Musings

Shutterstock Using data during election campaigns is nothing new. But as the Canadian federal election approaches, authorities must be diligent that data tracking doesn’t become surveillance. The upcoming Canadian federal election once again raises the spectre of interference and disruption through the misuse and abuse of personal data. More

By Jon Brodkin 8chan and Daily Stormer now both offline as a cloud provider cuts off access. Getty Images | Mario Tama At an interfaith vigil for victims of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which killed 21 people. The suspected terrorist gunman had posted to the website 8chan shortly before the tragedy, prompting Web companies to cut 8chan off. 8chan was able to get back online today despite Cloudflare cutting it off, as operators of the controversial website quickly found a new provider of CDN and DDoS protection services. But as of this writing, 8chan is offline again, apparently as a result of a cloud provider cutting off 8chan's new vendor. More Opinion: Let's shoot the messenger. Yeah, that always works. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Kate Cox - The senators want lawbreaking to come with "serious financial consequences." martince2 | Getty Images You can't send corporate "persons" directly to jail, but you can charge them a lot of money. The Federal Trade Commission's recent $5 billion settlement with Facebook largely drew two responses. One holds that $5 billion is objectively a large sum of money, while the other holds that, against Facebook's $55 billion 2018 revenue, the penalty amounts to mere drops in the ocean that will go completely unnoticed within the mammoth company. More

By Ernesto Several industry groups, including the MPAA, have shared their views on how to curb piracy with the US Department of Commerce. According to the submission, the Government can help to combat piracy by taking a variety of actions, including criminal investigations against key players and better copyright protections in trade agreements. More

By Andy A report compiled by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has concluded that presenting Internet users with warnings that they are visiting 'pirate' sites could breach privacy laws. Citizens' traffic can't be monitored without permission so any system would currently need users to opt in, something that would limit the effectiveness of any trial. More

By Shaun Fluker Shutterstock Whooping cranes, a critically endangered species, breed in one location, a wetland in Wood Buffalo National Park. Yet a federal-provincial review panel has approved an oilsands mine that could kill some of the birds. Widespread species decline at the hands of humans is a powerful tale. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than 27 per cent of 100,000 assessed species are threatened with extinction. This disappearance is a warning that something is amiss on Earth. More

By Thomson Reuters · Trump's executive order goes well beyond recent sanctions on oil, officials U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States on Monday, sharply escalating a diplomatic and sanctions drive aimed at removing socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power. More

By Kaleigh Rogers · CBC News · Advocacy groups sending the messages are akin to U.S. political action committees The Associated Press Canada Strong and Proud is a new third-party advertiser behind a robotexting campaign in multiple provinces. In June, like many Ontarians, Liberal MP Pam Damoff got a mysterious text from an unknown number. The message started, "Hi, this is Sue from Ontario Strong," before prompting the recipient to respond with the name of the party they intended to vote for in the October federal election. More

By Thomson Reuters Innovative Medicines Canada asks federal government to use 'tools' to stop bulk exports Chris Wattie/Reuters A pharmacist counts prescription drugs at the CentreTown Pharmacy in Ottawa. Innovative Medicines Canada is urging the federal government to get ahead of a U.S. plan to export Canadian drugs in bulk. Canada's main pharmaceutical lobby group has urged the government not to wait for drug shortages before responding to U.S. plans to import Canadian drugs, according to documents seen by Reuters. More

By Amina Zafar · CBC News Three chemotherapy cancer drugs face national shortages, putting pressure on health care providers Gerry Broome/The Associated Press Oncologists say drug shortages are becoming more frequent in Canada. Health Canada told CBC News it 'recognizes the impact that these shortages have on the patients who rely on these important medications and is taking action to address them.' Cancer specialists are concerned national shortages of three vital cancer drugs could lead to a time when they could run out of treatment options for patients in Canada. More

By Ruth Panofsky Diane Pullan; Facebook; special collections Many of the classic books of Canadian literature thrived because of women editors, publishers and agents. Some are profiled here: Anna Porter in the 1970s, Bella Pomer in 2015 and Claire Pratt in 1950. As you indulge in summer reading, consider this fact. If not for the path-breaking women in Canadian publishing, some of Canada’s best-known writers might not have made it: Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, Carol Shields. More

By Alyse Stanley Sean Gallup (Getty) After Greenland spent a good portion of July on fire, last week’s heatwave similarly scorched the country’s ice sheet, triggering a meltdown affecting roughly 60 percent of its surface. On Thursday alone, new data shows the ice shelf lost 12.5 billion tons to surface melting, its largest single-day loss in recorded history, the Washington Post reported. More

By Andrea Carson You don't need to look far to find doom and gloom stories about traditional media in the digital age. Yet linking media hardship to a view that investigative journalism is dying is a misconception. More

Two British aviators, Matt Jones and Steve Brooks, are taking turns to fly the Silver Spitfire on its four-month, 43,500-kilometre adventure westwards around the globe—the first time a Spitfire will ever have circumnavigated the planet. More

By Ryan Whitwam From everything we’ve been able to tell, the Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy. It’s a medium-large spiral with several smaller satellite galaxies, and the disk spans some 120,000 light-years. It can be hard to tell what the galaxy looks like from the inside, though. A new analysis focusing on a class of very bright stars indicates the Milky Way might be stranger than we thought with a warped and uneven central disk. More

By Sean Gallagher "The FBI says they're 'going dark.' Well yeah, because they've been staring at the sun." Drew Angerer/Getty Images US Attorney General William Barr speaks at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University School of Law on July 23, 2019 in New York City. In his remarks, Barr stated that increased encryption of data on phones and encrypted messaging apps puts American security at risk. Barr encouraged technology companies to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted data during certain criminal investigations. On July 23, in a keynote address at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, US Attorney General William Barr took up a banner that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been waving for over a decade: the call for what former FBI director James Comey had referred to as a "golden key." More Opinion: He must practice stupi...

By John Timmer General trust, but partisan skepticism, and worries about conflicts of interest. Ecole Polytechnique / Flickr Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released an analysis of polling results on Americans' views of science. In general, the poll was good news for the research community, showing a gradual-but-steady rise in the public's view of scientists. But there were a few areas of concern within the data, which showed that the public still worries about issues like scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest. And the numbers reveal a partisan divide on the situations where scientists are trustworthy. More

US Embassy (CC BY-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/DCM31U TPP Signing, February 4th, 2016 The Canadian government has launched a public consultation on expanding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, formerly TPP) to other countries, specifically citing the UK, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. The consultation could raise significant concerns as the UK would be the first non-Pacific country in the agreement and Taiwan could spark a response from China. Moreover, opening the agreement to new countries must likely factor in the possibility that the U.S. might want to re-enter the agreement if there is a change in administration in 2020. More

By Cory Doctorow Adversarial interoperability is what happens when someone makes a new product or service that works with a dominant product or service, against the wishes of the dominant business. More

By Lily Kuo and Christy Choi in Hong Kong Tensions escalate with swaths of city paralysed by its first general strike in 50 years Tyrone Siu/Reuters Teargas is fired on protesters at Tin Shui Wai. Riot police in Hong Kong have fired teargas and rubber bullets on protesters in at least five locations as demonstrators staged a daylong citywide strike during which two cars rammed the crowds. More

By Bonnie Allen · CBC News · Dramatic increase in synthetic fertilizers has increased crop yields, but also nitrous oxide emissions Matthew Howard/CBC Jocelyn Velestuk says her family farm near Broadview, Sask., makes a six-figure investment in manufactured fertilizer every year. And she doesn't want it to be wasted in the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. Increasingly, farmers are adopting more sophisticated fertilizer products and application methods in order to grow the most food, while spending the least amount of money. At the same time, these new approaches can reduce emissions of N2O, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. More at CBC News

By Sean Rehaag AP Photo/Marco Ugarte In this June 2019 photo, Central American migrants wait for the departure of a northbound freight train in Palenque, Mexico. The Mexican crackdown on migrants prompted by pressure from the Trump administration has pushed Central American migrants to seek new ways to try to reach the U.S. border. U.S. President Donald Trump regularly asserts that the United States is under attack by foreign invaders and that he is the only one willing to stop them. Who are these invaders? Central American asylum seekers, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. More at The Conversation

By Matthew Pearson · CBC News · Application calls for restitution of all fines paid, cancellation of outstanding debts Jean Delisle/CBC Ottawa-based defence lawyer Michael Spratt says victim surcharges often are imposed on people "who are already struggling." Spratt said that aspect of the application is the most meaningful, because it deals directly with the problems laid out by the Supreme Court last year when it quashed the mandatory victim surcharges for convicted criminals — a fine one Ontario judge referred to as a "tax on broken souls." More at CBC News

By CBC News The Canada Votes newsletter is your weekly tip-sheet as we count down to Oct. 21. Left to right, top row: Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Bottom row: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet. More at CBC News

By Kate Cox He's tired of "dogmatic announcements that lawful access simply cannot be done." Elijah Nouvelage | Getty Images Graffiti urging people to use Signal, a highly encrypted messaging app, is spray-painted on a wall during a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California. US Attorney General William Barr accused tech firms of "dogmatic" posturing, saying lawful backdoor access "can be and must be" done, adding, "We are confident that there are technical solutions that will allow lawful access to encrypted data and communications by law enforcement, without materially weakening the security provided by encryption." More at Ars Technica Opinion: His guy is a total nut case. Another fine example of the American education system. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Kyla Tienhaara AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad A Pakistani man walks past a shop that was closed due to a recent strike in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani businesses went on strike in a nationwide protest against an increased sales tax, which opposition political parties said was imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s recent $6 billion bailout package for Islamabad. It’s been a rough month for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. It started off with the International Monetary Fund approving a US$6 billion dollar loan to the country. The strict conditions on the loan meant that instead of expanding the welfare state, Khan’s government had to impose “shock therapy” austerity measures. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in nationwide strikes. More at The Conversation Opinion: Austerity always crashes the economy. Don't stop where the ink does.

By John Paul Tasker · CBC News · A decision on the winning bid is not expected until 2022 Jason Franson/Canadian Press A pilot positions a CF-18 Hornet at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta on October 21, 2014. The federal government formally submitted requests for proposals (RFP) today to procure fighter jets to replace the decades-old CF-18s. Four companies are in the running to supply Canada with roughly 80 new jets: Saab of Sweden, Airbus Defence and Space out of Britain, and the American firms Boeing and Lockheed Martin. More at CBC News

@Instagram A screen shot of @Instagram’s social media feed. Instagram’s recent decision to remove its “like” counter from its platform in select geographic regions is an interesting, perhaps long overdue, measure. Although recently users in Canada reported seeing the “like” counter back on for a day, the counter is currently off. The roll-out is a techno-social experiment, and there are advantages — and a few unintended consequences — of such an action. More at The Conversation

By Sam Machkovech Data and Seven of Nine return to help Picard shepherd a new cast into space. CBS "Engage!" Yes, that's what Sir Patrick Stewart says in this moment, and yes, it's as delightful in action as that sounds. All eyes were on San Diego Comic Con's Star Trek panel this year, as anticipation continues to build for Star Trek: Picard, the first Trek entry to feature Sir Patrick Stewart since the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis. And on Saturday, the series' handlers at CBS didn't disappoint. More at Ars Technica

By Jorge Barrera · CBC News · Renovation and construction dot Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario, much of it fuelled by marijuana Jorge Barrera/CBC The Pot Shoppe advertising its THC-laced slushies, gummies and hash in Tyendinaga. Driving down Highway 401 in southern Ontario, with the FM dial tuned to 87.9, the 1990s-era rap music fades into an ad, offering a free joint with every purchase over $20 between midnight and 4:20 a.m. at the Pot Shoppe. More at CBC News

A new technology is helping collect trash and floating debris in the water. Toronto is one of the first cities in Canada to install floating garbage bins to clean the city's outer harbour. More

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols GitLab finds 68% of security professionals feel that less than half of developers can spot security vulnerabilities, but most people feel it's a programmer's job to write secure code. That makes sense. But when GitLab, a DevOps company, surveyed over 4,000 developers and operators, they found 68% of the security professionals surveyed believe it's a programmer's job to write secure code, but they also think less than half of developers can spot security holes. More at ZDNet

By Jim Salter Data brokers like Facebook, Google, and Oracle might know more than you think. Thought using Incognito mode might keep such searching private? Facebook, Google, and even Oracle have more of your Web usage in their sights than you might think. The paper, set to be published in the journal New Media & Society, does an excellent job of backing up the claim that porn usage ends up being tracked by Google and Facebook. Authors Elena Maris, Timothy Libert, and Jennifer Henrichsen used open source tool webxray to analyze more than 22,000 porn sites, discovering tracking code for Google on 74% and for Facebook on 10% of the sites analyzed. Software giant Oracle's Web tracking code also showed up, appearing on 24% of those sites. More at Ars Technica

By John Timmer A Green New Deal with an emphasis on the green part. University of Rhode Island Sights like this may become common on Long Island. Yesterday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that's been described as the state's Green New Deal. Unlike the one that's been floated in Congress, this one isn't a grab-bag collection of social and energy programs. Instead, there's a strong focus on energy, with assurances that changes will be made in a way that benefits underprivileged communities. More at Ars Technica

By Eli Glasner · CBC News · Software engineer Ben Feist restored 11,000 hours of audio as historic mission control room becomes museum Eli Glasner Ben Feist, seen smiling in the centre, gazes at the large monitors displaying the lunar surface in the newly restored mission control More at CBC News

By British Medical Journal CC0 Public Domain Nations with strong women's rights are more likely to have better health and faster growth than those who don't promote and protect these values, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. More at Phys.org

By Peter Zimonjic · CBC News · Recently revamped guide is 'based on evidence, based on science, based on research,' PM says Chris Young/Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, is dismissing Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer's attack on the Canada Food Guide insisting his government's update to the guid is based on evidence. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending his government's update to the Canada Food Guide in the wake of attacks by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer who suggested the changes were riddled with "bias" and driven by "ideology." More at CBC News

By George Dvorsky Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden Biswamoyopterus gaoligongensis, a flying squirrel. A newly described species of flying squirrel is teaching researchers more about these enigmatic, tree-hopping rodents, but its threatened status means scientists will have to act fast. More at Gizmodo

By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco Martha Blackburn's bill is everything wrong with 2019 in 13 pages A bi-partisan law bill that promises to give internet users far greater control over their privacy made another appearance in US Congress on Thursday. More at The Register

By Vasileios Giotsas, The Conversation Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock How could a small internet service provider (ISP) in Pennsylvania cause millions of websites worldwide to go offline? That's what happened on June 24, 2019 when users across the world were left unable to access a large fraction of the web. The root cause was an outage suffered by Cloudflare, one of the internet's leading content hosts on which the affected websites relied. More at Phys.org

By Joel Hruska Here at ExtremeTech, we’ve often discussed the difference between different types of NAND structures — vertical NAND versus planar, or multi-level cell (MLC) versus triple-level cells (TLC) and quad-level cells (QLC). Now, let’s talk about the more basic relevant question: How do SSDs work in the first place, and how do they compare with newer technologies, like Intel’s non-volatile storage technology, Optane? More at ExtremeTech

By Katharine Trendacosta The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, aka the CASE Act. This was without any hearings for experts to explain the huge flaws in the bill as it’s currently written. And flaws there are. More at Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Matthew Hoffmann Georgios Kefalas/Keystone via AP Climate activists block the entrance to the Swiss bank UBS with a pile of coal in Basel, Switzerland earlier this summer. Climate protests are helping raise awareness about the ugliness of fossil fuels, and so too should the language we use. Despite dire warnings of climate catastrophe and research showing that fossil fuels need to stay in the ground, the fossil fuel system remains dominant, normal and even invisible. More at The Conversation

By Mark Gollom · CBC News · Former Ontario teaching assistant accuses Twitter of double standard after she's banned for 'hateful conduct' Richard Drew/Associated Press Twitter's decision to ban former Ontario teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd sparked accusations that the social media firm unfairly targets certain groups or individuals. Twitter's decision to ban former Ontario teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd from its platform earlier this week has once again sparked accusations that the company unfairly targets people with certain viewpoints. More at CBC News

By Zach Dubinsky, Lisa Mayor · CBC News · CAFE's backers have included a notorious counterfeiter and a Lamborghini-driving ex-wrestling champ CBC One of the storefronts of the Toronto-based CAFE, a chain of unlicensed cannabis dispensaries, was raided and shut down last week — a regular occurrence for the business. It reopened within hours. These are no ordinary renegade weed stores. They are branches of Cannabis and Fine Edibles, or CAFE, a chain of sleek coffee shops that double as marijuana dispensaries. Collectively, they have been raided and shut down at least a dozen times since Canada legalized cannabis last October — only to bounce back each time, usually reopening within hours. More at CBC News

By Guy Quenneville · CBC News · Conservative leader also vows to abolish Liberals' planned front-of-package nutrition labelling Don Somers/CBC Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer defended dairy and denounced the process that led to Canada's new Food Guide at a Saskatoon business luncheon Wednesday. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is promising another review of Canada's recently updated Food Guide should the Tories come to power this fall, saying the latest guide is the result of a flawed and biased process. More at CBC News Opinion: More hatred. Politicians are not smarter than the scientist who have study this all their lives. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Anthony King, From Horizon Magazine, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine A raft of strategies is being trialled in Europe to turn nutrient-rich farm waste such as chicken feathers, cow dung and plant stalks into green fertiliser. Full of phosphorus and nitrogen, recycled products could help reduce intensive agriculture's emissions and reliance on fertiliser imports. More at Phys.org

By Beth Mole Just three drug makers and six distributors were behind the flood. Getty | Bloomberg Enlarge / Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters hold signs while protesting during the McKesson Corp. annual meeting at the Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce in Irving, Texas, US, on Wednesday, July 26, 2017. Between 2006 and 2012, opioid drug makers and distributors flooded the country with 76 billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone—highly addictive opioid pain medications that sparked the epidemic of abuse and overdoses that killed nearly 100,000 people in that time period. More at Ars Technica Opinion: Capitalism at work. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Bennett Cyphers The latest release of Privacy Badger gives it the power to detect and block a new class of evasive, pervasive third-party trackers, including Google Analytics. More at Electronic Frontier Foundation