Ars Technica reports that a new law going into effect today make it a criminal offense to refuse an order to decrypt your own data.
Individuals who are believed to have the cryptographic keys necessary for such decryption will face up to 5 years in prison for failing to comply with police or military orders to […]
There’s an article on the L.A. Times detailing how putting all your communication eggs in the basket of a single unscrupulous provider can have serious privacy implications. For example:
There are red flags to be found in each telecom provider’s privacy policy. A close reading of Time Warner’s policy reveals:
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Not the movies, but the Strategic Defense Initiative proposed under Reagan.
Fifty-year-old Alistair Beckham was a successful British aerospace- projects engineer. His specialty was designing computer software for sophisticated naval defense systems. Like hundreds of other British scientists, he was working on a pilot program for America’s Strategic Defense Initiative–better known as […]
Beautiful video of a starfish-shaped robot learning of its own capabilities and developing a gait.
Found on Technovelgy.
I’ve just discovered PsyncX, a free and open source back up tool you can download here. I’m using it to create a synchronized backup of my files to an encrypted volume on a separate disk, and it works rather well (albeit with the occasional crach). Options are sparse, but it just right for […]
Could well be an explanation of DRM.
On Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End all hardware and operating systems have embedded Digital Rights Management software, a fact that while Vinge doesn’t specifically explain it, probably outlawed operating systems such as Linux which you have under your control (and not the other way around).
Now a guy in the U.S. who has been convicted of uploading […]
I know it sounds like a How-To book by Abdul Alhazred, but No Starch Press is coming out with a book called Forbidden LEGO, for creating such things as a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher. Here’s a video of a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates:
Found via Gizmodo, where they have another video […]
Some group is advocating blocking Firefox from accessing some sites, and has set up a site to explain their reasons. Their argument is that Firefox provides an easy way to block ads and - get this - watching a site without ads is theft.
Numerous web sites exist in order to […]
Very detailed article on automating server backups using Amazon’s S3 system, which I’ve recently trying out using myself for one of my Assembla-hosted projects.
PS: Yes, I’m making the Assembla backups myself. I’m not too keen on giving someone else the secret access key.