If You Used This Secure Webmail Site, the FBI Has Your Inbox.

This is comparable to searching all the apartments in 20 blocks of Manhattan just in case their might someday be warrants against some of the residents.

Rick Falkvinge says the copyright industry is doomed, because it can survive only by surveilling all forms of private correspondence.

I wish I could be so confident. I fear that states, which already seek to surveil all private correspondence and already act as agents for the copyright industry, will extend their surveillance to the point of achieving what Falkvinge considers impossible.

There is another way that the copyright industry can succeed in subjugating everyone: through streaming. If people are so foolish as to tolerate streaming instead of having a copy, no one will be able to share.

It is clear that we must reject any streaming service that doesn't allow users to download copies. And if it does allow users to download copies, we must make a point of using it that way.

Out, out, damned Spotify!

A Dutch appeals court says ISPs are not required to block access to the Pirate Bay.

This is a victory for internet freedom.

The predicted fastest-growing US jobs for the next decade are, mostly, very susceptible to automation.

It looks like the US is heading for a situation where millions of people who are fit to work can't find any jobs. The plutocrats would like to take advantage of this to force wages down for just about everyone. Instead we must redesign society so that everyone can have a decent life, even those who get no work. This could involve welfare for everyone. This could involve rejecting, even banning certain forms of automation. One way or another, it must be done.

RNA interference can be used to make pesticides, but they can go wrong.

The proposed applications vary in terms of the danger of bad side effects. Dosing bees with RNA to kill varroa mites is unlikely to result in exposing other wild insects to that RNA; if it doesn't hurt the bees, it won't do harm. By contrast, corn that generates interfering RNA can't avoid exposing all the species that live near the field, and there are lots of those.

I think that the interfering RNAs should be delivered in sprays, not made by crops, for two reasons:

• The sprays would not deny farmers the right to save and trade seeds.
• The sprays could be applied at particular times, which might reduce the danger to other insects that are not the targets.