http://sandiegofreepress.org/2016/10/san-diego-2016-general-election-progressive-voter-guide/

San Diego 2016 Progressive Voter Guide

OCTOBER 13, 2016 BY STAFF 16 COMMENTS

The editors of the San Diego Free Press and OB Rag are pleased to present our 2016 General Election Progressive Voter Guide.

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The ballot this year is long and complicated. Not everything is as it seems. Practitioners of deception have deliberately crafted personas and propositions in a manner to trick people into voting against their best interests. There are an equal number of voting decisions to be made on less-than-perfect candidates and causes.

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We endorsed (or didn’t) contests where editors and contributors had some working knowledge of the issues and the personalities involved. There were some races where we just opted to show the candidates with codes indicating who else had endorsed them.

Thus, out of the 638 candidates appearing on various ballots throughout San Diego County and City, we only weighed in on 130+ of them, plus the thirty odd propositions and measures.

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(Psst! There’s a little spooky something all the way at the end of this story.)

Here’s a link to a pdf version with working links more suitable for viewing on some mobile devices.
http://sandiegofreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/V3PDFProgressiveGuide.pdf

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/scientists-are-bewildered-by-zikas-path-across-latin-america/2016/10/25/5e3a992c-9614-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html

Scientists are bewildered by Zika’s path across Latin America
By Dom Phillips and Nick Miroff
October 25

RIO DE JANEIRO — Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers.

But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil.

Instead, Zika has left a puzzling and distinctly uneven pattern of damage across the Americas. According to the latest U.N. figures, of the 2,175 babies born in the past year with undersize heads or other congenital neurological damage linked to Zika, more than 75 percent have been clustered in a single region: northeastern Brazil.

The pattern is so confounding that health officials and scientists have turned their attention back to northeastern ­Brazil to understand why Zika’s toll has been so much heavier there. They suspect that other, underlying causes may be to blame, such as the presence of another ­mosquito-borne virus like chikungunya or dengue. Or that environmental, genetic or immunological factors combined with Zika to put mothers in the area at greater risk.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016166020

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-intelligence-nsa-commentary-idINKCN10X01P

Commentary: Evidence points to another Snowden at the NSA
Wed Aug 24, 2016 3:23am EDT
By James Bamford

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Now, in the latest twist, hacking tools themselves, likely stolen from the National Security Agency, are on the digital auction block. Once again, the usual suspects start with Russia – though there seems little evidence backing up the accusation.

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A more logical explanation could also be insider theft. If that’s the case, it’s one more reason to question the usefulness of an agency that secretly collects private information on millions of Americans but can’t keep its most valuable data from being stolen, or as it appears in this case, being used against us.

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Rather than the NSA hacking tools being snatched as a result of a sophisticated cyber operation by Russia or some other nation, it seems more likely that an employee stole them.

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Snowden’s leaks served a public good. He alerted Americans to illegal eavesdropping on their telephone records and other privacy violations, and Congress changed the law as a result. The DNC leaks exposed corrupt policies within the Democratic Party.

But we now have entered a period many have warned about, when NSA’s cyber weapons could be stolen like loose nukes and used against us. It opens the door to criminal hackers, cyber anarchists and hostile foreign governments that can use the tools to gain access to thousands of computers in order to steal data, plant malware and cause chaos.

It’s one more reason why NSA may prove to be one of Washington’s greatest liabilities rather than assets.

(James Bamford is the author of “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” He is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine.)

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3129257/windows-pcs/taking-a-break-from-windows-update.html

Taking a break from Windows Update
By Michael Horowitz
Computerworld | Oct 9, 2016 9:46 PM PT

Now would be a great time for windows 7 and 8.1 users to run Windows Update. By "now" I mean before Microsoft releases the October 2016 bug fixes on the 11th.

Run it, and run it again, to make sure your computer has all the currently available fixes. Or, maybe, all but the telemetry/spying patch that Microsoft released on October 4th.

I say this because Microsoft is rolling out a new procedure for Windows Update, one that mimics the scheme used by Windows 10, and I don't trust them. Microsoft has shown themselves to be incompetent, both at deciding what to do (think Windows 10 rollout) and in implementing things (think Windows Update taking hours to run on Windows 7).

After installing the currently available bug fixes, I suggest turning off Windows Update.

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WINDOWS 10 BUG FIXES ARE BUGGY

The Defensive Computing approach is to be wary of any change in procedures. But this change especially scares me because the Windows 10 patch delivery system is already buggy.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/opinion/britains-nuclear-cover-up.html

Britain’s Nuclear Cover-Up
By PETER WYNN KIRBY
OCT. 10, 2016

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Hinkley ... only makes sense if one considers its connection to Britain’s military projects ...

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A painstaking study of obscure British military policy documents, released last month by the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, demonstrates that the government and some of its partners in the defense industry, like Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, think a robust civilian nuclear industry is essential to revamping Britain’s nuclear submarine program.

For proponents of Trident, civilian nuclear projects are a way of “masking” the high costs of developing a new fleet of nuclear submarines, according to the report. Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required.

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Hiding the true costs of a project like Trident by promoting a questionable and ruinous project like Hinkley Point C distorts the economics of both the defense and the civilian energy sectors. It also skews energy policy itself.

If Britain’s energy policy were solely about energy, rather than also about defense, the nuclear sector would be forced to stand on its own two feet. And the government would have to acknowledge the growing benefits of renewable energy and make hard-nosed comparisons about cost, implementation, environmental benefits and safety.

Britain’s defense policy should not be allowed to undermine the country’s energy policy: That, too, is about national security.
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Peter Wynn Kirby is a nuclear and environmental specialist at the University of Oxford.