Why the Latest FISA Release By Google Et Al. Means Squat 131
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google, Yahoo, and other tech firms are offering some updated statistics about government requests for data. There's just one problem: under revised guidelines issued by the federal government, those companies can still only report a range, rather than a definitive number, for those requests. If that wasn't fuzzy enough, the range can only be reported after a six-month lag. Between January and June 2013, Google received between 0-999 FISA
'non-content' requests on 0-999 user accounts; it also fielded between 0-999 'content' requests for between 9000 and 9999 user accounts.Yahoo actually received a larger number of FISA queries than Google: for the first six months of 2013, the federal government made between 0-999 requests on between 30,000 and 30,999 user accounts hosted by the company. ... These companies have little choice but to advocate this new information release as a huge step forward for transparency. Unfortunately, restricting government data requests to a broad range isn't very helpful: for example, a range (rather than a single numerical value) makes it difficult to determine trends, such as whether government requests are gradually increasing over the long term."
is this a big deal? (Score:1, Informative)
I didn't like the redesign at first a couple months ago, but it was half baked. a quick glance at it now and it seems fine. you look at stories, read comments, then make comments. this still seems to be the case. the biggest problem I see is a scandalous mix of serif and sans serif fonts.
Re:is this a big deal? (Score:5, Informative)
Well threading is broken, try following a large thread. you can never figure out where it ends.
Post limits are gone..( browse at zero unless I am mod. to see AC's but not just trolls)
It uses about 10% of screen real estate. I mean come one there is so much white space you can use your monitor as a light source.
Poll's are on every page, because well everyone wants to read the current poll all the time right? and on really long threads that poll section goes all the way to the bottom.
The only thing I really like. is the new moderate button. that works and looks good.