We’re pretty familiar with patent trolls around here, mostly because the technology industry is filled with them. However, President Obama wants to take executive action in order to cut down on patent abuse in the system. It’s reported that the White House will reveal its plans tomorrow that includes some changes being made to the
The White House is set to announce the next chairman of the FCC, and the position will be going to telecom lobbyist and venture capitalist Tom Wheeler, according to several reports. President Obama is expected to make the announcement as early as tomorrow, which will see the Core Capital Partners managing director take over the FCC helm at that point.
Wheeler is taking over for Julius Genachowski, who stepped down from the position last month, and is temporarily being replaced by Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Such credentials attached to Tom Wheeler include being the head of CTIA Wireless for over 10 years, as well serving as president of the National Cable Television Association.
Wheeler will be put into some tough shoes, as he becomes head of an organization that maintains and polices wireless airwaves and regulates telephone networks, as well as television. In a fast-paced technology world where standards are changing, Wheeler will hopefully add a fresh presence to the FCC.
There’s also the chance that the FCC will approve certain proposals under Wheeler that the FCC wouldn’t approve otherwise. For instance, Wheeler has said in the past that he would have allowed AT&T to acquire T-Mobile, but a lawsuit brought on put an end to the acquisition, which was also supported by Genachowski.
[via Wall Street Journal]
President Obama to name Tom Wheeler as FCC head is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked today after a tweet was sent out from the account that read, “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” The Associated Press responded shortly after saying that its Twitter account had been compromised, and now the account has been suspended, but it should be back up shortly after Twitter and the AP resolve the issue.
The fake tweet was noticed by the AP fairly quickly, and several of their other Twitter accounts tweeted out that the hacked AP tweet was indeed bogus. However, many people were quick to shoot down the claim anyway, since the tweet wasn’t in AP style formatting in the first place, and no other mainstream news outlets were reporting on it.
The AP always puts “breaking” in all caps in their tweets, and they also use a service called SocialFlow to publish their tweets, whereas the fake tweet was sent out through the “web,” meaning it was sent through Twitter’s website rather than a third-party service like SocialFlow. Plus, the tweet was in title case, which the AP and other news sources never use.
In the end, it took only three minutes for the fake tweet to be officially denied by the AP, with the account being suspended just four minutes later. This is quite a fast response, but we shouldn’t expect nothing less of a news source like the AP, who is constantly keeping an eye on their social media feeds.
[via The Next Web]
AP Twitter account hacked with fake White House explosion claim is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
After being squashed in the Senate last year, the CISPA bill has made a reappearance in the House of Representatives once again, and it passed with flying colors. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, as it’s called, passed in the House by a majority vote of 288 to 127. It’s now on to the Senate to get a yea or nay.
The announcement of the passed bill was made by the House Intelligence Committee via Twitter, who also noted that CISPA passed the House with 92 Democrats voting for the bill “despite the President’s veto threat.” The committee also mentions that there was overwhelming bipartisan majority, and Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said that, by passing the bill, the House has “shown how bipartisanship works.”
However, there’s still grave concern over privacy issues. CISPA’s plan is to essentially dig up information on you by allowing companies to share your data with the government in order to strengthen security against various cyber threats. The bill is now one one step closer to becoming a law thanks to today’s House passing.
Furthermore, unlike SOPA, President Obama may sign the CISPA bill to officially make it a law. He has signed an executive cybersecurity order, and he’s been urging Congress the past few months to create legislation that would broaden the order. However, the White House said that it would veto CISPA if significant changes weren’t made to the bill.
House passes CISPA bill with flying colors is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
It would appear that United States President Barack Obama will be showing no end to his interest in advancing home-grown scientific research efforts as the BRAIN Initiative was announced today. This research effort will take on the mighty task of revolutionizing our understanding of the human mind – no small task! Qualcomm’s CTO Matt Grob has let it be known that they are onboard with this effort and, as he joined the press event at the White House today, has assured the White House and the public that they’re bringing more than just a couple of their own innovations to the party.
BRAIN stands for Basic Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, and through this initiative, scientists will be searching for new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders such as autism, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia. Straight from the White House press room you’ll find this rather upbeat video narrated by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins.
The full White House Fact Sheet on BRAIN includes a paragraph or two on the first “public-private partnerships” in this effort, it including several institutions you may have heard of before.
Public-private partnerships: Federal research agencies will partner with companies, foundations, and private research institutions that are also investing in relevant neuroscience research, such as the Allen Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Qualcomm will be amongst those companies aiming to make a big push for BRAIN in both their internal efforts as well as through a co-development agreement with the Brain Corporation. The Brain Corporation is a private company that aims to develop brain-based mathematical algorithms, visual systems, and, with Qualcomm, “specialized neuromorphic hardware” that will one day bring “smart consumer products utilizing artificial nervous systems.” Rather exciting!
“Qualcomm supports today’s exciting announcement of the Basic Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, which aims to develop and implement new tools to collect and process large scale brain activity and to develop a theoretical framework to understand this brain activity. The BRAIN Initiative will necessitate stimulation and recording of an unprecedented number of neurons, requiring real-time data processing.
These goals will be facilitated by wireless data collection. Given Qualcomm’s rich heritage in wireless communications, we are well positioned to make contributions to the BRAIN Initiative. Furthermore, modeling of the functional connectivity of the brain will be a challenging task. Qualcomm is developing a neural simulation accelerator (Neuromorphic hardware) that can potentially enable large scale, real-time neural simulations, as well as a comprehensive software tool suite that will enable rapid development and analysis of neural models.
The Qualcomm Research team includes neuroscientists and applied mathematicians with a background in multi-unit cortical recordings and neural network modeling. Our innovations have included development of new mathematical models of processing and learning in neurons. In addition to Qualcomm’s internal efforts, we have a co-development agreement and an investment in the Brain Corporation (www.braincorporation.com ), with whom we are working on these initiatives. In sum, we have a vested interest in the success of the BRAIN Initiative, and we hope to apply new insights gained from the BRAIN Initiative to our development efforts concerning scalable Neuromorphic hardware.” – Matt Grob, CTO of Qualcomm
Sound line a positive set of moves to you? Let us know what you think of the BRAIN initiative and Qualcomm’s efforts to keep science powered up!
Qualcomm joins President Obama in ambitious BRAIN initiative is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
President Obama lashed at the Patent Trolls during his Google+ Hangout and said that his administration’s attempts at patent reforms had only gone about half way of where they should have been. In response to an entrepreneur, who raised concerns about her friends being afraid of starting new businesses because of patent trolls, President Obama said “They don’t actually produce anything themselves. They are essentially trying to leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them.” (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Acrylicize Walls Up With LEGO Minifigs, Nikon Lenses Major Rebate Plan For Announced,
Last night was a big night for government and the entire US. President Obama gave the annual State of the Union address, where he lays out what condition the country is in, and suggest plans and goals for the future. The House chamber was buzzing last night, but so was Twitter, with over 1.36 million tweets that referenced the speech.
Twitter notes some of the most talked-about key points of the speech, saying that the number of tweets per minute topped out at 24,000 when President Obama discussed middle class opportunities and raising the minimum wage. During Obama’s discussion of gun violence and the need for legislation, Twitter roared in at 23,700 tweets per minute, and 19,000 tweets per minute when he talked about early childhood education.
However, the night’s moment that was perhaps the most interesting on Twitter — but only getting 9,200 tweets per minute — was during Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s Republican response speech, where he awkwardly reached over for his water and took a quick sip in the middle of his speech. The hashtag “#watergate” quickly bumped up to trending status and Rubio himself even poked fun at the moment.
During President Obama’s State of the Union address, he also gave a quick shout out to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who announced late last year that Apple would be manufacturing some Mac computers in the US again. Cook ended up sitting in the First Lady’s box during the address, which is usually reserved for guests that get mentioned the President’s speech.
State of the Union address sees over 1.36m tweets is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
President Obama is no stranger to using the Internet to converse with not only the American people, but also millions around the world to discuss a number of important topics. Last year, he hosted a Google+ Hangout session, and it looks as though he’ll be hosting another one this week.
The event will be called a “Fireside Hangout” and will allow the President to chat with several people selected by Google in order to spark conversation with him with their own questions. The Fireside Hangout will take place on February 14 at 4:50 EST, which is two days after his State of the Union speech to the U.S. Google is giving you until 11:59 p.m. ET to submit your questions as a video or text via the White House’s YouTube channel.
Those interested in viewing President Obama’s Fireside Hangout are encouraged to visit the White House’s Google+ page or their YouTube channel, although if you’re not one of the lucky few who have been chosen to chat with the President, then you should plan for the event to be a one-sided chat.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: YouTube Considering Paid Subscriptions To Launch This Spring, Pirate Bay Documentary Becomes First Film To Premier Online At Berlinale Festival,
Tomorrow President Obama will be delivering the nation’s 200th State of the Union, and will be addressing the country during a joint session of Congress in the nation’s capital. However, the President will also be hosting a Google+ “Fireside Hangout” two days later on Thursday, February 14 at 4:50 pm ET to answer your questions.
This will be President Obama’s fourth time conducting a Google+ Hangout in which he answers viewers’ questions, so this certainly isn’t anything new for him. Plus, Vice President Biden and Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz have held their own Google+ Hangouts as well over the past few weeks to discuss various issues.
You can submit questions for President Obama’s Hangout session by heading to the White House’s YouTube channel and submitting a video or text question. Then, you can vote on questions you’d like to hear Obama answer during the Fireside Hangout. All questions must be submitted by 11:59 pm ET on Wednesday, February 13.
President Obama’s State of the Union will take place tomorrow night at 9 pm ET on all major television networks, as well as a YouTube live stream on the White House’s YouTube channel, where you can follow along with various charts and other information that will show up in a new interactive sidebar during the speech.
Image via Flickr
President Obama to host “Fireside Hangout” after State of the Union is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Just this past Saturday, it officially became illegal for anyone to unlock a smartphone without the carriers’ consent. Obviously, this fired up a lot of people, who argue that if they buy an unsubsidized phone without a contract, they should be able to do what they want with it. And now, it looks like there’s a White House petition going around that seeks for the unbanning of phone unlocking.
27-year-old app developer Sina Khanifar decided to take a stand, and created a petition that asks the White House to reverse the ruling and create legislation that makes carrier-unlocking legal again. The petition is already over a third of the way there, with more than 35,000 signatures. However, per the White House’s changes, it needs 100,000 signatures before it goes through.
It took under a week for the petition reach over a third of its goal, but it needs to reach the 100,000 mark by February 23 before it can be passed over to the Obama administration for consideration. While many White House petitions in the past were a bit farfetched and, frankly, kind of ridiculous, this is one petition that is worth your signature.
Hopefully the petition will reach its goal, and if it gets passed along to the Obama administration, we’d like to be optimistic and say that there’s a good chance that the administration will highly consider overturning the new law, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see until next month when the petition ends.
[via PC World]
Phone unlocking ban cooks up White House petition is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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