Facebook To Ban Misinformation On Voting In Upcoming US Elections Slashdotby BeauHD on social at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at October 15, 2018, 11:35 pm)

"Facebook will ban false information about voting requirements and fake reports of violence or long lines at polling stations in the run-up to and during next month's U.S. midterm elections," reports Reuters. The latest efforts are to reduce voter manipulation across its platform. From the report: The world's largest online social network, with 1.5 billion daily users, has stopped short of banning all false or misleading posts, something that Facebook has shied away from as it would likely increase its expenses and leave it open to charges of censorship. The ban on false information about voting methods, set to be announced later on Monday, comes six weeks after Senator Ron Wyden asked Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg how Facebook would counter posts aimed at suppressing votes, such as by telling certain users they could vote by text, a hoax that has been used to reduce turnout in the past. The information on voting methods becomes one of the few areas in which falsehoods are prohibited on Facebook, a policy enforced by what the company calls "community standards" moderators, although application of its standards has been uneven. It will not stop the vast majority of untruthful posts about candidates or other election issues.

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Fire At AT&T Facility Causes Outage For Over a Million U-Verse Fiber Customers I Slashdotby BeauHD on att at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at October 15, 2018, 11:35 pm)

New submitter JustChapman writes: Local Dallas/Fort Worth WFAA is reporting a major outage of AT&T U-Verse fiber internet, due to a lightening strike at a switching facility in Richardson, TX. Apparently the strike took out primary and secondary power systems, setting fire to the building. One commenter states a representative allegedly said that 1.5 million customers are currently without service.

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[no title] Scripting News(cached at October 15, 2018, 11:33 pm)

I haven't listened to Exile on Main St in too long.
[no title] Scripting News(cached at October 15, 2018, 11:33 pm)

Why didn’t Elizabeth Warren hold on to the results of her study until Trump raised the issue again? Raising it herself just before the midterms seems like the most disadvantageous timing. Imagine if Trump re-stated his offer of $1 million, then she could release the study. Bonk. Wasted opportunity?
Supersonic Bloodhound hits cash roadblock BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition(cached at October 15, 2018, 11:31 pm)

The project to race a car at more than 1,000mph runs into a financial roadblock, with the company behind the venture going into administration.
99.7 Percent of Unique FCC Comments Favored Net Neutrality, Independent Analysis Fin Slashdotby msmash on communications at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at October 15, 2018, 11:05 pm)

When a Stanford researcher removed all the duplicate and fake comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission last year, he found that 99.7 percent of public comments -- about 800,000 in all -- were pro-net neutrality. From a report: "With the fog of fraud and spam lifted from the comment corpus, lawmakers and their staff, journalists, interested citizens and policymakers can use these reports to better understand what Americans actually said about the repeal of net neutrality protections and why 800,000 Americans went further than just signing a petition for a redress of grievances by actually putting their concerns in their own words," Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford University, wrote in a blog post Monday. Singel released a report [PDF] Monday that analyzed the unique comments -- as in, they weren't a copypasta of one or dozens of other letters -- filed last year ahead of the FCC's decision to repeal federal net neutrality protections. That's from the 22 million total comments filed, meaning that more than 21 million comments were fake, bots, or organized campaigns.

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Mohammed bin Salman: The dark side of Saudi Arabia's crown prince AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 10:30 pm)

Touted as Saudi Arabia's progressive reformer, Mohammed bin Salman has an ominous human rights record.
US Voter Records From 19 States Is Being Sold on a Hacking Forum, Threat Intelligenc Slashdotby msmash on usa at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at October 15, 2018, 10:05 pm)

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for ZDNet: The voter information for approximately 35 million US citizens is being peddled on a popular hacking forum, two threat intelligence firms have discovered. "To our knowledge this represents the first reference on the criminal underground of actors selling or distributing lists of 2018 voter registration data," said researchers from Anomali Labs and Intel471, the two companies who spotted the forum ad. The two companies said they've reviewed a sample of the database records and determined the data to be valid with a "high degree of confidence." Researchers say the data contains details such as full name, phone numbers, physical addresses, voting history, and other voting-related information. It is worth noting that some states consider this data public and offer it for download for free, but not all states have this policy.

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Harvard on trial over alleged discrimination against Asians AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 10:00 pm)

Lawsuit challenges the use of race as a factor in the Ivy League school's admissions and enrollment process.
US midterms: How they work and why they matter AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 10:00 pm)

With the midterms looming, Al Jazeera breaks down how the vote works, why it matters and what to expect.
Jeff Bezos Predicts We'll Have 1 Trillion Humans in the Solar System, and Blue Origi Slashdotby msmash on space at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at October 15, 2018, 9:35 pm)

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos predicted Monday that we'll have one trillion humans in the solar system one day -- and he showed off how the rocket company plans to help get there. "I won't be alive to see the fulfillment of that long term mission," Bezos said at the Wired 25th anniversary summit in San Francisco. "We are starting to bump up against the absolute true fact that Earth is finite."

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[no title] Scripting News(cached at October 15, 2018, 9:33 pm)

On Facebook, King Kaufman asks if the bike rider in this picture is doing the right thing. I responded: What the bike rider doing is correct. The only alternative would be to go in the left lane, and another driver is going to be pissed about that (he has to wait for the bike to get going and over to the right before he gets up to speed).
Qatar demands release of four Qataris disappeared in Saudi Arabia AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 9:30 pm)

Fate of four Qatari nationals forcibly disappeared in Saudi Arabia since last year is still unknown, rights group says.
Trump accused of siding with Saudi in Khashoggi 'murder' case AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 9:30 pm)

After speaking with the Saudi king, the US president parroted the 'rogue killers' theory that has been popular in the Saudi media.
UK PM May says Brexit deal still within reach AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at October 15, 2018, 9:30 pm)

After negotiations ground again to a halt, this time over Ireland, British civil servants have begun preparing for the country to crash out of the EU without a deal.