- Newton on an iPad
Ht @stephenjayl. The link, which I also saw on Hacker News, is to a write up on the latest fun with a pre-existing project, Einstein, that runs Newton OS on modern hardware via emulation. Earlier this month, the code was ported to iOS and the poster has embedded a video of it running on his iPad. I only ever had one on loan and enjoyed using it. My enjoyment of nostalgic computing and specifically the MessagePad overrides my current irritation with Apple enough that if I had a compatible device, I might try running this. - Google Voice app approved in Apple’s app store
As Slashdot explains, it isn’t the first app that was infamously approved, rejected, and then removed from the store. However, Google Voice Mobile is apparently in the process of being re-submitted and re-considered. As with the changes in Apple’s developer agreement, this signals a softening of policies, most likely because of complaints resulting in FTC scrutiny. - Modders bring emulation, homebrew games to PS3, Slashdot
- Swedish Pirate Party fails to retain seat in parliament, The Register
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein source code released, Slashdot
- iPhone app piracy tool, source code up for sale, ReadWriteWeb
- PostgreSQL 9.0 released
The H has the new features in this release that has been backing for a while. One of the most interesting is replication. It answers my questions, as a long time user of the database server, on how the feature works. It is targeted at hot standby, easing the replication of the write ahead log, so it is distinct from the kind of replication performed by newer, post-relational databases. - Europe proposes international internet treaty, Slashdot
Tag: The Pirate Party
feeds | grep links > Faster JavaScript for Firefox 4, Details of Google’s New Search Index, Leaked EU Surveillance Plan, and More
- JaegerMonkey now in Firefox nightly builds, ReadWriteWeb
- Google moves beyond map/reduce for new index system
The Register has some surprisingly good crunchy technical detail on how and why Caffeine works they way it does. If BigTable is similar to the other, large scale post-relational databases I’ve been exploring, then the transition makes sense to accomplish the goal of faster, more accessible updates to the index. I am eager to see the promised research paper when that is available. - Original Navajo Code Talker and code developer dies at 91, BoingBoing
- Pirate Party leaks EU surveillance plan, Slashdot
- More research on alternate topologies for the internet, Ars Technica
- Darpa project aiming at child equivalent intelligence in AI
As Katie Drummond at Wired explains, their plan from there is to instruct such a software agent consistent with how we do our own children. It makes a certain amount of sense, in terms of a more tractable goal and leveraging learning capabilities that might be augmentable once running. - Online censorship as a trade barrier, Google
feeds | grep links > More Open Cloud Computing, More API’s for Mozilla JetPack, Diaspora to Release Next Month, and More
- RedHat opens its cloud APIs, ReadWriteWeb
- Three new APIs included in latest version of JetPack from Mozilla, The H
- Diaspora sticks to its committed release date, Wired
- Czech copyright bill threatens public licenses like CC, Slashdot
- Pirate Bay documentary to be crowd, or peer, funded, TorrentFreak
- Court halts PS3 jail break sales, Ars Technica
- Sweden may get second Pirate MEP, TorrentFreak
feeds | grep links > Firefox 4 Beta 2 Drops, Law Suit over Zombie Cookies, and More
- Firefox 4 beta 2 released, including app tabs and CSS3 transitions
- Pirate Party offers hosting to WikiLeaks
- Law suit targets sites using analysis service that introduced zombie cookies
As Ryan Single explains, zombie cookies are browser cookies ressurrected from Flash’s client side storage without the users knowledge or consent. It was Quantcast that was identified as using them, though they claimed to have stopped shortly after being outed by researchers at UC Berkeley. Quantcast is in wide usage by many high profile sites and it is their customers being targeted by this suit. The basis of the suit is the use of zombie cookies violated a federal computer intrusion law, which I think is not the best framing but lacking a federal online privacy law there is little alternative. - More on ASCAP boss’s fears over being silenced
Professor Lessig himself messaged about this earlier in the day, linking to an update to his original Huffington Post article from earlier inviting Paul William’s to a debate. Mike Masnick at Techdirt has the open letter from Williams along with a good bit of analysis. The conclusion is indeed as baffling as it seems, somehow equating the call to a civil discourse in a public forum on the merits of both views with an attempt to silence one of those views. It is frustrating when the other side of the question of how we re-balance copyright won’t even engage in a rational conversation.
Digital Economy Act Could Spur More “Pirate” ISPs
The launch of Pirate ISP by the original Pirate Party clearly has the members of the UK Pirate Party thinking. Specifically, they expect that the Digital Economy Act may encourage smaller ISPs to crop up that also resist turning over customer data and do not retain logs.
You would think that refusing to play along with the new law’s deputization of service providers would already be out of bounds but there is apparently a loop hole related to the size of the provider.
However, the Ofcom proposals only apply to large ISPs, which the [UK] Pirate Party says will drive mid-size ISPs to break into smaller companies which fall outside the rules – creating a wave of so-called “Pirate ISPs” in the UK.
The prediction is not that unlikely. In other countries, like South Korea and France, where three strikes rules have come into play, file sharers have managed to route around those responsible for enforcing disconnection. The party specifically anticipates existing ISPs will hive off into smaller operations which also seems more likely than spinning up entirely new services, like the Swedish party did.
The Pirate Party Launches an ISP
I lamented the disbanding of the Piratbyrån, fearing that without that group there would be a lack of hands on, constructive projects to test concerns with copyright. Judging by its recent actions, the original Pirate Party in Sweden is clearly stepping into this gap. Over the past few months, the party has repeatedly stepped into to support the beleaguered Pirate Bay site, a searchable directory of BitTorrent files. Most notoriously the party started hosting the site out of the Swedish Parliament, taking advantage of the immunity doing so conveys.
Their latest effort continues in this vein. As enigmax at TorrentFreak explains, the idea behind launching the Pirate ISP is to not only provide an ISP with an iron clad commitment to privacy and protecting users’ rights but to compete with existing ISPs on these very ideals. ViaEuropa, the company behind the anonymizing VPN service, iPredator, will operate the ISP. It will start small and grow slowly but with a plan to build presence throughout Sweden. It is the idea of having points of presence in multiple Swedish markets that lends credibility to the ISP as a competitive concern, not just a novelty.
Beyond refusing to give up customer information and keeping no logs whatsoever, the new ISP is set up as a lightning rod for escalating issues to constitutional debate. That provocative stance even extends to international challenges.
Nipe was also clear on how Pirate ISP would respond to outside interference, in particular that from the United States.
“They can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it.”
Read the rest of enigmax’s article, it is full of quotes explaining how the ISP is already prepared for the usual threats. I wish them luck and look forward to their success an all fronts, both as a valuable service I wish I could use here in the US and as a prod to upset the status quo when it comes to the interaction of copyright and digital technologies.
feeds | grep links > Pirate Bay in Parliament, Futures Other than the Singularity, Facebook Adds Facial Recognition, and More
- Pirate Party will run The Pirate Bay from Swedish parliament
As Ben Jones on TorrentFreak explains, this sounds like a natural evolution for the public action aspect of the site. The fact that the site is one of the most popular and best places to locate torrents for all kinds of media has almost been a side effect of the primary goal of sparking discussion. This definitely moves that to a whole other level. - Futures for SF writers that are not the Singularity
Rudy Rucker has been increasingly skeptical of the Singularity though not necessarily foregoing interesting possibilities for the future of cognition and computing. I am increasingly convinced the Singularity operates solely as a metaphor, not as any kind of realistic prediction. Cory at Boing Boing links to a Futurismic post contemplating and suggesting other rich futures for writers to explore that don’t invoke the Singularity. - Facebook adds facial recognition
As Mike Melanson at RWW explains, it isn’t for specific faces but merely that any faces exist within posted photos. I have to wonder if the limitation is essential, some inherent bound, or intentional given the recent privacy scrutiny. Compare with efforts of other photo sharing services that are competing with the specific facial recognition recently included by Apple in its entry level photo management software. - Using Bespin, in a bookmarklet, to edit almost any text on the web
Via Hacker News. - Knuth announces successor to TeX
- Obama announces broadband grants to spur jobs
- BitTorrent only show achieves considerable success
- OpenOffice replaces Java media handling with GStreamer
TCLP 2010-05-23 News
This is news cast 214, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.
In the intro, thanks to new monthly donor, John Taylor Williams and his wife, Mia. Thank you to fellow Flattr beta testers who have been flattring my posts. I should have an update on how this service compares to donations and ads at the end of the month. My Balticon schedule is up, if you are going to be there, come and say high. Better yet, join me for the unofficial FLOSS and Tech Geek BoF. There will be no news show that Sunday but should be feature casts before and after the weekend.
This week’s security alerts are Chrome’s private mode leaks info and FTC looks into privacy concerns with digital copiers.
In this week’s news opening of VP-8 video codec becomes so much more including news event Microsoft will support it (kind of) and YouTube will switch to it for larger videos going forward, a technical analysis of VP-8 now that it is open, Facebook’s urge towards social utility will invite regulation, and an early, official history of NSA computers.
Following up this week The Pirate Party steps in to host The Pirate Bay and EFF issues a strong criticism of Google’s latest privacy mistake.
[display_podcast]
Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.