Category Archives: society

don’t let the EU censor your internet: stop ACTA

January 28, 2012 – 11:50

You might have heard that SOPA got stopped (for now) in the USA, a bill to censor the internet and limit online freedom for everyone. An even worse deal is going down on our EU-side of the globe unfortunately, where ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) has already been signed, but not yet approved (luckily). ACTA – [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in belgium, blog, copyleft, copyright, internet, law, media, politics | Comments (0)

break out of the search bubble

September 7, 2011 – 20:53

Did you know that when you search on the popular search engines these days you’re actually doing that from inside a “search bubble”? Google, Bing and Yahoo all do it, to give you more tailored and “relevant to your interest” results. Let’s take Google for example, since most people are using that one anyway. They [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in geek, google, internet, security | Comments (0)

watching #egypt

February 2, 2011 – 23:33

I don’t know if you are following this as much as I am, but I can’t keep from checking out the news rolling in on the #Egypt feed on twitter. It doesn’t get any more real than that with live pictures and video’s being blogged and tweeted first hand. Paper.li on #Egypt proves great for [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in internet, politics, tv, twitter | Comments (0)

refactoring the government

January 26, 2011 – 14:40

The Belgian politicians are having a bit of a problem forming a new government since the last elections. This caused folks to organise a demonstration in Brussels on Sunday to make it clear that it’s time those politicians get back to work and form a government pronto. While talking about this the whole thing somehow [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in belgium, politics | Comments (0)

the lazyweb is back

December 23, 2009 – 21:31

I always liked the idea of the Lazyweb. You could ask a question in a blog post starting with “Dear Lazyweb” and then some bot would pick it up and post in on the lazyweb aggregation site for other people to answer or help. The idea is to post not too easy to solve questions [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in geek, internet, twitter | Comments (0)

why camera surveillance in mechelen won't work

December 5, 2009 – 12:40

The Belgian city of Mechelen is planning to put up road surveillance camera’s up on all big exit and entry roads to the city. The reason for this is -of course- the same as it always is when it comes to invading your privacy: to increase security. The plan is to scan every license plate [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in belgium, politics, privacy | Comments (0)

help stop the Belgian data retention rule

October 28, 2009 – 20:58

The European Union wants that internet traffic, phone calls and generally every form of electronic communication data (e.g. Skype) is logged and kept for 2 years. The logged data has to contain personal information to identify the user and location information such as time, date, place, length of the phone call/internet connection, the text/MMS/email-message itself. [...]

By n3wjack | Also posted in belgium, geek, internet, law | Comments (4)