Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Standards/Consortia

  • [Old] CRN ☛ Massachusetts IT Chief, Supporter Of Open Software Format, Quits

    ODF office software, which has its strongest corporate sponsors in IBM and Sun Microsystems, was pushed through against the protests of Microsoft, which complained that its format approach was being unfairly excluded by the state. Quinn had powerful support for his stance in the person of Eric Kriss, who was the state's secretary of Administration and Finance. But Kriss resigned a few months ago and was replaced by Tom Trimarco, who has already indicated he is favorably disposed to Microsoft's approach.

  • [Old] Computer World ☛ Q&A: Former Mass. CIO Says Job Became Too Political

    What do you think is going to happen to the Open Document initiative? You're not there anymore. Your former boss, who also championed the project, is gone as well. Gov. Mitt Romney has pledged to move forward, but he isn't running for re-election. The opposition could just stall and throw it all out, couldn't they?

    You know, it could happen. But on the other side, we asked for something very simple. We asked to have formats that were unimpeded by proprietary restrictions and licenses, and we asked people to adhere to recognized standards bodies. It's not something that's totally unreasonable at all.

  • [Old] IDG Communications Inc ☛ Former Mass. CIO Vocal on Open Source

    Former Massachusetts state government CIO Peter Quinn believes that any technology leader, in the public or private sector, who is not supporting and implementing open standards should resign and get out of the business.

Leftovers

• India Times ☛ X adopts Facebook Group-like member vetting feature to enhance its Communities

  Facebook Groups has a similar feature, but it's far more robust. Administrators on Facebook can make individuals answer several questions before they can join, as well as agree to their group's own set of rules.

• [Repeat] Kev Quirk ☛ Friends from Blogging

  I've been lucky enough to make a number of friends off the back of this blog (and also their blogs). This is a bit of a feel good post about how social media isn't the only way to meet new people.

• Gizmodo ☛ You Can Now Read the Whole Earth Catalog Online

  Whole Earth was first published in 1968, during the heyday of the 60s’ counterculture, by writer and futurist Stewart Brand. The publication’s motto—“access to tools”—referenced its interest in providing readers with products and DIY advice that could allow them to be more self-reliant and get more in touch with the natural world. The original magazine only published several times but the franchise would later evolve, developing several offshoots that focused, among other things, on helping to circulate an emergent cyberculture.

• Troy Patterson ☛ Some Thoughts on X, er, Twitter

  There are still tons of people on Twitter, er X. On one hand, I understand why. There are still lots of good links and good people on X. However, X now supports a great amount of misinformation and disinformation. Actively.

  I’m off Twitter and I’ll explain why.

• [Repeat] Drew DeVault ☛ Going off-script

  There is a phenomenon in society which I find quite bizarre. Upon our entry to this mortal coil, we are endowed with self-awareness, agency, and free will. Each of the 8 billion members of this human race represents a unique person, a unique worldview, and a unique agency. Yet, many of us have the same fundamental goals and strive to live the same life.

  I think of such a life experiences as “following the script”. Society lays down for us a framework for living out our lives. Everyone deviates from the script to some extent, but most people hit the important beats. In Western society, these beats are something like, go to school, go to college, get a degree, build a career, get married, have 1.5 children, retire to Florida, die.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ I got to show you this

  For me it all started with Jelle’s Marble Runs. I don’t know how or why the Youtube recommendation engine decided that this was my future addiction but it did. Jelle’s Marble Runs is a Youtube channel with 1.4 million subscribers where they build various different downhill tracks, give names and team names to various differently colored marbles and race them against each other. Combined with high production quality and enthusiastic commentary, it’s easy to forget that those marbles don’t have any agency.

• Matt Rickard ☛ An Intelligent Wikipedia

  Wikipedia's top five accounts (by number of edits) are all bots. There’s MalnadachBot (11 million edits), WP 1.0 bot(10 million), Cydebot (6.8 million), ClueBot NG (6.3 million), and AnomieBOT (5.9 million.). These bots range in functionality from migrating tables, formats, and markup as Wikipedia changes to automatically detecting and reverting vandalism. Others tag content with labels, archive old discussions, recommend edits, or create new content. The website couldn’t function without them.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ A tooth that rewrites history? The discovery challenging what we knew about Neanderthals – podcast

    For generations, Neanderthals have been a source of fascination for scientists. This species of ancient hominim inhabited the world for around 500,000 years until they suddenly disappeared around 40,000 years ago. Today, the cause of their extinction remains a mystery.

    Archaeologist Ludovic Slimak and his team have spent three decades excavating caves, studying ancient artefacts and delving into the world of Neanderthals – and they’ve recently published provocative new findings. In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Slimak about how Neanderthals lived, what happened to them, and why their extinction might hold profound insights into the story of our own species, Homo Sapiens.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-10-11 [Older] Photographer Who Captured Horrifying Images of Challenger Breaking Apart After Launch Has Died

• Education

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Hacking the High School Grading System

    It’s a basic math hack. If a student needs two-thirds of the points—over 65%—to pass, then they have to do two-thirds of the work. But if doing zero work results in a 50% grade, then they only have to do a little bit of work to get over the pass line.

  • New York Times ☛ Teachers Can’t Hold Students Accountable. It’s Making the Job Miserable.

    I included a questionnaire at the end of that newsletter, asking teachers and parents what they think has changed about teaching and the perception of the job in their communities. I mostly heard back from teachers, and one of their consistent themes was that they felt they could no longer hold students accountable academically or behaviorally because of pressure from snowplow parents and bad district policies.

  • The Conversation ☛ Fortnite’s new in-game Holocaust museum shows us a virtual future for education

    Called Voices of The Forgotten, the museum serves as a virtual educational experience enabling players to learn about the history of the Holocaust. Spread across two floors, the museum contains photographs and details of the Holocaust, events that occurred during it, and historical figures from the era with their stories documented for all to see.

  • Armin Ronacher ☛ EuroRust 2023 Reflections: What's a Conference For?

    I very rarely write recaps of conferences but this time around I could not resist. This is for a lot of reasons. To kick things off, quite a bit of what was on my mind relates quite directly to a perception of a general negativity in the Rust community that I share. Most specifically this quote by Adam Chalmer:

  • Benny Siegert ☛ Talk about the Basics

    I’ll let you in on a secret: When I was in academia, when someone was talking about their results at a conference, I mostly did not give a shit about the results themselves. (Unless I was working on something narrowly related, which was rare.)

    Instead, what I was really interested in was the Intro and the Conclusion. Why did you do this research? What is the bigger picture? What have you learned?

  • Chris ☛ Sensitivity Counts Against You

    Whenever you update your belief due to evidence, the strength of that evidence comes from a low false positive rate, not a high sensitivity.

    This is counter-intuitive, because we would like to think the strength of evidence comes from its ability to call our the truth, not how well it does at not lying.

    It also tells us how to optimise our processes for finding out the truth: if the sensitivity is reasonable, focus on reducing the false positive rate.

  • Xe's Blog ☛ Post Series

    Some posts of mine are intended to be read in order. This is a list of all the series I have written along with a little description of what it's about.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Making A Concrete Sign

    While paging through the feed a few days ago our attention was caught by something a little away from the ordinary in Hackaday terms, a DIY video about creating cast concrete signage from [Proper DIY] which we’ve placed below the break. A deceptively easy-looking mould-making process has a few tricks that  will make the difference between a hard-wearing sign that lasts for years, and a lump of concrete.

  • Hackaday ☛ PCB Repair Is A Sticky Proposition

    What do you do when a PCB is cracked or even broken in two? [MH987] has a plan: superglue the board back and then bridge the traces with solder, solder paste, or wire. The exact method, of course, depends on the extent of the damage.

  • Hackaday ☛ Compact, Gesture-Based Remote Control Over Bluetooth

    [AlexMiller11] shared a project for a DIY gesture-sensing remote control that acts like a Bluetooth keyboard, capable of controlling media and presentations on a computer with a high degree of accuracy.

  • Hackaday ☛ Lessons Learned: Plastic Injection Molding For Products

    Injection molding is one of the technologies that makes the world go round. But what does it actually look like to go through the whole process to get a part made? [Achim Haug] wrote up a blog post that does a fantastic job of explaining what to expect when getting plastic enclosures injection molded in China.

  • Hackaday ☛ 2023 Halloween Hackfest: Candy Basket Sees You Coming

    On Halloween, some people can’t or don’t want to open the door for various reasons. Maybe they have a cat that likes to escape every chance it gets, or maybe their favorite TV show is on during prime trick-or-treating time. Whatever the case, we think it’s perfectly acceptable to leave a bowl of candy outside the door, especially if there are electronics involved.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Scotsman ☛ Scottish apples are in season. So why are supermarkets full of produce flown in? – Stephen Jardine

    It’s apple season in Scotland and this year we’re enjoying a bumper crop. Thanks to a sunny start to the growing season, followed by plenty of rain to nourish the blossom, our orchards are groaning with fruit.

    Not that you would know it from a visit to your local supermarket. Retailers who compete to be the most seasonal and sustainable seem to just give up when it comes to a crop we can actually grow in Scotland. Right now you will find apples from South Africa, New Zealand, France and Spain filling the supermarket shelves. Washed, packaged and wrapped, they look uniform and perfect and utterly unappetising.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ What's wrong with glyphosate, the herbicide used in Roundup?

    According to studies, glyphosate-based sprays might also alter genetic material and affect the nervous system in animals and humans. For example, a study by the University of Ulm found massive malformations in tadpoles, with disorders of the brain, heart, eyes and body shape due to exposure to the herbicide.

    Since the toxin is spread through the air when sprayed on fields, it contaminates widely, from surface water and groundwater to agricultural produce. Traces have been found in human urine and breast milk.

  • Truthdig ☛ One Mississippi Town Says No To Chevron’s Toxic Fuel

    Artis Burney is a grassroots organizer in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and he first learned about the plastic-based chemicals from Cherokee Concerned Citizens as well. Burney said he’s seen firsthand the toll pollution has taken on his community’s health. Several people in his life have cancer, including his mother who has bladder cancer and breast cancer.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Jonathan Faber ☛ The Right of Publicity and NO FAKES bill

    A recently introduced bipartisan Senate bill aims to hold AI and deepfake creators liable for unauthorized use of a person’s likeness. It sounds like a good idea, though Right of Publicity statutes already accomplish this objective. Perhaps a bill specifically addressing these particularly-concerning, technology-based uses could serve a purpose, but it should be considered, and drafted, with existing Right of Publicity statutes in mind. Here’s a link to one article of many covering the bill: NO FAKES bill

  • India Times ☛ AI working groups recommend setting up 24,500 GPUs of compute infrastructure

    Working groups formed by the government on artificial intelligence on Friday recommended setting up a three-tier compute infrastructure comprising 24,500 graphics processing units. The report which was released by minister of state for electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has recommended setting up best-in-class AI compute infrastructure at five locations with 3,000 AI Petaflops computing power, which is 15 times more capacity than the highest capacity installed at present.

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Is Paying Celebrities Millions to Turn Them Into Chatbots

    The eerie clip clearly didn't hit the mark, with confused commenters calling it "so creepy" and "honestly scary."

    "Is this legal?" one Instagram user wrote. "Did Kendall consent to this?"

  • Robert Heaton ☛ Hello Deep Learning

    The actual first thing you want to do is to train a model, as soon as possible, and it doesn’t matter how simple it is. Once you’ve trained your own model you’d be more than happy to learn about overfitting, data cleaning, and splitting strategies as well. But first you just want to create something yourself and see it work.

  • Matt Rickard ☛ The Half-Life of the AI Stack

    The half-life of software usually increases as you move down the stack. The average age of infrastructure components is much older than the frontend JavaScript framework. But in today’s AI stack, the world is flipped.

    The infrastructure layer in AI might have the shortest half-life. Why?

  • Quartz ☛ AI in Focus: Investors hit snooze

    Deals for generative AI were down 29% in the third quarter of this year compared to the one before it, with their values totaling $6.1 billion—an amount that was mostly made up by Amazon’s $4 billion agreement with language model provider Anthropic.

    There are a couple factors that could be leading investors to pump the brakes. One is that Big Tech, with its market influence and deep pockets, might be scaring away smaller players. But even Big Tech has slowed down its dealmaking. And valuations are still all over the map, further complicating things.

  • Chip Huyen ☛ Multimodality and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs)

    For a long time, each ML model operated in one data mode – text (translation, language modeling), image (object detection, image classification), or audio (speech recognition).

    However, natural intelligence is not limited to just a single modality. Humans can read and write text. We can see images and watch videos. We listen to music to relax and watch out for strange noises to detect danger. Being able to work with multimodal data is essential for us or any AI to operate in the real world.

  • Hackaday ☛ AI-Powered Snore Detector Shakes The Pillow So You Won’t

    If you snore, you’ll probably find out about it from someone. An elbow to the ribs courtesy of your sleepless bedmate, the kids making fun of you at breakfast, or even the lady downstairs calling the cops might give you the clear sign that you rattle the rafters, and that it’s time to do something about it. But what if your snores are a bit more subtle, or you don’t have someone to urge you to roll over? In that case, this AI-powered haptic snore detector might be worth building.

  • Windows TCO

    • Axios ☛ 2023 toll of data breaches and leaks already tops 2022

      Due to litigation (State of Missouri, et al v. U.S. EPA)

      By the numbers: Through September, the ITRC tracked 2,116 data compromises — a 17% increase from the 1,802 total compromises tabulated in 2022.

      Why it matters: The new data suggests that companies and government regulators' attempts to squash the ransomware attacks and other cyberattacks plaguing organizations have hardly made a dent.

    • [Repeat] Data Breaches ☛ Ransomware group starts leaking data allegedly from NJ cardiology consultants group

      At this point, it appears that Mulkay has had a reportable HIPAA breach, but Mulkay has not disclosed anything publicly as yet and has not confirmed any breach.

    • [Repeat]Security Week ☛ CISA Now Flagging Vulnerabilities, Misconfigurations Exploited by Ransomware

      As part of its Ransomware Vulnerability Warning Pilot (RVWP) program launched in March, the agency has released two new resources to help organizations identify and eliminate security flaws and weaknesses known to be exploited by ransomware groups.

    • The Register UK ☛ EPA flushes water supply cybersecurity rule after losing legal fight with industry, states

      American public water systems could be safe from cybercriminals and spies — we may not actually know until these systems are compromised, now that the Environmental Protection Agency has pulled the plug on a rule requiring US states to conduct cybersecurity evaluations after being sued by Republican states and water industry groups.

      This week the EPA sent a memo [PDF] to state drinking water administrators saying it had "chosen to rescind" an earlier cybersecurity rule, and cited a lawsuit as the reason for its decision.

    • EPA ☛ Withdrawal of Cybersecurity Memorandum of March 3, 2023 [PDF]

      Due to litigation (State of Missouri, et al v. U.S. EPA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chosen to rescind the interpretive memorandum issued on March 3, 2023, Addressing Public Water System Cybersecurity in Sanitary Surveys of an Alternate Process.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2023-10-13 [Older] Apple Accused of Not Doing Enough to Stop AirTag Stalking in Class-Action Lawsuit

    • Off Guardian ☛ While you were watching Israel…

      Digital ID has been in the news a lot lately, obscured for the past week in the mist of Israel-Hamas situation.

      Last month the United Nation Developments Programme published its legal guidelines for digital IDs as well as “mobilizing” global leadership with a $400mn fund to “empower” digital identity programmes in over 100 countries.

    • New York Times ☛ Your Face May Soon Be Your Ticket. Not Everyone Is Smiling.

      Facial recognition systems are already being expanded at some airports. At Miami International, for example, cameras at 12 gates serving international flights match passengers’ faces to the passport photographs they have on file with the airlines, letting passengers at those gates board without showing physical passports or boarding passes. The company installing the systems, SITA, has been contracted to do the same for a number of international gates in 10 other U.S. airports, including Boston Logan International Airport and Philadelphia International Airport. (Passengers can opt out and still present physical documents instead, SITA says.)

    • New York Times ☛ Can You Hide a Child’s Face From A.I.?

      But in September, she discovered her efforts hadn’t been entirely successful. Kodye Elyse used PimEyes, a startling search engine that finds photos of a person on the internet within seconds using facial recognition technology. When she uploaded a photo of her 7-year-old son, the results included an image of him she had never seen before. She needed a $29.99 subscription to see where the image had come from.

      Her ex-husband had taken their son to a soccer game, and they were in the background of a photograph on a sports news site, sitting in the front row behind the goal. She realized she wouldn’t be able to get the news organization to take down the photo, but she submitted a removal request, via an online form, to PimEyes, so that her son’s image would not show up if other people searched for his face.

    • India Times ☛ AI makes hiding your kids' identity on the Internet more important than ever. But it's also harder to do

      Historically, the main criticism of parents who overshare online has been the invasion of their progeny's privacy, but advances in artificial intelligence-based technologies present new ways for bad actors to misappropriate online content of children.

      Among the novel risks are scams featuring deepfake technology that mimic children's voices and the possibility that a stranger could learn a child's name and address from just a search of their photo.

• Defence/Aggression

  • El País ☛ Why is there a new surge in migrant boats to Spain’s Canary Islands?

    The figure is already about to exceed the total for 2022 (22,819 people), and will almost certainly exceed the number for 2020 (23,716 people), the second busiest year since the Canary Islands immigration route was “opened” in 1994. So far, the year 2006 still holds the record, with 31,678 migrant arrivals by sea in the Canary Islands.

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ If I Embarrass My Baby on TikTok, Will He Stay My Baby Forever?

    The phenomenon of the “cheese slice trick” (or the “baby cheese challenge”) is mildly rude, but it isn’t new. I first saw the videos circulating several years ago. I sensed that they had returned to my feed because I had viewed a different social media trend involving kids, a pantry staple and the element of surprise: the “egg crack challenge,” a recent viral prank in which parents film selfie videos of themselves cooking with their young children, only to — surprise! — forcefully crack eggs on their heads and capture the emotional fallout.

  • Gizmodo ☛ TikTok Has a Misinformation Crisis on Its Hands. Or Does It?

    Regulators in the EU sent letters to Meta, TikTok, and X/Twitter Thursday, giving the platforms 24 hours to address misinformation and other “illegal” content related to the Israel-Hamas war. It’s hard to say exactly what’s happening on these platforms, however, especially when it comes to the algorithmically defined endless scroll of TikTok. Standing in stark contrast to the EU’s complaints is a new study that comes to an entirely different conclusion: there’s barely any news content on TikTok to begin with, and the algorithm avoids the scant news it has to offer.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Announces Far-Reaching Disney Partnership Despite Continued Regulatory Scrutiny and Lawsuits

    TikTok and Disney formally announced their tie-up, centering on a variety of “Disney100” media within the short-form app, today. Designed to celebrate the older company’s 100th anniversary, the “first-of-its-kind content hub” is expected to be available to TikTok users in 24 markets for four weeks beginning on Monday the 16th.

    According to the involved parties, the in-app offering will incorporate north of 48 Disney TikTok handles as well as brands including but not limited to Pixar, National Geographic, ESPN, Star Wars, and Marvel.

  • New York Times ☛ France Raises Terrorist Threat Level After Teacher Killed in Stabbing

    The French government raised its terrorist threat alert to the highest level on Friday after a knife-wielding man killed a teacher and injured three other people at a school in northern France in what officials described as an Islamist terror attack, deeply disturbing the country.

  • RFERL ☛ Man Reported To Be Russian-Born Islamic Radical Kills Teacher, Wounds Two In Knife Attack In France

    [...] He was on a watch list of people known as a potential security risk in connection to radical [sic] Islamism, the police source added.

  • France24 ☛ France to deploy 7,000 soldiers after teacher's fatal stabbing

    Authorities have suggested a probable link to the ongoing violence in the Middle East, with President Emmanuel Macron denouncing the incident as an act of "Islamist terror".

  • El País ☛ France is deploying 7,000 troops after a deadly school stabbing by a suspected Islamic radical

    The prosecutor said the alleged assailant was a former student there and repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God [sic] is great,” during the attack. Prosecutors are considering charges of terrorism-related murder and attempted murder against the suspect.

  • CS Monitor ☛ How the remote, roadless Darién Gap became a route for 400,000 migrants

    The long-isolated village of Bajo Chiquito in eastern Panama, at the edge of the Darién Gap, is the first place hundreds of thousands of thirsty, exhausted migrants encounter as they emerge from the grueling, roadless rainforest that stands between South and Central America.

    The community has become a hectic transit point for migrants and refugees from around the world who hope to reach the United States.

  • Vox ☛ Poland’s democracy is on the brink. Can these elections save it?

    “Having this government for the third time would be a disaster because they will continue to close up this authoritarian system,” Bendyk said. Poland was not authoritarian yet; there was still a free press, strong civil society, and thriving local democracy which Bendyk described as the immune system in the democratic resistance. But one by one, PiS would target these. “It’s quite easy to lay down rules to demand you can be penalized for different actions,” Bendyk said. “It can be difficult to do what we are doing now.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ Exclusive - Taliban to Join China's Belt and Road Forum, Elevating Ties

    The Taliban's acting minister for commerce and industry, Haji Nooruddin Azizi, will travel to Beijing in the coming days, ministry spokesman Akhundzada Abdul Salam Jawad said in a text message to Reuters.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Has Israel’s govt recruited a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ At least 16 Russians dead in Israel after Hamas attack — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Defense is not complicity’: An open letter from Russian human rights group Pervy Otdel after the arrest of Navalny’s lawyers — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Hamas thanks Putin for comments in support of Palestine — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Harvard University ☛ Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible

    Six months later, we can see that the effects of leaving Twitter have been negligible. A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. (NPR declined an interview request but shared the memo and other information). While NPR’s main account had 8.7 million followers and the politics account had just under three million, “the platform’s algorithm updates made it increasingly challenging to reach active users; you often saw a near-immediate drop-off in engagement after tweeting and users rarely left the platform,” the memo says.

    There’s one view of these numbers that confirms what many of us in news have long suspected — that Twitter wasn’t worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic. “It made up so little of our web traffic, such a marginal amount,” says Gabe Rosenberg, audience editor for KCUR in Kansas City, which stopped posting to Twitter at the same time as NPR. But Twitter wasn’t just about clicks. Posting was table stakes for building reputation and credibility, either as a news outlet or as an individual journalist. To be on Twitter was to be part of a conversation, and that conversation could inform stories or supply sources. During protests, especially, Twitter was an indispensable tool for following organizers and on-the-ground developments, as well as for communicating to the wider public. This kind of connection is hard to give up, but it’s not impossible to replace.

• Environment

  • The Atlantic ☛ If You’re Worried About the Climate, Move Your Money

    Students at dozens of universities, galvanized by the nonprofit 350.org, began protesting at academic-leadership and investment offices, asking for endowments to quit holding shares in fossil-fuel companies. The students picketed. They marched. They conducted sit-ins. They held votes. “You do not want your institution to be on the wrong side of this issue,” Stephen Mulkey, the president of Maine’s Unity College, the first to divest using 350.org’s guidelines, told Inside Climate News in 2012. “We realized that investing in fossil fuels was an unethical position.”

  • Federal News Network ☛ US military to begin draining leaky fuel tank facility that poisoned Pearl Harbor drinking water

    Removing the fuel is a key step toward shutting down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility as demanded by the state of Hawaii. The November 2021 spill poisoned the Navy’s water system serving 93,000 people in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The leak continues to threaten an aquifer used by Honolulu’s municipal water utility to serve 400,000 people on Oahu.

  • Science News ☛ Ants may be the first known insects ensnared in plastic pollution

    Plastic waste is famously treacherous for seabirds and marine mammals, but it can cause problems for landlubbing animals too, clogging camels’ guts and killing songbirds (SN: 12/15/20; SN: 4/12/21). Scientists have also documented some insects interacting with plastics. Aquatic caddisfly larvae can use small plastic fragments to construct their protective body casings, says Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden who was not involved in the new research.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Research shows wildfire smoke may linger in homes long after initial blaze

    The findings, published in Science Advances, show that wildfire smoke can attach to home surfaces like carpet, drapes or counters—extending the exposure for those inside and potentially causing health problems even after an initial cleaning activity by air purifiers. However, Professor Delphine Farmer said the research also shows that simple surface cleaning—like vacuuming, dusting or mopping—can reduce exposure and limit risk.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ New research can help better predict the health and sustainability of 'grassy' ecosystems

    The article, published October 10, 2023, in Global Change Biology, provides key steps forward to improving mathematical models that forecast changes to our planet's savannas, prairies, grasslands, and arctic tundras.

  • El País ☛ Gregorio Mirabal: ‘What’s happening in the Amazon is a climate pandemic’

    Mirabal is a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA) and the Confederation of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). To prevent adverse impacts, Mirabal says it’s crucial for indigenous people to be recognized so they can claim their ancestral lands. He believes they have proven to be the most capable stewards of the Amazon Basin. Mirabal also notes that the region’s climate has become increasingly unpredictable, and that Brazil’s drought is indicative of a larger problem.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • H2 View ☛ Caltrans signs $80m contract with Stadler Rail for hydrogen trains in California

      The contract includes a base order of $80m for the first four trainsets with options for up to 25 additional trainsets that can be used throughout California.

    • Gizmodo ☛ The Biden Administration Is Pumping Billions Into Clean Hydrogen

      Why throw so much money at hydrogen specifically? If it is produced without creating other fossil fuels, it is a cleaner form of fuel. When burned, hydrogen releases water, according to the Department of Energy. “Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be used to store, move, and deliver energy produced from other sources,” the DOE explains.

    • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ In defence of power points with switches

      I remember thinking why I’d bother, when I could just flick a switch at the power point instead. Little did I know at the time, but this was another example of a weird cultural difference between where I grew up, and in this case the US where the Zip drive was designed.

• Finance

  • Vox ☛ Basic income is less radical than you think

    Some people see UBI as a “capitalist road to communism” or a world free of work. Others see everything from a means of unleashing the population’s creative potential to a policy that would undermine human agency and erode “psychological capital.” Some see it as a way to shore up the welfare state. Others, a way to bulldoze it.

    In part, that’s because unless you pin down the details, basic income is too vague to mean anything politically concrete. Like the Rorschach inkblot, you can interpret and design UBI in an endless variety of ways. A program that provides $250 per month is a different ballgame than one providing $1,200 per month. The same goes for one that replaces all other welfare, like food aid (sometimes referred to as a “pure UBI,” which would actually leave the most disadvantaged worse off, and is a bad idea), compared with one that complements existing programs.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ The IRS Says Microsoft Owes More in Back Taxes Than It Invested in OpenAI

    The tax adjustments, the corporate VP for taxes wrote, are the result of a now-closed IRS audit related to Microsoft's former financial dealings.

    [...]

    It's striking that the tax bill is nearly three times the size of Microsoft's $10 billion OpenAI investment from the beginning of 2023, which was officially announced mere days ahead of massive job cuts.

  • [Repeat] CBC ☛ Microsoft owes $29B in unpaid taxes, IRS claims

    The IRS began an audit of Microsoft in 2007, which the agency described in federal court documents last year as "one of the largest in the Service's history." Microsoft says it was recently notified by the IRS that the audit has ended, starting a new process to resolve a dispute over how much is owed.

  • [Repeat] The Verge ☛ Microsoft owes $29 billion in back taxes, says IRS

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has informed Microsoft that the company owes back taxes of $28.9 billion “plus penalties and interest” for the tax years 2004 through 2013, according to an SEC filing.

  • [Repeat] CoryDoctorow ☛ Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

    The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

    Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

  • [Repeat] Michael Geist ☛ Regulations Alone Can’t Fix Bill C-18: Why News Media Canada’s “Surrender” May Not Be Enough to Stop Google From Blocking News Links in Canada

    Bill C-18 stands as epic policy blunder by the government, which ignored recommendations for reforms during the legislative process and now finds itself stuck with a law that has become a model for what not to do. The key question, however, is whether the latest concession will be enough to convince Google to spend hundreds of millions on links and establish a precedent that could result in billions in liability worldwide. While News Media Canada has identified several issues where it supports Google’s request for regulatory change, the challenge is that Google’s regulatory response appears to arrive at the same conclusion as Meta, namely that regulations alone cannot save a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation. Google states: [...]

  • Janes ☛ France bets big on space, cyber, and robotics in new defence budget

    For space, a total of EUR600 million has been allocated – the largest share of funding for any planned defence programme or focus area under the PLF. Along with the acquisition of 11 Syracuse IV satellite communication (satcom) ground stations, the investment will fund spatial observation technologies and the strengthening of active defence capabilities. The latest very-high-resolution satellite – Composante Spatiale Optique (CSO) – will also be launched in 2024 as well as the Syracuse V programme.x

  • [Old] Cory Doctorow ☛ An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse

    I miss the old, good internet. But this isn’t a talk about bringing the old good internet back. It’s a talk about what a new good web could be.

    And why we don’t have it.

    And how we’ll get it.

  • Marketplace ☛ A theory of how internet platforms die

    Many of the biggest tech platforms, from Amazon to Facebook, follow a similar pattern of transformation, according to a recent essay from the author and internet activist Cory Doctorow.

    First, he says, these platforms court users with artificially low prices on products or an exciting way to connect with friends.

    Then, they hook sellers, like advertisers or third-party retailers, with promises of reaching a captive audience.

    Finally, Doctorow says, as companies try to maximize their profits, they end up ruining the experience on their platforms through a process he describes with a four-letter word we can’t broadcast or publish.

    The following is an edited transcript of a conversation between Doctorow and Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about how internet platforms die.

  • Wired ☛ The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok

    Today, Facebook is terminally enshittified, a terrible place to be whether you're a user, a media company, or an advertiser. It's a company that deliberately demolished a huge fraction of the publishers it relied on, defrauding them into a "pivot to video" based on false claims of the popularity of video among Facebook users. Companies threw billions into the pivot, but the viewers never materialized, and media outlets folded in droves.

  • [Old] Jacobin Magazine ☛ Cory Doctorow Explains Why Big Tech Is Making the Internet Terrible

    The internet is increasingly a miserable place to be. As Cory Doctorow explains, Silicon Valley CEOs and grifters are working hard to keep it that way.

  • India Times ☛ Social media companies warned of strict action over child abuse content

    Social media companies Telegram, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) may have to face strict action over their failure to remove violent pornographic content, including child and adult sexual abuse material, from their platforms, said Union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw.

  • Digital Music News ☛ RIAA’s Tom Clees Says Silicon Valley “Has to Know It Will Be Held Accountable”—But What Are the Rules for AI?

    We’ve already seen unauthorized viral AI hits like the Drake/The Weeknd mash-up accrue millions of streams on Spotify and YouTube before it was ripped down. The RIAA has even added the ‘Voice Cloning’ category to its Notorious Markets list, where it monitors havens of copyright infringement and intellectual property theft. The new category is a direct response to the ability to take a small sample of a vocal talent and re-create the voice mechanically using artificial intelligence tools.

    As a lobbyist and political strategist for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Clees represents major label group interests before members of Congress and their staff. He’s appearing on DMN’s ‘Rules for AI’ mini-conference as a panelist to discuss how artificial intelligence will shape many aspects of the music industry going forward.

  • Meduza ☛ Armenian president signs law ratifying Rome Statute — Meduza

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ ‘A.I. Obama’ and Fake Newscasters: How A.I. Audio Is Swarming TikTok

      In fact, the voice did not belong to the former president. It was a convincing fake, generated by artificial intelligence using sophisticated new tools that can clone real voices to create A.I. puppets with a few clicks of a mouse.

      The technology used to create A.I. voices has gained traction and wide acclaim since companies like ElevenLabs released a slate of new tools late last year. Since then, audio fakes have rapidly become a new weapon on the online misinformation battlefield, threatening to turbocharge political disinformation ahead of the 2024 election by giving creators a way to put their conspiracy theories into the mouths of celebrities, newscasters and politicians.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ EU opens probe into X

      European Union industry chief Thierry Breton has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X, the first under new EU tech rules, after earlier reprimanding the social media platform, TikTok and Meta Platforms for not doing enough to tackle the spread of disinformation following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

      All three platforms have seen a surge of false content about the Israel and Hamas conflict, with disinformation appearing to be most prevalent on X, social media researchers said.

    • India Times ☛ EU warns Google over YouTube disinformation in wake of Hamas attack

      The EU's top tech enforcer, Commissioner Thierry Breton, warned Google parent Alphabet on Friday to be wary of potential "illegal content and disinformation" on its YouTube platform.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Igor Volobuev, former Gazprombank executive, and Olga Romanova, head of Russia Behind Bars, designated ‘foreign agents’ by Russia — Meduza

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Pro Publica ☛ Local Newspapers Are Vanishing. How Should We Remember Them?

    A sign that reads “Somewhere Worth Seeing” welcomes travelers to Ware, a faded mill town surrounded by the hills and steeples of western Massachusetts. But these days, hardly any news outlets find Ware worth a visit, even as its leaders wrangle over issues vital to its future.

    Inside the brick, fortress-like Town Hall on a humid summer evening, Town Manager Stuart Beckley informed the five members of the Selectboard, Ware’s council, of an important proposal. A company was offering to buy Ware’s water and sewer services, which need tens of millions of dollars in upgrades. That’s a consequential choice for a town of 10,000 with an annual budget of $36 million. A sale would provide an infusion of $9.7 million. But private utilities often increase rates, raising the prospect that Ware’s many poor and elderly residents might face onerous bills down the road.

  • JURIST ☛ Australia journalist detained in China released after three years

    Prominent Australian journalist Cheng Lei was released Tuesday by Chinese authorities and reunited with her family in Australia after being detained in China since August 2020.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

    The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • France24 ☛ Australians vote in landmark Indigenous rights referendum

    Almost 18 million Australians will vote "yes" or "no" to changes that would acknowledge Indigenous peoples in the constitution for the first time and create an advisory body -- a so-called "Voice" -- to weigh laws that affect those communities.

    Australia's First Nations peoples have lived on the continent for more than 60,000 years.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk's X illegally fired worker challenging office return: US labor board

    Elon Musk's X illegally fired an employee in retaliation for her internet posts challenging its return-to-office policy, the U.S. labor board alleged on Friday.

    In the complaint, a regional director of the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accused X - formerly known as Twitter - of violating the federal law that prohibits punishing employees for communicating and organizing with others about their working conditions.

  • GO Media ☛ Celebs Inexplicably Let Meta Make AI Bots of Them, Despite SAG’s Explicit Warnings

    This comes as, earlier this year, similar technologies have been used to create disturbing, sexual AI-generated content and deepfakes of children and adult women alike without their permission. NBC reported in March that one app offering users the tools to make sexual deepfake content of stars like Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson was at varying points available in the Apple and Android app stores, and ran ads on Meta.

    That, of course, brings us back to Meta. It’s not yet clear what safety features or restrictions will be attached to the celebrity chatbots. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on this matter from Jezebel.

  • Business Insider ☛ Meta is paying the celebrity faces behind its AI chatbots as much as $5 million for 6 hours of work, report says

    Right now, the AI assistants are only text-based but Meta's announcement video featured clips of the celebrities speaking as their AI counterparts.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Union workers reach a tentative deal with Kaiser Permanente after the largest-ever US health care strike

    The strike last week lasted only three days, the length of time it had been scheduled to run. But the coalition of unions was threatening an eight-day strike next month with even more workers walking out if a new deal was not reached by October 31.

  • CBC ☛ Average rent went up another 11% in past year — and even getting a roommate doesn't help much

    And according to the September report, average rents aren't just headed up — they're increasing at their fastest pace this year.

  • Axios ☛ Music artists should unionize, top industry exec argues

    "Artists were not involved in negotiating the rates that they get [for streaming]," Steve Stoute, CEO of digital music distribution startup UnitedMasters, said at the Axios BFD conference in New York yesterday.

  • [Old] Los Angeles Times ☛ Musicians deal with stingy streamers and AI threats, too. So why aren’t they on strike?

    All the fears and complaints that Hollywood actors and writers have about low streaming-service payouts and threats of digital replacement are an ever-present reality for musicians and songwriters, too. Yet the rockers, pop singers and hip-hop artists who create the vast majority of music we consume are not on strike to protest their paltry royalties or AI inroads. One big reason? They’re not unionized.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Associated Press ☛ Book Review: Novelist and blogger Cory Doctorow pens a manual for destroying Big Tech

    “There is no fixing Big Tech,” Doctorow, who blogged for years on the website “Boing Boing,” writes in his new book “The Internet Con: How To Seize The Means of Computation.” The breezily written 173-page manifesto is for people who want to destroy it.

    Doctorow is adamant that no one be allowed to wield as much power as Mark Zuckerberg, who he deems a “feudal warlord” of middling intellect. “We don’t need a better Zuck. We need to abolish Zuck.”

  • The Washington Post ☛ How Fear and Greed Could Choke India’s Internet

    If that weren’t enough, now India’s biggest telecom firms — Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Idea Ltd. — have opened a second front. They want large streaming, gaming and social-media companies to contribute their “fair share” to network development, based on parameters such as the number of users or bandwidth occupation during peak hours. While the ostensible targets are Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video, the proposal is making even small startups see red.

• Monopolies

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-10-13 [Older] Caltech's seven-year Wi-Fi patent battle with Apple and Broadcom is over

  • Digital Music News ☛ U.S. Senators Target Unauthorized AI Soundalike Tracks With Bipartisan ‘No Fakes Act’

    With artificial intelligence music – including a growing number of unauthorized soundalike releases – becoming increasingly prevalent, four U.S. senators have introduced a bill that they say would “protect the voice and visual likenesses of individuals from unfair use.”

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ 'Terminating Internet Access over Piracy Claims is Drastic and Overbroad'

      Internet provider Grande Communications hopes to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $47 million in piracy damages to several record labels. The ISP is supported by several telecom industry groups, who all object to disconnecting subscribers' internet access based on copyright claims. A recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of Twitter plays a key role too.

    • [Repeat] Gizmodo ☛ Google Has Your Back If Its AI Lands You in Copyright Trouble

      There’s a larger question at the core of these cases, and it’s more complicated than whether or not big tech should be paying the legal fees: should large language models be running on copyrighted material at all? It’s one of the key advantages of a company that uses AI like Tesla, which is able to train machine learning for self-driving cars on a huge data set of videos from cameras in other Teslas that it already owns the rights to.