- SSL in outbound links from search engines
EFF has a great post that discusses how search engines could help our privacy even further by linking to encrypted versions of pages in their results where possible rather than the plain text. Not surprisingly, the privacy conscious search engine, Duck Duck Go, is already doing this. I switch the search engine in my browser some time back to DDG and each new announcement of the concrete steps they are taking to protect my privacy makes me feel that much better about my choice. - New book on Canadian digital copyright is out, including a free electronic edition
Cory shares the news from Michael Geist about this book from Irwin Law. At over six hundred pages, this is a considerable commitment to the subject. The focus is primarily on the most recent copyright debates in Canada, centered on the hotly contested bill C-32. The free PDF version is available under a Creative Commons license making the wealth of material available to, as the cover blurb suggests, be used freely to improve directly the quality of the discourse. - The BBC covers the crowd funded plan to build a working analytical engine, BBC via Hacker News
- FSF launches a hardware focused initiative
According to the H, the “Respects your Freedom” program is an endorsement based on a device using free software, being built with free software, and allowing user installation of modified software. This reminds me of Neuros’ Unlocked mark from a couple of years back as it is also trying to draw attention to manufacturers that support end user freedom, an increasingly important issue when anti-jail-breaking stories seem to be showing up with increasing frequency. - Government admits to Facebook spyring, Slashdot
- Suit claims Facebook leaked real names of users to advertisers, The Register
Tag: open hardware
feeds | grep links > Promiscuous Android Apps, Virgin Media Throttling P2P, Maverick Meerkat Approaches Release, and More
- Cooperation law for a sharing economy, yes! Magazine, HT @tbeckett
- 2 out of 3 Android apps use private data without permission
Dan Goodin at The Register explains a joint study between Pennsylvania State, Duke and Intel labs that looked into 30 apps selected random from the most popular ones. I’d be very curious to see a similar study of iOS apps, to better understand if it is mobile computing in general or Android specifically. The sample size here also seems pretty small but Goodin points out that the researchers targeted Android because it is open source and easier to study. Now, if we could only get a more constructive response from Google or some third party solutions to fill the gap. - Cloud orient fork of MySQL, Drizzle, goes beta, The H
- Virgin Media to start throttling all P2P traffic
Chris Williams at The Register clarifies that this is an incremental step from the ISP’s current policy of throttling based on high volume. It also seems like this practice is already pretty common in the UK, at least among DSL providers. - Release candidate out for next Ubuntu release, Maverick Meerkat, Ubunty, via Hacker News
- New version of OpenSocial reference implementation, Shindig, released, The H
- The Open Hardware Summit, Ars Technica