An open letter to President Obama from a dedicated Democrat

(Obviously not me)

Letter to President Obama on Surveillance and Freedom

 Excerpt:

"This failure is deep. If you fail to fix it, you will be the President principally responsible for the effective death of the Fourth Amendment and worse."

Well why not, since he's already killed the first?

Graffiti of a bear licking Snowden in Finland

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32368051@N08/9510326553/in/photostream/

Are you wondering what RT is?

I'm seeing it mentioned in various places, including  Twitter and either NECN or Fox.

According to Wikipedia, it's Russia Today!

Glad I asked.

Do you really know what your mobile phone is doing?

From PC Magazine: Android 4.3's New 'Always-On' Wi-Fi Feature Buried in Settings

 "To improve location accuracy and for other purposes, Google and other apps may scan for nearby networks, even when Wi-Fi is off," describes Google. 

...

Fire up the Settings app and tap your finger on the Wireless and Networks option. Tap on the Wi-Fi option, and then tap on the Overflow button on your phone's screen (the triple-dots icon). When this submenu pops up, tap your finger on the Advanced option. From there, you'll want to make sure to check the "Scanning always available" option if you want to participate in the new Android 4.3 feature. Otherwise, if it's checked, you need merely to uncheck it to ensure that "Wi-Fi off" really means "Wi-Fi off."

PS - Even in 4.1.1 and 4.2.2 there's weirdness in connection while asleep - go to wi-fi advanced,  and look at the "Keep Wi-fi on during sleep" - "always" might be checked - using battery like crazy?  Maybe change it to "Only when plugged in"?

 

Secure calls on Android

I have not tested this, use at your own risk

Tor and CSipSimple on Android.  What could possibly go wrong?

https://guardianproject.info/howto/callsecurely/

http://guardianproject.info/

FPGA development kit

 I LOVE living in the future!

 http://www.adafruit.com/products/451 99.95

Altera Cyclone IV FPGA (EP4CE22F17C6N)

• 22,320 Logic elements (LEs)
• 594 Embedded memory (Kbits)
• 66 Embedded 18 x 18 multipliers
• 4 General-purpose PLLs
• 153 Maximum FPGA I/O pins

 That's PLL's, not DSP's

Interesting Trivia about Emacs

From the splash screen:

DESCRIPTION
       GNU  Emacs is a version of Emacs, written by the author of the original
       (PDP-10) Emacs, Richard Stallman.  The user functionality of GNU  Emacs
       encompasses  everything  other  editors do, and it is easily extensible
       since its editing commands are written in Lisp.