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c0lo writes:

LOL is now officially 25 years old, along with other shorthands. The Guardian has a list with best and worst LOL uses.

LOL is 25 years old. Since its first recorded use in May 1989, LOL has completely transformed how we live. We text it to each other. We write it on pictures of animals. We say it out loud if we want people to think that we're creepy sociopaths.

A world without LOL is a world without laughter, or at least a world without people claiming to laugh when they're really just sitting there silently typing things onto Facebook with a Jaffa Cake hanging out of their mouth.

Some claim LOL originated earlier in the 80's.

janrinok writes:

One of the world's most baffling diseases may be spread by the wind. A new study has found that Kawasaki disease, which sickens 12,000 children a year in Japan and occurs in other countries including the United States and South Korea, is at its deadliest when the wind blows from northeastern China. The findings suggest that the illness may be caused by an airborne toxin from that region, but just which one remains unclear.

AnonTechie writes:

DefenceTech reports:

The rhythm, timing and tactile characteristics of how a person types on a computer keyboard or presses keys on a smartphone screen can be used to verify identify and prevent hacking and computer fraud, according to an ongoing project with the Pentagon's research arm and Louisiana Tech University.

Computer scientists with Louisiana Tech University are working on a collaborative project with the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, or DARPA, to refine algorithms able to authenticate computer and smartphone users. This is the sort of project that could release the military from having to use Common Access Cards to access government computers.

Fluffeh writes:

Ever wondered what politics is really like? Wondered how politicians talk to one another in a open debate about something like a three strikes policy being introduced in a country (Australia) where it isn't in place? Here is a great example, taken right out of the Australian Senate — a back and forth between Attorney General George Brandis (thats long for big cheese) and Senator Scott Ludlam of the Australian Greens Party.

"I know industry leaders have very strong views on these things, but I'm asking you about groups like Choice or ACANN or others that might represent consumer interests or the public interest," he [Scott] said. "There is a very strong public interest in the protection of private property and that includes the protection of intellectual property." Brandis responded evasively. "So you're not going to answer the question?" Ludlam said rhetorically.

There is a lot more on this debate and it is disgraceful how clearly the AG is simply spouting what he is told to say.

LowID writes:

Popular culture website Wikia originally hosted its user-contributed content under a free, sharealike Commercial Commons license (CC-BY-SA). At least as soon as 2003, some specific wikis decided to use the non-commercial CC-BY-NC license instead: hey, this license supposedly protects the authors, and anyone is free to choose how they want to license their work anyway, right?

However, in late 2012 Wikia added to its License terms of service a retroactive clause for all its non-commercial content, granting Wikia an exclusive right to use this content in commercial contexts, effectively making all CC-BY-NC content dual-licensed. And today, Wikia is publicizing a partnership with Sony to display Wikia content on Smart TVs, a clear commercial use.

A similar event happened at TV Tropes when the site owners single-handedly changed the site's copyright notice from ShareAlike to the incompatible NonCommercial, without notifying nor requesting consent from its contributors. Is this the ultimate fate of popular wikis? Do Creative Commons licenses hold any weight for community websites?

Angry Jesus writes:

When we understand that "privacy" is shorthand for the regulation of information flows, it's clear that information rules of some sort are inevitable in our digital society. The idea that privacy is dead is a myth.

Privacy — the rules we have to govern access to information — is just changing, as it's always been changing. The rules governing the creation, ownership, and mortality of data can be permissive or restrictive; they may create winners and losers, but they will exist nonetheless. And some of those rules are not just going to be privacy rules (rules governing information flows), but privacy-protective rules ones that restrict the collection, use, or disclosure of information.

AnonTechie writes:

Google has revealed it plans to build its own self-driving cars from the ground up, per an announcement from founder Sergey Brin at the Code conference Tuesday. The company revealed one such car to Recode, a highly compact two-seater without a steering wheel. Google had previously been retrofitting Toyota Priuses and Lexus SUVs with its self-driving technology. The cars were approved last week for use on public roads in California, and Google demonstrated the technology's ability to navigate complex traffic situations in cities at the end of April.

The prototype Google revealed differs from the Priuses and Lexuses in that they can't let humans take over the job of piloting; they are completely controlled by the onboard computer. In addition to lacking a steering wheel, the Google-built car also has no accelerator, no brake, no mirrors, no glove compartment, and no soundsystem (your tiny smartphone speaker will have to do). The cars are capped at a modest 25mph and are started and stopped by a button.

AnonTechie writes:

A three-year espionage campaign, believed to have originated in Iran, has used an elaborate scheme involving a fabricated news agency, fake social media accounts and bogus journalist identities to trick victims in the United States, Israel and elsewhere. iSight Partners has released a report showing that it believes the attackers have built an elaborate universe of fake personas bolstered by secondary accounts all for the purpose of garnering the trust of their targets by using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+.

ticho writes:

In a blog post, Hewlett-Packard's CTO states his concerns about Oracle's newly proposed license:

"Recently, Oracle submitted the new Universal Permissive License (UPL) for approval to the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI is the well-respected steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and reviews and approves open source licenses which conform to the OSD and do not create proliferation issues. Oracle claimed to address the non-proliferation issue by stating it viewed UPL as filling the need for a permissive, MIT-style open source license with explicit patent grants."

Among other things, he explains why he does not like it:

"At a high level, the UPL copyright and patent licenses are overly broad. They extend to current and future versions of both the UPL-licensed code as well as any software/hardware identified in a file included with the UPL-licensed code. There is no requirement that the UPL-licensed code be associated in any way with the software/hardware included in the file in order to use the license to that software/hardware. This is a very expansive license.

There is no defensive termination clause under the UPL, which would allow a licensor to terminate part or all of its license if the licensee sues the licensor for patent infringement. This means a licensee can get very broad rights in the licensor's technology, sue the licensor for intellectual property (IP) infringement, and not have to worry about losing its license to technology licensed under the UPL. As you can imagine, this is very attractive to those entities who frequently engage in litigation."

The license approval request can be found here.

Appalbarry writes:

If you're a listener to Public Radio in the US you likely know This American Life, (TAL) a hugely popular documentary show out of WBEZ in Chicago.

Like many public radio programs, TAL was syndicated and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI), a powerhouse in public radio which could get your show onto many stations, and get it sent out via satellite. Essentially, if you were a Big Fish in public radio, PRI was likely where you went.

TAL has announced that they are now abandoning PRI in favor of the Public Radio Exchange, a scrappy, producer run, internet-only radio syndication site. Unlike PRI, where you need to be fairly big to make it worthwhile, any producer can put their programs up on PRX and have them available to any public radio station, either for free, or for money.

Or as Ira Glass put it:

The company that's going to deliver the audio files of our show to stations, PRX, has this website (prx.org, duh) where anyone can post a story or a full series and try to get radio stations to run it. What they're about is the democratization of public radio. Making it easy for you or any newcomer to get their work into the hands of program directors. I admire that.

janrinok writes:

A group of prominent tech companies argues that US government gag orders that prohibit them from disclosing what type of national security information requests they receive are a violation of their free-speech rights. In court documents (PDF) unsealed Friday, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo contend that the gag orders, called national security letters, or NSLs, are a "prohibition on speech [that] violates the First Amendment."

"The government has sought to participate in public debate over its use of the NSL statute," the companies wrote in a brief filed with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in April. "It should not be permitted to gag those best suited to offer an informed viewpoint in that debate; the parties that have received NSLs."

NSLs are secret requests to Web and telecommunications companies requesting the "name, address, length of service," and other account information about users that's relevant to a national security investigation. No court approval is required for the electronic data-gathering technique, and disclosing the existence of the FBI's secret requests is not permitted.

The companies have sought legal permission for greater transparency about the government requests since last summer when reports based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden alleged that they provided the NSA with "direct access" to their servers through a so-called PRISM program. The companies have denied that allegation and petitioned the government to allow them to publish, in detail, the types of national security requests they have received under the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The companies say they do not want to disclose information related to a specific NSL that might jeopardize an investigation, but rather "more detailed aggregate statistics about the volume, scope, and type of NSLs that the government uses to demand information about their users."

J053 writes:

The TrueCrypt website has been changed it now has a big red warning stating "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues". They recommend using BitLocker for Windows 7/8, FileVault for OS X, or (whatever) for Linux. So, what happened? The TrueCrypt site says:

This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt. The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP. Windows 8/7/Vista and later offer integrated support for encrypted disks and virtual disk images. Such integrated support is also available on other platforms (click here for more information). You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.

Did the TrueCrypt devs (or SourceForge?) get a NSL? They are offering a "new" version (7.2), but apparently the signing key has changed and a source code diff seems to indicate a lot of the functionality has been stripped out. What's up?

Blackmoore writes:

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept writes A Response to Michael Kinsley

Kinsley has actually done the book a great favor by providing a vivid example of so many of its central claims. For instance, I describe in the book the process whereby the government and its media defenders reflexively demonize the personality of anyone who brings unwanted disclosure so as to distract from and discredit the substance revelations; Kinsley dutifully tells Times readers that I "come across as so unpleasant" and that I'm a "self-righteous sourpuss" (yes, he actually wrote that). I also describe in the book how jingoistic media courtiers attack anyone who voices any fundamental critiques of American political culture; Kinsley spends much of his review deriding the notion that there could possibly be anything anti-democratic or oppressive about the United States of America.

But by far the most remarkable part of the review is that Kinsley--in the very newspaper that published Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and then fought to the Supreme Court for the right to do so (and, though the review doesn't mention it, also published some Snowden documents)--expressly argues that journalists should only publish that which the government permits them to, and that failure to obey these instructions should be a crime.

I can't say I want my government to have its fingers in what is and what is not reported.

See also: Cory Doctorow's review of Greenwald's book at BoingBoing

DrMag writes:

One of the problems with the idea of big data is that when you look for things that are correlated, given enough data you're sure to find them. We all know the meme about correlation and causation, and still statistics get thrown around as solid science in our media. Tyler Vigen at Harvard Law put together a website to educate people about how statistics need to be taken with reason, otherwise we derive bizarre results that are purely coincidental. For example, did you know that the number of people who die by strangling in their own bedsheets correlates with the per capita amount of cheese being consumed? Or that more people die in swimming pools in years where Nicholas Cage appears in more movies?

Vigen in a recent interview explains:

"I've seen a lot of headlines, especially sensationalist ones 'Scientists find a connection between x and y'," he says. "In a lot of those situations there might be a correlation, but it's really important for us to be critical about whether there's a causal mechanism."

He also suggests three things to keep in mind when given any statistic:

1. Be critical of statistics that you see
2. Look for a causal link or mechanism
3. Demand a little bit of scientific rigour in showing that there's a strong, statistically significant correlation

If it helps to educate the public, then I'm all for it. When it's combined with a bit of humor, then even more so

Angry Jesus writes:

The Federal Trade Commission is still pushing the data broker industry to open up about its practices. After announcing an inquiry two years ago that focused on nine notable data collection companies, the FTC has now released a new report in an effort to push Congress to make the industry more transparent to consumers.

Data stalking of the population has become such a big business that Oracle recently acquired BlueKai, one of the most well-known companies in the industry.