feed on feeds - 2016/07/30 - items 0 to 15

Despite high rates of violence and poverty, Guatemala is consistently in the top 10 of happiest countries globally.

Members of Tunisia's parliament vote Prime Minister Habib Essid out of office some 18 months after his appointment.

Here's the thing about those wi-fi kiosks replacing New York City's public payphones. They're owned by Google/Alphabet company Sidewalk Labs, they're covered with ads, and if you read the privacy policy on its web site, "it's not that one." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from the Observer: Columbia professor Benjamin Read got a big laugh at this weekend's Hackers on Planet Earth XI conference in Manhattan when he pointed out that the privacy policy on LinkNYC's website only applies to the website itself, not to the actual network of kiosks. The web page points out that it has two separate privacy policies in an easily-missed section near the top, and for their real-world kiosks, "They essentially have a privacy policy that says, 'we can collect anything and do anything' and that sets the outer bound'," says New York Civil Liberties Union attorney Mariko Hirose. The Observer reports that the policy "promises not to use facial recognition... however, nothing stops the company from retracting that guarantee. In fact, Hirose said that she's been told by the company that the kiosk's cameras haven't even been turned on yet, but it is also under no obligation to tell the public when the cameras go live." The article concludes that in general the public's sole line of defense is popular outrage, and that privacy policies "have been constructed primarily to guard companies against liability and discourage users from reading closely."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An armed siege in the capital, Yerevan, has led to protests calling for President Serzh Sarkisian to step down.

In 2006, I ran into my old friend John Dvorak in the Apple Store in San Francisco. I asked him to explain secret of his trolling technique. He's built his whole career on trolling.

To my surprise, he laid it out to me, exactly how it works. It's surprisingly simple. And it's exactly what the Republican nominee for President is doing to monopolize the news channel, and cut off the air supply for other candidates and ideas.

If you want to understand the election of 2016, you must watch this video.

PS: See also, Don't feed the Trump.

In 2006, I ran into my old friend John Dvorak in the Apple Store in San Francisco. I asked him to explain secret of his trolling technique. He's built his whole career on trolling.

To my surprise, he laid it out to me, exactly how it works. It's surprisingly simple. And it's exactly what the Republican nominee for President is doing to monopolize the news channel, and cut off the air supply for other candidates and ideas.

If you want to understand the election of 2016, you must watch this video.

PS: See also, Don't feed the Trump.

Authorities say the hot air balloon was carrying at least 16 people when it caught fire and crashed.

eWeek reports that "hundreds of millions of users remain at risk" one year after Joshua Drake discovered the Stagefright Android flaw. Slashdot reader darthcamaro writes: A year ago, on July 27, 2015 news about the Android Stagefright flaw was first revealed with the initial reports claiming widespread impact with a billion users at risk. As it turns out, the impact of Stagefright has been more pervasive...over the last 12 months, Google has patched no less than 115 flaws in Stagefright and related Android media libraries. Joshua Drake, the researcher who first discovered the Stagefright flaw never expected it to go this far. "I expected shoring up the larger problem to take an extended and large effort, but I didn't expect it to be ongoing a year later." Drake believes targeted attacks use Stagefright vulnerabilities on unpatched systems, but adds that Android's bug bounty program appears to be working, paying out $550,000 in its first year.