Jan 312021
 

Enlarge The latest app to catch an illogical ban from the Google Play Store is Element, an open source, end-to-end encrypted messaging client for the federated Matrix chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban that Element said “is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a federated chat protocol, Element does not control the content on Matrix, so this is a bit like banning a Web…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1738486

 2021-01-31  Comments Off on Google Play bans open source Matrix client Element, citing “abusive content” [Updated] Ars Technica
Jan 312021
 

While it’s sign-up time for open-source organizations hoping to participate in this year’s Google Summer of Code, GSoC 2021 changes in the name of the pandemic are leading some organizations to debate whether it’s still being involved with this student coding effort…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GSoC-2021-Less-Interesting

 2021-01-31  Comments Off on Google’s Pandemic-Minded GSoC Will Be A Lot Less Interesting This Year Phoronix
Jan 312021
 

Enlarge The latest app to catch an illogical ban from the Google Play Store is Element, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging client for the federated Matrix chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban which Element said “is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a federated chat protocol, Element does not control the content on Matrix, so this is a bit like banning a web…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1738486

 2021-01-31  Comments Off on Google Play bans open-source Matrix client Element, citing “abusive content” Ars Technica
Jan 302021
 

Alas, it looks as though, for now, us humans are still alone in the pitch-black depths of space The notion of phosphine-producing microbes floating in Venus’s atmosphere is looking more and more shaky, as scientists believe the detection of the gas may have been skewed by the antenna of a telescope used to discover it.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/01/30/venus_alien_phosphine/

 2021-01-30  Comments Off on Remember life on Venus? One of the telescopes had ‘an undesirable side effect’ that could kill off the whole idea The Register
Jan 302021
 

“A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” was the title of a January 12 report by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. No matter how one is to interpret B’Tselem’s findings, the report is earth-shattering. The official Israeli response merely confirmed what B’Tselem has stated in no uncertain terms. Those of us who repeatedly claimed that Israel is not democratic, governed by an apartheid regime and systematically…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/29/btselems-historic-declaration-israels-open-war-on-its-own-civil-society/

 2021-01-30  Comments Off on B’Tselem’s Historic Declaration: Israel’s Open War on Its Own Civil Society CounterPunch.org
Jan 302021
 

Bay State College’s Boston Campus has donated its entire undergraduate library to the Internet Archive so that the digital library can preserve and scan the books, while allowing Bay State to gain much needed open space for student collaboration. By donating and scanning its 11,000-volume collection centered on fashion, criminal justice, allied health, and business books, Bay State’s Boston campus decided to “flip entirely to digital.”When it came to what to do with the books,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2021/01/27/bay-state-college-flips-to-digital-by-donating-entire-college-library-to-the-internet-archive/

 2021-01-30  Comments Off on Bay State College ‘Flips to Digital’ by Donating Entire College Library to the Internet Archive Internet Archive Blogs
Jan 292021
 

Promising protocol much easier to fingerprint than HTTPS Google’s QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) protocol, announced in 2013 as a way to make the web faster, waited seven years before being implemented in the ad giant’s Chrome browser. But it still arrived before privacy could get there.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/01/30/quic_fingerprinting_flaw/

 2021-01-29  Comments Off on Google QUIC-ly left privacy behind in its quest for a speedier internet, boffins find The Register
Jan 292021
 

The seven-day average COVID death toll hit an all time high yesterday, with over 3,400 Americans expected to die on any given day. Educator cases are on the rise. Studies have shown that children are as likely to contract and pass the coronavirus on as adults, making schools potential super spreading hotspots. As a result, European nations like the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands are shuttering schools, despite, in many cases, having lower infection…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/corporate-media-bash-teachers-unions-for-resisting-school-reopenings/

 2021-01-29  Comments Off on Corporate Media Bash Teachers Unions For Resisting School Reopenings PopularResistance.Org
Jan 292021
 

According to this news story, the Virginia Elections Department has settled a lawsuit, and as a result, only 2,000 signatures will be required for statewide offices this year. Normally the requirement is 10,000. Also the distribution requirement is easier in 2021 than it is normally. Only fifty signatures are needed from each U.S. House district, as opposed to the normal 400 from each district. The lawsuit is Goldman v Virginia Dept. of Elections, Richmond city…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2021/01/27/virginia-statewide-petitions-for-2021-lowered-from-10000-to-2000/

 2021-01-29  Comments Off on Virginia Statewide Petitions for 2021 Lowered from 10,000 to 2,000 Ballot Access News
Jan 292021
 

I understand the disgust, the revulsion people have to Donald Trump. We know who Donald Trump is. He’s a sociopath, he’s a white supremacist. He’s despicable, but Donald Trump is, in fact, America. Donald Trump represents the kind of attitude and the kinds of values that made the US settler state what it is today. So, this notion on the part of the liberals that he is some kind of aberration is completely ridiculous. In…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/ajamu-baraka-we-are-entering-a-new-totalitarian-era/

 2021-01-29  Comments Off on Ajamu Baraka: We Are Entering A New Totalitarian Era PopularResistance.Org
Jan 282021
 

A counterintuitive argument contends that from a housing justice perspective, the Biden administration’s attack on exclusionary zoning is imprudent. The post Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Biden’s Ill-Advised Plan to Eliminate Exclusionary Zoning appeared first on Shelterforce.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://shelterforce.org/2021/01/28/say-it-aint-so-joe-bidens-ill-advised-plan-to-eliminate-exclusionary-zoning/

 2021-01-28  Comments Off on Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Biden’s Ill-Advised Plan to Eliminate Exclusionary Zoning Shelterforce
Jan 282021
 

How does someone end up on the federal government’s “no-fly” list? You’d think the shorter, less-convoluted question would be how one avoids ending up on this list. Unfortunately, the answer to either question is a convoluted mess — one complicated unnecessarily by the number of federal agencies that think they should have a say in who lives and who flies. Papers Please has attempted to explain the no-fly list and its parameters. And it has…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210121/18331546100/papers-please-has-something-to-tell-you-about-no-fly-list-going-to-make-you-sad.shtml

 2021-01-28  Comments Off on Papers Please Has Something To Tell You About The ‘No Fly’ List And It’s Going To Make You Sad Techdirt.
Jan 282021
 

It’s easy for the Left to cheer when racists, fascists, and reactionaries are de-platformed by tech companies. But the censors aren’t our friends. We should champion free speech online — and argue that the best way to protect it is with a socialist program that brings privatized social media platforms into public control. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies via video conference duringa hearing examining the dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple in Washington, DC,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/censorship-big-tech-facebook-twitter/

 2021-01-28  Comments Off on The Left Should Oppose Censorship by Big Tech Companies Jacobin
Jan 282021
 

Not long after his inauguration, where he assured Americans that they “can overcome this deadly virus,” Joe Biden announced that as many as hundreds of thousands of coronavirus deaths are unavoidable in the coming months. But there’s only one reason for that — Biden preemptively ruled out pursuing a national stay-at-home order two months ago. US President Joe Biden in the State Dining Room of the White House, 2021. (Doug Mills-Pool / Getty Images) Toward…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/coronavirus-pandemic-biden-policy-failure/

 2021-01-28  Comments Off on Joe Biden Is Refusing the Alternatives to Mass Deaths Across America Jacobin
Jan 282021
 

Four European apps which secure user data via end-to-end encryption, ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota, have issued a joint-statement warning over recent moves by EU institutions that they say are setting lawmakers on a dangerous path to backdooring encryption. End-to-end encryption refers to a form of encryption where the service provider does not hold keys to decrypt the data, thereby enhancing user privacy — as there’s no third party in the loop with the technical…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/27/protonmail-threema-tresorit-and-tutanota-warn-eu-lawmakers-against-anti-encryption-push/

 2021-01-28  Comments Off on ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota warn EU lawmakers over ‘anti-encryption’ push TechCrunch
Jan 252021
 

Salim Abdool Karim was at a cricket match on December 26, Boxing Day, when he made the mistake of looking at his email. He had received a new report and the news wasn’t good. A heavily mutated coronavirus spotted in South Africa appeared to allow the virus to bind more tightly, and more easily, to human cells. Karim, an epidemiologist and lead covid-19 adviser to the South African government, knew what the report meant. It…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/23/1016684/whether-jnj-vaccine-works-against-scary-south-african-coronavirus-variant/

 2021-01-25  Comments Off on We could know soon whether vaccines work against a scary new coronavirus variant New on MIT Technology Review
Jan 252021
 

While the Democrats and media have hailed retired General Lloyd Austin as the historic first African-American secretary of defense, more significantly he is the second recently retired general tapped to head the Pentagon in four years.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/23/aust-j23.html

 2021-01-25  Comments Off on For second time in four years, Senate confirms ex-general as US defense secretary World Socialist Web Site (en)