Canada's Internet snooping bill is dead

Canada's terrible proposed spying law, Bill C-30 , is dead. The Harper Tories, who nailed the colours to the mast on the passage of the law, which would have given nearly unlimited access to private electronic communications to law enforcement, government, and random appointed persons, has issued a statement saying they won't reintroduce the bill . It's a humiliating climbdown and it couldn't have happened to a crummier government.

China's Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology gathers info and social media posts of American VIPs and military A small Chinese firm known as Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology has been systematically collecting personal data and crawling social media posts since 2017 for the stated purpose of providing intelligence to Chinese military, government and commercial clients, "according to a copy of the database that was left unsecured on the Internet and retrieved by an […] READ THE REST

7 years later, US court of appeals rules that NSA program leaked by Snowden was illegal after all From The Guardian, where the Snowden revelations were originally published in 2013: Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were […] READ THE REST

Tiny videocamera worn by an insect University of Washington engineers developed a tiny, wireless, and steerable videocamera that can be worn by insects or minuscule micro-robots to stream live video. The device weighs just 248 milligrams. Evan Ackerman writes in IEEE Spectrum: The system was successfully tested on a pair of darkling beetles that were allowed to roam freely outdoors, and […] READ THE REST

The Jamstik lets you practice your guitar skills anytime, anywhere A decent starter electric guitar will often run you about $500 nowadays. If you'd rather learn to play before you dump hundreds into a cool instrument, the Jamstik Guitar Trainer is a brilliant way of turning you into a guitar player without the huge upfront expense. In addition to saving you money, the Jamstik has […] READ THE REST

Ruby on Rails is a coding skill that can get you hired Few programming languages and web frameworks are also intuitive and user-friendly for beginners as Ruby on Rails. Even 15 years after its rollout, a virtual lifetime (or two) in tech terms, Ruby and its most popular framework Rails are still vital and energetic players in the programming world. And with over a million websites built […] READ THE REST