Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes? Slashdotby EditorDavid on censorship at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 19, 2019, 11:05 pm)

A senior policy analyst from a non-partisan national security think tank -- and one of their cybersecurity policy fellows -- sound a dire warning in an op-ed shared by Slashdot reader schwit1: From facial recognition software to GPS trackers to computer hacking tools to systems that monitor and redirect flows of Internet traffic, contemporary surveillance technologies enable "high levels of social control at a reasonable cost," as Nicholas Wright puts it in Foreign Affairs. But these technologies don't just aid and enable what Wright and other policy analysts have called "digital authoritarianism." They also promote a sovereign and controlled model of the Internet, one characterized by frequent censorship, pervasive surveillance and tight control by the state. The United States could be a world leader in preventing the spread of this Internet model, but to do so, we must reevaluate the role U.S. companies play in contributing to it.... On one hand, the United States cares deeply about protecting a global and open Internet... On the other hand, American companies are selling surveillance technology that undermines this mission -- contributing to the broader spread of digital authoritarianism that the United States claims to fight. (This also implicates allies such as Britain, whose companies have also sold surveillance technology to oppressive regimes.) We won't be able to allay this situation until the United States updates its approach to exporting surveillance technology. Of course, this must be done carefully. But digital authoritarianism is spreading, and U.S. companies need to stop helping it.-

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Impossible missions? The UN in Yemen and Syria AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 11:00 pm)

UN officials and a German diplomat reflect on efforts to end conflict in Syria and Yemen and provide humanitarian aid.
Women's March 2019: Thousands march across US for third year AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 11:00 pm)

Women and supporters across the US march against Trump amid government shutdown and controversy within the movement.
Trump to offer deal to end shutdown; Democrats call it inadequate AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 11:00 pm)

US president set to offer deal to end a partial government shutdown, now in its 29th day.
'I Got Death Threats For Writing a Bad Review of Aquaman' Slashdotby EditorDavid on movies at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 19, 2019, 10:05 pm)

The Huffington Post recently published a post by one of the 300 members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association -- and a contributing writer to Variety. I saw "Aquaman" on a brisk Monday morning in December. Though I appreciated that star Jason Momoa didn't take himself too seriously while playing an underwater superhero, the glut of CGI effects distracted me from the story. Which was hollow and nonsensical anyway. As with every movie I watch -- up to four a week, hundreds a year -- I expressed my opinion in print and online for Us Weekly, as well as my own site, MaraMovies.com. The review was also linked on Rotten Tomatoes, where I'm a Top Critic. Since I had a lot of films on my busy holiday schedule, I quickly moved on. Hundreds of men who read my review did not.... [Example comment: "I will kill your mom, dad and friends Bcoz I want [you] to regret for what u did. I have your address and details about your family members." I reported the messages to Instagram and was rebuffed because, per the automated response, the vitriol didn't "violate community guidelines." Didn't matter. They found me on Facebook and Twitter, too.... Nearly 2,000 people "liked" a post in which some guy made a collage of my face and a few negative reviews.... I wasn't scared by the threats as I much as I was disheartened. One guy summed it up when he messaged me: "How many of us are you going to block? There are thousands of us." Ironically, the review wasn't all negative. It called Aquaman "the first live-action D.C. Comics movie in which a superhero actually appears to be having fun. Batman, Superman, the Suicide Squad, even our beloved Wonder Woman tend to behave as if they just lost their 401(k) savings during the apocalypse." Yet rifing on the critic's last name, one commenter still wrote "hope another Holocaust happens." Instead of "thousands" of angry fans, it could just be hundreds who are using multiple accounts. But there's a larger issue. "I worry that reading volumes of hate mail is starting to get in my head and cause me to consider the potential angry male ramifications while I'm writing my reviews, thereby compromising my integrity."

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52 al-Shabab fighters killed in Somalia airstrike: US military AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 10:00 pm)

The strike was in response to a raid near Kismayo earlier on Saturday, which left eight Somali soldiers dead.
France: 'Yellow vests' protest despite Macron's grand debate AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 10:00 pm)

Tens of thousands took to the streets for 10th weekend of protests against French government amid anger over taxes.
Larry Lessig Will Headline Friday's 'Grand Re-opening of the Public Domain' Event Slashdotby EditorDavid on eff at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 19, 2019, 9:05 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes the Internet Archive's blog Please join us for a Grand Re-opening of the Public Domain, featuring a keynote address by Creative Commons' founder, Lawrence Lessig, on January 25, 2019. Co-hosted by the Internet Archive and Creative Commons, this celebration will feature legal thought leaders, lightning talks, demos, and the chance to play with these new public domain works. The event will take place at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.... Join the creative, legal, library, and advocacy communities plus an amazing lineup of people who will highlight the significance of this new class of public domain works. Presenters include Larry Lessig, political activist and Harvard Law professor; Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and co-editor of Boing Boing; Pam Samuelson, copyright scholar; and Jamie Boyle, the man who literally wrote the book on the public domain, and many others. Attendees will also receive a discount on the world premiere of DJ Spooky's Quantopia: The Evolution of the Internet, a live concert commissioned by the Internet Archive "synthesizing data and art, both original and public domain materials, in tribute to the depth and high stakes of free speech and creative expression involved in our daily use of media."

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GitHub Seeks Feedback on 'Open Source Sustainability' Slashdotby EditorDavid on opensource at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 19, 2019, 8:04 pm)

Devon Zuegel, "a developer with a passion for governance and economics," recently became GitHub's open source product manager to "support maintainers in cultivating vital, productive communities" -- specifically open source software (OSS). Thursday they put out a call for feedback from open source developers about their contribution hours, their projects, and especially their issues: As the OSS community has grown in scale and importance, the way we think about working together has to evolve, too. What works in a village or a town needs to evolve to serve a metropolis. Open source has grown from a small, academic sharing network to a giant, global web of dependencies. It now forms the backbone of the internet and technology in general. Just like any growing city, we have to coordinate the knowledge, infrastructure, and tools for the good of the whole community. OSS is an essential and special part of software development. OSS has also been the heart of GitHub since the beginning. However, there is so much more we could do to support the people behind it. I have many ideas, but first I want to hear from you. The essay argues OSS maintainers and contributors "don't have all the tools, support, and environment they need to succeed," including analytics, communication resources, recognition and "proportionate incentive to contribute time and money to creating and maintaining projects." (As well as deficiencies in both governance and mentorship.) And at the bottom of the blog post, there's a contact form. "I want you to be part of the conversation and our roadmap. These challenges are nuanced, and they are unique to each project and community, so it's crucial that we have an open dialogue as we focus on helping you address them."

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'Not afraid of the government': One month of protests in Sudan AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 8:00 pm)

The current wave of anti-government protests has become the longest since Sudan gained independence in 1956.
Scores of migrants unaccounted for after boat capsizes off Libya AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 8:00 pm)

Three rescued migrants say up to 117 others were on board dinghy that capsized, 93km northeast of Tripoli.
Rust 1.32.0 Stable Release Includes New Debugging Macro, 'Quality of Life' Improveme Slashdotby EditorDavid on programming at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 19, 2019, 7:05 pm)

An anonymous reader summarizes the changes in Thursday's release of Rust 1.32.0 stable: "Quality of life" improvements include a new dbg macro to easily print values for debugging without having to use a println statement. For example, dbg!(x); prints the filename and line number, as well as the variable's name and value, to stderr (rather than to standard output). Making it even more useful, the macro also returns the value of what it's debugging -- even all the boolean values returned by each execution of an if-then statement. Rust macros can now match literals of any type (string, numeric, char) -- and the 2018 edition of Rust also allows ? for matching zero or one repetitions of a pattern. In addition, all integral numeric primitives now provide conversion functions to and from byte-arrays with specified endianness.

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Two podcasts Scripting News(cached at January 19, 2019, 7:03 pm)

I took a longish walk this morning up to Zabar's and back, and listened to two podcasts on the way, Friday's Daily and last week's Radio Open Source. The Daily was about the splintering of the Women's March along racial lines. They discussed the issues that the march stood for, all of them women's issues, but they didn't get my perspective, and I marched, so I feel I'm entitled to an opinion. I didn't mind that they called it the Women's March, but I felt it was a march by everyone who was opposed to Trump. I was unhappy when they didn't let people who are anti-abortion speak (I am pro-choice btw). And it was totally predictable, based on experience in the antiwar movement of the 60s and 70s, that they would splinter and drift into irrelevance, taking our hopes of organizing against Trump with them.

The Radio Open Source episode was about the Green New Deal and our hero AOC. I am a huge fan of the podcast, and I have the same comment about this episode as I do about every one. What people want is meaning in their lives. That's why it's brilliant that AOC included the idea that any American can get a public service job helping America transition to the new energy system. Why is it so exciting? Because people want to make a difference, we all want our lives to mean something. Otherwise everything in the show was illuminating, as always, lots of new facts about solar and wind energy, and a general optimism which is what I enjoy most about the show.

Yemen's war: No agreement reached in prisoner swap deal in Jordan AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 7:00 pm)

Three days of talks between the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels in the Jordanian capital, Amman, end in failure with both sides accusing the other of lying.
Rifts and absences overshadow 'failed' Arab summit in Beirut AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 19, 2019, 7:00 pm)

Qatar and Mauritania to join Arab economic summit, but Palestinian and Egyptian presidents pull out at the last minute.