Items tagged with Politics
Have you ever wondered what kind of person is on the other end of a internet or social media rant? Usually, these kinds of people come off as brash and rude, but they may be the same way in real life, according to new research. On Thursday, a paper titled “The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis” from Alexander Bor and Michael Bang Petersen at Aarhus University was published in the American Political Science Review. In this report, the team posed the question, “Why are online discussions about politics more hostile than offline discussions?” While the paper acknowledges the age-old adage that...
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What would you do if, at 16-years old, you made $1.7 million in revenue and $110,000 in profits? What if this income came from selling (or scalping) things such as the newest PlayStation and Xbox consoles at up to double the sticker price? That is exactly what one teenager from New Jersey did during the pandemic, cornering the resale market on a wide variety of products. From consoles to Pokémon cards and pools, the pandemic has led to shortages of all kinds of products due to production issues and heightened demand. As capitalism goes, this gives rise to an opportunity to make money from these products in the resale subindustry, and 16-year-old Max Hayden saw this. For forty hours a week...
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The 2020 United States presidential election is over a year away, but there have already been several cyberattack attempts against presidential campaigns. Microsoft recently reported that a hacker group attacked nearly 250 accounts related to campaign workers, government officials, and reporters. The affected users have been notified and Microsoft has published information about the attack as a warning for others. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) noted that an Iranian hacker group referred to as “Phosphorus” attempted to identify the owners of more than 2,700 accounts. The hackers then attacked 241 of these accounts and successfully compromised four of them. The accounts...
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For so many reasons, Wolfenstein II looks to be a fantastic new addition to the classic game series, and as such, publisher Bethesda has pushed its advertising and promotional effort hard. As the company is quickly finding out, however, even if you think an advertising campaign provides a bulletproof message, you're may still to have to deal with backlash, especially if it also pushes the envelope a bit. In this particular case, Bethesda published a trailer that held back no punches, stating: "Make America Nazi-Free Again." Blunt? Incredibly. Unfortunately, white supremacist and Nazi-related subjects have been prominent in the US news recently, while some people have related President Trump to...
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It didn't take long after President Trump's presidential inauguration for decisions to be made that impacted a lot of people in one fell swoop. That couldn't be more true than with the recent executive order to temporarily bar entry into the US for a series of predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It instantly prevented many from returning home and gave pause for extreme caution to those of an affected citizenship who were planning to leave the country for a trip. For some companies, Trump's executive order to ban people from these countries from entering the United States was no different than someone shutting down a production line. You don't have to look far to see...
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If Jeb manages to become the third Bush to lead the United States, those who support net neutrality will have some genuine cause for concern. In a letter posted to his campaign website this week, Jeb wants to tackle what he dubs a "Regulatory Crisis", with one of the bullet-points being net neutrality - something he deems unfair. Interestingly, he wants to "make regulators accountable to Americans rather than special interests", which seems like the exact opposite of what he's proposing. He argues that instead of "enhancing consumer welfare", ISPs are unable to grow and expand because they're not able to charge other companies that use more of their traffic. He cites specific ISPs in rural towns...
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John McAfee is adding a new bullet point to his resume: U.S. presidential candidate. Yes, this is the same McAfee who developed the first commercial antivirus software for computers, which was later sold to Intel, and it's same McAfee who fled his residence in Belize after his neighbor turned up dead.This is not a joke or a hoax. McAfee filed the necessary paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president, paperwork that The Hill said it "confirmed" as being authentic with Kyle Sander, one of McAfee's campaign directors. According to Sander, McAfee will create a "new party yet to be announced."McAfee grew to prominence and wealth in the 1980s when he peddled antivirus software...
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Social networks are no longer solely about communicating with friends and family, they're also platforms for digesting news. You can even subscribe to daily news feeds from Facebook to help stay current on what's happening around the world. However, as we increasingly turn to social networks for news and civic discussions, are we also creating so-called "echo chambers" in which we're only seeing information from people who share the same views as us? Facebook says no. The world's largest social playground conducted research in hopes of answering that very question, and one of the things it found, generally speaking, we have Facebook friends who claim opposing political ideologies, and the content...
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President Barack Obama's first order of business this week was to post an open letter urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify Internet service as a utility and implement strong rules in favor of net neutrality, such as disallowing the rental of premium fast lanes and banning the practice of throttling. But while it's nice to have the President in your corner on important issues like net neutrality, it's come to light that politicians on both sides of the aisle received a combined sum of more than $8 million in campaign contributions from big cable companies in the 2014 election. That figure comes from Gizmodo, which deserves kudos for collecting all the campaign contributions...
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Depending on where you live and shop, you can buy a taco with Bitcoin, a form of virtual currency. You can also buy computer systems and even a Lamborghini with Bitcoin. Despite various shady activities and scandals associated with untraceable crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, the list of things you can buy with it keeps it growing. Heck, you can even make donations to political committees. The U.S. Federal Election Committee (FEC) is allowing Bitcoin to be used to make donations to political action committees under certain conditions, Reuters reports. Following a unanimous vote, the FEC approved donations up to an individual limit of $100 for each election cycle. Political committees are also...
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A number of prominent online companies have joined forces to create The Internet Association, the nation's first trade association claiming to represent the interests of the Internet economy. Led by President and CEO Michael Beckerman, IA consists of Amazon.com, AOL, eBay, Expedia, Facebook, Google, IAC, LinkedIn, Monster Worldwide, Rackspace, salesforce.com, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!, and Zynga. For better or worse, these are the companies that will lobby Internet-related issues in Washington, with an emphasis on three key areas: Protecting Internet freedom; fostering innovation and economic growth; and empowering users. "A free and innovative Internet is vital to our nation’s economic growth,"...
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Let's face it -- Twitter couldn't possibly be bigger right now. Practically everyone at SXSW is using it by the minute, it's pulling in new funds during a tight credit crunch and even a politician that was born long, long before the advent of the Internet is about to do an interview on it. Life's good in the Twitterverse, and it's about to get serious at noon eastern time today.ABC News' George Stephanopoulos is gearing up to conduct an entire interview with the Republican party's most recent presidential nominee, and there will be no special provisions to circumvent the 140 character limit. So far as we know, they'll be no cameras recording either of them, and the only way to tune in will be...
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After the Senate approved a delay for the Digital TV Transition in January, the House of Representatives blocked it in a vote of 258 to 168. Now, the House of Representatives is rehashing the issue and has voted to delay the switch to digital television after all. In case you were wondering, the initial House vote was in a special fast-track vote which required two-thirds support to pass. This time, the bill passed under a regular floor vote, which requires only a simple majority. Today, the House voted 264-158 to postpone the shutdown of analog TV signals until June 12 in order to address concerns that too many Americans wouldn’t be ready. The original deadline of February 17 was set by...
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Well, you can't say you saw this coming, can you? After the United States Senate approved a four month delay for the digital TV transition that would have effectively moved the cutover date from February 17th to June 12th, the House of Representatives stopped the whole show.In a shocking decision, the House voted 258 to 168 in favor of the bill, but under the special rules for this vote that required a full two-thirds majority to pass, it didn't quite make it. If it had received the appropriate amount of yeas, the switch -- which will see all local broadcast stations shut their analog signals off in favor of digital waves -- would have been postponed after years of advertising the once-again-current...
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