Edward Snowden did NOT lie: Michael Green responds to Kevin Ryan Kevin Ryan Has Unfairly Smeared Edward Snowden January 5, 2014 Kevin Ryan’s recent article, “Flirting with Sauron: The Risks of Trusting the Snowden Story” seriously and unfairly tarnishes the integrity of a likely hero, wrongly calling Edward Snowden a liar. By first misreading and then altering a Guardian quote from Snowden, Ryan claims falsely to have caught Snowden in a flagrant lie. Ryan then (mis)uses that “lie” to impugn and impeach Snowden’s credibility, effectively implicating Snowden as a co-conspirator or principal in Greenwald’s ostensibly shady self-serving dealings with Paypal billionaire Pierre Omidyar.Ryan’s article presents no new facts or insights about Glenn Greenwald’s questionable behavior, nor any legitimate basis for linking Edward Snowden to Greenwald’s putative misbehavior in any way except as its victim. Kevin Ryan owes Edward Snowden a public apology. Ryan wrote: It was originally reported that the number of documents Snowden had stolen was in the thousands.
The Internet’s Own Boy: Film on Aaron Swartz Captures Late Activist’s Struggle for Online Freedom This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City TV in Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest festival for independent cinema in the United States. Today, we spend the hour with the people involved in an incredible documentary that just had its world premiere here yesterday. AARON SWARTZ: I mean, I, you know, feel very strongly that it’s not enough to just live in the world as it is, to just kind of take what you’re given and, you know, follow the things that adults told you to do and that your parents told you to do and that society tells you to do. AMY GOODMAN: That was Aaron Swartz in his early twenties. In 2010, Aaron Swartz became a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Now, despite promises of reform, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act used to charge Swartz remains unchanged. REP. SEN. TAREN STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: I don’t think anybody really thought that SOPA could be beaten. [break] ROBERT SWARTZ: Yeah.
Aitzaz Hasan Aitzaz Hasan[2] (Urdu: اعتزاز حسن) was a Pakistani school boy from Hangu District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province who sacrificed his life while preventing a suicide bomber from entering his school of 2,000 students at Ibrahimzai village of Hangu, on January 6, 2014.[3] Aitzaz's action to save his classmates captured the hearts of many in Pakistan, and he was hailed as a national hero.[4] For his act, the office of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has advised President Mamnoon Husain to confer Aitzaz Hasan with the high civil award of Sitara-e-Shujaat (Star of Bravery) by the Government of Pakistan.[1][5] Life[edit] Aitzaz Hasan was the son of Mujahid Ali.[6] His family included his mother, brother and two sisters. Aitzaz Hasan was a 9th grader at the Ibrahimzai high school. Death[edit] According to other accounts, Aitzaz was on his way to school when he spotted a suspicious person. Aitzaz died in the hospital.[7] No other students were harmed. [edit] Awards and honours[edit]
Aaron Swartz's Open-Source Whistleblower Project Lives On Aaron Swartz speaking at a Stop SOPA/PIPA rally in January 2012 (Photo: Flickr / Creative Commons / gilly youner)Freedom of the Press Foundation will carry forward the work of the DeadDrop project, the "open-source whistleblower submission system originally coded by the late transparency advocate Aaron Swartz," the organization announced Tuesday. FPF, which advocates for transparent and aggressive journalism to hold government accountable, will take over the system Swartz developed in collaboration with Wired investigative reporter Kevin Poulsen, and support media outlets that wish to use the program, which has been renamed 'SecureDrop.' "By installing SecureDrop, news organizations around the world can securely accept documents from whistleblowers, while better protecting their sources’ anonymity," Trevor Timm and Rainey Reitman announced in a blog post for the organization. When Swartz passed away, the project was nearly completed.
Aitzaz Hasan Dies A Hero After Saving Classmates From Suicide Bomber Aitzaz Hasan, a teenage student from a remote town in North Western Pakistan, died this week as he saved his fellow classmates from a suicide bomber. Police say he died this week trying to stop the suicide bomber from attacking his school in the country’s “violence-prone northwest.” Local police official, Raheem Khan, said the event took place on Monday in a remote village in Hangu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, a teacher at the school told investigators that he saw Hasan chasing the attacker before seeing the attacker detonate the bomb that killed them both. Officials believe that the target was in fact the school’s morning assembly of about 450 students according to ABC News. Habib Ali, a senior teacher at the school said, “I saw Aitzaz trying to get hold of a guy and then there was a big explosion. Today, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, recommended Aitzaz Hasan for the highest civil award for bravery. [Image via BBC News]
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Swartz From left to right: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Swartz Today I want to tell you three American stories. The first story is about one of the most celebrated American entrepreneurs of all time – Steve Jobs. When Jobs was a young adult he and his friend Steve Wozniak started a business centered around an innovative piece of technology. This piece of technology was called a Blue Box. A Blue Box is a device that allows a user to hack phone networks to materially benefit by making free long distance phone calls. Their experience from their Blue Box business both in managing operations and manufacturing electronics would prove useful as they started another business a short time later called Apple Computer, now Apple Inc. Upon Jobs’ death he was revered as one of America’s greatest businessmen and it all started with the Blue Box. The second story is about one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the moment – Mark Zuckerberg. Three stories, different yet the same.
American Healthcare Debate Misses the Mark Gibson writes: "The real healthcare debate in this country shouldn't be focused on insurance, but on the fundamental causes of the outrageous costs of healthcare and why even basic health insurance is unaffordable for millions of Americans." By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News 04 January 14 he real healthcare debate in this country shouldn’t be focused on insurance, but on the fundamental causes of the outrageous costs of healthcare and why even basic health insurance is unaffordable for millions of Americans. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an improvement over the status quo. Health insurers can no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, young adults can stay insured on their parents’ plans until they’re 26, and some states have chosen to expand Medicaid under the ACA. In the last 50 years, American healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP tripled from 6 percent in 1960 to 18 percent in 2010.
What Is RSS December 18, 2002 RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. A brief history But coders beware. In the meantime, a third, non-commercial group split off and designed a new format based on what they perceived as the original guiding principles of RSS 0.90 (before it got simplified into 0.91). What a mess. So which one do I use? That's 7 -- count 'em, 7! What does RSS look like? Simple, right?