As was widely expected, the EU Council (made up of representatives of the EU member states) has officially rubber stamped the EU Copyright Directive that the EU Parliament passed a few weeks back. There had been some talk of various countries, such as Sweden, Germany and the UK possibly changing their vote. Sweden, in the end, actually did do so, but to stop the Directive, it was necessary for the UK or Germany to do…
WASHINGTON—In the wake of the WikiLeaks founder’s arrest by British authorities on behalf of the U.S. for charges stemming from the publication of classified military documents in 2010, members of the American media condemned Julian Assange Friday for the reckless exposure of how they could be spending their time. “We…Read more…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/media-condemns-julian-assange-for-reckless-exposure-of-1834010623
Adapting to climate change can seem uncomfortably close to copping out. After all, building higher seawalls to prevent a climate change-charged hurricane from inundating a city doesn’t do a thing to reduce carbon emissions. Moreover the local officials who push through climate resiliency projects might not even care whether humans cause climate change or not. When streets are flooding or basement sewer pipes are backing up, adaptation isn’t hard to sell. But a new proposal…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/could-floating-cities-be-the-answer-to-rising-sea-levels/
In this, The Year of Our Diplopoda, Two Thousand and Nineteen, I just noticed that the rules that govern mushroom growth in Millipede are literally Conway’s Life.The Archer looked out beyond the horizon. He knew only too well the revengeful signs of his father. “I beseech thee to turn back your rage from the netherworld and stop this onslaught.” As if in laughing response, the ground below him began to tremble. And the day ended…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/important-fungiculture-news/
Listen up bitches, it’s time to learn incorrect things about someone you’ve never heard of:I do know this, though: anyone reading who knows anything significant about either Victorian pseudoscience or the life of Charlotte Brontë is very annoyed right now, because all this is so obvious to them, has been covered in so many workshops and seminars, torn apart and examined and understood, and here I am laying it on the table like it’s news…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/buckle-up-twitter/
Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) Most of the time, when you talk to an Amazon Echo device, only Amazon’s voice-recognition software is listening. But sometimes, Bloomberg reports, a copy of the audio is sent to a human reviewer at one of several Amazon offices around the world. The human listens to the audio clip, transcribes it, and adds annotations to help Amazon’s algorithms get better. “We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1489431
By reducing the maximum penalty for a misdemeanor by one day, lawmakers reduced the harm of an unfair federal immigration law Utah is known for its red rock canyons, steep ski slopes, and a mega-majority Republican legislature. And now it can be recognized as one of just a handful of states to pass legislation that helps noncitizens avoid deportation if they are convicted of a misdemeanor. The bill, which was signed into law by Gov.…
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is about to make a bad privacy situation worse, and it’s urgent that Los Angeles residents contact their city council representatives today to demand they put the brakes on LADOT’s irresponsible data collection. The agency plans to scoop up trip data on every single e-bike and scooter ride taken within the city and, left unchecked, it will do so in the absence of responsible and transparent policies to…
A public vote on expropriating the big landlords offers Berliners a chance to push down soaring rents. New apartment buildings stand next to a construction site in the eastern part of the city on April 15, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. Sean Gallup / Getty On April 6, tens of thousands of Berliners will demonstrate against soaring rents. With 85 percent of the German capital’s residents renting their homes, protests against real estate speculation and rising…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/berlin-housing-referendum-tenant-organizing/
Uber and Lyft have tracked their passengers’ movements for many years. Now New York City tracks those passengers’ movements too. Please do not call what these companies do “sharing”. That is an absurd misnomer.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#7_April_2019_%28Tracking_passengers%27_movements%29
Chelsea Manning has been released from solitary imprisonment.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#7_April_2019_%28Chelsea_Manning%29
For as long as climate change has been a part of America’s national consciousness, it’s been talked about in dire terms, evoking images of some hellish, Mad Max-style dystopia. The title and much of the content of David Wallace-Wells’s recent book is a variation on the same theme, stirring up hundreds of pages of images worth of an “Uninhabitable Earth” to make the case that the conversation has not been dire enough. In describing the…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/07/green-new-deal-happiness/
With around a quarter of a billion monthly users, Reddit is one of the most important sites on the Internet. The site plays host to millions of live discussions on countless topics ranging from the mundane to obviously controversial. Recently we’ve reported on the troubles being faced by /r/piracy, Reddit’s most popular sub-Reddit focused on piracy discussion. In an article published mid-March 2019, we reported how the moderators of the forum were making best efforts…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/reddits-r-piracy-deleting-almost-10-years-of-history-to-avoid-ban-190407/
Depending on who you talk to, everything is either fine, or we’re living in an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia in which we forgot to drench everything in colored neon lighting. There’s little to be done about the digital surveillance panopticon that stalks our every move, but as far as the aesthetic goes, [abetusk] is bringing the goods. The latest is a laser jacket, to give you that 2087 look in 2019. The build starts with a…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2019/04/05/we-were-really-overdue-for-laser-jackets/
I’m convinced that my cats, Fade and Alucard, know their names. And, when I call them, they know I mean business. When I’m sleeping and Alucard wants me to top off his water dish, he bites my face. I scream his name and he gets more excited, because he knows it’s time for fresh water. When I’ve been on the computer too long, Fade strolls into the office and screeches at me until I log…
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Aurich Lawson) Referring to a drug as “mind altering” generally refers to its influence on immediate perceptions. But a lot of drugs that have been used for these effects have turned out to be mind altering in a more general sense: they can elicit longer-term changes in how the brain operates. Ketamine, for example, appears to provide rapid and sustained relief from depression. A study released this week suggests we…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1486473
Writing new software licenses is a seemingly irresistible vice in the free and open source world, and the decades since the first GPL have been filled with bitter disputes and splits over licensing, with new licenses proliferating for motives both noble and base. Benjamin “Mako” Hill’s seminal Libreplanet keynote described how “open source” had mutated to eliminate software freedom, allowing large companies (especially those with cloud-based products) to hoard all the benefits of openness without…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/04/open-ish.html
Sharon Ringel and Angela Woodall have published a comprehensive, in-depth look at the state of news archiving in the digital age, working under the auspices of the Tow Center at the Columbia Journalism Review; it’s an excellent, well-researched report and paints an alarming picture of the erosion of the institutional memories of news organizations. Ringel and Woodall find that news organizations are cavalier, even negligent, about archiving their news, and contrast this with the heyday…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/04/the-memory-hole-2.html
