November 2011

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Meltdown redux

David Cay Johnston: “Clear back in 1998, four months before the Long-Term Capital Management collapse, Brooksley Born, then chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, wrote a paper predicting that disaster would flow from the unregulated sale of derivatives. Congress responded by making sure derivatives were not regulated.”

Monday, 7 November 2011

Without Computer Security, Sources’ Secrets Aren’t Safe With Journalists

Christopher Soghoian: “… American journalists should assume that their communications are being monitored by their government — and possibly other governments as well.”

Sorry, Mark. Facebook needed Silicon Valley

Om Malik: “But Silicon Valley, at least for the next couple of years, has an advantage – and it is not VC money, which people mistakenly identify as Silicon Valley’s edge, or nearness to Stanford.”

Carbon dioxide emissions associated with UK consumption increase

Carbon dioxide emissions associated with UK consumption increase: “Trade data also indicates an increasing dominance of emissions embedded in UK imports from newly emerging economies such as China, India and Russia.”

Thursday, 3 November 2011

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

ProPublica: “Because of a regulatory Catch-22, the airport X-ray scanners have escaped the oversight required for X-ray machines used in doctors’ offices and hospitals. The reason is that the scanners do not have a medical purpose, so the FDA cannot subject them to the rigorous evaluation it applies to medical devices.”