GNU/Linux

• Applications

  • TecMint ☛ 6 Best Linux Apps for Downloading Movie Subtitles

    Are you facing difficulties in getting subtitles for your favorite movies, especially on major Linux desktop distributions? If so, then you are on the right track to discover some solutions to your problem.

    In this post, we shall run through some excellent and cross-platform applications for downloading movie subtitles. Note that the list below is not prepared in any definitive order but you can try out the different applications and find out which one works best for you.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Frederic Cambus ☛ Playing with Caml Light on DOS

  For more background information on Caml and the Caml Light implementation in particular, please refer to "A History of Caml". Distribution archives for Caml Light are available here.

• Ubuntubuzz ☛ Download Mageia 9 GNU/Linux Full Editions (Mirrors, Torrents, and Checksums)

  Congratulations to Mageia 9 release in August 2023! Mageia is a GNU/Linux operating system and Free Software distribution successor to the late Mandriva (had been known as the first user-friendly desktop distro before Ubuntu). It comes in complete choices as Installers, Live Editions, as well as Netinstalls in both 64-bit and 32-bit PC architectures to run on your desktop, laptop and server computers. Mageia is a very good alternative to your Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS. Here's compilation of full download links of the latest Mageia 9 accompanied with mirrors and torrents.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • SUSE's Corporate Blog ☛ July 2023: Proud Chameleons’ Month [Ed: Box-ticking PR exercise from the controversial company]

    July was SUSE’s Proud Chameleons’ Month.  At SUSE, we believe in creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We are committed to living SUSE’s values of openness and understanding that our diversity leads to SUSE’s success. 

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu ☛ Digital innovation in finance - the open source imperative

    Digital innovation is transforming finance. Advances in financial technology such as mobile money, peer-to-peer (P2P) or marketplace lending, robo advice, and insurance technology (InsurTech) are reshaping many areas –  from payments to wealth management.

    Over the past decade, fintechs have already driven enhanced access to financial services for retail users. Technology advances in connectivity, data processing, and storage have contributed to the current wave of technology-based finance. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are transforming both retail and wholesale financial markets in areas as diverse as financial market trading, regulatory and supervisory technology.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Standards/Consortia

  • Sean Conner ☛ To err is human—to really mess up takes a computer

    The other thing I learned is that the entity ' is not defined for HTML 4 (it is for HTML 5, and XML). This is important because I'm still using HTML 4 for my blog. Why not HTML 5? Because I'm not fond of the “living standard” (read: changes whenever, meaning an ever-constant churn of updating HTML to maintain the standard du jour) and the step-by-step parsing rules instead of a concise syntax. It also doesn't help that whenever I see WHATWG, I read it as “What working group?”

Leftovers

• Mexico News Daily ☛ US border crossing shutdowns continue, leaving cargo in limbo

  Additional security checks and crossing closures began Sept. 18 and have left long lines of cargo trucks stuck at the border.

• Pro Publica ☛ Anchorage City Commissioner Fraudulently Obtained $1.6M for Her Charity, Prosecutors Say

  An Anchorage city commissioner and her husband have been charged with fraudulently obtaining $1.6 million in COVID-19 recovery money for their charity. Charges filed in federal court in Anchorage accuse the couple of buying cryptocurrency and making personal use of money intended to help people find homes and addiction treatment.

  A federal grand jury on Sept. 19 indicted Rosalina Mavaega, 41, and Esau Fualema Jr., 44, on five felony charges including major fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The charges come after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica first reported in May that the Anchorage Assembly gave the couple one of the city’s largest awards under the American Rescue Plan Act despite prior fraud allegations.

• Pro Publica ☛ We Don’t Talk About Leonard

  This is “We Don’t Talk About Leonard,” a podcast series with WNYC’s “On The Media” that explores the web of money, influence and power behind the conservative takeover of America’s courts — and the man at the center of it all: Leonard Leo.

• Science

  • Science News ☛ A one-of-a-kind trilobite fossil hints at what and how these creatures ate

    Many of the more than 20,000 described species of trilobites, a group that existed between 520 million and 252 million years ago, were prominent members of marine ecosystems. Some species may have even had dual digestive tracts, though B. incola did not (SN: 10/31/14). The new find not only provides direct evidence of what some trilobites may have eaten, but it also hints about their physiology and how they foraged.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Samsung LPCAMM integrates LPDDR RAM on removable modules

    Samsung has unveiled a new type of removable memory module called the LPCAMM (Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module) with LPDDR designed for PCs and laptops, and the company expects them to eventually be used in servers found in data centers. I would also not be surprised to find them in embedded systems in the future, for example in an updated COM Express standard.

  • Hackaday ☛ Autonomous Racing Drones Are Starting To Beat Human Pilots

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Woodworking Lathe From Scratch

    Today, cheap dodgy machine tools are more readily available than ever. Sometimes though, there’s great value in putting a simple and rugged version of your own, as demonstrated by [bartworker]’s woodworking lathe build. 

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Pro Publica ☛ FAQs: The Philips Respironics CPAP Recall

    Millions of people in the United States and around the world were affected by the June 2021 recall of Philips Respironics ventilators and CPAP and BiPAP machines. ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on how the company kept complaints about the devices secret for years. As part of that reporting, the news organizations found answers for consumers trying to navigate the crisis.

    We are not providing medical advice and encourage patients and their family members to seek guidance from trusted health care providers.

  • Pro Publica ☛ ProPublica, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Have Sued FDA for Records Related to Philips CPAP Recall

    ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have filed suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in federal court in New York, accusing the agency of holding back records related to the sweeping recall of breathing machines that were sold around the world.

    In June 2021, Philips Respironics acknowledged that an industrial foam fitted inside its popular DreamStation continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machines and other devices could break down and send particles and fumes into the masks worn by patients. Health risks include headaches, respiratory conditions, nausea and “possible toxic and carcinogenic effects,” the company said.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Techdirt ☛ Silicon Valley Starts Hiring Poets To Fix Shitty Writing By Undercooked “AI”

    When it comes to the early implementation of “AI,” it’s generally been the human beings that are the real problem.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Millions of files with potentially sensitive information exposed online, researchers say

    Researchers with Censys, a service that indexes devices connected to the [Internet] and the services they’re running, recently indexed nearly 314,000 distinct [Internet]-connected devices and web servers with open directory listings and at least one file. The scanner then took note of file names, paths, file sizes and last-modification timestamps, creating what the company calls “one of the most comprehensive databases of all open directories on the internet.”

  • Bertrand Meyer ☛ AI will move mountains

    The amazement continues. I had not complained, not questioned the answer, not emitted any doubt or criticism, and here is this tool apologizing again. And leaving me with two exactly contradictory answers. Which one am I supposed to believe? If I ask again, am I going to get a new set of excuses and a reversal to the original answer? (I did not try.)

  • El País ☛ Ringo Starr on ‘Rewind Forward,’ writing country music, the AI-assisted final Beatles track and more

    In June, news broke that a final Beatles recording would soon become available, created using artificial intelligence technology to extricate John Lennon’s voice from a piano demo — the same method used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.”

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Passkeys, Crypto, and Signing AI Content

    Under the hood, it’s just crypto (as in cryptography). There’s a public and private key pair that’s generated. The private keys are used to sign log-in challenges sent by the authenticating service. We’ve had hardware security keys and WebAuthn for a while but mostly used them as a second-factor authentication. They required you to buy an additional device (usually USB). They weren’t used as primary authentication because if you lost the device, you couldn’t recover your account.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ GAO in ‘experimentation phase’ with AI model to query reports, inform its work

    An artificial intelligence model currently being developed by the Government Accountability Office could one day be used to do things like pull information from the watchdog’s extensive catalog of reports for Congress, the agency’s top official told lawmakers this week.

    GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Modernization at a Wednesday hearing that the agency is working to figure out how to both audit AI use in government and use the technology to its own benefit.

• Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

  • WhichUK ☛ One in 10 Amazon customers offered ‘bribes’ for positive reviews

    Our nationally representative survey of 1,556 people run in August 2023 found that 10% of people who bought from Amazon in the previous 12 months had received a note or card in the packaging of an Amazon product offering an incentive for leaving a five-star review. When scaled up, this equates to 4.5 million people in Great Britain.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Spiegel ☛ August Hanning: Legal and Critical Scrutiny for Ex German Intelligence Chief's Advisory Gigs

    August Hanning, the former president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, finds himself in the spotlight once again. Reporting by DER SPIEGEL has unveiled a series of questionable advisory engagements he has undertaken since leaving public office.

  • India Times ☛ Norway asks EU regulator to fine Facebook owner Meta over privacy breach

    The Norwegian regulator, Datatilsynet, is now referring its decision to the European Data Protection Board, which could make the decision permanent if it agrees with the Norwegian regulator's decision.

    "Datatilsynet has asked the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) for a binding decision in the Meta case," the regulator said in a statement.

  • El País ☛ From sharenting to cybersecurity: Why sharing your children’s information on social media poses serious risks

    The first immediate consequence is that a digital footprint is created for the minor. Today’s children have their lives advertised since even before birth. Many times, fathers and mothers-to-be upload ultrasound images to their social media accounts. The digital footprint of most adults today began consciously with the emergence of social media. But in the case of today’s teens and children, mainly belonging to the Z and Alpha generations, that record that we leave about ourselves on the internet, and which can be found by search engines, is being largely created by their own parents without real awareness. It’s like writing a resume prematurely in which all kinds of personal information will appear, which can be used for good or bad.

  • EDRI ☛ Polish Senate calls Pegasus illegal and demands scrutiny over secret services

    All hell broke loose towards the end of 2021, when Canadian tech NGO Citizen Lab and Apple discovered that governments around the world used Pegasus to spy on activists and journalists. Citizen Lab and Applenot only published the news, but also informed each detected victim individually that their devices may have been hacked with the spyware.

    The Polish ruling party (PiS) pretended nothing had happened. However, the Senate, with the majority held by the opposition, did not. In January 2022, a special committee was established to investigate the cases of illegal surveillance, its impact on electoral process, and to discuss the reform of the secret services.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Privacy watchdog recommends court approval for FBI searches of spy data

    The Democratic majority of a presidentially appointed privacy watchdog recommended in a report issued Thursday that Congress overhaul a controversial surveillance law to require court approval for searches of data belonging to U.S. persons.

    The recommendation by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board may shape efforts in Congress regarding whether to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful spying tool that expires later this year and allows intelligence agencies to collect the communications of non-U.S. persons abroad whose communications transit American telecommunications systems.

  • International Business Times ☛ Private Conversations With Google Bard Appear On Google Search, How To Stop It?

    Aside from indexing supposedly private Bard conversations, the AI bot's conversation URLs are being used as snippets to answer common search queries.

    It is a great example of why people should avoid sharing personal information with these kinds of chatbots. Apparently, something confidential you share with Google Bard may find its way to Google Search, where everyone could see it.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Group Claiming To Have Hacked Sony Is Using GDPR As A Weapon For Demanding Ransoms

    We’ve spilled a great deal of ink discussing the GDPR and its failures and unintended consequences. The European data privacy law that was ostensibly built to protect the data of private citizens, but which was also expected to result in heavy fines for primarily American internet companies, has mostly failed to do either. While the larger American internet players have the money and resources to navigate GDPR just fine, smaller companies or innovative startups can’t. The end result has been to harm competition, harm innovation, and build a scenario rife with harmful unintended consequences. A bang up job all around, in other words.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Disclosure of Pirates' Identities "Compatible With EU Privacy Laws"

    The top legal advisor to Europe's highest court says that the retention and disclosure of suspected pirates' identifying information is compatible with EU privacy laws. Advocate General Szpunar's opinion is presented as a legal solution to a long-running legal complaint that accuses France of violating fundamental rights as part of its graduated response anti-piracy program.

  • Techdirt ☛ Oversight Report Finds Several Federal Agencies Are Still Using Clearview’s Facial Recognition Tech

    Two years ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its initial review of federal use of facial recognition tech. That report found that at least half of the 20 agencies examined were using Clearview’s controversial facial recognition tech.

  • EFF ☛ Watch EFF's Talks from DEF CON 31

    This year was our biggest DEF CON yet, with over 900 attendees starting or renewing an EFF membership at the conference. Thank you! Your support is the reason EFF can push for initiatives like protecting encrypted messaging, fighting back against illegal surveillance, and defending your right to tinker and hack the devices you own. Of course if you missed us at DEF CON, you can still become an EFF member and grab some new gear when you make a donation today!

    Now you can catch up on the EFF talks from DEF CON 31! Below is a playlist with the various talks EFF participated in that covers topics from digital surveillance, the world's dumbest cyber mercenaries, the UN Cybercrime Treaty, and more. Check them out here:

  • EFF ☛ The Growing Threat of Cybercrime Law Abuse: LGBTQ+ Rights in MENA and the UN Cybercrime Draft Convention

    Enter the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. If ratified in its current form, it could not only reinforce countries' domestic surveillance powers for investigating actions wrongly labeled as crimes, but could also legitimize and enhance international cooperation based on these powers. This UN endorsement could set a dangerous precedent, normalizing surveillance practices for acts that starkly contradict international human rights law.

  • EFF ☛ The Federal Government’s Privacy Watchdog Concedes: 702 Must Change

    The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has released its much-anticipated report on Section 702, a legal authority that allows the government to collect a massive amount of digital communications around the world and in the U.S. The PCLOB agreed with EFF and organizations across the political spectrum that the program requires significant reforms if it is to be renewed before its December 31, 2023 expiration. Of course, EFF believes that Congress should go further–including letting the program expire–in order to restore the privacy being denied to anyone whose communications cross international boundaries. 

    PCLOB is an organization within the federal government appointed to monitor the impact of national security and law enforcement programs and techniques on civil liberties and privacy. Despite this mandate, the board has a history of tipping the scales in favor of the privacy annihilating status quo. This history is exactly why the recommendations in their new report are such a big deal: the report says Congress should require individualized authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for any searches of 702 databases for U.S. persons. Oversight, even by the secretive FISC, would be a departure from the current system, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can, without warrant or oversight, search for communications to or from anyone of the millions of people in the United States whose communications have been  vacuumed up by the mass surveillance program.

    The report also recommends a permanent end to the legal authority that allows “abouts” collection, a search that allows the government to look at digital communications between two “non-targets”–people who are not the subject of the investigation–as long as they are talking “about” a specific individual.  The Intelligence Community voluntarily ceased this collection after increasing skepticism about its legality from the FISC. We agree with the PCLOB that it’s time to put the final nail in the coffin of this unconstitutional mass collection. 

  • EFF ☛ How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should

    If you use Chrome, you can disable this feature through a series of three confusing settings.

    With the version of the Chrome browser released in September 2023, Google tracks your web browsing history and generates a list of advertising "topics" based on the web sites you visit. This works as you might expect. At launch there are almost 500 advertising categories—like "Student Loans & College Financing," "Parenting," or "Undergarments"—that you get dumped into based on whatever you're reading about online. A site that supports Privacy Sandbox will ask Chrome what sorts of things you're supposedly into, and then display an ad accordingly. 

    The idea is that instead of the dozens of third-party cookies placed on websites by different advertisers and tracking companies, Google itself will track your interests in the browser itself, controlling even more of the advertising ecosystem than it already does. Google calls this “enhanced ad privacy,” perhaps leaning into the idea that starting in 2024 they plan to “phase out” the third-party cookies that many advertisers currently use to track people. But the company will still gobble up your browsing habits to serve you ads, preserving its bottom line in a world where competition on privacy is pushing it to phase out third-party cookies. 

Defence/Aggression

• Hindustan Times ☛ Europe wants to ‘Trump Proof’ transatlantic relationship before US polls

  That means acting quickly to nail down binding agreements with the Biden administration, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private conversations. Member states were also told to be realistic about how much tougher negotiations could become if they fail to move quickly, they added.

• US News And World Report ☛ 186.000 Migrants and Refugees Arrived in Southern Europe So Far This Year, Most in Italy, UN Says

  The UNHCR estimates that over 102,000 refugees and migrants from Tunisia — a 260% increase from last year— and over 45,000 from Libya tried to cross the central Mediterranean to Europe between January and August, she said.

• Site36 ☛ Huge deal for Rheinmetall: German Army modernises drone fleet

  The German Army is buying a new medium-range drone system. The Bundeswehr’s procurement office signed a contract to this effect with Rheinmetall on Thursday. It was only on 20 September that the Budget Committee in the Bundestag cleared the way for the deal.

  The arms company is marketing the drone under the name “Luna NG”, the abbreviation standing for “next generation”. The predecessor manufactured by the company EMT has already been in service with the Bundeswehr for 20 years and was also exported to Saudi Arabia for border surveillance.

• France24 ☛ Niger soldiers killed in suspected jihadist attack

  The Tillaberi region, where the attack took place, is located in the so-called "three borders" zone where Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali meet. The area is a hideout for jihadists, particularly those affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

• Papers Please ☛ DHS uses travel as pretext for search of researcher and journalist

  According to a report by Zack Whittaker on TechCrunch, security researcher, and blogger Sam Curry “was taken into secondary inspection by U.S. federal agents on September 15 after returning from a trip to Japan. Curry said agents with the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit and the Department of Homeland Security questioned him at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC about a ‘high profile phishing campaign,’ searched his unlocked phone, and served him with a grand jury subpoena to testify in New York the week after.”

  How did this happen, and what recourse do you have if you are similarly searched?

  Sadly, the used of (entirely unrelated) international travel as a pretext for searches of electronic devices and data, including searches or researchers and journalists, is not new.

• Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • Meduza ☛ Russian-backed authorities in annexed Crimea to start fining business owners who refuse to shelter residents during air raid alerts — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Russian military official says General Staff not planning new mobilization drive and will not send mandatory service conscripts to war — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region leaves five localities without power — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Putin and Wagner Group commander Andrey Troshev discuss ‘volunteer formations’ in Kremlin meeting — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Reimagining Mariupol A Ukrainian design team develops a new vision for reviving the seaside city Russia destroyed — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Minsk claims (once again) that Polish helicopter intruded into its airspace. Warsaw denies this. — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ The end of Artsakh The republic proclaimed by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh will officially dissolve, and its former state minister is in Azerbaijani custody — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ ‘No one’s going to fight for us’: As Baku takes power in Nagorno-Karabakh, tens of thousands of refugees are flooding Armenia, without a hope of returning home — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Problems, solved: Ramzan Kadyrov met on camera with Vladimir Putin — to tell him that all is well in Chechnya. Neither his health nor his son Adam’s recent behavior were mentioned. — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Kadyrov’s youngest son takes to Instagram to respond to criticism following video of him beating prisoner — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Unequal access As the Russian school year begins, it’s clear that laws aren’t enough to ensure students with disabilities receive fair treatment — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Sometimes there are no red flags’: The life of Russian feminist activist Anastasia Yemelyanova, who was killed by her boyfriend in Turkey — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Duplicate ceremonies’: Russian Black Sea Fleet commander reportedly attends ‘reenactment’ of soccer award ceremony to prove he’s not dead — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ ISW: Russia and Iran in talks over supplies of ballistic missiles set to come out from under sanctions in October — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ It’s official: Russia enshrines date of annexing Ukrainian territories as Reunification Day state holiday — Meduza

Environment

• The Nation ☛ Climate March NYC

• Vox ☛ The US power grid quietly survived its most brutal summer yet

  On July 27, the US grid served nearly 15 million megawatt-hours of electricity across the lower 48 states, about 1.6 times the electricity produced by every nuclear power plant in the world on a given day. It kept lights, fans, and air conditioners running in every home, office, factory, school, hospital, and store on one of the hottest days ever. For comparison, the average daily electricity use in 2022 across the whole country was roughly 11 million MWh. At 6 pm ET, US energy demand reached an all-time high hourly peak of 741,815 MWh.

• New Statesman ☛ Net zero climb-down sacrifices Britain’s climate leadership for short-term gain

  The recent reversals on electric vehicles, energy efficiency and the rumoured shrinking of HS2 is a slap in the face to the companies and investors who have put their faith in the UK’s ambitious climate strategy. Multinational businesses have invested billions in the roadmap set out by successive Conservative prime ministers: they have just had the rug pulled from under them. And even the most stridently apolitical are speaking out, from Ford to Eon.

• YLE ☛ Helsinki University occupiers allowed to stay during defence event with president

  In its ninth day, the student occupation is a protest against Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's (NCP) government's planned austerity measures.

• teleSUR ☛ Zambia: Chinese Mining Firm to Boost Industry, More Investment

  According to Li Zhanyan, chairman of NFCA, the company plans to invest about 400 million U.S. dollars and increase its annual copper production to 110,000 tonnes per year. The company's current cumulative investment was 1.5 billion dollars, which has resulted in the creation of 5,600 local jobs, Li said. "Our commemoration of NFCA's 25th anniversary is a new starting point for us to accelerate our progress in building a world-class mining company."

• JURIST ☛ ECHR hears landmark lawsuit brought by youth climate activists against 33 governments

  In a nearly five-hour long hearing on Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard a landmark case brought by six youth plaintiffs against 33 European governments to spur stronger climate change mitigation measures.

• Pro Publica ☛ Victims of New Mexico’s Biggest Wildfire Wait for Checks From the Federal Government to Rebuild

  On a recent sunny morning in the high pastures of northern New Mexico, Tito Naranjo greeted a pair of federal surveyors on a patch of gravel where his traditional adobe home once stood.

  Naranjo used his walking stick to show them the outline of where his sunroom had been before it burned up in a wildfire accidentally set by the U.S. Forest Service last year. They walked slowly to the edge of the property, past a blackened willow tree that once held a tire swing, and stepped over a creek now empty of trout.

• DeSmog ☛ “Embarrassingly Wrong” Tufton Street Net Zero Report Gets Widespread Coverage

  A report from the Tufton Street group Civitas on the supposed cost of net zero was featured in several major newspapers today despite serious data errors. 

  Authored by management consultant Ewen Stewart, the report claimed that achieving net zero emissions will cost the UK £4.5 trillion, or £6,000 per household per year, by 2050.

• DeSmog ☛ Climate Litigation Is Increasing as Government Action Falters

  Despite its name, ambition was largely lacking at mid-September’s Climate Ambition Summit at the United Nations in New York. Secretary General António Guterres asked nations to arrive at the session with concrete commitments for phasing out fossil fuels, observing in his opening remarks that “humanity has opened the gates of hell.” But the event was overshadowed by the major polluters who didn’t attend.

  Those absent included China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which continue to expand oil and gas production. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chose the very day of the summit to announce that his government will push off the deadlines for phase-outs of methane gas-burning boilers, as well as sales of new gasoline and diesel-fueled cars. 

• Energy/Transportation

  • David Rosenthal ☛ The Bitcoin "Lab Leak" Theory

    Alas, this understandable effort by NSA staff has become the keystone in a bizarre theory that Satoshi Nakamoto is an alias for the NSA, who developed Bitcoin in secrecy as a "monetary bioweapon" a decade before it somehow leaked and infected the world.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • New York Times ☛ Beloved Sycamore Gap Tree Is Felled at Hadrian’s Wall in Britain

    Locals and tourists mourned the loss of one of Britain’s most photographed trees, which stood for hundreds of years in a dip in Hadrian’s Wall. The police said they had a suspect in custody.

• Overpopulation

  • RFA ☛ El Niño, India rice export ban cause food security fears in SE Asia

    Region’s millions depend on rice for 50% to 70% of their calorie intake.

  • Techdirt ☛ Sorry, No, AI Girlfriends Are Not Destroying The Birthrate Or Killing Medicare & Social Security

    What is it with real life stories matching satirical online TV shows lately? We just had a story match one from The Office, and now we’ve got one (that’s much dumber) that is copied from a Futurama episode about how dating robots will lead to the downfall of civilization:

Finance

• BIA Net ☛ Rising inflation expected following post-election lira slide, tax hikes

  A Central Bank survey shows an increased inflation forecast.

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ How to Compete with Patreon

  Pro tip: Patreon has no meaningful competitors, and also it sucks, so there's a huge opportunity for somebody to kick sand in its face and take its lunch money. But to do that you would have to understand what actually Patreon does that is worth it to creators to allow Patreon to take 5% of their proceeds (and then pass on to them a second 5% in payment processing fees).

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• New York Times ☛ Menendez Rejects Democrats’ Calls to Resign, Prompting Talk of Expulsion

  In a speech to fellow senators, the New Jersey Democrat maintained his innocence and reiterated his refusal to resign, causing one colleague to float the idea of forcing him out.

• Democracy Now ☛ Breaking the Menendez Cycle? Senator Pleads Not Guilty to Corruption, But Calls Grow for Resignation

  Senator Bob Menendez appeared in court Wednesday to face corruption charges yet refused to resign. A growing number of politicians have called for Menendez to step down, after federal agents discovered large amounts of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz in the Democrat’s New Jersey home. “There’s a possibility that this cycle that we see will not recur,” says David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, who says even the New Jersey political machine is “shunning” Menendez after his second corruption indictment in less than 10 years.

• Democracy Now ☛ “Donald Duck” & “Missing in Action”: GOP Rivals Criticize Trump for Skipping Another Debate

  Donald Trump skipped the second Republican presidential debate of the 2024 race on Wednesday, declining once again to share a stage with competitors for the nomination whom he leads in the polls by double digits. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized Trump for his absence, but most of the seven candidates avoided direct attacks on the front-runner. Instead, they largely aimed their fire at President Joe Biden — and each other. We air highlights from the debate, including the candidates’ remarks on the UAW strike, immigration and the economy.

• Techdirt ☛ Elon Fires Half Of ExTwitter’s Election Integrity Team, Because A Manager Liked A Tweet Calling Him A Fucking Dipshit

  There is no doubt that it’s not always easy to figure out what social media websites should do about election disinformation. There are those who believe that websites need to very actively remove such content, but there’s little evidence that straight removal does very much productive, which is why it wasn’t that surprising that YouTube (for example) has stopped policing lies about the 2020 election (the last Presidential election, which doesn’t mean they won’t pay attention to upcoming election).

• New York Times ☛ As McCarthy Seeks to Shift Shutdown Blame, Border Takes Center Stage

  The Republican speaker is working to turn the shutdown fight into a border security battle. Some lawmakers in both parties say they are open to including immigration provisions in an eventual deal.

• BIA Net ☛ Şırnak governor bans entry to several areas for two weeks

  The areas on the list have been declared as "Temporary Special Security Zones.”

• India Times ☛ Google antitrust trial: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to testify on Monday

  The government is likely to ask Nadella about Microsoft's efforts to expand the reach of Edge and Bing, its browser and search engine, and the obstacles posed by Google's dominance. Google will likely argue that the better quality of its products are the reason for its success rather than illegal behavior.

• Vice Media Group ☛ Elon Musk Just Won Another Massive Military Contract—This Time, for Satellites

  The contract is part of Space Force’s Proliferated Low-Earth Orbit plan, which has the new branch of the Pentagon seeding the skies with thousands of satellites from 100 to 1,000 miles above the planet. SpaceX will compete with 15 other companies to place some of these satellites. The plan is for the Pentagon to spend $900 million on this through 2028 and SpaceX’s particular contract caps out at $70 million.

• Democracy Now ☛ Ralph Nader: Why Is GOP Not Debating Corporate Crime Wave & the Weakening of Our Democratic Society?

  Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader responds to Wednesday’s second Republican debate, saying, “It’s pretty embarrassing that this is what they put forward to become the president of the most powerful country in the world.” Nader discusses the debate’s topics of social media, former President Donald Trump and wealth inequality in America. Nader also calls for the Democratic Party to “stop engaging in candidate suppression” and respect third-party candidates such as Cornel West to run for public office as a constitutional right.

• Insight Hungary ☛ Fidesz announces new bill targeting journalists, NGOs and politicians

  Last week Hungary's ruling party Fidesz KDNP held a meeting where the re-elected party leader Mate Kocsis spoke about the importance of defending Hungary's sovereignty, claiming it is "under attack".

  Kocsis said one of the economic attacks on the country's sovereignty came from Brussels when the EU suggested that Hungary abolish the cuts in utility costs, special taxes, and the interest rate freeze. Regarding cultural attack, the Fidesz leader said migrants are posing a threat to the Central European Country, as well as 'gender ideology' that "Brussels wants to impose.

• Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

  • New York Times ☛ China Uses ‘Deceptive’ Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says

    The accusations reflect worry in Washington that China’s information operations pose a growing security challenge to the United States.

  • LRT ☛ Latvia asks to report Russian war propaganda symbols on cars

    The letters “Z” and “V” that have become the symbols of Russia’s war in Ukraine have been largely eradicated from Latvia’s public space. But pro-Kremlin activists are still putting the stickers with these symbols on their cars, the Latvian public broadcaster LSM reports.

  • RFA ☛ US diplomat: ‘We’re in an undeclared information war’

    Released Thursday by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with countering foreign propaganda, the report also accuses Beijing of seeking to censor news around the world that “contradicts its desired narratives” on Taiwan, its human rights record, the South China Sea and its overseas development loans.

    The report says Chinese state-run companies have, for instance, purchased stakes in media across the world in order to ensure only positive stories about China are published, while promoting stories about problems in the United States and other democracies.

Censorship/Free Speech

• BIA Net ☛ Documentary reinstated in Golden Orange Film festival after censorship debate

  A documentary depicting the struggle of two dismissed public employees, was previously removed from the competition.

• BIA Net ☛ Filmmakers withdraw from Golden Orange festival over ‘censorship’

  A documentary focusing on two dismissed civil servants’ struggles was removed from the festival.

• El País ☛ Pussy Riot’s 10-year fight against Putin makes it to the museum

  Fear comes later, when you look at one of the videos: two policemen unceremoniously drag a young woman who is dressed in black and wearing military boots. She screams and struggles to get free, but to no avail. Just before she is put into a van, another woman turns on the camera and records the scene with a cell phone, documenting the arrest of an opponent of the despotic Russian regime. In another recording, people are seen walking, all in the same direction — there are no banners, no shouts or slogans, just people walking. This is how demonstrations are in Putin’s Russia. As if randomly chosen, a person is seized and subdued. Voices are heard, tension is felt. The detainee throws himself to the ground, an officer lifts him up, as if he were a wimp, by the waistband of his pants. The police use that momentum to throw him into a car, but alas, his legs remain outside the vehicle, preventing them from closing the car door. With another knock and push, the door is shut without a problem.

• RFA ☛ Authorities arrest Tibetan man twice for possessing Dalai Lama photo

  Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity. Tibetans frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by authorities and policies they say are aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity.

• RFA ☛ Vietnamese activist sentenced to 3 years in prison

  “The trial bore all the hallmarks of a show trial. The hearing lasted less than three hours, indicating that the outcome had been rigged in advance.

  “Hong’s conviction is yet another example of the Vietnamese government weaponizing the law to punish the country’s climate activists for daring to challenge the communist party’s monopoly on policymaking,” added Swanton.

• Techdirt ☛ ‘Porn’ Is A Human Right

  Accessing consensually created and distributed online pornography is a human right. Do you know why? The consensual production and viewing of porn online is a protected form of sexual expression between two or more adults. 

• EFF ☛ EFF to D.C. Circuit: Animal Rights Activists Shouldn’t Be Censored on Government Social Media Pages Because Agency Disagrees With Their Viewpoint

  EFF, along with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit urging the court to reverse a lower court ruling that upheld the censorship of public comments on a government agency’s social media pages. The district court’s decision is problematic because it undermines our right to freely express opinions on issues of public importance using a modern and accessible way to communicate with government representatives.

  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH), arguing that NIH blocks their comments against animal testing in scientific research on the agency’s Facebook and Instagram pages, thus violating of the First Amendment. NIH provides funding for research that involves testing on animals from rodents to primates.

  NIH claims to apply a general rule prohibiting public comments that are “off topic” to the agency’s social media posts—yet the agency implements this rule by employing keyword filters that include words such as cruelty, revolting, tormenting, torture, hurt, kill, and stop. These words are commonly found in comments that express a viewpoint that is against animal testing and sympathetic to animal rights.

• EFF ☛ Get Real, Congress: Censoring Search Results or Recommendations Is Still Censorship

  For the past two years, Congress has been trying to revise the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to address criticisms from EFF, human and digital rights organizations, LGBTQ groups, and others, that the core provisions of the bill will censor the internet for everyone and harm young people. All of those changes fail to solve KOSA’s inherent censorship problem: As long as the “duty of care” remains in the bill, it will still force platforms to censor perfectly legal content. (You can read our analyses here and here.)

  Despite never addressing this central problem, some members of Congress are convinced that a new change will avoid censoring the internet: KOSA’s liability is now theoretically triggered only for content that is recommended to users under 18, rather than content that they specifically search for. But that’s still censorship—and it fundamentally misunderstands how search works online. 

  Congress should be smart enough to recognize this bait-and-switch fails to solve KOSA’s many faults

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• EDRI ☛ Open Letter: European Parliament must protect journalists and ban spyware in the European Media Freedom Act

  80 media, journalists, and human and digital rights organisations are calling on MEPs to ensure that the regulation achieves what it set out to do by including a full ban on the use of spyware against journalists.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Son of media tycoon Jimmy Lai speaks at UN event on media freedom, as Hong Kong slams ‘political manipulation’

  Among the speakers at the “Media Freedom in Hong Kong” event in Geneva on Wednesday was Sebastien Lai, the son of detained media mogul Jimmy Lai. His father has been charged under the national security law and it was his 1,000th day in detention on Tuesday.

• CPJ ☛ Belarus detains journalist Andrei Tolchyn on extremism charges

  Authorities have previously detained Tolchyn multiple times and fined him in connection to his work.

Civil Rights/Policing

• RFA ☛ INTERVIEW: 'None of my mother's work endangered state security'

  Akida Polat speaks out about the life sentence handed to her mother, the Uyghur folklorist Rahile Dawut.

• France24 ☛ European Union poised to agree new asylum laws

  The European Union was poised Thursday to agree new rules for how it handles asylum-seekers and irregular migrants after Germany said it would go along with the intensely-negotiated package.

• New York Times ☛ Federal Lawsuit Accuses Tesla of Racial Discrimination

  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit accusing the carmaker of mistreating Black employees at its factory in California.

• Techdirt ☛ Minnesota’s Top Court The Latest To Say The Smell Of (Legal) Marijuana Can’t Justify A Warrantless Search

  Marijuana has been legalized pretty much everywhere in the United States. Even the DEA seems somewhat willing to move this source of easy busts off its drug schedule. At this point, there are only four states that have yet to legalize (or decriminalize) marijuana possession.

• BIA Net ☛ Ministry withdraws from Golden Orange Film Festival reinstatement of documentary

  "It is deeply regrettable that in such an important festival, there is a possibility of using the power of art to propagate FETÖ terrorist organization propaganda under the pretext of victimization,” the ministry has said.

• uni Stanford ☛ An inside look at graduate student unionization

  It joins a growing list of unions formed by graduate student workers at American universities and also continues efforts initiated by the Graduate Student Council last year.

  The SCWU follows a state-wide trend: 36,000 University of California graduate workers went on strike last year for nearly six weeks — the largest work stoppage at a higher education institution in the United States. Student workers in the California State University system also launched a unionization effort in April.

• India Times ☛ Uber, DoorDash lose bid to block NYC minimum wage for delivery workers

  A New York state judge on Thursday rejected a bid by Uber Technologies Inc, DoorDash Inc and other gig economy firms to block New York City's novel law setting a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers.

  The decision by New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne will allow the law to take effect pending the outcome of the companies' lawsuit. Moyne in July had stopped the law from being implemented while he considered the companies' request to block it until the case is resolved.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Reason ☛ FCC Revives Common Carriage for the Internet [Ed: Koch think tank continues to attack the Net by pretending that corporations controlling everything is perfectly OK]

  After five years without net neutrality rules, the fix for a problem that doesn’t exist is back.

Monopolies

• Vice Media Group ☛ Here’s the Email Amazon Sent Sellers It’s Allegedly Screwing Over After FTC Filed Antitrust Lawsuit

  One day after the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, the company told sellers that the suit “does not change anything about our relationship.”

• India Times ☛ French competition authority raids Nvidia's offices for anticompetitive practices: report

  The French competition authority, which disclosed the dawn raid on Wednesday, did not say what practices it was investigating or which company it had targeted, beyond saying it was in the "graphics cards sector."

  The authority said its operation this week followed a broader inquiry into the cloud-computing sector. The broader inquiry revolves around concerns that cloud-computing companies could use their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors.

• Digital Music News ☛ BOSS and SWIFT Act Introduced Into the US Senate — Potentially Forcing Transparent, All-In Ticket Pricing

  “For too long, ticket sellers have employed deceptive fees and practices to maximize profits at consumers’ expense. It’s time to crack down on this anti-hero behavior, which is exactly what the BOSS and SWIFT Act will do,” added Hirono with a nod to Taylor Swift’s massive hit. “By requiring ticket sellers to act with transparency, this legislation will protect consumers, helping them enjoy the best day at their favorite concerts, games, and performances.”

• The Register UK ☛ French monopoly cops raid Nvidia office in cloud probe

  According to the Euro nation's media, on Tuesday French authorities conducted an unannounced visit and seizure operation on the chip giant's office to gather evidence on possible anti-competitive practices by the GPU slinger and others.

• Democracy Now ☛ David Dayen: Amazon & Google Antitrust Cases Highlight “Newfound Vigor” in D.C. to Fight Monopolies

  On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, but the details of the suit remain unclear as much of it is redacted to the public. We speak with David Dayen, author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, about the significance of this lawsuit, which comes just two weeks after the opening of a landmark antitrust trial against Google. “Suddenly there is all this activity in the antitrust space after a period of dormancy for about 40 years,” says Dayen, who says the charge is being led by FTC Chair Lina Khan. “Khan represents an aggressive set of antitrust enforcers that the Biden administration has put in and really reversed this troubling trend of the last 40 years.”

• Copyrights

  • Bjoern Brembs ☛ No Evilsevier DEAL!

    No matter how well-intended (and we all know to which place the road leads that is paved with good intentions!), transformative agreements (such as DEAL in Germany) are generally the wrong tool at the wrong time for making publicly funded science accessible to the public. If you count public statements, the picture of a rare academic consensus emerges: the DEAL-incompatible proposals and criteria from the Council of EU Science Ministers were enthusiastically welcomed by a wide range of scientific organizations. This was not surprising as these conclusions originated from within the scholarly community and build on existing solutions within scholarly institutions. More surprising is the positive feedback coming from the smaller publishers. They welcome these modern concepts from the scientific community that have found their way into the EU decisions, because they finally give them an opportunity to compete with the larger publishers. In short, the only ones still considering DEAL to be up to the task are DEAL themselves and the big publishers; all other relevant actors who have made public statements so far, all reject DEAL.

  • Royal Society Of Chemistry ☛ Publishers settle copyright infringement lawsuit with ResearchGate

    Specifically, during upload the ResearchGate platform will check rights information for ACS and Elsevier published content and immediately determine how the content can be shared on the site. Authors will be able to store the final versions of ACS and Elsevier published articles privately in their ResearchGate profiles and share them privately when requested by other users.

    Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, a librarian and professor of information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the settlement agreement ‘signals that ResearchGate has completed its journey from disrupter to partner within the scholarly communications ecosystem’. She notes that Elsevier and ACS have been using ResearchGate’s content blocking technology since at least early 2022, which indicates that ‘a more collaborative relationship’ has been in development for some time.

  • Digital Music News ☛ What Are the Rules for AI? Music Industry Leaders Convene In Los Angeles for DMN’s Upcoming Mini-Conference

    What are the rules for AI? The role that artificial intelligence will play in the music industry is still being cemented as 2023 comes to a close, though we’re witnessing the beginnings of a roadmap. Now, it’s time to take a closer look at how AI will impact the music industry in 2024 and beyond with some of the most important players in the business.

  • Walled Culture ☛ Copyright’s legal stranglehold on creativity has made putting works into the public domain absurdly hard

    This blog has written many times about the public domain, and its central importance to creativity – past, present and future. Placing his work in the public domain is a wonderful way both to allow other people to use it in all kinds of exciting new creations, and to snub his copyright oppressors in the most poetic manner possible. Needless to say, the latter have no intention of allowing this to happen if they can stop it using their weapon of choice: copyright law. Comic Book Resources reported that DC Comics have responded to Willingham’s plan as follows: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Medium asks AI bot crawlers: Please, please don't scrape bloggers' musings

    CEO Tony Stubblebine on Thursday explained how Medium intends to curb the harvesting of people's written work by developers seeking to build training data sets for neural networks. He said, above all, devs should to ask for consent – and offer credit and compensation to writers – for training large language models on people's prose.

    Those AI models can end up aping the writers they were trained on, which feels to some like a double injustice: the scribes weren't compensated in the first place, and now models are threatening to take their place as well as income derived from their work.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Authors: OpenAI's Fair Use Argument in Copyright Dispute is Misplaced

    Several authors including Paul Tremblay, Mona Awad and comedian Sarah Silverman have responded to OpenAI's request to dismiss several infringement copyright claims. The AI company cited fair use, among other things, but the plaintiffs note that this isn't the time and place to bring up this "urban legend".

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Two Pirate IPTV Sellers Sentenced Following Sky Investigation

    Two men who sold piracy-configured set-top boxes and provided access to pirate IPTV services have been sentenced at Belfast Crown Court. Following an investigation by police and subscription broadcaster Sky, the pair faced charges under several pieces of legislation including the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Communications Act 2003, and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.