Leftovers

• [Old] CoryDoctorow ☛ Schizmogenesis

  This notion grabbed me, because it explained so much about the changes in attitudes I’d seen among my (erstwhile?) friends and allies in the “progressive” world during the Trump years and through the covid pandemic. Specifically, it explained how people who considered themselves politically liberal or even leftist were transformed into defenders of voting machine companies and the pharmaceutical industry, and champions of the FBI.

• Zach Flower ☛ Over-Engineering a #100DaysToOffload Counter in Jekyll

  Alright, so I've re-kicked off this #100DaysToOffload challenge, and despite the fact that it's only been like 2 days, I've remembered just how tedious counting the posts can be. I mean, I've gotta open my last post, copy the challenge footer, paste it in the new post, increment the counter... ugh, too much work.

  So, I did what any good engineer would do, and I decided to automate it.

• Hackaday ☛ Ham Radio Memes In The 1970s

  If you have a fondness for old and unusual ham gear, [Saveitforparts] has a great video (see below) about a Robot slow scan receiver he found at a junk store.  Slow scan or SSTV is a way to send pictures via low-bandwidth audio, such as you often find on the ham bands. The idea is you take a picture, send some squeaks and blips over the air, and in about 8 or 10 seconds, a single frame of video shows up at the receiver. Hams aren’t the only ones who used it. The Apollo missions used an SSTV system in some cases, too.

• Hackaday ☛ Neopixels? Try Liquid Nitrogen To Color Shift Your LEDs Instead

  If you’re like us, you’ve never spent a second thinking about what happens when you dunk an ordinary LED into liquid nitrogen. That’s too bad because as it turns out, the results are pretty interesting and actually give us a little bit of a look at the quantum world.

• YLE ☛ Hundreds of Finns emigrate to Norway every year

  More Finns are now moving to Norway, instead of Sweden, in search of better earning opportunities, reports Finnish news agency STT on Saturday.

• Science

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-07 [Older] Alexander Bogdanov Was One of Russia’s Great Revolutionary Thinkers and a Sci-Fi Pioneer

  • Off Guardian ☛ Dr. Richter’s Diabolical Experiment

    Ever heard of Dr. Curt Richter? Neither had I. During the time in the United States where nearly anything was done in the name of science (these days, not so much, now anything is done in the name of money) Dr. Curt Richter, a renowned physiologist and behavioral scientist, conducted his seminal experiments [...]

    Dr. Richter was a hero in the science world, of course. What he determined in his little reprehensible experiment is that at least rats were capable of expending energy to stay alive if they were led (falsely) to believe they would at some point be saved, i.e., their efforts to stay alive could continue almost indefinitely if they believed those efforts would pay off.

  • Science Alert ☛ Each of Your Nostrils Smells The World Uniquely, Study Reveals

    Sniffing in stereo.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mastering Your Body's Internal Clock Could Be The Key to Success

    Are you in sync?

• Hardware

  • [Repeat] Security Week ☛ Intel Sued Over ‘Downfall’ CPU Vulnerability

    A 112-page class action complaint was filed this week by plaintiffs represented by Bathaee Dunne. News of a Bathaee Dunne-led lawsuit against Intel over the Downfall vulnerability emerged in late August, when the law firm announced that it was preparing to file a complaint.

    The plaintiffs say the Intel CPUs they have purchased are “defective” because they are either left vulnerable to cyberattacks or they have significantly slower performance due to the vulnerability fixes made available by the chip giant.

    The complaint says Intel has known about speculative execution vulnerabilities in its processors since 2018, when cybersecurity researchers disclosed the existence of two attack methods named Meltdown and Spectre.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Fastest 3D Printers Benchmarked: Top Printers Ranked By Output Time

    3D printers are getting faster. To find out who rules the roost, we tested the leading FDM-style printers and looked at how long it took them to print a ‘benchy’ model.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Mysterious 6502 Apple 2 Simulator

    Nice, visual simulators of CPUs such as the 6502 are usually made much later and with more modern tooling than what they simulate. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if a simulator runs on the very hardware it’s simulating?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Hill ☛ America’s veterans didn’t sign up for privatized health care

    Soaring costs and a significant decline in accessibility, especially for veterans in rural areas, are part of private care’s vast dangers. The existing private, for-profit community care program has already led to fragmentation of care, causing challenges in securing medical records from private providers and leading to redundant tests, which results in a waste of money and resources. Privatization erodes the VA’s ability to maintain control over the quality of care veterans receive, as community care providers lack the specialized expertise that VA providers possess in meeting our veterans’ unique needs.

  • New York Times ☛ The Only People Who Understand What a Caregiver Goes Through

    Mentoring programs bring together those just starting to care for family members with dementia and those who have been coping for some time.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Naloxone aids fight against evolving opioid epidemic

    From 2014 to 2022, approximately 551,772 naloxone kits have been distributed throughout Ohio through Project DAWN, an Ohio Department of Health program – generating 68,586 known overdose reversals.

  • YLE ☛ Silja cancels cruises over legionnaires' disease fears

    Ferry firm Tallink Silja is cancelling departures after legionnaires' disease was discovered aboard one of its ships.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Science Alert ☛ The World Is Running Out of Data to Feed AI, Experts Warn

    Similarly, the stable diffusion algorithm (which is behind many AI image-generating apps such as DALL-E, Lensa and Midjourney) was trained on the LIAON-5B dataset comprising of 5.8 billion image-text pairs. If an algorithm is trained on an insufficient amount of data, it will produce inaccurate or low-quality outputs.

    The quality of the training data is also important. Low-quality data such as social media posts or blurry photographs are easy to source, but aren't sufficient to train high-performing AI models.

  • India Times ☛ Deepfakes reveal dark side of AI, call for stringent laws

    If you have seen former US President Barack Obama calling Donald Trump a "complete dipshit", or Zuckerberg having "total control of billions of people's stolen data" — and more recently a deepfake video of actor Rashmika Mandana that went viral on social media - you probably know what deepfake is.

  • The Strategist ☛ How to win the artificial general intelligence race and not end humanity

    These developments indicate that governments are starting to take the potential benefits and risks of AI equally seriously. But as the security implications of AI become clearer, it’s vital that democracies outcompete authoritarian political systems to ensure future AI models reflect democratic values and are not concentrated in institutions beholden to the whims of dictators. At the same time, countries must proceed cautiously, with adequate guardrails, and shut down unsafe AI projects when necessary.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ Meta, YouTube face criminal spying complaints in Ireland

      Two weeks ago, Hanff filed a civil complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission against YouTube's browser interrogation system, which detects ad blocking software and refuses to play videos unless adverts are allowed or subscription money handed over. The regulators are right now waiting on a reply from Google to provide an update on the status of that claim.

    • Pierre Equoy ☛ Pixel 8: the good, the bad, and the Google

      I still needed a smartphone, so I went ahead and bought the Pixel 8.

      And, as I expected, even though the hardware seemed great, the software was a nightmare.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa’s informal sector is ditching cash fast

      Card payment growth is muscling in on cash and outstripping other payment methods in South Africa’s informal economy, new research shows.

      The digitisation of payments in the cash-driven informal economy is shining a light on consumer behaviour in what is often thought of as the country’s invisible or “dark” sector.

    • Futurism ☛ Police Scanned Beyoncé Concert for Pedophiles, Terrorists

      Michael said the police department had a facial recognition van parked outside a concert hall in Cardiff on May 17, with the system comparing attendees' faces to a watch list of suspected terrorists and pedophiles. Footage, he said, was kept for a maximum of 31 days.

    • BBC ☛ Beyoncé's Cardiff gig crowd was scanned for paedophiles

      A live facial recognition camera works by comparing faces with a "watch list" generated by police. The CCTV footage is recorded and kept for up to 31 days.

      The use of the cameras has been criticised by human rights campaigners.

    • The Register UK ☛ Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

      The Movement for an Open Web (MOW), an organization that has lobbied against Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative by claiming it's harmful to rival [Internet] advertising businesses, has filed a complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over Google's IP Protection proposal.

      IP Protection, previously referred to as "ip-blindness" or "Gnatcatcher," is a proxy system similar to Apple's Privacy Relay. It's designed to run Chrome browser connections through two proxies, one operated by Google and one operated by a third-party (eg, Cloudflare), so that the true public IP address of the user is obscured, hopefully thwarting attempts to track them around the web using that address.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Omicron Limited ☛ World temperatures will blow past Paris goals this decade, asserts new study

    The study, which is published in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change, asserts that many previous forecasts of future warming have used faulty assumptions about the sensitivity of the Earth's atmosphere to greenhouse-gas levels. They also say that recent major reductions in aerosol pollutants, which reflect energy back into space, is admitting more solar radiation to the surface, supercharging the rate of warming.

    Scientists have known since the 1800s that greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane warm the Earth's surface, and that their abundance changes naturally as well as from human actions. Today, due to human emissions, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, has reached levels that have not existed for millions of years. At about 420 parts per million in 2023, levels are about 50% higher than in preindustrial times. The result has been a rise in the global average temperature of about 1.2°C, or 2.2°F.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU launches TikTok, YouTube child protection probe

    It said it wanted to know what measures YouTube and TikTok had implemented to comply with the DSA, especially with regards to the protection of children.

    The commission said it asked for information on the firms' "obligations related to risk assessments and mitigation measures to protect minors online, in particular with regard to the risks to mental health and physical health, and on the use of their services by minors."

    The commission said that it will announce next steps based on an assessment of the companies' replies, which could include the "formal opening of proceedings."

  • Quillette ☛ Gaza, Islam, and the West

    The question of the place of Islam in Western culture is particularly acute in France—home to the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe. In 2016, Pew Research estimated that 8.8 percent of the French population was Muslim, and that this could grow to as much as 18 percent by 2050. Since most elections are won by smaller margins than this, Muslims may—if they form an organised voting bloc—play an influential if not decisive role in French elections in the future. Who is likely to profit from this? And how might Islam manifest itself politically?

    There are two principal possibilities. The first is that Muslims form an alliance with the progressive Left, a scenario imagined in Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel Submission. In that book, Mohammed Ben Abbes, leader of the Muslim Fraternity, beats Marine Le Pen in the presidential election in an alliance with the Socialist party and implements Sharia. The novel ends with François, a Sorbonne professor, settling in to a surprisingly comfortable life of submission to the regime.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa to miss ‘legally binding’ 2030 emissions goal

    South Africa will miss its binding 2030 carbon emissions targets under the Paris climate agreement, three senior government officials confirmed, as the country plans to run eight coal-fired power plants for longer than planned.

    South Africa is the world’s 11th biggest greenhouse gas emitter and has one of the world’s highest per capita emissions.

  • Salon ☛ Far-right MAGA theocrats: Most dangerous threat to America

    While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — which seems to have swallowed the evangelical movement while also embracing it (a T-1000 morphing into Sarah Connor is just about the right image) — is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Two Women Died on an Alaska Mayor’s Property. No One Has Ever Been Charged.

    On a subzero Monday morning in March 2020, police found another woman dead at the ex-mayor’s property.

    Two years earlier, the body of 25-year-old Jennifer Kirk lay curled at the foot of a bed, a rifle on the floor, strangulation marks on her neck and a bullet hole beneath her chin. City police swiftly closed the case, declaring it a suicide.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian City Blocks Protest By Soldiers' Relatives, Citing Pandemic Restrictions

    The mayor’s office of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk has rejected an application by relatives of mobilized soldiers fighting in Ukraine to hold a demonstration, citing measures instituted to combat the spread of COVID-19.

  • TruthOut ☛ Texas Police Put an 11-Year-Old Into Solitary Confinement

  • TruthOut ☛ Today Let’s Honor the Veterans Who Have Turned Against the US War Machine

  • New York Times ☛ The Beached Philippine Ship That Is Angering China

    After multiple maritime clashes, the Philippines invited journalists on a mission to resupply the Sierra Madre. A reporter for The Times was given rare access.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese vessels engage in high-seas chase of Philippine boat carrying journalists

    As a Philippine Coast Guard rubber boat carrying journalists sped towards Filipino troops on a grounded navy vessel in the disputed South China Sea, three Chinese speed boats gave chase.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ No, Nvidia Isn't Breaking GPU Sanctions Against China, Says Analyst

    Analyst first back at claims that Nvidia is circumventing US Hey Hi (AI) GPU sanctions against China. We dive deeper into the context.

  • Hackaday ☛ NVIDIA Trains Custom AI To Assist Chip Designers

    AI is big news lately, but as with all new technology moves, it’s important to pierce through the hype. Recent news about NVIDIA creating a custom large language model (LLM) called ChipNeMo to assist in chip design is tailor-made for breathless hyperbole, so it’s refreshing to read exactly how such a thing is genuinely useful.

  • New York Times ☛ In Veterans Day Speech, Trump Promises to ‘Root Out’ the Left

    The former president said that threats from abroad were less concerning than liberal “threats from within” and that he was a “very proud election denier.”

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-09 [Older] Treasury's Adeyemo Says 'Far Better' to See Russia Buying Tankers Than Tanks

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-08 [Older] Russians not collectively to blame for Ukraine war: Human rights expert

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-07 [Older] US Commerce Dept Suspends Exports of 3 Companies Over Russia Sales

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-07 [Older] NATO suspends key Cold War treaty after Russia pulls out

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-06 [Older] The Hurdles of Modernization: Russia’s Unlikely Path Forward

    • NL Times ☛ 2023-11-06 [Older] Dutch products ending up in Russia via Turkey

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-06 [Older] Russia appeals Olympics suspension to international court

    • New York Times ☛ Johnson Pitches Bill to Avert Government Shutdown That Faces an Uncertain Fate

      The measure would extend funding for some agencies through late January, and for others until early February. It omits funding for Ukraine or Israel.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Scott Brady Checked In on Investigations into All of Rudy Giuliani’s Ukrainian Oligarchs

      Rudy Giuliani solicited Hunter Biden dirt from three corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs: Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Dmitry Firtash, and Mykola Zlochevsky. Scott Brady's efforts to "vet" dirt on Hunter Biden checked in with all three investigations.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Launches Missile at Kyiv for First Time in Weeks, Ukraine Says

      The attack was part of an overnight barrage that suggested Moscow was testing air defenses before another potential winter campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

    • Meduza ☛ Washington Post: Ukrainian colonel coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack: The officer, currently in a Kyiv detention center, denies any involvement — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ One Man’s Mission to Give Soviet World War II Soldiers Decent Burials

      Konstantin Dobrovolsky searches for the remains of soldiers left to rot on the battlefield almost 80 years ago. Then he had to bury his own son, who fought in a war he despises.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Germany set to double its Ukraine military aid under Scholz plan: Report

      German chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition has agreed to double German military aid for Ukraine next year to 8 billion euros ($8.54 billion), Bloomberg News reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says Situation In South, East 'Remains Difficult' Amid Russian Onslaught

      Ukraine’s military late on November 11 said the situation in the east and south of the country “remains difficult,” citing dozens of Russian air strikes and rocket attacks, even as Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the liberation of the strategic city of Kherson.

    • France24 ☛ Russian missile strike targets Kyiv, Ukraine marks one year since Kherson city's liberation

      Russian forces targeted Ukraine’s capital as part of an overnight bombardment felt across the country, local officials said Saturday. In the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, residents on Saturday celebrated the recapture of Kherson city from Russian forces a year ago, the last major shift of the front line.

    • RFERL ☛ IMF Staff, Ukraine Reach Agreement On $900 Million In Funding Disbursement

      Staff from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Ukrainian officials reached agreement on an updated set of economic and financial policies for the second review of the four-year Extended Fund Facility to allow disbursement of $900 million in funding, subject to approval by the IMF board.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Drones Intercepted Over Moscow and Smolensk Regions, Russian Military Claims

      The Russian Defense Ministry said late on November 10 that air-defense forces had intercepted two Ukrainian drones over the territories of the Moscow and Smolensk regions just before midnight.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian Investigative Committee opens terrorism case after freight train derails in Ryazan region — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Sabotage Suspected After Russian Freight Train Derails In Ryazan Region

      Russian authorities said sabotage is suspected after a freight train with 19 wagons derailed early on November 11 in the Ryazan region, injuring at least one railway employee. The news comes on the same day that another suspected sabotage incident was reported at a Russian munitions factory.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Treasury Chief Warns Beijing: Chinese Firms Aiding Russia Face 'Significant Consequences'

      U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on November 10 that the U.S. government had seen evidence that Chinese firms may be aiding in the flow of equipment to Russia's war effort despite Western sanctions.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • TruthOut ☛ Elon Musk Wants Me Fired. The People of San Francisco Want Him Taxed.

• Environment

  • US News And World Report ☛ In UN Talks for a Global Plastic Treaty, Delegates to Face off Over Production Limits

    The world is currently producing about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, with less than 10% of it being recycled, according to the UN Environment Programme, choking landfills and despoiling oceans. That produced amount is set to surge in the coming decade, as oil companies, which often also produce plastics, look to new sources of revenue amid the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

    Today, about 98% of single-use plastic - like bottles or packaging -is derived from fossil fuel, according to the U.N. Environment Programme.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-08 [Older] Russia’s Dynamic Energy Cooperation with Africa

    • Ruben Schade ☛ The Economist fails to defend car dependency

      This whole article was a lesson in lies and statistics. By hand waving about speed, accessibility, and diversity, they attempted to paint what they admit is an “addiction” as a good thing, by saying it makes society “fairer and more efficient”. They failed.

      One could argue the Economist got what they wanted out of this, thanks to a click-bait title and links to their journalism (such as it as). You might be right. But we need to tackle bad ideas like this.

    • YLE ☛ Possible Icelandic eruption won't impact flights, says Finnish expert

      Iceland has declared a state of emergency as earthquakes rock the country.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ Haunting Animation Shows All The Fires Burning in Northern Australia The Past 2 Months

      "Pretty unfathomable".

    • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Origins of North America's 'Last Primate' Finally Emerge

      We never knew where it came from.

  • Overpopulation

    • Associated Press ☛ Mexico City imposes severe, monthslong water restrictions as drought dries up reservoirs

      The Mexican National Water Commission and mayor announced the moves at a news conference, but officials did not report the cuts on social media until just four hours before they took effect.

    • REFORMA ☛ Opinion | Out of sight, out of mind, out of water.

      More troubling, though, is the reality that the two nations have yet to ink an agreement addressing how these underground resources might be managed, shared, exploited, or protected. In fact, groundwater has long been neglected in Mexico-US political relations. Transboundary aquifers are excluded from the existing treaty regime, rarely appear on the binational agenda, and have only sporadically received the focus of federally funded research. Without cooperation, these resources are doomed to dwindle, jeopardizing the viability of the region’s communities, economic growth, and environment.

• Finance

  • Softonic ☛ More layoffs in the video game industry: Warframe studio dismantles its publishing department

    The problematic situation in the video game industry persists, with numerous layoffs taking place. The Warframe studio, Digital Extremes, has announced staff layoffs and the permanent closure of its game publishing and distribution wing, focusing exclusively on development.

    This has a significant impact, particularly on Digital Extremes’ latest title, Wayfinder. The maintenance and distribution phase of Wayfinder will be handed over to Airship Syndicate, which will assume full control of the game. In this way, Digital Extremes will substantially reduce its workload and workforce.

  • Tech Giants Implementing Job Cuts: Google, Amazon, Snap, and Others Restructure Workforces

    As the festive season approaches, a cloud of uncertainty hovers over numerous tech professionals, courtesy of recent job cut announcements from major players like Google, Amazon, Snap, and more. The impact of these layoffs extends across product management, consumer services, and engineering roles globally, affecting employees in Latin America, North America, and Europe.

  • Which companies are not laying off? [Ed: You know this industry is tanking when you see headlines like these]

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ For Both Trudeau and Biden, Polls Suggest an Uphill Political Path

    The economy, and particularly inflation, has soured voters on both leaders, polls indicate, though well in advance of upcoming votes.

  • JURIST ☛ EU court rules Austria communications regulation does not apply to foreign platforms

    Google, Meta and TikTok, all of which have subsidiaries established in Ireland, challenged the law in Austrian courts in June 2022. The Bundesgesetz über Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Nutzer auf Kommunikationsplattformen (Austrian Communication Platforms Act 2021) contained provisions seeking to protect users of communication platforms. The act attempted to regulate practices of all “domestic and foreign service providers which provide communication platforms with the intention of making a profit,” with exceptions based on low national usership and low profit.

    Article 3(2) of the EU’s electronic commerce directive stipulates that “Member States may not … restrict the freedom to provide information society services from another Member State,” subject to exceptions under Article 3(4), which include public policy, the protection of public health, public security and the protection of customers.

    The court held that the platforms are only subject to Irish law, as this is the country they are established in. It highlighted the effect allowing a member state to restrict foreign services would have on the EU’s core principles of mutual trust, mutual recognition and the internal market, which it found the directive sought to preserve.

  • Federal News Network ☛ The cultural shift that’s needed to see greater ROI in cyber

    Acting National Cyber Director in the Office of the National Cyber Director Kemba Walden recently stated, “The success of the national cybersecurity strategy will be measured in part by the way companies get a return on their investment in building resilience.”

    The same holds true for federal agencies – the more ROI they’re able to see in their cyber investments and zero trust strategies, the more resilient we’ll all collectively be. So how can agencies adopting this outlook not only make smarter cyber investments but also ones that help them realize a greater ROI on existing investments?

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ Why I'm Not Getting a Humane AI Pin

    Thinking about it for a while this last week I realized it’s because it confuses multiple different problems.

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple might have to pay that €13B EU tax bill after all

    For those having trouble recalling the nature of the disagreement, it reaches back a few years, beginning with a decision in 2018 that told Apple to hand over the aforementioned €13 billion to Irish tax officials after the European Commission decided Apple and Irish authorities had together broken state aid rules.

  • The Straits Times ☛ ST Picks: 6 things to know about disgraced Malaysian MP Syed Saddiq

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australian minister touts Tuvalu security and migration pact

    Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the pact showed that Australia was a "genuine, reliable" regional partner.

  • RFERL ☛ Kosovar, Israeli Teams Seek To Focus On Soccer As Balkan Nation Steps Up Security

    Kosovar police said on November 11 that they had stepped up security measures a day before the Euro 2024 qualifying soccer match between Kosovo and Israel, banning materials with religious and political content around and near the stadium in the capital, Pristina.

  • France24 ☛ Macron to skip anti-Semitism march amid political bickering, but will attend in ‘thoughts’

    French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not join a march on Sunday against anti-Semitism, but would attend it in his "thoughts". Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she plans to attend the rally, triggering a round of bickering by political parties amid a surge in anti-Semitic incidents across France.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Moscow Prosecutor’s Office launches investigation into Russian YouTuber Yury Dud for ‘discrediting’ army — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ European University at St. Petersburg charged with participating in activities of ‘undesirable organization’ — Meduza

  • TruthOut ☛ Columbia Suspends Pro-Palestine Student Groups Amid Crackdown on Free Speech

  • Reason ☛ Speech Defending Attacks on Civilians: A Thought Experiment

    I've heard some suggest that it's proper for universities to expel students for publicly defending the Hamas murders. (This has included both public universities and private universities that had pledged to protect student free speech.) Others have suggested that faculty members who defended the murders be fired. And there have been calls for nonacademic employers…

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ "Brand safety" killed Jezebel

    The main purpose of the culture war isn't immiserating marginalized people – that's its effect, but its purpose is to distract low-information turkeys (working people) so they'll vote for Christmas (the ongoing seizure of power by American oligarchs). For the funders of conservative movement politics, the cruelty isn't the point, it's merely the tactic. The point is power: [...]

  • VOA News ☛ Turkey’s Media Regulator Votes to Order DW to Obtain License

    The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) ruled on the move in a majority vote, saying the German broadcaster must comply with a Turkish licensing regulation enforced in 2019.

    RTUK has previously moved to block DW’s content in 32 languages under its dw.com domain, along with VOA Turkish over the refusal by both media outlets to obtain a license.

    Both international broadcasters said previously they could not comply with the regulation because of censorship concerns.

  • JURIST ☛ HRW: Burkina Faso conscription plan to muzzle dissent from journalists and organizations

    The interim military authorities in Burkina Faso claim that the conscription orders are justified under the “general mobilization” plan. This year-long plan was declared on April 13 this year by Captain Ibrahim Traore, Burkina’s transitional president who came to power in a coup, as a measure to combat increasing terrorism in the country and recapture 40 percent of the country’s territory, which is controlled by jihadists.

    The plan gives power to authorities to conscript people from the age of 18 if needed in the fight against jihadists. It also aims to give the authorities “all necessary means” to counter a spate of violent acts that are attributed to fighters associated with the Islamic State (IS).

  • The Hindu ☛ Journalists asked to uphold dignity of the profession

    Minister for Public Works and district-in-charge for Belagavi Satish Jarkiholi has called on the journalists to uphold the dignity of the profession through their impartial reports that throw light on the maladies and problems in the society.

  • CPJ ☛ ‘Our kids miss their mom’: Husband of journalist Alsu Kurmasheva speaks out about her detention in Russia

    Kurmasheva is the second U.S. journalist to be held by Russia this year, after Russian authorities arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges in March.

  • New Statesman ☛ Zombie news: the strange resurrection of the local paper

    On 8 November, journalists at the UK’s biggest commercial news publisher, Reach, joined a web meeting in which the company’s CEO, Jim Mullen, announced the latest wave of redundancies: 450 jobs would go, of which around 320 would be journalists. In what seems to have been a technical oversight, staff were able to comment on the livestream; as Mullen spoke, anonymous commenters asked why Mullen (whose experience lies mainly in the gambling industry) couldn’t spare some of his £4m salary, 174 times that of a typical reporter, and why his pay was so high when the company’s share price had fallen significantly. Another simply asked: “How long until we are all unemployed?”

    [...]

    Posing as a prospective advertiser, I asked PR Fire if it would be possible to run local politics stories on both sites. I stipulated that I would have to have complete control over the text and pictures in the stories, and that they would not be marked as advertising. To any editor, such a request should be taboo – but one of PR Fire’s directors guaranteed that my ads would run unedited, “not marked as sponsored or ad”, and that I would also have control over how the stories were presented on social media.

    In further emails, another PR Fire employee described how the pieces would be syndicated by news aggregators. Because these aggregators regarded them as news, published by an editorial website, these paid-for articles would receive “guaranteed syndication to Google News, MarketWatch, Reuters, DowJones & LexisNexis”, they wrote, as well as to “reputable news sites” including Microsoft Network or MSN, which is, at 750 million visits per month, one of the biggest websites in the world. Being featured on a site like this costs an extra £200, and also helps advertisers to move their narratives further up in Google search results. “MSN will look like editorial,” one email assured me.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Futurism ☛ The Guy Behind "Shrek" Says AI Is Going to Wipe Out Human Jobs in Animation

    "In the good old days, you might need 500 artists and years to make a world-class animated movie," added the "Shrek" producer. "I don't think it will take 10 percent of that three years from now."

  • Rolling Stone ☛ SAG-AFTRA Reveals How Studios Will Handle AI Replicas of Living and Dead Actors

    According to the deal, companies must request consent before making digital replicas of actors and must disclose what the replica will be used for. Actors will also receive compensation for the digital replicas.

    “We were engaged in a very serious fight with big companies over what was going to happen with respect to the use of generative AI to create what we call synthetic fake performers,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said.

  • Craig Murray ☛ Fighting Back Against the State

    It may seem hopeless, but we have to continue to hold back the tide of fascism with all our might. This letter is self-explanatory, and I think its staid legal argument brings out the absurdity of deeming me a terrorist danger to the UK.

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ "Top 10 Beast TV Reseller" Faces Lawsuit For Selling Pirate IPTV Packages

      Pirate IPTV service Beast TV shut down in 2020 in response to a lawsuit filed in Canada by several Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and Bell Media. A lawsuit filed Thursday in the United States claims to target a former 'Top 10' Beast TV reseller who allegedly still sells Beast TV-branded subscriptions. When Beast was shut down almost three years ago, an announcement on the defendant's alleged site, posted under a name that matches his, claimed the service was still alive.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — AEINXRO Wordo: OUSEL

• Technology and Free Software

  • This week — Updating Blog Pages, Grinding in Granblue Fantasy, and Looking for DRM-Free Music

    I've updated most of this blog's pages, grinded for a new perpetuity ring in GBF, made some progress in Pixel Cat's End and Pixpet, and attempted to find online stores that sell digital DRM-free music.

    Hello, everybody! This is just a short rundown of my week; at work, I got assigned to manage an orientation that's scheduled to take place very soon, while I'm still assisting with other training programs. Hence, I've been fairly exhausted during the weeknights again.

  • Move @ Around the Screen

    A basic roguelike task is to get an @ moving around a screen. Here it is done in 16-bit assembly for the i386. Probably you will want QEMU unless you have an i386 lying around (and one that is compatible with this code. Various documentation indicates that there be bugs in PC BIOS land). nasm is required to assemble the binary. And cat.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Bubble v7.0: Subspace Views, Grouped Posts, New Feed Options and User Actions

      It has been four months since the previous Bubble feature update. This is plenty of time to observe how I and others have been using the system and think of potential improvements. This release makes substantial changes to show useful information that was previously unavailable, gives you more control over what is displayed on the front page, and applies a host of smaller tweaks to improve general usability.

  • Programming

    • Fantasy Python Dependency Management Wishes

      Nothing in this article refers to real Python examples. This is a collection of thoughts on how I wish managing dependencies in Python worked; not how it actually does.

    • Ready-made regexp replacers

      Here are five Emacs functions that let you do stuff to words, vars, lines, sentences, or paragraphs.

      They’re called replace-word, replace-line, replace-paragraph, replace-var and replace-sentence. They have the same semantics as replace-regexp does, i.e. if the region is active it only affects stuff in there, otherwise it’ll affect from point to end-of-buffer.