There’s a false Yellow Peril that the populist demagogues used to propagate to spread fear and xenophobia against Asian minorities in the US. That’s the past however, and this is now. The last large scale Communist country on the planet is a peril - not due to the people, but rather due to the over reach of government surveillance through technology. While activists rightly decry the US over reach few are paying attention to the dangers of Chinese tech and apps.

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The world is witnessing a massive expansion of Chinese telecommunications reach and influence, powered entirely by users choosing to participate in it. In Usage of the mobile messaging app WeChat (?? Weixin), for example, has skyrocketed not only inside China, but outside, as well. Due to these systems being built upon proprietary protocols and software, their inner workings are largely opaque and mostly insecure. (WeChat has full permission to activate microphones and cameras, track GPS, access user contacts and photos, and copy all of this data at any time to their servers.)

In this talk, Nathan Freitas — Berkman Fellow, director of technology strategy and training at the Tibet Action Institute. and leader of the Guardian Project — questions the risks to privacy and security foreign users engage in when adopting apps from Chinese companies. Do the Chinese companies behind these services have any market incentive or legal obligation to protect the privacy of their non-Chinese global userbase? Do they willingly or automatically turn over all data to the Ministry of Public Security or State Internet Information Office? Will we soon see foreign users targeted or prosecuted due to “private” data shared on WeChat? And is there any fundamental difference in the impact on privacy freedom for an American citizen using WeChat versus a Chinese citizen using WhatsApp or Google?

More info on this event here: cyber.law.harvard.edu

A fix for the Thunderstrike proof-of-concept bootkit attack has made its way into a beta version of Apple’s OS X, according to a just-published report. The new fix may indicate that a patch isn’t far from general release.

The exploit was dubbed Thunderstrike because it spreads through maliciously modified peripheral devices connected to a Mac’s Thunderbolt interface. When plugged into a Mac that’s booting up, the device injects what’s known as an option ROM into the extensible firmware interface (EFI), the firmware responsible for starting a Mac’s system management mode and enabling other low-level functions. Once a Mac is infected, the malicious firmware can survive hard drive reformats and OS reinstallations. And since Thunderstrike replaces the digital signature Apple uses to ensure only authorized firmware runs on Macs, there are few viable ways to disinfect infected systems.

Earlier this month, Thunderstrike creator Trammell Hudson said that only the latest versions of Mac Mini’s and iMac Retina 5ks were largely immune to the exploit but that Apple engineers were in the process of developing a fix for the rest of the Mac product line. According to a report published Friday by iMore, the patch has been spotted in the latest beta of OS X 10.10.2, the next version of Yosemite.

More: Apple Readies Fix for Thunderstrike Bootkit Exploit in Next OS X Release

What [Noam] Scheiber is basically saying is that if you want to unite whites and minority voters, you have to focus on the issues that are a priority to whites. That’s pretty much white supremacy in a nutshell. His big “tell” comes in what he leaves out of that last sentence. The reason racial groups view the issues he places at the bottom differently is because they affect racial groups differently. White people never had to be concerned about “stop-and-frisk” because it almost never happened to a white person. White mothers/fathers, wives, siblings don’t spend much time worrying that their son, husband, brother will be harassed/beaten/killed because some police officer jumped to the conclusion that he was a “dangerous black/brown man.” But that is exactly how police actions become a priority for voters of color. The fear of what can happen becomes a life-and-death issue for them - as we’ve seen lately.

More: Horizons: Dog Whistles From the Left (Updated)

Not sure what to say besides crazy antisemitic conspiracy theorists are crazy.

ATHENS, Greece — A politician from the main opposition party in Greece caused an uproar after posting an anti-Semitic rant on his Facebook page accusing the Greek prime minister of heading a Jewish conspiracy.

Theodoros Karypidis, the left-wing Syriza Party’s candidate for governor of Western Macedonia, said Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras was at the head of a Jewish plot to visit “a new Hanukkah against the Greeks.” […]

More: Greek Politician Says His PM Heading Jewish Plot

H/T to @Gus_802 for bringing this story to my attention via a RT.

It appears the party in the article above, Syriza, has won in the national elections.

ATHENS — Greece rejected the punishing economics of austerity on Sunday and sent a warning signal to the rest of Europe as the left-wing Syriza party won a decisive victory in national elections, positioning its tough-talking leader, Alexis Tsipras, to become the next prime minister.

With 60 percent of the vote counted, Syriza had 36 percent, almost eight points ahead of the governing center-right New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had conceded defeat. The only uncertainty was whether Syriza would muster an outright parliamentary majority or if it would have to form a coalition. […]

More: Anti-Austerity Party Wins Decisive Victory in Greece

H/T BishopX

This is obviously not good news for Jews living in Greece.

Additionally, while trying to find out what Greece’s Jewish population is, I came across another antisemitic story form this month, this one coming from a right-wing politician.

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — A Greek government official has been forced to clarify that Greek Jews do pay taxes and have the same obligations as every citizen.

“Greek citizens of Jewish faith pay their tax normally like all Greeks and do not enjoy any exemption or extra burden because of their religion,” said Giorgos Kalantzis, the Education Ministry’s general secretary for religion.

Last month, right-wing politician Panos Kammenos said in a television interview that Jews don’t pay taxes. […]

More: Greek official refutes charge that Jews don’t pay taxes

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece also has a whole slew of recent stories on antisemitism at their website.

Last but not least, goddamnedfrank provided me with a link to the ADL Global 100 Survey, which is an index of antisemitism. Here’s the info for Greece—as you can see, the index, at 69%, is quite high. Higher even than Iran (56%), believe it or not. There’s also a PDF of the report’s Executive Summary available for download.

H/T to Skandal for providing population stats in the comments.

re: #4 Skandal

As of 2012, the Jewish population of Greece was 4,500. 0.04% of the total population. According to Jewish Population of the World

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There’s no “silver bullet” for addressing the nation’s energy needs, and early rave hopes about ethanol in gas are getting a questioning second look.

I’ve been blocked at Wikipedia — ostensibly for posting the following comment, but obviously for writing Infamous, Thoughtless, and Careless - and for the further offense of having these become so widely read. (The Guardian ❧ Gawker ❧ PandoDaily ❧ The Mary Sue ❧ Wil Wheaton ❧ Der Standard)

Thank you to the tens of thousands of new visitors here; your interest is very welcome. If you’re interested in software, I hope you’ll visit often.

Mark Bernstein’s weblog post

… (many comments from various people)…

That the proposed decision of which I wrote is infamous, is an opinion widely shared. Yes, some of its most extreme measures might not pass and some additional, disposable accounts may be sanctioned to give the impression of balance. Whether or not widespread public indignation at its measures has played some role in that, I cannot say….

Wikipedia has been and continues to be used as a weapon against women in computing; I see little in either the proposed decision or the current revision that recognizes, much less remedies, this, and much that lends assistance to those who would like nothing better than the opportunity to intimidate women with the threat that their own sex lives might be the next topic for Arbcom publicly to scrutinize. — Mark Bernstein

More: Mark Bernstein: Reckless

As long as they are able to get there before Weyland-Yutani …

Intel, Microsoft and Autodesk are quietly investing in “programming” living organisms — potentially merging biology with electronics. However, all three are playing catch-up to Microbial Robotics LLC (Cincinnati, Ohio), which has already perfected its ViruBots and BactoBots.

The ViruBots and BactoBots are based on programming living organisms (viruses and bacteria) to perform humanitarian tasks for which they were not evolved to do — such as clean toxins from waste water, hunting down and killing (only) cancer cells, produce non-polluting fuels and developing new hybrid living/electronic materials. Microbial Robotics has already spun-off a eight companies to market these solutions to particular environmental and medical tasks, but Intel, Microsoft and Autodesk are joining the fray because of the ever slimming margins in electronics and end-of-the-road for semiconductors coming into sight circa 2028, according to Jason Barkeloo, Microbial Robotics’ CEO.

“Bacteria and viruses are the hardware, DNA is the operating system and genes are the application software.”

“Manipulating nucleic base pairs (A,T,C,G) on DNA strands is comparable to binary programming,” Barkeloo, told us. “Bacteria and viruses are the hardware, DNA is the operating system and genes are the application software.”

More: Intel, Microsoft, Autodesk Creating Life

Communities that fall into that in-between category, then, are counting on companies such as LightSpeed Communications LLC if they want to become Gigabit Cities. LightSpeed is based in East Lansing, Michigan, and is currently building out a gigabit network to serve portions of the Greater Lansing region. The area in and around Lansing, Michigan’s capital, has a population of about 460,000 people and sits about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.

Incumbents AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) have yet to announce any fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) initiatives in the community, and Lansing failed to woo Google Fiber Inc. — though Google’s efforts did draw attention to the demand and the business model of providing a fat pipe to homes. (See Is Google Good for Gigabit?)

“Google has proved that there is an enormous market for people who just want bandwidth,” says Jason Schreiber, co-founder and CEO of LightSpeed. Schreiber and his fellow founders hail from regional optical network operator Arialink, which was swallowed up by Zayo Group Inc. (NYSE: ZAYO) in 2012. (See How Zayo Spent $3.7B on Acquisitions.)

More: LightSpeed Looks to Plug the Gigabit Gap

And this day, nearly 70 years after then-18-year-old Anna Brunn and her mother were freed after losing her father and grandmother to the gas chambers, Ornstein wasn’t yet sold on memorials. They seem, she said, to imply punctuation, the end of something, as though everything possible has been learned.

“We like to think: ‘This is it! Now we’ll know better,’ ” she said as she came out of the cold and descended into the subterranean National September 11 Memorial Museum. But despite being what she calls “the most researched horror story in the world,” Ornstein said the Holocaust “was just the beginning of the century of genocide. Armenians, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda… . Now some Muslims say ‘Give me respect and maybe I’ll stop killing you.’ I only know we did not learn from the Holocaust that we should stop killing, because we did not.”

Ornstein, who lives outside Boston, had taken a taxi with a friend on a frigid morning to Ground Zero for the first time, to learn more about how a modern-day horror is memorialized.

More: A Survivor Wonders if the World Has Grasped the Meaning of the Holocaust - Chicago Tribune

President Obama announced Sunday that the U.S. and India have made progress on civilian nuclear trade. In a joint news conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, Obama said the countries had agreed to more cooperation in other areas as well, including defense and climate change.

Obama arrived in India Sunday for a three-day trip, and he and first lady Michelle Obama were greeted by Modi at the airport. The warm welcome was a “departure from protocol,” India Today reports.

Obama is the first U.S. president to visit India twice while in office, a point he brought up during the news conference.

More: U.S. and India Announce New Ties on First Day of Obama’s Trip : The Two-Way : NPR