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Bill and Chelsea Clinton are starting a podcast
The Clintons are getting into podcasting. Former president Bill and his daughter Chelsea, the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, have revealed they're starting a show called Why Am I Telling You This?. It'll include conversations with the Clintons, foundation staff and guests. They'll "share their unique experiences and stories to help explain the factors shaping our interconnected world -- and why we should be optimistic about its future," according to the podcast description.
US indicts 12 Russian intel officers for hacking Democrats in 2016
Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have received an indictment for 12 Russian intelligence for hacking Democrats leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The spies are accused of digitally infiltrating the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, along with stealing information of 500,000 US voters, and releasing emails with the express purpose of influencing the election.
State Department releases emails from Clinton aide Huma Abedin
Like it or not, the Hillary Clinton email saga isn't over yet. The US State Department has released about 2,800 emails and other documents from former Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop of her soon-to-be-former husband Anthony Weiner. The disclosure is a response to a 2015 Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has been hoping to use the presence of classified emails from personal accounts as evidence of lawbreaking by Abedin and Clinton. Most of the messages (covering January 2009 to February 2013) are unclassified, though a handful have been redacted at least in part.
AP investigation details how Russia hacked the DNC’s emails
Today, an extensive Associated Press investigation revealed just how Russian actors hacked into the Hillary Clinton campaign. A single successful phishing email out thirty attempts sent in March 2016 gave the hacking group access to plenty of the Democratic candidate's secrets, which had severe consequences for her campaign and the party as a whole. As the AP reveals, this wasn't just a few messages that happened to deceive a lone gullible employee: The hacking campaign attempted to compromise Clinton's inner circle and over 130 party employees and supporting staff.
'Pharma bro' Shkreli ordered to jail over internet harassment
Martin Shkreli is learning the hard way that his eagerness to harass others has consequences beyond social networking bans. Judge Kiyo Matsumoto has ordered the price-gouging (and most recently, securities fraud convict) "pharma bro" CEO to jail over the Facebook post he wrote offering $5,000 to whoever could get him a strand of Hillary Clinton's hair. Shkreli and his lawyer maintained that the post was satire protected by free speech, but Judge Matsumoto didn't buy it. This was "solicitation of assault," she said in her decision, adding that it wasn't funny to effectively issue a threat.
President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey
President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey, who recently led multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State and Russia's involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. Trump acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who argued Comey caused "substantial damage" to the FBI's reputation and credibility over the past year. Which brings us back to Clinton's emails. "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken," Rosenstein writes.
After Math: Did I do that?
It was a big week for huge accomplishments. SpaceX proved that you can, in fact, reuse rockets. Scientists trawled 3 million studies to solve an oceanic mystery and Twitter opened up all 140 characters for you to use. Numbers, because what else would we use to count?
Russian hackers targeted Clinton's email before the elections
US intelligence agents are pretty sure the Russian government authorized the DNC hacks and leaked Hillary Clinton's emails. While the country continues to deny its involvement, security firm SecureWorks found evidence that it has been targeting Clinton even before the elections began. Apparently, a group of hackers (known by the names APT28, Sofacy and Fancy Bear) working for Russian military intelligence sent 19,315 malicious links to 6,730 people from March 2015 to May 2016. Their targets included Clinton, her campaign chairman John Podesta, her staff, known critics of the Russian government, members of the US military and diplomats around the world.
VP Mike Pence used AOL email for state business while governor
The Indianapolis Star reports that in response to a public records request, the current governor of Indiana has released 30 pages of emails from the AOL (which is the parent company of Engadget) account of Mike Pence. The former governor and current Vice President is said to have used his personal email account for state business on a number of occasions, which the paper notes is not against Indiana law. It also notes that a number of emails were not released because the state considered them "confidential."
US intelligence releases report linking Russia to election hacks
As promised, the US intelligence community has released the public version of its report connecting the Russian government to election-oriented hacks... and it isn't pulling any punches. The findings directly accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering an "influence campaign" to destabilize the American vote, with hacks as a major component. The authoritarian leader wanted to both "undermine public faith" in the democratic process and "denigrate" Hillary Clinton to make sure that Russia's preferred candidate, Donald Trump, took office. Many of the unclassified details will seem familiar, but the US notes that its conclusions are drawn from both intelligence collected by the CIA, FBI and NSA as well as knowledge about both the Kremlin and the organizations it props up.
Google's 2016 was defined by 'Pokémon Go,' Olympics and Trump
Google's Year in Search summaries have a knack for capturing the cultural zeitgeist, and that's truer than ever in 2016. The company has published its top search trends for the year, and it clearly mirrors a tumultuous 12 months defined by the unexpected, the tragic and the rise of technology. Notably, the biggest global search trend was for Pokémon Go -- yes, the wildly popular mobile game did more to captivate the world's attention than political upheaval or sports triumphs. Apple's iPhone 7 was the runner up, followed by President-elect Donald Trump.
Twitter bots were rampant during the US election
If you believe one study, it's not just fake news that polluted the internet during the US election... it's bogus accounts, too. Researchers at the international Project on Computational Propaganda report that the use of politically minded Twitter bots reached an "all-time high" during the 2016 presidential campaign. Out of 18.9 million studied tweets using political hashtags, 17.9 percent of them came from "highly automated" accounts that post 50 or more tweets per day. That ratio only grew higher during the debates, peaking at over 27 percent during the final Clinton/Trump showdown -- and it conveniently tanked after the election was over.
Earthquake science explains why election polls were so wrong
Polls are not predictors. This is the message that American University history professor Allan Lichtman has been screaming at the world since 1981: It's not that the polling system itself is broken -- instead, polls behave exactly as they're designed. The problem is they aren't designed to predict the outcome of elections. "Polls are snapshots," Lichtman says. "They are not predictors. They are abused and misused as predictors because they're so easy. If you're a journalist, you don't even have to get out of bed in the morning to write a story about the polls and tell where the so-called 'horse race' stands." Lichtman has accurately predicted the winner of the nine US presidential elections since 1984, relying on his 13-point Keys to the White House model. He even got it right this year, when most pundits and polls were wildly, disastrously incorrect. But Lichtman didn't just get it right; he predicted in September that Donald Trump would win the presidency, more than a month before Election Day. That was also before a swathe of potentially game-changing October surprises rocked the news cycle, including a tape of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and FBI director James Comey reigniting conspiracies about Hillary Clinton's use of a private server as Secretary of State.
Google search for 'final election numbers' offers up fake news
Search engine technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years, but it's far from perfect. One week after the US presidential election, the top Google result for "final election numbers" is a WordPress blog called 70News that's packed with inaccurate information.
This election proved you're only as good as your data
As you've probably heard, while Hillary Clinton won the majority of the popular vote, Donald Trump was awarded more than 270 votes in the Electoral College. Many, particularly on social media, were incredulous, partly at the candidates but also at the pollsters -- in particular, famous polling analysts like Nate Silver from Disney's FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver rose to fame as the guy who successfully predicted the past few presidential elections. In 2008, he correctly predicted 49 of 50 states, and in 2012 he nailed all 50. With that, plus an impressive showing in the midterms, a legend was born. The 2016 presidential election was not so kind to FiveThirtyEight, with misses in the battlegrounds of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin turning the odds quickly in favor of Trump. But throughout nearly the entire general election campaign, Mrs. Clinton was an overwhelming favorite. So the question is: What went wrong? There are explanations all over the internet this week, but there's one that should not be overlooked: Polling ...
Clinton urges supporters to speak outside secret Facebook groups
A political candidate's online support isn't always in the open, and Hillary Clinton wouldn't mind changing that. In her presidential campaign concession speech, she indirectly thanked "secret, private" Facebook support groups like Pantsuit Nation, a 3 million-strong outfit she'd messaged (through her digital team leader) on election day. At the same time, she didn't want supporters keeping their message bottled up in these groups -- she wanted them "coming out from behind that" to make sure their "voices are heard." You can see the statement below at the 15:15 mark.
Engadget's Election Day liveblog
Engadget's editors will be watching the election results roll in all night. If you want to know what they're reading, where they're tracking the vote and what is capturing their attention on social media tune in here to the Engadget election liveblog. And, if you've got questions not answered by our guide to the candidates hit us up on Twitter and we'll do our best to answer them.
Expect more vote suppressing misinformation on Election Day
While the internet is filled with sources providing accurate and unbiased information aimed at getting informed voters to the polls on Tuesday, some corners of it are taking an alternate approach. A Buzzfeed report cites 4chan posters cooking up various memes and campaign-lookalike graphics intended to confuse and mislead potential Hillary Clinton voters. We've seen a preview of this with Twitter ads that promoted a "vote by text message" hoax and it appears there could be similar efforts in store for tomorrow.
FBI says new emails won't change the results of its Clinton probe
Those newly uncovered Hillary Clinton emails may have stirred up a lot of last-minute electoral drama, but they won't make much of a tangible impact. FBI director James Comey now reports that the messages (found on devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner) won't change the bureau's recommendation against pressing charges. The investigation, which went "around the clock," combed through all the unearthed emails to see if they shed any new light on Clinton's use of a private email server during her term as Secretary of State.
After Math: Politics as usual
It's been a crazy week for US politics, what with the end of the contentious 2016 election just around the corner. The New York Times announced that it would lower its paywall for the 72 hours surrounding election day while human dumpster fire Peter Thiel tried to explain away his support for Donald Trump. Security experts are also investigating why one of Trump's servers keeps pinging a Russian bank as the FBI investigates one of its own Twitter accounts for violations of the Hatch Act. And no, you still can't vote by phone, dummy. Numbers, because how else are you going to rig an election?
