10.31.13
Posted in Deception, Google at 8:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Famous staff, lowered credibility
By Вени Марковски
Summary: US-based Internet giants which openly deceive the public when it comes to privacy should not be trusted; without freedom-respecting and secure hosting there will always be surveillance
TECHRIGHTS has been anything but a Google critic. However, when there is pretence and deception we should be honest and balanced enough to expand our scope and deal with GNU/Linux backers critically where they deserve it.
This Halloween it is reported that there is exceptionally high demand for masks bearing Edward Snowden’s face. He sure helped change the way many of us view the world, and not just the digital world (although most of the documents he leaked address digital means of surveillance). NSA access to Microsoft stuff (all of people’s data at Microsoft) is almost automatically implied, as Microsoft was the first company in the PRISM program and perhaps its main facilitator. Snowden showed documents that support these facts. There is no room for spin and no need for speculation; the raw material also eliminates bias that could be attributed to some reporters and their trustworthiness. Putting Microsoft aside (it’s the biggest violator of privacy), Google and Yahoo! are in the news right now [1,2] because it is shown that the NSA secretly accessed Yahoo and Google datacentres. That’s useful to know. This means that there is yet another reason never to host any sensitive data in the United States and by extension it would be unwise to work with north American Internet companies. They cannot guarantee privacy at all. Amazon, a CIA partner, even makes it very explicit in its terms of agreement.
“NSA access to Microsoft stuff (all of people’s data at Microsoft) is almost automatically implied, as Microsoft was the first company in the PRISM program and perhaps its main facilitator.”The NSA is not protecting the United States. It does the very opposite. It is destroying the reputation of many strong companies with talented people (hired from all over the world). The NSA is trying to save its own reputation by gagging critics [3], but the crimes speak for themselves and the Swedish Pirate Party accuses the NSA is treating Merkel (head of Europe’s largest economy) like she is a terrorist or a paedophile [4]. Well, here in Manchester some acquaintances of mine are organising a CryptoParty [5], helping people to avoid snooping from the NSA and its British offshoots (at least two are known) which spy on Europe.
It’s hard to escape surveillance when giants like Google and Yahoo won’t tell the truth. They give a false sense of security/privacy. It really boils down to trust and this is why Techrights is hosted by CoPilotCo, which is managed by a guy who is very serious about security. He guards the hardware. He even does Bitcoin Secure Hosting. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
-
The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.
By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.
-
-
-
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Site News at 8:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Author: Ronny Siegel
Summary: Techrights is moving to Drupal now that WordPress introduces back doors as part of the core package
Techrights was always a WordPress-based Web site. I have been with the WordPress for nearly a decade and I met its co-founder (Mike Little) for coffee about 8 years ago, back when I was more actively involved in the development side. That was around the time this Web site started. It used WordPress 2.0 for quite a few years (and since the very start) because this version was a long-term support release (as required for inclusion in Debian GNU/Linux software respositories). Contrary to some smears and lies, Techrights never got cracked in any way whatsoever. It’s build very securely and only DDOS attacks took it down. Around 2009 there was an upgrade which resulted in very little change to the site’s appearance as consistency was a priority. In response to DDOS attacks it also added a cache proxy and more CPU cores. To the outsider (visitor), this site today looks very similar to how it looked 7 years ago. But this aging look makes it less suitable for its breadth. In fact, a blogging platform was outgrown when we added a Wiki (later in the same year) and now we deal with issues of organisational nature. WordPress has just had a release with automatic updates [1,2] (security risk in itself, but it’s toggled off by default, for now) and there is already a bugfix release [3], which in many cases will get installed automatically even though it has no security-related fixes. This can be risky if the update mechanism gets hijacked (as has happened before to other companies). Governments can compel companies to misuse this mechanism or secretly take over it* in order to install Trojan horses in the background (targeting particular sites). In any event, automatic updates come with risks that are backdoor-like; Drupal, a European project, does not have this issue, at least not yet. The front page of this site is now Drupal-powered and it is a sign of things to come. The plan is — one way or another — to make Drupal the primary component of the site without disrupting or even changing the old pages. The transition can be slow, but we’re determined to make it happen. █
____
* The NSA is good at covert action and Automattic would be easy pickings for it, not just because it’s US-based (packets can be sniffed and decrypted for passwords). While I have enormous trust and respect for Matt Mullenweg, who is a charming man of integrity, I very much doubt he can challenge his government technically and legally. An intervention-free remote update mechanism is a trade-off between security and so-called ‘national security’ (the oppressors’ power). Remember that WordPress got backdoored once before (core — not plugins — in version 2.1.1). Linux too was a victim, a few years earlier (it was developed and hosted in the United States at the time). The very existence of backdoor-like mechanism is begging to be abused. Experience teaches that it does get abused, and far more often than most of us choose to believe. The more subversive sites become, the bigger a target they become for authorities’ ‘legalised’ cracking teams.
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
The WordPress team has announced the release of version 3.7 which makes WordPress more secure. The release is named “Basie” in honor of Count Basie.
-
-
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Servers at 7:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo by Avinash Kaushik (Googleplex)
Summary: Addressing claims that GNU/Linux and Free software in general are neither efficient nor suitable for old hardware
THERE is an ongoing online debate about GNU/Linux as a remedy/recovery plan for old PCs; those who deem it unfit for old computers (no link, intentionally, but there is a rebuttal in [1]) are totally ignoring the many distributions which are specifically created and optimised so as to help revive old PCs. Some, like the Raspberry Pi, are doing exceptionally well [2-6] with very little. There is no need for massive computers to perform simple tasks. A lot of people use computers for very light activity (like Web surfing) with just one active application actually running. It’s a trend. Even Intel is now surrendering to the trend [7], embracing its rival out of desperation perhaps (Atom was a big failure). Microsoft and Apple, two companies that rely on x86 and inefficient machines (Apple is routinely shamed by Greenpeace for being one of the dirtiest companies in the planet alongside Microsoft [1, 2]), are arguing over who’s responsible for draining batteries so quickly [8] and we are constantly reminded of the urgency of energy efficiency [9] because solutions/alternatives do exist these days [10,11].
“Cooperation reduces other sorts of waste, too.”When it comes to natural resources, there is a limit. They are all finite (some less than others, e.g. sun rays and winds), so we should stop assuming infinite expansion of everything (including Moore’s/Intel’s silly ‘law’ [12], which assumes we can magically redefine or bend atoms’ size). We are in this energy-wasting mess right now because greedy oil tycoons and economists don't seem to grasp scarcity, especially in a lifetime’s worth/timespan.
For those who are “green”-conscious, Free software should become a thing to embrace and to spread. Cooperation reduces other sorts of waste, too. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Even on old hardware, GNU/Linux idles like every other desktop OS since i386. Really. PCs are much faster than humans and sit in a looping state checking for stuff to do until the human makes another click some milliseconds apart. In a millisecond, an old PC with a single or dual-core CPU can do millions of operations. It’s not that hard to do IT and keep ahead of humans if you are that fast. Further, modern hard drives run ~100-200 MB/s and the old ones slog at 40 MB/s, not that different if you’ve just clicked on an icon or link. A lot of what we do is out on the Internet where a click takes a few tenths of a second to get anything done and many transactions take ~1s.
-
This week our friends at OpenERP have launched their own crowdfunding campaign for a retail Point of Sale solution, based on our favourite little computer – the Raspberry Pi, and some other bits of hardware.
-
It is fair to say that the Raspberry Pi is a success. I love them, you love them, the whole world loves them. It has reminded the rest of the computing world that the UK – and Cambridge especially – has a proud computing heritage.
-
-
It was recently announced that the Raspberry Pi (RPi) has sold 1.75 million units in the 1.5 years they have been available. That is seen by most folks as a screaming success. In contrast, the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) has sold about twice as many OLPC units in about 6+ years… yet it is seen by some as a quasi-failure.
-
You might not have noticed that the $35 computer, Raspberry Pi has exceeded 1 million units shipped. Further, they have production volumes cranked up to the point where you can order more than one unit.
-
“It’s huge. Imagine ARM’s most powerful and technologically advanced 64-bits processor built on Intel’s leading-edge fabs. A duo that will be hard to beat,” explains Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.
-
Is it true? Yes. And also no. What PCWorld’s team of mythbusters discovered was that yes, installing Windows on a MacBook Air exhausted its battery far, far quicker than the Mac OS ever could. But when asked to explain themselves, Microsoft executives explained that Apple’s engineers simply weren’t as dedicated as the Windows world.
-
-
The primary complaint against solar power—that it, you know, requires the sun—is perfectly valid. But Arizona’s new Solana Generating Station, the largest capacity solar thermal plant on the face of the Earth, has just provided a $1.4 billion counterpoint. Thanks to its massive molten salt reserves, this plant keeps producing power even after lights out.
-
Vanderbilt University researchers say they have come up with a way to store electricity on a silicon-based supercapacitor that would let mobile phones recharge in seconds and let them continue to operate for weeks without recharging.
The researchers said in a paper that instead of storing energy in chemical reactions the way batteries do, silicon supercapacitors store electricity by assembling ions on the surface of a porous material. As a result, they tend to charge and discharge in minutes, instead of hours, and operate for a few million cycles, instead of a few thousand cycles like batteries, the researchers stated.
-
“The tech industry has been lazy and has depended on Moore’s Law, but once it’s gone they’re going to have to come up with new and different ways to make their products better and faster,” suggested blogger Mike Stone. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t know how they’re going to do that at this point, but I have all the confidence in the world that they will.”
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Action at 5:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Joe Lieberman, Neoliberalist
Summary: Why the press — a free and independent press for that matter — is so vital in exposing corrupt and/or abusive figures of authority
HERE in the UK we are known for prosperity but also for poverty. We have some of the worst economic disparity, by some measures the second worst in the West (second to the United States). The problem is being further acknowledged right now [1] by The Guardian, over two years after we had riots, even right here in Manchester. This undeniable economic disparity was definitely among the causes.
“Revolution” is no longer a scary word for some [1], not even former New York Times journalists. This does not mean forceful or violent revolution but an “Invisible Revolution” that’s based and hinged upon exposing corrupt power structures. This “Invisible Revolution” is actually becoming more visible when those in power want to crush it by hounding [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and spying on journalists (the fourth estate, not to be confused with anti-media propaganda called "Fifth Estate"). I have personally seen — even my relatively short lifetime so far — how the media crushed people in power who had abused their power against powerless citizens who can barely afford a lawyer. Sometimes the media (not corporate media but investigative media) acts a deterrence and silent regulator; people who abuse power or engage in corruption dread the thought of becoming the centre of a attention, embroiled in a scandal in the national or international press; it can destroy their entire career and they know it. This is why we absolutely need to defend the media — the real media, i.e. one that’s not funded by corporations to covertly drive their separate agenda and distract from genuine media.
“We need to name and shame these politicians, which is something that Professor Lessig does very well these days.”The New York Times has a new article (behind paywall or requirement of surveillance by real ID) [3] which shows how politicians get bribed by banks to vote for banks’ interests. We need to name and shame these politicians, which is something that Professor Lessig does very well these days. What we have right now (more so in the US than in the UK) is “neoliberalism” [4], which puts all the political power in the hands of corporations (and those who run them, the plutocrats).
One way to fight all this is to deprive the banks — the facilitators of disparity and the people who bribe politicians — of their power. It can really be accomplished by choosing alternative bartering methods that can prove to be rather rewarding [5] (the banks and their politicians are trying to ban those currencies using new laws, as expected). We need to support sites like Wikileaks using alternatives currencies because, as we came to discover 3 years ago, an illegal financial embargo can be used against them given enough pressure from politicians like Joe Lieberman (who are of course working with the banks, using them for sanctions/vendetta). Centralisation of power and money is something which needs to be dodged. Alternative currencies, alternative media, etc. are becoming ever more vital. We also need an alternative to the Internet, an NSA-free alternative. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Children’s Society finds more than half of UK’s 3m poor children complain of cold and 76% often worry about family finances
-
By the time ruling elites are openly defied, there has already been a nearly total loss of faith in the ideas—in our case free market capitalism and globalization—that sustain the structures of the ruling elites. And once enough people get it, a process that can take years, “the slow, quiet, and peaceful social evolution becomes quick, militant, and violent,” as Berkman wrote. “Evolution becomes revolution.”
[...]
Ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force.
-
“”House aides, when asked why Democrats would vote for this [sell out to Wall Street] even though the Obama administration opposes it, offered a political explanation. Republicans have enough votes to pass it themselves, so vulnerable House Democrats might as well join them, and collect industry money for their campaigns.””
-
-
Bought in 2009, currency’s rise in value saw small investment turn into enough to buy an apartment in a wealthy area of Oslo
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Ubuntu at 5:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo from markshuttleworth.com
Summary: A “Big Brother Award” is being awarded to Mark Shuttleworth, who continues to ignore criticism from a lot of Ubuntu users and public interest groups
A few days ago Muktware said that Canonical’s and Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth had won Austria’s Big Brother Award [1] for liaising with strong CIA partner Amazon (CIA’s surveillance/data-mining platform is being implemented by Amazon). For those who have not been paying attention, the EFF and FSF both denounced Canonical’s deal with Amazon — a deal which help transmit search terms from local search to Amazon and back (that’s when Amazon knows the identity of the searcher). This behaviour is still enabled by default, even in Ubuntu 13.10 [2], so we know that Canonical actively ignores the problem. Canonical employees are trying to challenge the messenger, or the author of the above article (and failing as evidence points against them). To me, personally, this is just a sign of Canonical’s arrogance. They could really use some more competition on the desktop and they deserve to have stronger competition at this stage. Mark Shuttleworth collectively called critics of this malicious features “trolls” and more recently he labeled (as a joke) those who criticise his other decisions as the “Open Source Tea Party”. That’s just insulting, it is not so funny and above all it is divisive (comparing people you do not agree with to zealous GOP backers). Putting aside new derivatives of Ubuntu [3-5], which mostly eliminate the spyware-like behaviour (including the latest Kubuntu that looks decent), there are options such as these freedom-respecting distributions. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Austria’s Big Brother Awards has picked Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth for the coveted Big Brother Award for their online extension to local searches.
Ubuntu has been criticized by Free Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation and many other concerned organizations for adding a new feature in Ubuntu’s Dash which sends all search queries to Canonical servers located in the UK and the US.
-
-
Ubuntu comes in many flavors, and it’s designed for very different kinds of users. Edubuntu 13.10 is an Ubuntu spin for educators. It comes preloaded with quite a selection of education-related applications including some for science and engineering.
-
-
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Content is available under CC-BY-SA