Month: September 2016

Two of the biggest porn sites in the world have been blocked by Russia's media regulator, a decision which has apparently prompted uproar on the country's social media.

Weirder yet, Roskomnadzor, the body that enacted the bans (whose name translated into English is the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media), has been actively engaged in sassing members of the Russian public who complain.

The regulator dropped the banhammer on Tuesday, applying rules which had previously been imposed by two separate regional courts. Any Russian citizen visiting PornHub or YouPorn is now redirected to a simple message telling them that the sites have been blocked "by decision of public authorities."

Enlarge / Ronald Rotunda prepares to deliver testimony.

As Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has sent a lot of subpoenas. It started with his campaign to dig up wrongdoing by NOAA climate scientists after they published a paper updating the agency’s global temperature dataset—an update that happened to weaken Smith’s claim that the world hadn’t warmed in some number of years. When NOAA refused to start handing out the researchers’ e-mails and drafts, Rep. Smith started firing off subpoenas.

More recently, subpoenas went out to several state attorneys general who have launched securities fraud investigations of ExxonMobil. The investigations followed media reports that the company had funded its own climate research in the 1970s and '80s—and that research made it clear that climate change was real and dangerous. After ExxonMobil shut down the research, it focused on fighting any climate policies by claiming that climate change was uncertain. The company never publicly disclosed the potential risks to its business, as regulations require.

Rep. Smith’s subpoenas targeted both the attorneys general pursuing the investigation and a pile of environmental groups that advocated for the investigation. That’s how we got to yesterday’s House Science Committee hearing, entitled “Affirming Congress’ Constitutional Oversight Responsibilities: Subpoena Authority and Recourse for Failure to Comply with Lawfully Issued Subpoenas.” In essence, Smith was seeking legal backing for his actions.

(credit: BBC)

Briton Lauri Love will be extradited to the US to face charges of hacking, Westminster Magistrates' Court ruled on Friday.

Love faces up to 99 years in prison in the US on charges of hacking as part of the Anonymous collective according to his legal team.

Handing down her ruling at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, district judge Nina Tempia told Love that he can appeal against the decision. The case will now be referred to the home secretary Amber Rudd while Love remains on bail.

"Is America the greatest country in the world?" "Yes," Gordon-Levitt replies in his role as Edward Snowden.

The first major film event about Edward Snowden did not come this year thanks to Director Oliver Stone. Instead, it came in the form of Citizenfour, the deserving winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

That film is given a lot of attention in Stone's own creation, this week's Snowden, as many of its scenes include actor portrayals of Snowden, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald. The reenacted documentary scenes are quite authentic, complete with Snowden ducking under a blanket to enter a password while he's being filmed, and they were shot in the same Hong Kong hotel where Snowden was staying when the documents he copied were revealed to the world.

One documentary scene didn't make the dramatized cut, however. The first moment in which Snowden appears in the documentary includes Greenwald asking about the leaker's life and identity. To those, he almost immediately responded, "I'm not the story here."

Enlarge

The Grand Tour—the new Amazon Prime motoring show from ex-Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond—is launching on November 18.

New episodes will run every week exclusively for Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime Video subscribers, but there's no word yet on whether the show will run in regions that do not have access to Prime Video.

While Amazon is keeping the finer details of The Grand Tour firmly under wraps, the company has dropped a few details on what will be in the first episode, which features a studio tent recording in California that will be filmed later this month. The studio tent has previously made its way to Johannesburg, with other locations due to be revealed in the lead-up to launch. Further updates are promised on the show's Facebook and Twitter accounts.