LWN.net – [$] User-space interrupts

Sep 302021
 

The term “interrupt” brings to mind a signal that originates in the
hardware and which is handled in the kernel; even software interrupts are a
kernel concept. But there is, it seems, a use case for enabling user-space
processes to send interrupts directly to each other. An upcoming Intel
processor generation includes support for this capability; at the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference,
Sohil Mehta ran a
Kernel-Summit session on how Linux might support that feature.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/871113/rss

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on LWN.net – [$] User-space interrupts

Planet Mozilla – Top anti-tracking extensions

Sep 302021
 

The truth of modern tracking is that it happens in so many different and complex ways it’s practically impossible to ensure absolute tracking protection. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless against personal data harvesters attempting to trace our every online move. There are a bunch of browser extensions that can give you tremendous anti-tracking advantages…  Privacy Badger Sophisticated and effective anti-tracker that doesn’t require any setup whatsoever. Simply install Privacy Badger and right away it begins the work of finding the most hidden types of tackers on the web.  Privacy Badger actually gets better at tracker blocking the more you use it. As you naturally navigate around the web and encounter new types of hidden…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://addons.mozilla.org/blog/top-anti-tracking-extensions/

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Planet Mozilla – Top anti-tracking extensions

Boing Boing – Woman charged for crying during surgery

Sep 302021
 

Don’t cry during a stressful or painful medical procedure, unless you’re willing to pay extra. One woman learned this the hard way when she went to her doctor to get a mole removed. She cried at one point during the operation, and her bill, which she posted to Twitter, showed an $11 charge for “Brief Emotion” and a billing code of CPT Code 96127. — Read the rest

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/09/30/woman-charged-for-crying-during-surgery.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=woman-charged-for-crying-during-surgery

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Boing Boing – Woman charged for crying during surgery

Phoronix – Intel Exploring CPU+GPU Synchronized Priority Scheduling For Linux

Sep 302021
 

Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver engineers are evaluating possible improvements to the Linux kernel for accommodating CPU and GPU synchronized priority scheduling…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-CPU-GPU-Prio-Nice-Sched

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Phoronix – Intel Exploring CPU+GPU Synchronized Priority Scheduling For Linux

Motherboard – YouTube Removes Legendary Meme Video After 14 Years for ‘Violence’

Sep 302021
 

You probably don’t know Paul Weedon by name, but you’ve probably seen him get punched in the face. He is the man behind the “I can’t believe you’ve done this” meme, an old, viral video in which he talks to the camera for a few seconds before someone off camera sucker-punches him mid-sentence.  It’s a canonical internet video that has spread far and wide since Weedon uploaded it to YouTube 14 years ago, and for reasons that he doesn’t understand, yesterday YouTube decided to remove it, citing its violence policies. Weedon has tried appealing YouTube’s decision, but the company denied his request. “I got an email from YouTube late last night informing me that it had…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aqgx9/youtube-removes-legendary-meme-video-after-14-years-for-violence

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on Motherboard – YouTube Removes Legendary Meme Video After 14 Years for ‘Violence’

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Large majority of Berlin voters back expropriation of German property companies

Sep 302021
 

The clear vote in favor of expropriating large landlords is to be welcomed. It is an expression of the widespread opposition to the intolerable rents in Berlin and other large cities.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/30/berl-s30.html

 2021-09-30  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Large majority of Berlin voters back expropriation of German property companies

Hackaday – Gopher, the Competing Standard to WWW in the ’90s is Still Worth Checking Out

Sep 292021
 

The 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web passed earlier this year. Naturally, this milestone was met with truckloads of nerdy fanfare and pining for those simpler times. In three decades, the Web has evolved from a promising niche experiment to being an irreplaceable component of global discourse. For all its many faults, the Web has become all but essential for billions around the world, and isn’t going anywhere soon.
As the mainstream media lauded the immense success for the Web, another Internet information system also celebrated thirty years – Gopher. A forgotten heavyweight of the early Internet, the popularity of Gopher plummeted during the late 90s, and nearly disappeared entirely. Thankfully, like its plucky namesake, Gopher…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standard-to-www-in-the-90s-is-still-worth-checking-out/

 2021-09-29  Comments Off on Hackaday – Gopher, the Competing Standard to WWW in the ’90s is Still Worth Checking Out

Motherboard – Amazon Unveils ‘Astro,’ a Privacy Nightmare Robot That Follows You Around

Sep 282021
 

On Tuesday, Amazon unveiled a host of new products including Astro, a mobile Alexa robot that can capture every detail of your home’s layout, follow you around on video calls, and apparently even recognize people’s faces.  Given that Amazon is mostly known these days for leveraging various forms of surveillance to make money (when it’s not running its workforce ragged), it’s pretty safe to say that nobody asked for this. At the moment, you can only buy Astro if Amazon invites you to buy it first, and it costs $999.  First and foremost, Astro is a spybot. According to Amazon, the robot uses machine learning to “proactively patrol your home, investigate activity, and send you notifications…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akgbbe/amazon-unveils-astro-a-privacy-nightmare-robot-that-follows-you-around

 2021-09-28  Comments Off on Motherboard – Amazon Unveils ‘Astro,’ a Privacy Nightmare Robot That Follows You Around

The Intercept – Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

Sep 282021
 

This August, Israeli consular officials in the southeast U.S. arranged meetings with a dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to discuss a graduate student teaching a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to two UNC professors with knowledge of the meetings, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, the Israeli official accused the Ph.D. student of antisemitism and said she was unfit to teach the course.
The intervention by an Israeli government official, Consul General to the Southeastern United States Anat Sultan-Dadon, followed a pressure campaign by right-wing pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group to remove the graduate student, Kylie Broderick, from teaching the history department course called “The Conflict over Israel/Palestine.” The websites and…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/israel-palestine-unc-academic-freedom/

 2021-09-28  Comments Off on The Intercept – Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

Hackaday – FPGA Retrocomputer: Return To Moncky

Sep 272021
 

Part of the reason that retrocomputers are still so popular despite their obsolescence is that it’s possible to understand the entire inner workings of a computer like this, from the transistors all the way up to the software. Comparatively, it will likely be a long time (if ever) before anyone is building a modern computer from discrete components. To illustrate this point, plenty of 8-bit computers are available to either restore from original 80s hardware or to build from kits. And if you’d like to get even deeper into the weeds you can design your own computer including the instruction set completely from the ground up using an FPGA.
This project, called the Moncky project, is a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/09/26/fpga-retrocomputer-return-to-moncky/

 2021-09-27  Comments Off on Hackaday – FPGA Retrocomputer: Return To Moncky

The Intercept – Federal Prisons’ Switch to Scanning Mail Is a Surveillance Nightmare

Sep 272021
 

In a Pennsylvania federal prison, Joe used to trace his girlfriend’s handwriting with his finger as the faint smell of her perfume wafted into his cell. Her letters elicited rare feelings of intimacy in an otherwise cold environment. But after his facility, United States Penitentiary Canaan, replaced physical mail with photocopies in 2019, those feelings have disappeared.
“It’s just like receiving a fake dollar bill,” Joe told The Intercept in an email through a prison communications system. The Intercept is using a pseudonym because Joe fears retaliation from prison staff.

Over the past two years, dozens of facilities across the Federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, which oversees approximately 156,000 people and 122 facilities, have adopted policies of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/26/surveillance-privacy-prisons-mail-scan/

 2021-09-27  Comments Off on The Intercept – Federal Prisons’ Switch to Scanning Mail Is a Surveillance Nightmare

Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Chinese Wikipedians

Sep 262021
 

Chinese Wikipedians seem to be campaigning systematically and sneakily
to slant and censor what it says about recent Chinese history.

Ironically, the article emphasizes the term “open source” whose
purpose was and is to draw attention away from freedom (too
controversial a topic). In a second level of irony, in this specific
case the correctness and quality of articles is about freedom.

My 1998/1999 proposal for a universal encyclopedia
dealt with this by
rejecting the idea that there would be one official article about a topic.
Rather, it allowed for different articles written by different authors
and presenting different points of view.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2021-jul-oct.html#26_September_2021_%28Chinese_Wikipedians%29

 2021-09-26  Comments Off on Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Chinese Wikipedians

Techdirt. – Fake ‘U.S. Copyright Office’ Imposter Gets Google To Delist URLs On Section 1201 Grounds

Aug 262021
 

We’ve done more than our share of posts in the past about the problems within the DMCA takedown system as currently practiced. The reason for so many posts is in part due to the sheer number of problems with how this all works. For starters, when notices go out to search engines like Google to delist “problem” URLs, those notices are often times generated by automated systems that unsurprisingly result in a vast majority of notices targeting URLs that are non-infringing. As in, over 99% of those notices. And even once we get past the malpractice of using automation buckshot notices that result in an incredible amount of collateral damage, we then have to add the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210825/09451247432/fake-us-copyright-office-imposter-gets-google-to-delist-urls-section-1201-grounds.shtml

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Fake ‘U.S. Copyright Office’ Imposter Gets Google To Delist URLs On Section 1201 Grounds

Ballot Access News – New York Libertarian and Green Parties File Brief in Second Circuit, Seeking Reinstatement as Qualified Parties

Aug 262021
 

On August 18, the New York Libertarian and Green Parties filed this brief in the Second Circuit in Libertarian Party of New York v New York State Board of Elections, 21-1464. This is the case against the 2020 bill that increased the statewide petition from 15,000 to 45,000 signatures, and altered the definition of a party from one that had polled 50,000 votes for Governor, to one that had polled 2% for the office at the top of the ballot in the preceding election.

The parties are seeking injunctive relief to have their qualified party status restored. The U.S. District Court had denied injunctive relief.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2021/08/25/new-york-libertarian-and-green-parties-file-brief-in-second-circuit-seeking-reinstatement-as-qualified-parties/

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – New York Libertarian and Green Parties File Brief in Second Circuit, Seeking Reinstatement as Qualified Parties

The Register – Cops responding to ShotSpotter’s AI alerts rarely find evidence of gun crime, says Chicago watchdog

Aug 262021
 

It may hurt community policing, too

Police responding to ShotSpotter’s AI-generated alerts of gunfire find evidence of actual gun-related crime only about one time in ten, a Chicago public watchdog has found.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/08/25/shotspotter_chicago_report/

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on The Register – Cops responding to ShotSpotter’s AI alerts rarely find evidence of gun crime, says Chicago watchdog

Motherboard – A Signal from Space Is on a 16-Day Cycle. Scientists Just Ruled Out an Explanation

Aug 262021
 

Scientists have captured unprecedented observations of bizarre signals in space, revealing new insights about why some of these unexplained pulses, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), appear to flash in clear periodic patterns. First detected in 2007, FRBs are extremely bright radio pulses that erupt for a fraction of a second, but can still be observed across billions of light years, suggesting that they are powered by highly energetic sources. Some FRBs are one-offs that seem to only flash a single signal, while others are “repeaters” that produce multiple pulses.  It gets weirder: two of those repeaters show periodicity in their pulses, meaning that they have distinct active and dormant phases. Some scientists have proposed that…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyv9vk/a-signal-from-space-is-on-a-16-day-cycle-scientists-just-ruled-out-an-explanation

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on Motherboard – A Signal from Space Is on a 16-Day Cycle. Scientists Just Ruled Out an Explanation

International Socialism Project – Doctors Without Borders to Pfizer: Share vaccine recipe with the world

Aug 262021
 

According to Doctors Without Borders—known globally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)—”at least seven manufacturers in African countries currently meet the prerequisites to produce mRNA vaccines, if all necessary technology and training were openly shared.”

External feed Read More at the Source: https://internationalsocialism.net/doctors-without-borders-to-pfizer-share-vaccine-recipe-with-the-world/

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on International Socialism Project – Doctors Without Borders to Pfizer: Share vaccine recipe with the world

New on MIT Technology Review – Our brains exist in a state of “controlled hallucination”

Aug 262021
 

When you and I look at the same object we assume that we’ll both see the same color. Whatever our identities or ideologies, we believe our realities meet at the most basic level of perception. But in 2015, a viral internet phenomenon tore this assumption asunder. The incident was known simply as “The Dress.” For the uninitiated: a photograph of a dress appeared on the internet, and people disagreed about its color. Some saw it as white and gold; others saw it as blue and black. For a time, it was all anyone online could talk about. Eventually, vision scientists figured out what was happening. It wasn’t our computer screens or our eyes. It was the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/25/1032121/brains-controlled-hallucination/

 2021-08-26  Comments Off on New on MIT Technology Review – Our brains exist in a state of “controlled hallucination”

Techdirt. – US Army Now Using Clearview’s Unproven Tech To Investigate Crimes

Aug 242021
 

We can add another government agency to the list of entities that have been suckered in by Clearview’s highly questionable sales pitches about its unproven tech: the US Army. [Paywall ahead, but alternatives abound.]

The US Army has a contract with Clearview AI, according to documents that reveal the controversial facial-recognition startup making bold claims to the military about capabilities such as “criminal network discovery” and “force protection and area security.”

The contract, obtained with other documents by Insider via public-records request, shows the US military awarding a discounted contract for Clearview to work with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which investigates serious crimes that could involve active service members or civilian workers for the Army.

Fantastic. Now, let’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210823/17000247418/us-army-now-using-clearviews-unproven-tech-to-investigate-crimes.shtml

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Techdirt. – US Army Now Using Clearview’s Unproven Tech To Investigate Crimes
 Older Entries  Newer Entries