Новости за 13.02.2016

Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw some great stuff. David Guetta suggested "beating" piracy by embracing free music; Neil Gaiman explained how he went from fearing piracy to believing it's incredibly good; the Khan Academy was moving to leverage the power of BitTorrent; and a study from the Japanese government showed that anime piracy might be boosting sales.

But, on the flipside, we saw even more awful stuff. One rapper sued multiple companies for giving him lots of... Читать дальше...

My criteria for the projects in these posts is simple: I look for things that make me say "hey, that's pretty awesome," whether or not I'm entirely sure if they need to exist. But once in a while something makes me say "hey, that's really awesome" even though it definitely doesn't "need" to exist, and the Ming Micro 8-bit video synthesizer is one of those cases.

This isn't a huge surprise, but the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal -- which is a sort of extremely weak, "oversight" board charged with making sure that the GCHQ isn't violating the law, but which has no real powers over GCHQ and has a history of supporting its spying, has now said that the GCHQ's hacking of computers, networks and phones is perfectly fine.

This was in response to a challenge mounted by Privacy International. The IPT was not too concerned about GCHQ spying, and even... Читать дальше...

The government has made one last attempt to screw over a victim of an IRS bank account seizure. The screwing began in December of 2014, when the IRS -- despite stating it would not perform forfeitures if there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing -- lifted $107,000 from convenience store owner Lyndon McLellan. This was yet another one of the IRS's "structuring" cases, predicated solely on the fact that multiple deposits under $10,000 were made. ($10,000 triggers automatic reporting to the federal... Читать дальше...

If you haven't planned a romantic Valentine's Day yet, you still have a bit of time left. But if you're not at all interested in this pink and red commercial holiday, then just think about the discounted chocolates you can snag on the 15th. Don't just sit home alone, though, check out these links and appreciate that, in the grand scheme of things, almost anything that's possible has a chance of happening -- and try to stay romantic somehow.

• In 1788, medical students in London discovered... Читать дальше...

In 1998, Congress passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), which placed a ban on taxing internet access. The bill was temporary, and every few years had to be extended by Congress to stop attempts to add taxes to the cost of your internet access. For a long time, there's been a push to make the ITFA permanent, and Congress finally did that yesterday, when the Senate approved such a bill (the House approved its version last summer). As Senator Ron Wyden noted in response to this passing, this inevitably... Читать дальше...

It's still somewhat strange to me to see how badly some companies react to basic competition. Yes, sometimes that means companies lose, but it doesn't automatically make any and all competition unfair. An online map company, StreetMap.Eu sued Google a few years ago, claiming that Google's entrance into the online mapping world, and specifically including maps in search results, was unfair competition. However, the UK High Court has now, rightfully, rejected such a claim. The basis of the ruling seemed rather straightforward... Читать дальше...