer provinces like Bihar or Gujarat (pdf), women still give birth to many more children than the Indian government’s target of two. State governments encourage women with two or more children to undergo sterilization in what are called “sterilization camps”—makeshift village clinics that often have filthy conditions.

It’s cheaper and easier for the government to “incentivize” poor young women who lack education to get their tubes tied than it is to educate them and finance birth control. Here’s a look via the UN at how India stacks up with other countries in terms of contraceptive use (pdf):

Most of these sterilizations aren’t “forced” in the sense of being against a woman’s will. But the lack of information given by health workers and the “incentives” offered to women who undergo surgery make the practice coercive. The government of Madhya Pradesh actually offered Tata Nano cars to those who agreed to sterilization (pdf, p.13). And as HRW reports, health care workers often offer misleading information to encourage women to submit to surgery.

Those are the carrots. And here’s the stick: the Economist reports that people who have more than two children are barred from running for public office in some larger states. Other states also deny government services to people resisting sterilization, according to local NGOs.

Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin killed the proposal.

Governments love to use external enemies as a way to further their agendas. Alarmed by reports that American spies are gathering data from popular web services, Ilya Kostunov, a lawmaker from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in the lower house of government, yesterday said he wants state officials to stop using US social networks and email services such as Facebook and Gmail for official purposes.

This seems like a sensible move. But Kostunov—who is on Facebook, Google+ and LiveJournal—goes further. He told Izvestia, a Russian daily, about a letter (link in Russian) he sent to deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin (more on him later), the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB is the successor to the KGB), and the defense and communications ministers, in which he suggests that any lapses resulting from the reckless use of foreign services should be dealt with under article 275 of the Russian criminal code: treason. The law was recently expanded to include wide-ranging new definitions of treason.

Kostunov is a colorful character in Russian politics, known, among other things, for insulting the entire Russian population. But his views parallel those of the Russian establishment.

Last week, Russia’s deputy prime minister Rogozin suggested at a lecture in Moscow that the the US State Department was actively engaged in influencing Russian public opinion through social networks. He said that people “receive special content that is undermining the authority of the state and the values of the established state,” according to Russia Today, an English-language news service.

Earlier this week, the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, told a meeting of the national counter-terrorism committee that social networks and foreigners (link in Russian) were spreading religious extremism in Russia, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

These statements contain within them an element of truth. Russian ministers and intelligence services, like their counterparts in other parts of the world, have legitimate reasons to worry about data security and online extremism. But Russia’s complaints are undermined by its own attacks on free speech and online forums.

Last year, Russia passed a law requiring NGOs that obtain funding from outside Russia to register as “foreign agents,” a law that critics say is used to harass those organizations. Kostunov was among those pushing for the law to be expanded to the media. More recently, Russia has turned its wrath on the internet. In May, a parliamentarian held social networks responsible for helping organise protests in Moscow. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Putin in February called on the FSB to better monitor social networks, and cites lawmaker Aleksey Mitrofanov as saying “an era of absolutely free internet in Russia has ended.”

More worrying still is the persecution of Pavel Durov, who founded VKontakte, a popular—and permissive—Russian social network. Durov disappeared in April after being accused of hitting a policeman with his car. Shortly thereafter, authorities raided VKontakte’s offices in St Petersburg. The following day, two of his partners sold their  combined 48% stake in the company to a private equity group linked to the Kremlin. Some view l’affaire Durov as part of a wider crackdown on internet freedom.

Together, these events and exhortations from lawmakers point to a clear trend: Russia’s problem with social networks is actually a problem with free speech itself, even if it is couched in the international language of controlling extremism, unchecked migration and criminal activities. Foreigners are the enemy in this campaign. And the NSA leaks give Putin’s men a perfect opportunity to drive home that message.

Presiding over an audience of devoted Pokemon fans during an E3 2013 roundtable session, Tsunekazu Ishihara and Junichi Masuda of The Pokemon Company dropped some interesting new facts about the upcoming Pokemon X and Y, releasing October 12 for the 3DS. The games' new online functionality, known as the Player Search System (or P.S.S.), taps into the power of the 3DS by allowing players to switch between local wireless communication and full-fledged Internet connectivity with the push of a button.

During play, the bottom screen of the 3DS will display confirmed friends - fully integrated with the 3DS' Friend List (meaning friends you add before the game's release will appear there) - as well as people in the area who happen to be playing. Battling someone from the latter group will add them to an acquaintances list, and after a few battles, X and Y will establish a friendship between the two players. True to the series' focus on multiplayer from its very first generation, X and Y has made it easier than ever to smash your pocket monsters into friends' far and wide.

One important question, though, left some lingering disappointment in the room: when asked if previous generations' Pokemon can be imported into X and Y, Masuda could only offer "we're working on it," citing the problems in communicating data between the DS and 3DS. Hopefully, you won't have to take your current stable of Pokemon out behind the woodshed come October.

Pokemon X and Y's online features feel like a true evolution originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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flight - Ardy Lightfoot (ASCII - Super Famicom - 1993) 

requested by anonymous

If you enjoyed the song from the Assassin's Creed 4 "Horizon" trailer, it's called "Full Circle" by Half Moon Run. We've grabbed iTunes, Spotify and YouTube links if you'd like to pick it up through non piratical means.

Continue reading Looking for that song from the Assassin's Creed 4 'Horizon' trailer?

Looking for that song from the Assassin's Creed 4 'Horizon' trailer? originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A plan akin to adding more lanes of highway to the wireless internet traffic jam is taking shape, and you can already see the results. We’ve told you about a plan from GlobalStar, a satellite company, to turn the spectrum it uses to communicate in space into a new wireless network for earth. With an experimental licence from the US Federal Communications Commission, it has now demonstrated how effective its network could potentially be.

GlobalStar holds the rights, in the US and around the world, to a block of spectrum—on earth and not just in space—adjacent to what’s currently used for Wi-Fi. It is currently exploring using some of that spectrum to add an extra channel for Wi-Fi use, which consumers could theoretically access through a software upgrade. There would be some sort of charge for most people to send data over this new uncrowded wireless lane (hospitals and schools and emergency services would likely get a break.) But given looming issues with data crowding in Wi-Fi spectrum slowing internet traffic, that’s a promising market.

The charts below tell the story of a test (PDF) performed in a Boston office building, comparing coverage via conventional Wi-Fi channels and the GlobalStar spectrum. The cooler the color, the better the connectivity to a wireless access point in the building, with red representing a dead zone. On the left, you see the results of using conventional Wi-Fi channels, while on the right, what GlobalStar’s new network provided:

The difference is pretty stark. In the first test above, a wireless access point specially developed by Ruckus Wireless for the new network was placed in the front of the building, and provided three to five times the connectivity when using the new channel. The company’s executives attributed the results to the lack of interference from other nearby Wi-Fi users. Similar results were seen using a generic wireless access point, below:

The tests also showed that traffic on the new channel doesn’t interfere with existing Wi-Fi traffic. But while this early performance is promising, the challenge with Wi-Fi comes with overcrowding. It will be interesting to see what the results of this test look like when multiple users are on the new network. The company says central control of the network will allow it to manage interference between hotspots in ways that the decentralized public Wi-Fi network cannot. Full deployment awaits the FCC’s approval, and these results will likely to help the cause.

Of all the charges faced by James (Whitey) Bulger, whose trial begins Wednesday in Boston, it is the ones that violate his personal code that stand out.

"I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period."

The Super Suit Carrier from 24Dientes is a garment bag specialized for superheros on the go. Keep you super identity safe while also fighting off wrinkles on your capes, tights and even leotards. It is available to purchase online.

Used by the most famous and popular superheros all around the world and beyond!

image via 24dientes

Amir Blumenfeld made reference to Michael in an episode of College Humor’s Jake and Amir, mentioning that he would go “dickless for Michael Chiklis”. This boosted his reputation as a person who people would willingly lose their genitals for.

Link

Nice!

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE | Published: June 11, 2013

A Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns, a case that could upend the long-held practice of the film industry and other businesses that rely heavily on unpaid internships.

In the decision, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that Fox Searchlight should have paid two interns on the movie “Black Swan,” because they were essentially regular employees.

The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work. The case could have broad implications. Young people have flocked to internships, especially against the backdrop of a weak job market.

Employment experts estimate that undergraduates work in more than one million internships a year, an estimated half of which are unpaid, according to Intern Bridge, a research firm.

“Employers have already started to take a hard look at their internship programs,” said Rachel Bien, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “I think this decision will go far to discourage private companies from having unpaid internship programs.”

Chris Petrikin, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, said: “We are very disappointed with the court’s rulings. We believe they are erroneous, and will seek to have them reversed.”

Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman, production interns on “Black Swan,” sued Fox Searchlight in September 2011. In the suit, Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman said they did basic chores, usually undertaken by paid employees. Like their counterparts in other industries, the interns took lunch orders, answered phones, arranged other employees’ travel plans, tracked purchase orders, took out the trash and assembled office furniture.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said Mr. Glatt, who has an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University. “I hope that this sends a very loud and clear message to employers and to students doing these internships, and to the colleges that are cooperating in creating this large pool of free labor — for most for-profit employers, this is illegal. It shouldn’t be up to the least powerful person in the arrangement to have to bring a lawsuit to stop this.”

In the ruling, the judge said unpaid internships should be allowed only in very limited circumstances.

Judge Pauley rejected the argument made by many companies to adopt a “primary benefit test” to determine whether an intern should be paid, specifically whether “the internship’s benefits to the intern outweigh the benefits to the engaging entity.” Judge Pauley wrote that such a test would be too subjective and unpredictable.

Instead, the judge forcefully called for following criteria that the Department of Labor has laid out for unpaid internships. Those rules say unpaid internships should not be to the immediate advantage of the employer, the work must be similar to vocational training given in an educational environment, the experience must be for the benefit of the intern and the intern’s work must not displace that of regular employees.

Some employers have asserted that they have free rein not to pay interns as long as the interns are receiving college credit. But Judge Pauley said receiving academic credit was of little importance in determining whether interns should be paid.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as résumé listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” Judge Pauley wrote. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.” Judge Pauley added that “Searchlight received the benefits of their unpaid work, which otherwise would have required paid employees.”

The “Black Swan” case was the first in a series of lawsuits filed by unpaid interns.

In February 2012, a former Harper’s Bazaar intern sued Hearst Magazines, asserting that she regularly worked 40 to 55 hours a week without being paid. Last July, a federal court ruled that the plaintiff could proceed with her lawsuit as a collective action, certifying a class of all unpaid interns who worked in the company’s magazines division since February 2009. This February, an unpaid intern sued Elite Model Management, seeking $50 million.

After a lawsuit brought by unpaid interns, Charlie Rose and his production company announced last December that they would pay back wages to as many as 189 interns. The settlement called for many of the interns to receive about $1,100 each — amounting to roughly $110 a week in back pay, for a maximum of 10 weeks, the approximate length of a school semester.

As part of his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Pauley also granted class certification to a group of unpaid interns in New York who worked in several divisions of the Fox Entertainment Group.

Original Source

Ubuntu developers are still likely to be switching from Mozilla Firefox as the Linux distribution's default web-browser to now using Google's open-source Chromium platform...

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others have vociferously denied that they gave the NSA direct access to their networks to provide data to the massive surveillance program called PRISM. Several of these companies emphasize the importance of protecting privacy and limiting government intrusions as part of their company ethos.

Twitter refused to participate in PRISM and elected instead not to make it easier for the NSA to gather information on users’ communications. It is widely acknowledged to be the most aggressive protector of user privacy and regularly works its users to fight court orders for Twitter-related data.

Twitter’s absence from the list of cooperating companies is striking because the company’s personal messaging system is widely used by its 500-million person user base (see e.g. the Anthony Weiner scandal) and surely contains information of interest to the US government. But the company likely complies with more traditional, targeted FISA requests, because it would otherwise risk criminal liability in US courts.

The scale of private communications taking place over Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (the owner of Hotmail) networks makes their data valuable to the NSA. They control even larger amounts of information than Twitter because unlike tweets, email messages, chat conversations, video conferences, etc. are not public. The combined user-base of these three leading email providers is over 1 billion people, double that of Twitter. And Facebook’s estimated 1.1 billion users generate not only public postings, but also a significant amount of chat conversations, direct messages, and other private communications.

According to the US government, the surveillance program is managed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders (pdf), which are issued in secret with only US government lawyers present. These orders put Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. in a bind because as US companies, they are required to comply with federal law, including the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among others. It is unclear how a company, even Twitter, would fight a FISA order, when the very existence of the order is a state secret, and gag orders prevent the companies from disclosing any information about them.

These companies are much younger than the telephone industry and have a much shorter history of being subject to government regulation (and fewer regulations at that). According, to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, telephone companies do very little to protect private customer/user data from government collection. They regularly do not: require a warrant for content; tell users about government requests; publish transparency reports; publish law enforcement guidelines; fight for users’ privacy rights in court; and/or fight for users’ privacy rights in Congress. In the wake of recent revelations, telecom companies should their policies as consumers become more conscious—and likely concerned—about how and when their information is being shared.

Verizon has not denied that it received—and presumably complied with—an April 25 order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to provide the NSA on an “ongoing, daily basis” information about all calls placed on its system, both landline and mobile, both within the US and between the US and foreign countries. The telecom company and its peers have a long history of complying with government regulation, especially since 9/11. Because the telephone has been the predominant method of communication for so long, phone companies have longstanding relationships with the US intelligence community.

Leading technology companies will increasingly become embroiled in US intelligence-gathering activities as new communications platforms and patterns evolve and the government strives to keep up. After all, PRISM is merely one method of complying with FISA orders—among many—that makes the transfer of data to the NSA (in compliance with such orders) easier. So even if a company like Twitter declines to participate, it still has to provide the data sought by the FISA order another way.

While they are forced to comply with their legal obligations, it is also incumbent upon them to stand up for user privacy instead of following in the foot steps of telephone companies and willingly submitting to increased government control. Google, which has traditionally scored high on protection of customer data, has attempted to maintain its track record through transparency. The company has requested—via an open letter to the Attorney General—that it be allowed to publish general information about the quantity and scope of FISA requests it receives as part of its annual transparency report. Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter followed suit and are also calling for increased government transparency. Hopefully, Washington will listen and be more open about what exactly it’s asking these companies for and why.

You can follow Eli on Twitter at @EliSugarman. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

estheimtogetdown:

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kirbyvolteatscookies:

aerithstrife:

NO CHURCH IN THE WILD, MICROSOFT

NO CHURCH IN THE WILD

THIS IS ME.

odditiesoflife:

Montaña Mágica Lodge

Deep in southern Chile lies the Montaña Mágica Lodge (Magic Mountain Lodge). An extraordinary hotel hidden in the center of a 300,000 acre private nature reserve. The small, 13 room hotel is built in the shape of a volcano that spews water instead of lava. The exterior is covered in rainforest moss and vines and its entrance is only accessible via a suspended, swinging rope bridge. The outdoor hot tubs are carved from the trunks of giant trees. The lodge is located in Los Rios which is within the stunning Huilo-Huilo Unesco biosphere reserve, 242 square miles of lush nature, filled with wildlife.

Hand-written by The Radiant Child when he was 20-years-old (1980).

Sotheby’s | BuzzFeed

Last week I was driving to Champaign to hang out with friends. I am, admittedly, a fast driver, especially on flat, wide open Midwest interstates. I was going around 86 and this silver SUV kept chasing me, or at least that’s what it felt like. Lo and behold, it was a state trooper and he pulled me over. He was robust in that hearty, corn-fed way with a buzz cut and well-pressed uniform. He spoke slowly and rounded his vowels. It was straight out of central casting.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked.

I smiled, said, “Eighty.” I’m not the kind of girl who gets to flirt their way out of tickets so I just work with plausible lies. 

He peered into my car, then asked if I had received any tickets lately. I said, “No,” which was the truth. Thus began a brief interrogation.

“Where are you going so fast?”

(Let me add that he acted like speeding was a moral affront. It was ridiculous.)

“To hang out with friends from work in Champaign,” I said. 

“Where do you work?”

“Eastern Illinois University.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a writing professor.”

At this, there was a stunned silence because he had made some assumptions, just by looking at me and my answers did not fit his assumptions. The tattoos up and down my arms, my size, my race, maybe my gender—he assumed I was trouble or that I was just…not worth some basic consideration. After that, his tone changed, he took my information and returned to his vehicle for a long while. 

As I answered his questions I realized, “I do not have to answer these questions,” but I also knew that I did have to answer the questions. If I didn’t answer, he would have probably made me get out of my car. He would have probably searched my car. Another unit or two may have been called. I see it all the time, up and down the Interstate, young black people being put through an arbitrary ringer for the crime of being black.

The rules are different when you drive black in rural America, or do anything, anywhere for that matter. Just ask young black men what it’s like to walk while black in New York City. We don’t have the same rights. It’s a really bitter pill to swallow, one that fills me with a quiet rage, quiet only because I have to get on with the business of living. 

This sort of double standard is the same in airports. I travel by plane once or twice a month, sometimes more. Without fail, at some point in the journey, I will be pulled aside for “special screening.”

And what always… amuses me is that I know I have it easy compared to say, air travelers of Middle Eastern descent or certain men of color.  I think, man, if this is easy… 

In that moment, answering the trooper’s questions, I could have made a stand. I could have fought the good fight. I had nothing to hide, no tickets in years, no arrests, a squeaky clean record but I didn’t want to waste a couple hours of my evening. It was easier to just play along and answer his inane questions. I mean, what was I going to say? It’s all absurd.

I had a right to privacy in that moment but I didn’t. When you are a member of certain communities, privacy has diminishing returns. There are things you don’t get to keep to yourself. As a woman, people see your gender and make assumptions, think they know things about you. As a person of color, people see your race, or they guess at your race, and make assumptions, think they know things about you. There are certain privacies you can never be afforded, simply because of who you are.

Privacy is important. I like privacy, keeping things to myself. I do not want you to know my secrets, my fears, my vulnerabilities unless I choose to disclose them. I do not want you to know what weird things I spend my time on the Internet looking at. I do not want you to see the content of a great many, shall we say, dirty e-mails. This is all fairly trivial stuff, but it’s my stuff. It’s my life, and I have a right to keep such things to myself. We all have that right or we thought we did, or we hope we do. 

There are degrees of privacy. There are privacies to which I and many, many others, will never have access, privacies, the luxury of which we will never be able to fathom.

This past week, with these revelations about the NSA and wiretapping and PRISM, I’ve been a bit bewildered, a bit bemused. Intellectually, I do understand the seriousness of these revelations, the disturbing potential consequences. In truth, I’m not even a little surprised. I’m not particularly outraged, though I wouldn’t mind the privilege of being outraged. I guess I never really assumed I had digital privacy where the government was concerned. The Scrabble game I’m playing online knows I recently visited Home Depot to buy metal shelving and keeps displaying Home Depot ads. If that’s possible, then yes, it’s not a reach to see that the government is probably in my business, too. 

To be clear, it doesn’t thrill me to know my data is potentially being analyzed by a powerful government overlord, to unclear, probably nefarious ends, not at all. It’s also hard to feel a sense of urgency about this, or a sense of crisis because so many aspects of my life are beyond the realm of privacy and always have been.

We now know who this latest whistleblower is—Edward Snowden. He’s 29. He makes $200,000 a year. He works as a contractor for the NSA. He has a girlfriend with whom he shares a home. He up and left his life, apparently without explaining himself to his loved ones, and went to Hong Kong, from where he leaked the information, to journalists, about the NSA’s incursions into American privacy.

People are already calling him a hero. It’s this easy narrative just waiting for us to grab hold. We love heros, especially when they fight for our freedom! I don’t think he’s not a hero. It’s too soon to understand what the hell is going on. I mostly keep thinking, “Oh his poor girlfriend, what a mess her life is going to be for the next while.” He sacrificed her privacy to bring attention to the erosion of everyone’s privacy. I suppose this is about the greater good but as usual, the greater good has unwitting victims. 

It is not a coincidence that the people who most visibly advocate for the right to privacy are middle class or relatively affluent, heterosexual white men. Privacy is, for them, something sacred, and when there is the slightest hint that the sanctity of that privacy has been breached, my goodness, that’s when they spring into action, and how. They start foundations and movements. They become advocates for the freedom of information and the right to privacy. They proudly take credit for what they’ve done because, by god, they are fighting the good fight. They are fighting for an inalienable human right that is, alas, unique only to them. 

flash-gordo:

I don’t care what she’s selling, I’m buying.

1919: Demonstrating the Magnavox PA system

Fritzi Scheff (1879-1954) Vienna-born American vocalist, demonstrating the Magnavox

Source

SMB2 is the new default protocol for sharing files in OS X Mavericks. SMB2 is superfast, increases security, and improves Windows compatibility.

For the Beck’s Record Label project, creative agency Shine Limited created the Edison Bottle, the world’s first playable beer bottle. The bottle is inscribed with the single “Here She Comes” by New Zealand band Ghost Wave from their album Ages and can be “played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison’s original cylindrical phonograph.”

Making the world’s first playable beer bottle was a formidable technical challenge. The clever people at Auckland firm Gyro Constructivists first had to design and build a record-cutting lathe, driven by a hard drive recording head. Then they reinvented Edison’s original cylinder player, using modern materials and electronics and built to very fine tolerances. The Edison Bottle made its public debut at SemiPermanent in Auckland in May to a standing ovation from the assembled media and design community.

Beck’s has had a long association with music and art. In fact, at about the same time Heinrich Beck was brewing his first beer in the 1870s, Tom Edison was tinkering away on designs for the first phonograph. Considering how beer has influenced recorded music since then, this physical collaboration was very appropriate and long overdue.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips