The Treasury Department will put a woman on the $10 — they should have picked the $20 →

Bizarre decision. Quoted in full:

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew confirmed late Wednesday that the Bureau of Printing and Engraving is preparing a plan to put a woman on the $10 bill. The woman, who has not yet been selected (here are some good ideas), will apparently appear alongside Alexander Hamilton on the bill.
Rather than resort to this odd arrangement, a better idea would be to take Andrew Jackson off the $20, as Jillian Keenan has argued. Many presidents oversaw mistreatment of American Indians, but Jackson's policies in this regard were especially egregious. He was also a proponent of slavery, and his crank monetary policies — including an opposition to paper money — make him almost uniquely unsuited for a role on currency.
Hamilton had his flaws and the case for putting a woman on American currency is strong, but Jackson is far and away the best candidate for removal.

Pope Francis's Vision of a Moral Ecology Will Challenge Both Republicans and Democrats →

...As election season commences, questions about Pope Francis will likely surface repeatedly in candidate question-and-answer sessions, in no small part because the Republican primary field is stocked with Catholics: George Pataki, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio (who also doubts Francis's capacity to contribute to political matters), along with Bush and Santorum.
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Unity is the organizing principle of Laudato. Francis opens his encyclical with a brief consideration of former popes, saints, and scholars who have established Catholicism’s interest in creation care, thereby establishing continuity between his concerns and those of the historical Church. He maintains this dialogue with his predecessors in the pursuing chapters. In doing so, Francis demonstrates his commitment to the Church’s tradition, and gracefully disposes of any grumbling about his break from prior teaching. Laudato treats novel issues—like genetically modified crops, biological warfare agents, and global development problems—because they are new, but the logic of his treatment is firmly rooted in the Church’s conventional theology.
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As we look toward our next national election, it is evident that neither major political party in America is a natural home for the kind of moral ecology Francis envisions. This is not a new observation, but perhaps Francis’s success at commanding the attention of the media combined with his interest in reaching out to young people will press the issue to the forefront.

China and Russia Almost Definitely Have the Snowden Docs →

Last weekend, the Sunday Times published a front-page story (full text here), citing anonymous British sources claiming that both China and Russia have copies of the Snowden documents. It’s a terrible article, filled with factual inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims about both Snowden’s actions and the damage caused by his disclosure, and others have thoroughly refuted the story. I want to focus on the actual question: Do countries like China and Russia have copies of the Snowden documents?
I believe the answer is certainly yes, but that it’s almost certainly not Snowden’s fault.
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But while cryptography is strong, computer security is weak. The vulnerability is not Snowden; it’s everyone who has access to the files.
First, the journalists working with the documents. I’ve handled some of the Snowden documents myself, and even though I’m a paranoid cryptographer, I know how difficult it is to maintain perfect security. It’s been open season on the computers of the journalists Snowden shared documents with since this story broke in July 2013. And while they have been taking extraordinary pains to secure those computers, it’s almost certainly not enough to keep out the world’s intelligence services.
There is a lot of evidence for this belief. We know from other top-secret NSA documents that as far back as 2008, the agency’s Tailored Access Operations group has extraordinary capabilities to hack into and “exfiltrate” data from specific computers, even if those computers are highly secured and not connected to the Internet.
These NSA capabilities are not unique, and it’s reasonable to assume both that other countries had similar capabilities in 2008 and that everyone has improved their attack techniques in the seven years since then. Last week, we learned that Israel had successfully hacked a wide variety of networks, including that of a major computer antivirus company. We also learned that China successfully hacked US government personnel databases. And earlier this year, Russia successfully hacked the White House’s network. These sorts of stories are now routine.
I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they’ve penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside.

Uber Driver in California Will Be Considered Employee, Not Contractor →

An Uber driver is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling from the California labor commission. This is horrible news for Uber but good news for anyone concerned that the ruthless ride-hailing service is building a corporate empire by dicking over its drivers.
Uber insists that it’s a merely a tech company peddling a mobile platform that happens to connect drivers with riders, not a driving service. That’s a convenient way to think about the service, since it means Uber can shrug off the responsibility of treating is growing supply of drivers like they work for the company.
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Even though Uber tries to paint itself as a matchmaking platform for riders and drivers, it sets strict controls on how drivers conduct their business. Uber sets fare rates and prohibits drivers from collecting tips, and it has rules about what kind of cars they can drive. It’ll also boot drivers who receive low ratings on the app. As the ruling pointed out, that heavy level of control fits the profile of an employer.

Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church’s Place in Black History Almost Certainly Made It a Target →

On Wednesday night, a gunman—identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof of Columbia, South Carolina—murdered nine people at a weekly prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Among the dead is 41-year-old Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor at the church and a four-term Democratic state senator. The shooter is a young white man, and police are calling the murders—the worst mass shooting in South Carolina’s history—a hate crime. It’s appropriate...

Senate passes torture ban despite Republican opposition →

More than 20 Republican senators rejected a ban on the use of cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners on Tuesday, voting against an ultimately successful measure to permanently prevent a repeat of the CIA’s once secret and now widely-discredited torture program.
The bipartisan amendment reaffirms President Barack Obama’s prohibition of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, which were developed by the CIA under the administration of his predecessor, George W Bush.
The measure passed in the Senate, 78-21.

Research on The Trade-off Between Free Services and Personal Data →

Our findings, instead, support a new explanation: a majority of Americans are resigned to giving up their data­ -- and that is why many appear to be engaging in tradeoffs. Resignation occurs when a person believes an undesirable outcome is inevitable and feels powerless to stop it. Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them. Our study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened.
By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable. Moreover, the futility we found, combined with a broad public fear about what companies can do with the data, portends serious difficulties not just for individuals but also -- over time -- for the institution of consumer commerce.

The Shift from Public to Private Markets in Tech Funding →

Very interesting notes in relation to the "tech bubble" talk:

Yesterday, the folks at Andreessen-Horowitz released a slide deck on their reasoning why “this time it is different” on tech funding and bubbles. It is worth a little of your time but here are the take aways:
  • The amount of money going into tech start-ups is still much less than it was in the dot.com bubbleof 2000. Indeed, as a share of GDP funding has been flat since that time. It is also flat as a function of people online.

However:

  • The tech funding is heavily geographically concentrated. We know that this is the case with entrepreneurial activity (see here) and I think it is becoming more so.
  • That means that while an economy-wide view of funding shows flatness in the aggregates, I wonder if we did just a Silicon Valley analysis, it would look like this. My guess is that funding from Silicon Valley to Silicon Valley has increased.
  • Given this, I think the heart of the move to earlier stage funding is doing hand in hand with the increase in wealth concentration...