Bonum Certa Men Certa

Leftover Links 22/07/2023: Shocking Details Emerge of Microsoft's 'Clown Computing' Breach



  • Leftovers

    • AxiosBiden has started using CPAP machine for sleep apnea

      President Biden has recently started to use a CPAP machine to treat his sleep apnea, the White House confirmed Wednesday.

      Driving the news: “Since 2008, the President has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports. He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history," White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

    • AxiosNo Labels insists poll designed to sink them actually proves third-party viability

      No Labels, the bipartisan group plotting an independent presidential campaign, is claiming that a new poll — commissioned by Democratic and Republican strategists determined to stop them — actually bolsters their case.

    • TruthdigFrom Oppenheimer to Repo Man: Truthdig’s Guide to Nuclear Cinema

      But it should be. The Doomsday clock maintained by Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is currently set to 90 seconds to midnight. NATO and Russia are playing a game in Ukraine that has drawn informed comparisons to an extended Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear arms control has collapsed. New generations of nuclear weapons are being developed by the U.S., Russia and China. Wherever history ends up ranking the new “Oppenheimer,” it’s a very well-timed entry to a long movie tradition of reckoning with the bomb and its effects on human beings at every level, from the civilizational to the cellular.

      With that in mind, here’s our guide to essential atomic movies.

    • Science

    • Education

      • YLEFinland slips to 11th in international competitiveness ranking

        The Nordic country's weaknesses included: how open the culture is to external ideas, as well as how flexible and adaptable people are when they face new challenges.

      • RFERLThe Azadi Briefing: Taliban Intensifies Efforts To Eradicate Secular Education In Afghanistan

        The order affects 49 teacher-training centers and 198 support facilities across the country, according to a source at the ministry who spoke to Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

        Around 5,600 instructors and other staff were employed by the training centers. Created under the previous Western-backed Afghan government, the centers were aimed at improving the quality of education in the war-torn country.

      • QuartzTSMC blamed a lack of skilled US workers for delays at its Arizona chips plant

        In the interim period, the company said it’ll send over “experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers for a short period of time” to bridge the skills gap. Last month, Nikkei Asia reported that a “task force” of more than 500 experienced workers will be heading to the US to help set up specialized equipment.

        Construction on the Arizona microchips manufacturing plant, which was supposed to start producing 4 nanometer chips next year, is now due to start in 2025. The opening of a second fab, which will produce smaller and more complex 3nm chips, is still on track for 2026.

      • The Register UKTSMC says Arizona fab behind schedule, blames chip geek shortage

        TSMC on Thursday said its under-construction chip fab in Arizona won't be up and running until at least 2025 because of a shortage of skilled workers.

        During the Taiwanese giant's Q2 earnings call, CEO Mark Liu acknowledged the biz can't get enough workers to complete the building project on its original timeline. TSMC had hoped to start producing 4nm-node chips at the plant sometime next year.

      • The HinduAll State universities must follow common syllabus, says Higher Education Minister Ponmudy

        All V-Cs were consulted while framing the common syllabus. The aim is to upgrade higher education, make it easy for students to move from one university to another and improve the universities’ standing in the National Institutional Ranking Framework, he averred.

        He reiterated that language subjects will be the same for aided, government and autonomous colleges.

    • Hardware

      • Tom's HardwareFake 'New' GPU Operation in China Leads to 22 Arrests

        A sizable graphics card refurbishing operation has been arrested in China, with seven of the 22 detained in custody, and millions of dollars worth of stock confiscated.

      • Democracy Now“Cobalt Red”: Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children

        The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces nearly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, an essential component in rechargeable batteries powering laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles. But those who dig up the valuable mineral often work in horrific and dangerous conditions, says Siddharth Kara, an international expert on modern-day slavery and author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. In an in-depth interview, he says the major technology companies that rely on this cobalt from DRC to make their products are turning a blind eye to the human toll and falsely claiming their supply chains are free from abuse, including widespread child labor. “The public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern context,” says Kara. “The fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with.”

      • IT WireBig setback for Modi's chip dreams as Foxconn cancels Vedanta deal

        The cancellation of the deal was announced on Monday, as per a Reuters story. A Foxconn spokesperson was quoted therein as saying: "Foxconn has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta".

      • HackadayBehold A Gallery Of Sony’s PS VR2 Prototypes

        Every finished product stands at the end of a long line of prototypes, and Sony have recently shared an interview and images of their PlayStation VR2 prototypes.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

      • RFAA chatbot with socialist core values, please

        Can China and the rest of the world agree on how to regulate AI? It may be a more serious question than we think.

      • GamingOnLinuxAI-powered news sites are dumb and Redditors managed to trick them

        This is pretty amusing to see. Nothing really related to Linux / Steam Deck gaming, but more a state of the industry post that I thought you might also find fun. Redditors managed to trick an AI-powered news scraper.

      • HackadayNo Moving Parts LiDAR

        Self-driving cars often use LiDAR — think of it as radar using light beams. One limitation of existing systems is they need some method of scanning the light source around, and that means moving parts. Researchers at the University of Washington have created a laser on a chip that uses acoustic waves to bend the laser, avoiding physically moving parts. The paper is behind a paywall, but the University has a summary poster, and you can also find an overview over on [Geekwire].

      • [Repeat] Security WeekCitrix Zero-Day Exploited Against Critical Infrastructure Organization

        The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed on Thursday that the recently disclosed Citrix zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-3519 has been exploited against a critical infrastructure organization.

        CISA has not attributed the attack to any known threat actor, but the agency has shared tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) obtained from the targeted critical infrastructure organization to help others detect potential attacks.

      • Terence EdenThat's not my printer! Accidentally finding unsecured HP printers in the wild

        Oh... OH! This was not my printer. A fact I could tell from the subtly different model number, the public IP address, and that the user interface was in Cyrillic.

      • [Repeat] How we tried to book a train ticket and ended up with a databreach with 245,000 records

        To celebrate Franco-German friendship, German Transport Minister Wissing and his French counterpart Beaune came up with something special: 30,000 free Interrail tickets per country for travel in Germany and France for young adults between 18 and 27. Codename: “Passe France Allemagne”

        However, many things went wrong when the Interrail passes were distributed. In the following, we want to take you on a journey through the stages of the not-so-well-implemented ticket and show you how you could still get a pass after registration ended.

      • Using emoji on the web

        This can vary depending on the operating system, browser, and font stack. If you don’t conduct much cross-device testing, you might not even be aware that your colorful emoji is shown as a plain single-color symbol for some users.

      • [Repeat] Bruce SchneierAI and Microdirectives

        AI is about to make this issue much more complicated, and could drastically expand the types of laws that can be enforced in this manner. Some legal scholars predict that computationally personalized law and its automated enforcement are the future of law. These would be administered by what Anthony Casey and Anthony Niblett call “microdirectives,” which provide individualized instructions for legal compliance in a particular scenario.

        Made possible by advances in surveillance, communications technologies, and big-data analytics, microdirectives will be a new and predominant form of law shaped largely by machines. They are “micro” because they are not impersonal general rules or standards, but tailored to one specific circumstance. And they are “directives” because they prescribe action or inaction required by law.

      • Tom's HardwareGoogle and Bing AI Bots Hallucinate AMD 9950X3D, Nvidia RTX 5090 Ti, Other Future Tech

        At this point, no one should be surprised that AI bots would make up non-existent products. But what's interesting here is that the LLMs know the latest real version of certain products -- smart phones and movie sequels among them -- and won't fabricate information about those. This shows that the technology is capable of separating fact from fiction but has glaring blind spots.

        Considering that Google is now building an AI tool to "help" journalists write news and that some prominent websites are using bots like Bard and ChatGPT to write articles, we're likely to see a lot more articles about products that don't yet -- and might never -- exist.

      • OpenAI Trust and Security Lead resigns

        OpenAI has suffered severe staff losses. Dave Willner, an industry veteran who has led the AI ​​Trust and Security team for the past year and a half, has announced that he is leaving the company and moving into a consulting role. He plans to spend more time with his family. His departure comes at a critical time for AI as questions arise around the world about how to regulate AI and how to minimize its potentially harmful impact.

      • Windows TCO

        • Security WeekMicrosoft Cloud [Breach] Exposed More Than Exchange, Outlook Emails

          Researchers at cloud security startup Wiz have an urgent warning for organizations running Microsoft’s M365 platform: That stolen Microsoft Azure AD enterprise signing key gave Chinese [attackers] access to data beyond Exchange Online and Outlook.com.

          “Our researchers concluded that the compromised MSA key could have allowed the threat actor to forge access tokens for multiple types of Azure Active Directory applications, including every application that supports personal account authentication, such as SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive,” Wiz researcher Shir Tamari said in a document posted online.

        • The Register UKStolen Microsoft key may have opened up a lot more than US govt email inboxes

          Incredibly as it sounds, and it really does deserve wider coverage, someone somehow obtained one of Microsoft's internal private cryptographic keys used to digitally sign access tokens for its online services. With that key, the snoops were able to craft tokens to grant them access to Microsoft customers' email systems and, crucially, sign those access tokens as the Windows giant to make it look as though they were legitimately issued.

          With those golden tokens in hand, the snoops – believed to be based in China – were able to log into Microsoft cloud email accounts used by US government officials, including US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The cyber-trespassing was picked up by a federal government agency, which raised the alarm.

        • Silicon AngleThat Chinese attack on Microsoft’s Azure cloud? It’s worse than it first looked

          Well, almost. The original reports of the breach centered on a set of compromised encryption keys for Microsoft’s Exchange online email services. But Microsoft’s latest blog post still doesn’t completely connect all the dots of what happened. That has led some reporters, such as Andy Greenberg of Wired magazine, to speculate on several scenarios on how the keys were stolen or mishandled.

          “The threat actor was able to obtain new access tokens by presenting one previously issued from this API due to a design flaw,” the new report from Wiz says, though it has since been fixed. These tokens were used to access emails from Outlook Web Access and Outlook.com services.

          However, the report from Wiz goes further. “The compromised signing key was more powerful than it may have seemed and was not limited to just those two services,” Wiz reports. It found this key could be used to obtain access to a variety of services that use Azure Active Directory or AAD for authentication using the “login with Microsoft” sequence.

        • Scoop News GroupThe FBI’s Cynthia Kaiser on how the bureau fights ransomware

          Ransomware is obviously a significant threat, and it’s been for the last several years. Now, we know that ransomware actors don’t care who they target. In fact, they’re looking to target entities that have little tolerance for downtime. So that includes hospitals or just critical infrastructure entities. If they think you can’t live without your networks or you can’t operate without your networks, they’re going to go after you. And I think that’s what makes it so insidious and difficult is because they’re just constantly targeting. There’s new variants all the time. There’s new actors, affiliates going between the different variants, which makes it a really difficult ecosystem. As we get into talking about what the FBI is doing about it, it’s that ecosystem concept that we really need to think about. It’s not just a person developing something and then deploying it. It’s a lot of different people working across variants, working across services, cryptocurrency exchanges, marketplaces. And I think that’s that broader effort among all of the criminals that’s really putting a lot of U.S. networks at risk.

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Patrick BreyerAbuse survivor files suit against #ChatControl searches in private messages

          With his lawsuit, Schneider wants to stop the practice of US digital corporations such as Meta, Google and Microsoft of indiscriminate and error-prone searches of private messages for supposedly suspicious content (so-called voluntary chat control or chat control 1.0) and overturn the corresponding EU regulation from 2021. The background to the lawsuit is a planned successor regulation, with which this message and chat control, which has so far only been practised by US providers, is to become mandatory for all providers of email, messenger and chat services (so-called chat control 2.0 or child sexual abuse regulation, CSAR).

        • Patrick BreyerManipulative EU opinion poll no justification for indiscriminate chat control

          The EU Department of the Interior DG Home claims to have proven with a Eurobarometer opinion poll that the vast majority of the EU population wants total chat control. Unfortunately this was never asked for, or only in a misleading way.

        • OpenRightsGroupDisappointment as peers fail to protect privacy on encrypted chats

          The issue last night was about the powers in the Online Safety Bill that will allow Ofcom to force tech companies to scan chat messages on behalf of the government. Given the scale of use of these services, it will effectively introduce a form of mass surveillance and all experts agree that the necessary technological solution will compromise end-to-end encryption. The powers would also enable Ofcom to give similar mandates to public social media platforms and other services.

        • EDRICouncil poised to endorse mass surveillance as official position for CSA Regulation

          EU Member State governments are planning to adopt their official position, called a ‘general approach’, on the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) at the meeting of Justice and Home Affairs ministers on 28 September 2023. The Law Enforcement Working Party (LEWP) – who have been negotiating this text on behalf of their countries for the last year – will have its last meeting before the Summer break on 26 July.

          Their discussions will be based on Council text 11518/23 which puts forward the latest suggested changes to the draft CSAR by the Spanish Presidency. Here, we sound the alarm about the following major issues with the Council’s latest text: [...]

        • OpenRightsGroupOnline Safety Bill: Peers have failed to protect our privacy and security

          “It is disappointing that peers have failed to protect the privacy and security of the 40 million people in the UK who use messaging apps to communicate with friends, family and colleagues.

          “As it stands, the Online Safety Bill will give Ofcom the power to ask tech companies to scan our private messages on the government’s behalf.

          “Despite having cross party support, the opposition withdrew an amendment that would at least ensure judges have oversight over these powers for government-mandated surveillance.

        • QuartzWhy does Tesla want to build its own $1 billion supercomputer?

          Any time you’re driving a Tesla, it’s collecting data in the background. An autonomous vehicle can collect up to 19 terabytes of data per day, from an array of sensors and cameras. All that data requires increasingly powerful computers to process, secure, and store, particularly as the demand for Teslas and other autonomous EVs soars.

          Essentially, this data consists of all the information fed to the car’s 12 sensors and eight external cameras mounted to provide 360-degree visibility for a range of up to 250 meters to enhance safety and convenience for everyone on board.

        • Privacy InternationalPI's submission to the Independent Review of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016

          The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 provides a legal framework for the use of investigatory powers by the UK security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and other relevant public bodies. These powers include the interception of communications; the retention and acquisition of communications data and; equipment interference for obtaining communications and other data. The act also provides powers to the security and intelligence agencies’ relating to the retention and examination of bulk personal datasets.

        • The Register UKJust declassified: US senator caught up in Section 702 FBI surveillance dragnet

          The freshly declassified April 11 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinion concerns the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the Feds to snoop on foreigners' electronic communications.

          The timing is especially significant: it comes as Congress considers whether to reauthorize Section 702 before it expires at the end of the year. Let's just say it's likely to have one less supporter on the Senate floor.

        • US News And World ReportFBI Wrongly Searched for US Senator and State Senator in Section 702 Spy Data, Court Says

          News of the latest violations comes as the Biden administration faces a difficult battle in persuading Congress to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows spy agencies to collect swaths of emails and other communications.

          Already this year, U.S. spy officials have disclosed that the FBI improperly searched Section 702 databases for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd.

        • India TimesTwitter to take on LinkedIn with job posting feature

          According to the screenshot, the company describes the feature as "Twitter Hiring" which is a "free" feature for "verified organisations to post jobs on your company profile, and attract top talent to your open positions."

          Moreover, the verified organisations will be able to add up to five job positions to their profiles.

        • EFFYoung People Should Oppose the Kids Online Safety Act

          What’s often been left out of the debate over KOSA is how young people feel about this. In fact, many teenagers already oppose the bill. Young TikTok users have been rallying one another to call and email legislators to push back on the bill, and videos describing what’s wrong with KOSA have received hundreds of thousands of views. The common sentiment on TikTok, which is primarily used by young people, is that the billwould be disastrous, leading to privacy invasions, account deletions, and even suicides. Petitions and calls to action against it on Tumblr, where 48% of the active users and 61% of new ones are from Generation Z, have gone viral multiple times. The common critiques of the bill are that it requires surveillance of minors by parents, that it would lead to huge holes in what information and platforms are accessible by young people online, and that it would force all users to upload their IDs to verify their ages.€ 

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • The NationEven as the Oppenheimer Film Rights a Historic Wrong, the Memo That Smeared Him Remains Redacted

        Even today, some Oppenheimer case documents remain partly classified and remarkably time-consuming for historians to review. In 2017, I filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Hoover’s 69-page memo. Six years later, in March 2023, the National Archives finally released to me a copy of the memo with more than 70 redactions, citing an exemption that permits the government to withhold parts of a document in order to protect a “confidential source.”

        The redactions shielded the identity of multiple informants, including one who said Oppenheimer participated in a Communist Party meeting in fall 1940, and another who said Oppenheimer had “in effect, delayed or attempted to delay the development of the H-bomb.”

      • The NationThe Many Enigmas of Oppenheimer

        J. Robert Oppenheimer made his greatest contribution to physics in 1939. It was three years before he met Gen. Leslie Groves, three years before they built a town in the New Mexico desert, and three years before they recruited thousands of scientists and their families to live in that desert town where they worked toward a single-minded goal: a weapon of such destructive power that it would end World War II, perhaps even all wars. Hitler had just invaded Poland, and Oppenheimer, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was working on a paper that used Einstein’s theory of relativity to identify what we now call black holes.

    • Environment

      • [Repeat] New York TimesFor Europe’s Older Population, Heat Is the New Covid

        Last year, Italy was exposed to extreme temperatures longer than most other European countries, enduring three major heat waves. Almost 30 percent of the 61,000 people estimated to have died last summer from extreme heat in Europe were Italians, with age playing a significant factor. The number of Italians over 80 is now about 4.5 million, almost double the number of 20 years ago.

      • QuartzAmsterdam is cracking down on cruise ships

        The measure is set to tackle two issues at once. “The polluting cruise is not in line with Amsterdam’s sustainable ambitions,” said Ilana Rooderkerk, the local leader of the D66 party, which introduced the motion. “Cruise ships in the city center also do not fit in with the task of combating mass tourism.”

      • The NationJust Can’t Stop
      • France24Europe faces 'extreme conditions' as summer heatwave intensifies

        Greece closed the ancient Acropolis during the hottest part of the day on Friday to protect tourists, while Croatian villagers cleaned up after a wildfire as a fierce heatwave swept across southern Europe.

      • France24One-third of Americans under heat alerts as blistering heatwave spreads

        More than a third of Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings Thursday as a blistering heat wave that's been baking the nation spread further into California, forcing residents to seek out air conditioning or find other ways to stay cool in triple-digit temperatures.

      • The Straits TimesChinese cities brace themselves for floods as heat scorches inland regions

        Temperatures of 35 deg C and above continued to menace other parts of China.

      • Energy/Transportation

        • Truthdig‘The Fastest Way to Fry the Planet’: New Climate Campaign Directed at Air Travel

          The airline industry has missed 98 percent of its previous environmental targets, yet is still planning to at least double passenger numbers by 2050. The ‘Fly Net Zero’ plan addresses as little as one half of aviation’s climate impact and ignores the non-carbon effects of flights.

          Research indicates that additional flights being taken due to their promotion by advertising could result in up to 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in a year.

        • VoxHollywood’s got a [cryptocurrency] critic. Should we pay attention?

          So why should you care what Ben McKenzie thinks about [cryptocurrency]? The short answer is ... I don’t exactly know. As a general rule, people probably shouldn’t listen to celebrities about money. McKenzie’s answer is that he studied economics as an undergraduate, so he knows about money, and he’s an actor, so he knows about lying. He’s testified about [cryptocurrency] before Congress, too. And he’s not trying to get you to buy anything (except maybe his book).

          Whatever the case, McKenzie, 44, has now fashioned himself as the famous face of the [cryptocurrency] skepticism movement. I spoke with him for about an hour in mid-July about his theory on the case of [cryptocurrency], his experiences looking into it, and why he hopes people will pay attention.

        • The Straits TimesChina’s cycling scene shifts into high gear, boosted by Covid-19, social media

          With 20 million road cyclists in China, the industry is expected to be worth $21.8 billion by 2026.

        • New York TimesInside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case

          Now Ms. Ellison is poised to be a star witness at Mr. Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, which is scheduled for Oct. 2.

      • Overpopulation

        • ANF NewsTurkey continues to cut off Euphrates water

          The Turkish state has been releasing only 200 cubic meters of water per second instead of 500 cubic meters. This violates the 1987 protocol between Syria and Turkey.

          The level of the Euphrates has dropped a lot due to the water being cut off for 30 months. The lakes behind three dams on the Euphrates River in Syria, the largest of which is the Euphrates Dam at Tabqa, have decreased significantly.

        • La Prensa LatinaArab world needs to boost food sector

          Ibrahim Al-Dakhiri, director general of the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development, noted the need to accelerate the pace of integration and cooperation to produce food.

    • Finance

      • The 2023 Dreadful Surge in Bankruptcy Filings

        Nothing here constitutes financial advice. As a matter of fact, everything said here is based on logic and statistics.

        Exactly one year ago, in July of 2022, I wrote an article with a few predictions for the next 12 months.

        I was very wrong about one of them: the grain crisis resulting from the Black Sea embargo and the Russo-Ukrainian War. It didn’t happen so far.

        This was supposed to occur during the first half of 2023, but a grain deal between Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey saved the day — a deal that right now is at serious risk.

      • Hong Kong Free PressAnyone for golf? Or would Hongkongers prefer public housing?

        I have to thank local€ golf€ enthusiasts for providing a great deal of innocent amusement for those of us who have no strong feelings about the game, and perhaps subscribe to the observation – first recorded in 1910 and often misattributed in a crisper version to Mark Twain — “to play€ golf€ is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk.”

      • JURISTUS Department of Justice charges 78 people with $2.5 billion worth of healthcare fraud

        The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Wednesday that it was criminally charging 78 people for their alleged involvement in healthcare fraud schemes. The alleged fraud schemes totaled over $2.5 billion and targeted the elderly, people with HIV, pregnant women and others.

      • Michael West MediaReserve Bank governor pledges 'significant' overhaul

        Fewer meetings, post-decision press conferences and more board member interaction with staff have been given a tick by the governor of the Reserve Bank.

        Philip Lowe has signed off on a range of recommendations from an independent review released in April.

      • Michael West MediaMore rate rises 'possible' but RBA's course uncertain

        Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe says it’s “possible” there will be further increases to interest rates, despite keeping them on hold at the last meeting.

        The governor says it’s unclear if monetary policy has more work to do, and was “very conscious” the full force of the tightening to date had not yet been felt.

      • Michael West MediaMore asking for help but borrowers resilient, says ANZ

        There’s been a modest uptick in the number of ANZ customers asking for help but the head of the big four bank says borrowers, overall, are proving resilient.

        ANZ chief executive officer Shayne Elliott said some customers were struggling as rising interest rates pushed up borrowing costs but most were “managing their way through” the current financial pressures.

      • Michael West MediaRate rises still on cards but RBA chief softens stance

        Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has toned down his language around more interest rate hikes, but says more tightening is still possible even after keeping the cash rate on hold this month.€ 

        The governor says it’s unclear if monetary policy has more work to do and was “very conscious” the full force of the tightening had not yet been felt.

      • MIT Technology ReviewIs the digital dollar dead?

        It’s summer 2020. The world is under a series of lockdowns as the pandemic continues to run its course. And in academic and foreign policy circles, digital currencies are one of the hottest topics in town.€  China is well on its way to launching its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC, and many other…

      • The NationFinally, the Biden Administration Will Offer Some Relief for Childcare Costs

        The Biden administration has just announced that it will take unilateral action to make childcare more affordable and accessible to American families. The US Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that it has proposed a new rule to reduce the out-of-pocket costs for families who receive federal childcare subsidies while offering financial support to providers who accept those subsidies. It’s a far more limited action than what President Joe Biden had been seeking at the start of his administration—only 900,000 families get a childcare subsidy—but it will mean significant relief for the people it reaches.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • TechdirtNo, Social Media Is Not The Same Thing As Lead Paint

        A few months back I attended a workshop regarding keeping children on the internet safe, and at some point a debate broke out over whether social media was “more like” cigarettes or chocolate (i.e., obviously addictive and harmful or just a little unhealthy in large doses), and a long term trust & safety executive who was in the room told me it was driving them crazy, because it’s just not an analogy that works. Chocolate and cigarettes are things you literally consumer in your body, and they have a clear, and pretty well understood, impact on your body.

      • JURISTEuropean Parliament committee deadlocks on amended nature restoration law, delaying legislation

        The newest version of the European Parliament’s proposed Nature Restoration Law faced an impasse within a European Parliament committee on Tuesday, failing to secure a majority vote. The Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety rejected the proposal in a tie 44–44 vote.

      • Michael West MediaVoice will help complete unfinished business: Burney

        Linda Burney wants Australians to remember that behind the stark statistics about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health there are real people.

        The Minister for Indigenous Australians addresses the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, when she will speak about the upcoming referendum on a First Nations voice.€ 

      • NPRThe White House and big tech companies release commitments on managing AI

        Companies have also committed to having their AI systems tested through a third party before being released. One example of that will take place at the DEF-CON hacking convention in Las Vegas next month. Some of the companies, including Google and OpenAI, will have their AI systems tested there, at the encouragement of the White House. Beyond that, there isn't a clear outline of who the third-party checks would be, and how they are selected.

        But the White House says these agreements are just a first step.

      • ScheerpostDivide and Rule

        How the Growing Rift between Peace, Climate and Social Justice Movements Is Cementing a Ruinous Status Quo.

      • Common DreamsIf You Fuck Around With Us

        Ooof. We're somewhat speechless with revulsion but nonetheless feel a compunction to point out that a former mob boss "president," leading GOP contender for the once-venerated presidency, and multi-indicted - five at last count - grifter and sociopath is still not only free but posting dark, baneful, apocalyptic threats to law enforcement and anyone else who stands in his malignant way. His barbs are accompanied by the sound of alien tripods killing people in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds." Nothing to see here.

      • Insight HungaryOutrage over Hungarian president's presence at women’s rights conference in Rwanda

        Hungarian President Katalin Novak an anti-abortionist, shocked some leading delegates with her presence when she spoke at the Women Deliver conference in Kigali, Rwanda.

        “We were taken aback,” said conference attendee Bruna Martinez, a Brazilian activist told The Guardian. “We don’t understand why a woman like this would be invited.”

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • The Death of Infosec Twitter

          Unfortunately this is where the story will stop too. The free tier we were using to collect this data was cut off last week. Between the headlines and the trend we are seeing in this data, it just doesn’t make sense to pay for access to this data. The last day we were able to save twitter data was July 12th, 2023, exactly two years from the start of our experiment. And with that, we say “so long” to infosec twitter.

        • TechdirtOnce Again, Mainstream Media Falls For A Fake TikTok Challenge, Creating Yet Another Moral Panic

          It seems to happen over and over again, and the mainstream media always makes it worse. The mainstream media hears about a “TikTok challenge,” reports on it like crazy, and people freak out that TikTok is destroying the children or some such.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • The NationHow Rumble Is Planning to Be the Premier MAGA Platform

        “I have been living with a proverbial boot on my neck for going on years now.”

      • RFAHong Kong man jailed 3 months for insulting China’s national anthem

        Sentence imposed after he swapped anthem for banned protest song in Olympic footage

      • RFERLThe Azadi Briefing: The Taliban's War On Music

        The Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on July 19 released photos of the blaze. The ministry declared music is un-Islamic and promotes "immorality that has caused the youth to go astray and society to be destroyed."

        Widely condemned by Afghans on social media, the move is seen as part of the Taliban's war on music.

        The extremist group banned music soon after seizing power in 2021 and has burned instruments and beaten musicians. That has led hundreds of musicians to flee the country in fear of their lives.

      • FuturismReddit Seizes Popular Subreddit That Dared Defy Its Iron Fist: They've followed through with their threats.

        While most subreddits have ended their protests against the social network's profiteering, the popular r/malefashionadvice has held out — and now, Reddit is punishing its mods by taking it over.

      • The VergeReddit takes over one of the biggest protesting subreddits

        As we reported last week, the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, a subreddit with than 5 million subscribers, had taken the community private and were pushing its users toward Discord and Substack instead. At the time, the moderators expected to be removed after receiving a message from a Reddit admin (employee), ModCodeofConduct, telling them they would be replaced if they didn’t reopen.

        Three former moderators of r/malefashionadvice tell The Verge that they were removed from the subreddit on Thursday. “We more or less have been expecting the removal for the past few days,” one former mod, who asked to go by “Walker,” says in an email to The Verge. Now, the community’s modlist currently has just one moderator: ModCodeofConduct. Though despite the subreddit’s “restricted” status, somebody was able to make a post on Thursday that encourages community members to join the Discord.

      • Tor[tor-relays] Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: run an obfs4 bridge!

        If you have access to an IP range that has never seen the light of day, a stable residential connection, or access to your university network, you can help thousands of people connect to the internet in Turkmenistan.

      • IranWireIndirect Censorship: The Iranian Government’s Methods for Suppressing Dissent Abroad

        This is just one episode in the history of the Islamic Republic’s vast and ongoing operations to pressure, suppress and silence the opposition beyond Iranian borders. These actions harm and endanger freedom of expression in democratic countries but, unfortunately, governments there have not done much, if anything, to prevent or to counter these threats.

      • The Telegraph UKProtests outside schools and cinemas by hardline Muslims 'pose national security threat'

        Anti-blasphemy protests outside schools and cinemas by conservative Muslims are becoming a threat to national security, a new report has warned.

        The review by the Henry Jackson Society think tank has warned that the failure to protect teachers and others from intimidation is amounting to a tacit anti-blasphemy law.

      • RFERL'Not Our Enemies': Iran's Crackdown On Protest By Disabled War Veterans Triggers Outrage

        The government's harsh response to the veterans' protest has triggered widespread anger in Iran, which has been the scene of regular protests over soaring inflation and rising poverty and unemployment.

      • France24Saudi Arabia, Iran summon Swedish diplomats over desecrations of Koran

        The separate moves by both majority-Muslim countries, announced in statements late Thursday, came amid heightened tensions between Sweden and Iraq over a Sweden-based Iraqi refugee who last month burnt pages of the Muslim religious text outside Stockholm's main mosque.

      • Deutsche WelleThe Quran-burning protester in Sweden and his complex past

        It's extremely hot in Iraq right now, the Iraqi government is headed by a religious political party and it is also the beginning of the second holiest month on the Islamic calendar, Iraqi political consultant Jassim Mohamad said as he explained the intensity of reactions from Iraq.

        In particular the latter "means that the mood of the Iraqi street tends towards religious extremism," Mohamad, director of the European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, based in the western German city of Bonn, told DW.

        "It could also be an opportunity for the cleric al-Sadr's group to reappear on the political scene and position itself in opposition to the Iraqi government," he added. Al-Sadr officially exited Iraqi politics in 2022, but the religious leader still has the ability to call large numbers of demonstrators onto the street.

      • [Repeat] BIA NetTurkey enforces ad ban on Twitter following non-compliance with social media law

        The Social Media Law, enacted on October 1, 2020, imposes an obligation on social media providers with over one million users in Turkey to have a legal representative within the country. Failure to adhere to this requirement can result in progressive sanctions, including monetary fines, advertising bans, and bandwidth throttling for non-compliant platforms.

      • RFERLIranian Activists Urge UN Rights Chief To Intervene As Fears Of Boxer's Imminent Execution Grow

        Since being sent to prison, he has reportedly been subjected to torture in an effort to extract a confession that he supports the People's Mujahedin of Iran, which is outlawed in Iran.

        The rate of executions in Iran has been rising sharply, particularly in the wake of widespread protests that swept across the country last year following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody for an alleged head scarf violation.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • ShadowproofWhat’s Next In The Julian Assange Case

        WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his legal team believe that Assange may be extradited to the United States before the end of summer.

        It is unfortunately time for us to prepare for court proceedings, and so far, you came through for us marvelously.

      • The DissenterWhat's Next In Julian Assange's Case?
      • ANF NewsJournalist Beroski abducted after criticizing Barzani

        Speaking after Sherwan Sherwani was sentenced to 4 years in prison, journalist Umêd BeroÅŸki said: "It is Mesrur Barzani's decision to sentence Åžêrwan Åžêrwani to 4 years in prison. The country cannot be ruled by a police and military mentality. Opposition in Kurdistan is being silenced. Those who silence the opposition voices of Behdinan today will silence all of us tomorrow. For this reason, we all need to take to the streets to oppose this unlawful decision.”

        Journalist Umêd Beroski was allegedly abducted by KDP forces on Thursday night, just hours after criticizing Mesrur Barzani.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • France24Hollywood actors join screenwriters for first day of historic strike

        “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudekis and other top movie and TV actors joined picket lines alongside screenwriters Friday on the first full day of a walkout that has become Hollywood’s biggest labor fight in decades.

      • ScheerpostThe Fallout From the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision Has Already Begun

        Diversity advocates are pushing to end legacy admissions while conservatives are taking steps that will make it harder for students of color to go to college, critics say.

      • ScheerpostMichigan Amazon Workers Stage Largest Delivery Station Strike Yet

        “We are demanding a safe work environment where we are not straining, pulling muscles from lifting heavy packages, or tripping over boxes falling off the conveyor belt,” said Alicia Ozier, one of the strikers at the delivery station.

        > She and her co-workers walked out after Amazon retaliated by refusing to accommodate her when she sustained an injury on the job.

      • Vice Media GroupSAG Files Unfair Labor Practice Against Universal After It Trimmed Trees on Picket Line Without a Permit

        On Wednesday, both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA filed formal unfair labor practice charges against Universal Pictures for retaliating against picketers. SAG-AFTRA claimed that the studio had tried to direct the picket line to an unsafe construction site across the street. When workers picketed in front of the studio instead, SAG-AFTRA alleges that the studio trimmed the trees in response. An investigation by the city of Los Angeles found that no permits had been issued for the trimming—meaning that Universal Pictures had trimmed the trees in violation of city policy.

      • The NationHollywood’s Robot Overlords

        Improbable as it may seem, Hollywood, Calif., is now arguably the epicenter of labor strife in the United States. For more than two months, the screenwriters have been out on strike. Now, Hollywood’s actors have joined them. It is the first time in 63 years that writers and actors have struck simultaneously. Roughly 160,000 actors belong to SAG-AFTRA, and 11,500 writers are members of the Writers Guild of America. That’s an awful lot of people flexing their economic muscle simultaneously.

      • UPITaliban bar women from taking key medical school exam

        Beginning in May, the Taliban instituted a policy allowing only male medical students to take the Exit Supplementary Exam, according to the latest updated issue of the U.N.'s Human rights situation in Afghanistan report.

        Women's rights have been eroded heavily in Afghanistan since the Taliban re-established control over the country and its population of 40.1 million in late August of 2021.

      • RFERLAfghan Women Complain Of Harassment, Threats By Taliban's Morality Police

        Women in the western Afghan city of Herat say they have been harassed and threatened by members of the Taliban’s notorious morality police for not wearing the hijab, or Islamic head scarf.

        The complaints come a week after the Taliban deployed more members of the morality police across Afghanistan’s third-largest city, according to local residents who spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

      • RFERLFounder Of Prominent Iranian Charity Fled Into Exile After 'Months Of Torture'

        But the charity, which has over 10,000 volunteers across Iran, has come under mounting pressure from the authorities in recent years. In 2021, an Iranian court ordered the independent NGO be dissolved, a ruling that was upheld by an appeals court last year.

        In July 2021, the charity's founder, Sharmin Meymandinejad, was arrested and charged with insulting Iran's leaders. He was kept in detention for months, during which he alleges he was tortured.

      • Deutsche WelleAI and film: Actors and writers fear obsolescence

        And indeed, AI could herald a sea change in film and television production, which has alarmed the unions representing the screenwriters and actors. Writers fear that programs like ChatGPT could be used to write entire screenplays. And actors are fighting for the right to their own image and voice: Modern algorithms can create a digital likeness of them that could be used endlessly without additional payment, and the same could be done with voices, say concerned Hollywood creators.

      • RFERLIranian Activist Gholian Thrown Out Of Court After Refusing To Wear Head And Body Covering

        Iranian rights activist Sepideh Gholian was removed from a court during a public session of her trial because she refused to accept a judge's order to wear a "chador," a traditional full-body cloak that leaves only the face exposed.

        The judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency said Gholian entered the court on July 19 with a "very small" piece of cloth on her head, which she later removed, prompting the judge to order her removal.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Monopolies

      • [Old] GhacksMozilla criticizes Google, Apple and Microsoft for using their operating systems to force users away from other browsers

        The report, titled Five Walled Gardens, analyzes the problems caused by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta (Facebook). Mozilla conducted a survey to find out how users around the world use browsers, and it wasn't impressed with the results. Over 6000 participants from Australia, U.S., U.K., France, India and Kenya took the survey, they were asked about their experience with using web browsers, changing the default browser, etc.

      • The AtlanticBiden Declares War on the Cult of Efficiency [sic]

        This was not huge news at the time. Kids today certainly don’t read about it in history class. And yet the impact of the policy shift, along with court rulings limiting the scope of antitrust law, has been enormous. In the four decades since, the American economy has grown dangerously concentrated, dominated by a shrinking number of airlines, banks, tech companies, and pharmaceutical firms (to name just a few examples). Corporate titans have amassed outsize influence over the political process, smothered start-ups, and often treated consumers with shocking indifference. Study any dysfunction in American economic life long enough—runaway health-care costs, baby-formula shortages, regional inequality—and you’re likely to find corporate concentration among the causes.

      • Copyrights

        • New York TimesThe French Music Maker Pone Tries to Reclaim His Lost Voice

          The rap producer known as Pone, who has A.L.S., speaks through a computer that makes him sound robotic. He asked a comic impersonator to try to recapture his distinctive sound.

        • John GruberAptos, Microsoft’s New Default Font for Office Documents

          The kerning is rather awful in all of these PDF specimens, at times jarringly so. I suspect, or at least hope, the problem is with the web version of Word (which I presume has its own text rendering engine), not the fonts themselves. Look, for example, at the words milliner and Uncle (which looks like “Unde” in some of them) in the sample text. If these fonts were available for download, I’d have typeset the specimens using better software, but they’re not, so I can’t. I suppose I could fish out the web fonts used by Microsoft 365, but this whole endeavor has consumed enough of my time as it is.

        • The Register UKJudge lets art trio take another crack at suing AI devs over copyright

          Judge Orrick warned them that their claims – that the fact AI could generate images based on text descriptions containing their names violated copyright laws – are unlikely to hold up in court on their own.

          "I don't think the claim regarding output images is plausible at the moment, because there's no substantial similarity between images created by the artists and the AI systems," he said.

        • Digital Music NewsUS Appeals Court Finds Instagram Not Liable for Copyright Infringement in Photo-Embedding Case

          Neither Time nor BuzzFeed News sought permission from Brauer or Hunley to license and use these photographs in their reporting for the respective events. Both Hunley and Brauer filed a class action lawsuit against Instagram for allowing image embedding without the original artists’ permission. The lawsuit accuses Instagram of “inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and vicarious copyright infringement.”

        • Digital Music NewsIFPI, GESAC, and Others Call for Mandatory Artificial Intelligence Training Disclosures in the EU — ‘AI Innovation and Effective Copyright Protection Are Not Mutually Exclusive’

          Amid ongoing trilogue negotiations over the EU’s AI Act, music industry organizations including the IFPI, IMPALA, and GESAC are urging lawmakers to assure that the legislation compels artificial intelligence systems to “comply with the existing EU copyright framework.”

          The mentioned entities, in addition to the ICMP, the IMPF, and a number of non-music media representatives, jointly called for “meaningful transparency obligations on AI” via a brief release that was emailed to DMN.

        • Torrent Freak'Digital TV' Raided By Cybercrime Unit Following DirecTV IPTV Piracy Complaint

          A complaint filed by DirecTV in Argentina has led to raids on the alleged operators of Digital TV, a pirate IPTV platform servicing an estimated 85,000 customers. A specialist cybercrime unit led by a local prosecutor identified a 22-year-old IT technician as the service's founder and now the general public knows him too. Local media immediately published his name while local TV channel Canal26 went on to broadcast images of the suspect to 4.5 million viewers.

        • Torrent FreakPopular Torrent Site Taunts Anti-Piracy Boss and Investigators

          Most pirate sites do everything they can to avoid getting noticed by anti-piracy groups and investigators. Spanish torrent site DonTorrent is clearly playing in a different league. The site's operators openly taunt the most effective anti-piracy coalition ACE, while ridiculing OSINT investigators that approach them.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • It Wasn't Exactly a Stench

        So, Mirka was driving. I don't know the make and / or model of the vehicle because (one) I am oblivious to the automobile world and (two) everything else happening may have been a bit distracting. In the passenger's seat was an abomination. What sort of abomination was it? It could have been a very kind abomination for all I know. I am unsure. Whatever personality traits it had, it was still an abomination, and I'm not only stating that in regard to its appearance. There was a particular smell. It wasn't exactly a stench, but had a way of worming itself into the molecular structure of the atmosphere itself. It spoke from time to time, but only to Mirka, and in a guttural tongue unlike Czech or Spanish or English or any other language I've heard in the last few millennia.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Some plans

          Here is some of what I have planned for the official Project Gemini capsule in the near future. It's not a complete list, but it's stuff I'm ready and feel the need to share at this point.

          As mentioned in my previous news post about the FAQ updates, there will be a second round of FAQ updates to come. The second update will be less substantial than the first, rest assured! The focus will be mostly on section 4, "Protocol design", which went through the previous update with minimal change. In particular, I want to re-write the "design criteria" section, to put more emphasis on some things and less on others.

          I am painfully aware that on the face of it this has the feel of trying to rewrite history, but I promise I'm not trying to change what Gemini is or was about. It's just that some things that really were fundamental guiding principles, like non-extensibility, are mentioned in passing in individual answers rather than being clearly highlighted like they should have been. Other things, like giving full control of styling to the client, weren't considered such a huge deal in the early days of the project when the FAQ was first written, but today this is considered by many to be one of Gemini's core strengths, and from the point of view of somebody coming from the web who is trying to understand Gemini it's a really major difference which ought to be emphasised. Maybe it falls under the broader banner of "user autonomy", which is again something that really served as a guiding principle but didn't make the cut when the early FAQ was written with a target audience of gopher and pubnix geeks. In short, the updates to section 4 will be a retrospective reframing of the real, actual, genuine design history for a wider audience. I just want folks to actually understand what we are and are not trying to do here!



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