Journalist Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, must pay $890K in restitution Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin The intelligence and security journalist has already served more than two years in prison for charges related to his proximity to sources within the hacktivist entity known as Anonymous. Read the rest Barrett Brown sentenced to 5 Years … Read more
Moot Retires From 4chan Slashdot vivaoporto writes Moot bids his final farewell as the administrator of the (in)famous imageboard. The full resignation letter can be read on the site blog (it’s cool, it’s SFW) but for those who are not brave enough to dwell in the “underbelly of the internet” here are some excerpts: “I founded … Read more
Ethnographers as Writers: Theory and Data – Part II Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Kristen Ghodsee So I’m staring at some fieldnotes and trying to sort out the best way to blend my theoretical analysis with my ethnographic data. Where to start? How to find the right balance? Once … Read more
Silk Road Trial Becomes Case Study for Law Enforcement Online All Facebook by Kimberlee Morrison The trial of Ross Ulbricht, alleged admin of The Silk Road (a Tor Network marketplace for the sale and trade of illegal goods), is expected to begin in New York today. The public nature of the trial could result in much discussion … Read more
Is Jetpack Misleading Users to Promote WordPress.com? WPBeginner by Editorial Staff Are you using Jetpack’s publicize feature on your site?Recently while browsing through Facebook, we found several folks sharing links where WordPress replaced the site domain. Along with that, the status also read like this: Michelle Schulp published an article in WordPress. Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi Flogged … Read more
Algorithmic cruelty Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow With its special end-of-year message, Facebook wants to show you, over and over, what your year “looked like”; in Eric Meyer’s case, the photo was of his daughter, who died this year: “For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in … Read more
President Obama writes his first line of Javascript Mashable! by Stan Schroeder The U.S. now has a “coder-in-chief:” President Barack Obama has written his first line of code Peter Sunde: The Pirate Bay Should Stay Down TorrentFreak A few weeks ago Peter Sunde was released from prison where he’d been serving a sentence for his involvement in … Read more
Finance media’s hottest club is Ello Nieman Journalism Lab by Caroline O’Donovan By now, you’ve probably heard of Ello, the anti-Facebook social networking site founded by a handful of graphic designers. Though initially meant to be a closed experiment in network building, Ello grew popular due to its anti-advertising, anti-data mining stance. As Kyle Chayka … Read more
White cop, black boy hug at Portland rally for Ferguson: story behind striking photo Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin This striking photo by Portland-based photographer Johnny Nguyen is one of the most memorable to emerge from protests around the country. Read the rest Ferguson protests at retail stores bring new meaning to Black Friday In Ferguson, Missouri, protests … Read more
Europe wants Google’s ‘right to be forgotten’ to be applied on global search results The Next Web by Abhimanyu Ghoshal The European Union wants Google to wipe search results mentioning people who invoke their ‘right to be forgotten’ across all its sites, and not just its European versions, reports Reuters Majority of global population agrees Internet access … Read more
Firefox to switch default search from Google to Yahoo Mashable! by Karissa Bell Yahoo will soon be the default search engine on Firefox browsers. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: why only an anthropologist can tell the story of Anonymous Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow BitTorrent Users are Avid, Eclectic Content Buyers, Survey Finds TorrentFreak Each month 150-170 million Internet … Read more
Detekt: A New Malware Detection Tool That Can Expose Illegitimate State Surveillance EFF.org Updates by Eva Galperin Recent years have seen a boom in the adoption of surveillance technology by governments around the world, including spyware that provides its purchasers the unchecked ability to target remote Internet users’ computers, to read their personal emails, listen in … Read more
The FBI Director’s Evidence Against Encryption Is Pathetic The Intercept by Dan Froomkin FBI Director James Comey gave a speech Thursday about how cell-phone encryption could lead law enforcement to a “very dark place” where it “misses out” on crucial evidence to nail criminals. To make his case, he cited four real-life examples — examples that … Read more
Ello Cofounder Doesn’t Think Facebook Is a Social Network Mashable! by Karissa Bell Ello, the independent, invitation-only and ad-free social network that went viral almost overnight, is often compared to Facebook. Indeed, the still-nascent social network has already gained a reputation as the “anti-Facebook.” Everything you need to know about Ello, the latest trendy social network … Read more
Snowden on winning the alternative Nobel prize media/anthropology by John Postill via The Guardian Edward Snowden issues a recorded statement after being awarded Sweden’s Right Livelihood Honorary Award, dubbed the ‘alternative Nobel Prize’. The National Security Agency whistleblower says he accepts the award on behalf of those who risked their lives to help ‘resist unlawful … Read more