Proto-Hypertext Memory Expander
In Jason Edward Harrington’s Dear America, I Saw You Naked, he reveals that he was the anonymous TSA agent who wrote the Taking Sense Away tell-all/whistleblower blog. Harrington’s piece is a shocking and eye-opening look into the world of TSA agents, especially the section dealing with the “IO room” where the nude photos of travellers who used the Rapiscan machines were displayed:
Continue reading “TSA whistleblower describes life in the pornoscanner room”
When Kansas lawmakers introduced a bill outlawing municipal broadband network, there was no sponsor’s name on it: rumor has it that’s because it was written by a lobbyist called John Federico, who is president of Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association. The bill masquerades as a pro-competition measure (pro-competition initiatives from the cable industry! Pull the other one), but it effective prohibits measures like the wildly successful Google Fiber project in Kansas City. Given that the big carriers and cable companies have shown no interest in providing fiber or even reasonably priced, reasonably provisioned broadband in most markets, this means that most people in Kansas can kiss any hope of a read broadband life goodbye.
Continue reading “Kansas cable lobbyist writes bill outlawing Google Fiber and municipal broadband, gets it introduced in Kansas legislature”
Mel Li sends us “Images of the DIY DNA bread (and accompanying build process) I made for a labmate’s qualifying exam referring to her research on DNA migration through paper for applications in small, affordable global health disease diagnostics.In this food, pretzels indicate base pairs, the color parts are candy fluorophores. Two kinds of fluorphores which bind to DNA are indicated: [1] intercalating dyes (Green), or [2] oligo probe (Red/Yellow/Green) & FRET quencher (Purple/Blue).”
In January 2012, I reviewed a new book from Observer business/tech columnist John Naughton, called From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Disruptive Innovation in the Age of the Internet. It’s a great, fast read aimed at smart people who don’t quite get the net — the kind of thing you’d want to slide under your boss’s door to forestall more well-intentioned and frustrating questions about What Should Be Done about this Internet thing.
Now the book is out in the USA and Quercus, the US publisher, is giving away 15 copies of the book in a random drawing. I highly recommend it — my original review is below the jump!
Continue reading “Win a copy of From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, now out in the USA!”
A new Snowden leak reported on the CBC reveals that secretive Canadian spy-agency CSEC was illegally spying on Canadians by collecting information from the free Wifi service in major airports and cross-referencing it with intercepted information from Wifi at cafes, libraries and other public places in Canada.
The agency is prohibited from spying on Canadians without a warrant, but it captured data on all travellers in a Canadian airport, ensuring that it captured an enormous amount of sensitive information about Canadians. It claims that because it did not “target” Canadians (that is, it spied on everyone, regardless of nationality), they somehow weren’t “spying” on Canadians.
The CBC article features a brilliant and incandescent Ron Diebert (who runs the Citizenlab centre at the University of Toronto and wrote one of the best books on Internet surveillance, Black Code), and an equally outraged Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario privacy commissioner, who is one of the most savvy privacy advocates in any government.
Continue reading “Canadian spies illegally tracked travellers using free airport Wifi”
Andy Forest from Makerkids, a Toronto makerspace for kids, writes, “Together, Kids Learning Code, MakerKids, TIFF and the Toronto Public Library have just finished developing 7 comprehensive maker curriculum modules for libraries, schools and other organizations who want to get kids started being Makers. The Mozilla Hive Network Toronto provided funding support.
The modules are designed for a non-technical audience and contain all the information needed to teach these topics:”
Amanda writes, “Danger!awesome is an open-access laser cutting, laser engraving, and 3D printing workshop in the heart of Cambridge, tucked right between MIT and Harvard. Our mission is to democratize access and training to rapid prototyping resources, long reserved for academic institutions and multi-million dollar R&D labs. We want to teach anyone and everyone how to make, customize, and invent.
Continue reading “Kickstarting Danger! Awesome, a hackerspace in Cambridge, Mass”
Personhood, Lauren Zuniga’s 2012 performance at the Urbana Poetry Slam, is a powerful piece about choice, social justice, reproductive rights, and rape [TW]. Set against the backdrop of Rick Santorum’s remarks on rape (calling pregnancies arising from rape a “gift from God”), the performance tries to bridge the gap between Zuniga’s life and beliefs and her conservative grandfather’s staunch opposition to choice on abortion.
(via Wil Wheaton)
Her Universe’s “I Love You/I Know” nightshirt recreates Leia and Han’s romantic moment with a glow-in-the-dark gag. Nice typography, too!
(via The Mary Sue)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpNsxGJSWd8
Omaha police officer Bradley D Canterbury was fired after he beat up a suspect and then participated in a brutal, illegal retaliatory raid on the home of a citizen who’d video-recorded the incident. Canterbury was one of over 30 Omaha police officers who broke into a family home without a warrant intending to destroy mobile phone video evidence of his violent actions, and was one of six officers from that cohort who were fired for the beating.
