WcP.Watchful.Eye's blog

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1,800 US newspapers have closed since 2004
Half of the 3,143 counties in the United States now have only one newspaper, usually a small weekly, and almost 200 counties in the country have no newspaper at all.
"The people with the least access to local news are often the most vulnerable -- the poorest, least educated and most isolated," the report said.
More than half of all newspapers have changed ownership in the past decade, and the largest 25 chains own a third of all newspapers.
"The consolidation in the industry places decisions about the future of individual papers, as well as the communities where they are located, into the hands of owners with no direct stake in the outcome."

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Photo courtesy AFP Photo / NATALIE BEHRING

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Martin Cooper, who made the first cell phone call in 1973, holds a Motorola DynaTAC, the first prototype of a cell phone. The first commercial call wasn’t made until 10 years later.

Our reliance on cellphones began 35 years ago today
With 95% of Americans owning a cellphone, it can feel like we’ve been calling, texting, and tweeting on the go forever. But the infrastructure supporting our cellphones has actually not been around that long. While we’re now on 4G networks, it was only 35 years ago today that Ameritech (now part of AT&T) launched 1G, or the first commercial cell phone network.

That network, called the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), went online on October 13, 1983, allowing people in the Chicago area to make and receive mobile calls for the first time. Ameritech president Bob Barnett, who made the first call, decided to make the historic moment count by ringing Alexander Graham Bell’s grandson. A little more than a year later, UK’s Vodafone hosted its first commercial call on New Year’s Day. Israel’s Pelephone followed suit in 1986, followed by Australia in 1987.

7 October 2014: There are officially more mobile devices than people in the world
The world is home to 7.2 billion gadgets, and they’re multiplying five times faster than we are.
The number of active mobile devices and human beings crossed over somewhere around the 7.19 billion mark.

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Photo courtesy AP Photo / Eric Risberg

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Sudan, the world's last male northern white rhino, has died, putting his species on the brink of extinction
Sudan was born in 1972, in what is now South Sudan, when there were still about 1,000 northern white rhinos roaming wild. But their habitat was then, as it remains today, riven by human conflict. As The Washington Post's Kevin Sieff wrote in a profile of Sudan in 2015: “They were concentrated in countries plagued by war: Sudan, Congo, the Central African Republic. When fighting broke out, the rhinos were also victims, killed for their meat or their horns, or sometimes exchanged for money or arms.”

The world's last remaining male northern white rhino has died in Kenya at age 45, the conservationists who looked after him said Tuesday. There are now just two female members of the subspecies left.

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Photo courtesy Mercury News / AP

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#BreakingNews: Fed raises benchmark rate 0.25%. Fed funds rate range now 1.5% to 1.75%. Fed maintains three rate hikes for 2018.

More Than 11 Million Young People Have Fled Facebook Since 2011 According to iStrategy, Facebook has 4,292,080 fewer high-school aged users and 6,948,848 college-aged users than it did in 2011.

March 23, 2018 - Elon Musk joins delete-facebook boycott, deleted Tesla’s and SpaceX’s Facebook pages on Friday. “I didn’t realize there was one. Will do,” Musk tweeted back. He initially said, “What’s Facebook?” to a prior tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urging his followers to delete Facebook because, “It is time.”

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Image courtesy JOEL SAGET / AFP / Getty Images

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21 Nov, 2017
Uber Paid Hackers $100,000 to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People, to Keep Massive Cyberattack Quiet
Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.

Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information of about 7 million drivers was accessed as well, including some 600,000 U.S. driver’s license numbers. No Social Security numbers, credit card information, trip location details or other data were taken, Uber said.

21 Nov, 2017
Uber concealed massive hack that exposed data of 57m users and drivers
Firm paid hackers $100,000 to delete data and keep breach quiet
Uber concealed a massive global breach of the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers in October 2016, failing to notify the individuals and regulators, the company acknowledged on Tuesday.

Uber also confirmed it had paid the hackers responsible $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, which was first reported by Bloomberg.

21 Nov 2017  read more »

Image courtesy CAL FIRE @CAL_FIRE

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Last Pacific Coast Coal Terminal Nixed - Industry’s dream to export U.S. coal to Asia is dead
The state of Washington's Department of Ecology has rejected a necessary water-quality permit sought by Millennium Bulk Logistics for its proposed coal-export terminal at Longview, Washington. Barring a successful appeal of the decision, this means the end of the line not only for Millennium's dream of building the largest coal-export facility in North America, but also for the coal industry's larger scheme to ship vast amounts of U.S. coal to Asian markets.

"This is the end," says Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. "Almost exactly seven years ago, Peabody Coal proposed its first project to move huge amounts of coal around the globe. This is a testament to the tens of thousands of people who raised their voices and said, 'Hell no.'"

Shipping coal abroad was supposed to be a lifeline for the U.S. coal industry, given plummeting domestic demand as renewables became cost-competitive with fossil fuels. With vast coal reserves readily available in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, coal companies pinned their hopes on exporting it to Asia via seven proposed terminals on the West Coast. With Longview blocked, coal opponents are now seven for seven in stopping those terminals. (The others were to be at Cherry Point and Grays Harbor in Washington; Port Westward, Coos Bay, and Port of Morrow in Oregon; and Oakland, California.)

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