This summer, proposed changes to Baltimore’s fire code sparked vitriolic public discord.Some lawmakers and bike advocates there were pushing to revise the code to legalize the use of narrower street lanes for emergency vehicles, in order to create more room for protected bicycling. They argued that there was plenty of space to share the road; firefighters disagreed, saying that bike lanes would block emergency access. For a fight that was ultimately over what counts as…
Google CEO Sundar Pichai came under fire from lawmakers on Tuesday over the company’s secretive plan to launch a censored search engine in China. During a hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee, Pichai faced sustained questions over the China plan, known as Dragonfly, which would blacklist broad categories of information about democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. The hearing began with an opening statement from Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who said launching a censored…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2018/12/11/google-congressional-hearing/
Who cares? Let’s whip out the BFG and blow up the boss On December 10, 1993, after a marathon 30-hour coding session, the developers at id Software uploaded the first finished copy of Doom for download, the game that was to redefine first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Hours later IT admins wanted id’s guts for garters.…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/doom_turns_25/
Lawmakers in the European Union (EU) often lament the lack of citizen engagement with the complex policy questions that they wrestle with in Strasbourg and Brussels, so we assume that they will be delighted to learn that more than 4,000,000 of their constituents have signed a petition opposing Article 13 of the new Copyright in the Single Market Directive. They oppose it for two main reasons: because it will inevitably lead to the creation of…
Romero Games Ltd. John Romero—co-creator of the classic and influential 1990s first-person shooter Doom—has announced that he will release 18 new levels for the game for its 25th anniversary next year. Scheduled for a mid-February 2019 release, the free megawad of levels will be called “Sigil.” Romero’s website describes it as “the spiritual successor” to the fourth episode of Doom, picking up “where the original left off.” It will include nine single-player levels and nine multi-player Deathmatch…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1425959
There’s this approach to computing history where we focus on work that looks shallowly similar to current norms, claim that work was ‘prophetic’ or ‘ahead of its time’, & mostly ignore differences & intent except as quirks. Because of the recent 50th anniversary of the Mother of All Demos, we’re getting a fresh batch of them. Fuck that.These folks weren’t trying to predict our current future. They were trying to create a future worth living in,…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://medium.com/@enkiv2/techs-masturbatory-historiography-6d7ae12abf1f?source=rss-43a4cf6aa464——2
Who cares about that, let’s whip out the BFG and blow up some of our coworkers On December 10, 1993, after a marathon 30-hour coding session, the developers at id Software uploaded the first finished copy of Doom for download, the game that was to redefine first-person shooter (FPS) gaming. Hours later IT admins wanted their guts for garters.…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/doom_turns_25/
Congress is trying to sneak an unconstitutional ban on political expression into the spending bill in order to avoid public scrutiny. According to recent reports, congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle are planning to sneak a bill criminalizing politically motivated boycotts of Israel into the end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill. The bill’s original sponsor, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), is pushing Democratic leadership to include this bill, which has not moved forward thus far primarily…
Google is facing a renewed wave of criticism from human rights groups over its controversial plan to launch a censored search engine in China. A coalition of more than 60 leading groups from countries across the world have joined forces to blast the internet giant for failing to address concerns about the secretive China project, known as Dragonfly. They come from countries including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, France, Kazakhstan,…
The Transportation Security Administration has set out an alarming vision of pervasive biometric surveillance at airports, which cuts against the right to privacy, the “right to travel,” and the right to anonymous association with others. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which included language that we warned would provide implied Congressional endorsement to biometric screening of domestic travelers and U.S. citizens, became law in early October. The ink wasn’t even dry on that bill when…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/tsas-roadmap-airport-surveillance-moves-dangerous-direction
In recent years the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has released several reports detailing “notorious markets” that contribute to large volumes of copyright infringement worldwide. The annual reports are aimed at guiding the U.S. Government’s position towards foreign countries where these sites and services are located. With a focus overseas, US-based platforms are not included. Earlier this year the EU announced that it would be following the example set by the United States…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/new-eu-piracy-watchlist-targets-key-pirate-sites-and-cloudflare-181210/
For decades, scientists have warned of the pending crisis for the planet and humanity in the event of runaway climate change. But a new paper from prominent economists frames the situation in language that people might actually understand: Not addressing climate change, they conclude, will lead inevitably to “worldwide economic collapse.” Researchers also have a warning for renewable energy evangelists and techno-optimists, concluding that it is a fantasy to believe that the economy can grow at…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2018/12/05/climate-change-economics/
Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Simpsons) Rudy Giuliani, who briefly advised Donald Trump on cybersecurity before taking a role as his personal attorney, doesn’t understand how domain names work. And that lack of understanding led him to invent a ludicrous conspiracy theory about Twitter. It all started when Giuliani tweeted about special counsel Robert Mueller: If someone tweets out a valid URL, Twitter automatically converts it into a hyperlink. In this case, .in is the country code…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1423403
On January 1, 2019 in the United States, tens of thousands of new works will join iconic pieces such as Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa as a part of the public domain. Save the date! Please join us on January 25, 2019 for a grand day of celebrating the public domain! Co-hosted by the Internet Archive and Creative Commons, this celebration will feature a keynote…
A critical flaw in the Kubernetes container orchestration system has been announced. It will allow any user to compromise a Kubernetes cluster by way of exploiting any aggregated API server that is deployed for it. This affects all Kubernetes versions 1.0 to 1.12, but is only fixed in the supported versions (in 1.10.11, 1.11.5, and 1.12.3). “With a specially crafted request, users that are authorized to establish a connection through the Kubernetes API server to…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/773836/rss
Democrats, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer, are playing word games when it comes to funding Trump’s border wall. Sometime between now and Dec. 7, when the current appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security will expire, Congress needs to provide the agency with another’s year’s funds. A single word has become a sticking point for the politicians who will vote on that funding: “wall,” as in President Trump’s border wall. Trump and his Republican allies…
SpaceX Monday p.m. Update: At the top of its launch window, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket soared into space on Monday from a launch site in California, sending 64 smallsats on their intended path toward a Sun synchronous orbit. Shortly thereafter the first stage descended to a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean and landed safely. This is the third time this particular first stage has flown into space and returned safely to Earth. Meanwhile, SpaceX…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1421039
SpaceX Monday a.m. Update: Originally scheduled to launch on Nov. 19, the Spaceflight SSO-A mission has been delayed three times due to the need for additional rocket checks as well as some weather concerns. Now the historic mission—SpaceX will attempt to launch the same Falcon 9 first stage for the third time, set an annual record for total launches, and fly the most smallsats into space on a U.S. booster—is scheduled for Monday at 1:32pm…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1421039
SpaceX Sunday a.m. Update: SpaceX said early Sunday that it is standing down from Sunday’s launch attempt “to conduct additional inspections of the second stage.” The company is working toward its backup launch attempt on Dec. 3, when the launch window opens at 1:32pm ET (18:32 UTC). Original post: Sunday’s launch attempt of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, with a primary launch window from 1:32pm ET (18:32 UTC) to…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1421039
The chemical agent is outlawed in international warfare but used regularly by police here at home. This piece originally appeared at The Washington Post’s PostEverything. Pictures of migrant women and children fleeing in panic as tear gas canisters were fired at them by U.S. border agents this week shocked many Americans, but the Trump administration praised the Border Patrol for responding “admirably and responsibly” in deploying the “accepted use of nonlethal force.” But using tear…