152174851
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wiredog writes:
From PC Magazine: 2021 is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
Mostly Chrome and Android, but they are Linux. Which, considering my first Linux was RedHat 2.0 in the beige box, running the 0.95(?) kernel and FVWM, is pretty cool. It came with 2 books, a CD, and a boot floppy.
144618658
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wiredog writes:
It's back! Sigh...
138722856
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wiredog writes:
Disney has developed a radical new theory of copyright:
When Disney bought Lucasfilm and Fox, they acquired the copyright licenses that enabled them to sell Alan Dean Foster's books — but not the liability, the legal obligation to actually pay him for those books. They have apparently also done this to numerous other authors.
The statement from the Science Fiction Writers of America is here. and also a Twitter thread from Cory Doctorow.
135450234
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wiredog writes:
A BuzzFeed News investigation based on satellite images has revealed 268 newly built concentration camps for Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
Part 1: China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims
Part 2: What They Saw: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China's Detention Camps
Part 3: Blanked Out Spots On China's Maps Helped Us Uncover Xinjiang's CampsChina's Baidu blanked out parts of its mapping platform. We used those locations to find a network of buildings bearing the hallmarks of prisons and internment camps in Xinjiang. Here's how we did it.
65129765
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wiredog writes:
From the article by Brian Krebs:Many in the Internet community have officially called baloney [that's a technical term] on the government’s claims, and these latest apparently contradictory revelations from the government are likely to fuel speculation that the government is trying to explain away some not-so-by-the-book investigative methods.
65039089
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wiredog writes:
CR claims that supposedly "unbiased" tests show that " both iPhones seem tougher" than #bendgate would imply and that the 6+ "outperformed the HTC One". CR also claims that "the Note 3's screen splintered and it stopped working."
64485193
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wiredog writes:
From the Beeb, the news that security researcher Michael Jordon has hacked a Canon's Pixma printer to run Doom. He did so by reverse engineering the firmware encryption and uploading via the update interface.
But does it play Barney Doom? And can you get Linux running on the thing?
51964653
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wiredog writes:
Lots of it. Overwhelming amounts, perhaps. From The Washington Postwhen one Iranian e-mail address of interest got taken over by spammers. The Iranian account began sending out bogus messages to its entire address book. ... the spam that wasn't deleted by those recipients kept getting scooped up every time the NSA's gaze passed over them. And as some people had marked the Iranian account as a safe account, additional spam messages continued to stream in, and the NSA likely picked those up, too....Every day from Sept. 11, 2011 to Sept. 24, 2011, the NSA collected somewhere between 2 GB and 117 GB of data concerning this Iranian address.
44353795
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wiredog writes:
Microsoft has released a report of all the subpoenas and other requests it got from law enforcement in 2012, and the way it responded to them. This is similar to the Google Transparency Report at
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US/
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wiredog writes:
The sole appeal of these lottery tickets is their randomness... it’s becoming increasingly clear that ... several of these games have been systematically broken.
Oops.
18473932
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wiredog writes:
A bundle of all six movies will sell for $139.99, while sets of the original three films, and the three prequels, will go for $69.99 apiece. Obsessive types can pre-order them on Amazon now.
Han shot first!
18384240
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wiredog writes:
Does monogamy cause drinking, or does drinking cause monogamy?
FTA (PDF warning)Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.
18091028
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wiredog writes:
Via The Atlantic, the news that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has a new section of their website dedicated to documenting COBOL's history. An exhibit will open at the museum this spring.
17221728
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wiredog writes:
Via The Atlantic, a brief piece on what is likely to be the first photograph (a daguerreotype) showing a human.
12350412
submission
wiredog writes:
The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy is actually a student project.The "No Net Brutality" campaign idea was one of the four finalists created as an assignment for a two-and-a-half week "think tank MBA" program. The other finalists were a project promoting free speech in Venezuela, one supporting education reform in Poland, and one dealing with sales taxes rates in Washington, D.C. ("No Net Brutality" came in third. The Polish reform idea won.)
