Russia bans all of Reddit over a single ‘shroom thread

Russia’s censoring spree continued on Wednesday when the government’s internet agency, the Roskomnadzor, banned the entire Reddit website from Russian access — all because of a single thread that discussed how to grow psilocybin (aka “magic”) mushrooms titled, “Minimal and Reliable Methods for Growing Psilocybe”. According to reports from Meduza, the ban came at the behest of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, which felt that the content promoted discussion of these substances. The government had first sought to ban just the individual threads it found objectionable but, because Reddit uses HTTPS, the only way to eliminate of those threads was to nuke the entire site from orbit (it’s the only way to make sure).

This decision follows Russia’s earlier saber rattling over cannabis cultivation threads, though these actions were not wholly without warning. On August 10th, Roskomnadzor officials published a blog post chiding Reddit for not immediately capitulating to its demands, “We assume that the website is simply understaffed during the summer holidays, but this is no excuse to risk [losing] its entire audience [in Russia].”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on a horse

The Roskomnadzor maintains the state’s federal blacklist of websites which are supposed to deal with child pornography, extremist content or subjects under to a gag order. In reality, it’s more of a clearinghouse of information that the Russian government wishes to suppress including everything from the official Jehovah’s Witnesses website to the Internet Wayback Machine to Facebook event pages that promote protests of the government — even Chess Grand Champion/outspoken Putin critic Garry Kasparov’s personal website.

[Image Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]

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Internet

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Via:
Business Insider

Source:
Meduza

Tags: censorship, drugs, https, mushrooms, psilocybin, Reddit, Russia, VladimirPutin

Verizon reshuffles: Wireless giant to shutter contracts

Verizon is making a huge change. As of August 13th you’ll no longer be able to pick up a phone at a discounted rate on a 2 year plan. Verizon is following its wireless competitors to do away with service contracts. Customers will now be left to choose between financing their device, or bringing their own.

Verizon will offer four basic plans to consumers. All plans will have unlimited calling and texting, something that is seen as pretty standard these days, along with a data bucket for all the lines to share. The Small plan will cost $30 per month and have 1 GB of data while the Medium will be $45 and provides 3 GB of data. The Large plan is $60 for 6 GB of data and the XL plan is $80 for 12 GB. In addition to this you’ll be paying $20 per line for a smartphone, $10 for a tablet and $5 for a wearable.

If you were to have a plan of 4 lines, which is pretty common amongst families, with 6 GB of data to share, your monthly bill would be $140 ($60 for the Large plan, $20 per smartphone line x 4). All of this is assuming that you already have a phone. If you add 4 iPhone 6 (16 GB) smartphones to that (at $27.08 a month) your bill becomes $238.32 before insurance, taxes and fees.

For comparison’s sake lets take a look at how this stacks up to the other three big carriers in the US.

As you can see in the table T-Mobile and Sprint are about on par with each other and you get $10 GB of data instead of the 6 we used for Verizon and AT&T. There are a couple caveats here as well. AT&T’s monthly access fee is $40 per line but they knock off $15 per line if you buy a phone from them. T-Mobile has no data overages since they’re technically unlimited data but once you reach your limit, they slow you down to 2G speeds. With Sprint, you get the same 10 GB of data that T-Mobile offers but there are overages once you exceed that. Sprint also waives a $15 per month per line charge if you’re leasing or buying a phone from them but you have to bring your number to Sprint with you.

What do you think of Verizon’s new change? Is paying the extra $30 a month compared to T-Mobile and Sprint worth it for a better network in the sparsely populated areas that Verizon seems to dominate?

Source: PhoneScoop

The post Verizon reshuffles: Wireless giant to shutter contracts appeared first on AndroidGuys.

Periscope’s live streaming video reaches nearly 2 million users daily

Now that Facebook is getting into streaming (soon for non-celebs too) and even Google/YouTube is taking notice, the folks at Twitter-owned Periscope are publishing some stats to let us know where the bar is for live video apps. In a blog post on Medium, the team says it has grown past 10 million registered accounts just four months after its launch. An accompanying graph shows its number of Daily Active Users has risen to nearly two million people, with a spike showing where it just about doubled in May with the launch of an app for Android. Rival app Meerkat beat it to the punch on Android, but we don’t have similar stats on its growth yet. By their measure however, the important stat is Time Watched, which Periscope reports has risen to over 40 years of video being watched every day. This includes “huge viewership” on the web, outside of its iOS/Android apps, which the daily users stat does not. in a video Q&A, Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour says that features coming soon include landscape video support and better tools for handling spam/abuse.

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Internet, Mobile

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Source:
Periscope (Medium)

Tags: accounts, mobilepostcross, statistics, twitter, users, videostreaming

Intel says its job diversity efforts are paying off

Intel vowed to increase the diversity of its workforce early this year, and there are signs that it’s already making good on that promise. The chip designer has published a mid-year diversity report which shows that it’s not only hiring more women and minorities, but that the overall representation is improving. About 43.3 of its new American hires this year are from these underrepresented groups (higher than the 40 percent goal for 2015), and their ratios are higher both among executives and the rank-and-file. At first glance, strategies such as referral bonuses, pay equity audits and support groups are paying off.

However, Intel isn’t going to be running a victory lap any time soon. It’s still far from its goal of truly proportionate US representation by 2020, and the study notes that representation of some groups actually decreased, particularly among entry-level staff and Hispanic technical workers. The company is also quick to admit that it needs more educational efforts to foster a broader interest in technology careers. All the same, this is an important step forward for a company that was caving in to pressure from the anti-diversity camp just months ago.

Filed under:
Misc, Intel

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Source:
Intel (1), (2), (3)

Tags: diversity, hiring, intel, jobs