Trumps Signs Order Withdrawing U.S. from TPP, a Deal That Would Have Greatly Benefitted Donors to the Obama Foundation, But Will He Renegotiate a NAFTA That Expands Protection for Corporate Interests?

Anti-TPP signs seen at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. (Photo: Reuters)

Trump signs order withdrawing U.S. from Trans-Pacific trade deal

On November 21, 2016, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump released a video laying out actions he would take on his first day in office, including withdrawing the United States from a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump also said he would issue a rule cutting government regulations, direct the Labor Department to investigate abuses of visa programs, and cancel some restrictions on energy production, including shale oil and gas and coal. [Reuters] 

January 23, 2017

Reuters - President Donald Trump signed an executive order formally withdrawing the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday, following through on a promise from his campaign last year.

In an Oval Office ceremony, Trump also signed an order imposing a federal hiring freeze and a directive banning U.S. non-governmental organizations receive federal funding from providing abortions abroad.

Trump called the TPP order a "great thing for the American worker."

Barack Obama Readies for Final TPP Push, Which Could Benefit Donors to His Foundation

April 28, 2016

International Business Times - President Barack Obama last week renewed his push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, suggesting that it will be easier to pass the deal after the elections are over. The idea is that lawmakers will then be more insulated from political influence.

Yet Obama has his own potential incentives to push for the TPP: His presidential foundation has been relying on support from industries that could profit from the agreement.

For instance, the TPP offers potential benefits to the finance sector, including expanded access to capital and investment opportunities in emerging markets, as well as what critics say are provisions that could dilute financial regulation in the United States. The progressive advocacy group Public Citizen says the deal “would undermine bans on particularly risky financial products” and “restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money.”

The same financial industry that could benefit from the TPP has forged deep ties to Obama’s foundation. The organization’s current president is J. Kevin Poorman, the CEO of investment firm PSP Capital Partners. PSP was founded by billionaire Penny Pritzker, daughter to a co-founder of Hyatt hotels, a longtime Obama ally and the current head of the U.S. Commerce Department.

Other members of the foundation’s leadership team include John Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers; Martin Nesbitt, co-founder of the private equity firm Vistria Group; John Rogers of the financial firm Ariel Investments; and Michael Sacks, chairman and CEO of the investment management firm GCM Grosvener.  

Doerr also serves on the board of directors for Google.

In addition to helping steer the Obama Foundation, Sacks has given it somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million.

The foundation also reports that it has received somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million from Mark Gallogly, founder of the investment firm Centerbridge Partners and a former senior managing director at the Blackstone Group. The same goes for James Simons, founder of the investment management firm Renaissance Technologies LLC. Hedge fund founder David Shaw, former UBS President Robert Wolf and Tim Collins, CEO of the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, have each given between $250,000 and $500,000. Nicholas Aleskos of the private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners has given up to $100,000.

Similarly, the TPP has been backed by the entertainment industry because of its stronger copyright protections. It has also been supported by producers of equipment for outdoor recreation, whose trade association said the deal’s lower tariffs represent “substantial commercial benefits for outdoor product manufacturers and retailers.”

Key figures in both of those industries are also major Obama Foundation donors: the foundation of director George Lucas recently donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the president’s foundation, and Tom Campion, the co-founder of outdoor retailer Zumiez, gave between $250,000 and $500,000.

Good government activists have been sounding the alarm about presidential library fundraising for years. In a 2013 NBC News article about the George W. Bush library, Sunlight Foundation policy counsel Daniel Schuman described library contributions as “the wild, wild West of influence.”

“Presidents often start raising money for these libraries while they’re still in office, usually two or three years before they leave office, and money can come from anywhere — from foreign governments, from foreign officials, from lobbyists, from anywhere,” he said.

Though few public officials will ever be in a position to launch a presidential library foundation, other politicians have nonprofits with similar disclosure rules and no limits on contributions. For example, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has the McCain Institute Foundation, which in 2014 received $1 million from the government of Saudi Arabia.

By law, the Obama Foundation is not required to disclose all of its donors.

The TPP Is Officially Dead. Thank the People's Movement, Not Trump.

January 23, 2017

CommonDreams.org - President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), marking a new phase for the broad movement that sought to kill the corporate-friendly trade deal.

Progressive groups campaigned hard against the 12-nation trade agreement which they said threatened public health, environmental protections, and human rights while handing a big win to corporate interests.
Indeed, digital rights group Fight for the Future was quick to credit that movement with Monday's victory.

"The victory against the TPP belongs to the people, not to Donald Trump or any other politician," said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer.

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."

Both Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made their opposition to the deal and others like it a cornerstone of their election platforms. And Sanders on Monday said he was "glad the [TPP] is dead and gone."

"Now is the time to develop a new trade policy that helps working families, not just multi-national corporations," Sanders said. "If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers then I would be delighted to work with him."

But Trump's record since he won the election—and since he was sworn into office on Friday—don't inspire a lot of confidence on that last count.

"Donald Trump's administration is profoundly anti-worker, and his decision to pull out of the Trans Pacific Partnership doesn't change that," said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). "His administration is crammed with bankers and billionaires, and his first actions were to halt overtime pay rules and make it more expensive for middle-class families to buy homes. He may talk a big game, but his actions speak for themselves."

As such, the public must stay vigilant that any "new policy," as Sanders put it, will adhere to the goals of the movement that took down the TPP in the first place. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, outlined some of those goals in a statement on Monday.

Trump's executive order "will bury the moldering corpse of a deal that couldn't gain majority support in Congress," Wallach said, "but the question is going forward: Will President Trump's new trade policies create American jobs and reduce our damaging trade deficit while raising wages and protecting the environment and public health not just here but also in trade partner nations?"

Noting that Trump has also vowed to renegotiate the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Wallach warned: "NAFTA renegotiation could be an opportunity to create a new trade model that benefits more people, but if done wrong, it could increase job offshoring, push down wages, and expand the protections NAFTA provides to the corporate interests that shaped the original deal."

Google Declares War on Alternative Media: Plans to Punish “False News” by Halting Ad Revenue

November 16, 2016

MintPress News - Google has decided to make itself the arbiter of what is “true” and what is “false,” placing alternative media in the cross-hairs of its war on free speech and the free flow of information.

Since the US Election’s “surprise” outcome, supporters of Hillary Clinton have been searching for who and what to blame. One of the more bizarre theories circulating has been that Google, Twitter, and Facebook, who WikiLeaks revealed were actually colluding with Clinton’s campaign to get her elected, were to blame for distributing “fake” and “false” news that painted Clinton in a bad light and “unduly” influenced public opinion against her. In order to take the heat off of themselves, Google and Facebook have now announced measures that will target so-called “fake news” on the internet by cutting off how the writers of such content make money – advertising.

Google sets due to the most damage to alternative news content creators as its AdSense advertising network. AdSense allows advertisers to place text ads on millions of websites that are a part of its network and is a major source of money for many publishers. In the wake of last week’s election, Google is now working on a policy change that would prevent websites that Google deems “false” or “misleading” from using AdSense.

Google has long had rules for AdSense, such as barring ads from appearing next to pornographic or violent content. It uses a combination of human and artificial intelligence to comb through sites’ content, with the artificial intelligence learning from sites removed from the program, making the process faster and more efficient. Essentially, Google is hoping to starve websites that don’t fit the mainstream media’s “truthful” narrative.

Fil Menczer, Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, told Reuters that Google’s new policy “could cut the income that creates the incentive to create the fake news sites.” Facebook has followed suit by updating its own advertising policies to include “fake news” in its ban on deceptive and misleading content.

However, there’s a big problem with all of this. What is “fake news”? Anything that could be construed to be a “conspiracy theory” could easily be placed in this category, as could any content that is critical of the “system,” of which Google is a part. More importantly, why is Google being allowed to be the official arbiter of what is true and what is false on the internet? It seems doubtful that Google would target the lies of the mainstream, corporate-owned media since it is beholden to those same interests.

Considering Google’s significant CIA connections, there is likely an agenda here. Trust in the corporate media is at an all-time low while the viewership of the alternative media has grown significantly. This change has happened, in part, because of dishonest reporting from the corporate media. For example, after this year’s election,The New York Times admitted its election coverage had been partial and inaccurate and promised to “rededicate” themselves to honest reporting. However, they and other media outlets like them will not be targeted by Google’s new policy.

By cutting off the alternative media’s income, Google can help kill off the dying corporate media’s competition and lessen the alternative media’s competing narratives. If people are legitimately worried about “false” news, they should investigate or look to confirm any and all stories they read. If there are no hyperlinks or sources in the story and it cannot be confirmed elsewhere, caution is urged. Regardless, people should be able to make up their own minds about what they are reading, not be forced to let Google make that decision for them.

Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence - Sources

October 4, 2016

Reuters -Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.
 
Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency's request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.
 
It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.
 
Reuters was unable to determine what data Yahoo may have handed over, if any, and if intelligence officials had approached other email providers besides Yahoo with this kind of request.
 
According to two of the former employees, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's decision to obey the directive roiled some senior executives and led to the June 2015 departure of Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now holds the top security job at Facebook Inc.

"Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States," the company said in a brief statement in response to Reuters questions about the demand. Yahoo declined any further comment.

Through a Facebook spokesman, Stamos declined a request for an interview.
 
The NSA referred questions to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declined to comment.
 
The request to search Yahoo Mail accounts came in the form of a classified edict sent to the company's legal team, according to the three people familiar with the matter.
 
U.S. phone and Internet companies are known to have handed over bulk customer data to intelligence agencies. But some former government officials and private surveillance experts said they had not previously seen either such a broad demand for real-time Web collection or one that required the creation of a new computer program.

"I've never seen that, a wiretap in real time on a 'selector,'" said Albert Gidari, a lawyer who represented phone and Internet companies on surveillance issues for 20 years before moving to Stanford University this year. A selector refers to a type of search term used to zero in on specific information.

"It would be really difficult for a provider to do that," he added.

Experts said it was likely that the NSA or FBI had approached other Internet companies with the same demand, since they evidently did not know what email accounts were being used by the target. The NSA usually makes requests for domestic surveillance through the FBI, so it is hard to know which agency is seeking the information.
 
Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft Corp, two major U.S. email service providers, separately said on Tuesday that they had not conducted such email searches.

"We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: 'No way'," a spokesman for Google said in a statement.

A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement, "We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo." The company declined to comment on whether it had received such a request.
 
CHALLENGING THE NSA
 
Under laws including the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, intelligence agencies can ask U.S. phone and Internet companies to provide customer data to aid foreign intelligence-gathering efforts for a variety of reasons, including prevention of terrorist attacks.
 
Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and others have exposed the extent of electronic surveillance and led U.S. authorities to modestly scale back some of the programs, in part to protect privacy rights.

Mark Zuckerberg's Charitable Contribution is to Himself  So He and Other Elitists Can Shape the World in Their Own Images Against the "Useless Eaters"

The move is not surprising given that five years ago Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge" — along with other tech billionaires such as Bill Gates — to give away the majority of his wealth.

Bill Gates and other elitists claim that their plans will reduce global poverty. And they will, but not in the way they would have you believe. The elitists plan to reduce global poverty by eliminating the poor in the world through vaccines, control of the global food supply, GMOs, control over growing your own food, control of vitamins and herbal supplements, control of clean water, control of health care, and control of cheap forms of energy. If you think this won't affect you, just remember that the gap between rich and poor is growing rapidly until one day soon there will be only the rich and the poor, and you will be the next target for elimination. The power elite want to reduce the world's population down to 500 million — chances are, you're not one of their chosen few.  

Let me explain how this works for those of you that know absolutely nothing about asset protection. Remember my words whenever you hear some really rich guy telling you he is donating all his money to charity rather than leave it to his kids....IT IS ALL A SCAM. Here is how it works... A charitable trust is established which focuses on the interests of the person for whom the trust is established. (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have theirs.) Over time, assets that generate income such as stocks are transferred to the trust to support the causes as previously mentioned. Upon the establishers death the remaining assets are transferred to the trust to continue the mission.....Thus avoiding the 55% estate tax.... So where's the scam? Guess who manages the charity? The kids of the person who established the trust, and they are paid a respectable amount per year for their service...say about 3%. That is $1.25B per year to Zuckerberg's heirs for NOTHING. The tax laws protect the ultra rich. Just don't think they are really giving anything away. They are protecting their wealth. [NeoGeo at Yahoo]

Let's not be naive - without knowing anything about this story, we can all still assume it's first and foremost a way to shield his money from taxes and regulation. Probably taking a page from the success of the Clinton Foundation. If he owns Facebook stock there are all kinds of rules about insider trading, reporting, taxes, announcing planned sales, etc... But if you put all the money in a "charity" that you control then there are suddenly a lot fewer rules and penalties to deal with. I'm sure any money going out of the charity will go to quasi-political organizations that promote increasing immigration so he can hire cheaper workers and fire Americans or other groups that promote his liberal leanings or that help his business. I doubt we'll see much of the money going to soup kitchens and Special Olympics. And as long as he keeps making donations to the right politicians he can guarantee he will never get audited or even questioned by law enforcement. [Raul at Yahoo]

People are inexplicably upset about Mark Zuckerberg's decision to "give away" 99% of his fortune

December 2, 2015

Yahoo Finance - Mark Zuckerberg's announcement on Tuesday that he would be giving away 99% of his Facebook stock to "advance human potential and promote equality" was greeted with universal cheers, right?

Well, no.

There were a lot of people who found bad things to say about the announcement.

They fell into several camps.

The 'gotcha — it's not really a charity!' camp

BuzzFeed pointed out that the organization they're donating to, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is a corporation — an LLC — rather than a nonprofit charity. In addition, the initiative won't necessarily be donating all the money to charitable causes — it will also make private investments and do things like advocacy work and lobbying.

Entrepreneur Anil Dash called the structure of the giveaway "clearly flawed," but admitted that:

It's impossible to know how much of those flaws are about ulterior corporatist goals and how much are accommodations of arcane regulations. For example, almost all non-profit organizations are founded as conventional corporations and then converted after the fact, so starting as an LLC may not be an indicator of future purpose.

As Bloomberg explains, setting up the organization as an LLC allows it to spend money on lobbying, earn money to reinvest in the organization, do joint ventures with fewer restrictions, and lets them give away money at a pace they determine rather than the mandatory 5% per year for non-profits.

The 'Zuck sucks' camp

Gawker pointed out that Zuckerberg's donation is going toward furthering the things that he thinks would help the world, which are not necessarily the things that other people think would help the world.

For instance, the writer called Zuckerberg's question "Can you learn and experience 100 times more than we do today?" a "patently hellish" vision that could only be hatched by a "technocrat." 

The "billionaires don't know anything" camp

There were several takes with this angle. Dash pointed out that most charitable contributions don't really help society:

No matter how good their intentions, the net result of most such efforts has typically been neutral at best, and can sometimes be deeply destructive. The most valuable path may well be to simply invest this enormous pool of resources in the people and institutions that are already doing this work (including, yes, public institutions funded by tax dollars) and trust that they know their domains better than someone who’s already got a pretty demanding day job.

 

A lot of folks linked to a 2010 Der Spiegel interview with businessman Peter Kramer, who argued that billionaires in the U.S. who give their money away are implicitly saying that they know better how to help society than government does:

It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

Google Denies Claim That It Will Censor Palestinian YouTube Videos on Israel's Behalf; Israel Prevents Free Speech by Shutting Down Second Palestinian Radio Station

Israeli security detain The Associated Press photographer Nasser Shiyoukhi during a Palestinian protest in Yatta in the West Bank on Saturday. Shiyoukhi was released without charge after Saturday’s incident. (photo credit: AP Photo)

Google Denies Israel’s Claims That It Will Allow Censorship Of Palestinian Videos

The Internet giant says the meeting with Israeli officials was simply “one of many that we have with policymakers from different countries to explain our policies on controversial content.” 

December 1, 2015

Mint Press News - After a misleading press release suggested they’d bowed to pressure from apartheid Israeli officials, Google representatives denied that they agreed to allow censorship of Palestinian videos on YouTube and other Google websites.

The news of Israeli officials’ interactions with Google came after Palestinians have used YouTube to expose violence by illegal Israeli settlers and members of the Israeli Defense Forces, including planting knives on executed Palestinian teenagers.

According to Saed Bannoura, a reporter from the International Middle East Media Center, a Hebrew-language press release published last week on Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website claimed that ministry officials met with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Jennifer Oztzistzki, director of Public Policy for Google, who agreed to allow the censorship of videos published by Palestinians on YouTube and other websites controlled by the Internet giant.

However, after the agreement was widely reported in the media, a Google representative issued the following statement:

“Following media reports about a meeting last week between Google / YouTube executives and the Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, we wanted to clarify that this meeting was one of many that we have with policymakers from different countries to explain our policies on controversial content, flagging and removals. 

The Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs has corrected its original announcement which, in error, suggested there had been an agreement with Google to establish ‘a mechanism to monitor online materials.’”

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, claimed Palestinians are using social media to “indoctrinate” children, according to a Nov. 24 press release on the Israeli ministry’s website. She continued: “We are engaged daily in confronting incitement to violence, a task which can benefit greatly from the cooperation of those companies that are involved in social media.”

In 2008, YouTube banned videos which incite others to commit acts of violence, regardless of the nationality of the person publishing the video. Activists were alarmed by the news that Google might have granted special digital abilities to Israeli officials, as Palestinians more frequently use YouTube and other social media sites to expose how the Israeli army attempts to  justify the violence it commits against Palestinian protesters.

Writing on Thursday for his blog Tikun Olam, Richard Silverstein, an Israel-Palestine affairs analyst for MintPress News, cautioned against jumping to conclusions about Israel’s pronouncements of impending Internet censorship.

“There are so many problems with Hotovely’s claims, it’s hard to know where to start,” Silverstein wrote, adding:

“I strongly doubt Google has agreed to any formal arrangement that could lead to restricting video content. But if they have, it would be very important to know this.

Israel shuts second Hebron radio station

November 20, 2015

AFP - Israeli forces Saturday raided and shut down a Palestinian radio station accused of incitement in the West Bank city of Hebron, the army said, in the second such case this month.

Soldiers entered the offices of Al-Khalil radio overnight and handed the station a six-month order to close, said Ezz Haddad, its head of programming.

"Al-Khalil radio station has repeatedly broadcast content which promotes and encourages terror and acts of violence against Israeli civilians and security forces," the army said in a statement.

The station's Facebook page posted pictures of heavily armed Israeli forces arriving at the offices and of alleged damage.

"They took the computers, the communication equipment, everything," Haddad told AFP.

The station was offline on Saturday morning.

Google is Building an Army of Advanced Robots

"And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, 'Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.' And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt." - Revelation 9:13-19

Google Buys Scary Military Robot Maker


In December 2013, Google announced that they acquired Boston Dynamics, creators of quad- and bi-pedal robots like Big Dog and PETMAN.

This was Google’s eighth robotics acquisition in 2013. Other robotics companies purchased by Google are based in the US and Japan, and focus on software for advanced robotic arms, grasping technology, and computer vision.

The announcement appeared in the New York Times. Boston Dynamics is known for supplying robotics technology mostly for Pentagon clients, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert said they would honor their DARPA military contracts although Google will not officially be a military contractor.

Google may not be planning a defense business, but Google is certainly assembling an impressive array of real-world robots, so we’re going to go ahead and call it an “army,” in the metaphorical sense if not the military one. Add in Google’s self-driving cars and it may be only a matter of time before Google’s robots outnumber humans in the real world, too.

As of now, Boston Dynamics has a $10.8 million contract with DARPA to supply several humanoid Atlas robots. The machines are set to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, which awards the winning maker with a $2 million prize. The contest evaluates robots' ability to function during natural disasters and catastrophes such as an earthquake or a nuclear power meltdown.

Tech giant Google has, so far, refused to reveal what it is planning to produce with the new technology, but the internet giant's robotic efforts will certainly have impressive capability due to the new acquisition. The company also said it will keep the financial aspect of the deal confidential.

Boston Dynamics, founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert, began life as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for its fascinating robots, which have the ability to walk through terrain that is difficult even for humans. One of its four-legged robots, BigDog, can climb hills, walk through snow, travel through ice, and remain standing even after being kicked by a human, according to a video of the robot released in 2008. One of the company's recent creations is WildCat, a four-legged outdoor runner capable of rising, turning, and reaching running speeds of up to 16 miles per hour (mph) on flat ground. A video recorded the Cheetah robot running 29 mph faster than the fastest human, Usain Bolt. The Jamaican sprinter's top speed is 27.78 mph (44.7km/h).

Somehow, Google acquired seven robotics companies without anyone noticing. Google’s robot vision is as diverse it is ambitious. But the companies all point to Google’s final goal: to create a smart, mobile, dexterous robot that can work alongside — or in place of —  humans. It’s the type of moonshot that companies like Google — and, indeed, Amazon — have gotten particularly good at making,

How to Use Google Without Being Tracked

How to use Google without being tracked (and 4 search engines that never track you)

October 20, 2015

BGR - I love how “evil” Google is. Do you hear that, Google? I want you to have all of my data, as long as you keep protecting it. I want you to learn everything you can about me, and I want you to use that data to make my life better. I want you to make my life easier. I want services like Google Now to give me information before I even know I need it. I want it all. 

But many people aren’t in the same boat as me, and there are plenty of very valid reasons to want to protect your data and keep it out of Google’s hands. But should that mean you have to stop using Google for searches?

Well guess what: it only takes one step to stop Google from tracking you, and you can still enjoy Google search along with several other Google features. Plus, there are some great alternatives to Google search that don’t track you, and we’ll cover them here as well.

VPN. It’s that simple.

What is a VPN, you might ask? Virtual Private Networking is basically technology that takes all of your Internet traffic and routes it through a special third-party server. The websites you visit then see traffic coming from that server instead of your computer, hiding all personally identifying data in the process.

Virtual Private Networks are great for a number of things, and stopping Google from tracking you and your searches is one of them. We could go through 1,500 words of instructions full of Google settings you need to tweak to stop Google’s tracking features one at a time, but a VPN will handle everything in one shot.

The other great thing about VPN services are the fact that they’re remarkably easy to set up. Configure a VPN once on your computer and you’re done. And on your phone, a VPN can be enabled and disabled in seconds from within the Settings app. Good VPN services also often come along with a companion app that makes it easy to turn them on and off, and even to pinpoint the location of the server your traffic is routed through.

There are plenty of great services out there with prices that range from free (be careful, read reviews) to hundreds of dollars each month. The service we use and recommend is called Private Internet Access, and it costs $6.95 per month or $39.95 per year.

If you don’t want to use a VPN and Google’s tracking is off-putting, there are still some great options for search engines that won’t track you. Here are four you should check out:

DuckDuckGo: The clear leader in search engines that won’t track you

Disconnect: The best alternative if you want to search Google but don’t want to use a VPN.

ixquick: Bills itself as the world’s most private search engine.

StartPage: Very similar to Disconnect in that it only surfaces results from Google, but run by the same company as ixquick.

New Patent Awarded to Google Is for an Invention Designed Specifically for Future Google Glass-type Devices

If you wear glasses, this Google invention may change your life

September 13, 2015

BGR.com - Google Glass may have been a dud but that doesn’t mean Google is done making our glasses smarter. Quartz draws our attention to a new patent awarded to Google this week that could potentially solve problems that have plagued people who wear glasses for centuries.

The technology outlined in Google’s patent describes using motion sensors and tiny motors that will automatically detect where your head is angled and adjust the glasses so they’ll stay fitted to the bridge of your nose.

“In Google’s idea, the new glasses would have an actuator — a little motor for controlling movement — in each arm that could bend the arms in or out as needed, rather like the way a bendy straw works,” Quartz explains. “When the glasses detect that their wearer is bobbing up and down at an increased rate—while running, for example—the arms contract to grip the wearer’s head.”

This sounds very cool, but how, exactly would these glasses be powered? Quartz’s report doesn’t say, although from the look of the diagram in the patent filing, it seems this particular invention was designed specifically for future Google Glass-type devices.



In other words, it sounds like these kinds of smart glasses are just one more gadget you’ll have to charge at the end of the day along with your laptop, smartphone and smartwatch.

Hooray.

Google is Taking Over the World

Google will probably become a company that runs the greatest part of technology in the world. They already buy any new invention they find and are behind many things that we don't know about. I think they will end up being the only supplier for technology in the world. Apple is a sinking ship and we all know it. Microsoft is doing great but Windows won't last too long, so when Google (Android) takes over the PC world they will probably buy Microsoft as well... Then there won't be much between them and "World Domination." [Source]

Urgo at Google World Domination - Every day that goes by Google becomes both more powerful and more liked. I still feel as truly as I did the day I made this prediction that they are still on course to take over the world.

My original prediction:
Posted by Urgo at December 16, 2004 11:31 PM

For the past year now I've been predicting that within the next ten Google will 'take over the world'. Most people I tell this to think I'm crazy and this will never happen, saying that Google is the best company ever and they will never turn evil. I tend to disagree.

Let me take just a few minutes to explain why I think this, and then at the bottom of this entry is a link to a flash video I found today with someone else thinking the same thing.

Facts - Google owns:
- Google is the most used search engine
- Gmail, while maybe not the most used email provider (maybe it is now?) it is definitely the most highly desired
- Orkut, while mostly blown over now is still a thriving social network site
- Google News is viewed as a #1 news site for many people
- Blogger is one of the leading blog sites and blogs are all over the news these days
- Keyhole offers a satellite imaging service
- Google Desktop Search
- Google Adsense - probably the most widely used advertising on the web these days (used even on this website although I haven't seen any return yet)
- And much much more, plus all the things normal people like myself have come up with such as the random google image in the right sidebar.

My point to all of this is the following:

Through GMail Google stores and never deletes your email. They catalog it and can do a LOT with that data. With time google can write robots to parse the data to find out every bit of data about you, who you know, what you talk about, etc.

Gmail bundled with Orkut - Google really has a solid grip on your social network with more detail and structure than email alone. Google knows who joebob62@aol.com really is, where he lives, what his passimes are, etc and can link it up with your email conversations. Now to get even further into your life they have the Google Desktop Search, which has already been called on being invasive, bypassing security on people's PC's and cataloging files that it shouldn't.

Step back for a second, Google now knows who you know, what you talk about, details about every person, everything you say on your computer, what files you have, what is in each file, basically all of your Digital Data. Oh, also if you use the google search bar (IE plug-in) in advanced mode (default.. plus ohh! I want advanced features....) they track every webpage you go, although the desktop search tool does that as well. Owned.

Next we start to see Google's current revenue. Blogs, Keyhole, Adsense. Wow, if the inflated stock doesn't make them enough $$$ then this sure helps. Although I don't believe Google charges for blogger right now, they are setting themselves up for it in the future if blogging ever takes off as a legitimate news source...

News.. Google news is one of the most used news services to gather news from many sources, sorted automatically for relevance...

Now, just think if Google DID want to turn evil (assuming they aren't already) how much of the market they already own. In the 90's people switched search engines all the time, but moving email providers, etc is a lot harder to do. In a few more years they'll have people so dependent on them and their products and, just like Microsoft, people will be stuck with Google for better or worse.

More info on Google being evil is at google-watch.

Wow, well this was supposed to be a very short blog entry promoting a clip I saw today but I had to get my rant over with. Other then the Google-watch site that’s been around for a while, today on mefi I stumbled into a 10? minute flash movie someone made giving a detailed rundown of a possible scenario that Google might take in the coming years towards world domination. I personally haven't come up with a scenario myself, and I am uncertain if this one is how its going to happen, but I was happy to see that others feel the same way as I do, that within the next ten years Google will takeover the world or in this movie, the media forcing the New York Times offline.

Please take the time to watch this movie, and ignore the somewhat cheesiness of it. I really think they are being insightful and this COULD happen.

Flash Movie of How Google Will Take Over The World

U.S. Military Shifting to Robotic Warfare

The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Boston Dynamic, tested an autonomous robot late in 2012 [Google purchased Boston Dynamic in December 2013]. The robot, which looks like a head-less robotic horse, was designed to carry heavy equipment for soldiers (see video above). Rapidly rising personnel costs combined with a decline in defense spending is driving the Pentagon to expand its robotic arsenal, replacing humans with autonomous systems. In a report released in January 2014, “20YY: Preparing for War in the Robotic Age,” the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a prominent think tank, says the increased cost of manned combat systems would lead to this shift to robotic warfare. Two Army generals have talked about replacing soldiers with robots: “A warfare regime based on unmanned and autonomous systems has the potential to change our basic core concepts of defense strategy, including deterrence, reassurance, dissuasion and compellence.”

U.S. Army Considers Replacing Thousands of Soldiers With Robots

January 22, 2014

Evan Ackerman - The Army Aviation Symposium, in Arlington, Va., a U.S. Army officer announced that the Army is looking to slim down its personnel numbers and adopt more robots over the coming years. The biggest surprise, though, is the scale of the downsizing the Army might aim for.

At the current rate, the Army is expected to shrink from 540,000 people down to 420,000 by 2019. But at last week's event, Gen. Robert Cone, head of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, offered some surprising details about the slim-down plans. As Defense News put it [see full story below], he "quietly dropped a bomb," saying the Army is studying the possibility of reducing the size of a brigade from 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 in the coming years.

To keep things just as effective while reducing manpower, the Army will bring in more unmanned power, in the form of robots.

The thing to keep in mind about initiatives like this is that the army personnel who are actually flying airplanes or shooting guns or disarming bombs don't make up the majority of the army. There's a concept called tooth-to-tail ratio, which is the ratio of soldiers directly involved in fighting missions (tooth) to those involved in supporting activities (tail). A typical ratio is about 1/3 tooth to 2/3 tail, which means that you're spending a lot of resources on logistics, supplies, and other efforts to support the actual combat operations.

According to Gen. Cole, the Army sees that as an opportunity to become more efficient:

"Maybe it’s one-half to one-half," he said. "The point is you get to keep more tooth, more folks that actually conduct operations on the ground and less supporting structure."

Snowden Explains That the NSA's PRISM Program Collects Data from Tech Companies like Google, Facebook and Apple

Thanks to Edward Snowden, Americans now know that the CIA and NSA have spied on Americans citizens through Facebook since June 6, 2009 using a dubious FISA court judicial opinion. The CIA, through its private venture capital business In-Q-Tel, invests in “big data” projects with all of Facebook’s principal underwriters, investors and partners. NSA Prism program taps into user data of Apple, Google, Facebook and others. [Source]

Edward Snowden Explains How The Government Can Get Your 'D**k Pic' During Interview With John Oliver

April 6, 2015 

The Huffington Post - Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with comedian John Oliver nearly two years after he leaked classified documents about U.S. government surveillance programs and fled to Russia to escape prosecution.

"I do miss my country. I do miss my home. I do miss my family," Snowden said.

Oliver, the host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," encouraged Snowden to explain bulk surveillance in colloquial terms so the general public could better understand it. He showed Snowden a video of Americans who were concerned that the government improperly intercepted nude photos, or "dick pics," as part of its mass surveillance programs.

"The good news is that there's no program named the 'dick pic' program. The bad news... they are still collecting everybody's information, including your dick pics," Snowden said while stifling a chuckle.

"If you have your email somewhere like Gmail hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or anytime it crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database," Snowden added.

Snowden then went on to explain the "PRISM" program, which collects data from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and others.

Only Government, Government Contractors, Wall Street, International Mega Corporations, Military Industrial Complex, Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, and Virtual Business Monopolies Like Google, Microsoft and Amazon Can Pay Workers Wages Unrelated to the Value of Their Work

Restaurants in Seattle Going Dark as $15 an Hour Minimum Wage Looms

Inferior food at higher prices delivered by over-worked servers during restricted hours: recipe for failure. 

March 14, 2015

PJ Media - I like this simple, elegant explanation from Reason’s Ronald Bailey about the value of labor and the minimum wage:

If all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less people will demand it. That’s the law of demand, a fundamental idea in economics. And yet there is no shortage of politicians, pundits, policy wonks, and members of the public who insist that raising the price of labor will not have the effect of lessening the demand for workers. In his 2014 State of the Union Address, for example, President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. He argued that increasing the minimum wage would “grow the economy for everyone” by giving “businesses customers with more spending money.”

A January 2015 working paper by two economists, Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, claims that raising the minimum wage of fast food workers to $15 per hour over a four-year transition period would not necessarily result in “shedding jobs.” The two acknowledge that the “raising the price of anything will reduce demand for that thing, all else equal.” But they believe they’ve found a way to “relax” the all-else-being-equal part, at least as far as the wages of fast food workers go. Pollin and Wicks-Lim argue that “the fast-food industry could fully absorb these wage bill increases through a combination of turnover reductions; trend increases in sales growth; and modest annual price increases over the four-year period.” They further claim that a $15/hour minimum wage would not result in lower profits or the reallocation of funds away from other operations, such as marketing. Amazing.

Seattle is going to put that theory to a real world test. Starting April 1, businesses in the city will be forced to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour, reaching $15 an hour by 2017 for large businesses and 2019 for smaller companies. There are allowances if a business offers health insurance benefits, but all businesses will be paying employees $15 an hour in salary, tips, or benefits by 2021.

Google to Launch Internet Service Through Solar-powered Drones

Google Inc. Launching Solar-Powered Internet Drones Later This Year

March 3, 2015

International Business Times - Google Inc. is pressing forward with a plan to launch solar-powered drones to broadcast Internet to the 4 billion people without access. The plan comes after Google announced a plan to offer wireless phone and data service in the U.S. later this year.

Google is launching the drones through Titan Aerospace, a manufacturer it acquired last April, sometime later this year, according to Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of product. During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Pichai said Google’s Titan drones are at the same point in development as its atmospheric balloon program, Project Loon, was two years ago, The Guardian reported.

Titan Aerospace is developing the lightweight, solar-powered drones to remain in the Earth’s stratosphere for extended periods of time, broadcasting Internet signals to targeted areas much like satellite television services do from geostationary satellites. The Titan drones are meant to work alongside Project Loon but are easier to keep in a specific location.

The high-altitude drones could also be used to provide service to areas struck by disasters that often disrupt cell and landline Internet service, Pichai said. He added the drones would also work in tandem with local service providers to maintain a consistent level of service.

Google announced a number of advancements in its programs to provide Internet service around the globe. In the U.S., Pichai announced Google’s plan to offer wireless service by licensing wireless networks from larger carriers as a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, to offer a service much like Virgin Mobile and MetroPCS.

Google is reportedly planning on supplementing its wireless phone service with Wi-Fi hotspots in areas where it offers Google Fiber. In what is shaping up to be a space race in Silicon Valley, Internet giant Facebook also has plans to offer Internet service through drones, as does SpaceX, according to CEO Elon Musk.

31,385 People Gave 28 Percent of All Individual Contributions to the 2012 U.S. Election: This Elite Group of Donors are the Collective Gatekeepers of Public Office

International Corporations and Bankers Run the World - They Own the Politicians, Big Media, Judges, State Houses, City Halls (Excerpt)

The U.S. now has a campaign finance system where a tiny slice of individuals – 31,385 people, not even enough to fill half of a professional football stadium – collectively account for more than a quarter of all individual contributions (that we can trace), even though they represent just one in ten thousand Americans. Every single member of Congress elected in 2012 received a contribution from this group of individuals, and the vast majority of those elected (84 percent) received more money from the "1% of the 1%" than they did from all small donations (under $200).

A tiny sliver of Americans who can afford to give tens of thousands of dollars in a single election cycle have become the gatekeepers of public office in America. Through the growing congressional dependence on their contributions, they increasingly set the boundaries and limits of American political discourse – who can run for office, what their priorities should be and even what can be said in public. And in an era of unlimited campaign contributions, the power of the 1% of the 1% only stands to grow with each passing year.

Meet the 1% of the 1%

Who are the 31,385 individuals who contributed 28.1 percent of the traceable money in the 2012 election?

A few of them are well-known. Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam contributed a combined $97 million. Harold Simmons, who built a business empire around buying Superfund sites, contributed $25 million. Bob Perry, the late Texas real estate mogul, contributed $23.5 million. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the seventh largest donor, at $10.6 million. Many of the other names atop the list will be familiar to readers of our “Stealthy Wealthy” series.

But our analysis is not focused on specific individuals, many of whose campaign largesse and motivations already have been well-scrutinized. Rather, our interest is in examining the role of this elite group of donors as the collective gatekeepers of public office.

Mostly, these donors tend to come from top corporate positions, most commonly in the worlds of finance and law. They most frequently hail from New York and Washington. Of donors for whom we know the gender, 71.8 percent are male.

For a list of all 31,385 donors in the 2012 one percent of the one percent, click here.

Top Professions

While the most common occupation listed among these donors is “Retired” (13.1%), the plurality with identifiable professions hail from top corporate jobs: 8.8 percent identify themselves as “president,” 8.7 percent as “attorney” or “lawyer” and 8.5 percent as “CEO.” While there is some overlap among the corporate jobs (for example, various individuals list themselves as “CEO and Chairman,” or “President/CEO,” etc.), a total of 5,639 top donors (17.0 percent) list themselves as at least one of the following: “CEO," "President," "Chairman,” “Executive” or “Owner."

Looking purely at the monetary contributions, CEOs and chairmen (frequently the same person) account for the largest raw percentage of donations, which tells us that they contribute, on average, a bit more than the average member of the 1% of the 1%. By contrast, retirees give a little less on average, accounting for only 10.8 percent of the contributions as compared to 13.2 percent of donors.

It’s also worth highlighting that 7.7 percent of the 1% of the 1% list their occupation as “homemaker.” Since homemakers are rarely compensated for their work, we are left to assume that their ability to contribute tens of thousands of dollars is due to spousal or inherited wealth. “Homemaker” is the listed occupation for 27.4 percent of the female 1% of the 1% donors, while “Retired” is the listed occupation of 17.5 percent of the female 1% of the 1% donors. (As a basis of comparison, 11.5 percent of the male 1% of the 1% donors list their occupation as “retired.”)

Most common professions among the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 2012

Occupation	Donors	Share of 1% of the 1% donors	Total donations	Share of 1% of the 1% donations
Retired	4131	13.2%	$181,663,338	10.8%
President	2764	8.8%	$137,886,277	8.2%
Attorney	2738	8.7%	$104,658,811	6.2%
CEO	2671	8.5%	$230,678,958	13.7%
Homemaker	2432	7.7%	$117,901,507	7.0%
Chairman	2428	7.7%	$223,832,610	13.3%
Executive	1886	6.0%	$101,835,685	6.1%
Investor	1638	5.2%	$106,385,270	6.3%
Owner	1015	3.2%	$42,177,945	2.5%

Top Employers

While thousands of different employers are represented among the 1% of the 1%, certain names pop up more frequently than others. At the top of the list (by far), is Goldman Sachs, with 85 employees contributing $4.67 million between them. Blackstone, the private equity firm, is next with 49 employees, and the major law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, is third on the list with 40 employees. Financial and legal/lobbying firms dominate the top 20.

Besides Goldman and Blackstone, financial firms Morgan Stanley (38 donors), Elliot Management (24), Citigroup (23), Credit Suisse (23), Fidelity (23) and Bain Capital (21) also make the top 20 list. That adds up to 248 major donors from top financial firms. Elliot donors contributed on average $184,830, the highest of any of the top employers. Bain Capital came in second, at $131,634.

The top legal and lobbying firms, after Kirkland and Ellis, are Akin Gump (36), Podesta Group (30), Skadden Arps (29), DLA Piper (21) and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (20). That adds up to 176 major donors from top law and lobbying firms.

Rounding out the list of organizations with the most employees in the 1% of the 1%: Harvard University at 33, Google at 33, Microsoft at 31 and Comcast at 26. One name that may not be familiar to Washington insiders is the Rothman Institute, a Philadelphia-area orthopedic group with 23 employees in 1% of the 1%. It is the only healthcare organization on this list. Its 1% of the 1% donors also gave the least on average: $25,668.

Most common employers among the 1% of the 1% percent, 2012

Employer	1% of the 1% Donors	Total donations	Average donations
Goldman Sachs	85	$4,670,207	$54,944
Blackstone	49	$2,236,050	$45,634
Kirkland and Ellis	40	$1,526,949	$38,174
Morgan Stanley	38	$1,241,241	$32,664
Comcast	37	$1,222,705	$33,046
Akin Gump	36	$1,643,941	$45,665
Google	33	$1,352,312	$40,979
Harvard	33	$1,236,391	$37,466
Microsoft	31	$1,049,667	$33,860
Podesta Group	30	$1,052,179	$35,073
Skadden Arps	29	$1,239,387	$42,737
Patton Boggs	26	$925,528	$35,597
Elliot Management	24	$4,435,923	$184,830
Credit Suisse	23	$705,788	$30,686
Rothman Institute	23	$590,366	$25,668
Citigroup	23	$746,650	$32,463
Fidelity	23	$726,414	$31,583
DLA Piper	21	$864,496	$41,166
Bain Capital	21	$2,764,306	$131,634
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck	20	$627,016	$31,351

Congressional dependence

Every single member of Congress elected in 2012 received at least some money from the 1% of the 1%. Only Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., ($4,750 from eight 1% of the 1% donors) and Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., ($7,000 from six 1% of the 1% donors) received less than $10,000 total. Both represent safe seats in poor, urban districts, and both get roughly 75 percent of their campaign money from PACs.



Of the 435 House members elected in last year, 372 (86 percent) received more from the 1% of the 1% than they did from every single small donor combined. And almost half (202, or 46.4 percent) received more than three times as much money from these large donors than they did from all small donors combined.

The 33 senators elected in 2012 were only slightly less dependent on the 1% of the 1%. The majority (20, 61 percent) got more money from the top donors than from all small donors combined. And one third (11) got three times as much money.

Members of Congress with the highest share of donations from the 1% of the 1%, 2012

Candidate	State	Chamber	Share from the 1% of the 1%	Share from small donors	Total raised
Nancy Pelosi (D)	CA	H	40.4%	4.8%	$2,298,844
Roger Williams (R)	TX	H	38.7%	1.5%	$2,736,485
Sheldon Whitehouse (D)	RI	S	36.5%	6.4%	$3,280,685
Nita M. Lowey (D)	NY	H	34.2%	3.9%	$2,125,851
Eric Cantor (R)	VA	H	34.2%	4.9%	$7,619,202
Jeff Flake (R)	AZ	S	33.3%	13.9%	$8,967,955
Joe Kennedy III (D)	MA	H	32.6%	0.0%	$4,193,094
Bill Foster (D)	IL	H	32.3%	11.8%	$2,956,287
John Sarbanes (D)	MD	H	31.8%	5.4%	$1,010,367
John Boehner (R)	OH	H	31.0%	26.7%	$21,981,789
Jon Tester (D)	MT	S	29.7%	13.1%	$11,881,646
Ron DeSantis (R)	FL	H	29.1%	6.1%	$1,145,859
Ted Cruz (R)	TX	S	28.8%	17.2%	$13,627,317
Jerrold Nadler (D)	NY	H	28.4%	2.4%	$1,114,468
Orrin G. Hatch (R)	UT	S	28.3%	0.6%	$8,829,902
John A. Barrasso (R)	WY	S	28.3%	4.5%	$4,007,574
Tim Kaine (D)	VA	S	28.2%	17.0%	$18,008,380
Ted Deutch (D)	FL	H	27.9%	2.6%	$1,263,534
Kirsten Gillibrand (D)	NY	S	27.6%	8.5%	$15,577,940
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D)	FL	H	27.6%	21.0%	$3,610,339

For complete data on all members elected in 2012, click here.

Related: 

• 'Think Tanks' of the Elite Guiding U.S. Policy 
• A Tiny Elite Owns 80% of the World's Wealth

Google Glasses: Do We Want to Live in a World Where People Can Wear Devices on Their Faces That Can Record Anything at Anytime?

The Google Glass Culture War Meets Its Waterloo

May 25, 2014

The Wire - In perhaps the lamest page from our "the way we live now" handbook, Feast—a restaurant whose $24 squid ink pappardelle symbolizes what befell New York's once rough-and-tumble East Village—has become a flashpoint in the Google Glass battle.

At issue here is one key idea: Do we want to live in a world where people can wear devices on their faces that can record anything at anytime? As EVGrieve reports, when one woman was asked by Feast's management to remove her Google Glass and refused, things got heated quickly. The woman, Katy Kasmai, wrote an account of her travails on Google+ (it has since been seen 1.7 million times):

For the first time ever this place, Feast, in #NYC just asked that I remove +Google Glass because customers have complained of privacy concerns in the past. Never has happened to me before in the one year I've had Glass. I left. #throughglass Feast

Then came the cascade of negative reviews of Feast on Google+, which as it's been pointed out, is the very first search result for the restaurant.  Many of the reviewers mentioned absolutely nothing about the food and/or submitted reviews from far away, mostly deriding the restaurant for its Google Glass policy.

But as the negative reviews came tumbling in, they were counterbalanced by a spate of positive reviews, not only on Google+, but also on Yelp.

At play here are several components of our digital struggle. There's the already arbitrary and deleterious impact of online reviews on a business (that may or may not deserve it) mixed with an ideological schism over the extent to which we're entitled to privacy and whether wearable technology like Google Glass violates that privacy. 
 

As we noted earlier this year, Google laid out an etiquette guide for its Glass "explorers" to follow, specifically requesting that Glass users not be "Glassholes" by being "creepy" or "rude." Of course, there's nothing binding about that and stories of Google Glass wearers suffering assaults (but not thefts) speak to a broader discomfort with regard to the technology.

This kerfuffle doesn't seem all that different than businesses like Hot Bird, a bar in Brooklyn that recently banned babies and young children. While safety factored into the bar's decision, so did the wishes of the clientele. This was the same rationale given by Feast in explaining why it asked the Glass user to remove her device. Businesses thrive or die based on the wishes of its customers. Until attitudes change, restaurants like Feast will probably keep asking customers to stop making other customers uncomfortable, whether it's Google Glass, being too drunk, or actually ordering the beet ravioli.

As Google Glass becomes more ubiquitous, we should expect more fights like this to erupt. And then, once we all have our Google Glass, this whole chapter will probably just become an old image of ourselves that was taken when we hoped no one was recording.

U.S. Advises Avoiding Internet Explorer Until Bug Fixed

U.S. Government Suggests that You Switch from Internet Explorer

UPDATE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers have used to launch attacks. The United States Computer Emergence Readiness Team said in an advisory released on Monday morning that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer “could lead to the complete compromise of an affected system.”

April 27, 2014

Reuters - Microsoft is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer Web browser after a computer security firm disclosed a flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies.

PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft stopped supporting the 13-year-old operating system earlier this month. Security firms estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of the world’s PCs still run Windows XP.

Microsoft disclosed on Saturday its plans to fix the bug in an advisory to its customers posted on its security website, which it said is present in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11. Those versions dominate desktop browsing, accounting for 55 percent of the PC browser market, according to tech research firm NetMarketShare.

Cybersecurity software maker FireEye said that a sophisticated group of hackers have been exploiting the bug in a campaign dubbed “Operation Clandestine Fox.”

FireEye, whose Mandiant division helps companies respond to cyber attacks, declined to name specific victims or to identify the group of hackers, saying that an investigation into the matter is still active.

“It’s a campaign of targeted attacks seemingly against U.S.-based firms, currently tied to defense and financial sectors,” FireEye spokesman Vitor De Souza said via email. “It’s unclear what the motives of this attack group are, at this point. It appears to be broad-spectrum intel gathering.”

He declined to elaborate, though he said one way to protect against them would be to switch to another browser.

Microsoft said in the advisory that the vulnerability could allow a hacker to take complete control of an affected system, and then do things such as viewing, changing, or deleting data; installing malicious programs; or creating accounts that would give hackers full user rights.

FireEye and Microsoft have not provided much information about the security flaw or the approach that hackers could use to figure out how to exploit it, said Aviv Raff, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm Seculert.

Yet other groups of hackers are now racing to learn more about it so they can launch similar attacks before Microsoft prepares a security update, Raff said.

“Microsoft should move fast,” he said. “This will snowball.”

Still, he cautioned that Windows XP users will not benefit from that update since Microsoft has just halted support for that product.

The software maker said in a statement to Reuters that it advises Windows XP owners to upgrade to one of two most recently versions of its operating system, Windows 7 or 8.

Editor's Note: I recommend you download the free internet browser Mozilla Firefox.

"Ah, yes. Another day, another hole in Windows. Don’t kid yourselves: this isn’t just IE. Thanks to the way that Microsoft integrated IE into the Windows operating application as part of their monopolistic business model back in the ’90s, they can’t just fix IE. That’s why people still using XP are in trouble – Microsoft won’t provide the OS fixes for XP, only their later versions of their operating application. If Windows was a real operating system, like Unix, you could just fix IE and everything would be fine." - majkmushrm, Reuters, April 28, 2014