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‘Clear the Kitchen Table’: How Apple and IBM Marketed the First Personal Computers

Apple / IBM / The Atlantic As ubiquitous as they might be now, in the 1970s, few things were more mysterious and unknown than the “personal computer.” For years, these shadowy, ever-shrinking machines had been touted as the next revolution in the American home, although few people had a sense of…

Jun 18, 2015

Inside 'Hackerville,' Romania's Infamous Cyber Crime Hub

motherboard.vice.com

You've probably never heard of Râmnicu Vâlcea , a town of less than 100,000 people two hours outside of Bucharest, Romania, on the foothills of Transylvania. But the town has gained notoriety over the years for being a nest of cybercriminals. Some have come to call it " Hackerville ," or "…

Jun 18, 2015

All Systems Go for NASA's Mission to Jupiter Moon Europa

nasa.gov

Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward from concept review to development. NASA’s mission concept — to conduct a detailed survey…

Jun 18, 2015

Why Facebook Failed Our Censorship Test

eff.org

If you click around Facebook’s “ Government Request Report ,” you’ll notice that, for many countries, Facebook enumerates the number of “content restrictions” the company has fulfilled. This is a sanitized term for censorship. For example, Facebook restricted access to three items of content on its…

Jun 18, 2015

Pope's climate change encyclical tells rich nations: 'Pay your debt to the poor'

theguardian.com

Pope Francis has called on the world’s rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt” to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an undeniable risk to a “common home” that is beginning to resemble a “pile of filth”. The pope’s 180-page encyclical…

Jun 18, 2015

Privately Owned Armored Trucks Raise Eyebrows After Attack on Dallas Police

nytimes.com

Jeff Funicello in his armored vehicle in Mesa, Ariz. He has used the truck as a kind of traveling billboard for his mixed martial arts gym. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times HOUSTON — Jeff Funicello is selling his black 1975 GMC truck on Craigslist. It would be perfect for a thrifty bank. Or a…

Jun 18, 2015

Moving Wikipedia From Computer to Many, Many Bookshelves

nytimes.com

Michael Mandiberg, at his Brooklyn studio, has a new show, “From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!,” at the Denny Gallery. Credit Mark Kauzlarich/The New York Times The Wikipedia entry for “quixoticism” runs only about 255 words. But if anyone could argue for a personal mention, it might be Michael Mandiberg . For…

Jun 17, 2015

House Votes to Repeal Country-of-Origin Labeling on Meat - US News

usnews.com

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry. The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month,…

Jun 17, 2015

AT&T just got hit with a $100 million fine after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

washingtonpost.com

The Federal Communications Commission slapped AT&T with a $100 million fine Wednesday, accusing the country's second-largest cellular carrier of improperly slowing down Internet speeds for customers who had signed up for "unlimited" data plans. The FCC found that when customers used up a certain…

Jun 17, 2015

The government’s plan to regulate facial recognition tech is falling apart

washingtonpost.com

Systems analyst and co-administrator of the facial recognition program for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Scott McCallum, displays a method of facial mapping used to set criteria for image searches of faces. (photo by Edward Linsmier for the Washington Post) Facial recognition is being used…

Jun 17, 2015

“We are destroying the middle classes”: Why one of the world’s richest men is starting to sound awfully like Bernie Sanders

salon.com

Johann Rupert, the owner of Cartier, is worried that the commoners are ready to run the jewels. Speaking last Monday to the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Monaco, an event reported on by Bloomberg , the South African billionaire said the social dangers created by the entrenched…

Jun 17, 2015

Email Self-Defense - a guide to fighting surveillance with GnuPG encryption

emailselfdefense.fsf.org

Email Self-Defense English - v4.0 Čeština - v4.0 Deutsch - v3.0 ελληνικά - v3.0 español - v4.0 فارسی - v4.0 français - v4.0 italiano - v3.0 日本語 - v4.0 português do Brasil - v3.0 română - v3.0 русский - v4.0 Shqip - v4.0 svenska - v4.0 Türkçe - v4.0 Translate! GNU/Linux Mac OS Windows Teach your…

Jun 17, 2015

How to Disappear Completely: Linguistic Anonymity on the Internet | JSTOR Daily

daily.jstor.org

Facebook’s much debated Real Name policy , which seeks to reduce online anonymity, has put personal privacy and identity issues back in the spotlight of life on the Internet. User accounts with so-called ‘non-official’ names have fallen foul of the stentorian push to merge real life and virtual life…

Jun 17, 2015

Russia's secret space shuttles have been sitting in plain sight for 22 years

businessinsider.com

Ralph Mirebs In 1974, Russia launched its largest, most expensive project in space exploration history. The stars of the project, called the Buran program, were its space shuttles, which were built in secret from designs the Soviet secret police stole from NASA. It's hard to pin a number on just how…

Jun 17, 2015

Super Mario Maker Will Let You Build Your Own Mario Levels This September

social.techcrunch.com

Nintendo is letting players take control of its Mario platform game building tools with Super Mario Maker, and now we know when it’ll be available: September 11, 2015. The “game” allows people to create their own levels in either Super Mario Bros 8-bit graphics, or more modern 3D style (albeit with…

Jun 17, 2015

Programmer who exposed Airtel's 'spy code' seeks Israeli firm's apology

hindustantimes.com

The Bengaluru-based programmer, who accused Bharti Airtel Ltd of spying on its 3G internet subscribers , has expressed 'outrage and shock' over an Israel-based company's legal notice and has demanded an unconditional apology. Israel-based Flash Networks' code was allegedly used in the "spying".…

Jun 17, 2015

Dutch startup plans first 3D printed steel bridge to span Amsterdam canal

theguardian.com

An artist’s impression of plans by a Dutch startup MX3D to build the world’s first 3D-printed bridge across an Amsterdam canal, a technique that could become standard on future construction sites. 17 July 2015Photograph: Joris Laarman/MX3D A Dutch startup has unveiled plans to build the world’s…

Jun 17, 2015

Downing Street dodges Freedom of Information act with automatic 3-month deletion of emails

thestack.com

The Stack Archive World Downing Street dodges Freedom of Information act with automatic 3-month deletion of emails Wed 17 Jun 2015 Share 2 Share 2 Shares Weeks before Tony Blair’s Freedom of Information (FOI) act first came into force, Downing Street adopted a policy of automatically deleting emails…

Jun 17, 2015

Microsoft is merging its hardware and software divisions

thenextweb.com

Microsoft today announced the surprise news that it was parting ways with Stephen Elop , Nokia’s ex-CEO just over a year it purchased the mobile company, but buried in the announcement was a bigger piece of news. Under the reorganization, Microsoft is merging both its hardware and operating systems…

Jun 17, 2015

In Turnabout, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs

nytimes.com

In late May, about 35 technology employees at Disney/ABC Television in New York and Burbank, Calif., received jarring news. Managers told them that they would all be laid off, and that during their final weeks they would have to train immigrants brought in by an outsourcing company to do their jobs.…

Jun 17, 2015

How Apple's Transcendent Chihuahua Killed the Revolution

blog.longreads.com

Ian Bogost | from The Geek’s Chihuahua | University of Minnesota Press | April 2015 | 22 minutes (5,539 words) The following is an excerpt from Ian Bogost’s book The Geek’s Chihuahua , which addresses “the modern love affair of ‘living with Apple’ during the height of the company’s market influence…

Jun 17, 2015

Adieu : Small change for a better web, without AdBlock. We ❤ Content.

adieu.io

Buy this domain. adieu.io 2019 Copyright. All Rights Reserved. The Sponsored Listings displayed above are served automatically by a third party. Neither the service provider nor the domain owner maintain any relationship with the advertisers. In case of trademark issues please contact the domain…

Jun 17, 2015

A New Theory of Distraction - The New Yorker

newyorker.com

Illustration by Daniel Zender “At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction,” the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, in 1839. Those were the days. Browning is still right, of course: ask any reader of…

Jun 17, 2015

The 100-year-old scientist who pushed the FDA to ban artificial trans fat

washingtonpost.com

No one was more pleased by the Food and Drug Administration's decision Tuesday to eliminate artificial trans fats from the U.S. food supply than Fred Kummerow, a 100-year-old University of Illinois professor who has warned about the dangers of the artery-clogging substance for nearly six decades.…

Jun 17, 2015

Apple CORED: Boffins reveal password-killer 0days for iOS and OS X

theregister.co.uk

Dire straits "The consequences are dire," the team wrote in the paper. Some 88.6 per cent of 1,612 OS X and 200 iOS apps were found "completely exposed" to unauthorized cross-app resource access (XARA) attacks allowing malicious apps to steal otherwise secure data. Xing says he reported the flaws to…

Jun 17, 2015

Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke

cbc.ca

Think it's hard to make money in publishing in the digital age? Well, huge profits are still to be had – if you're a publisher of academic research journals. While traditional book and magazine publishers struggle to stay afloat, research publishing houses have typical profit margins of nearly 40…

Jun 17, 2015

Uber Drivers Deemed Employees By California Labor Commission

social.techcrunch.com

It would appear that the California Labor Commission has ruled that at least one Uber driver is an employee. As it stands now, Uber employs its drivers as third-party contractors, operating as a logistics company that provides access to customer demand and directions, transactions, etc. for the…

Jun 17, 2015

DuckDuckGo on CNBC: We’ve grown 600% since NSA surveillance news broke

technical.ly

DuckDuckGo has exploded in popularity since the federal government’s surveillance program came to light two years ago. Remember the privacy-minded search engine’s best week ever ? The service has grown 600 percent since then, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg said on CNBC. “We’re doing about three…

Jun 17, 2015

Pope Francis blasts global warming deniers in leaked draft of encyclical

washingtonpost.com

A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says “the bulk of global warming” is caused by human activity and calls on people — especially the world’s rich — to take steps to mitigate the damage by reducing consumption and reliance on fossil fuels. In words likely to anger some of his…

Jun 16, 2015

World leaders accused of shameful failure over refugee crisis

theguardian.com

Millions of refugees have been condemned to a life of misery in the worst displacement crisis since the second world war, a leading human rights organisation has said in a scathing report (pdf) that blames world leaders’ neglect for the deaths of thousands of civilians fleeing wars in the Middle…

Jun 16, 2015

Clinton Breaks TPP Silence Ahead of Final Fast-Track Showdown

telesurtv.net

Chile’s Communist Party Rejects Intervention in Venezuela Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Campaign…

Jun 16, 2015

Watch: Saudi-led Coalition Blamed for Bombing at World Heritage Site

rollingstone.com

Around 3 a.m. this morning, as Saudi-led coalition jets circled above Sanaa and ground forces replied with anti-aircraft fire, an object hurtled out of the sky and crashed into a row of houses in the old city, reducing four homes to rubble. As dawn broke, several dozen men worked frantically to pull…

Jun 16, 2015