Unsecured Internet of Things gadgets get hacked within 40 minutes of being connected to the net Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow The Atlantic’s Andrew McGill set up a virtual server on Amazon’s cloud that presented to the internet as a crappy, insecure Internet of Things toaster; 41 minutes later, a hacked IoT device connected to it … Read more
Using Sound and Artificial Intelligence to Detect Human Rights Violations iRevolution by Patrick Meier Video continues to be a powerful way to capture human rights abuses around the world. Videos posted to social media can be used to hold perpetrators of gross violations accountable. But video footage poses a “Big Data” challenge to human rights organizations. Two … Read more
Jacob Appelbaum, Tor developer and Wikileaks staffer, resigns amid sex abuse claims Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Appelbaum, whose work has put him in the crosshairs of his own government and foreign states, resigned from the Tor project on Friday, accompanied by a short note from Tor executive director Shari Steele. Tor Developer Jacob Appelbaum Resigns Amid … Read more
A Brief History of Debian – The Debian Manifesto debian.org [ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ A ] [ next ] Written by Ian A. Murdock, Revised 01/06/94 Debian Linux is a brand-new kind of Linux distribution. Rather than being developed by … Read more
Negotiating the WSIS+10 and the Future of the Internet Dipnote – U.S. Department of State Official Blog by Daniel Sepulveda After two and a half years of technical analysis and discussions, six months of deliberations among all stakeholders, and intense negotiations at the United Nations, at three o’clock in the morning on December 12, 2015, the … Read more
A Victory for Privacy and Transparency: HRW v. DEA EFF.org Updates by Mark Rumold In a victory for millions of people in the U.S. who have placed telephone calls to locations overseas, EFF and Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of collecting those records in bulk has stopped and that the … Read more
New Study Shows Armchair Activists Actually Make a Difference – Social media “slacktivism” plays an important role in social movements. Upvoted by Gabrielle Canon In the wake of the devastating November terrorist attack that left 130 dead in Paris, Facebook photos around the world began appearing in the faded colors of the French flag: With just one click, … 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
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
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
EU top court: NSA spying means US servers are not a fit home for Europeans’ data Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Historically, US companies have been able to get around the (relatively stringent) European data-protection rules thanks to a “Safe Harbor” agreement between the US and the EU — but Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, … Read more
IFLA Publishes a Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment At its 14 August 2015 meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, the IFLA Governing Board endorsed an IFLA Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment. The FAIFE Committee oversaw preparation of the Statement and benefitted from consultation with IFLA units and various Internet civil liberties advocacy … Read more
Pirate Music Site Op Pleads Guilty, Faces Five Years in Prison TorrentFreak Over the past five years, Operation in Our Sites, the U.S. initiative tackling copyright-infringing websites, has produced several arrests and the seizure of thousands of domains. Car information security is a complete wreck — here’s why Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Sean Gallagher’s long, … Read more
Most popular programming languages shift at Github Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza Driven by the web and Android, Javascript and Java reign. Ruby and C lose ground. PHP lumbers on, impervious. Somewhere in the distance, a Perl script barks mournfully. Wargames-style map shows ongoing internet attacks Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza The Norse Map is a Wargames-style … Read more