feed on feeds - 2018/09/04 - items 0 to 15

The Wikimedia Foundation has sounded a stark warning against a copyright reform proposal in Europe that's due to be voted on by the European Parliament next week. From a report: In the post, also emailed to TechCrunch, Maria Sefidari Huici, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, writes: "Next week, the European Parliament will decide how information online is shared in a vote that will significantly affect how we interact in our increasingly connected, digital world. We are in the last few moments of what could be our last opportunity to define what the Internet looks like in the future. The next wave of proposed rules under consideration by the European Parliament will either permit more innovation and growth, or stifle the vibrant free web that has allowed creativity, innovation, and collaboration to thrive. This is significant because copyright does not only affect books and music, it profoundly shapes how people communicate and create on the internet for years to come." Backers of the reform proposals argue they will help European creatives be fairly recompensed for their work. But critics argue the proposals are not balanced and will chill the creative freedoms of web users to share and comment on content online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Xi Jinping hosts high-level meeting of African leaders and promises no strings attached to more financing.

Six killed and a dozen wounded as demonstrations escalate over abysmal government services in the southern province.

The siblings, who went into hiding twice to escape deportation, lived in the Netherlands for 10 years.

Definition's full adoption will 'not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel', party spokesperson says.

The last build of the full version of NetNewsWire, before the sale to Black Pixel, was 3.3.2. I’ve learned that lots of people still use it!

I was considering publishing the source on GitHub and/or making a 3.4 build that strips out the Esellerate and Google Reader syncing parts.

So I sent the code to Daniel Jalkut, who quickly hacked at it and got it running and sent it back to me.

And then I ran it too — and quickly realized a few things:

It has lots of bugs. Bugs that would be difficult to fix without rearchitecting critical parts.
It uses WebView a ton, which is deprecated, and replacing use of WebView with the new WKWebView would not get us the results we want. (The Combined View wouldn’t survive, for one thing.)
It would be an attractive nuisance — some people would focus on this while I’d rather the focus be on NetNewsWire 5. I care about history, but not at the expense of the future.

I might still make a build of NetNewsWire Lite 4.0 available. That code base is not just newer than 3.3.2, it’s just plain way better.

(It was the start of my never-completed NetNewsWire 4 rewrite. NetNewsWire Lite 4, when it shipped, had zero known bugs, and just one known bug within a couple weeks. It was a good app. With modern tools I bet I could find more bugs pretty easily, though.)

But it’s still not nearly as good as the code I’m working on now. (Which should be no surprise — it’s years later, and I’m a better developer.)

Samsung will unveil details of a foldable smartphone later this year, the CEO of its mobile division told CNBC, amid rumors that such a device was in the works. From the report: DJ Koh said that "it's time to deliver" on a foldable device after consumer surveys carried out by Samsung showed that there is a market for that kind of handset. Speaking to CNBC, Koh was tight-lipped on how the folding screen could work but ran through the design thinking of the upcoming smartphone, particularly how Samsung is trying to differentiate the experience from a tablet once it is unfolded. "You can use most of the uses ... on foldable status. But when you need to browse or see something, then you may need to unfold it. But even unfolded, what kind of benefit does that give compared to the tablet? If the unfolded experience is the same as the tablet, why would they (consumers) buy it?," Koh said at the IFA electronics show in Berlin last week. Further reading: Samsung Plans To Overhaul Its Smartphone Strategy at the Mid-range Price Point.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least dozens of people have received an email from Google informing them that the internet giant responded to a request from the FBI demanding the release of user data, news outlet Motherboard reported Tuesday, citing several people who claimed to have received the email. The email did not specify whether Google released the requested data to the FBI. From the report: The unusual notice appears to be related to the case of Colton Grubbs, one of the creators of LuminosityLink, a $40 remote access tool (or RAT), that was marketed to hack and control computers remotely. Grubs pleaded guilty last year to creating and distributing the hacking tool to hundreds of people. Several people on Reddit, Twitter, and on HackForums, a popular forum where criminals and cybersecurity enthusiast discuss and sometimes share hacking tools, reported receiving the email. [...] The email included a legal process number. When Motherboard searched for it within PACER, the US government's database for court cases documents, it showed that it was part of a case that's still under seal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Donors promise millions more for Africa's Lake Chad, but will it be enough for a region beset by violence, famine and climate change?

The largest U.S. telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix, according to new research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bloomberg: The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by about 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services are being throttled when and by whom, in what likely is the single largest running study of its kind. Among U.S. wireless carriers, YouTube is the No. 1 target of throttling, where data speeds are slowed, according to the data. Netflix's video streaming service, Amazon.com's Prime Video and the NBC Sports app have been degraded in similar ways, according to David Choffnes, one of the study's authors who developed the Wehe app. From January through early May, the app detected "differentiation" by Verizon Communications Inc. more than 11,100 times, according to the study. This is when a type of traffic on a network is treated differently than other types of traffic. Most of this activity is throttling. AT&T Inc. did this 8,398 times and it was spotted almost 3,900 times on the network of T-Mobile US and 339 times on Sprint's network, the study found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UN mission in Libya says rival militias in the capital agree to end all hostilities and to reopen Mitiga airport.

Laser-guided missile transfer to Saudi Arabia stopped amid increasing concerns for slain Yemeni civilians.

An anonymous reader writes: Google today launched Chrome 69 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Android, and iOS, just a few days after the browser's 10-year anniversary. The release includes a new design, more powerful omnibox, updated password manager, more accurate autofill, plenty of developer-specific changes, and a slew of security improvements. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater, download it directly from google.com/chrome, or grab it from Google Play and Apple's App Store.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Medium is deprecating custom domains. Owning your own content means the ability to use your own domain, so you’re not locked in to a specific service.

Confirmation of Trump's nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, could solidify a hard-right majority on the country's highest court.