News and Notes Roundup - 12/14/2015
We interrupt your otherwise average Monday proceedings to bring you this overdue News & Notes Roundup! Our sincerest apologies for not updating you on the world’s events last week, but we were industriously chugging away at wrapping the DemTools project.
Oh, yeah. About that. We LAUNCHED DEMTOOLS 2.0 last week. These powerful new systems are ready to come out swinging for democracy - get your own DemTools sites here. We had a very successful event with speeches from Rep. Anna Eshoo and Gov. Howard Dean and a panel of technology and civics experts from the US CTO, Amazon Web Services, Sunlight Labs, NuCivic, epolitics.com, and Peacetech Lab. 230 people attended with over 100 joining our livestream; guests ranged from top-level State and USAID officials to interested members of the private sector. The lunches were pretty tasty, too.
Tech News:
Curious about smart thermostats? Take a look and get educated.
Who knew making odd GIFs could hit paydirt?
The House Judiciary claims to have put a permanent ban on taxes for accessing the Internet
An NYU grad student created the “True Love Tinder Robot,” which swipes based on body signals
Sorry, hoverboarders - your new toys have a vertical limit
A civic coder built a tool to detect cybersquatting on political candidates’ sites
China appears to be winning the race for domain names
The workers are really going to feel it if the unicorn bubble bursts anytime soon
Twitter alerts users that their accounts may have been hacked by state-sponsored actors
Bristol is getting connected in a huge way
After a successful petition on We The People (the inspiration for Petitions), privacy leaders met with top White House officials to talk encryption
Tech4Dem:
Google has 11 tips for improving tech accessibility
FailFest DC highlighted some great learning and evaluation
France opts not to ban public Wifi or using Tor
Net neutrality may yet survive in Europe
Congress promises to open up data on legislation
Kampala is getting high-speed wifi, thanks to Google.
Mobile News:
Cortana has come to iOS, but you might prefer Siri anyway
No more Firefox OS smartphones. For the ultra-cheap smartphone dream, we’ll need to look to Android.
Last year, the mobile industry generated $3.3 trillion and 11 million jobs
Verizon is piloting plans featuring “sponsored data” - with net neutrality implications.
We now know what you do on your phone when you wake up