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My Best Sources

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These are the websites, blogs, experts that I, personally, admire most. Some are traditional news sources. Be advised: These are often opinionated sources and my 100% agreement is not implied by their appearance here.

The Mac Security Blog | Keep Macs safe from the dangers of the Internet. Last Friday, Adobe Systems released an ahead-of-schedule update to resolve a widely known vulnerability... By Derek Erwin All businesses face cybersecurity challenges, which means proactively protecting organizational assets, employees and consumers... This month begins the 12th annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), coordinated and... Apple has updated its XProtect.plist definitions file to version 2068, providing OS X with... The Apple Watch recently received its second major update, which patches a total of... Adobe Systems has released Flash Player 19.0.0.185 for Macintosh and Windows with patches for 23... Internet Archive Blogs. Chris Clarke.

Key Ideas & Articles

LESSIG Blog, v2. On Tuesday, Berkeley City Council adopted unanimously an ordinance inspired by Councilman Max Anderson, and which I and Robert Post helped craft. I was very happy to bat cleanup in an effort that has been underway for years. But there’s some serious misunderstanding about the ordinance and its purpose. No doubt many of the people fighting for the ordinance have a firm belief that non-ionizing radiation presents a significant and underappreciated health risk. Those people believe this for different reasons. Some believe it because of personal experience: The letter from the mother who lost a daughter who carried her cellphone in her bra, and who then was discovered to have four cancerous lumps perfectly mirroring where her phone had been carried, is a letter from someone who believes this because there’s no other way for her to understand her loss.

These are all people who believe there is a risk that is not yet acknowledged. I am not a scientist. Likewise, here’s the Blackberry statement: Lessig on Vimeo. LessigWiki. Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Career Advice, Jobs. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Chris Clarke. COPYCENSE. Civil Eats | Promoting critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systemsCivil Eats | Promoting critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems. World Population Clock: 7 Billion People (2014) World Population: Past, Present, and Future (move and expand the bar at the bottom of the chart to navigate through time) The chart above illustrates how world population has changed throughout history. View the full tabulated data.

At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year. A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987).

Wonder how big was the world's population when you were born? Growth Rate 10 Billion (2055) Ceta-Base: Captive Dolphin, Beluga & Killer Whale Database.

Cory Doctorow

Consumerist. The six tech policy problems Congress failed to fix this year. August isn’t the top time of year for thinking about tech policy. For many, it’s vacation time, a month when Americans are more focused on hacking a path to the nearest beach than hacking their computers. Congress just left for vacation too, heading home last week for its traditional August recess.

When it returns to Washington, election season will be in full swing, which means that betting on the passage of any bold legislation later this year is a long shot. In light of that, now (and not December) is when we can look back at what activists, companies, and lawmakers were hoping to accomplish in the 113th Congress—compared to what actually happened. The current Congress is on track to go down as the least productive in modern history. The most-touted piece of tech-related legislation in 2014 was a bill to re-legalize cell phone unlocking. The Congressional standstill in tech policy is as visible and as hurtful as it is in any policy area. These aren't wild hypotheticals. Privacy | Disciplines. Afghanistan and the Artificial US War on Terror (Gopal Anand's New Book) By Juan Cole I guest-hosted a book salon over at Firedoglake on Sunday concentrating on Anand Gopal’s expose of the so-called ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan.

Below is my review of the book. Do go to FDL to read the whole salon, where Mr. Gopal was kind enough to answer our questions about the book and the subject. No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living is a deconstruction of the American “War on Terror” as it pertained to Afghanistan. In short, as Gopal tells the story, there was no Taliban activity in Afghanistan to speak of by 2002, but the US military machine required an enemy, and its clients among the men on the make in Karzai’s Afghanistan were glad to supply alleged Taliban (sometimes even tagging as such men who had spent a decade fighting the puritanical seminarians).

He is alive to the fluidity of politics and even religion in village Afghanistan. Mirrored from Firedoglake Book Salon. FDL Book Salon Welcomes Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes. Welcome Anand Gopal (AnandGopal.com) (Twitter) and Host Juan Cole (Informed Comment blog - JuanCole.com) (Twitter) No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living is a deconstruction of the American “War on Terror” as it pertained to Afghanistan. It is an argument that the US military allowed itself to fall into chasing phantoms, put up to search and destroy missions by tribal allies mainly interested in using the Americans to settle feuds and deflect rivals. They got drawn into what anthropologists call the segmentary lineage political system of rural Afghanistan.

In short, as Gopal tells the story, there was no Taliban activity in Afghanistan to speak of by 2002, but the US military machine required an enemy, and its clients among the men on the make in Karzai’s Afghanistan were glad to supply alleged Taliban (sometimes even tagging as such men who had spent a decade fighting the puritanical seminarians). MobileRead. MobileRead Forums. Shows featuring Juan Cole.

Marion Nestle on Food Politics

Transforming Green | EcoWatch. TreeHugger | Your source for green design & living news, commentary and advice. Vox Felina – Feral/free-roaming cats and trap-neuter-return/TNR: critiquing the opposition. Mother Jones | Smart, Fearless Journalism. Your Neighborhood NSA by The Center for Investigative Reporting — Beacon. You’re being watched. With funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local taxpayers, police departments across the country are collecting unprecedented amounts of information about Americans. They’re using images from bridge crossings, GPS data, facial recognition, smart video motion recognition, license-plate readers, camera networks and other technology to create or expand surveillance hubs on a citywide or regional level.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is deeply interested in the emerging technologies that could revolutionize policing – and how the public is monitored by the government. Our team of reporters and producers – Andrew Becker, Matt Drange, Amanda Pike, G.W. Schulz and Ali Winston – will work with CIR editors to uncover this issue, from California’s Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C., and local communities.

Here’s what you’ll get for subscribing: ✓ Access to exclusive online discussions with the reporters and behind-the-scenes stories. The Intercept. To Promote the Progress? | A critical look at intellectual property and technology policy. 3D Printer | Exploring the world of 3D printing. Adam Steinbaugh's | Blog About Law and Technology. Green Is The New Red — Activism Is Not Terrorism. When I received this collection of comics, I had to drop everything and read all of them. Liberator is a series about young vigilantes who go above the law (and go underground) to rescue animals from vivisection labs, dogfighting rings, and anywhere else they are abused.

What I love about the series is that it presents a counter-narrative to the political reality of “eco-terrorism.” The comics are of course fictitious. But they are also grounded in radical activism, drawing inspiration from groups like the Animal Liberation Front. The Spanish translation of Green Is the New Red received an excellent review in “Filosofía Hoy,” a very well-respected magazine in Spain.

I love the image as well! Los Verdes Somos Los Nuevos Rojos was published by Plaza y Valdes. Kentucky is the latest state to consider “ag-gag” legislation, which would make it illegal to photograph animal cruelty on farms and slaughterhouses. Mashable asked me to respond to the NSA’s address at TED 2014. UCS: Independent Science, Practical Solutions | Union of Concerned Scientists. Techdirt. TorrentFreak - Breaking File-sharing, Copyright and Privacy News.

TechCrunch - The latest technology news and information on startups. TreeHugger | Your source for green design & living news, commentary and advice. Plankton Chronicles. The Intercept. ProPublica. ALEC Exposed. Progressive Policies Win at the Ballot Box Ballot measures across the country passed on November 8th highlighting the fact that progressive values still resonate with the U.S. electorate. Gains were made even in the face of industry deception and big dollar ad campaigns. In a victory for climate activists and solar energy, Floridians voted down Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment which would have made it hard for people with solar panels to sell energy back to the grid. Read the rest of this item here. Kochs Battle Dark Money Disclosure in South Dakota The Koch network mobilized in South Dakota to defeat the "South Dakota Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act," a state-wide initiative on the ballot November 8.

The anti-corruption measure, Initiated Measure 22 or IM-22, was launched by a bipartisan group called the South Dakotans for Integrity and put on the ballot with signatures from over 20,000 state residents. TorrentFreak - Breaking File-sharing, Copyright and Privacy News. Rick Falkvinge, Author at TorrentFreak. For teenagers today, the copyright monopoly is something that the establishment uses to punish them for enjoying culture and science, to censor their protests and voices, and to prevent their art from reaching an audience. As these people grow older and come into policymaking positions, at what point will they… Throughout the debate on sharing culture and knowledge in violation of the copyright monopoly, one question keeps popping up.

But it's not a question as much as an insult to all artists. Copyright monopolists insist on the idea of controlling the fruits of other people's labor, such as when other people copy a particular file. This attitude is offensive, insulting, and antithetical to a free market. When I founded the Swedish Pirate Party and decided to change the political landscape of the copyright monopoly, I frequently told reporters that the plan was to change Sweden, Europe, and the world - in that order.

Schneier on Security. Bruce Schneier | Wired Opinion. Krebs on Security. The Citizen Lab - University of Toronto. Sacbee. Juan Cole: Real Petraeus Failure Was Counterinsurgency in Iraq, Afghanistan. Emptywheel. Bruce Schneier - Authors. Energy. Energy and Climate News | InsideClimate News. Reinventing Sex Culture. SUSIEBRIGHT.COM. Violet blue - author | journalist | editor | advisor | educator | agitator. Hobo Stripper. The Sex Myth.

Sex Work Activists, Allies, and You. The Naked Anthropologist · Dr Laura Agustín on Migration, Sex work, Trafficking and the Rescue Industry. Anne G. Sabo. New porn by women. Feminisnt. Dr Brooke Magnanti. Ecowhore. Ocean Science. Deep-Sea News. Oceanbites | The latest oceanography literature, explained. Science News. GLOBAL ANIMAL: Daily Animal Connection, From Pets To Wildlife. ProPublica.

My Best Sources on the Environment

Marco.org. Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism. Accidental Tech Podcast. TidBITS: Apple news for the rest of us. Techdirt. OpenCryptoChip – Open Crypto Project. The Layer Cake Architecture Picture ¶ Use Cases ¶ RPKI/DNSSEC Signing Transport VPNs Routers and TCP/AO Email Federations, Identity Systems, SSO etc Password Stretching & HMAC:ing PGP and SSH Keys on a Stick High Quality Entropy Randomness A Communications Terminal Doing One Thing Well, Like Jabber w/o X11 HSM for Pond, OTR identity keys, ssh private keys, etc.

(i.e. key gen, store, import/export non X.509 packages) Password management Basic Functions of Crypto Chip ¶ Key Generation Key Storage Key Wrap Key Unwrap Hash Sign M of N Sign Verify Signature Encrypt Decrypt KDFs, e.g. Password Stretching (a la PBKDF2) Random (RO + noisy diode?) Key wrapping ¶ We need to support key wrapping. Things we Should Try To Do, Even if we Can't Do Them Perfectly ¶ Tamper Protection (wipe on signal, suggest detectors, suggest potting features) Side Channel Attack Reduction Security Goals and Documentation ¶ Agreement Specification Development Platform ¶ The Bunnie laptop Novena. TerasIC DE0-Nano board. Cory Doctorow. TorrentFreak - Breaking File-sharing, Copyright and Privacy News. Glenn Greenwald on security and liberty | Comment is free. Glenn Greenwald (ggreenwald)

Hullabaloo. Richard A. Clarke.

Laura Poitras

Juan Cole.