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Fundstücke

Around the web in week 47, 2012

../spider-web.jpg Fundstücke published this week:

Engineering 1984

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While catching up with the nettime mailing list, I came across two articles that give me the creeps.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘It’s been a fact that modern phones are in reality tracking devices that let us make calls, but the idea that awkward citizens might find their phone shut down at the behest of a Government agency is a very worrying thought and not one that fits with democratic principles.’

Around the web in week 44

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Early 2009, I started using Friendfeed as a way to aggregate various sources of web links to share. August that year, Facebook bought FriendFeed, ripped out the innovators, and left the site to bleed to death. (I’m sure it felt less dramatic to the fine folks who built it.)

I’ve had a nagging feeling since, wanting to move away, but (luckily) the great features of their service stayed on air, and (sadly) no real open alternative showed up. But with the 1.6.0 release of tt-rss, my current news reader, came a “share…” bookmarklet, with the lacking piece of the puzzle: a way to inject any web page into a feed of web links to share.

When I suggested what I still missed, the developer almost instantaneously responded, completing the feature for my use case.

Ay caramba, Ubuntu 12.10: Get it right on Amazon!

Ay caramba, Ubuntu 12.10: Get it right on Amazon!:

Another glimpse at the new Ubuntu, and at what makes it awkward. Mr. Shuttleworth has already declared that all your data belong to him …

“Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.”

Silly me, I was thinking I had root over my own computer, and noone else, but apparently I should check the code. And 12.10 includes data-leaking features you need to switch off yourself.