Leftovers

• Off Guardian ☛ Evil Walks Among Us: Monsters with Human Faces Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms

  For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.

  Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government—through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny—has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

• Futurism ☛ Google AI Chief Says There’s a 50% Chance We’ll Hit AGI in Just 5 Years

  Legg apparently began looking towards his 2028 goalpost all the way back in 2001 after reading "The Age of Spiritual Machines," the groundbreaking 1999 book by fellow Google AI luminary Ray Kurzweil that predicts a future of superhuman AIs.

  "There were two really important points in his book that I came to believe as true," he explained. "One is that computational power would grow exponentially for at least a few decades. And that the quantity of data in the world would grow exponentially for a few decades."

• Futurism ☛ 15,000 Scientists Warn Society Could Collapse By 2100 Due to Climate Change

  In a statement, Oregon State University postdoctoral scholar and co-lead study author Christopher Wolf echoed the paper's serious tone while offering some glimmers of hope paired, of course, with major mitigation strategies.

  "Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from the Earth than it can safely give," Wolf said, "we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and fresh water."

• Education

  • The Register UK ☛ Tech bros still cling to sexist stereotypes, forgetting female pioneers who coded their path

    The survey of nearly 1,500 workers in tech, those who have just left the industry, and women qualified in sciences, technology, or math, also found that a "tech bro" work culture of sexism forced more than 40 percent of women in the sector to think about leaving their role at least once a week.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Quantifying Consolidation in the Scholarly Journals Market

    Scientists are trained to never to accept anything at face value. Even the most obvious of statements requires supporting data, otherwise it must be treated with skepticism.That training has been on my mind over the last few months as I’ve worked with colleagues to put together a large scale report on trends in the journals publishing market. A key trend, obvious to any publishing consultant or acquisitions editor buried in a seemingly endless (and seemingly rising) stream of independent journals seeking a partnership with a larger publisher, is the ongoing and ever-increasing market consolidation that has been accelerated by the move to open access (OA). We all know this to be true, but where is the data?

    Looking at the literature, the references I can find are out of date, the most recent being Lariviére et al., from 2015, looking at conditions in 2013. With nothing available for the last decade, I set out to see if the obvious was indeed true.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Australasia's hidden pollination crisis could threaten biodiversity and food security

    "The same environmental threats to plants and their pollinators are happening in this region—but we haven't been monitoring their impact," he says.

    A pollination crisis is the decline in abundance—including to the point of extinction—of animals that act as pollinators and of the plants they pollinate.

    "This is not a trivial issue," says Professor Pyke. "In Australia, we estimate 15,000 animal species act as plant pollinators. Declines in these pollinator species will cascade through to the estimated 20,000 species of flowering plants in Australia that rely on or benefit from animal pollination to reproduce.

  • Prof. Skidmore’s zombie antivax pseudoscience rises again

    If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the last two decades dealing with antivax propaganda, it’s that bad papers written by antivax ideologues designed to promote a narrative that vaccines are dangerous and/or ineffective (but mostly dangerous) never die. Just take a look at the prototypical example of the modern antivaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 case series published in The Lancet that purported to show an association between the MMR vaccine and “autistic enterocolitis,” a finding that was also promoted from the beginning as a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. It took 12 years to get the paper retracted (as it should have been very quickly), with an investigation by journalist Brian Deer resulting in findings demonstrating scientific fraud. Unfortunately during that 12 years, Wakefield’s paper caused all manner of havoc stoking vaccine hesitancy in the UK and beyond. Even after retraction, it still has way more influence than any paper that bad and deserving of retraction should. I could go on and on discussing antivax papers that somehow either never died, survived retraction, or reappeared in new journals after retraction—Anthony Mawson, anyone?—but this time around I want to discuss a retracted paper that has reappeared, leading tech bro turned ridiculously over-the-top antivax influencer Steve Kirsch to write a post over the weekend on his Substack entitled MSU Professor Mark Skidmore was exonerated by MSU; his landmark paper showing over 250,000 killed by the COVID vaccine is now back in the peer-reviewed literature.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Verge ☛ Bungie delaying Destiny 2 expansion and Marathon release amid layoffs

    Bungie is laying off an unspecified number of staffers as well as delaying two of its forthcoming titles: Marathon and Destiny 2’s forthcoming expansion, The Final Shape. The latter is now expected to launch in June 2024, while the former won’t be expected until 2025.

  • EuroGamer ☛ Destiny 2 developer Bungie latest PlayStation studio to be hit by layoffs | Eurogamer.net

    "Today is a sad day at Bungie as we say goodbye to colleagues who have all made a significant impact on our studio," Parsons wrote on social media. "What these exceptional individuals have contributed to our games and Bungie culture has been enormous and will continue to be a part of Bungie long into the future. These are truly talented people. If you have openings, I would highly recommend each and every one of them"

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Facebook subscriptions launched in EU – no ads for R200/month

    Meta was fined €390-million earlier this year by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner, and was told it cannot use the so-called “contract” as a legal basis to send users ads based on their online activity.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Apple is losing Chinese consumers to Huawei

    The iPhone 15 series saw a 6% decline in sales in its launch month compared with the prior year, according to data from market researcher GfK that covers end-consumer sales for all channels. Mobile industry tracker IDC estimates Apple’s shipments were down 4% in the third quarter, with both identifying Huawei Technologies’ return to the mobile arena spotlight as a key event in the period.

  • Eric Bailey ☛ Zombie Slack channels

    Zombie Slack channels are effectively dead communication that refuses to die. They are animated by unknown forces, set to mindlessly shamble towards some unknowable end.

  • New York Times ☛ X Says It Is Worth $19 Billion, Down From $44 Billion Last Year

    In his year of owning Twitter, Mr. Musk has overhauled the company and the social media platform. More than 80 percent of its 7,500 employees have either quit or been laid off. He has changed the service’s verification process, as well as content-moderation rules. Advertising, the company’s main source of revenue, was down in the United States by almost 60 percent this summer. Mr. Musk also loaded the company with billions of dollars in debt to help pay for the acquisition.

  • Techdirt ☛ The First Rule Of Owning A Toyota Tundra In Australia Is You’re Not Allowed To Talk About Your Toyota Tundra

    Here are two things that cannot simultaneously be true: a company is very confident in the product it produces and that same company is very afraid of public discussion of its product on social media. This is generally true of pretty much every product in every category, but it gets a little more serious when we’re talking about a two-and-a-half ton hunk of metal on wheels that has to be retrofit for driving in a new country.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • #020 | S2 | In The Chair | Dr Kate Brown - Online Dating

      In this episode of In The Chair, we speak to Dr Kate Brown about online dating and how people meet each other using phones. Do online dating apps lead to healthy and successful relations, or are they just best for hookups and fun?

    • Tedium ☛ Give ’Em Less Data

      The original sin of online news, it’s often said, was the decision to make the information free. I think that’s only half-true, and to be honest, I don’t think blaming the users for that gets down to the actual problem.

      I think the real problem is that we gave advertisers more than enough rope to hang themselves—as well as the publishers whose work was being funded. To some degree, marketers had long been looking for increased data to maximize results, and here was this online thing, which could basically do the most granular work of online research for them, so they could maximize their bottom lines.

      The problem, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, is that they didn’t actually care about whether you survived, as long as they got theirs. And with that in mind, the “original sin” has been allowed to spread into new mediums with increased damage to the entire ecosystem. We bend to the will of what the advertisers want, without considering what makes for a better product for all of us.

    • EFF ☛ How GoGuardian Invades Student Privacy

      GoGuardian is a student monitoring tool that watches over twenty-seven million students across ten thousand schools, but what it does exactly, and how well it works, isn’t easy for students to know. To learn more about its functionality, accuracy, and impact on students, we filed dozens of public records requests and analyzed tens of thousands of results from the software. Using data from multiple schools in both red and blue states, what we uncovered was that, by design, GoGuardian is a red flag machine—its false positives heavily outweigh its ability to accurately determine whether the content of a site is harmful. This results in tens of thousands of students being flagged for viewing content that is not only benign, but often, educational or informative. 

      We identified multiple categories of non-explicit content that are regularly marked as harmful or dangerous, including: College application sites and college websites; counseling and therapy sites; sites with information about drug abuse; sites with information about LGBTQ issues; sexual health sites; sites with information about gun violence; sites about historical topics; sites about political parties and figures; medical and health sites; news sites; and general educational sites. 

      To illustrate the shocking absurdity of GoGuardian's flagging algorithm, we have built the Red Flag Machine quiz. Derived from real GoGuardian data, visitors are presented with websites that were flagged and asked to guess what keywords triggered the alert. We have also written a detailed report on our findings, available online here (and downloadable here). 

    • Techdirt ☛ Israel Gives Blacklisted Spyware Companies The Go-Ahead To Help It Track Israeli Hostages

      Decades of somewhat-restrained conflict between Israel and Palestine erupted into war again at the beginning of the month. Islamist militant group Hamas followed rocket strikes with a physical invasion, the latter of which included the massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians. Israeli civilians were also tortured and mutilated.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Axios ☛ Schools scramble to respond to an influx of migrant students

    The big picture: The past two months set records for families illegally crossing the southern border, according to Homeland Security data. Last month alone, 124,000 family members crossed without visas — whether illegally or by showing up at ports of entry.

  • ANF News ☛ Declared "arrested" in Turkey for kidnapping a Yazidi girl, ISIS member turns out to be at liberty

    A senior member of ISIS was put on trial in Turkey for “human trafficking” for kidnapping a Kurdish Yazidi girl and subsequently offering her for sale on the dark web. While he was not even taken into custody, Turkish authorities declared him "arrested".

  • BIA Net ☛ Revealed: Senior ISIS member on trial for kidnapping Êzîdî girl at liberty

    A high-ranking ISIS operative, declared "arrested" on Saturday by the governor of Ankara, has now been confirmed to be at liberty. The operative was put on trial for “human trafficking” for kidnapping an Êzîdî girl and subsequently offering her for sale on the dark web.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump 14th Amendment trial in Colorado opens with focus on events of Jan. 6

    Six Colorado voters have alleged in a lawsuit that Trump’s role in “summoning” and “inciting” that mob make him ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Civil War-era clause prohibits anyone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” from holding office in the United States.

    In an opening statement, attorneys for the plaintiffs, including representatives of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said their four-point case was simple: Trump took an oath to support the Constitution; the Jan. 6 attack was an insurrection; Trump engaged in that insurrection; and Colorado election officials can and must bar ineligible candidates from the ballot.

  • BBC ☛ Anti-Israel mob storms Dagestan airport in Russia

    Many in the crowd shouted antisemitic slogans while others chanted "Allahu Akbar" - God [sic] is greatest.

    Local media reported that some demonstrators were stopping cars outside Makhachkala's airport demanding to see documents, in a chaotic search for Israeli passports.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian FM compares Russia to Nazi Germany after anti-Jewish unrest in Dagestan

    Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has compared Russia to Nazi Germany following unrest in Dagestan where an angry mob stormed an airport expecting a plane from Israel.

    “Even after Bucha there were still people saying we can’t compare Russia to Nazi Germany. Well... how about now? Are the pogroms convincing enough? Do you need Putin to actually grow a moustache and raise his right hand?” he posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

  • India Times ☛ Telegram to ban channels that called for anti-Semitic riots in Russia's Dagestan

    The popular messaging platform Telegram will block channels that called for anti-Semitic violence in Russia's Dagestan region, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on Monday.

    "Channels calling for violence will be blocked for violating the rules of Telegram, Google, Apple and the entire civilised world," Durov wrote on his own Telegram channel.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘It could have all ended with us getting killed’ Passenger on flight from Israel to Russia’s Dagestan recounts anti-Semitic riot at airport

    The excerpt below is from a translated interview with Shmuel, a 26-year-old from Jerusalem. He spoke with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on October 20, 2023. He recounts his experience as a passenger on a flight from Tel Aviv to the city of Makhachkala in Russia’s Dagestan region, which was met with hundreds of anti-Semitic rioters at the airport.

  • Reuters ☛ Police take control of Russia's Dagestan airport after anti-Israeli protests

    The unrest in the region, where Russian security forces once fought an Islamist insurgency, is a headache for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is waging a war in Ukraine and is keen to maintain stability at home ahead of an expected presidential election next year.

    The Russian Aviation Authority has closed the airport for flights until it completes security checks.

    The interior ministry, in its statement, said the identity of 150 of what it called the most active protesters had been identified. It said the authorities were looking to track down everyone involved.

  • NDTV ☛ Video: Russia Airport Shut After Mob Searches For Jews On Israel Flight

    Several local Telegram channels showed photos and videos of dozens of men waiting outside the airport to stop cars.

  • VOA News ☛ Hundreds Storm Airport in Russia's Dagestan Region, Surround Flight From Israel

    Video on social media showed some in the crowd waving Palestinian flags and others trying to overturn a police car. Antisemitic slogans can be heard and some in the crowd examined the passports of arriving passengers, apparently in an attempt to identify those who were Israeli.

  • Quillette ☛ A Different Concept of Death

    After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, New York author and journalist Paul Berman explored the roots of Islamist terrorism in Terror and Liberalism. In that New York Times bestseller, Berman examined the connections between radical Islam and European totalitarianism. Speaking from New York, he explains how Hamas’s terrorism fits into this picture. The interview was conducted by Andreas Scheiner.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Is Australia in the grips of a youth crime crisis? This is what the data says

    While action needs to be taken in the short term to address community safety concerns, all states and territories also need to address the longer-term, multi-factoral causes of youth crime, such as truancy and disengagement from school, drug usage, domestic violence in the home and poor parenting.

  • New York Times ☛ Riot Over Plane From Israel Alarms Jews and Draws Condemnation

    Hundreds of young men stormed the main airport in the predominantly Muslim republic of Dagestan on Sunday night, searching for a commercial flight from Tel Aviv. Videos and some images on social media showed some of the rioters holding Palestinian flags and carrying signs opposing the war in Gaza, possibly spurred on by a Telegram messaging channel that urged them to “catch” the passengers of the incoming flight from Israel.

  • Craig Murray ☛ Zionism Is Bullshit

    In 2009 I spoke to a demonstration of 300,000 in London against another Israeli massacre in Gaza, which coincidentally killed just over 1400 people, the same number claimed killed during the recent Hamas attacks. Strangely Western politicians did not shout out about Palestine’s right to self-defence. A lesson for those who think history began on 7 October 2023.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Mob looking for Jews storms airport in Russia's Dagestan and surrounds plane landing from Israel

      Crowd overwhelmed security and broke into Makhachkala airport, chanting anti-Semitic slogans and demanding the expulsion of all Jews

• Environment

  • New Statesman ☛ How quickly are sea levels rising?

    A new data project from the New Statesman models different sea level rises against a digital elevation model of coastal areas from the non-profit research organisation Climate Central. Our map shows how even in a scenario where the world meets the core ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement – that emissions reach net zero by the middle of the century, and warming is kept below 2°C – sea levels are expected to rise by 0.4m by 2100.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ GB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

      One of the owners of GB News runs a hedge fund that has a major financial stake in more than 100 oil and gas firms, DeSmog can reveal. 

      This news comes after former prime minister Boris Johnson was announced as a new presenter on the television broadcaster on Friday.

    • RIPE ☛ Frugal Computing for a Sustainable Internet

      Professor Wim Vanderbauwhede - lead of the Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing activity at the School of Computing Science of the University of Glasgow - talks to us about the carbon footprint of the ICT industry, misleading narratives around digitalisation, and why the notion of frugal computing is needed to move forward.

    • BIA Net ☛ Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are accelerating the climate crisis

      There is a strong and mutually impactful relationship between the climate crisis and the transportation sector: Greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector accelerate the climate crisis. Simultaneously, climate-related disasters such as severe rainfall, storms, heatwaves, and fires affect the transportation sector, infrastructure, and passengers significantly.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • [Repeat] Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 182: Inside the Hearings on Privacy and AI Reform – My Industry Committee Appearance on Bill C-27

    After months of delays, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology has finally begun to conduct hearings on Bill C-27, which wraps Canadian privacy reform and AI regulation into a single legislative package. Last week, I appeared before the committee, making the case that the process is need of fixing and the bill in need of reform. The appearance sparked a wide range of questions from MPs from all parties. This week’s Law Bytes podcast takes you inside the committee hearing room for my opening statement and exchanges with MPs.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ White House executive order on AI seeks to address security risks

    The order directs leading AI labs to notify the U.S. government of training runs that produce models with potential national security risks, instructs the National Institutes of Standards and Technology to develop frameworks for how to adversarially test AI models, and establishes an initiative to harness AI to automatically find and fix software vulnerabilities, among other measures.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Joy Buolamwini: “We’re giving AI companies a free pass”

    Now, Buolamwini has a new target in sight. She is calling for a radical rethink of how AI systems are built. Buolamwini tells MIT Technology Review that, amid the current AI hype cycle, she sees a very real risk of letting technology companies pen the rules that apply to them—repeating the very mistake, she argues, that has previously allowed biased and oppressive technology to thrive.

    “What concerns me is we're giving so many companies a free pass, or we're applauding the innovation while turning our head [away from the harms],” Buolamwini says.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Executive Order on AI says a lot of the right things, but requires follow-through to ensure real change

    The Biden Administration has released its long-anticipated Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence. The 100+ page document lays out various areas for action—including banking, education, healthcare, housing, the workplace—and primarily directs federal agencies to develop standards for use that minimize harms, while maximizing benefits for the U.S.

    The following statement can be attributed to Caitlin Seeley George (she/her), campaigns and managing director at Fight for the Future: [...]

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: What does Biden’s new executive order mean for the future of AI?

    “Can machines think?” The mathematician Alan Turing posed this question in 1950, imagining a future human-like machine that observed the results of its own behavior and modified itself to be more effective. After observing the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent months, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Monday intended to modify how humans use these “thinking machines.” The thinking behind the order is to make AI safer, more secure, and more trustworthy. Will it be effective? Below, our own “thinking machines”—that is, Atlantic Council experts—share their insights.

  • India Times ☛ Biden administration aims to cut AI risks with executive order

    The order, which he signed at the White House, requires developers of AI systems that pose risks to US national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the US government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they are released to the public.

  • Digital Music News ☛ President Biden Signs Executive Order for ‘Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy’ AI

    Furthermore, the order highlights that ‘AI not only makes it easier to extract, identify, and exploit personal data, but it also heightens incentives to do so because companies use data to train AI systems.’

  • New York Times ☛ Biden to Issue First Regulations on Artificial Intelligence Systems

    The regulations will include recommendations, but not requirements, that photos, videos and audio developed by such systems be watermarked to make clear that they were created by A.I. That reflects a rising fear that A.I. will make it far easier to create “deep fakes” and convincing disinformation, especially as the 2024 presidential campaign accelerates.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Issues Executive Order to Create A.I. Safeguards

    President Biden signed a far-reaching executive order on artificial intelligence on Monday, requiring that companies report to the federal government about the risks that their systems could aid countries or terrorists to make weapons of mass destruction. The order also seeks to lessen the dangers of “deep fakes” that could swing elections or swindle consumers.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Potential and peril: Biden to sign executive order on AI safeguards

    “We can’t move at a normal government pace,” Mr. Zients said the Democratic president told him. “We have to move as fast, if not faster than the technology itself.”

    In Mr. Biden’s view, the government was late to address the risks of social media and now United States youth are grappling with related mental health issues. AI has the positive ability to accelerate cancer research, model the impacts of climate change, boost economic output, and improve government services among other benefits. But it could also warp basic notions of truth with false images, deepen racial and social inequalities, and provide a tool to scammers and criminals.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Biden signs executive order directing artificial intelligence companies to develop safer AI

    Under the new guidelines, the government will approach privacy and safety in the development of AI from multiple angles. In terms of cybersecurity and safety, in accordance with the Defense Protection Act the order will require companies developing foundation models that pose risks to national security or public health will need to notify the federal government and share their security audits and before making their models public.

    To promote this, the order will have standards set by various government bodies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology to provide rules for safety and testing. The departments of Energy and Homeland Security will address potential AI threats to infrastructure and cybersecurity before the release of AI models that affect infrastructure, biotechnology or nuclear.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Navigating the AI revolution: Industry insiders discuss opportunities and challenges

    Sharrma and Vikram Joshi (left), founder, president and chief technology officer of Compute.AI, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and John Furrier at Supercloud 4, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the opportunities and hurdles that this AI-driven landscape presents to entrepreneurs, including these veteran founders, investors and industry insiders.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Stop Asking Americans in Diners About Foreign Aid

    I remain astonished that so much of the media remain committed to covering Donald Trump and sedition-adjacent extremists such as Johnson as if they are normal American politicians. But while Americans pretend that all is well, the rest of the world is busily going about its terrifying business, which is why one comment in the Post article jumped out at me.

  • Gizmodo ☛ Meta Is Asking Users for Handouts Amid New Regulations in Europe

    Being waterboarded with advertisements sort of feels like second nature on the likes of Facebook and Instagram, but for some in the EU willing to pay, that will change.

    Meta revealed its subscription service to access an ad-free version of Facebook and Instagram in a blog post Monday. Users in several European countries will now have the option to pay anywhere from €9.99 on desktop or €12.99 on mobile—that’s about $10.60 and $13.78 USD, respectively—for an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook. For now, the fee will cover all accounts linked to the account that purchases the subscription, but starting on March 1, 2024, users will have to fork over €6 ($6.36) on desktop or €8 ($8.48) on mobile for each additional account.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ Young People May Be The Biggest Target for Online Censorship and Surveillance—and the Strongest Weapon Against Them

    EFF and many other digital rights and civil liberties organizations have fought back against these bills, but the sheer number is alarming. At times it can be nearly overwhelming: there are bills in Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Montana; there are federal bills like the Kids Online Safety Act and the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act. And there’s legislation beyond the U.S., like the UK’s Online Safety Bill. 

    [...]

    Young people, too, have fought back. In the long run, we believe we’ll win, together—and because of your help. We’ve won before: In the 1990’s, Congress enacted sweeping legislation that would have curtailed online rights for people of all ages. But that law was aimed, like much of today’s legislation, at young people like you. Along with the ACLU, we challenged the law and won core protections for internet rights in a Supreme Court case, Reno v. ACLU, that recognized that free speech on the Internet merits the highest standards of Constitutional protection. The Court’s decision was its first involving the Internet. 

  • Axios ☛ Banned books often get circulation bump, new study finds

    The big picture: As attempted book bans continue to surge in schools and public libraries across the U.S, a new study reveals the unintended consequences of the effort: an increase in readership for the titles in question.

    What they found: A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and George Mason University found that the dissemination of banned books increased.

  • RFA ☛ Hong Kong university fires Tiananmen historian after visa denial

    A Hong Kong university has fired a university professor who penned a book on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre – discussion of which is banned in China – after she was denied the renewal of her work visa following a denunciation in the Communist Party-backed media.

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong's official website described Rowena He, author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, as "currently on leave" on Monday.

  • BIA Net ☛ Report: Turkey blocked access to over 40,000 URLs in 2022

    The most common targets for censorship were news articles that mentioned alleged irregularities related to the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family, according to the report. Additionally, websites with content opposing the government's ideology were prominently blocked, categorized as "critical websites."

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Pro Publica ☛ Elkhart Cop Sentenced to a Year in Prison

    Having come to journalism after dropping out of law school (where I discovered I didn’t want to be a lawyer) and dropping out of the Peace Corps (where I discovered I can’t grow vegetables in the Sahara), I started small, working at newspapers with names you probably would not recognize.

    My first job was at the Valley Courier in Alamosa, Colorado, where my beat was sports and courts. I’d drop into a trial in the afternoon, perhaps a stabbing, then cover high school basketball games at night. My second job was at the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho. It was there, on the night cops beat, that I had a police department source who would call the newsroom and leave, anonymously, a message saying, “The little birdy has flown,” which was his signal for me to call him. From there I went to the Times-Advocate in Escondido, California.

  • Axios ☛ NYT tech workers to walk out in protest of return-to-office policies

    Details: The Tech Guild — which includes nearly 700 software engineers, data analysts, project managers, product managers and designers — will begin to walk out at 1 pm ET, according to a statement from the NewsGuild.

  • The Hindu ☛ Gig and platform workers are poorly paid, says report

    Only some digital platforms that are currently employing millions in the country are paying a minimum wage and not one of them is providing a living wage to workers.

    This was among the conclusions of a report by Fairwork India Ratings-2023. This is the fifth edition of the report which studied work conditions of gig and platform workers on digital labour platforms, including in Hyderabad. This year, the team evaluated 12 platforms against five Fairwork principles, according to the report.

    The Fairwork India team is led by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore together with the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The UAW Now Has Tentative Deals With All Three Automakers — and They Look to Be Historic

    The union’s national councils for each of the Big Three automakers will now convene in Detroit to vote on whether to send the contract to the membership for a ratification vote. The Ford National Council already completed this step after Ford was the first to reach a TA on October 25. That body decided unanimously last night to send the deal to the membership for a ratification vote. Stellantis’s national council will vote on November 2, with GM’s national council voting on November 3. Workers at all three companies will return to work during the balloting process.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Virtual meetings tire people because we're doing them wrong, says new research

    New research suggests sleepiness during virtual meetings is caused by mental underload and boredom. Earlier studies suggested that fatigue from virtual meetings stems from mental overload, but new research from Aalto University shows that sleepiness during virtual meetings might actually be a result of mental underload and boredom.

  • The Conversation ☛ Replacing frontline workers with AI can be a bad idea — here’s why

    AI chatbots are already widely used by businesses to greet customers and answer their questions – either over the phone or on websites. Some companies have found that they can, to some extent, replace humans with machines in call centre roles.

    However, the available evidence suggests there are sectors – such as healthcare and human resources – where extreme care needs to be taken regarding the use of these frontline tools, and ethical oversight may be necessary.

  • VOA News ☛ Hijab Law Cost Another Young Woman Her Life, Nobel Laureate Says

    Geravand, 17, died following an alleged encounter with police over violating the country's hijab law as she was entering a subway car at Meydan-E Shohada, or Martyrs’ Square, Metro station in southern Tehran on October 1, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

    Mohammadi, in her Instagram post, criticized the secrecy surrounding Geravand’s death.

    No independent reporter was allowed to enter the hospital, only those affiliated with state media, she wrote. Government news agencies announced the 17-year-old's death, not her parents, Mohammadi wrote.

  • JURIST ☛ Iran teenager dies after alleged encounter with morality police

    Amnesty International issued a statement this month urging the Iranian government to permit an impartial inquiry into the Geravand incident, accusing the Iranian government of a coverup and demanding UN involvement.

  • DeSmog ☛ Frontline Communities Launch Hunger Strike to Protest Plastics Giant Formosa

    Communities around the world impacted by the plastics giant Formosa are launching a global hunger strike on October 31. 

    Fishers, organizers, and concerned citizens in Texas, Vietnam, and Louisiana — areas that are home to existing or proposed Formosa plants — have supported each other’s efforts to mobilize against the Taiwan-based firm, forming the organization International Monitor Formosa Alliance (IMFA). Now the alliance is launching a hunger strike to demand that the victims of a 2016 environmental disaster in central Vietnam caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of the Formosa Plastics Group, be compensated for their losses, that the polluted area be restored, and that those who have been jailed for protesting be released. 

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Fight looming over zero rating in South Africa

    “However, the further zero rating of additional PBOs cannot be treated in isolation from our other social obligations, as these form part of the same licence conditions that are currently under review. To this end, we are in constant engagement with Icasa to finalise the details of the zero-rating process and await its directive on the social obligations related to the spectrum purchased before we explore further zero-rating initiatives.”

• Monopolies

  • NPR ☛ Google to present its star witness, the company's CEO, in landmark monopoly trial

    The $1.7 trillion company is expected to argue that it dominates in search because it has the best technology and, so, people prefer it. On Monday, it's bringing in a star witness to testify: Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

  • Gizmodo ☛ Sundar Pichai Defends Google Paying Billions to Remain Top Search Engine

    The U.S. Department of Justice is arguing that Google created the building blocks to hold a monopoly over the market, but Pichai disagrees, saying the company is the dominant search engine because it is better than its competitors.

  • New York Times ☛ Google C.E.O. Says Tech Giant Has Improved the Web for All Consumers

    The Google chief was the highest-profile witness to testify so far in the 10-week trial. The monopoly trial — the first involving a tech giant of the modern internet era — reflects increasing efforts in Washington to rein in the power of Big Tech.

    The Federal Trade Commission has filed its own antitrust lawsuit against Meta, arguing it stifled nascent competitors, and Amazon, saying it squeezes small merchants and favors its own services. On Monday, President Biden signed an executive order laying out the government’s first rules for the artificial intelligence systems that Silicon Valley companies have raced to build.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Dutch Fiscal Police Win "Anti-Piracy Award" for Shutting Down IPTV Datacenter

      The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance has announced the winner of its annual "Anti-Piracy Award." At this year’s Europol IP Crime conference, the honors went to the Dutch fiscal police (FIOD) for its efforts to combat IPTV piracy. FIOD took down a large-scale IPTV operation earlier this year which impacted over a million subscribers and took an entire datacenter with more than 1,200 servers offline.

    • The Register UK ☛ Digital Millennium Copyright Act celebrates a quarter century of takedown notices

      It has been 25 years since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into US law by President Bill Clinton, ushering in an era of intellectual property (IP) protection for all. Or that was the hope.

      The DMCA has its basis in treaties passed in 1996 by the World Intellectual Property Organization aimed at dealing with copyright in the age of the internet. As well as heightening the penalties for copyright infringement on the web, it also criminalized technology designed to circumvent measures to control access to copyrighted works.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Stargazing Updates, Fairbanks, AK, USA (publ. 2023-10-30)

    The star gazing season did start up for me, but I have been too busy with the new baby to be able to post about it. Night-time weather has been cloudy most of the time, as is usual for this time of year, but I had a few stargazing sessions this month. Back on Sunday October 15, in the early morning hours, I went to the boat launch and did some naked-eye stargazing. The skies were cloudy, but I had a good view to the north for about twenty minutes. It was a good time of becoming more familiar with the constellations in that direction. In particular, I focused on Draco, which weaves in between the little and big dippers, before coming up and then back down to the head. Hercules is also an interesting one, which has a spider-like shape:

• Technology and Free Software

  • Interview with Psy

    Hola! Happy Hacking to all hackers, DIY, Creators and tinkers out there. - So during the summer I got contacted my the news reporter that does hacking topics here in Spain, I know her from a long gime, we have a good relationship and she uses some of our services like mastodon,usenet,matrix etc. See told me that "Psy"/"EPSYLON" was interested in doing a interview with me, I 99% of the

  • Rosy Crow 1.4.0

    Due to breaking changes in the MAUI framework, the URL entry can no longer be smoothly animated as it had previously been. This is something that I'll be keeping an eye on in the hopes of fixing in the foreseeable future.

  • Programming

    • Random Line From File

      The problem here, assuming a unix file, is that one does not know how many lines there are, nor where the lines are. So one might think to get the number of lines, roll a random number in that range, then go back through the file to find and print that line number.