Distributions and Operating Systems

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • IT Wire ☛ Sign of the times: Oppo launches another low-budget smartphone

    Oppo Australia has launched its latest A series smartphone, the A58, with the price tag ($299) suiting the times given that people are still feeling the pinch from the rising cost of living.

Leftovers

• Jim Nielsen ☛ A Few Details About My Notes Website

  A little while back I created notes.jim-nielsen.com and wrote about why I made it. I want to write a little more about some of my favorite parts of the site.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Concluding my link experiment

  Back in April I started an experiment where I stopped using inline links. I thought putting links in their own lines would aid readability, and make polyglot markup for Gemini possible. Polyglot still sounds like something you’d unclog a drain with. Maybe there’s a metaphor there for what Gemini represents compared to the modern web. But, damn it, I digress, again.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ NASA Scientists Got a Surprise When They Opened Up Sample of Bennu Asteroid Dust

    Dish the dirt!

  • uni Stanford ☛ A Case for Limiting Total Food Production for Human Consumption

    The original blog was published at Mother Pelican in January 2023 Few experts in population biology, related fields of science, demography, and economics appear ready and willing to see what is in front of the naked eye.

  • Science Alert ☛ Nobel Chemistry Winner Failed His First College Chem Exam

    There's hope for us still!

  • Science Alert ☛ Orca Appears to Have Been Felled by A Single, Small Creature

    A lose-lose situation.

  • Science Alert ☛ Black Holes Might Not Be Quite as 'Simple' as We Thought, New Paper Suggests

    What if there were two event horizons?

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Keep Going

    It's reasonable to look at her story and think about timing and luck. But it's also a great reminder to keep going. The world is changing so fast that there are countless opportunities for us to be early or late on. And for many of those, we are both. So, we might as well keep going.

  • Filippo Valsorda ☛ Announcing the $12k NIST Elliptic Curves Seeds Bounty

    Steve Weis has recently published a well researched article on everything we know about those arbitrary seeds embedded in the FIPS 186 specification. Apparently, they were provided by the NSA, and generated by Jerry Solinas in 1997. He allegedly generated them by hashing, presumably with SHA-1, some English sentences that he later forgot.

  • The Register UK ☛ Boffins propose RISC-V microcontroller to power cubesats

    The team's RISC-V-based Trikarenos chip aims to address this with a fault-tolerant design based on TSMC's 28nm process tech, which the team says has "shown tolerance to the destructive effects of radiation," and is as efficient as earlier designs.

• Education

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Two student entrepreneurs use their creativity and passion to start small businesses

    Two students took their developed passions and turned them into profitable business ventures.  Graduate student Kaitlyn Phillips studied entrepreneurship for her undergraduate degree and is currently pursuing a master’s in international business. All entrepreneurship majors have to start a business, so Phillips had to start thinking of ideas.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Repairers concerned about lack of younger skilled workers

    In light of the green transition, people are being increasingly encouraged to repair broken or worn things. "Aktuaalne kaamera. Nädal," the Sunday evening edition of ETV's nightly news broadcast, visited Paide, the capital of Järva County, to get a better idea of what options exist for repairs in a small town in Estonia.

    Ivar Avik is Järva County's only cobbler. He has been repairing shoes for 35 years. However, the nature of his work has changed a great deal in that time.

• Hardware

  • The Next Platform ☛ Details Emerge On Europe’s First Exascale Supercomputer

    Some details are emerging on Europe’s first exascale system, codenamed “Jupiter” and to be installed at the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany in 2024.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Blues introduces dev kits for IoT solutions

    Last month, Blues launched various products in a Notecard (System-on-Module) form-factor which offer multiple connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, LoRa and Cellular connectivity. The company is also offering compatible kits which provide sensors, I/O ports for expansion and battery connectors for portability.

    The Blues Starter Kit comes packed with a range of components and modules designed to create various IoT projects:

  • Hackaday ☛ Spuds Lend A Hand In The Darkroom

    If film photography’s your thing, the chances are you may have developed a roll or two yourself, and if you’ve read around on the subject it’s likely you’ll have read about using coffee, beer, or vegetable extracts as developer. There’s a new one to us though, from [cm.kelsall], who has put the tater in the darkroom, by making a working developer with potatoes as the active ingredient.

  • Hackaday ☛ Just What Is Tone, In A Microphone?

    As long-time Hackaday readers will know, there is much rubbish spouted in the world of audio about perceived tone and performance of different hi-fi components. Usually this comes from audiophiles with, we’d dare to suggest, more money than sense. But oddly there’s an arena in which the elusive tone has less of the rubbish about it and it in fact, quite important. [Jim Lill] is a musician, and like all musicians he knows that different combinations of microphones impart a different sound to the recording. But as it’s such a difficult property to quantify, he’s set out to learn all he can about where the tone comes from in a microphone.

  • Hackaday ☛ An SMD Capacitor Guide

    For electronics, your knowledge probably follows a bit of a bell curve over time. When you start out, you know nothing. But you eventually learn a lot. Then you learn enough to be comfortable, and most of us don’t learn as much about new things unless we just happen to need it. Take SMD components. If you are just starting out, you might not know how to find the positive lead of an SMD capacitor. However, if you’ve been doing electronics for a long time, you might not have learned all the nuances of SMD. [Mr SolderFix] has been addressing this with a series of videos covering the basics of different SMD components, and this installment covers capacitors.

  • Hackaday ☛ Neat Soldering Station Design Has Workshop & Portable Versions

    The warm and rather stinky heart of any hacker’s lair is the soldering station, where the PCB meets the metal (solder). A good soldering station lets you get on with the business of building stuff without worrying about piffling details like temperature and remembering to turn the thing off. The AxxSolder is a neat design from [AxxAxx] that fulfills these criteria, as it includes full PID control of the iron and an auto sleep feature. It will run from any DC power source from 9 to 26 Volts, so you can run it off your bench power supply and have one less thing to plug in. There is even a portable version for those on-the-go hackathons.

  • Hackaday ☛ We’d Sure Like To Strum The Chrumm Keyboard

    If you want something as personal as a keyboard done right, you have to do it yourself. Not quite satisfied with the multitude of mechanical offerings out there, [summific] decided to throw their hat into the ring and design the Chrumm keyboard. And boy, are we glad they did.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Food Industry Influence Could Cloud the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, a New Report Says

    The process of updating the healthy eating recommendations has become more transparent in recent years, but conflicts persist.

  • The Straits Times ☛ New Zealand PM returns to campaign trail after recovering from COVID

    New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins on Friday said he was back on the election campaign trail, after he tested negative for COVID-19 earlier in the day.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • La Prensa Latina ☛ UN and Red Cross join voices against danger of autonomous weapons

    In a joint appeal, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric called on States to establish specific restrictions on these technologies to shield current and future generations from the consequences of their use.

    “In the current security landscape, setting clear international red lines will benefit all States,” they stressed in the appeal released here.

    Autonomous weapon systems, equipped with technology that selects targets and applies force without human intervention, pose grave humanitarian, legal, ethical, and security concerns.

  • Futurism ☛ Man Reportedly Steals 800 Gallons of Gas by Hacking Pump

    While we don't know which specific device was used in this latest hack, easily purchasable gadgets have flooded the internet, allowing practically anybody to easily circumvent gas pumps' payment systems. Some of these devices exploit remote control options used by station owners and fuel inspectors. Other devices called pulsar manipulators trick the pump into dispensing more gas than it's keeping track of, per NBC.

  • Digital First Media ☛ Nearly 800 gallons of gas stolen from Detroit station's pump with electronic device, police say

    A store employee told officers nearly 800 gallons of gasoline were stolen by a person or people who used some type of electronic device to override the controls of a gasoline pump and obtain the fuel without paying for it.

  • Scheerpost ☛ AI Goes to War

    The Pentagon has long built its strategy around supposed technological marvels like the “electronic battlefield” in the Vietnam era; the “revolution in military affairs,” first touted in the early 1990s; and the precision-guided munitions praised since at least the 1991 Persian Gulf war. It matters little that such wonder weapons have never performed as advertised. For example, a detailed Government Accountability Office report on the bombing campaign in the Gulf War found that “the claim by DOD [Department of Defense] and contractors of a one-target, one-bomb capability for laser-guided munitions was not demonstrated in the air campaign where, on average, 11 tons of guided and 44 tons of unguided munitions were delivered on each successfully destroyed target.”

  • Windows TCO

    • Scoop News Group ☛ NATO investigating breach, leak of internal documents

      NATO is investigating claims by a politically motivated hacktivist group that it breached the defense alliance’s computer systems, which, if confirmed, would mark the second time in the last three months that the group known as SiegedSec has broken into NATO systems.

      SiegedSec, a cybercrime group with a history of politically-motived attacks, claimed on its Telegram channel on Saturday that it had stolen roughly 3,000 NATO documents and posted six screenshots allegedly showing access to various NATO web pages. The group claimed the 3,000 stolen files total more than nine gigabytes of data.

    • The Register UK ☛ Lorenz ransomware crew bungles blackmail blueprint by leaking two years of contacts

      The data includes names, email addresses, and the subject line entered into the ransomware group's limited online form to request information from Lorenz.

      A subset of the individuals included in the breach were approached by The Register and all confirmed they had contacted Lorenz in the past two years.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Prolific malware and botnet operator Qakbot still operating despite FBI takedown

      Chris Morgan, senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at cybersecurity company ReliaQuest LLC, agreed, saying that the “news of Qakbot’s resurgence comes as no surprise, given the long list of other prominent malware families returning shortly after a law enforcement operation.” He noted that Emotet and Trickbot both returned following a significant takedown of associated infrastructure by law enforcement or cybersecurity firms.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Spoofing Alerts in 4G LTE Networks

      Our attack can be performed using a commercially-available software defined radio, and our modifications to the open source NextEPC and srsLTE software libraries. We find that with only four malicious portable base stations of a single Watt of transmit power each, almost all of a 50,000-seat stadium can be attacked with a 90% success rate. [...]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ UK DATA BRIDGE: A GLOBAL PRIVACY RACE TO THE BOTTOM

      On October 12, the UK extension (Data Bridge) to the EU–US Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework (DPF) will come into force.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Meta’s Facebook, Instagram Heading Toward Paid Plans in Europe

      The company received a fine of 390 million euros earlier in the year by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission and told in no uncertain terms that it cannot use its so-called “contract” as a legal means to send users targeted ads. As a result, the company said it intended to ask European users for their consent before allowing businesses to target ads in order to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape.

    • The Register UK ☛ EPIC urges watchdog to probe Grindr's data privacy – or alleged lack thereof

      On Wednesday, EPIC filed a complaint with the US government watchdog over Grindr's "apparent failure to safeguard users' sensitive personal data." This includes both present and past users who have since deleted their accounts, according to the complaint. Despite promising in its privacy policy to delete personal info if customers remove their account, Grindr allegedly retained and disclosed some of this data to third parties.

    • Vice Media Group ☛ Ring Is Cashing In on the UFO Craze to Promote Its Surveillance Dystopia

      The “Million Dollar Sighting” contest is Amazon’s latest scheme to make people think of Ring cameras as wacky and fun instead of frightening and paranoid. In 2022, it launched a television show called Ring Nation that’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos built from porch cams.

      Sold as a home safety device, Ring is really great at violating your neighbor’s privacy and delivering footage to cops without your consent. The American suburb is a paranoid place and Ring plays on those fears to sell cameras and generate reams of data for Amazon to sell. Advocacy groups petitioned the FTC to ban the cameras in 2021, but the plea failed. Meanwhile, Amazon has continued to expand its partnerships with police departments, making it easier for the cops to see what Ring users have recorded.

    • Jeffrey Paul ☛ Apple OSes Are Insecure By Design To Aid Surveillance

      I believe that Apple is preserving unencrypted server connections in their operating systems in an effort to enable global location tracking of their userbase by passive monitoring of major internet backbones.

      This is supported by timelines and context, which will be provided.

      Several important connections (TSS, OCSP) are made from Apple devices in plaintext (that is, completely unencrypted). This began for historical reasons, but has been repeatedly reported to Apple. They have not fixed it.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Chat control gate: EU Home Affairs Commissioner Johansson fails to credibly dispel lobbying revelations

      Following reports from several European media outlets about the close involvement of foreign tech and law enforcement lobbyists in the preparation of the controversial Child Sexual Abuse or Chat Control Regulation [1], the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) last week demanded “clarifications and explanations on the allegations” by EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson. In her response, Johansson attempts to dispel the affair.[2]

      Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party), member of the Civil Liberties Committee and co-negotiator of the proposed regulation, comments: [...]

    • Scoop News Group ☛ DNA testing service 23andMe investigating theft of user data

      On Sunday, a post on a popular forum where stolen data is traded and sold claimed to have “the most valuable data you’ll ever see” and posted a link to a sample of what was described as “20 million pieces of data” from 23andMe.

    • Techdirt ☛ KOSA Won’t Make The Internet Safer For Kids. So What Will?

      I’ve been asked a few times now what to do about online safety if the Kids Online Safety Act is no good. I will take it as a given that not enough is being done to make the Internet safe, especially for children. I think there is enough evidence to show that while the Internet can be a positive for many young people, especially marginalized youth that find support online, there are also significant negatives that correlate to real world harms that lead to suffering.

    • Site36 ☛ Indymedia Linksunten: German Police can’t decrypt MacBook and hast to return it

• Defence/Aggression

  • PHR ☛ Ethiopia: Premature End of UN Human Rights Commission Obstructs Justice and Elevates Risk of Further Atrocities

    The failure of the UN Human Rights Council to renew the mandate of the Independent Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) prevents survivors and victims of human rights violations from any credible access to justice and could lead to further atrocities...

  • Vox ☛ How TikTok profits off dangerous health trends

    Social media platforms like TikTok have always been filled with snake oil salesmen and wellness influencers pushing questionable cleanses and protocols. But the US rollout of the TikTok Shop in September has shined a spotlight on how dubious online wellness advice and TikTok’s trend cycles work together to find new audiences, and how they repackage ineffective or dangerous health remedies that have been around for years. Creators shilling parasite cleanses, detox drinks, miracle cures, and promoting oils and tinctures with overbroad health claims have all been pushed onto the For You Pages of TikTok users in recent weeks.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok shuts shopping feature in Indonesia following ban

    Indonesia was one of the first countries where TikTok launched TikTok Shop, betting on the app's potential to become a successful retail platform for the company's second-largest user base.

    Now, the country has become the first to block the feature.

  • The Local SE ☛ Swedish gang [sic] criminals 'branching out into healthcare sector'

    Sweden's Economic Crime Authority warned that gang criminals are starting to establish themselves within the healthcare industry, opening healthcare and vaccination centres to access regional and municipal funding.

  • NPR ☛ A record 400K migrants have crossed the treacherous Darién jungle to reach the U.S.

    Despite a U.S.-backed deal with Colombia and Panama to "end the illicit movement" along this route, numbers of migrants traversing the jungle's trails have spiked to an all-time high. In the first nine months of this year, 400,000 migrants have crossed the Darién on their way to the United States, Panamanian officials recently said, a sharp increase from the nearly 250,000 people who made the journey in all of 2022.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Poland’s Election Is Neither Free nor Fair

    Before I continue, here is a very emphatic declaration of personal interest. I am married to a Polish politician, Radek Sikorski, a former foreign minister who is a member of Civic Platform, the largest opposition party. He is not a candidate in this election, but he is a member of the European Parliament, and he is campaigning on behalf of others. If that bothers you, then stop reading here. But do remember that some stories are clearer from the inside. As soon as this article is published, both my husband and I could once again be the focus of orchestrated online attacks from PiS trolling operations, more slander on state-run and state-controlled media, and maybe even more antagonism from the state institutions that use the security services to harass political opponents, including us, by orchestrating bogus financial or criminal investigations. Those same institutions have put spyware on the phones of our colleagues and friends. As in the Communist era, people in Polish politics now sometimes go outside or leave their phone in a different room when they want to speak. That’s just the price, nowadays, of being in the democratic opposition.

  • RFERL ☛ Tbilisi Condemns Moscow's Reported Plan To Establish Naval Base In Breakaway Abkhazia

    The West has called the move effectively an annexation of the two regions by Russia. Only Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria have recognized Abkhazia as independent.

  • Meduza ☛ European Parliament condemns Baku’s ‘violent seizure’ of Nagorno-Karabakh as ethnic cleansing, demands reduction of E.U. gas imports from Azerbaijan — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ A Russian strike kills 51 in the Ukrainian village of Hroza as locals gather to hold a wake The youngest victim was a 6-year-old boy. Another child has been wounded. — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Putin announces ‘successful testing’ of nuclear-powered cruise missile — Meduza

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Vladimir Putin is still convinced he can outlast the West in Ukraine

      Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has united the democratic world to a degree not seen in decades, but the Western response to the war continues to be hampered by excessive fear of provoking Putin, writes Dennis Soltys.

    • France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Deadly Russian missile attack on Hroza 'no blind strike', Zelensky says

      President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that a Russian missile attack which killed 51 people gathered for a wake in the village of Hroza in the Kharkiv region was “no blind strike”. Zelensky's words came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is tasked "with building a new world" and reiterated his position that Russia did not start the war in Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Grenade fragments found in bodies of Prigozhin plane crash victims, Putin claims

      Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that hand grenade fragments were found in the bodies of people who died in the Aug. 23 crash of mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane.

    • RFERL ☛ Putin Claims Russia Successfully Tests New Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile

      President Vladimir Putin on October 5 said Russia had successfully tested the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile that he has long boasted was under development.

    • RFERL ☛ Prankster Tricks Russian Schools Into Sending Putin Birthday Greetings Featuring Ukrainian Nationalist

      Several Russian schools were tricked into sending birthday greetings to President Vladimir Putin bearing a photograph and quotes of a World War II-era Ukrainian partisan leader who has been vilified by the Kremlin.

    • teleSUR ☛ No More Financial Dictatorship From the West: Putin

      The Russian president pointed out that the dollar-based international trade "does not align with the current interests of the vast majority of humankind."

    • New York Times ☛ Putin Suggests New Narrative for Prigozhin Plane Crash: Cocaine and Grenades

      The Russian president said grenade fragments were found in the bodies recovered from the crash site after the Wagner mercenary leader’s plane went down in August.

    • New York Times ☛ Putin Claims Russia Successfully Tested a Nuclear-Powered Missile

      “No one in their sound mind will use a nuclear weapon against Russia,” the Russian president said. The test could not be independently verified.

    • The Strategist ☛ Ukrainian civil defence is integral to the response to Russia’s invasion

      Civil defence has been crucial to Ukraine’s survival since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

    • Meduza ☛ Putin’s favorite subordinate The president’s attention has wandered over the decades, even in wartime, but he keeps coming back to Marat Khusnullin — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Satellite images confirm many Russian military ships have left Crimea base for Russia — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ St. Petersburg athletes prohibited from leaving Russia without official approval — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin says Russia may consider withdrawing ratification of Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin: After plane crash, Prigozhin’s body was studded with grenade remnants — Meduza

    • Atlantic Council ☛ By the numbers: Here’s how turmoil in Congress could impact US aid to Ukraine

      The US aid to Ukraine can continue to flow for the next few weeks but the recent events make the outlook for US aid more difficult.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Russian War Report: Civilian cafe attacked and a fake Ukrainian news site is exposed

      A suspicious website impersonating a Ukrainian news agency accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukrainian leadership of corruption and misusing aid provided by the United States.

    • France24 ☛ No, Ukraine didn’t release a postal stamp of a pro-Nazi soldier

      Pro-Russian social media accounts have been circulating an image of what they say is a Ukrainian postage stamp showing a Ukrainian veteran who fought alongside the Nazis in World World II. It turns out, however, that this isn’t a real stamp.

    • France24 ☛ European leaders stress support for Ukraine at Granada summit

      Almost 50 European leaders used a summit in the southern Spanish city of Granada on Thursday to stress they stand by Ukraine at a time when Western resolve appears somewhat weakened.

    • RFERL ☛ More Than 50 Civilians, Including 6-Year-Old, Killed In Russian Attack On Village, Ukraine Says

      Ukrainian officials said dozens of people were killed in a Russian attack that ripped through a cafe during a wake service in a village in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, with emergency crews scrambling through the debris in search of more casualties.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Andreas Kluth: We need to keep supporting Ukraine, Elon

      Stopping Hitler in 1938 would have been incalculably cheaper in both currencies than it turned out to be.

    • YLE ☛ Finnish man suspected of stabbing Ukrainian teen in Warsaw

      Authorities in Warsaw said it is very likely the suspect is guilty of stabbing a 17-year-old male Ukrainian.

    • CS Monitor ☛ With wary eye on Moscow, European Union opens door to Ukraine

      Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put European Union enlargement on the agenda again, with Kyiv the top-priority candidate. But joining won’t be easy.

    • New York Times ☛ Opposition to Ukraine Aid Becomes a Litmus Test for the Right

      The drama that has played out among House Republicans over the past week has highlighted a sharp decline in the party’s willingness to back continued aid for Kyiv’s fight against Russia.

    • New York Times ☛ Explosion in Ukraine Kills at Least 51 Gathered for a Wake

      Ukrainian officials said a Russian strike had killed at least 51 people in a tiny village with no obvious military or industrial targets nearby.

    • New York Times ☛ Biden Watches House Republicans’ Dysfunction From a Distance

      President Biden has chosen not to weigh in forcefully on the Republican meltdown in the House, instead trying to contrast his own achievements with the chaos of his rivals.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia-Ukraine War : Russian Strike on Village Shop Kills Over 50, Ukrainian Officials Say

      President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine condemned an attack in the northeastern Kharkiv region, which came as he attended a summit in Spain.

    • Latvia ☛ EBU warns against shutdown of Russian-language public media in Latvia

      The influential European Broadcasting Union (EBU) warned October 5 that a Saeima-approved plan to completely end funding for public media in the Russian language could constitute a human rights violation by Latvia.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ With Congress in chaos, Europe can show the world how to unite and deliver for Ukraine

      Twenty-three European foreign ministers traveled to Kyiv on October 2 in another example of EU support for Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ German Authorities Raid Properties Of Uzbek-Born Russian Tycoon Usmanov

      German police and customs officers searched several properties in southern Germany, which a source familiar with the matter said belonged to a Russian national targeted by European Union sanctions over Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Slovak President Says She Is Against New Military Aid Package For Ukraine

      Slovak President Zuzana Caputova said on October 5 that she is against a new package of military aid for Ukrainian armed forces that are fighting Russia's full-scale aggression.

    • RFERL ☛ Tbilisi Condemns Moscow's Reported Plan To Establish Naval Base In Breakaway Abkhazia

      Georgia's Foreign Ministry has condemned reports that Russia plans to establish a naval base in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, calling it a "blatant violation" of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

    • RFERL ☛ Kadyrov Critic Gets Six-Month Prison Term In Kyrgyzstan, Faces Deportation

      A court in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, sentenced Russian citizen Mansur Movlayev, an outspoken critic of the authoritarian ruler of Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to six months in prison for illegal border-crossing.

• Environment

  • uni Stanford ☛ Letter to the Editor | Across diverse backgrounds, we are more aligned on how to approach Stanford’s fossil fuel engagement than you might think

    We are a group of six graduate researchers with diverse professional backgrounds and opinions on fossil fuel companies’ role in funding affiliate program research. Three of us have been actively protesting fossil fuel funding at the Doerr School. Three of us are in favor of maintaining an open dialogue with fossil fuel companies. We agree that addressing climate change is serious enough to demand a clear strategic response from the University. Working together, we have reached a consensus on recommended criteria for evaluating the sources and objectives of research funding through affiliate programs, as well as a set of actions for enforcing these criteria.

  • University of Michigan ☛ UMich wins grant to establish new climate change research center

    The School for Environment and Sustainability will house the center, which will aim to forecast and understand the impacts of climate change on ecological and social systems. The center will also work to research methods by which government systems can increase disaster resilience. Jon Allan, director of integrated research at the center, told The Michigan Daily that the center’s multi-pronged approach is a key component of its efforts.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Say No, NYC Isn’t Sinking Because of Its Skyscrapers

    The good news is that, contrary to a previous study published in the journal Earth's Future earlier this year, all those skyscrapers aren't causing NYC to sink after all. The bad news: it is sinking, by an average of 0.06 inches — "about the same amount that a toenail grows in a month" — per year, though the causes are mostly related to natural geographical phenomena, with a dash of human meddling.

  • France24 ☛ Weather disasters caused by climate change displaced 43 million children, UNICEF

    Weather disasters fueled by climate change -- from floods to droughts, storms to wildfires -- sparked 43.1 million child displacements from 2016 to 2021, the UN Children's Fund warned Thursday, slamming the lack of attention paid to victims.

  • DeSmog ☛ Despite Climate Promises, Insurance Companies Are Still Covering Coal

    This article by Grist is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering ClimateNow.

    The insurance industry is in a state of flux because of climate change. This year has seen a record-breaking number of costly disasters in the United States, and insurance companies are on the hook for much of that property damage. But even as insurers pull out of disaster-prone areas, deeming them too risky to insure, they are continuing to cover one of the most polluting industries: coal. 

  • DeSmog ☛ Influential Conservative Think Tank’s Funders Include BP, Shell and Equinor

    Onward has had a meteoric rise. Since its inception in 2018, five of its founding advisory board members have taken roles in Conservative cabinets and its reports regularly feature in print and broadcast media.

    Onward, which describes itself as “a modernising think tank” with “bold and practical ideas for the centre right”, was ubiquitous at Tory conference in Manchester this week. It hosted two dozen fringe sessions, and it will be out in force at Labour conference in Liverpool this weekend.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • RFERL ☛ Bangladesh Gets First Uranium Shipment From Russia For Its Moscow-Built Nuclear Power Plant

      Bangladesh on October 5 received the first uranium shipment from Russia to fuel the country's only nuclear power plant, still under construction by Moscow.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Bangladesh gets first uranium shipment from Russia for nuclear power plant

      Bangladesh received shipment of uranium fuel for its US$12.65 billion debut nuclear power plant.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ The Oracle Problem

      Once Ethereum made it possible to store programs on a blockchain and execute them, the question of the sources for these programs' inputs arose. After all, "Garbage in, garbage out" has been a computer science mantra since at least 1957. These programs have access to data on the blockchain, which is assumed to be the ultimate repository of truth, but for all other data they must rely on APIs provided by external services. These services are called "oracles" because, like the ancient Greek oracles, they provide "wise and insightful counsel".

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • YLE ☛ APN Podcast: Are Finnish fish finished?

      Can people in Finland keep eating herring in the future? The show casts a wide net to learn how a small fish became the centre of a big debate involving a traditional dish.

    • The Scotsman ☛ Animals are sentient. Just ask anyone who knows about cows – Philip Lymbery

      Animal sentience legislation requires lawmakers to consider the mental and emotional well-being of the animals we share our world with. Creating a better world for animals, people, and the planet. Which is why the United Nations should officially recognise animal sentience and make the next World Animal Day a special one to celebrate.

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Lynxes and vultures offer insights for European wildlife conservation

      In spring 2023, environmentalists captured an adult male lynx in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains and released it in a Croatian national park called Plitvice Lakes. The move was part of an effort to increase the genetic diversity an endangered lynx population in Croatia and Slovenia.

• Finance

  • European Commission ☛ Delivering in times of crises while preserving the EU financial interests through the 2022 EU budget

    European Commission Press release Brussels, 05 Oct 2023 The Commission welcomes the decision of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) to give the EU annual accounts a clean bill of health, for the 16th year in a row. The revenue part of the EU budget also continues to be free from material error, like in previous years.

  • Seattle Times ☛ Seattle-headquartered software company Qualtrics cuts 780 jobs

    Cloud software company Qualtrics is laying off 780 employees after a “deep review” of its operations, CEO Zig Serafin told employees Wednesday.

  • Deutsch New York is laying off estimated 19% of staff

    Shop lost a major account in PNC bank earlier this summer, but cuts span many departments

  • Business Insider ☛ The Great Zelle Pool Scam

    That we could require Zelle to protect users from fraud is, of course, not exactly an idea without precedent. "The context I use for Zelle is my credit card," the staffer from Senator Warren's office told me. "If someone steals my credit card, I'm protected. If someone fools me to pay with my credit card, the same thing holds. But it's important to remember that when credit cards were introduced, they didn't have those protections. The Fair Credit Billing Act built in those protections."

    Senator Warren would very much like to have something like the Fair Credit Billing Act for peer-to-peer payments. But because there doesn't seem to be any political will for banking regulation at the moment, and Zelle certainly isn't going to just volunteer, it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

  • The Local SE ☛ How I got scammed in Stockholm by paying for an apartment that didn't exist

    German journalist Jasmin Adolph had landed an internship in Stockholm and found the perfect apartment. The only problem was: the apartment didn't exist. Here she shares her story with The Local about how she fell victim to an all-too-common scam.

    [...]

    One person we asked even told us that this was quite common. Why hadn’t I come across it during my research?

  • Techdirt ☛ Elon Has To Pay The Legal Fees Of Former Execs He Fired

    Elon Musk really seems to hate paying legal bills (or, really, any bills), but now he’s got a few more to cover. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Kathaleen McCormick, Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery (who is quite familiar with Elon Musk and Twitter) has ruled that exTwitter has to cover the legal fees of former CEO Parag Agrawal and former legal boss Vijaya Gadde.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Peso reaches 6-month low against US dollar

    The Mexican peso has dropped about 5% against the dollar this week, reaching its lowest rate since March as the U.S. currency picks up steam.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Democracy Now ☛ “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama”: How the Death of Abed’s 5-Year-Old Son Sheds Light on Life Under Israeli Apartheid

    We spend the hour with Nathan Thrall and Abed Salama, the author and subject of a remarkable new book detailing the many bureaucratic barriers and indignities that make the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation even more difficult. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy focuses on the 2012 death of Salama’s son, 5-year-old Milad, who was killed in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a theme park. What followed was a desperate daylong search by Salama and his family to locate Milad’s body across different cities and hospitals, encountering numerous barriers due to the Israeli occupation system, like different ID cards giving varying levels of access through military checkpoints, and lack of help from any Israeli authorities. “This awful event allowed me, in telling the story, to describe the entire elaborate system of segregation and subjugation and apartheid in which all of these people live,” says Thrall, who first wrote about the tragedy in a 2021 essay for The New York Review of Books. Salama says his main motivation in participating with Thrall was to keep Milad’s memory alive. “When I start to talk about him, I feel that his spirit is behind me, around me,” he says. “I hope if anyone from the American government hears me … we want only justice. This is what we want as Palestinians.”

  • RIPE ☛ Why the Technical Community's Voice Matters

    Find out why it's an extremely important time for the technical community to contribute to Internet governance, and how you can make your voice heard.

    The next couple of years will be a particularly crucial time for Internet governance, with several UN processes taking place that have the potential to significantly impact the way in which the Internet is governed — including the role that different processes, platforms and actors will play in continuing to shape the Internet. As one of the organisations entrusted with operating a fundamental aspect of the global Internet’s technical infrastructure, and as secretariat for the larger RIPE community, we’ve been following these developments closely.

    As we head into another Internet Governance Forum that takes place next week in Kyoto and online, we wanted to share some of these developments and urge you to get involved at this critical time.

  • Positech Games ☛ Your corporate communication policy is bollocks

    Having dealt directly with both google and facebook, I can tell you both companies are incredibly obtuse, bureaucratic disasters with absolutely no idea how to do anything any more. Its impossible to communicate with them, or get anything fixed. From the point of view of a customer (in this case for ads), both companies seem 100% computer-run, with no humans at all. At any level.

  • India Times ☛ Created over 100,000 job opportunities in India ahead of festive season: Amazon

    The company has fulfilment centres across 15 states, offering 43 million cubic feet of storage space for seller inventory.

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Chicago Democrats Fume Over Homeless Illegal Aliens.

    Between the Democrats making life more horrible in Illinois, and more expensive every damn day somehow, and Governor Pritzker’s latest bill to “end homelessness”, when every action he takes puts me and my spouse closer to the edge of the knife, and Bidenflation, it’s not hard to see that this was coming.

    Every time our fat vile windbag of a governor opens his stupid yapper to talk about ending homelessness, our rent goes up another 10%. It’s so amazing how we’re ending homelessness through rent hikes, right? I know!

    Certainly as a hotel heir who has never worked and has $5 billion he can quit tearing toilets out of his spare mansion to save on property tax, and chip in? No? I know!

  • Pro Publica ☛ Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Defense

    For months, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies have defended Thomas’ practice of not disclosing free luxury travel by saying the trips fell under a carve-out to the federal disclosure law for government officials.

    But by not publicly reporting his trips to the Bohemian Grove and to a 2018 Koch network event, Thomas appears to have violated the disclosure law, even by his own permissive interpretation of it, ethics law experts said. The details of the trips, which ProPublica first reported last month, could prove important evidence in any formal investigation of Thomas’ conduct.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Southeast Asian Casinos Emerge as Major Enablers of Global Cybercrime

    Mr. Big had a problem. He needed to move what he called “fraud funds” back to China, but a crackdown was making that difficult. So in August, Mr. Big, who, needless to say, did not list his real name, posted an ad on a Telegram channel. He sought a “group of smuggling teams” to, as he put it, “complete the final conversion” of the stolen money by smuggling gold and precious stones from Myanmar into southern China, in exchange for a 10% cut.

    It’s unclear whether Mr. Big ultimately succeeded; his ad has since been deleted, and ProPublica was unable to reach him. But the online forum where he posted his ad says a lot about why Americans and people around the world have found themselves targeted by an unprecedented wave of fraud originating out of Southeast Asia, whose vast scale is now becoming apparent. In a single recent criminal investigation, Singapore police seized more than $2 billion in money laundered from a syndicate with alleged ties to organized crime, including “scams and online gambling.”

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ The first American released by North Korea without conditions.

    That black US soldier, Travis King, that tried to defect into North Korea and told them he wanted to be a Communist there because America treated him so badly got EXPELLED the other day. He was the first American that they released unconditionally.

    The news sites have moved to the point where he’s black so they’ve started removing his mugshot and any and all references to his conviction in South Korea regarding the bar brawl and vandalizing the cop car, but that’s sadly becoming extremely typical.

    This is sort of like something out of Communism. The new revisions are in effect, and now he was just some tourist and who knows why he bolted into North Korea?

    The only reason we do know is because it took them a while to pull down the information, send it to the Disinformation Ministry, InfoSpeak Division, and post the new retcons to the InterWeb.

  • Craig Murray ☛ Death Wish 2023

    There can be few safer indicators of the views of the globalist “liberal” Establishment than reports of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which prefers to be known as Chatham House.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • France24 ☛ No, Ukraine didn’t release a postal stamp of a pro-Nazi soldier

      The image of Hunka that appeared on the fake stamp is a still from the video showing Hunka’s appearance at the Canadian House of Commons. The frame appears at around 0’50 in this video published by a British media outlet.

    • Press Gazette ☛ To protect future newsrooms from AI fakery we must first protect the past

      However, there is an even deeper, more urgent problem that hasn’t received nearly enough attention: the security of archives and their long-term value in the face of photorealistic AI-generated content.

      At the Archives and Records Conference in Belfast this year, I spoke to several archivists and record-keepers who clearly saw their role as guardians of the truth. However, I fear our guardians aren’t fully awake to the forces attacking our fragile fortress.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Political Disinformation and AI

      Many propaganda outlets moved from Facebook to messaging platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp, which makes them harder to identify and remove. TikTok is a newer platform that is controlled by China and more suitable for short, provocative videos—ones that AI makes much easier to produce. And the current crop of generative AIs are being connected to tools that will make content distribution easier as well.

      Generative AI tools also allow for new techniques of production and distribution, such as low-level propaganda at scale. Imagine a new AI-powered personal account on social media. For the most part, it behaves normally. It posts about its fake everyday life, joins interest groups and comments on others’ posts, and generally behaves like a normal user. And once in a while, not very often, it says—or amplifies—something political. These persona bots, as computer scientist Latanya Sweeney calls them, have negligible influence on their own. But replicated by the thousands or millions, they would have a lot more.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Political Disinformation and AI

      Elections around the world are facing an evolving threat from foreign actors, one that involves artificial intelligence.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Michael Geist ☛ Canada Plans to Regulate Search and Social Media Use of Artificial Intelligence for Content Moderation and Discoverability

    The Canadian government plans to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in search results and when used to prioritize the display of content on search engines and social media services. AI is widely used by both search and social media for a range of purpose that do not involve ChatGPT-style generative AI.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian Christian radio censors Vatican Radio broadcast on distrust in Church

    However, Paulius Subačius, a member of the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Sciences and a professor at Vilnius University, thinks that the word “censorship” is too weak in this case. According to him, the exclusion of certain information from the Vatican Radio rebroadcast is a disregard for the Church’s main institution.

  • Truthdig ☛ Book Banning Reaches Historic, Ominous Levels in the US

    PEN is not the only group tracking these disturbing trends. In a report issued in March 2023, the American Library Association revealed that the number of book challenges in 2022 was nearly twice the then-record total from 2021 and by far the most since the ALA had begun keeping data 20 years ago. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who directs the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage inducing.”

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Report: Estonia [Internet] freedoms intact even as global decline continues

    Estonia nonetheless continues to hold second position in the world in terms of [Internet] freedoms, after Iceland (unchanged from last year, and a situation which has been the case in the more distant past also – ed.).

    Hille Hinsberg, an e-governance expert at private sector consultancy Proud Engineers, tasked with compiling the Estonian component of the annual report, said: "Estonia, known for its strong level of digital society, ensures the availability of network connection, and the country offers strong protection for users' rights."

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ First Amendment advocates fight growing number of U.S. book bans

    “The escalating crisis of book bans across our country in recent years is a direct attack on First Amendment rights and should concern everyone who believes freedom of expression and the freedom to read are essential for a strong democracy,” Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement. “The sinister efforts to remove books from our schools and libraries are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes.”

    In September, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss the consequences of book bans, but senators ultimately decided it was not Congress’ role to intervene.

  • BIA Net ☛ İzmir university students detained for protesting meal price hikes

    Students at the İzmir Dokuz Eylül University who were protesting meal price increases in the campus cafeteria were forcibly removed by the security staff.

    Eight students among those removed were subsequently detained by the police, with the PSU also intervening to prevent students from documenting the detentions.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Urges Second Circuit to Affirm Injunction of New York’s Dangerous Online “Hateful Conduct” Law

    The statute itself requires covered social media platforms to develop a mechanism that allows users to report incidents of “hateful conduct” (as defined by the state), and to publish a policy detailing how the platform will address such incidents in direct responses provided to each individual complainant. Noncompliance with the statute is enforceable through Attorney General investigations, subpoenas, and daily fines of $1000 per violation. The statute is part of a broader scheme by New York officials, including the Governor and the Attorney General, to unlawfully coerce online platforms into censoring speech that the state deems “hateful.”

  • The Gray Zone ☛ How US gov’t prosecution of Uhuru activists threatens a ‘First Amendment exception’

  • Meduza ☛ Imprisoned Navalny, Kara-Murza, and Yashin declare October 30 Political Prisoner Day, urging supporters to join them in hunger strike — Meduza

  • Techdirt ☛ The Weird Legal Posture Of Bounty Laws Strikes Again: Porn Age Verification Lawsuit In Louisiana Dismissed

    A federal district judge in Louisiana dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state’s mandatory age verification statute in order to access adult content on the internet. The lawsuit was brought by the Free Speech Coalition and stakeholders in and adjacent to the adult entertainment industry.

  • Techdirt ☛ Publishing A Book Means No Longer Having Control Over How Others Feel About It, Or How They’re Inspired By It. And That Includes AI.

    There’s no way to write this article without some people yelling angrily at me, so I’m just going to highlight that point up front: many, many people are going to disagree with this article, and I’m going to get called all sorts of names. I actually avoided commenting on this topic because I wasn’t sure it was worth the hassle. But I do think it’s important to discuss and I’ve now had two separate conversations with authors saying they agree with my stance on this, but are afraid of saying so publicly.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Guardian News and Media managing editor Jan Thompson to retire

    Thompson was managing editor of The Independent from 1999 until 2005, when she took up the same role at The Observer. She served five years at The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper before taking on her group-wide role.

  • BIA Net ☛ Desire to silence journalists to conceal crimes

    In Turkey, press freedoms have continued to decline following the May Elections, with arbitrary arrests and trials, increasing violence during detentions, censorship protecting those in power from criticism, and local judiciaries that do not recognize the Constitutional Court.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ U.S.: Journalists, Civil Society Leaders Join Commemoration Dinner Honoring Life and Legacy of Jamal Khashoggi

    The organization recognized journalists Ayman Mohyeldin and Solafa Magdy with their inaugural DAWN Integrity Award, celebrating voices who best exemplify Khashoggi's commitment to securing freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

  • CPJ ☛ Three journalists detained in Ethiopia, transferred to military camp

    “The detention of journalists at a military camp, under unclear judicial oversight, is a deeply worrying sign of the depths to which Ethiopia’s regard for the media has sunk,” said CPJ sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should release journalists Tewodros Zerfu, Yehualashet Zerihun, and Nigussie Berhanu, as well as other members of the press detained for their work.”

  • ANF News ☛ A journalist and an environmental activist imprisoned in Dersim

    The detainees were referred to court after giving their statements at the police department. After the finalization of the procedures for three detainees, one of them, Yaprak Kurban, was released on condition of judicial supervision. Ertan Çıta, correspondent of the left-wing newspaper "Yeni Demokrasi" (New Democracy), and Ali Yıldız from the board of the Munzur Environmental Association (MÇD), were remanded in custody. Çıta and Yıldız are accused of “membership in a terrorist organization” and “financing a terrorist organization”, meaning the PKK.

  • Meduza ☛ Ukrainian journalist goes missing in Russian-occupied territory — Meduza

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ Workers Exposed to Extreme Heat Have Few Protections

    Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to cope with soaring temperatures. OSHA is developing new workplace safety standards, but they are not yet complete.

  • New York Times ☛ Gun Deaths Rising Sharply Among Children, Study Finds

    Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among young children and teenagers in the United States.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Ramaswamy says angry protesters rammed his car in Iowa; police say no evidence crash was intentional

    Vivek Ramaswamy's presidential campaign says protesters upset about his remarks in opposition to aid for Ukraine purposely rammed his car in Iowa in retaliation, but police say there is no evidence to support the claim that the crash was intentional. The police account of the crash in Grinnell on Thursday afternoon sharply diverged from the story told by Ramaswamy’s campaign, which contended that at least one protester yelled and swore at the candidate before jumping into a vehicle, ramming his empty campaign car and speeding off. Police say the driver of the car that hit Ramaswamy's told them she wasn't a protester and accidentally hit the vehicle while leaving lunch at a nearby deli.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Red Cross aims to make civilian wartime hacking more humanitarian

    The role of civilian hackers during warfare continues to expand, and now at least one group is trying to set up some rules of engagement. But whether the proposal from the International Committee of the Red Cross announced Wednesday will gain any traction and make these attempts more humane is anyone’s guess.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Bandcamp Seeks Union Recognition from Songtradr After Acquisition—Songtradr’s Statement

    Epic Games announced it would sell Bandcamp to Songtradr as part of a larger effort of layoffs impacting the company. At the time, Epic Games wrote that Songtradr would be offering positions to some Bandcamp employees, but not all of them. The sale comes in the middle of contract negotiations for Bandcamp’s staff union—Bandcamp United.

    The union is seeking employment offers for all of its workers, voluntary severance offers, and immediate union recognition & continuation of its bargaining. Bandcamp says it was built on the idea of serving the community and functions as much more than just a marketplace to purchase music.

  • CBC ☛ Rights group says mother of Iranian teen hurt in alleged confrontation over hijab law has been arrested

    An Iranian rights group said that security forces on Thursday arrested the mother of a teenage girl who was in a coma in hospital following a confrontation with agents in the Tehran metro for not wearing the hijab.

  • France24 ☛ Injury of 16-year-old Iranian girl not wearing headscarf in Tehran sparks anger

    A mysterious injury suffered by a 16-year-old girl who boarded a Metro train in Iran’s capital without a headscarf has reignited anger just after the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests it sparked.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran 'morality police' under scrutiny after girl put in coma

    Activists in Iran have accused the country's "morality police" of beating a 16-year-old girl on Sunday at a metro station in Tehran, allegedly for not wearing a hijab headscarf.

    Norway-based Kurdish human rights NGO "Hengaw" said Armita Geravand lost consciousness after the encounter, and is now in a coma. The girl is being treated at Tehran's Fajr Hospital, which belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force.

    Strict security measures have been imposed at the facility, and the girl's family has not allowed to visit, activists said. Iranian officials have claimed the girl fainted, and released CCTV images of her being pulled from a subway train shortly after boarding.

    Geravand's hospitalization, and isolation, at the military hospital have raised suspicion.

  • New York Times ☛ With Iranian Girl in Coma, Suspicion Falls on Government

    All week, the girl, Armita Geravand, has been in a coma, guarded by security agents in the intensive care unit of a military hospital in Tehran and evoking broad comparisons with Mahsa Amini, who died last year at 22 in the custody of the morality police after being accused of violating Iran’s hijab rules, which require women to cover their hair.

    Exactly what happened to Armita on Sunday is not clear, and the government has not released footage from inside the train that would reveal what made the teenager collapse.

  • International Business Times ☛ Iranian Girl In Coma After Alleged Assault Over Hijab Rules

    A 16-year-old girl has been left fighting for her life after being "physically attacked" by Iranian authorities for not wearing a hijab.

    The victim, identified as Armita Geravand, suffered "severe injuries" after being attacked by Iran's morality police on the Tehran subway, a rights group said on Tuesday. The Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw has claimed that the teenager remains in a critical condition after she fell into a coma.

    They have alleged that she was attacked on Sunday for violating the stringent hijab laws. She lost consciousness after being assaulted by two officers at the Shohada metro station in Tehran.

  • Futurism ☛ CEO Roasts Human Workers He Fired and Replaced With ChatGPT

    Earlier this year, Suumit Shah, a 31-year-old CEO of an Indian e-commerce platform called Dukaan, fired the vast majority of the humans making up his company's customer service team — and replaced them with an in-house chatbot powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT.

    Strikingly, Shah is now roasting his former human workers, saying the bot simply does a much better job than they did, and at a fraction of the price.

  • Pixel Gallery ☛ AI is taking our bullshit jobs

    In the world of work, there is a growing phenomenon known as bullshit jobs. These are the types of jobs that seem to serve no real purpose or contribute little value to society. David Graeber, an anthropologist and author, argues that there has been an epidemic of made-up jobs that only exist for the sake of keeping people employed.

  • Vox ☛ Why 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers have gone on strike

    The year started with 7,000 NYC nurses across two hospital systems going on strike. Now, as autumn sets in, 10 times that many health care workers are striking in one of the best-known health systems in the country — one that had, until now, been something of a model for successful labor-management relationships in the health care industry. The striking workers have said this will be a three-day action, though as of Thursday morning, there was little evidence of a resolution between the unions and Kaiser Permanente.

  • RFERL ☛ Classmates Of Hospitalized Iranian Teen Reportedly Under Pressure, Mother Detained

    An Iranian labor group says teachers and classmates of Armita Garavand, a high-school student reportedly in a coma after being assaulted by morality police for not wearing the mandatory head scarf, are being pressured and threatened by security authorities.

  • RFERL ☛ Jailed Russian Opposition Figures Call For One-Day Hunger Strike

    Prominent jailed Russian opposition figures -- including Aleksei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Ilya Yashin -- called on fellow political prisoners and backers to conduct a one-day hunger strike to protest oppression in the country.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ The Pivotal Role of MENOG in the Middle East Region

    The Internet has become a pivotal tool to foster growth and innovation across business, government, communities, and individuals. As the digital landscape expands, it is crucial that Middle Eastern countries are fostering this digital revolution.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Walled Culture ☛ Brown noise spam is another reason why music streaming payments need a radical overhaul

    There’s an interesting story on Wired about “functional music” – things like white noise and brown noise – which is widely available on music streaming platforms. These kind of streams are causing a problem that arises from the fact that the money earned by streaming platforms is allotted in a rather odd way. All the revenues are put together, and then divided up according to an individual artist’s share of the service’s total number of streams. In practice, this means that the subscription paid by someone who only listens to interesting but obscure artists nonetheless goes mostly to the big names in pop music, whose music is listened to millions of times a day.

    Because of this revenue division, spam streaming can be highly profitable. Here are some of the tricks that are used, as described by Wired: [...]

  • Wired ☛ Universal Music Declares War on Streaming Noise

    Every night, I bury my tinnitus under brown noise, cats’ purrs, and the tap of rain on leaves. This “functional music,” as it is known, certainly serves its function—lulling me to sleep. It also accounts for a vast portion of the streaming world: Spotify recently revealed that white noise and ambient podcasts rack up 3 million hours of listens a day.

    In a weird industry quirk, these ambient sounds, often recorded or generated by AI, are assigned the same monetary value as actual songs. One stream is one credit—one equal piece of the pot that’s shared among everyone. A system like that is pretty easy to game.

  • Techdirt ☛ Netflix Eyes Yet Another Price Hike As It Slowly Devolves Into Comcast

    Clearly keen to not miss another opportunity to show how they’re slowly turning into Comcast, Netflix this week indicated they’d be pushing yet another price hike in the wake of the recently successful writers’ strike: [...]

• Monopolies

  • Vice Media Group ☛ CYBER: Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Broke and How to Fix It

    Well have I got the book for you. It’s The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. It’s a little bit history, it’s a little bit manifesto, and it’s all about one simple concept that can help us get out of this mess: interoperability.

  • Trademarks

    • Techdirt ☛ More ‘3 Stripes’ Nonsense: Addidas Opposes LIV Golf’s Trademark App For Logo

      Adidas has a reputation as a jealous defender, and at times is better described as an aggressor, when it comes to enforcing its trademark rights, specifically around its admittedly famous 3 stripes logo. Famous mark or not, the company has far too often shown itself willing to go to absurd ends in protecting those marks. Adidas opposed a logo application for Black Lives Matter, for instance, simply because it had 3 horizontal yellow lines underscoring the name of the organization. It also opposed ELEAGUE’s logo application for the crime of stylizing the “E” in its name with three angled lines instead of the full letter. The examples go on from there, but you get the point: Adidas opposes anything with three lines in it, somehow thinking trademark law allows them to control the depiction of 3 straight lines in branding.

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Sam Smith and Normani Chase Down Litigants Following Frivolous ‘Dancing With a Stranger’ Lawsuit

      After a federal judge dismissed a frivolous lawsuit against Sam Smith and Normani’s ‘Dancing With a Stranger,’ the stars are chasing down the copyright accusers to foot their legal bills.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Popular "AI Hub" Discord Taken Down Following Copyright Complaints

      In just a few months, "AI Hub" became a massively popular Discord server with over half a million members. While copyright infringement was strictly forbidden, not all users stuck to the rules. This previously raised the attention of the RIAA, and now appears to have caused the server's downfall after it was suddenly shut down.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ "€25m Profit" Pirate IPTV Group Dismantled, 10 Arrested, 12 Vehicles Seized

      Greek police say they have dismantled a criminal organization behind an illegal IPTV operation that caused broadcasters over €100m in losses. Over eight years it's alleged the operators generated over €25 million in profits, laundered money through a network of companies, while investing in real estate and other luxuries. Ten men were arrested and a dozen cars plus €100k+ in cash was seized.

    • Digital Music News ☛ NLE Choppa Faces Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Over ‘Who TF Up in My Trap’ — Including a Demand for ‘All’ the Track’s Profits

      NLE Choppa and others are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit for allegedly lifting elements of a 1980s track to create “Who TF Up in My Trap.”