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Today we are releasing the implementation guide for EFF’s Do Not Track (DNT) policy. For years users have been able to set a Do Not Track signal in their browser, but there has been little guidance for websites as to how to honor that request. EFF’s DNT policy sets out a meaningful response for servers to follow, and this guide provides details about how to apply it in practice. At its core, DNT protects user privacy by excluding the use of unique identifiers for cross-site tracking, and by limiting the retention period of log data to ten days. This short retention period gives sites the time they need for debugging and security purposes, and to generate aggregate statistical data. From this baseline, the policy then allows exceptions when the user's interactions with the site—e.g., to post comments, make a purchase, or click on an ad—necessitates collecting more information. The site is then free to retain any data necessary to complete the transaction. We believe this approach balances users’ privacy expectations with the ability of websites to deliver the functionality users want. Websites often integrate third-party content and rely on third-party services (like content delivery networks or analytics), and this creates the potential for user data to be leaked despite the best intentions of the site operator. The guide identifies potential pitfalls and catalogs providers of compliant services. It is common, for example, to embed media from platforms like You Tube, Sound Cloud, and Twitter, all of which track users whenever their widgets are loaded. Fortunately, Embedly, which offers control over the appearance of embeds, also supports DNT via its API, displaying a poster instead and loading the widget only if the user clicks on it knowingly.

Knowledge makes the difference between willing tracking and non-consensual tracking. Users should be able to choose whether they want to give up their privacy in exchange for using a site or a  particular feature. This means sites need to be transparent about their practices. A great example of this is our biggest adopter, Medium, which does not track DNT users who browse the site and gives clear information about tracking to users when they choose to log in. This is their previous log-in panel, the DNT language is currently being added to their new interface.

On OpenCongress, you can now email your representatives and senators just as easily as you would a friend or colleague. We've added a new feature to OpenCongress. It's not flashy. It doesn't use D3 or integrate with social media. But we still think it's pretty cool. You might've already heard of it. Email. This may not sound like a big deal, but it's been a long time coming. A lot of people are surprised to learn that Congress doesn't have publicly available email addresses. It's the number one feature request that we hear from users of our APIs. Until recently, we didn't have a good response. That's because members of Congress typically put their feedback mechanisms behind captchas and zip code requirements. Sometimes these forms break; sometimes their requirements improperly lock out actual constituents. And they always make it harder to email your congressional delegation than it should be.

This is a real problem. According to the Congressional Management Foundation, 88% of Capitol Hill staffers agree that electronic messages from constituents influence their bosses' decisions. We think that it's inappropriate to erect technical barriers around such an essential democratic mechanism. Congress itself is addressing the problem. That effort has just entered its second decade, and people are feeling optimistic that a launch to a closed set of partners might be coming soon. But we weren't content to wait. So when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) approached us about this problem, we were excited to really make some progress. Building on groundwork first done by the Participatory Politics Foundation and more recent work within Sunlight, a network of 150 volunteers collected the data we needed from congressional websites in just two days. That information is now on Github, available to all who want to build the next generation of constituent communication tools. The EFF is already working on some exciting things to that end.

But we just wanted to be able to email our representatives like normal people. So now, if you visit a legislator's page on OpenCongress, you'll see an email address in the right-hand sidebar that looks like Sen.Reid@opencongress.org or Rep.Boehner@opencongress.org. You can also email myreps@opencongress.org to email both of your senators and your House representatives at once. The first time we get an email from you, we'll send one back asking for some additional details. This is necessary because our code submits your message by navigating those aforementioned congressional webforms, and we don't want to enter incorrect information. But for emails after the first one, all you'll have to do is click a link that says, "Yes, I meant to send that email."

Cloud architecture has to be defined in a way that allows applications to move around, or clouds can become the mother of all lock-ins, warned Red Hat's CEO James Whitehurst. Once users get stuck in something, it's hard for them to move, Whitehurst said in an interview. The industry has to get in front of the cloud computing wave and make sure this next generation infrastructure is defined in a way that's friendly to customers, rather than to IT vendors, according to Whitehurst.

The cloud certification program was announced last year, and Amazon Web Services was the first cloud provider to get certified. Since then, NTT and IBM have been added to the list of certified partners and more are on the way, according to Whitehurst.

To be able to move a workload from a data center to a cloud or between two clouds, a connecting API (application programming interface) is needed, and there are a plethora of different ones being developed. Fewer would be better, according to Whitehurst. However, the real challenge isn't the API, but ensuring that the application will run with the same performance when it has been moved.

10 years ago, everybody was on MySpace. 10 years from now, the Twitters and Facebooks and YouTubes of today will be dinosaurs, abandoned by users sick of censorship and centralized control. Thankfully, the alternatives to these social media dinosaurs are already here, and they’re blockchain-based, torrent friendly, decentralized and censorship resistant.

SHOW NOTES Leaked Twitter API data shows the number of tweets is in serious decline Yep, science confirms that quitting Facebook makes people happier Facebook ‘made China censorship tool’ Facebook is censoring posts in Thailand that the government has deemed unsuitable The Corbett Report on Steemit The Corbett Report on Minds.com The Corbett Report on BitChute Ray Vahey on Twitter

The HTML Working Group published eight documents: Working Drafts of the HTML5 specification, the accompanying explanatory document HTML5 differences from HTML4, and the related non-normative reference HTML: The Markup Language. Working Drafts of the specifications HTML+RDFa 1.1 and HTML Microdata, which define mechanisms for embedding machine-readable data in HTML documents, and the specification HTML Canvas 2D Context, which defines a 2D immediate-mode graphics API for use with the HTML5 <canvas> element. HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives, which is intended to help authors provide useful text alternatives for images in HTML documents. Polyglot Markup: HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents, which is intended to help authors produce XHTML documents that are also compatible with non-XML HTML syntax and parsing rules.

In 2004, Google launched Google Desktop, a program designed to make it easy for users to search their own PCs for emails, files, music, photos, Web pages and more. Desktop has been used by tens of millions of people and we’ve been humbled by its usage and great user feedback. However, over the past seven years we’ve also witnessed some big changes in how users store and access their own data, with many moving to web-based applications. There has been a significant shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as integration of Google Desktop functionality (like local search) into most modern operating systems. This is a positive development for users and we’re excited that most people now have instant access to their personal information. As such, we’ll be discontinuing support for Google Desktop, including all of the associated APIs, services, plugins and gadgets. As of September 14, Google Desktop will no longer be available for download, and existing installations will not be updated to include new features or fixes.

n 2004, Google launched Google Desktop, a program designed to make it easy for users to search their own PCs

At the Web 2.0 Expo, Tim O'Reilly predicts that Microsoft will emerge as a leading proponent of the open Web, despite the company's tradition of fostering its own proprietary operating systems and development languages. O'Reilly says Microsoft's recent deals to index Twitter tweets and use Wolfram Alpha's APIs for computational data show a shift in its willingness to work with other Web companies. Moreover, the Windows Azure cloud computing operating system is designed to work with open-source technology.

Google cuts Huawei off Android; so Huawei may migrate to Aurora. Call it mobile Eurasia integration; the evolving Russia-China strategic partnership may be on the verge of spawning its own operating system – and that is not a metaphor. Aurora is a mobile operating system currently developed by Russian Open Mobile Platform, based in Moscow. It is based on the Sailfish operating system, designed by Finnish technology company Jolla, which featured a batch of Russians in the development team. Quite a few top coders at Google and Apple also come from the former USSR – exponents of a brilliant scientific academy tradition.

Aurora could be regarded as part of Huawei’s fast-evolving Plan B. Huawei is now turbo-charging the development and implementation of its own operating system, HongMeng, a process that started no less than seven years ago. Most of the work on an operating system is writing drivers and APIs (application programming interfaces). Huawei would be able to integrate their code to the Russian system in no time.

No Google? Who cares? Tencent, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo are already testing the HongMeng operating system, as part of a batch of one million devices already distributed. HongMeng’s launch is still a closely guarded secret by Huawei, but according to CEO Richard Yu, it could happen even before the end of 2019 for the Chinese market, running on smartphones, computers, TVs and cars. HongMeng is rumored to be 60% faster than Android.