How about on a whiteboard that you’re planning to stand in front of while being interviewed by CNN?
Month: July 2014
Free speech victory in Texas
I bring good news: top-notch work by generous and dedicated lawyers has produced a free speech victory in Texas.
Last year I lit the Popehat Signal seeking help for J. Todd DeShong, a blogger and AIDS activist. DeShong, a longtime critic of the nutty and conspiratorial junk science occasionally directed at AIDS issues, ran afoul of Clark Baker, an ex-cop and full-blown AIDS denialist who offers “expert” “witness” services
Popehat Signal Update: Dream Team Victory In Texas (Popehat)
Bacon
I love bacon, but I would rather go out and buy me some instead of paying someone else to eat it…. This guy wants money to buy himself bacon.
I need bacon.
I need bacon, and I need money to go to the store and buy bacon.
The money will be spent on gas, and bacon.
If we make enough money, I’ll buy more bacon.
Using TOR? You might be a target for surveillance.
Jake Appelbaum et. al, are reporting on XKEYSCORE selection rules that target users — and people who just visit the websites of — Tor, Tails, and other sites. This isn’t just metadata; this is “full take” content that’s stored forever.
UK’s Web Filters Blocking Nearly One-Fifth Of The World’s Most Popular Websites
Remember UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s China Lite® web blockade, the one that was set up to keep British children from stumbling across Internet Pornography™ and other assorted subjectively objectionable material? While being ostensibly “for the children,” the default settings (applied by ISPs at the request of the Foster State) are blocking a whole lot of non-porn.
Nearly one in five of the most visited sites on the internet are being blocked by the adult content filters installed on Britain’s broadband and mobile networks.
A Porsche car dealership, two feminist websites, a blog on the Syrian War and the Guido Fawkes political site are among the domains that have fallen foul of the recently installed filters.
The Open Rights Group, which campaigns for digital rights, surveyed the 100,000 most popular sites as ranked by digital marketing research firm Alexa, and found that 19,000 of them were blocked by at least one fixed line or mobile internet service provider.
LifeRaft – Anti Cyberbullying & Crime Prevention Solution
Proprietary software, like it’s a good thing…
Also, the last thing we need is more surveillance. Schools should not ever deal with what happens during the students free time.
LifeRaft is a leading edge, innovative proprietary software to help prevent cyberbullying in schools & law enforcement with crime.
LifeRaft is a software solution we are building and the team is based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada. The software will monitor all of the social media platforms to determine potential threats to individuals and others. The solution will be positioned as the leading tool to be used by schools (7-12 and University) and law enforcement to identify what is being said in the online social communities to potentially avoid outcomes such as cyberbullying, crime and harm to individuals & others.
Can we just agree that trying to remove stuff from the internet never works?
It appears that, as part of its transparency efforts, Google is also telling the websites who are being delinked that they are being delinked over this, because both the BBC and the Guardian have stories up today about how they’ve had stories removed from Google thanks to the “right to be forgotten” efforts. And, guess what? Both articles dig into what original articles have been removed, making it fairly easy to determine just who was so embarrassed and is now seeking to have that embarrassing past deleted. And, of course, by asking for the content to be removed, these brilliant individuals with embarrassing histories have made both the removal attempt and the original story newsworthy all over again.
Google Alerts Press About Right To Be Forgotten Removals, Putting Those Stories Back In The News
This could never be viewed as corruption…
A new FOIA discovery via Todd Feathers at MuckRock has turned up some emails showing a rather cozy relationship between top Comcast execs and Justice Department antitrust officials. In fact, just days before Comcast announced its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable, Comcast Senior VP of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, Kathryn Zachem, had invited Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Renata Hesse, to “attend a celebration of the opening ceremony” of the Sochi Olympics, care of Comcast NBC Universal. Hesse sent an email saying that she really wanted to attend but “the rules folks over here tell me I can’t do this.” Though, she still says that they need to get dinner sometime soon. When Zachem responds that she had hoped it would still be okay because “we have nothing formally before you all,” Hesse notes “our ethics rules are very restrictive.”
FBI ignores first amendment rights for sex workers
The disturbing trend of the federal government seizing domain names without regard to the First Amendment continues. The FBI, along with the IRS, apparently seized a number of websites associated with MyRedbook.com, and arrested the operator of the site. The FBI notes that the site, which was a social network and resource for sex workers, included advertising that “facilitated prostitution.” It also accused the site of money laundering.
However, as the EFF is noting beyond the question of whether or not the FBI should even be in the business of targeting sex workers, there are serious First Amendment questions around such a seizure of a website
Fonhandle
… what the hell is this? And why?
Fonhandle is inspired by hafting, the act of attaching artifacts to a handle which turns them into useful objects. Humans have used this method throughout history to turn rock, metal and bone into axes and hammers, then later on – simple lenses into magnifying glasses, and then – rubber nets into fly swatters. Now it is time to do the same with the most useful object of all – the smartphone.
Fonhandle enhances your mobile experience. It opens a world of new photographic and videographic opportunities, better ergonomics, easier web browsing and other uses that have yet been discovered.
Better ergonomics and easier web browsing? Uh….