Month: November 2017

Enlarge / AT&T will own a bunch of new media properties if it is allowed to buy Time Warner. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

AT&T's purchase of Time Warner Inc. is reportedly hitting a speed bump as the Trump administration's Department of Justice considers filing a lawsuit to block the merger.

This wouldn't be a death knell for the merger because the DOJ often files lawsuits against deals that it ultimately approves, and AT&T today said it still expects to get approval. The DOJ's antitrust division could file a lawsuit to block the proposed merger while at the same time filing a proposed settlement that would allow the deal to be approved, as it did last month with CenturyLink's purchase of Level 3.

But a settlement could only happen if AT&T and the government agree on conditions that would offset the merger's harms to competition. So far, negotiations are stalling, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal.

Enlarge / Sam Clovis, then newly appointed national co-chairman of the Trump campaign, speaks during a news conference with Donald Trump. (credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images)

Yesterday, the Trump administration's pick for a science post at the Department of Agriculture withdrew his name from consideration. Sam Clovis, who was a talk radio host before joining the Trump campaign, had been a controversial pick to begin with due to his complete lack of experience with either agriculture or science. But his nomination was terminated due to his role in the Trump campaign, where he supervised George Papadopoulos, the first person to plead guilty due to Robert Mueller's investigation of the campaign's Russian ties.

Since Trump's inauguration, Clovis has served as a White House advisor within the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this year, Trump nominated him to a formal position within the department: the Undersecretary of Research, Education, and Economics. That position coordinates research within the department, and the person who holds the position is often referred to as Agriculture's chief scientist. The law that created the position indicates that the person nominated for it should be chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics."

That description is a poor fit for Clovis, and several Democratic senators were questioning his qualifications prior to his nomination hearings. Clovis' response to questions from Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), ranking member of the Senate's agriculture committee, were obtained by The Washington Post. In them, Clovis admits he hasn't taken any courses or published any research in science or agriculture. Instead, he suggested he was qualified because some of the courses he taught included some material on agriculture, and he'd run for statewide office in Iowa. "One cannot be a credible candidate in that state," Clovis contended, "without significant agricultural experience and knowledge.”

Einstein gets ready to do a search on Google Canada. (credit: Photo by Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Earlier this year, a small Vancouver software firm called Equustek earned an extraordinary legal win against Google. The Supreme Court of Canada ordered the search giant to de-index all pages from a former Equustek distributor—not just in Canada, but worldwide.

Google's response to that was to file a lawsuit in US federal court asking a judge to rule that the Canadian order is unenforceable in its home country. Google called the Canadian order "repugnant" to the First Amendment, and it pointed out that the Canadian plaintiffs "never established any violation of their rights under US law."

It looks like Google is going to win that case, but not as a result of any high-minded legal arguments. Its opponent simply failed to show up. In a motion (PDF) filed Tuesday, Google said that Equustek CEO Robert Angus faxed Google's lawyers a letter "stating that Defendants would not be defending this action."

Enlarge (credit: Bitcoin Charts)

Six weeks ago, it looked like Bitcoin's latest boom might be coming to an end. The virtual currency had been worth almost $5,000 in early September, but then Chinese regulators announced a harsh crackdown on China's Bitcoin economy. On September 15, Bitcoin's price reached a low of $3,000.

But then the currency bounced back, and it has been on a tear ever since. Last night the price of one bitcoin soared about $7,000 for the first time—that's a ten-fold increase over the last year.

It's never easy to pinpoint exactly what's driving market optimism about Bitcoin, and this case is no exception. A major factor in Bitcoin's growing value over the last year has been the broader popularity of initial coin offerings—sales of new Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Because it's not easy to set up an exchange for trading a new currency for dollars, most ICOs are conducted using bitcoins or Ethereum's ether as an intermediary—customers buy those currencies first and then trade them in for the new token.

Enlarge / Tugboats from Singapore assist the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) as it steers toward Changi Naval Base, Republic of Singapore, following a collision with the merchant vessel Alnic MC while underway east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore on August 21. Ten sailors died in the collision.

On November 1, the US Navy issued its report on the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain this summer. The Navy's investigation found that both collisions were avoidable accidents. And in the case of the USS McCain, the accident was in part caused by an error made in switching which control console on the ship's bridge had steering control. While the report lays the blame on training, the user interface for the bridge's central navigation control systems certainly played a role.

According to the report, at 5:19am local time, the commanding officer of the McCain, Commander Alfredo J. Sanchez, "noticed the Helmsman (the watchstander steering the ship) having difficulty maintaining course while also adjusting the throttles for speed control." Sanchez ordered the watch team to split the responsibilities for steering and speed control, shifting control of throttle to another watchstander's station—the lee helm, immediately to the right (starboard) of the Helmsman's position at the Ship’s Control Console. While the Ship's Control Console has a wheel for manual steering, both steering and throttle can be controlled with trackballs, with the adjustments showing up on the screens for each station.

However, instead of switching just throttle control to the Lee Helm station, the Helmsman accidentally switched all control to the Lee Helm station. When that happened, the ship's rudder automatically moved to its default position (amidships, or on center line of the ship). The helmsman had been steering slightly to the right to keep the ship on course in the currents of the Singapore Strait, but the adjustment meant the ship started drifting off course.