Sweden to begin deportations of refugees

Rejected asylum seekers in Restard Gård demonstrate against a deportation order last week. Photo Swedish TT.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Around 1,500 asylum seekers are to be deported from Sweden this month, many of them to the Kurdistan Region, after their applications were rejected by the Swedish migration office.

The first round of deportations will start in the Restard Gård near the southern city of Gothenburg, where some 2,000 refugees have been placed, mostly since 2015 when a massive migration set off through Turkey to the European Union.

Kurdish activist Rebwar Rahim who has campaigned against the planned deportations said that many of the refugees are families with underage children who often have nothing to return to in their home countries.

“We have collected a group of volunteers, lawyers and activists, and will be present at the camp to show solidarity,” Rahim told Rudaw.

The Swedish social democratic coalition government reviewed an earlier decision regarding the number of refugees it could provide asylum to during 2016 and reduced it to nearly half of the 163,000 it had initially announced.

The new wave of migration has almost polarized the Swedish society with virtually one in two voters supporting the deportations, according to a Gallop survey conducted in April.

Many of the refugees are reluctant to leave the camps despite being informed by the authorities and some have said that they would seek asylum in the neighboring countries if the pressure continues.

“We are not willing to leave since we have suffered a great deal to reach here,” said Parinaz Ahmadi, a Kurdish migrant at the Restard Gård.
continue http://rudaw.net/english/world/05062016

Tiny Core Linux 7.1: Big Where It Counts

Jesse Smith

There’s an old cliché that promises “big things come in small packages.” Our reviewer takes a look at Tiny Core Linux and finds a lot of wallop in its 16MB size.

Most software grows and expands, taking on new features over time. While this can make software applications more useful, it also means more resources are required to run our programs. However, there are some software projects which strive to become ever more lean, more efficient and use fewer resources. One such project is Tiny Core Linux, a minimalist distribution which packs a lot of functionality into a very small system. The project’s website states:

“Our goal is the creation of a nomadic ultra small graphical desktop operating system capable of booting from CD-ROM, pen drive, or frugally from a hard drive. The desktop boots extremely fast and is able to support additional applications and hardware of the user’s choice. While Tiny Core always resides in RAM, additional applications extensions can either reside in RAM, be mounted from a persistent storage device, or installed into a persistent storage device.”

There are three editions of the Tiny Core distribution: Core, TinyCore and CorePlus. The Core edition is a mere 11MB download and offers users just a command line interface with a few tools. The TinyCore edition (16MB) provides a minimal desktop environment on a live disc. CorePlus offers a larger image (it is a little over 100MB and can be installed on a hard drive). I found Tiny Core Linux can be downloaded as a 32-bit or 64-bit x86 build and there are also Raspberry Pi builds. Something I found interesting was the 64-bit builds had “Pure” in their names (e.g., “TinyCorePure”). I did some looking around the project’s website and wiki, but could not find any explanation for this.

Speaking of the wiki, I highly recommend bookmarking and making use of Tiny Core’s documentation. The miniature distribution does a lot of things differently from its mainstream Linux counterparts and I find the wiki helps when navigating the unique characteristics of Tiny Core.

The latest release of the distribution, version 7.1, does not feature many new changes. The release announcement mentions some minor updates, but not a lot about Tiny Core’s design has changed in recent years. I decided to download the TinyCore edition of the distribution, which provides a live disc with a minimal desktop environment. In an effort to try to avoid confusion, I refer to the distribution as a whole as “Tiny Core” with a space between the words while I call the specific edition I used “TinyCore” without a space.

continue http://fossforce.com/2016/06/tiny-core-linux-7-1-big-counts/

A Wave of Social Media Arrests Sweep Through London

London is increasingly slapping people with prosecutions for reckless, aggressive or plain hateful language on social media.

“Online crimes of speech” are landing a growing number of people in London’s courts, according to data reported by the city’s police force in response to a Freedom of Information Request. While these types of arrests seemed to be on the decline between 2010 and 2013, a surge was observed again last year.

The Register reports that the number of arrests made for obscene, anxiety-causing, and otherwise offensive messages has increased by 37 percent since 2010. The most common type of these arrests is for “Sending messages intended to offend or menace,” accounting for over 60 percent of all crimes included under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. This controversial bit of legislation broadly defines illegal communication as “using public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety,” a definition that could, frankly, apply to pretty much every website on earth at some point, particularly Britain’s own Daily Mail. Violating this law can carry a six-month prison term or fine of up to the equivalent of $5,500.

continue http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/06/wave-social-media-arrests-sweep-london/

PC Scourge of the Week: Sexist Weather!

This is one of those days where parody and satire are impossible. From the Washington Post:

Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds

People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.

Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesconcludes.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning  1950 and 2012.  Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities.

continue http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/pc-scourge-of-the-week-sexist-weather.php

15,000 Bees Show Up In Tree Next To ‘Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee’ Mural Across From Muhammad Ali Center

A man photographs a memorial as he pays his respects to boxing legend Muhammad Ali at the Muhammad Ali Center June 5, 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky. (credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (CBSNewYork/AP) — Thousands of bees are making their home next to a Muhammad Ali mural in Louisville bearing one of his most famous quotes.

CBS affiliate WLKY-TV reported the swarm of bees showed up in a tree next to the “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee” mural on Sunday morning. The mural is across from the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.

A coincidence or a sign from #MuhammadAli? Thousands of bees swarm tree near Ali mural. Story tonight on @WLKY pic.twitter.com/9EqlgPczM8

— Carolyn Callahan (@CarolynWLKY) June 5, 2016

“About 15,000, maybe a little more,” beekeeper Kevin McKinney told WLKY. “It was a very big swarm.”

McKinney added that the “irony is not lost on me at all.”

continue http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/06/05/ali-bees-mural/

These 20 Projects Just Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize — Hackaday

For this year’s Hackaday Prize, we’re doing something spectacular. We’re funding the next great piece of Open Hardware by giving away thousands of dollars for the best hardware projects. Just a few days ago, we wrapped up the Anything Goes portion of The Hackaday Prize, an electronic free for all to build the coolest gizmos imaginable. Now,…

via These 20 Projects Just Won $1000 In The Hackaday Prize — Hackaday

Appalachian Coal Ash Richest in Rare Earth Elements

By Ken Kingery

Heileen Hsu-Kim

A study of the content of rare earth elements in U.S. coal ashes shows that coal mined from the Appalachian Mountains could be the proverbial golden goose for hard-to-find materials critical to clean energy and other emerging technologies.In the wake of a 2014 coal ash spill into North Carolina’s Dan River from a ruptured Duke Energy drainage pipe, the question of what to do with the nation’s aging retention ponds and future coal ash waste has been a highly contested topic.

One particularly entrepreneurial idea is to extract so-called “critical” rare earth elements such as neodymium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium and erbium from the burned coal. The Department of Energy has identified these globally scarce metals as a priority for their uses in clean energy and other emerging technologies. But exactly how much of these elements are contained in different sources of coal ash in the U.S. had never been explored.

Researchers from Duke University measured the content of rare earth elements in samples of coal ash representing every major coal source in the United States. They also looked at how much of these elements could be extracted from ash using a common industrial technique.

continue https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/appalachian-coal-ash-richest-rare-earth-elements

Government Regulators Are Unregulated

In “There’s No Such Thing as an Unregulated Market,” I claimed that regulation by market forces works better — gets better results for society — than government regulation. But why does government regulation work so poorly?

In government, the regulators themselves are in practice unregulated. Their accountability goes the wrong way — upward to politicians rather than downward to the public.

Regulation is so bad in our overregulated economy because our regulators are unregulated.

Consider the regulation of school quality. For decades, Americans have deplored the low quality of our government-regulated schools, as compared to the higher quality of our market-regulated private-sector schools.

A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education) asserted in 1983 that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Since then, nothing material has changed. There are some superb government schools, but there are also many in poor areas that are atrocious, and even average-quality government schools produce mediocre education at high cost. For example, in my hometown, the Baltimore City Public Schools spent $15,464 per child in the 2010–11 academic year. Meanwhile, the median tuition charged by private schools attended by students receiving partial scholarships from the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF) Baltimore was $5,050 total. (A scholarship of, say, $1,000 at the median-tuition school would mean the child’s family would have to pay only $4,500.) And these are schools considered so much better by the children’s parents that they willingly pay out-of-pocket to send their children there. The numbers are not directly comparable because many of the CSF Baltimore schools include only grades K–8, while the Baltimore City Public Schools include high schools, which are more expensive. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest that Baltimore could get better schooling for less than half of what’s spent in government schools, if only the quality of those schools were decently regulated.

continue https://fee.org/articles/government-regulators-are-unregulated/

Like Us On Facebook Or Break Your Lease, Threatens Apartment Complex

Ever have somebody in your life who tries to control you? Maybe they use fear, intimidation, and guilt to manipulate you into doing something not necessarily in your best interest.

Those people are toxic.

But what about when it’s an apartment building, threatening that you’ll have breached your lease unless you not only friend it on Facebook but agree to let photos of you and your visitors be posted to its Facebook page?

The emotionally needy inanimate object in question is City Park Apartments, a condominium and apartment building in Salt Lake City.

Though it’s obviously seeking warm and fuzzy – it’s also outlawed bad Yelp reviews – the business was getting frigid and barbed comments and a miserable rating on its Facebook page as of Tuesday (the page was down at the time of publication of this article).

One such review:

The fact that you force people to “like” you on Facebook is straight hostile what if that person does not have Facebook you are going to force them to create one for face a penalty. Guess what you were looking for is lots of “likes” but what you got is lots of negative reviews that you only have a 1 star rating. Won’t move here I’ll find someone who allows me to Be free and not force me to do something like this Facebook mandatory. Good luck

As local news outlet KSL reports, the new “Facebook addendum” to the lease showed up taped to residents’ doors on Thursday night.

The addendum gave tenants five days to friend the complex, even though some had already signed a lease months ago. Attached was a photo release that would allow building management to post pictures of tenants and their visitors on the Facebook page.

continue https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/06/01/like-us-on-facebook-or-break-your-lease-threatens-apartment-complex/

Anonymized Data Really Isn’t Anonymous: Vehicle Data Can Easily Be Used To Identify You

Companies increasingly hoover up larger and larger oceans of consumer data, promising that security and privacy aren’t much of a worry because data is “anonymized.” But as research has shown time and time again, anonymous data isn’t all that anonymous — since it takes only a modicum of effort to either analyze the data — or cross reference it with other data — to ferret out personal identities. It doesn’t really matter whether we’re talking about NSA surveillance troves or social networking data: anonymous data just isn’t anonymous.

As yet another example of this, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California at San Diego have found that the data collected by a car’s onboard computer can be surprisingly personal. In fact it’s so personal, the researchers found that they could identify a driver — from a possible list of fifteen drivers — just by looking at data collected from the brake pedal alone:

“The research team found that 15 minutes’ worth of data from the brake pedal — and only the brake pedal — could lead them to choose the right driver, out of 15 options, 90% of the time. Again, with just the brake pedal data, upping that collected data to 90 minutes’ worth, allowed them to pick the correct driver 100% of the time. For a 100% hit rate with 15 minutes’ worth of data, they just had to collect records from more than one car part.

continue https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160526/06352934550/anonymized-data-really-isnt-anonymous-vehicle-data-can-easily-be-used-to-identify-you.shtml

LA Sheriff: We’re Looking Into Biggest Loser Drug Rumors

By Jenn Gidman

Kai Hibbard, former “Biggest Loser” contestant, stands for a photograph at Sunset Park in Airway Heights, Wash., on May 3, 2016.   (AP Photo/Young Kwak)

(Newser) – A New York Post exposé on alleged drug distribution on the Biggest Loser has now led to a probe by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, BuzzFeed reports. The investigation officially started last month after an unnamed journalist “advised Malibu/Lost Hills station personnel of a news report regarding unsubstantiated allegations of illegal narcotics use in the past on the set,” the sheriff’s release on the matter says, per People. In the Post story, a few contestants mentioned that people involved with the show had encouraged them to ingest the ADHD drug Adderall (weight loss can be a side effect) and other pills containing ephedra, which the FDA banned more than a decade ago.

continue http://www.newser.com/story/225980/la-sheriff-were-looking-into-biggest-loser-drug-rumors.html

Google voice search records and keeps conversations people have around their phones – but the files can be deleted. Just talking is enough to activate the recordings – but thankfully there’s an easy way of hearing and deleting them. Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself. The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products. The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people. But it also comes with an easy way of listening to and deleting all of the information that it collects. That’s done through a special page that brings together the information that Google has on you. According to the article (link is above), its constantly recording in an “effort to improve” its service. Also located in the article are links which apparently not only allow you to listen to all of your recordings but delete them. I dont have google voice but I do have a login for youtube which was empty.

Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself.

The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products.

The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people.

But it also comes with an easy way of listening to and deleting all of the information that it collects. That’s done through a special page that brings together the information that Google has on you.

It’s found by heading to Google’s history page and looking at the long list of recordings. The company has a specific audio page and another for activity on the web, which will show you everywhere Google has a record of you being on the internet.

continue http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-voice-search-records-and-stores-conversation-people-have-around-their-phones-but-files-can-be-a7059376.html

How Spam Became Hawaii’s Most Iconic Food – A Hawaiian redditor shares what Hormel’s meat-in-a-can meant to locals during World War II. — Upvoted

Call it comfort in a can. Spam remains a staple in Hawaiian fare, resting atop blocks of rice and wrapped in nori, diced and sprinkled into steaming bowls of saimin, and wedged between grilled pineapple slices and hamburger buns. You can almost hear the ukuleles strum as you take a bite into the apocalypse-friendly meat mashup. While today, Spam…

via How Spam Became Hawaii’s Most Iconic Food – A Hawaiian redditor shares what Hormel’s meat-in-a-can meant to locals during World War II. — Upvoted

#EURefugeeCrisis LIBYA: PM has rejected deal with Europe over being paid to take #Refugees – @AceNewsServices — Ace News Services

#AceNewsReport – June.06: ‘They can’t live with us’: Libyan PM rejects Turkey-style refugee deal with EU Libya’s situation is different from Turkey, so the country cannot take back refugees from Europe the way Turkey is expected to, the Libyan prime minister has said. Libya is one of the major gateways through which asylum seekers go […]

via #EURefugeeCrisis LIBYA: PM has rejected deal with Europe over being paid to take #Refugees – @AceNewsServices — Ace News Services