Ireland is finally set to get much-anticipated drone delivery service from Wing, the drone delivery company affiliated with Google.
Wing announced this month that it would be partnering with Apian, which is a medical drone startup founded by a team of doctors from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and perhaps coincidentally, ex-Google employees, to build a drone delivery network. Together, Apian and Wing will work with pharmacies and other healthcare providers to deliver goods via drones in South Dublin, Ireland. Products being delivered are set to include pharmacy items, laboratory samples, and medical devices and supplies — which will be shipped out to both urban and suburban environments.
As I’m surrounded by my like-minded people, who care about software freedom and privacy, I’m usually questioned about why I’m not on social networks and sometimes get suggestions about what social network may suit me.
I have to explain to them that my problem is not with a certain network, no matter how ethical they might be, but rather is with the essence of social networks. My problem with social networks is that they’re social and they require some bare minimum that I’m uncomfortable with.
Our continued survival here at the South Pole, as temperatures dip below -100€°F, is enabled by a series of primary, secondary, and tertiary systems for keeping the station warm, lights on, water flowing, communication links healthy, and food cooking.
In this post, I’m going to talk about the infrastructure for generating and distributing power at the South Pole. I won’t sugarcoat it – we burn a lot of fossil fuel here, and we burn plenty more in the supply chain along the way. It’s my sincere hope that we continue working, with urgency, to reduce the environmental footprint of US Antarctic research, both point-of-use and in the supply chains along the way.
The recent news that Russia’s Luna 25 Moon lander had made an unexpected lithobraking detour into the Moon’s surface, rather than the expected soft touchdown was met by a variety of responses, ranging from dismay to outright glee, much of it on account of current geopolitical considerations. Yet politics aside, the failure of this mission casts another shadow on the prospects of Russia’s attempts to revive the Soviet space program after a string of failures, including its ill-fated Mars 96 and Fobos-Grunt Mars missions, the latter of which also destroyed China’s first Mars orbiter (Yinghuo-1) and ignited China’s independent Mars program.
An image comparing literacy rates between the United States and China has been shared repeatedly in Chinese-language social media posts that claim the level of literacy in the U.S has noticeably declined between 1950 and 2022, while the level in China has seen a remarkable increase. The posts cited the U.S. Census Bureau and China’s Ministry of Education as sources.
But the claim is misleading. The U.S. Census Bureau did not gather literacy statistics for 2022, and AFCL found the numbers mentioned in the image come from surveys with varying definitions and methodologies for measuring literacy.
The spirit of Name that Ware is about demystifying electronics and encouraging people to learn by taking things apart. Drawing a schematic from an image of a circuit board is a great example of this, so FETguy gets the prize this month. [...]
Thanks to adrian for sharing this ware! Adrian sent me several wonderful photos, and the whole thing is actually pretty neat to look at. However, for better or for worse the parts in the ware are so unique that most of them resolve to an answer with a simple search query – even those of the most humble looking 16-pin SOICs. Hopefully this partial view of the ware makes it at least a little bit of a challenge to guess.
Effects pedals for musical instruments like electric guitars can really expand a musician’s range with the instrument. Adding things like distortion, echo, and reverb at the push of a button can really transform the sound of a guitar and add depth to a performance. But [Guy] wondered why these effects should be limited to analog signals such as those from musical instruments, and set about to apply a number of effects to the use of computer keyboards and mice with this HID effects pedal.
When it’s the 1950s and you are tasked to design a computer system that features not only CPU registers but also a certain amount of RAM, you do not have a lot of options. At this point in time, discrete logic was the rule, and magnetic core memory still fairly new and rather expensive. This is where the rotating drum comes in, which is somewhat like a cross between an old-style cylinder record and a hard drive. In a recent [Usagi Electric] video, a 1950s Bendix G15 system is demonstrated, which features such a rotating drum device, alongside both tube-based circuits and newfangled diode-based circuitry.
At age 2, the association is most prominent when looking at the likelihood of children at age 1 whose mothers reported four or more hours of screen time, compared to children whose mothers reported less than one hour of screen time: developmental delays are 4.78 times more likely in communication skills, 1.46 times more likely in gross motor skills, 1.74 times more likely in fine motor skills, 2.67 times more likely in problem-solving skills and 2.1 times more likely in personal and social skills.
At age 4, the association remains only in communication and problem-solving skills. For children whose mothers reported four or more hours of screen time at age 1, compared with children whose mothers reported less than one hour of screen time at age 1, developmental delays in communication skills at age 4 were 2.68 times more likely and 1.91 times more likely in problem-solving skills.
When the bold prediction was published, monthly recreational sales were just $22 million. At that rate, it would have taken more than eleven years to reach $3 billion.
Yet, here we are.
That was almost three months ago now. I’m still limping. It’s getting better but it’s slow. The doctor told me, “Just be aware: this isn’t days or weeks recovery. This is months.”
Earlier this month, I got the news that the Ohio State Medical Board had€ finally suspended the license€ of€ Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a notorious antivax quack practicing in the suburbs of Cleveland whose misinformation and quackery I’ve been discussing intermittently€ dating back to 2011€ and even€ blog since 2009 (although I had mentioned her€ going back to at least 2007). Most people who have heard of Dr. Tenpenny learned of her in 2021, when she became infamous for claiming that COVID-19 vaccines cause people to€ become magnetized:
In thenewest, lowest, dumbest, most scurrilous "argument" yet for forcing women to give birth, a MAGA "judge" has argued people like looking at sonograms and babies just like at wild animals and the FDA's approval of a widely used abortion pill deprives them of that God-given pleasure. "Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child," writes partisan hack James Ho in a wildly misogynistic screed against women who want to decide what to do with their own bodies. But whadda they know. Just WTF.
By the time 25-year-old Tyler Waite arrived at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, in May 2020, his skin had turned a sickly shade of yellow. At 6-foot-3, pushing 330 pounds, his appearance was misshapen by a stomach distended with fluid. His liver had failed so much that, unless he got a new one, he likely wouldn’t live to see summer’s end.
A diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan who loved fishing, Waite worked at a software company and lived at his parents’ home in the north Atlanta suburbs, saving for a place with his fiancee and working on getting his life back on track. Over the past few years, ever since his young daughter had moved away from Georgia with her mom, Waite had struggled. Many nights, he coped by drinking large amounts of vodka in the quiet of his family’s house.
The days Covid-19 took over daily news are gone. Though Covid€ has subsided, it hasn't disappeared altogether. A life is still taken every week by the virus, Latvian Television reported on August 22.
When the pandemic came, Becky Wilkes moved her enfeebled mom and dad into her own home. Her series “Till Death Do Us Part” documents that time.
The neighbors may complain about the noise, but outdoor spaces that bloomed under a pandemic program are now a permanent and vibrant fixture of city life.
Data: Pediatrics analysis of CDC data; Chart: Axios Visuals
Firearm deaths among children in the U.S. hit a new record high in 2021, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Software’s inevitable decay will continue to have more and more impact on our day-to-day lives, so we need to incentivize developers to maintain as well as innovate. We need to give employees time in their work weeks to adjust to new user interfaces or changes in their services. We also need to leave them time to play around with new tools and advances, and recognize that as productive work.
This incident illustrates some of the risks associated with cloud computing’s many benefits. While much of the discussion around cloud computing is centered around these benefits—this infrastructure bears consideration as well. Just like other critical infrastructure sectors—such as energy, water, financial services, the defense industrial base, and more—disruptions to major cloud services could have material effects on economic and national security. The cloud’s centrality to critical infrastructure is the basis of the Atlantic Council’s recent report, “Critical Infrastructure and the Cloud: Policy for Emerging Risk,” which seeks to raise awareness of the seriousness of potential cloud disruptions and increase efforts toward bolstering cloud security and resilience across critical infrastructure.
To examine these risks, we brought together a group to share their perspectives on the challenges facing cloud infrastructure and how policy can encourage better security and risk governance across this critical sector.
What I propose here is that we find a way to speak about these problems in a clear, conversational way.
Threat Modeling is a great way to do this. It’s a way of taking many different attacks, and possibilities, and possible negative outcomes, and turning them into clear language that people understand.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said it was "investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco" and is in contact with both Cruise and law enforcement officials. It said its "primary focus" was "the safe operation of autonomous vehicles and safety of the public who share the road with these vehicles," adding it was investigating to "determine the facts."
Victims of the ransomware group Cl0p, attacked using vulnerabilities in the secure managed file transfer software MOVEit Transfer, now number 730, according to a count kept by the New Zealand-headquartered security firm Emsisoft.
The number of individuals affected by these breaches has been estimated to be in excess of 47 million, according to data which Emsisoft says is sourced from US state breach notifications, SEC filings, other public disclosures and also Cl0p’s website.
Cyber-attacks and security breaches have become a key source of revenue for criminal gangs operating across continents, often with little expertise. Over the last few years we’ve seen how breaches and data leaks by these shadowy networks can destroy the reputations of otherwise highly trusted companies, causing share prices to tumble. Remedying the detrimental outcomes of successful breaches can cost organisations precious time and resources and negatively impact productivity, adding further insult to the injury of negative publicity and declining customer trust. And it isn’t just a small minority who are being affected: according to data released by the UK government in April this year, over a third (37 per cent) of large businesses, and over a quarter (25 per cent) of medium-sized businesses have been victims of cyber-attacks in the last year alone.
With technological advancements, hackers are becoming increasingly adept at identifying vulnerabilities and gaps in security systems. This makes unauthorized access to secure data and files prevalent, underscoring the critical importance of robust application security measures. This susceptibility to breaches is especially true today, as applications are tightly integrated with cloud platforms.
While some choose to incorporate a multi cloud security strategy to safeguard essential business assets like customer data and applications within cloud environments, selecting the appropriate operating system is equally important. Linux, an operating system, emerges as a significant option, furnishing an additional layer of protection for your applications. Continue reading to discover the compelling reasons behind Linux’s efficacy in fortifying security.
Lately, however, the conversation has been all about Worldcoin, an initiative backed by another of Altman’s companies called Tools for Humanity. It aims to create a “globally inclusive identity and financial network, owned by the majority of humanity,” according to a white paper describing the project. What that means in practice is a unique digital identifier for each person on Earth, known as a World ID, tied to a bespoke cryptocurrency called WLD. Together, the company says, they can be used to authenticate human beings online in the age of rapidly proliferating AI bots while also providing a pathway to a universal basic income in a global economy disrupted by AI. Worldcoin is starting out with a sizable war chest, having raised $115 million in funding from some of Silicon Valley’s biggest investors that it announced in May
High-speed broadband connectivity enables the smart grid, a network that allows for two-way communication between the utility and its customers, to ensure that electricity is being managed in the most efficient way, said Graves.
We found that network transmissions containing sensitive data such as those containing users’ keystrokes are decipherable by a network eavesdropper, revealing what users are typing as they type.
Recently a reader wrote in and asked if I would look at Sam Altman’s Worldcoin, presumably to give thoughts on it from a privacy perspective. This was honestly the last thing I wanted to do, since life is short and this seemed like an obvious waste of it. Of course a project devoted to literally scanning your eyeballs was up to some bad things, duh.
The report shows the Windows and Android implementations were vulnerable to eavesdropping, while the iOS version wasn’t. Of particular note, Sogou Input Method has around 450 million monthly active users worldwide. It's used not only in China, but also has a large userbase in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan. It is not known if this vulnerability was previously discovered or exploited. However, given the level of network access and broad latitude afforded to state authorities within China, it’s possible that users of the keyboard (especially those located within China) may have had their private communications leaked to the Chinese state.
The researchers found€ this vulnerability was due to the use of custom cryptography vulnerable to a padding oracle attack. Implementing cryptographic algorithms is an extremely precarious and rigorous effort. Even when done relatively well, a side-channel attack can undo the basic guarantees these algorithms are meant to provide. Best practice dictates that well-vetted cryptographic libraries which are made available by the system—rather than coded on one’s own—should be used to avoid these attacks and ensure the latest protections are available against weaknesses. As of 2003, the vulnerabilities in this particular implementation were already fixed in TLS implementations.
We applaud the scrupulous cryptanalysis and reverse-engineering work done by the security researchers Jeffrey Knockel, Zoë Reichert, and Mona Wang (who formerly worked at EFF). By bringing these vulnerabilities to light, public-interest analysts serve as a bulwark against the secretive hoarding of vulnerabilities by authorities and deployment of them as a spying tool used to invade the privacy of us all. Only by responsibly disclosing and publicizing these flaws can they be fixed, and can the general public make informed decisions about what software they wish to use in the future.
Recall how challenging it is to keep passwords apart and to never send them to the wrong recipient. Password managers have this neat benefit: they know when you reuse passwords between sites and can make up unguessable passwords unique for each site! Then when you sign into one site, it doesn't recommend passwords for another site. However, password managers do not stop confused users or victims of phishing from copying passwords out and into another website or application.
The Somali Ministry of Communications and Technology (MOCT) announced on Sunday that Somalia decided to ban the short-form video hosting platform TikTok, the instant messaging platform Telegram, and the online gambling platform 1XBet, for their undue influence on Somali youths, which the ministry says had “caused some of them to lose their lives.”
What’s more, Mr. Trump faces felony charges, both federally and in Georgia, that go right to the essence of democracy: alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In that light, presidential historians say, the United States is at a turning point.
The charges could prompt a “resurgence of democratic norms and principles,” says Lindsay Chervinsky, a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Or we could be seeing the precursor to a presidency unlike any in American history, including Mr. Trump’s first term.
At this point, Watergate looks downright quaint.
Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok’s operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app’s terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok’s dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) have issued an alert about the increased targeting of the US space industry by foreign intelligence entities (FIEs).
Musk volunteered the information during an October conversation with Colin Kahl, then the Pentagon’s top policy official, about Ukrainian forces losing connection to Space Exploration Technologies Corp’s Starlink service as they entered territory contested by Russia, the magazine said Monday.
By then, Musk’s sympathies appeared to be manifesting on the battlefield. One day, Ukrainian forces advancing into contested areas in the south found themselves suddenly unable to communicate. “We were very close to the front line,” Mykola, the signal-corps soldier, told me. “We crossed this border and the Starlink stopped working.” The consequences were immediate. “Communications became dead, units were isolated. When you’re on offense, especially for commanders, you need a constant stream of information from battalions. Commanders had to drive to the battlefield to be in radio range, risking themselves,” Mykola said. “It was chaos.” Ukrainian expats who had raised funds for the Starlink units began receiving frantic calls. The tech executive recalls a Ukrainian military official telling him, “We need Elon now.” “How now?” he replied. “Like fucking now,” the official said. “People are dying.” Another Ukrainian involved told me that he was “awoken by a dozen calls saying they’d lost connectivity and had to retreat.” The Financial Times reported that outages affected units in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk. American and Ukrainian officials told me they believed that SpaceX had cut the connectivity via geofencing, cordoning off areas of access.
Border guards in Saudi Arabia have regularly opened fire on African migrants seeking to cross into the kingdom from Yemen, killing hundreds of men, women and children in a recent 15-month period, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Monday.
The guards have beaten the migrants with rocks and bars, forced male migrants to rape women while guards watched and shot detained migrants in their limbs, leading to permanent injuries and amputations, the report said.
The shooting of migrants is “widespread and systematic,” it said, adding that if killing them were Saudi government policy, it would constitute a crime against humanity.
“Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons and shot people at close range, including women and children, in a pattern that is widespread and systematic. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings would be a crime against humanity,” notes the report.
"Saudi officials are killing hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers in this remote border area out of view of the rest of the world," HRW researcher Nadia Hardman said in a statement.
"Spending billions buying up professional golf, football clubs and major entertainment events to improve the Saudi image should not deflect attention from these horrendous crimes," she said.
According to the report, Saudi border guards used explosive weapons such as mortars against migrants and shot them at close range with live ammunition. Saudi border guards reportedly fired on people even when they complied with orders.
HRW found expanding Saudi Arabian border security infrastructure on commonly traveled migrant routes, as well as expanding burial grounds near migrant camps. HRW called the recent pattern of killings a change from “an apparent practice of occasional shootings” to “widespread and systematic killings.”
The data shows that from 2000 to the present, the level of support for military rule as a form of government has doubled, from 11.6% of people supporting “much” or “very much” military rule as a form of government to 22.3%. Of the 37 countries analysed, there were 11 where support for military dictatorship was decreasing and 26 where this figure was on the rise. The latest Afrobarometer data shows that support for democracy has fallen in the last year. Out of 38 countries, only four show decreasing support for military rule since 2000, whereas 34 show higher support for higher military rule than in 2000.
David Cortright is an American anti-war activist who spoke out against the Vietnam War while serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army from 1968–1971. After the war came to an end, Cortright researched peacekeeping processes, advised the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and wrote several research papers on the use of multilateral sanctions. Meduza spoke to Cortright about how America’s anti-war movement developed throughout the course of the Vietnam War and what Russian anti-war activists can learn from their American counterparts.
Grey Zone, a Telegram channel linked to Russia’s Wagner Group, has posted a new video statement from the paramilitary outfit’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that purportedly shows him in Africa (though the country is unclear).
A Yekaterinburg court arrested a 23-year-old local man named Danil Fomin Monday on suspicion of murdering Francois Ndjaseli, a graduate student from Gabon who was studying at Ural Federal University, according to the Telegram channel It’s My City.
Mikhail Myagkov, the scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society, said Monday that Russia’s new history textbook will provide an “objective” view of Joseph Stalin’s role in Russian history. He contrasted the book’s approach to that of past Russian history textbooks, including “the ones financed by the Soros Foundation in the 1990s.”
Roman Bilyk (known by the stage name Roma Zver), the frontman of the Russian rock band Zveri (“Beasts”), recently played a concert for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, according to Semyon Pegov, the creator of the pro-Russian Telegram channel WarGonzo.
Last November, the Great Salt Lake, the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere, reached its lowest water level ever recorded—and its highest concentration of salt. A toxic lake bed is emerging from the receding water as the suburban sprawl inches ever closer to meet it. At the shore of Antelope Island, where the briny water of the lake laps against land, Utah’s water issues also become air issues. “It’s like a bathtub, or a toilet bowl, with no drain,” Molly Blakowski, PhD candidate in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University, said of the lake. What we discard into the watershed ends up in the lake—and, increasingly, our air.
What’s clear, and what has always been clear, about the climate is that we need to treat the disease and not the symptom. Ensuring every house has an air conditioner will temporarily make us cooler, but it won’t keep us that way. Even air conditioning has its limits and is dependent on other factors. New York City’s 2019 heat wave proved that when a power outage in Brooklyn and Queens left more than 50,000 residents without power for more than 24 hours — and, in turn, without cold air.
"There is positive news in this number, because when this process began, the missing person list contained over 2,000 names," Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said via Instagram.
"Through the tireless work of the FBI and the Maui Police Department, over 1,285 individuals have been located safe," he added.
President Biden on Monday mourned the loss of life and destruction in Maui and vowed to aid rebuilding efforts in the wake of historic wildfires that have decimated the island.
The Lanzador is equipped with two electric motors, one for each axle, providing all-wheel drive and efficiency in all driving conditions, on all surfaces, and in every driving style. The system delivers a peak power that exceeds one megawatt.
The second reactor at Finland's Olkiluoto nuclear power plant is undergoing maintenance as of Friday, and a connection between the Finnish and Swedish electricity systems was severed on Saturday. At the same time, the average daily price in the cut-off region of Sweden is €24 per megawatt-hour on Tuesday.
A group of at least five (but possibly more than 20) people disappeared during a heavy rainstorm on Sunday, while on a guided tour of Moscow’s underground water collection system. According to the local media, the known members of the group were the 47-year old manager Dmitry Markushin, his 15-year-old daughter Yelizaveta, their 18-year-old relative Gleb, and Gleb’s girlfriend Victoria.
In Canada, the province of British Columbia has declared a state of emergency where entire towns have been burned to the ground in the country’s worst wildfire season ever. Evacuation orders are in place for more than 35,000 people, and 30,000 more have been told to be prepared to evacuate. Nearly all 20,000 residents have already left the city of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Scientists say climate change is increasing the risk of wildfires because they are fueled by the increasingly hot and dry weather. “There’s a symbiosis here between how the climate is changing relative to the length of a potential fire season and the fuels that provide energy to fires,” says Bob Gray, a wildland fire ecologist, speaking to us from Chilliwack, British Columbia. Gray warns that Canada’s firefighting workforce is stretched thin, relying on a network of provincial firefighters, contractors and international firefighters.
BRICS — the five-country bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — is holding a monumental summit in Johannesburg this week where the group will discuss a number of major issues, including expanding membership and how to improve financial cooperation. Over 40 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, and 23 countries have formally applied to join the bloc, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Indonesia, Egypt and Ethiopia. The summit is a “very unstable situation,” as member countries vary greatly on priorities and many potential candidates for membership are “mostly tyrannies, carbon-addicted economies,” says Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. “Some of these machinations are hegemonic projects to stop dissent at home and actually call for a unity that does not benefit the masses,” says South African activist and scholar Trevor Ngwane, who criticizes BRICS as “projecting a false hope to the masses” for posing as an alternative to U.S. and Western imperialism.
Saprina James was hopeful when she received a letter in 2019 about her wage theft claim against her former employer. The letter said the New York State Department of Labor had substantiated her claim and ordered Mugisha F. Sahini and his company, Riverside Line, to pay her more than $70,000 in back wages. “I was feeling good that the government was on my side, and that I would soon get paid,” she said.
James first started driving a van for Sahini in January 2016, taking people to medical appointments in Buffalo, New York. She often worked six days a week, usually helping dialysis patients who relied on walkers, and drove clients from 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. She didn’t mind the long hours — she assumed that her pay would ultimately reflect her hard work.
Raiffeisenbank, the Russian subsidiary of Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, announced Monday that from September 1, the fee for transferring funds in U.S. dollars to a client’s account from other banks will be 50 percent of the transfer amount, with a minimum of $1,000, but no more than the incoming amount. The maximum fee will be $10,000.
The irony comes from Veilid's origins, the legendary Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective. Like Tor before it, where the US Navy intelligence agency gave us an intelligence agency resistant network, Veilid isn't so much poacher turned gamekeeper as the creation of a mirror world. Information may want to be free, but it also wants to be free from interlopers and snoopers. If Veilid achieves its aims of a massive global network of mesh nodes, it will gain that freedom by becoming far too expensive to break.
The government and supporters of Bill C-18 talking points now emphasize two things in relation to Meta blocking news links: the law has yet to take effect and there is room to address their concerns in the regulation-making process. Both of these claims are incredibly deceptive, relying on the assumption that most won’t bother to read the actual legislation. If they did, they would see that (1) the law has received royal assent and can take effect anytime and (2) the regulation making process addresses only a small subset of Bill C-18 issues with most of the core issues finalized. In other words, the time to shape the law and address many of the key concerns was before the government repeatedly cut off debate in order to ensure it that received royal assent before the summer break.
At Black Hat last week, the White House announced an AI Cyber Challenge. Gizmodo reports: [...]
In a call with reporters on Tuesday, White House officials expressed hope that the new program would be a first step towards creating previously unheard-of cyber defenses. Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for Joe Biden’s White House, said that she felt the challenge would help America “stay ahead in the race against our adversaries’ cyber offensive capabilities.”
In Guatemala, progressive presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has won a landslide victory in a runoff election against former first lady Sandra Torres. Arévalo, a member of the Semilla party, took nearly 60% of the vote Sunday after months of political persecution. In June, Arévalo stunned many in Guatemala when he placed second in the first round of voting after running on an anti-corruption platform. Soon after, the attorney general’s office suspended Arévalo’s Semilla party, and police raided their offices. In Guatemala City, we speak with Guatemalan human rights lawyer Frank LaRue and award-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn about this historic election. LaRue and Nairn agree this election proves that Guatemalans want a change from the country’s history of corruption and military dictatorships, but the situation remains tense in the country as oligarchs will most likely attempt to disrupt Arévalo’s transition to power. “This could be the beginning of a turn in Guatemalan history,” says Nairn, who predicts the next phase of this election process will be people demonstrating popular support to force a transition of power. “They may have to take to the streets to defend the results of this vote.”
In an interview with the German news network Deutsche Welle, Leonid Volkov, the ex-chairman of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that ACF has been able to help more than 1,500 of its supporters get humanitarian visas or asylum in different countries of the world.
Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny called on his supporters and opposition voters to participate in the Russian elections set to take place in September 2023 and to vote “for any candidate against United Russia.” Navalny employed the same strategy during the 2011 Russian election campaign.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they'll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.
Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to "woke" policies at the Department of Defense.
Gramm’s research suffers from other inexcusable omissions, like overlooking data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget office showing that income inequality has actually worsened, not improved, in recent decades. The CBO finds that the income gap in constant dollars between the lowest and highest-paid 20 percent of the population, even using a Gramm-like measure including government transfers, has more than doubled since 1980.
Biased research is nothing new, of course. Cigarette makers set the mold in the 1950s when they parried growing evidence of tobacco’s causal links to cancer with the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, ostensibly an independent group of scientists to study “all phases of tobacco and health.” In reality, the research topics were dictated by the tobacco industry and were designed to persuade the public that smoking was safe.
The Pre-Code era was the short bit of time (1927-1934) between the widespread proliferation of pictures with sound and the revision and enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, more infamously known as the Hays Code. The movies of the era were experimental and unbound in their depictions of what were considered "taboo" subjects by more conservative and white-centric groups, including interracial marriage, drug use, sex, abortion, homosexuality, and more, including the promiscuity and female sexual empowerment featured in Baby Face.
According to the Iranian Student Guild Councils, the clampdown, particularly in female dormitories, has reached unprecedented levels with some accommodation centers, such as the female dormitory of Tabriz Cultural University, having restrictions "more stringent than those in prisons."
A report from the group noted that during summer-term examinations the university has enforced a one-hour movement limit for female students residing in the dormitory, essentially keeping them inside the residence for 23 hours a day. All departures and arrivals are meticulously recorded and if a student exceeds the one-hour limit, they are "immediately" reported to security officials.
The Court of Final Appeal handed down its decision to Lui Sai-yu, a former Hong Kong Polytechnic University student, on Tuesday. Lui was sentenced to five years in jail last April after being accused of inciting secession over selling weapons on messaging app Telegram and posting pro-independence messages, an offence the court considered of a “serious nature.”
Bishop Azad Marshall of the Diocese of Raiwind said that Christians were “falsely accused” of violating the Quran. Bishop Marshall added, “We cry out for justice and action from law enforcement and those who dispense justice and the safety of all citizens to intervene immediately and assure us that our lives are valuable in our own homeland.” Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar responded, “All law enforcement has been asked to apprehend culprits and bring them to justice. Rest assured that the government of Pakistan stands with our citizenry on equal basis.”
The government-affiliated Myanma Alinn newspaper reported Saturday that Myanmar’s military junta took 13 Myanmar citizens, including a 12-year-old girl, and a Swiss national into custody over their alleged involvement in a film deemed to be offensive to Buddhism.
According to deputies, the man made "several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag" that stood outside Carleton's store before ultimately shooting her.
The TLP denies instigating the violence and says it helped calm it down. Police say people who made announcements from mosques calling on Muslims to attack Christians later joined a so-called peace process.
Last year, a friend came to me with a strange tech problem. “The algorithm is screwing me over,” he said, peering over a drink at a bar in Manhattan’s East Village. Anthony, a 31-year old engineer who asked to withhold his real name, had been on the dating app Hinge for five years. He said he always had a hard time meeting people on apps, but over the course of the pandemic, Anthony noticed a discouraging change that made his experience even worse.
Before the shooting, the man "made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store," sheriff's officials said.
Now, an anonymous letter and the account of a former worker suggest that the school’s administration canceled Henry’s show because of its subject matter — police violence — and instructed museum staffers to tell Henry and the public it was because of HVAC problems in the gallery.
Yandex will relocate the servers of its Kazakhstan branch, Yandex.kz, to Kazakhstan, the country’s digital development minister reportedly said Monday.
Shortly after the Russian authorities blocked Patreon in the country, a homegrown content monetization platform called Boosty emerged as a popular alternative that let Russian content creators stay in touch with their patrons and continue getting donations from abroad.
The Price of Truth, a documentary made by Muratov’s friend, the film-maker Patrick Forbes, follows him through 2022 and into 2023, a period in which a lot – too much – happens. The invasion begins in February. For a while, Muratov stays ahead of the censorship and the threats (journalists deemed “foreign agents” receive long prison sentences). But by April, it’s beginning to be too much. He is attacked on a train by a “veterans’ group”, red paint and acetone thrown over him, burning his eyes. The newspaper’s move to Riga is made. By May, the first new iteration of Novaya has been published – put together, as Martynov puts it, by a load of “people sitting on suitcases”.
But Biden would likely have to pass at least parts of it through Congress, where many Democrats hold highly critical views of bin Salman, also known as MBS, due to the kingdom's human rights record and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
In other words, the whole justification for police raids — not just on the Record but on the homes of publisher Eric Meyer and city councilwoman Ruth Herbel — crumbles into ash at a cursory examination.
No wonder Marion County attorney Joel Ensey withdrew the search warrants and ordered all the evidence returned.
In the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia -- which did not allow women driving or cinemas until 2018 -- fans have queued up in pink versions of the abaya, the traditional all-covering robe, to see the hit movie.
But not everyone is comfortable with the celebration of female emancipation in a region where attitudes towards women's empowerment are only slowly changing.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization says that July alone saw 61 executions, with the list comprising 11 Baluchis and three Afghan nationals. Since the start of 2023, a verified total of 423 individuals have been executed in Iran, though insiders believe the actual figure could be significantly higher.
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.
But, due in part to light pollution and smoke from Canadian wildfires exacerbated by climate change, stargazing in the Chicago area is in danger. Some researchers estimate that North America experiences a 10% increase in light pollution—or the excessive use of artificial light—every year.
"You can't overstate it—it's like going deaf if you like music," Carhart said. "It's to the point where you can barely do it anymore."
He and other enthusiasts are calling on the city and others to curb light pollution or risk missing out on starry night skies.
The UK competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, has confirmed that it has blocked the original deal submitted by Microsoft in its bid to acquire gaming firm Activision Blizzard.
In a statement on Tuesday, the CMA said Microsoft had now submitted a new, restructured deal for review. Last month, the two companies agreed to extend the date for closing the deal to 18 October.
The CMA reviewed the appeal and decided that it did not provide any basis for a change to the original prohibition decision. On Thursday, the CMA imposed a final order which prohibits the original deal on a worldwide basis.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Activision have agreed a new, restructured deal, under which Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights for existing Activision PC and console games, or for new games released by Activision during the next 15 years (excluding the European Economic Area). Instead, these rights will be divested to Ubisoft Entertainment SA prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision.
The new deal has been submitted to the CMA to review in a new investigation. The statutory deadline for a decision is Oct. 18.
The pledge, which will last 15 years, will not cover Activision's PC and console games in the European Economic Area.
Art generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools can’t be copyrighted under current law, a U.S. district court judge ruled.
Judge Beryl Howell said the U.S. Copyright Office “acted properly” in denying a copyright to a work of art created by an AI tool after the scientist behind the tool, Stephen Thaler, sought to protect the artwork, according to a Friday ruling.
Big tech companies are using published books to train their artificial intelligence models—not just without obtaining authorization from their authors, but also by pirating the books and denying the authors their sales royalties.
In a study published on Sunday (Aug. 20), the Atlantic revealed how OpenAI, Meta, and other tech companies use pirated books from shadow libraries, paying nothing for the content that trains and powers their large language models.
In fact, it was. I recently obtained and analyzed a dataset used by Meta to train LLaMA. Its contents more than justify a fundamental aspect of the authors’ allegations: Pirated books are being used as inputs for computer programs that are changing how we read, learn, and communicate. The future promised by AI is written with stolen words.z
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This is, to an extent, a story about clashing cultures: The tech and publishing worlds have long had different attitudes about intellectual property. For many years, I’ve been a member of the open-source software community. The modern open-source movement began in the 1980s, when a developer named Richard Stallman grew frustrated with AT&T’s proprietary control of Unix, an operating system he had worked with. (Stallman worked at MIT, and Unix had been a collaboration between AT&T and several universities.) In response, Stallman developed a “copyleft” licensing model, under which software could be freely shared and modified, as long as modifications were re-shared using the same license. The copyleft license launched today’s open-source community, in which hobbyist developers give their software away for free. If their work becomes popular, they accrue reputation and respect that can be parlayed into one of the tech industry’s many high-paying jobs. I’ve personally benefited from this model, and I support the use of open licenses for software. But I’ve also seen how this philosophy, and the general attitude of permissiveness that permeates the industry, can cause developers to see any kind of license as unnecessary.
In May five men behind pirate IPTV service Flawless TV were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison following a Premier League prosecution. Fugitive Zak Smith was detained in Thailand last month and now faces sentencing back in the UK. Photographs of his arrest have been circulating in Thailand along with an allegation of Smith selling IPTV from a rented home. TorrentFreak was able to review a video recorded by the authorities that has clearly been edited.
After masquerading as legitimate music rightsholders, two men fraudulently extracted over $23 million in revenue from YouTube's Content ID system. The men were indicted in 2021 and subsequently entered guilty pleas. An Arizona court has now sentenced Webster Batista Fernandez, who reportedly initiated the scheme, to 46 months in prison.