Shockingly unshocking: Two congressional staffers who helped write SOPA/PIPA become entertainment industry lobbyists Two high level Congressional staffers who have been instrumental in creating or moving forward both PROTECT IP (PIPA) and SOPA have left their jobs on Capitol Hill and taken jobs with two of the biggest entertainment industry lobbyists, who are working very hard to convince Congress to pass the legislation they just helped write. And people wonder why the American public looks on DC as being corrupt. Techdirt
Pictures of the Radeon HD 7000-series surface Today, new information regarding the upcoming Radeon HD 7000-series appeared. Thus, according to information from Xtreme Systems , the only graphics card HD 7970 and HD 7950 graphics core on the next, just based GCN. The flagship, codenamed Tahiti XT brings it allegedly set on 2048 128 ALUs and texture units with a clock of 1.0 GHz and GDDR5 and a 384-bit wide interface. (Translated from German) ATI Forum
The Twitter fraudsters Twitter has hundreds of fun parody accounts, but Mike Jennings discovers there's also a dark side to the impersonators. "Some of the stuff is scandalous and has absolutely nothing to do with me," wrote football manager Sam Allardyce in his Evening Standard column. Was he ranting about transfer rumours or a dressing room bust-up? No. He took to the paper's pages to complain about the spoof Twitter account that bears his name... PC Pro
Louis C.K. doesn't get torrents, but gets distribution Stand-up comedian Louis C.K is selling a direct download of his show at the Beacon Theater for 5 dollars. No DRM, no forced email spam, no expensive middle-man – just value for value. That's how easy and convenient video distribution can be nowadays and judging from the comments on Reddit people seem to like it. However, Louis C.K also heard that a DRM-free copy will be easier to torrent. TorrentFreak
Hitachi GST quietly starts to sell 4TB internal desktop hard disk drives in japan Hitachi Global Storage Technologies on Thursday quietly started to sell a yet unannounced DeskStar hard disk drive with 4TB capacity in Japan. The novelty is quite expensive, but not extremely despite of the fact that it uses components produced in flooded Thailand. Since the new 4TB drive belongs to Deskstar 5K family, it will barely attract performance enthusiasts. X-bit labs
FirstEnergy tells public one thing, NRC another; Nuke plant damage more than previously admitted Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today questioned whether FirstEnergy has been entirely upfront with the people of Ohio over the extent of the damage to the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. Kucinich requested full public disclosure of all relevant photographs, test results, analyses and reports by FirstEnergy after comparing... Kucinich.house.gov
The condescending UI I have a kneejerk reaction to most modern computer user interfaces (also, all microwave user interfaces). I've used plenty of excuses over the years: my "eye for design," my love of minimalism, a sense of utility. Today, I finally put my finger on it, and it's not just a desire for the-computer-as-pure-machine, or a spartan aesthetic. It's quite simple, really: I don't like the condescending tone. The Verge
Senator wants answersfrom DHS over domain name seizures Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said Friday he would demand answers from the Department of Homeland Security about its domain seizure program known as Operation in Our Sites after it was revealed that the government kept a hip-hop music review site's name for a year without affording the owner a chance to challenge the seizure. Wired
Tweets cause US death row conviction to be overturned A juror's tweets have caused the murder conviction of a death row inmate to be overturned by a court in the US. Arkansas Supreme Court judges said it was inappropriate for a juror to have posted his musings online. They have asked a panel to consider whether jurors' access to mobile phones should be limited during trials. BBC
When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state's high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders... Washington Post
Browser study sheds light on Firefox's insecurity When Google funds a study on browser security and allows it to be published, perhaps it's no surprise that Chrome comes out on top. More interesting is who comes out at the bottom: Google's friends-quickly-becoming-frenemies at Mozilla. Forbes