China is ‘remaking the world in its techno-dystopian image’ Internet freedoms have taken a nose dive for the eighth year running, according to a report warning that authoritarian countries and populist leaders are exporting harmful attitudes and ideas around the world.…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/02/internet_freedom_report_2018/
As a staunch defender of an open Internet, ISP Bahnhof has repeatedly spoken out against pirate site blocking efforts. The company has also argued the matter in court recently, after academic publisher Elsevier applied for an order to ban a series of domain names, including Sci-Hub. Today, Bahnhof announced that it has been ordered to block the sites in question. This is the worst possible outcome for Bahnhof. TorrentFreak spoke to CEO Jon Karlung who…
The SpamAssassin 3.4.2 release was the first from that project in well over three years. At the 2018 Open Source Summit Europe, Giovanni Bechis talked about that release and those that will be coming in the near future. It would seem that, after an extended period of quiet, the SpamAssassin project is back and has rededicated itself to the task of keeping junk out of our inboxes.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/769917/rss
“Remember that everything you consider solid is a side effect of the decisions of people who aren’t substantially smarter than you are, and those decisions didn’t occur very long ago.” – Rococo Modem Basilisk(I don’t endorse the specific content of this article and I apologize for the paywall link.)
External feed Read More at the Source: http://blog.felter.org/post/179669252605
Amid all the divisive ugliness inside the Beltway, here is some good news: 2018 may well be the best year in a half century for election reform. Today’s narrative laments a crumbling democracy, alienated voters, and a political culture spiraling ever downward. While true, that narrative is incomplete. It misses the remarkable energy building across many states to confront these problems, shore up our democracy, and rebuild our political culture. Nowhere is that energy more…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/will_voters_lead_on_electoral_reform
The battles within the Democratic Party have played out in high-profile races this year, largely featuring well-heeled establishment figures with years of elected experience challenged by left-wing outsiders running with the support of a national grassroots movement. Amidst this fight, there has been a strenuous effort from party centrists to drain the question of any ideological content. Party leaders are not pushing any particular agenda, goes the argument, but are merely pragmatists maximizing the chances…
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is one of the bedrocks of America. President Trump said this week that he is preparing an executive order to try to take away the citizenship guarantee in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that people born in the United States are United States citizens. On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham announced that he would introduce legislation with the same aim. But the president cannot repeal part of the Constitution by…
Since its launch in March 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope has provided us with an incredible amount of data about exoplanets within our galaxy, proving these worlds are more varied and numerous than we could ever have imagined. Before its launch we simply didn’t know how common planets such as ours were, but today we know the Milky Way contains billions of them. Some of these worlds are so hot they have seas of molten…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/30/kepler-closes-eyes-after-a-decade-of-discovery/
Bloomberg is reporting that IBM has agreed to acquire Red Hat for over $33 billion. “International Business Machines Corp. will pay $190 a share in cash for Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat, according to a statement from the companies Sunday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. That’s a 63 percent premium over Red Hat’s closing price of $116.68 per share on Friday.”
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/769762/rss
We’re pleased to announce that the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office have expanded the exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA, a dangerous law that inhibits speech, harms competition, and threatens digital security. But the exemptions are still too narrow and too complex for most technology users. Section 1201 makes it illegal to “circumvent” digital locks that control access to copyrighted works, and to make and sell devices that break digital locks. Every…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/new-exemptions-dmca-section-1201-are-welcome-dont-go-far-enough
In honor of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (October 27) we’d like to take you on a brief tour through seven decades of digitized music and audio recordings from 1900 through 1970. We’ve been working to digitize 78rpm discs for the Great 78 Project to preserve the heritage of the first half of the 20th century, and now we’re turning our eyes toward vinyl LPs that have fallen out of print in the Unlocked Recordings collection. 1905 –…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/27/decades-of-music/
In 2018, there has been a significant increase in editorial board support for ranked choice voting. Some highlights: Editorials Give ranked voting a shot. Our democracy would benefit. The Editorial Board on June 14, 2018 … Montgomery County and other localities should consider a reform that empowers the majority by allowing voters to rank their choices. Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, has been used successfully in other countries as well as a growing…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/editorial_board_support_for_rcv_in_2018
We’ve always had a fascination with things that fly. Sure, drones are the latest incarnation of that, but there have been RC planes, kites, and all sorts of flying toys and gizmos even before manned flight was possible. Maybe the first model flying machine you had was a paper airplane. There’s some debate, but it appears the Chinese and Japanese made paper airplanes 2,000 years ago. Now there’s a database of paper airplane designs, some…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/25/paper-airplane-database-has-the-wright-stuff/