Category Archives: Technology

May 11, 2013

This guy ran the tech that won Obama reelection

Posted on May 11, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Harper Reed, the CTO for Obama’s 2012 campaign, tells us why Obama won, why the GOP lost and what will define 2016.

The Chief Technology Officer for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign probably does not look like what you think he looks like.

In fact, Harper Reed — the Obama for America CTO who led a highly-regarded team of engineers in support of last November’s victorious candidate — likes to compare his looks to those of his predecessor, the CTO for Obama’s 2008 campaign, as he did in this side-by-side photo he showed while speaking at Rhizome’s Seven by Seven conference in April:

No, Reed is not the buttoned-up, neatly-coiffed exec you might expect to run the technology behind the most important election in America; but regardless of his sartorial choices, or the way he shapes his bangs in the morning, Reed has achieved unqualified triumphs, both as CTO for Threadless, the popular online T-shirt storefront, and then as CTO for President Obama’s reelection run.

In other words: You may question his beard, but you can’t question his success.

Since November 2012, Reed has turned away from politics, turning his attention to a stealthy mobile payments app (as well as a repository of pizza GIFs). And though he’s no longer plying his trade in Washington D.C., he did reflect on what made the Democrats successful in 2012, what doomed the GOP’s chances and a couple of the issues that may define the race in 2016 in a recent sit-down interview with Yahoo! News.

You can watch the interview with Reed below:

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Elections, Obama, Technology

May 10, 2013

Inmates party, display drugs & cash in Facebook posts and video

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The Channel 4 I-Team examined more than 100 communications on the inmates’ Facebook pages and found one case of an inmate communicating with an inmate in another prison.


A prisoner relaxing in his cell. A friend from outside prison asked him how he was on Facebook from inside prison.

The Facebook posts raise serious questions for the Tennessee Department of Corrections because the inmates aren’t supposed to have internet access and cell phones are prohibited in prisons.

The photos and videos show inmates claiming to be using drugs, smoking, hoarding snacks, giving each other tattoos, and in one photograph, burning clothes inside a cell.

“Anyone who sees those videos, they’re going to be sickened by it. They’re going to be angry,” said Verna Wyatt, executive director of Tennessee Voices for Victims, an advocacy group for crime victims.

The Channel 4 I-Team found inmates using Facebook not only to communicate instantly with family and friends, but also to talk to inmates in other prisons.

“I guarantee you, when the commissioner sees this, there’s going to be a reckoning. And there should be,” Wyatt said.

The Channel 4 I-Team released all our findings to the state department of correction and assistant commissioner Tony Parker, who is charge of security in state prisons.

“These are murderers, rapists, other convicted criminals and they appear to be having a pretty good time in prison,” asked chief investigative reporter Jeremy Finley.

“Again, I don’t like it. But it’s a problem we face every day,” said Parker.

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Posted in Crime, Law & Courts, Technology

April 26, 2013

Undercover video: The future of filmmaking

Posted on April 26, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

”Because if I take a regular camera and stick it in front of a Border Patrol agent, he’s going to say, ‘Take the camera away from me. I’m not allowed to speak to you.’ So the only way I have to speak the truth is to go with this, what some could consider, a sneaky way.”

Undercover audio and video recordings are a frequent part of the modern political news cycle, from James O’Keefe to the “47 percent” video to audio of a private conversation in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky campaign office.

Filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch, who recorded undercover video for his new documentary, “They Come to America II: The Cost of Amnesty,” says the world better get used to it.

“This is the future of the world,” Lynch, founder and CEO of TV360Media, told POLITICO. “You gotta watch what you say and what you do every second of the day.” It’s also, Lynch says, the future of political movies.

“Is this the future of filmmaking? Absolutely,” Lynch said. “And that’s a terrible thing. Everyone is going to be terrified.”

Lynch, who used sunglasses with video recording capabilities in his documentary to make the case that America’s borders remain dangerously porous, has been able to justify his method, however. Lynch, who witnessed the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, has been motivated by a desire to keep terrorists out of the United States.

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Posted in Citizen Journalism, Dennis Michael Lynch, Technology

April 8, 2013

Stars hacked! ‘Secret files’ on celebs leaked online

Posted on April 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

A website posted private financial information on celebrities and government officials. The site did not state how the information was obtained or why the people targeted on the site were selected, describing the records only as “secret files.”


Beyonce and Jay-Z were among the celebrities targeted.

Authorities and celebrities were grappling with how to respond to a website that posted what appears to be private financial information about top government officials and stars such as Jay-Z and Mel Gibson.

The Justice Department said Monday the FBI was investigating how the Social Security number, address and a credit report of FBI Director Robert Mueller ended up on the site. The site also posted the same information about Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, and the department said it was investigating the matter.

In addition to Jay-Z and Gibson, other targeted stars included Beyonce, Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Info posted about Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not include credit reports but included addresses and other sensitive information.

Social Security numbers posted on Jay-Z, Gibson and others matched records in public databases.

The site, which bears an Internet suffix originally assigned to the Soviet Union, expanded throughout the day Monday to add entries on Britney Spears, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and others.

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Posted in Technology

March 21, 2013

South Korean banks & media report computer network crash, causing speculation of North Korea cyberattack

Posted on March 21, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The network paralysis took place just days after North Korea accused South Korea and the U.S. of staging a cyberattack that shut down its websites for two days last week. Loxley Pacific, the Thailand-based Internet service provider, confirmed the North Korean outage but did not say what caused it.

A cyberattack caused computer networks at major South Korean banks and top TV broadcasters to crash simultaneously Wednesday, paralyzing bank machines across the country and prompting speculation of North Korean involvement.

Screens went blank at 2 p.m. (0500 GMT), the state-run Korea Information Security Agency said, and more than seven hours later some systems were still down.

Police and South Korean officials couldn’t immediately determine responsibility and North Korea’s state media made no immediate comments on the shutdown. But some experts suspected a cyberattack orchestrated by Pyongyang. The rivals have exchanged threats amid joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and in the wake of U.N. sanctions meant to punish North Korea over its nuclear test last month.

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Posted in Asia, Technology, Terrorism

March 13, 2013

Cyber-attacks a bigger threat than Al Qaeda, officials say

Posted on March 13, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“It’s getting worse,” Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the Pentagon’s new U.S. Cyber Command said, citing more than 140 attacks on Wall Street over the last six months. And in August, he said, a computer intrusion at Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian national oil and gas company, destroyed data on more than 30,000 computers.


Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, left, and CIA Director John Brennan prepare to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington.

Cyber-attacks and cyber-espionage pose a greater potential danger to U.S. national security than Al Qaeda and other militants that have dominated America’s global focus since Sept. 11, 2001, the nation’s top intelligence officials said Tuesday.

For the first time, the growing risk of computer-launched foreign assaults on U.S. infrastructure, including the power grid, transportation hubs and financial networks, was ranked higher in the U.S. intelligence community’s annual review of worldwide threats than worries about terrorism, transnational organized crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The startling reappraisal came a day after President Obama’s national security advisor, Thomas Donilon, complained of “cyber-intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale” and said China-based digital attacks on U.S. businesses and institutions had become “a key point of concern” for the White House.

“The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country,” he said in a speech at the Asia Society in New York. He urged Beijing to “take serious steps to investigate and put a stop to these activities.”

Appearing Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, said Russia and China are unlikely to launch a devastating cyber-attack against the United States outside a military conflict or crisis that they believe threatens their vital interests.

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Posted in Crime, Technology, Terrorism

March 12, 2013

Facebook ‘Likes’ reveal more about you than you think

Posted on March 12, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Using a dataset of more than 58,000 U.S. Facebook users, University of Cambridge researchers predicted race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Likes alone.

If you “Like” lots of people, places and things on Facebook, you may get rewarded with discounts and special offers. But new research out today shows that these public Likes reveal more about you than you may think.

Using a dataset of more than 58,000 Facebook users in the USA collected between 2007 and 2012, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom were able to accurately predict certain qualities and traits, such as race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Facebook Likes alone.

The Likes include photos, friends’ status updates, Facebook pages of products, sports, musicians, books, restaurants or popular websites.

“Likes represent a very generic class of digital records, similar to Web search queries, Web browsing histories, and credit card purchases,” says the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The participants gave researchers access to their Facebook pages and they completed a variety of online tests, including personality and IQ. Their Likes were fed into algorithms and researchers created statistical models that were able to predict the personal details using Facebook Likes alone. Results were corroborated with information from the Facebook profiles and personality tests.

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Posted in Science, Social Media, Technology

March 11, 2013

Marine Le Pen: “The Internet is an incredible opportunity”

Posted on March 11, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Very followed on social networks, the president of the National Front leads the Grand Prix of the e-reputation in all categories. Increased popularity by the dynamism of Web Frontists.

Google translation from original French article.

Spread the word. Yes, Marine Le Pen is a twitteuse, a lover of the Net and even Aficionada social networks. “I am a woman of my time, I tweet myself but not too abused. I feel very comfortable in this world,” she says Metro. In fact, the owner of the National Front counters explodes all categories of Grand Prix of e-reputation .

And if the last presidential campaign is very much in the number of occurrences found in the e-media, we must admit that the National Front is well known user of web tools, and for a long time. “We were the first political party to have a website in the early 1990s, likes to remind Marine Le Pen. And I am even more proud to be leading the rankings that we only have to a small team of two people to take care of the Internet. ”

First on Facebook, Twitter second

A small team assisted, according Marine Le Pen, a large number of Frontists, she agrees to come and speak on the Net. “We are an anti-system. We do not have the same access as other parties to traditional media. For us who are a party poor, the Internet is an incredible opportunity. This is why I am very active, I keep abreast of everything all the time. ”

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Posted in Marine Le Pen, Nationalism, Technology

March 8, 2013

Facebook changes News Feed

Posted on March 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Zuckerberg said the News Feed has become primarily about displaying visual content since the number of smart phone users have continued to increase, and that since the end of 2011 “almost 50 percent of the content” is visual.

Facebook unveiled an updated look to its News Feed feature today, a core element of the social networking site’s interface since nearly its start.

From their Menlo Park, California headquarters Thursday morning, the Silicon Valley giants gave journalists and bloggers an overview of the new changes to the site. After, Facebook announced that new changes would start being rolled out immediately. Users of the desktop website will start seeing changes on Thursday, the company confirmed, with mobile and tablet users seeing design changes occurring during the next few weeks.

Zuckerberg has described News Feed as being one of the “Three Pillars of the Facebook ecosystem,” joining the Timeline and Graph Search features. Those elements were rolled out in 2011 and 2013, respectively, with News Feed being one of the more antiquated features of the website — it debuted in 2006. During Thursday’s unveiling, he said he wanted that core element to help bring the most relevant and important information directly to the user.

The new News Feed, said Zuckerberg, will “give everyone in the world the best personalized newspaper in the world.”

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Posted in Technology

March 3, 2013

Trailer: Black & White and Dead All Over

Posted on March 3, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Black and White and Dead All Over is an in-depth look at the newspaper industry as it struggles to remain financially viable and to keep the presses rolling. Through the voices of prominent journalists including Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and David Carr of the New York Times, we reveal an industry in the midst of a financial death spiral, as readers abandon print for online news sources. We see publishers and editors desperately trying to create a sustainable business model for their dying papers.

Visit their website here.


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Posted in Documentary, Journalism, Technology