Historical country borders through time     While geographic boundaries can often seem like a semi-static thing, they’ve changed a lot when you look at them on the scale of centuries. Point in History, by Hans Hack, presents a map of what boundaries used to be. Click anywhere to see the history. The map is Read more about Historic borders, Mapping the boundaries of history[…]

Which countries are the most (and least) corrupt? This map shows corruption around the world, and the movers and shakers over the last decade. Source: Mapped: Corruption in Countries Around the World

Denmark’s foreign secret service allowed the US National Security Agency to tap into a crucial internet and telecommunications hub in Denmark and spy on the communications of European politicians, a joint investigation by some of Europe’s biggest news agencies revealed on Sunday. The covert spying operation, called Operation Dunhammer, took place between 2012 and 2014, based Read more about NSA spied on European politicians through Danish telecommunications hub[…]

Belarusian authorities appear to have forced a Ryanair jet to perform an emergency landing in Minsk in order to arrest an opposition blogger wanted for organising last summer’s protests against leader Alexander Lukashenko. Roman Protasevich, a former editor of the influential Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, was detained by police after his flight was Read more about Belarus accused of ‘abhorrent action’ after Ryanair flight diverted midair with MiG 29 to arrest blogger[…]

Within a week, Basecamp’s loathed no-politics-at-work rule has escalated to a mass exodus. This afternoon, reporter Casey Newton tweeted that around one-third of the company’s employees accepted buyouts following a “contentious all-hands meeting.” The software company behind Ruby on Rails, Campfire, and HEY was, until this week or so, generally perceived by outsiders as one Read more about One-Third of Basecamp Employees Have Reportedly Quit at Once after being told they can’t talk about politics[…]

The US is following through on promises of retaliation against Russia for its alleged involvement in the SolarWinds cyberattack. The AP reports that President Biden has expelled 10 Russian diplomats from Washington, DC, including members of intelligence services, in response to actions that include the SolarWinds hack. The White House also imposed sanctions on 32 Read more about US expels Russian diplomats in response to SolarWinds hack and election interference[…]

This piece is  very worth reading in its’ entirety. Underneath just the conclusions. Conclusions and Recommendations This report reviews some of the research that is relevant to foreign information efforts targeting U.S. elections. It provides a general framework for understanding these efforts and will inform our analysis in future volumes of this series. We focused Read more about From Consensus to Conflict: Understanding Foreign Measures Targeting U.S. Elections[…]

The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying Read more about Whistleblower Shows How Facebook Deals With Global Political Manipulation – not enough according to her[…]

Claims were made on Sunday that No 10may be preparing a new onslaught on the BBC with a threat to scrap the television licence fee and turn it into a subscription service. The Sunday Times quoted a senior source as saying that the broadcaster could be forced to sell off most of its radio stations Read more about In Trump fascist playbook, Johnson trying to kill BBC licence fee in favour of a subscription model due to BBC being critical, independent[…]

On Tuesday, Don HO, the developer of Notepad++, a free GPL source code editor and notepad application for Microsoft Windows, released version 7.8.1, prompting a social media firestorm and a distributed denial of service attack. Notepad++ v7.8.1 was designated “the Free Uyghur edition,” in reference to the predominantly Muslim ethnic group in western China that Read more about Notepad++’s ‘Free Uyghur’ release sparks spam tsunami by pro-Chinese – tough shit says developer who has many politically themed releases[…]

For years now, Twitter has been an important platform for disseminating news and sharing opinions about U.S. politics, and 22% of U.S. adults say they use the platform. But the Twitter conversation about national politics among U.S. adult users is driven by a small number of prolific political tweeters. These users make up just 6% Read more about 6% of all U.S. adults twitterers account for 73% of tweets from American adults that mention national politics[…]

YouTube is the biggest social media platform in the country, and, perhaps, the most misunderstood. Over the past few years, the Google-owned platform has become a media powerhouse where political discussion is dominated by right-wing channels offering an ideological alternative to established news outlets. And, according to new research from Penn State University, these channels Read more about Maybe It’s Not YouTube’s Algorithm That Radicalizes People but communities forming around the content[…]

The popular short-form video app will no longer run ads from politicians or candidates at any level of government because “the nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience,” TikTok’s VP of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, announced in a blog post Thursday. This ban also covers “election-related Read more about TikTok Kicks Political Ads Off Its Platform Because Screw That Noise[…]

The European Union has been reconsidering its copyright laws for several years, and for months we’ve been trudging towards a final vote. Well, that vote is scheduled for Tuesday, and if approved it could mean the end of the open internet as we know it. Specifically, there are two troubling provisions in the EU’s new Read more about Wikipedia and Reddit Stage Eleventh-Hour Protest Against Alarming EU Copyright Plan[…]

Juncker said he was opting for French because “slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe and France has elections this Sunday and I want the French people to understand what I am saying about the importance of the EU.” The Commission president tackled the row that erupted over a private meeting he had Read more about Jean-Claude Juncker: ‘English is losing importance’ – so only the French get to hear his views on the EU[…]

The minister states that he thinks (his vision is backed by a bunch of closed source software vendors [Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, KPN, CapGemini, Ordina, ATOS, CGI and IBM]) that not having to buy licenses is offset by the costs of having to manage and pay for the deployments of open source software (OSS). Which is Read more about NL Minister Blok takes flying leap from reality in criticism of open source[…]

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. […] When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average Read more about US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study | Common Dreams[…]