Hasta La Gadget!

iCloud is used to help users backup their data in the cloud, like photos, contacts, and so on. However according to a recently discovered bug in iOS, it could potentially end up with your files stored in the cloud, which is no doubt a huge inconvenience to those who have painfully uploaded gigabytes worth of data.

Well now according to new reports, it seems that there are some users who are not able to access all of iCloud’s services and are prompted to keep entering their details within iOS. There are some who are reporting that the service works perfectly fine for them, but at the same time there are those beg to differ as they are unable to access iCloud via iOS, Mac, or the iCloud.com website.

Apple has yet to acknowledge or confirm the outage, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for more information regarding this issue. In the meantime do any of our readers have issues trying to log into iCloud themselves, or are they experiencing the issue where they are prompted to keep entering their iCloud credentials all the time? Do let us know in the comments below and we will keep you guys updated about the situation!

Multiple User Reports Of iCloud Outage Across iOS, Mac, And Web

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If you’re looking for affordable tablets and laptops, it seems that Microsoft and HP have you covered. HP has recently announced two new tablets and laptops that HP will be adding to its Stream family. The tablets will be priced starting as low as $99, while the HP Stream laptops will be priced starting at $199.99.

Granted these are hardly the most powerful devices you could buy at the moment, but if you’re looking for something simple and affordable that can get the job done, then perhaps these devices could be worth your consideration.

Starting with the tablets, these are Windows 8.1 powered devices and will come in 7-inch and 8-inch options. They will be powered by an Intel processor and will include a 1-year Microsoft Office 365 Personal subscription that will include 1TB of OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype each month. The 8-inch model will also come with an optional 200MB of 4G data each month with no annual contract for the life of the device.

Moving on to the laptops, there will be a 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch model to choose from. Both will feature HD displays and will sport a fanless design and are powered by an Intel Celeron processor with 32GB of eMMC flash memory. The laptops will also include a 1-year subscription to Office 365 Personal and 1TB of OneDrive storage, and a $25 gift card to buy apps or games from the Windows Store. All four devices are expected to be available this November.

New HP Stream Tablets And Laptops Announced

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

In California, leaders of North Bay Organizing Project honored the 49th anniversary of regulations governing hiring on federal construction and other contracts by calling for changes that would help put America back to work and make sure employment of people of color more closely tracks with their participation in the work force. That could help address the problems at the root of the strife in Ferguson.

Sept. 24 was the 49th anniversary of an important federal policy ensuring access to taxpayer-funded work for all Americans. Faith leaders in Gamaliel and our campaign arm, Transportation Equity Network, are holding actions to highlight the fact that, if we want to have something to celebrate when the policy turns 50 next year, the Obama administration has some serious catching up to do.

Most people know affirmative action as a courtroom debate, but a similar policy began with a presidential order by President Lyndon Johnson Sept. 24, 1965. He ordered the Department of Labor to regulate the minority and female hiring of companies with federal construction contracts. LBJ opened the door to good-paying construction jobs for low-income people. Unfortunately, this giant step forward has not been supported by more recent presidents. The regulations were last updated in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter.

“These numbers are out of date by more than three decades,” says Irma Wallace, who is national co-chair of the Gamaliel jobs campaign and a leader with Faith Coalition for the Common Good in Springfield, Illinois. “At the same time, our communities have changed: More women are in the workforce, especially in construction careers, and the minority population has increased.”

In Chicago, for example, where people of color made up 19.6 percent of the workforce in 1980, now they make up 30.75 percent (based on 2010 American Community Survey population estimates). In Milwaukee, people of color were 8 percent of the workforce in 1980, but 20.91 percent now. Changes in some communities have been less dramatic — St. Louis went from 14.7 percent to 20.7 percent, for example. But in Springfield, Illinois, the share of people of color in the workforce tripled, from 4.5 percent of the workforce to 13.6 percent.

Gamaliel and TEN wrote a briefing paper on this; it is available here.

The need for these jobs is huge, in the nation and in Ferguson, Missouri, a center of racial unrest since the shooting of Michael Brown. One of the best responses to the riots has been by the Centene Corporation, which is adding a location in Ferguson that will employ 200 people. President Obama can do the same and open thousands of employment opportunities to low-income people, minorities and women, if he makes the update these important regulations a priority.

Here’s why the update is needed:
– Women make up only 2.6 percent of construction workers.
– African Americans continue to be unemployed at a rate 2.2 times that of their white counterparts.
– In 2013 the average U.S. unemployment rate was 6.7 percent, the unemployment rate for white Americans was 5.9 percent, and the unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.9 percent.

Groups that will be taking action on this issue in the next few weeks include Faith Coalition for the Common Good; Gamaliel of Metro Chicago; MICAH in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; MORE2 in Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; North Bay Organizing Project in Sonoma County, California; and United Congregations of Metro East in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Mr. President, let’s work together to put America back to work.

To understand voting in Russia, it helps to have a literary turn of mind, an appreciation of the Kafkaesque lengths to which the authorities will go to constrain the opposition.

The new, preliminary report on the September 14, 2014, elections in Russia, prepared by the independent Russian electoral rights group Golos (“Voice” in Russian), describes in bewildering detail how vote manipulation is carried out. In St. Petersburg, it says, “all known illegal techniques were used” against opposition and even rival pro-government candidates.

The Case of the Missing Election Committee

Take, for example, what it calls “shimmering” election committees. In different districts of St. Petersburg, it says, “many candidates simply could not find the election committee.” Opposition parties — and even some rival representatives of the government-allied United Russia party — spent more than a week in search of the committee. When one representative eventually tracked it down, he found that committee members took suspiciously long “lunch breaks.”

Queing Up

Even when candidates knew where the committee was working, they often encountered long lines of other “candidates” waiting to register. One civic activist was prevented from submitting her registration application in time. Arriving at the offices, papers in hand, she found herself at the end of a long queue and ended up waiting all day. When she went back the next morning, 17 “unidentified individuals were standing in front of her.” When the office eventually closed, she was told that it was the last day to submit documents.

“Checking the Fire Extinguisher”

In another district a candidate for municipal council and a journalist were assaulted by the deputy head of the electoral committee, the report says, after they tried to use a photocopy machine. The official hit the journalist and then went after the candidate with a fire extinguisher. He later said he didn’t want to hurt the candidate but was just “checking the fire extinguisher.”

Fisticuffs

There were other more “original” ways of closing registration offices, the Golos report explains. A “candidate” from the crowd suddenly rushed into the office of one election committee and allegedly beat up everybody there. The ECME (Election Committee of Municipal Entity) was then closed, just as the ambulance arrived.

Plumbing Problems

You guessed it: One registration office had to close because of “sewage incidents.”

Timing Is Everything

Even finding out the official date of the election campaign was a challenge. In one district the information allegedly was published on June 16, but the newspaper officially announcing the election date didn’t make it to the public library until several days later. In another case officials said the election date was not going to be announced, but roughly 50 candidates with “insider” information were able to find it out and register in time.

A Good Night’s Sleep

The “classical” tradition of bribing voters was revived, the report says, with a new twist. Giving prospective voters boxes of tea, candy and cookies, it appears, is “out of fashion.” Now, bed linen sets are the preferred way to remind voters of who is looking out for their welfare. In one district, the report says, the local government purchased 120 satin bedding sets for veterans. Another ordered 2,600 sets of sheets, along with 1,737 towels.

Potemkin Villages

The result of these election sleights of hand: Half of the independent candidates were not able to register for the election. One party, Civic Platform, nominated 265 candidates, according to Golos. Less than half of the candidates managed to submit their documents, 48 candidates could not get in to the offices of the election committees and 72 were denied registration.

Liliya Shabanova, Executive Director of Golos, has seen much of this before. She ruefully describes it as “Potemkin village” elections, a campaign rife with deception designed to appear completely above board. Her organization itself is caught in a catch-22, labeled a “foreign agent” accused of receiving foreign funding, a decision just overturned by a Moscow city court. Golos, however, still remains on a list of organizations considered foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice.

In times past, Shabanova says, vote count fraud was the main problem. Now, she says, “manipulation has migrated to other parts of the process.”

 The race to the bottom is back. Reminiscent of the netbook war of yesteryear, HP just followed Toshiba’s lead with a $99 tablet along with introducing a $199 Windows notebook. Expect to see these colorful devices at a department superstore near you. HP hasn’t revealed the specs powering these Windows 8 machines. That’s by design and as we’ve said for years, the spec is… Read More