COVID-19 Patients’ Right to Privacy Against Quarantine Surveillance Deeplinks

May 212020
 

Governments around the world are using surveillance technologies to monitor whether COVID-19 patients are complying with instructions to quarantine at home. These include GPS ankle shackles, phone apps that track location, and phone apps that require patients to periodically take quarantine selfies and send them to government monitors. All of these surveillance technologies burden fundamental rights. And they can harm public health, by discouraging people from getting tested. No patient should be compelled to submit…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/covid-19-patients-right-privacy-against-quarantine-surveillance

 2020-05-21  Comments Off on COVID-19 Patients’ Right to Privacy Against Quarantine Surveillance Deeplinks

Facebook’s blatant rip-off of Bitmoji avatars is a legal lesson in skirting copyright Boing Boing

May 212020
 

Facebook fastidiously copied Bitmoji’s artwork for its new avatars feature. Consider a) the access to legal expertise and b) the shameless indifference Facebook has to ethical standards, bad PR or media exposure. In this image (posted to twitter by Alex Heath) is a detailed lesson in exactly how closely you can copy others’ work and get away with it. Or if you prefer, it establishes the necessary quantum of difference to avoid liability, in Facebook’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/facebooks-blatant-rip-off-of.html

 2020-05-21  Comments Off on Facebook’s blatant rip-off of Bitmoji avatars is a legal lesson in skirting copyright Boing Boing

Another Real Estate Crash Is Coming Jacobin

May 172020
 

The COVID-19 crisis, like the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, has sparked major public interventions to stabilize the financial markets. But the Fed isn’t stepping in to bail out the real estate sector — and the big losers are set to be ordinary households. Apartment buildings in Brooklyn, New York. (Flickr) Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, the Federal Reserve has won admiration from many quarters for the pace and magnitude of its…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/real-estate-crash-pandemic-coronavirus/

 2020-05-17  Comments Off on Another Real Estate Crash Is Coming Jacobin

DNA Lounge: Wherein COVID-19 is likely to finish the job that Live Nation and Golden Voice started. jwz

May 172020
 

One of the most likely outcomes of this pandemic is that the vast majority of independently-owned venues will go out of business, wiping the slate clean for multinational superpredators Live Nation and Golden Voice to fill those voids. That’s been their mission for years, and this can only accelerate it.Their M.O. has long been to wait until an independent venue is in financial trouble, and then take it over and either turn it into an…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2020/05/16.html

 2020-05-17  Comments Off on DNA Lounge: Wherein COVID-19 is likely to finish the job that Live Nation and Golden Voice started. jwz

Researchers count the kinks in a ring, predict their stability Ars Technica

May 162020
 

Enlarge / Two rings buckling under the pressure of a soap film. The top ring is a narrow band (compared to its diameter), so it buckles inward. The bottom ring has wide walls. It wrinkles out of plane as it collapses inward. (credit: Finn Box) I once had a PhD student who joined our research program thinking he was going to be studying a mixture of plasma physics and gas diffusion. To his surprise, he…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1676267

 2020-05-16  Comments Off on Researchers count the kinks in a ring, predict their stability Ars Technica

Charter tells court that its no-refund policy helps prevent price increases Ars Technica

May 152020
 

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle. (credit: Charter) Charter is suing Maine to block a new state law that requires prorated refunds when cable customers cancel service mid-month, claiming that the requirement is a form of rate regulation and is preempted by federal law. The preemption question will be at the heart of the case, but Charter also told the court that its no-refund policy prevents its prices from rising even more than they usually do. “Charter’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1676380

 2020-05-15  Comments Off on Charter tells court that its no-refund policy helps prevent price increases Ars Technica

Second Circuit Judges Appear Inclined to Let New York Presidential Primary Proceed Ballot Access News

May 152020
 

On May 15, the Second Circuit heard Yang v Kellner, 20-1494. This article describes the 90-minute hearing. The article makes it sound as though all three judges will agree with the U.S. District Court that New York can’t cancel its … Continue reading →

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/05/15/second-circuit-judges-appear-inclined-to-let-new-york-presidential-primary-proceed/

 2020-05-15  Comments Off on Second Circuit Judges Appear Inclined to Let New York Presidential Primary Proceed Ballot Access News

North Carolina Supreme Court Overturns Awful Decision By Appeals Court, Says Giving The Finger To Cops Isn’t A Crime Techdirt.

May 142020
 

Last August, the North Carolina Court of Appeals decided it was OK for police officers to use protected speech as the basis for retaliatory stops. The stop — and the criminal charges that followed — originated from this interaction: While assisting the stranded motorist, Trooper Stevens turned his attention to another car traveling on the roadway. Defendant, a passenger in a small white SUV, had his arm outside of the window and was making a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200510/10254244466/north-carolina-supreme-court-overturns-awful-decision-appeals-court-says-giving-finger-to-cops-isnt-crime.shtml

 2020-05-14  Comments Off on North Carolina Supreme Court Overturns Awful Decision By Appeals Court, Says Giving The Finger To Cops Isn’t A Crime Techdirt.

Now there’s nothing stopping the PATRIOT Act allowing the FBI to slurp web-browsing histories without a warrant The Register

May 142020
 

Thanks for nothing, Bernie Sanders An amendment that would require the FBI get a warrant before they access Americans’ web-browsing history failed to pass by a single vote in the US Senate on Wednesday.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/us_spying_laws/

 2020-05-14  Comments Off on Now there’s nothing stopping the PATRIOT Act allowing the FBI to slurp web-browsing histories without a warrant The Register

Don’t Pretend Joe Biden Is Actually Moving Left Jacobin

May 142020
 

Joe Biden has named several progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sara Nelson, to newly announced policy “task forces.” This beats him just sneering at leftists — but it’s no great progressive victory that a few good people are on a random list of names for toothless task forces. Phil Roeder / Flickr I’ve had this sensation of late that when it comes to politics, we are now all trapped inside of a really dark,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/joe-biden-move-left/

 2020-05-14  Comments Off on Don’t Pretend Joe Biden Is Actually Moving Left Jacobin

Waterworld world map Boing Boing

May 142020
 

The premise of 1995’s Waterworld [Amazon] was flawed in that there isn’t enough water in the ice caps to raise sea levels 7500m, as is established in Waterworld canon. But I wanted to see what that would look like, so here is a map of planet earth with the sea level raised 7500m, based on topographical data published by NASA. As you can readily see, only parts of the Tibetan plateau remain above the waves.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/13/waterworld-world-map.html

 2020-05-14  Comments Off on Waterworld world map Boing Boing

Twitter says staff can continue working from home permanently TechCrunch

May 122020
 

Earlier today, Jack Dorsey sent an email to Twitter staff, notifying employees that they will be ale to  continue working from home as long as they see fit. The CEO notes that Twitter was an earlier adopter of a work-from-home model, though — like much the rest of the world — that push has been accelerated by COVID-19 stay at home orders. Twitter confirmed the decision in an email to TechCrunch, noting, We were uniquely…

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 2020-05-12  Comments Off on Twitter says staff can continue working from home permanently TechCrunch

Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth Internet Archive Blogs

May 122020
 

Last week the Internet Archive upped our bandwidth capacity 30%, based on increased usage and increased financial support.  Thank you. This is our outbound bandwidth graph that has several stories to tell… A year ago, usage was 30Gbits/sec. At the beginning of this year, we were at 40Gbits/sec, and we were handling it.  That is 13 Petabytes of downloads per month.  This has served millions of users to materials in the wayback machine, those listening…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2020/05/11/thank-you-for-helping-us-increase-our-bandwidth/

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth Internet Archive Blogs

Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a covid app—and it hasn’t helped much New on MIT Technology Review

May 122020
 

When Iceland got its first case of covid-19 on February 28, an entire apparatus sprang into action.  The country had already been testing some people at high risk of catching the virus, thanks to DeCode genetics, a local biotech company. Once the arrival of the disease was confirmed, it began rapidly rolling out public testing on a much wider scale. The government, meanwhile, quickly built a team of contact tracers to interview those with a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/11/1001541/iceland-rakning-c19-covid-contact-tracing/

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a covid app—and it hasn’t helped much New on MIT Technology Review

Open Source Pick and Place Has a $450 BOM Cost Hackaday

May 122020
 

Give your grizzled and cramped hands a break from stuffing boards with surface mount components. This is the job of pick and place machine, and over the years these tools of the trade for Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) have gotten closer to reality for the home shop; with some models diving below the $10,000 mark. But if you’re not doing it professionally, those are still unobtanium. The cost of this one, on the other…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2020/05/11/open-source-pick-and-place-has-a-450-bom-cost/

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on Open Source Pick and Place Has a $450 BOM Cost Hackaday

AGP Graphics Card Support Proposed For Removal From Linux Radeon/NVIDIA Drivers Phoronix

May 122020
 

Longtime AMD open-source driver developer Christian König is proposing the removal of AGP graphics card support from their Radeon kernel driver as well as the open-source NVIDIA “Nouveau” kernel driver and in turn removing the AGP related code from the TTM memory management code…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AGP-Radeon-Nouveau-Drop-RFC

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on AGP Graphics Card Support Proposed For Removal From Linux Radeon/NVIDIA Drivers Phoronix

New Teensy 4.1 Arrives with 100 Mbps Ethernet, High-Speed USB, 8 MB Flash Hackaday

May 122020
 

It was only last August that PJRC released Teensy 4.0. At that time, the 4.0 became the fastest microcontroller development board on the planet, a title it still holds as of this writing — or, well, not exactly. Today the Teensy 4.1 has been released, and using the same 600 MHz ARM Cortex M7 under the hood, is now also the fastest microcontroller board. What the 4.1 brings to the table is more peripherals, memory,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2020/05/11/new-teensy-4-1-arrives-with-100-mbps-ethernet-high-speed-usb-8-mb-flash/

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on New Teensy 4.1 Arrives with 100 Mbps Ethernet, High-Speed USB, 8 MB Flash Hackaday

Article Says Both Candidates in Montana Green Party U.S. Senate Primary are Insincere Ballot Access News

May 122020
 

Montana requires all qualified parties to nominate by primary. According to this story, both candidates in the upcoming Green Party U.S. Senate primary are really acting on behalf of one of the two major parties. Dennis Daneke, one of the two candidates, says if he wins the primary, afterwards he will withdraw, because he supports the Democratic Party and doesn’t want a Green candidate on the general election ballot for U.S. Senate. The other Green…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/05/11/article-says-both-candidates-in-montana-green-party-u-s-senate-primary-are-insincere/

 2020-05-12  Comments Off on Article Says Both Candidates in Montana Green Party U.S. Senate Primary are Insincere Ballot Access News
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