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There's been proof before, just Snowden's expose AND the US Gov's reaction to it made it more obvious.
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2889/1.html
http://cryptome.org/jya/echelon-dc.htm
http://cryptome.org/echelon-baby.htm

Where do you even get so much propaganda?

I pay 35 cents/kwH and my provider is a local, clean energy one. You can probably find cheaper power easily.

Prices are falling:
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/40/40051/1.html

Solar is currently at almost 12%:
http://www.solarserver.de/solar-magazin/nachrichten/aktuelles/2013/kw37/photovoltaik-in-deutschland-119-solarstrom-anteil-im-august-2013.html

Really, where do you get your lies? Are they cheaper in bulk? :-)

for example:
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html

> So why not just give the award to the NSA?

In fact they gave three awards to the NSA (Source in German). They won "Lifelong Annoyence", the audience award (shared with GCHQ) and in the category "politics" (shared with the Austrian goverment).

Interesting, that qaeda=database thing.

I thought Al Qaeda meant 'the base', no 'data' involved (Robin Cook having publicised the 'database' thing). So I looked it up. Turns out it means base, foundation, fundament etc. And is related to a verb qaad, to sit.

So there are accounts from different people about what they think this word is used to mean, with some saying that it describes a terrorist base (in the sense of seat of activity, place of training), others saying it describes a database (of participants, members). Then there are still others pointing out that it can have meant both of these at various times and contexts. But personally I prefer the definition provided by those that point out that al qa'ada is what is colloquially known as a pisspot.

Regarding alternative OS, it won't matter. Who says Intel, AMD, ARM, nVidia, RealTek and all other hardware manufacturers haven't already included backdoors into their firmwares and hardware design to please the NSA? There was an article recently in the German magazine C't about possible backdoors in Intel's Active Management's Technology (AMT). Even if turns out to be a hoax, for now, who knows what lays dormant in such firmware, waiting to be tapped by the NSA?

They weakened Lotus Notes by allowing the the NSA to know some of the bits of secrets: http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html

So yeah they could backdoor US stuff.

This is the first time I hear about it here in Germany, so I doubt it is a PR stunt.

On the other hand I have heard about an organized photo shooting of a building bought by the US embassy in Vienna (Austria, not Germany) that is allegedly being used by the NSA: article in German with embedded YouTube video

I am pretty sure they are refering to stuff like this: http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html

If you can read german, there's a good collection of articles here:

http://www.heise.de/tp/news/enews/default.html

Publisher Heise is a popular and well regarded brand name for tech news in German. The English "The H" was trying to leverage their existing brand reputation.

Why the devil didn't they just call it Heise then?

Publisher Heise is a popular and well regarded brand name for tech news in German. The English "The H" was trying to leverage their existing brand reputation. It didn't work out, but I can understand why they tried using that name to try. It's not as bad as the dubious reasoning behind some of the poorly chosen open source project names. (LibreOffice, I'm looking at you too)

I got one of their stories featured on Slashdot and it ended up in their list of most read stories, so I understand what you mean. They never found a way to transfer the success with their huge German following to their English offspring. The H wasn't as full-featured and didn't have the backing of the print publications that the German site has. It's a shame that most of you don't understand German well enough to just go to Heise Newsticker and get the combination of high quality journalism, commentary and playfulness delivered by people who clearly know and enjoy what they're doing. (Not affiliated with Heise in any way, just a big fan of their work.)

The only real data I ever saw is the Patent Game experiment. I already mentioned that but I post here again:

http://www.patentgame.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Pi4w8ddA8

As far as I know that is the only real data on the issue. The conclusion of the "game" is quite surprising: no patents actually performs better then patents. Both in amount of innovation and the whole wealth.

The other data I have is on copyright. Germany had in fact for 100 years no copyright laws, the first laws were introduced in 1837, well after the laws in England in 1710. In that period of time Germany had a booming book industry, with many more books and much more cheaper then in England. If you know history, then that was also the "Golden Age" of Germany, with many discoveries, political, literature, etc. innovations. After the copyright laws were introduced the total amount of books goes down, prices goes up.

You can read it up (in German):
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/33/33092/1.html

My opinion is: patents yes, but only for real innovations and limited.
Copyrights: yes, but extreme limited and only after registration.
Basically, my opinion is in agreement with the founding fathers of the USA.

If he'd root his device he could still use modern Android on it, at least version 4 or higher.

Yeah, right. c`t magazine recently reported that Samsung refused repairs under warranty because of an "unsupported OS". And that was actually an update coming from Samsung itself. http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt/2013/12/68/ (in German behind a paywall)

way back when the NSA was doing stuff like this,

http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html

I'm sorry that this is in german, but here is a user posting that explicitly says thet AdWords has great customer support. (compared to the rest of Google that is)

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Re-Support-Nur-fuer-zahlende-Kunden/forum-254186/msg-23419861/read/

The German magazine c't is the equivalent of the old Byte, as it existed 30 years ago in the US: Coverage of every techie hardware and software topic, written by people who actually know what they're talking about. Details, not just marketing fluff. For the the big company IT types, there's the sister publication i'X - not to my personal taste, but an equally good read for its target audience.

I don't know of any equally good magazines in the English-speaking world.

C't is the top computer magazine in Germany. Their online newsticker is among the most visited German web sites and they make the tool which is used for testing the integrity of USB thumbdrives all over the world: h2testw. It is available in print and online with the same content.

No country has achieved more than 20% grid penetration of wind/solar without major compromises.

What's "major compromises" supposed to mean?

Germany did generate 23% from alternative sources in 2012. And we did export more energy than in previous years even though eight of 17 nuclear sites were shut down in 2011.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Deutschland-steigert-Stromexport-1833469.html

is the order of the day. Food has to be ordered online. Kitchenware is not at home anymore, but in an Italian, Chinese or other canteen kitchen cloud," the Estate Agent says: http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/2010/11/gross.jpg

You should care.

One, if what the idiot co-founder said in the update is true, Mega can decrypt your data. Which means their deniability just died and they will be on the hook, which means they are very likely to give your data to law enforcement in order to get out of everything.

Two, a fantastic and fairly neutral german article outlines the impact on the markets and musings on some more philosophical backgrounds. The TL;DR version is that Kim is pretty much the same as the banksters we want to see in jail for the financial crisis - he takes an artificially scarce commodity he doesn't own (data in his case, money for the banksters) and creates a mechanism through which it gets artificially inflated (sharing / bubble of complex financial products) with the purpose of making a profit for himself, ignoring the devastating effect that inflation has on the base value for small market participants.

Or if even that is too long for you: Kim will make money, big musicians, movies, etc. won't really care, small artists and smaller movies will suffer.

As much as the truth hurts, but if you want to support small artists, then iTunes does more for them then Mega will. You'll need to do a bit of research to verify that, but it'll be enlightening. I applaud the Pirate Bay for realizing their effect and trying to undo it with their recent initiatives.

IID predicts for 2013 that criminals will leverage networked healthcare devices to carry out murders. My counter-theory is, that the first murder probably has already occurred; we and the police just didn't notice it. So 2013 may be the year the first murder via Internet device is proven.

During a BKA (German version of the FBI) conference, i made a remark that got me nationwide media attention in 2000: "In the Internet you'll find anything but murder." I wish i could say this with the same conviction today as i did back then (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BKA-hat-Muehe-mit-der-Internet-Kriminalitaet-16354.html).

I think those happy days Daniel Suarez envisioned have already arrived.

One import detail is missing in TFA and on /.

They are currently trying to fine them 20.000€ for the violation of their order which is of course laughable. It might become more intersting if this goes to court because then the fines could increase rapidly.

That said, I am regarding the current move by ULD more as a kickstart for something bigger, because if

a) Facebook abides, which is highly unlikely, everybody wins
b) Facebook denies and pays 20k, then they are admitting to violate the law
c) Facebook denies and does not pay, it will go to court possibly to upper instances leading to a general ruling.

Mind you, the data protection officials in this small state in Germany's north have a history of pissing corporations to prove our rights, so I am very interested to see where this one goes ;-).

Here's a source for the 20k fine. You may run it through a translator service of your choice.
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Klarnamenzwang-Datenschuetzer-droht-Facebook-mit-Zwangsgeld-1770733.html

They shouldn't. The USA actually has a track record of putting backdoors into stuff. e.g. Lotus Notes. http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html

By the way if you use Windows, as long as Microsoft signs something, your computer will trust it. And if you also use IE, you can delete all the CAs in your browser except the microsoft one, once you go to an https website, the required CA certs will be readded automagically as long as they have been signed by the Microsoft one (try it yourself on a test machine - but if you accidentally delete all CAs you're going to have problems doing updates). To disable an untrusted CA you have to keep the cert in and unmark all the checkboxes. But what if you don't know the untrusted CA in advance?

According to German IT news site heise.de[1] , to get the free music, users have to install a "megakey"-software on their computers, which acts like an ad-blocker for your browser, but instead of just blocking ads on websites, it will replace 15% of ads with Megabox ads.

Does anyone else see a problem with this? For me, that's a no-go.

[1]http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Neuseelands-Premier-entschuldigt-sich-bei-Kim-Dotcom-1718814.html

I guess the same applies to companies like IBM, AT&T and Microsoft in the European Union, companies which undermine our domestic security (see the IBM Lotus Notes backdoor scandal in Sweden) and seek to influence our law makers. In particular AT&T with their lobbying for censorship rules and Microsoft which does not disclose the source code of its applications to the IT security agencies and undermines open source and open standards policies --- as if they were part of the European constituency. Oh, and don't mention the OOXML case.

http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/2012/19/gross.jpg

Translation: Water! Water! Sensors detect a waterlike substance! And where there's water, there could be life, too ...

reviews in German language/with screenshots: http://heise.de/-1699388 http://www.golem.de/news/opensuse-12-2-verspaetet-und-deshalb-stabil-1209-94353.html

That is so typical of content-"producers" or copyright-holders of the "We want to eat our cake and have it, too" syndrome. They want the extra traffic generated from the news-aggrigators and search engines, but what also a share of the money the news-aggrigators and search engines are generating by offering an useful service.

If they do not want that the news-aggrigators and search engines are using their content, they could just use the robot.txt file to opt-out of the indexing. But of course then they do not get the extra traffic. So they choose the next "logical" step: get the benefit from the news-aggrigators and search engines but complain loudly and weeping so they get an extra piece from the money.

The inter-trade organizations VDZ and BDZV could also just exclude Google or any other news-aggrigators they don't like and either a) create their own search engine/news-aggrigators or negotiate an agreement with Google.

But of course weeping and crying is not only more easily, but with a new law they can extend their rights indefinitely. Right now the discussion is about the Topics and automatically extracted excerpts that should be protected for one year. In 5 years they will push the law for a protection of 5 years, and sooner or later it will be "aligned" with German copyright law and Topics and automatically extracted excerpts are protected for 70 years.

from http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Google-Leistungsschutzrecht-beispielloser-Eingriff-ins-Netz-1671227.html

"Presseverlage im Online-Bereich mit anderen Werkmittlern gleichzustellen" und fordern die Bundesregierung auf, nicht "halbherzig" zu handeln.

Meaning that they want the same copyright protection for topics and excerpts that they have for the article itself, meaning 70 years after the death of the author.

According to the H, UK was only one of many European countries for which cycling directions were enabled:

Cycling maps are available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway and the UK. Cycling directions are available at least in both Austria and Switzerland in addition to the UK.

Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Google-Maps-jetzt-auch-fuer-Radfahrer-in-Europa-1637428.html (German)

You can overlay the cycling information for maps, but it doesn't seem to do the route planning for cycling; the only options there remain "per car" and "on foot". So for the time being, for actual cycling route planning in Germany, Komoot seems to remain the only good option for now.

Energy graph for part of the reported day

It was 37 % of the german energy usage just through solar power. Wind adds a few more percent and should put it well over 40.

Energy graph for part of the day on which that happened.

solar is yellow.

http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html - switchable to English of course.
While it is primarily advertised for flash media these days (and indispensable since there have been numerous forgeries or DOAs at least on the European market lately), it evolved as an HDD tester in the first place.

On Linux in particular, a combination of dd and smartctl (before&after writing the entire disk, as well as for self-tests) may come in handy too, of course.

In Germany we have "Zitatrecht", the right to quote freely. [...] The proposed law would not supersede...

As in the US (17 USC section 107), but you (will) still need heaps of money (from a stricly non-commercial blog) on either side of the pond to fend off claims for royalties, let alone criminal prosecution for alleged infringement (either of which may be raised as mere SLAPPs): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/US-Blogger-setzen-sich-gerichtlich-gegen-Copyright-Abmahner-durch-1469554.html

An alas German article about the whole debate (including Pro and Contra position) can be found in the c't 17/10 (online http://heise.de/-1447608). They also have a news article on the most recent development ( http://heise.de/-1447608 ) but that is not really anything new except that the government now started to make internal plans on how to realize such a law. Note that obviously Heise would profit from such a law but they are typically quite impartial.

Main argument for introducing the law is that for many news simply quoting headlines and a few excerpted lines of text is all someone wants to know. Thus the argument goes that the news aggregators do not direct (sufficient) traffic to the authors of the news but mostly keep the traffic - and thus the ad profits - for themselves.

An alas German article about the whole debate (including Pro and Contra position) can be found in the c't 17/10 (online http://heise.de/-1447608). They also have a news article on the most recent development ( http://heise.de/-1447608 ) but that is not really anything new except that the government now started to make internal plans on how to realize such a law. Note that obviously Heise would profit from such a law but they are typically quite impartial.

Main argument for introducing the law is that for many news simply quoting headlines and a few excerpted lines of text is all someone wants to know. Thus the argument goes that the news aggregators do not direct (sufficient) traffic to the authors of the news but mostly keep the traffic - and thus the ad profits - for themselves.

Weird. I haven't used a Windows desktop for more than a few hours in the last three years.

Personal anecdotes don't really matter, Linux usage has essentially stayed the same since 2007 (Linux visitors of the biggest German IT magazine), so it looks like the year of the Linux desktop isn't coming any closer anytime soon.

There is an electronic version called "Heise.de" (in form of a website with forums) that you can use, if you want. It is different from the paper version, because no one would buy it anymore, of course. It's the publishing company that brings c't and iX.

I visit the German version (classic view) quite regularly, because the forum discussions are fun and it is my number 1 bookmark. This is comparable to Slashdot in my opinion and has funny troll threads. ;) There is also an version in English that is probably not that busy as the German one and does not publish as many articles. I think they would, if they had more visitors. So it's up to you to make it big, because the competence is available there.

Btw, I can see articles quite frequently here on Slashdot that originate from Heise.de.

By the way, the German Max Planck Institute has found in a study (sorry, German only) that data retention does not help with fighting any serious crime - terrorism, homicide, armed robbery or, remarkably, child pornography. It would only be of (limited) use for "petty" crimes of online fraud and for civil cases, mostly in the field of copyright infringement. Not that that was not clear from the start, but it sure is nice to see it spelled out in very clear language by a highly regarded internationally recognised scientific institution.

We need copyright reform, and hopefully the pirate parties draw attention to that fact. But copyright abolition is a cure worse than the disease.

There were two (german) articles (and a book) about copyright in Europe and Germany's development from a basically all agricultural country to one of Europe's leading industrial nations in the early 1900s. it compares the U.K. and Germany in terms of copyright laws from 17something on, a time where the U.K. already had a copyright law, Germany not.

This period correlates with rampant "pirating" of all things printed in Germany. Publishers copied any book they could get hold of and reprinted (=sold) it themselves. That lead to a) very low book prices, which in turn made those books available and affordable for the masses and b) led to an explosion in inventions inspired by those books by people that otherwise would never have thought of inventing anything at all. People, that never had the chance (and money) to visit a university. A bunch of autodidacts, if you will.

So it really stands to question if the cure is worse. The book/those articles suggest the opposite.

We need copyright reform, and hopefully the pirate parties draw attention to that fact. But copyright abolition is a cure worse than the disease.

There were two (german) articles (and a book) about copyright in Europe and Germany's development from a basically all agricultural country to one of Europe's leading industrial nations in the early 1900s. it compares the U.K. and Germany in terms of copyright laws from 17something on, a time where the U.K. already had a copyright law, Germany not.

This period correlates with rampant "pirating" of all things printed in Germany. Publishers copied any book they could get hold of and reprinted (=sold) it themselves. That lead to a) very low book prices, which in turn made those books available and affordable for the masses and b) led to an explosion in inventions inspired by those books by people that otherwise would never have thought of inventing anything at all. People, that never had the chance (and money) to visit a university. A bunch of autodidacts, if you will.

So it really stands to question if the cure is worse. The book/those articles suggest the opposite.

since it is your phone, you can do with it what you want.

It's your phone, but the firmware is just licensed, in this case for a locked phone. In Germany, some unlockers have been handed suspended jail sentences for commercial, large scale unlocking, according to this article. The judge called the unlocking illegal tampering with evidence and modification of data.

Heise (German only) just reported that Google officially denied the rumors they were about to drop Firefox.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Google-Wir-unterstuetzen-Firefox-weiter-1390401.html (google translate http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FGoogle-Wir-unterstuetzen-Firefox-weiter-1390401.html)

Basically, Google denied all rumors.

In Germany, not even emergency calls are possible without an active SIM card. Law's been changed, supposedly because there were too many prank calls.

And to answer the naive guy before: also in Germany, police in Dresden tracked participants of a demonstration against nazis. Without a warrant. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bericht-Ueber-1-Million-Mobilfunkgespraeche-bei-Anti-Nazi-Demo-in-Dresden-erfasst-1268104.html (you know how to use translate.google.com)

"GPS" based toll systems are occasionally floated and shot down. They will pass eventually: People who stand to earn billions from such pork barrel projects can be quite tenacious. (Most recent attempt that I know of: German Greens politician Winfried Kretschmann wants a GPS based toll system for passenger cars.)

Mozilla-Foundation failed again: (sorry, in German) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Update-auf-Firefox-7-verschoben-1351616.html There are also desperate cries for a fork: http://in-other-news.com/2011/The_problem_with_Firefox_and_how_it_could_be_fixed

A german magazine has developed an answer to that about a month ago:

http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/

Absolutely worth a read, and if you use a "like" button on your page and you're a geek, you should definitely use this.

Heise have recently published the source code under the MIT license:
http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/
Unfortunately, documentation and strings seem to be German only, but it's probably not excessively complex to set up. Maybe someone can start an English language fork?

Btw, users have already created plugins for Wordpress and Joomla:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/2-click-socialmedia-buttons/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-socialshareprivacy/
http://joomla-extensions.kubik-rubik.de/2csb-2-click-social-buttons