Adblock Plus now selling ads Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza Adblock Plus is to begin reselling the ads it blocks, replacing websites’ original ads with ones under its control—and which it takes a fat cut of the revenue from. Adblock Plus Wants to Make Money by Serving You More Ads MIT Technology Review A service meant to … Read more
Apple told to pay €13bn in back taxes to Ireland Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza Ireland offered Apple huge tax breaks, but didn’t give other companies the same deal. The European Commission concluded this was illegal and the companymust pay up the €13bn it would otherwise have owed in taxes. Deputy PM invites Apple to move int’l … Read more
Update: the Best 37 Torrent Sites Pirate Bay is The King of Torrents Once Again TorrentFreak Hollywood hoped that it would never happen, but this week The Pirate Bay quietly turned thirteen years old. Torrentz Remains Down, But The Clone Wars Are On TorrentFreak by Ernesto Mere hours after Torrentz.eu announced its farewell last week, various clones and … Read more
Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius Wired Top Stories by Andy Greenberg and Gwern Branwen WIRED has determined that Bitcoin’s creator is probably Dr. Craig Steven Wright. Twitter warns of state-sponsored attacks for first time AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (IN DEPTH) Some users receive notice that state-sponsored hackers may have tried to obtain sensitive … Read more
French Ministry of Interior wants to ban open wifi, Tor Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow A leaked memo from the Ministry sets out new bills it would like to see introduced into the French Parliament as early as next month, setting out an ambitious plan to block privacy tools, something only technically possible by recreating China’s … Read more
Wikipedia is using artificial intelligence to get more actual humans writing articles The Next Web by Napier Lopez Better artificial intelligence is often associated with the detriment of a human workforce, but judging by some new practices by the team at Wikipedia HQ, it doesn’t have to be that way. Racist algorithms: how Big Data makes bias seem objective Boing … Read more
Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects The Intercept by Dan Froomkin In the wake of the Paris attack, intelligence officials and sympathizers upset by the Edward Snowden leaks and the spread of encrypted communications havetried to blame Snowden for the terrorists’ ability to keep their plans secret from law enforcement. Yet news emerging from … Read more
EU official: all identified Paris attackers were from the EU Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Despite the rumors that tricked more than half the state governors in the USA into enacting racist anti-Syrian policies, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers came from outside the EU. (more…) VIDEO: Bataclan band: People died saving friends BBC News … Read more
Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So … Read more
How Instagram Solved Its Justin Bieber Problem Wired Top Stories by Cade Metz Back in the day, Bieber pics would receive so many “Likes” that they’d crash Instagram. Here’s how they fixed it. Inside the Aaron Swartz Day hackathon Newsweek Columnists: Christopher Dickey by Seung Lee Golden light flooded the room through the tall, stained windows all … Read more
Narcodata, an In-Depth Data Journalism Project That Contextualizes the Drug War in Mexico Global Voices Online Screenshot from Narcodata’s introduction video. The Economist’s anti-ad-blocking tool was hacked and infected readers’ computers Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Pagefair is an ad-blocking circumvention tool that publishers can use to track readers who’ve taken technological countermeasures to protect their privacy. … Read more
How big data and The Sims are helping us to build the cities of the future The Next Web by The Conversation By 2050, the United Nations predicts that around 66 percent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. It is expected that the greatest expansion will take place in developing regions such … Read more
Google’s audacious project that scanned millions of books has been declared legal The Next Web by Owen Williams Google Books, a project that involved scanning tens of millions of books to make them available online, was met with resistance from authors around the world. A group of authors sued Google in 2008 claiming that the project violated copyright and … Read more
Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the Achievements of Women in Technology EFF.org Updates by Annelyse Gelman Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Please join us in commemorating the life of Ada Lovelace by celebrating the achievements – past and present – of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Snowden for drones: The Intercept’s expose on US drone attacks, … Read more
Nobel Prize in literature goes to journalist from Belarus EurActiv.com Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian journalist and dissident writer, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday (8 October) “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”, the Swedish Academy announced. How the Crowd and Automation Are Shaping Journalism Social Media Today by … Read more