Prominent figures from Jacob Gottlieb to Betsy DeVos got help from a reputation management firm that can bury image-sensitive Google results by placing flattering content on websites that masquerade as news outlets. The Wall Street Journal reports: Jacob Gottlieb was considering raising money for a hedge fund. One problem: His last one had collapsed in a scandal. While Mr. Gottlieb wasn't accused of wrongdoing, googling his name prominently surfaced news articles chronicling the demise of Visium Asset Management LP, which once managed $8 billion. The results also included articles about his top portfolio manager, who died by suicide days after he was indicted for insider trading in 2016, and Mr. Gottlieb's former brother-in-law, an employee of Visium who was convicted of securities fraud. Searches also found coverage of Mr. Gottlieb's messy divorce in New York's tabloids. So last year Mr. Gottlieb hired Status Labs, an Austin, Texas-based company specializing in so-called reputation management. Its tactic: a favorable news blitz to eclipse the negative stories.

Afterward, articles about him began to appear on websites that are designed to look like independent news outlets but are not. Most contained flattering information about Mr. Gottlieb, praising his investment acumen and philanthropy, and came up high in recent Google searches. Google featured some of the articles on Google News. His online makeover shows the steps some executives and public figures are taking to influence what comes up on the world's top search engine. It also illustrates that despite Google's promises to police misinformation, sites can still masquerade as news outlets and avoid Google's detection. Google removed five websites from Google News after The Wall Street Journal inquired about them. Google, owned by parent company Alphabet, said the sites violated its policies around deceptive practices. Google's news feature forbids "content that conceals or misrepresents sponsored content as independent, editorial content."

"Uber's stock market value fell by $1.4 billion Friday, on the heels of the company's release of a safety report revealing that 3,000 incidents of sexual assaults took place during its U.S. rides in 2018," reports the Bay Area News Group: On Thursday evening, Uber released its long-awaited safety study, which revealed that the company received 3,045 reports of sexual assaults in its rides in 2018, and 2,936 such incidents in 2017. Those figures included 235 reports of rape in 2018, up from 229 in 2017, and thousands of other assaults ranging from unwanted touching, kissing or attempted rape. Between 2017 and 2018, the company said it averaged about 3.1 million rides in the U.S. each day.

Uber is not the only ride-hailing company grappling with safety issues, though. Earlier Thursday, its top rival, Lyft, was sued by 20 women alleging they were raped or sexually assaulted by Lyft drivers.

In a statement on Twitter following the safety report's release Thursday, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi pledged to take further measures to protect the safety of both passengers and drivers.
The editorial boards of two Silicon Valley newspapers said the report seems to be an attempt "to confront legitimate problems head-on and transparently," asking how the figures compare to those for taxicabs and applauding Uber for instituting tighter background checks on drivers and adding more safety features to Uber's app.

"But it also must acknowledge that these safety issues should have been anticipated. Entrepreneurs aren't doing themselves -- or their industry -- any favors when they fail to anticipate problems and only act on consumer issues after the fact."

Slashdot reader peterthegreat321 shared an article from Medium's technology blog OneZero revealing the "cracks, loopholes, and limitations in Facebook's systems that bad actors are busily exploiting." Facebook says it's proud of the progress it has made, though it acknowledges there's more to be done. "Multiple independent studies have found that we've cut the amount of fake news on Facebook by more than half since the 2016 election," the company said in a statement to OneZero. "That still means plenty of people see fake news, which is why we now have more visible warning labels flagging this type of content, and prominent notifications when someone tries to share it or already has...."

The most glaring shortcoming in Facebook's systems might also be the one that's hardest to fix. Even when everything goes right with its fact-checking partners, their human editorial resources pale in comparison to the scope of misinformation on the platform, and they can only vet a fraction of it... In most cases, a story only rises to the top of fact-checkers' priority list once it has already gone viral. And it continues going viral during the fact-checking process. By the time it's marked as debunked on Facebook, its reach may have already peaked.

The discouraging reality is that Facebook's fact-checking efforts, however sincere, appear to be overmatched by the dynamics of its platform. To make the News Feed a less misleading information source would require far more than belated debunkings and warning labels. It would require altering the basic structure of a network designed to rapidly disseminate the posts that generate the greatest quantity of quick-twitch reactions. It would require differentiating between more and less reliable information sources -- something Facebook has attempted in only the most halfhearted ways, and upon which Zuckerberg recently indicated he has little appetite to expand... [T]he progress the platform has made appears to be reaching its limits under a CEO who sees his platform as a bulwark of free speech more than of human rights, democracy, or truth.

Last week, Facebook's only Dutch fact-checking partner quit the program in protest of the company's refusal to fact-check politicians.

Jimmy Wales' new social network WT.Social started November with just 1,500 members. Four weeks later, it's skyrocketed up to 345,680 members -- and that's just the beginning.

Next year Wales plans to hire journalists, with the site's users acting as their "editors-in-chief," fulfilling the dreams Wales had for the site's earlier incarnation as a crowd-sourced news platform Wikitribune, reports the journalism magazine Press Gazette: Wikitribune originally employed about ten to 12 journalists who created content and hit publish on stories for the site. But the whole editorial team was laid off in October last year after Wales told them costs were unsustainable with not enough money coming in from crowdfunding and no major investors. [On WT.Social] he instead enabled thousands of users to publish articles, a right that had previously been limited to Wikitribune's staff journalists....

"[T]here was a real feeling that this site was a journalists' website and you as a member are allowed to help them as a junior mini-journalist on the side. And that just didn't really work. Whereas to really foster that sense of community engagement and moral ownership of what they're doing, you kind of want to reverse that and say actually the journalists are here to serve whatever you're interested in so send them out, get them busy, you be the editor-in-chief and direct their work....

"We'll say: 'Here are some of the most active communities, you work for them -- what do they need you to do? What are the things that they want you to look into? Who do they want you to go and hunt down and interview?' So it's really putting journalists at the disposal of people who are in a certain area."
Wales tell the Press Gazette that his original WikiTribune site had had a design that was "too intimidating" for non-journalists. "People felt like 'okay I have to go and write a whole big piece, edit it, publish it, all of that' rather than just sharing, interacting in a much more casual way..."

"So far [on WT Social] that's proven to be overwhelmingly true," Wales added. On his new site users are signed up for four "subwikis" by default -- Internet News, Long Reads, Fighting Misinformation, and Upcoming Newsworthy Events -- and this has started some good conversations. "People come on the platform and they're discussing things, sharing things, writing things in a much more fluid way."


WT.Social is currently looking for volunteer laravel or vue developers, as well as admins, and there's even a paid position as a community assistant.

Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd shared this report on "arguably the most powerful lines of computer code in the global economy," the Google algorithms that handle 3.8 million queries every single minute.

But though Google claims its algorithms are objective and autonomous, the Wall Street Journal reports Google "has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged": More than 100 interviews and the Journal's own testing of Google's search results reveal:

- Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc., contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action. The company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

- Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results. These features include auto-complete suggestions, boxes called "knowledge panels" and "featured snippets," and news results, which aren't subject to the same company policies limiting what engineers can remove or change.

- Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results... Google employees and executives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have disagreed on how much to intervene on search results and to what extent. Employees can push for revisions in specific search results, including on topics such as vaccinations and autism.

- To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms' rankings. Even so, contractors said Google gave feedback to these workers to convey what it considered to be the correct ranking of results, and they revised their assessments accordingly, according to contractors interviewed by the Journal. The contractors' collective evaluations are then used to adjust algorithms.

The Journal's findings undercut one of Google's core defenses against global regulators worried about how it wields its immense power -- that the company doesn't exert editorial control over what it shows users.

Everyone on Deadspin's staff -- nearly 20 writers and editors -- resigned this week after the site's interim editor-in-chief, Barry Petchesky, was fired for refusing to "stick to sports." Axios reports: In the last month alone, two prominent American sports publications have been gutted and look destined to become shells of their former selves. A few weeks ago, Sports Illustrated's new owners laid off half the newsroom -- the first step in their plan to turn it into a rickety old content mill staffed by contributors making as little as $25,000 a year. Deadspin was founded as a sports blog in 2005 and was originally part of Gawker Media, which was sued out of existence thanks to a lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan (and funded by Peter Thiel). After bouncing between a few owners, Deadspin and its sibling sites like Gizmodo, Jezebel and The Onion were acquired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners earlier this year. Since then, new ownership has tried to change the tone of the site on the fly, urging writers to avoid hot-button issues or polarized political topics. The New York Times explains the tension between the management and editorial staff: While largely focused on sports, Deadspin for years had delved into a broad range of topics in a voice that was sometimes rude, often funny and always conversational. On Tuesday, the site's top editor, Barry Petchesky, was fired after refusing to go along with the order. The departures shocked fans of the site, which put a new spin on sports coverage for a generation of digital natives. But they were the result of a long buildup of resentment between the journalists and their new bosses, according to interviews with 13 current and former employees of Deadspin and G/O Media.

The main topic of discussion at the Wednesday meeting was the stick-to-sports memo, which was signed by Paul Maidment, the editorial director of G/O Media, the company that became the owner of Deadspin and sibling sites like Jezebel and Gizmodo six months ago. Stories that showed the intersection of sports and other topics were fair game, Mr. Maidment wrote in the memo. He said at the meeting that he had enjoyed a recent post about President Trump getting booed at a World Series game. But purely non-sports content was forbidden. Deadspin writers and editors considered that to be meddling.

[...] G/O Media installed Jim Spanfeller, a digital media executive who had previously run Forbes.com, as its head. Mr. Spanfeller promptly got rid of some top editors and made Mr. Maidment the editorial director. Signs of tensions between the irreverent journalists and the management team came quickly. They were not helped by an Aug. 2 Deadspin article whose reporting was critical of G/O Media, Mr. Spanfeller and his executive team. The piece took issue with their "lack of knowledge about" the sites now in their portfolio and "their seeming unwillingness or inability to get up to speed." A few weeks later, Deadspin's top editor, Megan Greenwell, resigned, saying in a farewell post that her job had become untenable, given management's demands.The next major event at G/O Media occurred on Oct. 10, with the shuttering of its politics site, Splinter. Further reading: Thank You (Deadspin); The Mavening of Sportswriting (The Ringer).

Bernie Sanders said in a statement Thursday evening, "I stand with the former Deadspin workers who decided not to bow to the greed of private equity vultures like Jim Spanfeller. This is the kind of greed that is destroying journalism across the country, and together we are going to take them on."

American companies have an obligation to defend the freedom of expression, even at the risk of angering China, writes The New York Times' Editorial Board. From the article: China's assertive campaign to police discourse about its policies, even outside of its borders, and the acquiescence of American companies eager to make money in China, pose a dangerous and growing threat to one of this nation's core values: the freedom of expression. The Communist state is becoming more and more aggressive in pressuring foreign companies to choose between self-censorship and the loss of access to what will soon be the world's largest market. An old list of taboo topics, sometimes described as the "three Ts" -- Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan -- has been joined by newer subjects that must not be mentioned, including protests in Hong Kong and China's mistreatment of its Muslim minority. The Constitutions of China and the United States both enshrine freedom of speech, but China's totalitarian regime has long taken a narrow view of that freedom -- and American companies have long accepted those restrictions while doing business in China. Now, however, China is seeking to control not just what is said in China but what is said about China, too. If China has its way, any topic it deems off limits will be scrubbed from global discourse.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States finds itself in a contest of ideas and principles with a country in its own weight class. But this time is different. The United States and China are economically intertwined: The trade volume between the two countries is the greatest of any between two countries in the history of the world. There is no reasonable prospect of disengagement, nor is that a desirable outcome. The clear necessity is for the two countries to find ways of living together, and coexistence requires respect for differences. Instead, China is engaged in the kind of cultural imperialism it often decries. China insists that its national interest is at stake. So is the national interest of the United States and other free nations. China has taken a hard line, and it's time for the United States to respond in kind. The United States and American businesses have a duty to not appease the censors in Beijing -- even if the price of insisting on free expression is a loss of access to the Chinese market.

Ask Google or Siri: "What is Taiwan?" "A state", they will answer, "in East Asia". But earlier in September, it would have been a "province in the People's Republic of China." From a report: For questions of fact, many search engines, digital assistants and phones all point to one place: Wikipedia. And Wikipedia had suddenly changed. The edit was reversed, but soon made again. And again. It became an editorial tug of war that - as far as the encyclopedia was concerned -- caused the state of Taiwan to constantly blink in and out of existence over the course of a single day. "This year is a very crazy year," sighed Jamie Lin, a board member of Wikimedia Taiwan. "A lot of Taiwanese Wikipedians have been attacked." Wikipedia is a movement as much as a website. Anyone can write or edit entries on Wikipedia, and in almost every country on Earth, communities of "Wikipedians" exist to protect and contribute to it. The largest collection of human knowledge ever amassed, available to everyone online for free, it is arguably the greatest achievement of the digital age. But in the eyes of Lin and her colleagues, it is now under attack.

The edit war over Taiwan was only one of a number that had broken out across Wikipedia's vast, multi-lingual expanse of entries. The Hong Kong protests page had seen 65 changes in the space of a day -- largely over questions of language. Were they protesters? Or rioters? The English entry for the Senkaku islands said they were "islands in East Asia," but earlier this year the Mandarin equivalent had been changed to add "China's inherent territory." The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were changed in Mandarin to describe them as "the June 4th incident" to "quell the counter-revolutionary riots". On the English version, the Dalai Lama is a Tibetan refugee. In Mandarin, he is a Chinese exile. Angry differences of opinion happen all the time on Wikipedia. But to Ms Lin, this was different. "It's control by the [Chinese] Government" she continued. "That's very terrible." BBC Click's investigation has found almost 1,600 tendentious edits across 22 politically sensitive articles. We cannot verify who made each of these edits, why, or whether they reflect a more widespread practice. However, there are indications that they are not all necessarily organic, nor random. Both an official and academics from within China have begun to call for both their government and citizens to systematically correct what they argue are serious anti-Chinese biases endemic across Wikipedia.

"The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army's psychological warfare unit," reports Middle East Eye: The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as "information warfare". Carter says the 77th Brigade is giving the British military "the capability to compete in the war of narratives at the tactical level"; to shape perceptions of conflict. Some soldiers who have served with the unit say they have been engaged in operations intended to change the behaviour of target audiences.

What exactly MacMillan is doing with the unit is difficult to determine, however: he has declined to answer any questions about his role, as has Twitter and the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Responding to the article, the British army told Newsweek their brigade had no relationship with Twitter, "other than using Twitter as one of many social media platforms for engagement and communication." And Twitter reminded Newsweek that "We proactively publish all tweets and accounts relating to state-backed foreign information operations on the service -- regardless of the source. We built this industry-leading archive to promote better public understanding of these threats." Despite the assertions of Twitter and the British military, academics and researchers have said the division between the two is not so clear. David Miller -- a professor of political sociology in the School for Policy Studies at England's University of Bristol, who studies propaganda and public relations efforts concerning the British government -- is one such academic. He told Newsweek he believes a link is there, adding that it was a "threat to our democracy."

"I would say I know a good amount about army propaganda and 'psyops' operations as they're called, but what is interesting is how little information we have 77th Brigade," he said." I suppose it means that all their work is covert, but what I would like to know is what they exactly are they doing? Are they just tracking accounts or are they trying to influence people's views? What we do know is that their account itself is hidden by Twitter so we assume they are trying to influence people under the operatives' own names. And because we know so little about exactly what they're doing, we have to look elsewhere for clues for example.
The professor also argues that Twitter is deceiving us by "not acting as transparently as it could. If they are working with army personnel in this way, it is extremely damaging to our democracy. Given Twitter's closure of accounts alleged to be used by foreign governments, it's a very hypocritical stance of Twitter to take."

Medical experts and federal health officials on Friday warned the public about the dangers of vaping and discouraged using the devices as the number of people with a severe lung illness linked to vaping has more than doubled to 450 possible cases in 33 states. The New York Times reports: The number of deaths linked to vaping rose to four from two on Friday. The Indiana Department of Health announced the third death, saying only that the victim was older than 18. Hours later, officials in Minnesota confirmed that a fourth person had died. The patient, who was 65, had a history of lung disease, but state officials said his acute lung injury was linked to vaping illicit T.H.C. products.The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health was investigating a possible fifth death, saying on Friday afternoon that the fatality was associated with the use of e-cigarettes, also known as vaping. "There is clearly an epidemic that begs for an urgent response," Dr. David C. Christiani of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health wrote in an editorial published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The editorial called on doctors to discourage their patients from using e-cigarettes and for a broader effort to increase public awareness about "the harmful effects of vaping." Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoed that call in a briefing. "While this investigation is ongoing, people should consider not using e-cigarette products," said Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, who is leading the C.D.C.'s investigation into the illness.

Last week Forbes ran an article by writer/data scientist Kurt Cagle arguing that Agile software development "was becoming less and less relevant." Within five days it had racked up 300,000 hits, and "I'm still digging out from the deluge of email, Tweets and Linked In messages," he wrote this week.

But in a new follow-up, Cagle looks back over his 40 years of programming, remembering successful six-month development cycles in the 1990s that used "a home-grown methodology which I've since dubbed the Studio Model, because it reflected the way that you create movies, television programs, orchestrated concerts, video games, and to be honest, most intellectual property." He then attempts a 12-point manifesto for this Agile alternative, which emphasizes things like a clear vision, good design, redundancy, flexibility, and remembering that as a project moves forward changes become "exponentially expensive". All too often, proponents of certain methodologies want to claim that their methodologies are the reason for success, when in reality, the deciding factor was the skill and tenaciousness of the people involved, the presence of a clearly articulated vision that could be changed as needed but that was not written in jello, and on recognizing the distinction between providing flexibility and fueling failures.

Agile is not, by itself, a methodology. The Agile Manifesto is a wish-list, written primarily by programmers, in response to the incessant micro-management by non-technical managers who were in general too incompetent to learn about the technology that they managed. I cheered when I first read it... Agile legitimized the idea that all stakeholders must be involved in the process of shaping the product's constraints and parameters (something that even now is still more preached than practiced). It gave a voice to developers and (some) others in the production process who up until then often had little say, and its message to managers in particular about the need to trust in the competence of the people they manage is one that cannot be stressed loudly enough. Its emphasis on change management has spurred a lot of thought about the nature of change, experimentation and development costs in the field. And for all that I think that certain Agile tools are a bit on the cheesy size, the idea of formalizing the process of development in such a way as to give creatives both the opportunities and the tools to shape and push back on design decisions is invaluable.

Yet, there are two key sets of problems that the Agile community faces. The first, and foremost, is that it decentralizes responsibility too much -- it essentially punts on the whole issue of governance or editorial guidance. This is that whole vision thing all over again... Agile empowers autonomous teams, but those teams still need to be able to pull together towards a common set of goals, and this means sacrificing some autonomy for cohesiveness. Agile also does not (ironically) distribute very well for precisely that same reason...

Agile may be everywhere, as several readers suggested, but scratch the surface a bit and you'll find that most of those successful agile projects were ones where you had a strong architect or steward, a culture that was already primed to work in a more Studio-Model like manner, a strong design in the first place as a foundation, and exceptional team-members that used agile in the way it should be used -- as a scaffold, rather than a crutch. There are good things to take out of the last twenty years of Agile, but this is not 2000, and it's well past time to acknowledge what's worked with Agile ... and what hasn't.

Twitter is now blocking state-run media outlets from advertising on its platform. The new policy was announced just hours after the company was criticized for running promoted tweets by China's largest state agency that paint pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong as violent, even though the rallies, including one that drew an estimated 1.7 million people this weekend, have been described as mostly peaceful by international media. TechCrunch reports: State-funded media enterprises that do not rely on taxpayer dollars for their financing and don't operate independently of the governments that finance them will no longer be allowed to advertise on the platform, Twitter said in a statement. That leaves a big exception for outlets like the Associated Press, the British Broadcasting Corp., Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, according to reporting from BBC reporter, Dave Lee. The affected accounts will be able to use Twitter, but can't access the company's advertising products, Twitter said in a statement.

The policy applies to news media outlets that are financially or editorially controlled by the state, Twitter said. The company said it will make its policy determinations on the basis of media freedom and independence, including editorial control over articles and video, the financial ownership of the publication, the influence or interference governments may exert over editors, broadcasters and journalists, and political pressure or control over the production and distribution process. Twitter said the advertising rules wouldn't apply to entities that are focused on entertainment, sports or travel, but if there's news in the mix, the company will block advertising access. Affected outlets have 30 days before they're removed from Twitter and the company is halting all existing campaigns.

Long-time Slashdot reader trolman scared this scathing editorial by security researcher Brian Krebs: If you are somehow under the impression that you -- the customer -- are in control over the security, privacy and integrity of your mobile phone service, think again. And you'd be forgiven if you assumed the major wireless carriers or federal regulators had their hands firmly on the wheel. No, a series of recent court cases and unfortunate developments highlight the sad reality that the wireless industry today has all but ceded control over this vital national resource to cybercriminals, scammers, corrupt employees and plain old corporate greed...

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists...

Is there any hope that lawmakers or regulators will do anything about these persistent problems? Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, said the answer -- at least in this administration -- is probably a big "no."

"The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight of the mobile wireless industry," Sohn told KrebsOnSecurity. "Our enforcement agencies aren't doing anything on these topics right now, and we have a complete and total breakdown of oversight of these incredibly powerful and important companies."

After more than three decades of publishing editorial content and providing technical guidance to the Microsoft developer community, MSDN Magazine will publish its last issue in November. From a report: Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was launched in 1992 to manage the relationship of the company with the developer ecosystem. MSDN Magazine originally started as two separate magazines -- Microsoft Systems Journal (MSJ) and Microsoft Internet Developer (MIND) -- which consolidated into MSDN Magazine in March 2000. The monthly magazine is available as a print magazine in the United States and online in several languages. While the March 2000 issue was entirely devoted to Windows, the MSDN Magazine has gone through its evolution over the years as Microsoft products and services expanded exponentially.

An anonymous reader shares a post: Like many things that starts out as a mere annoyance, though eventually growing into somewhat of an affliction. One particularly dark and insidious thing has more than reared its ugly head in recent years, and now far more accurately described as an epidemic disease. I'm talking about the filth that is reCAPTCHA. Yes that seemingly harmless question of "Are you a human?" Truly I wish all this called for were sarcastic puns of 'The Matrix' variety but the matter is far more serious. Google describes reCAPTCHA as: "[reCAPTCHA] is a free security service that protects your websites from spam and abuse." However, this couldn't be further from the truth, as reCAPTCHA is actually something that causes abuse. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being subjected to constant reCAPTCHAs is actually an act of human torture and disregard for a person's human right of mental comfort. The author goes on to make several points.

83-year-old former U.S. Senatior Ron Paul has published a new editorial on Zero Hedge: Last week, the House of Representatives voted in favor of a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill amendment to repeal the prohibition on the use of federal funds to create a 'unique patient identifier.' Unless this prohibition, which I originally sponsored in 1998, is reinstated, the federal government will have the authority to assign every American a medical ID.

This ID will be used to store and track every American's medical history.

A unique patient identifier would allow federal bureaucrats and government-favored special interests to access health information simply by entering an individual's unique patient ID into a database. This system would also facilitate the collection of health information without a warrant by surveillance state operatives...

The unique patient identifier system puts the desires of government bureaucrats and politically powerful special interests ahead of the needs of individual patients and health care providers. Instead of further intervening in health care and further destroying our privacy and our liberties, Congress should give patients control over their health care by giving them control over health care dollars through expanding access to Health Savings Accounts and health care tax credits. In a free market, patients and doctors can and will work tighter to ensure patients' records are maintained in a manner that provides maximum efficiency without endangering privacy or liberty.

How many words can you fit in a subtitle? For a slew of modern books, the answer seems to be as many as possible. From a report: Just look at Julie Holland's "Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, the Sleep You're Missing, the Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy," Erin McHugh's "Political Suicide: Missteps, Peccadilloes, Bad Calls, Backroom Hijinx, Sordid Pasts, Rotten Breaks, and Just Plain Dumb Mistakes in the Annals of American Politics" and Ryan Grim's "We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement." Blame a one-word culprit: search.

Todd Stocke, senior vice president and editorial director at Sourcebooks, said that subtitle length and content have a lot to do with finding readers through online searches. "It used to be that you could solve merchandising communication on the cover by adding a tagline, blurb or bulleted list," he said. But now, publishers "pack the keywords and search terms into the subtitle field because in theory that'll help the book surface more easily." He should know. Sourcebooks will publish Shafia Zaloom's "Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between: The New and Necessary Conversations Today's Teenagers Need to Have about Consent, Sexual Harassment, Healthy Relationships, Love, and More" in September.

Amazon allows up to 199 characters for a book's title and subtitle combined, making the word combination possibilities, if not endless, vast. Anne Bogel, host of the podcast "What Should I Read Next?," is not generally a fan of the trend. "I don't feel respected as a reader when I feel like the subtitle was created not to give me a feeling of what kind of reading experience I may get, but for search engines," she said. When Bogel asked author friends how they came up with their subtitles, several told her they can't even remember which words they ended up using. That being said, sometimes titular long-windedness works.

AmiMoJo writes: After initially banning Huawei scientists from reviewing papers submitted to the IEEE, the organization contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce seeking clarification. Based on new information, the IEEE has decided that it can still allow Huawei employees to participate in the review process. The IEEE statement reads in part: "IEEE has received the requested clarification from the U.S. Department of Commerce on the applicability of these export control restrictions to IEEE's publication activities. Based on this new information, employees of Huawei and its affiliates may participate as peer reviewers and editors in our publication process. All IEEE members, regardless of employer, can continue to participate in all of the activities of the IEEE.

Our initial, more restrictive approach was motivated solely by our desire to protect our volunteers and our members from legal risk. With the clarification received, this risk has been addressed. We appreciate the many questions and comments from our members and volunteers around the world and thank them for their patience as we worked through a legally complex situation."

New submitter AntiBrainWasher writes: Running away from the fear of legal/political persecution, the New York City-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) told editors of its roughly 200 journals yesterday that it feared "severe legal implications" from continuing to use Huawei scientists as reviewers in vetting technical papers. They can continue to serve on IEEE editorial boards, according to the memo, but "cannot handle any papers" until the sanctions are lifted. The IEEE ban has sparked outrage among Chinese scientists on social media. "I joined IEEE as a Ph.D. student because it is recognized as an International academic platform in electronics engineering," wrote Haixia (Alice) Zhang of Peking University in Beijing in a letter to IEEE leadership. "But this message is challenging my professional integrity. I have decided to quit the editorial boards [of two IEEE journals] until it restores our common professional integrity."

Meanwhile, the SD and Wi-Fi Alliance reinstated Huawei as a member, less than a week after they quietly removed the company from its membership list. Despite the lack of evidences, U.S. officials have alleged that the Chinese government could use equipment manufactured by Huawei, which is a global supplier of cellphones and wireless data networks, to spy on users or disrupt critical infrastructure, similar to what the NSA has done.

"It has become too easy to take Linux and FOSS for granted," warns a Linux Journal editorial by Doc Searls, complaining, for example, that today "We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google Hangouts."

Long-time Slashdot reader whh3 wants to live differently -- and to model a different set values: After reading the recent Doc Searls article in Linux Journal, I realized that I need to get back to my roots. The first step will be to build/setup/run my own email server for my vanity domain.

The problem is, I haven't run my own email server since the 90s. It was easy back then -- there was much less SPAM and self-hosted email servers didn't have to jump through hoops to make sure that they weren't blacklisted as senders.

So, I am reaching out to this great community to find out if there are any good tutorials on modern-day best-practices for self hosting an email server. Any tips/tricks/pointers would be great appreciated!
A lot's changed in 20 years -- but for such a basic form of online communication, is it still possible to roll your own? Or are we trapped in a world where private conversations about valuing open source software take place inside Google's proprietary Gmail client.

Leave your own suggestions in the comments. How would you host your own email server?