Apple is redesigning iThings to help companies communicate users' personal data from one to another, and enable them to manipulate users better. This page shows the perverse viewpoint of someone who is on the companies' side and presents this malice as an advance.

They are also now designed to make it harder for victims to keep control of their budgets.

It is a truism that "if you don't pay, you're the product." But now we see that, with proprietary software, you are often the product even if you do pay.

Almost 250 teachers at Boston University have called on the university to divest from fossil fuel companies.

It is clear that conservation measures in Boston University itself will have only a tiny influence on world fossil fuel consumption. In a market system, if A decides not to buy some commodity, the price goes down and B or C buys more. We need to change the parameters of the system itself.

The direct financial effect of divestment by Boston University alone would also be small, but this approach has a better chance to turn into a movement by many universities, and that could intern influence policies to change the parameters.

It appears that the NSA intercepted the Thinkpad keyboard that Andrea Shepard, a Tor developer in Seattle, had ordered from Amazon. Presumably this was to sabotage it. I wonder if people have studied this keyboard to see what the NSA changed.

If you are any sort of activist, don't order a computer by mail yourself. Have a friend order it, after discussing the plan in person with no mobile phones around.

People have called Belarus "Europe's last dictatorship", but Russia has more or less become equal to it.

Regardless of what organizations it may join, Azerbaijan is not in Europe. It is in the Middle East.

The University of Sydney disinvited two Sri Lankan NGOs from an international human rights event, caving to pressure from Sri Lanka's brutal government.