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Submission + - Will editorial bias blight a curated Apple News? (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: There was a lot of Apple news to digest from WWDC last week. As well as the latest versions of OS X and iOS 9, we witnessed the appearance of women on stage as Apple tried to do its part for diversity. Apple would probably like us to focus on the likes of the Apple Music and Beats One launches, but really it's another announcement that should be foremost in our minds: Apple News.

On the face of it, this is a simple replacement — perhaps even just a renaming — for Newsstand, but it's really much more than that. The key difference here is that content will not only come from media partners, but will also be curated. Apple is now a news editor, and that's extremely dangerous.

There are a number of reasons to be concerned about the fact that Apple will employing a team of people to control which news stories appear in the News app. Perhaps the most worrying feature of Apple News is that the stories will be handpicked and curated.

Submission + - Privacy Advocates Walk Out in Protest Over U.S. Facial Recognition Code of Condu (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Nine privacy advocates involved in the Commerce Department process for developing a voluntary code of conduct for the use of facial recognition technology withdrew in protest over technology industry lobbyists' overwhelming influence on the process

“At a base minimum, people should be able to walk down a public street without fear that companies they’ve never heard of are tracking their every movement — and identifying them by name — using facial recognition technology,” the privacy advocates wrote in a joint statement. “Unfortunately, we have been unable to obtain agreement even with that basic, specific premise”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7cd...

The Commerce Department, through its National Telecommunications and Information Administration, brought together “representatives from technology companies, trade groups, consumer groups, academic institutions and other organizations” early last year “to kick off an effort to craft privacy safeguards for the commercial use of facial recognition technology”

The goal was “to develop a voluntary, enforceable code of conduct that specifies how the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights applies to facial recognition technology in the commercial context”

But after a dozen meetings, the most recent of which was last week, all nine privacy advocates who have participated in the entire process concluded that they were thoroughly outgunned

“This should be a wake-up call to Americans: Industry lobbyists are choking off Washington’s ability to protect consumer privacy,” Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, said in a statement

“People simply do not expect companies they’ve never heard of to secretly track them using this powerful technology. Despite all of this, industry associations have pushed for a world where companies can use facial recognition on you whenever they want — no matter what you say. This position is well outside the mainstream”

Submission + - Sunday Times issues DMCA takedown notice to the Intercept over Snowden article (documentcloud.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Sunday the newspaper the Sunday Times published an article citing anonymous UK government sources that Edward Snowden was in the hands of the Russians and Chinese. Shortly thereafter, Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept published a scathing criticism of the article. In this article, Glenn published a photograph of the paper's front page on which the story occurred. Yesterday, the Intercept received a DMCA take down notice from News Corp on account of the photograph.
The Intercept is refusing to comply with the take down notice.

Submission + - Julian Assange To Be Interviewed in London After All (aklagare.se)

Submitted by mpawlo
mpawlo writes: The Swedish Director of Public Prosecution Ms Marianne Ny has submitted a request for legal assistance to the English authorities and a request to Ecuadorian authorities regarding permission to interview Julian Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London during June-July 2015. Back in 2010, a warrant was issued in Stockholm, Sweden for WikiLeaks founder and spokesman Julian Assange. Ever since, Assange has found refugee at the embassy of Ecuador in London.

Submission + - USCRN shows U.S. temperatures have declined for 10 years (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by davidph
davidph writes: Recent research published by NOAA's National Climate Data Center purports to show that world temperatures have continued to rise over the last two decades, at least if you accept their data data manipulation. But not all climate scientists approve of the adjustments to the raw data. For instance, Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry says the National Climate Data Center paper is "politically useful for the Obama administration" but not a "useful contribution to our scientific understanding."

Now we have ten years of data from the U.S. Surface Climate Observing Reference Network, state-of-the-art weather stations "designed with climate science in mind." The high quality data from the USCRN show rather that instead of rising temperatures have actually declined slightly in the last ten years.

Submission + - StrageLoop bans engineer over political views (breitbart.com)

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes: Software engineer Curtis Yarvin was scheduled to give a talk on a new system software stack at Strangeloop — but his talk has now been cancelled after the conference received complaints on social media by critics of his political views. These complaints occured despite the fact that Yarvin’s talk, the abstract of which is copied below, concerned a purely technical topic.

Submission + - In Advance Of Upcoming Steam Summer Sale, Valve Introduces Steam Refunds

Submitted by Deathspawner
Deathspawner writes: Despite all of its competition, Valve's Steam service remains the most popular digital PC game store around. While Steam does do a lot of things right, it can sometimes stumble in the worst of ways. Look no further than April's Skyrim mod debacle as a good example. Well, just as Valve fixed up that issue, it's gone ahead and fixed another: it's making refunds dead simple. While refunds have been possible in the past, it's required gamers to jump through hoops to get them. Now, Valve has set certain criteria, and if it's met, a refund will be granted, no questions asked — a definite step in the right direction.

Submission + - USA Freedom Act passes unamended, limiting NSA surveillance (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Today the US Senate passed the USA Freedom Act without amendments, signalling the start of the significant surveillance reform that has been called for since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the agency's activities. It had already been determined that the bulk collection of phone metadata was illegal, and the expiry of Section 215 of the Patriot Act at the end of May brought this data collection to an end anyway.

The USA Freedom Act sets in concrete the end of the phone data collection program and is seen as a major victory for privacy advocates. It will come as good news to Snowden himself who will undoubtedly feel a sense of relief that his risk-taking paid off. The bill is still to be signed into law by President Obama, but this is now little more than a formality.

Submission + - Senator proposes criminal charges against global warming skeptics

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has proposed that racketeering charges be considered against fossil fuel companies who express skepticism about human-caused global warming and dare to disagree with any environmental regulations imposed based on this theory.

As he writes today in his Washington Post op-ed:

The fossil fuel industry, its trade associations and the conservative policy institutes that often do the industry's dirty work met at the Washington office of the American Petroleum Institute. A memo from that meeting that was leaked to the New York Times documented their plans for a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to undermine climate science and to raise "questions among those (e.g. Congress) who chart the future U.S. course on global climate change."

Gee, industry skeptics of global warming wish to use their first amendment rights to debate the issue! How dare they! Worse, they might use money to finance their effort!

As noted at the first link, the idea that any disagreement with global warming advocacy should be criminalized is not a new thing, and has increasingly been advocated by that leftwing community. The Whitehouse is now tying this to the criminalization of the use of money to express that disagreement. This is nothing more than a fascist attempt at squelching freedom.

Submission + - Meet the Classic Game Designers

Submitted by belg4mit
belg4mit writes: In collaboration with AMC in support of their fictionalized account of the history of video games, "Halt and Catch Fire", Motherboard TV is releasing a series of mini-documentaries about people involved in the history of gaming including Dona Bailey, the author of Centipede, and John Romero of id Software fame.

Submission + - Sourceforge staff takes over a user's account and wraps their software installer (arstechnica.com) 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sourceforge staff took over the account of the GIMP-for-Windows maintainer claiming it was abandoned and used this opportunity to wrap the installer in crapware. Quoting Ars:

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements.

Submission + - Gates, Zuckerberg Promising Same Jobs to US Kids and Foreign H-1B Workers? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Over at the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg-bankrolled Code.org, they're using the number of open computing jobs in each state to convince parents of the need to expand K-12 CS offerings so their kids can fill those jobs. Sounds good, right? But at the same time, the Gates and Zuckerberg-bankrolled FWD.org PAC has taken to Twitter, using the number of open "STEM" jobs in each state to convince politicians of the need to expand the number of H-1B visas so foreign workers can fill those jobs. While the goal of Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy is to kill two birds [K-12 CS education and H-1B visas] with one crisis, is it cool for organizations backed by many of the same wealthy individuals to essentially promise the same jobs to U.S. kids and foreign H-1B workers?

Submission + - Security certification for an old grad? (nolink.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I graduated in late 2003 during the tech bubble burst with a below 2.5 GPA. I am 35 with an interest in getting a security job. What are the chances that I would be just wasting my time and money? I am pursuing business interests with a patent used in a service that will be a prime target for hackers. I have been writing client/server software in an OpenBSD virtual machine for the security and the kqueue functionality; not to mention the rest of the virtual clients crash that I have tried. I figure that trying to sell the service idea, even if I can't get a job, when they ask what qualifies me to have such ideas, I can say I have the credentials. I just got issued the patent this year.

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