Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Standards/Consortia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Portugal: Political turmoil hangs over Lisbon Web Summit

Leftovers

• Old VCR ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Philippines: Ex-Senator Leila de Lima leaves jail

• CBC ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Non-existent trail removed from Google Maps after another rescue in Vancouver's North Shore mountains

• Idiomdrottning ☛ No to SEO

  SEO is like a shouting contest, a screaming contest. It’s trying to make a book with the most garish cover. Not into it. It never made sense to me logically.

• Gizmodo ☛ Aardman Animations Is Running Out of Its Iconic Clay

  The material is named after its creator Lewis Newplast, a schoolteacher who created it in his garden shed. The plasticine is easy to mold and able to maintain its shape. And once it’s gone, it’s gone: the outlet revealed Aardman is looking for a suitable replacement, or possibly considering creating its own substitute. As far as where they are on that front, it’s not discussed within the piece itself, and we likely won’t know until Aardman outright says as such, likely whenever that Wallace & Gromit film draws closer to release.

• The Telegraph UK ☛ Aardman is about to run out of clay – now the Chicken Run creators face a crisis

  Ever since its founding in the early 1970s, Aardman has moulded its characters from Lewis Newplast – a modelling material named after one Mr Lewis, an art teacher from Chislehurst who concocted the stuff in his garden shed.

  This Plasticine-like substance is an animator’s dream: it’s easy to mould, yet keeps its shape under hot studio lights. But in March this year, the only factory that made it, on the outskirts of Torquay, shut up shop. When its closure was announced, Aardman bought up every last block of Lewis Newplast that remained in the warehouse – enough for just one more film: the new Wallace & Gromit, coming in 2024. After that, until a suitable replacement can be found, or invented, that’s it.

• WhichUK ☛ Inflation on budget groceries outstrips other food and drink

  Overall annual food inflation has fallen to 9.5%, and butters and spreads are cheaper now than a year ago. However, budget-range groceries - which are relied upon by millions of those hardest hit by the cost of living crisis - have soared by 20% in a year.

• Education

  • James Koppel ☛ Book Review: A Philosophy of Software Design

    PoSD is best read as a tactical guide of how-to’s. About a quarter of it is spent on naming and comments, and much of the rest is about specific patterns. His few attempts to jump from tactical advice to principles are either done by trying to blur together similar-sounding tips, or are hamstrung by his inability to see the meaning of a program beyond the code (more on that later). He demonstrates the lack of principles comically in Chapter 19, where he promises to apply the books’ “principles” to several software trends, and then fills the rest of the chapter with standard (but solid) advice on unit-testing and OOP, with nary a reference to the rest of the book. On the whole, the book’s advice is higher-level than beginner books like Clean Code, but most of its contents will be familiar to a senior software engineer, and the novel parts are hit-and-miss.

• Games

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Pretty sneaky, sis

    The “I don’t wanna win against just a blunder” crowd, what’s the next step? Using checkmate as the analogy, they could make matemate chess where “no, you can’t make that move, that would lead to checkmate the next turn”, where the goal is to create a forced-mate-in-two situation because you could otherwise “blunder” into a checkmate. And then even that version of the game wouldn’t be enough, you’d have to make a matematemate version where you have to create a forced-mate-in-three to win, and so on. Why don’t you just put the whole world in a bottle??

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Antibiotic resistance in children on the rise

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Germany: 4.6 million adults addicted to gambling or at risk

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Nearly Two Dozen Toddlers Sickened by Lead Linked to Tainted Applesauce Pouches, CDC Says

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Fast-spreading Avian flu endangers more than just birds, but is there a growing risk to people?

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Dozens sickened with salmonella after eating cantaloupes in Canada, U.S.

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] B.C. reservist pleads guilty to 2 charges related to criticism of Armed Forces vaccine mandate

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Why men die younger than women

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] EU extends approval of the weedkiller glyphosate by 10 years

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Germany's top court annuls move to repurpose COVID funding

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Swedish Left Failed the Vulnerable During the Pandemic

    In this context, figuring out the most effective ways for us to face shared crisis together, in solidarity, is arguably one of the most important tasks that the global left faces. Here, the infamous case of the Swedish response to the pandemic stands as a stark example — and a cautionary tale. How did a country ruled by a social democratic party, supported by the Left Party in parliament, and nominally committed to legislating egalitarian and proworker policies end up being the poster child for an approach to the pandemic based on mass infection and natural herd immunity — an approach which left the working class and marginalized segments of society to fend for themselves as a deadly and unknown virus swept through the population?

    The Swedish pandemic response stands as a testament to the folly of basing our responses to global crises primarily on domestic political considerations, as well as to the danger that leftist movements become unmoored from their own basic values and principles.

  • Science Alert ☛ Children May Be 'Evolutionarily Primed' to Need More Than 2 Parents

    What is beyond debate, however, is that the nuclear family system, as Chaudhary puts it, "is a world away from the communal living arrangements of hunter-gatherer societies like the Mbendjele."

  • Science Alert ☛ Experts Warn Why We Need to Stop Treating Back Pain With Opioids

    Prescribing opioids for low back and neck pain can also cause harms ranging from common side effects – such as nausea, constipation and dizziness – to misuse, dependency, poisoning, and death.

    Our findings show opioids should not be recommended for acute low back pain or neck pain. A change in prescribing for low back pain and neck pain is urgently needed in Australia and globally to reduce opioid-related harms.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Is Noise Cancelling Bad for Your Ears?

    Noise-cancellation is fast becoming a staple feature for those shopping for new headphones and earbuds, as many users can see the benefits of cancelling ambient noise while on their daily commute or at the gym. But new research from the World Health Organization indicates that around one billion Gen Z and Millennials are at risk of hearing loss due to excessive use of headphones — so you might wonder if using noise-cancelling technology is helping or actively hurting your ears.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Meta’s responsible AI team disbanded as company shifts focus

    Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has dissolved its Responsible AI (RAI) team, which was tasked with ensuring the ethical and safe use of artificial intelligence across its products and platforms. The Information reported this development today, based on an internal post it accessed.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta disbanded its Responsible AI team

    Meta has reportedly broken up its Responsible AI (RAI) team as it puts more of its resources into generative artificial intelligence. The Information broke the news today, citing an internal post it had seen.

  • 600 Laid Off US H-1Bs Find Alternative — The Indian Panorama

    Canada is increasingly becoming a sought-after destination for H-1B visa holders affected by layoffs in the US tech sector. The

  • The Verge ☛ Sam Altman isn’t coming back to OpenAI

    After a weekend of negotiations to potentially bring back Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO following his shock firing, the company’s nonprofit board has gone another way entirely and named former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear as interim CEO, according to a person familiar with the matter. He will take over as CEO from Mira Murati, who was publicly aligned with Altman.

  • Sam Altman will not return to OpenAI despite investors’ attempts to reinstate him, he is moving to Microsoft

    Despite investors’ efforts to reinstate Sam Altman as OpenAI’s CEO, he will not return to the company, reports The Information. Influential investors, including Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital, pressured the board of directors to bring Altman back after his abrupt departure, which had a significant impact on the tech world. They also reportedly asked Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, to use its influence to reinstate Altman.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Update: Sam Altman reportedly won’t return as OpenAI CEO despite investor push

    A source also told The Information that Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, who is reportedly the one who pushed for Altman’s ouster, has told staff that Altman won’t return as CEO. Sutskever also reportedly said Emmett Shear, co-founder of video streaming site Twitch, which Amazon.com Inc. bought in 2014, will take over as interim CEO.

    Still, this may well not be the last word, given the influence and motivation of Microsoft, among other investors, who have appeared to support Altman.

  • India Times ☛ Sam Altman will not return to OpenAI, Twitch's Emmett Shear is interim CEO

    Altman will not return to the company as CEO despite efforts from the company's executives to bring him back, the report said, citing Sutskever. The report did not give any other details. Reuters could not immediately verify the statement cited by The Information.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Sam Altman will not return as CEO of OpenAI, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear to take his job: Report

    Reports of Sam Altman not returning as CEO comes amid speculations that Microsoft Corp., with more than $10 billion stake in the company, is working with investors including Thrive Capital and Tiger Global Management to bring back Altman.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Cruise Exec Omitted Pedestrian Dragging In Summary of Self-Driving Car Incident to California DMV, Email Shows

    A senior Cruise executive didn’t mention that one of his company’s self-driving cars dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in a summary sent to the director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles the morning after the October 2 incident, an email obtained by Motherboard shows.

    This provides concrete evidence that Cruise initially misled the state regulator about what actually happened during the crash. The California DMV said in its October 24 decision to revoke the self-driving car company's license to operate that Cruise omitted footage of the pedestrian being dragged by the car, which had come to a stop after the person was thrown into its path by a separate collision, in a meeting on October 3. Cruise flatly denied this allegation.

  • New York Times ☛ Cruise’s C.E.O. Quits as the Driverless Carmaker Aims to Rebuild Trust

    The resignation is a stunning fall from prominence for one of the tech industry’s most outspoken champions of self-driving cars. He leaves behind a company in deep crisis and an industry that is confronting increased public and regulatory scrutiny.

    Cruise pulled all of its driverless cars off the road after its license to operate them was suspended in California. With its costs spiraling, the company is considering layoffs. And it is awaiting a report from an outside law firm’s investigation into how it responded to a crash last month in which a Cruise car dragged a woman 20 feet.

  • The Register UK ☛ CEO of self-driving cab outfit Cruise parks his career

    At the time of writing, neither Cruise nor General Motors had posted any info about Vogt's departure.

    It's not hard to guess why he resigned: CEOs are supposed to do so after a string of SNAFUs like those listed above. The admission that Cruise cars are not fit to operate without a driver is an especially damning failure that suggests new leadership is needed to ensure Cruise can deliver on its mission.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Outrage after Taliban member speaks at German [sic] mosque

    Serap Güler, a member of Germany's federal parliament from Cologne who is also on the parliamentary commission into the Afghanistan mission, said she was "stunned" by the incident.

    "All the details of this matter must now be fully clarified," she told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

    A spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia administration also condemned the incident.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Can AIoT Replace Humans in Future Wars?

    This article conceptualizes the impact of AIoT on war in four categories: information and communication, fire control systems, cyber-attacks, and autonomous killer robots. Of course, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things are also used in other military fields such as logistics, training, simulation, surveillance, espionage, etc., which this article does not tackle. However, the content of current article partly match with C4ISR which stands for Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4) Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) in military terms. Finally, this article examines the limitations of artificial intelligence and whether it can replace humans or not.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ AI Journey is the talk of the world: Newsweek finds out whether Musk will come to Russia for the AI conference

    Having analyzed all the known facts on the topic, journalists concluded that Ilon Musk may indeed take part in AI Journey. However, only in two cases: either he will go to Russia secretly, or he will do it at the very last moment.

  • Truthdig ☛ If At First You Don’t Secede

    But unlike the old Confederates, they are not proposing to leave. The evolving strategy in 2023 is quite the opposite: By staying put, the right is focused on growing their philosophy and influence to the point where it will become the legitimate government — the union, if you will — and Democrats and others will be marginalized.

    This is much more ambitious, and more sinister, than breaking away and becoming a separate nation. The GOP wants to invert the picture that’s stood for 150 years and become the dominant force of the country, with everyone living by its rules. It’s a scenario in which the immoral will become acceptable, and the reasonable and humane will become fringe, even ridiculous. It’s the kind of complete victory the Confederates could have only dreamed of, but which the GOP, whose influence extends far beyond the South, has in its sights.

  • El País ☛ Texas prepares a radical law criminalizing immigrants

    House Bill (HB) 4 caused days of tension in the legislative body. The state House approved it in late October, on a Thursday at 4:00 a.m. The Republican majority prevailed over attempts by Democratic politicians to derail the proposal by Congressman David Spiller, who represents an upstate county. His proposal allows anyone to be detained at any time and place on suspicion of having illegally entered Texas, a state with a population of about 10 million people of Mexican origin.

  • BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] 91-year-old Syriac man fatally shot at Mardin home

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Syria ordered by ICJ to take action against torture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Sudan asks UN to end political mission immediately

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Ethiopia and Eritrea: Is a new war looming?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Patients evacuated after gang surrounds Haiti hospital

  • HRW ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] World Court Rules Against Syria in Torture Case

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] France issues arrest warrant for Syria's Assad — reports

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] National Interest: “It’s time to get out of Syria”

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] US Carries Out Air Strikes in Syria Against Iran-Linked Facilities

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] German police raid Islamist organizations in several states

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Rwandan genocide trial in France: Push for accountability

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Rwanda migration plan: What's the UK government's next move?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Sudan conflict: EU warns of 'another genocide' in Darfur

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] EURO 2024 qualifiers: Israel to play 'home games' in Hungary

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Shots Fired at Jewish School in Canada Again, Amid Tensions Over Overseas Conflict

  • International Business Times ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Shots Fired At Jewish School In Canada Amid Israel-Hamas War

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] US Marines on Okinawa ramp up jungle training

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Why are more Asian Americans buying guns?

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Newsweek ☛ Fact Check: Is Elon Musk Heading to Moscow?

    Newsweek has contacted X and Tesla media representatives via email for comment.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ First French ski reports open, but only at high altitude

    After the recent storms, "there is no more snow below 1,500 and 1,700 meters altitude and there has been a decline between 1,500 and 2,500 meters," said Gilles Brunot, director of the Chamonix office of Meteo France, the national weather service.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Wildfires Are Setting Off an Arctic Doom Loop

    The effects of thawing permafrost spread far beyond the far North. Wildfire’s impact on frozen permafrost propels a climate feedback loop: Wildfires release methane, which accelerates climate change, which causes more frequent wildfires—and repeat.

  • HRW ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] US National Climate Report Highlights Climate Harms to Pregnancy, Newborns

  • The Local SE ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Greta Thunberg in London court after climate demonstration arrest

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] British Trade Unions Are Organizing to Tackle the Climate Crisis

  • NL Times ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Prominent XR supporters withdraw after Gaza speeches at Amsterdam climate rally

  • NL Times ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Water board tax to rise next year due to climate change and inflation

  • The Local SE ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Sweden Democrats make U-turn and agree to support government climate targets

  • NL Times ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] About 70,000 people at Amsterdam climate march, largest in the Netherlands

  • NL Times ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Timmermans lashes out at Jetten: "nothing has been done for the climate"

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Quebec mini-budget shows CAQ's scattershot approach to tackling housing crisis, climate change

  • The Local SE ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Greta Thunberg slammed over pro-Palestinian statements at climate rally

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Amsterdam hosts large climate protest as elections near

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Amsterdam Marchers Demand Climate Action as Dutch Election Nears

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Greta Thunberg Brushes off Interruption at Massive Dutch Climate March Days Before Election

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-11 [Older] The next election will be a climate change election — because they all are now

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-11 [Older] How Researchers, Farmers and Brewers Want to Safeguard Beer Against Climate Change

  • Vox ☛ 2023-11-11 [Older] Joe Manchin deserves (some) credit for fighting climate change

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Waves of waste: The harsh truth about ocean plastic

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Almost all global warming indicators behind target: report

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Do plastic cleanups make a real difference?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • El País ☛ Will the Global South become a dumping ground for gas cars or an EV hotbed?

      “Countries in the Global South risk getting trapped in dependence on fossil fuels, which could lead to a reliance on other nations for transportation fuels. These fuel imports result in substantial capital and foreign currency loss,” said Ben Scott, the author of the Carbon Tracker report.

      The report analyzes 12 emerging economies — Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt, and Algeria. These countries have large numbers of ICE vehicles and spend billions every year importing transportation fuels. In many cases, they also lack the capacity to refine it, further worsening their trade balance. While Algeria and India are net exporters of refined petroleum products, these 12 countries as a whole imported $13.3 billion in transportation fuels in 2021.

    • CBC ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Ottawa's green grants program for homeowners is running out of money faster than expected

    • The Local SE ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] How Sweden wants to ramp up nuclear energy production in next 25 years

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Enhancing International Cooperation for Sustainable Energy Transition in Europe

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Indonesia Needs a Conductor for the Energy Transition Orchestration

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Native American Tribes Fight US Over a Proposed $10B Renewable Energy Transmission Line

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Why are India's roads so deadly?

    • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Teck Resources agrees to sell steelmaking coal business in deals valued at $9B US

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] India: Some 40 workers trapped after road tunnel collapse

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Berlin says goodbye to its East German trains

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] B.C. landowner's arson theory rejected as panel orders him to pay $450K for causing wildfire

    • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Deadly horse virus prompts cancellation of equestrian events across N.S.

    • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Global Ozempic shortage plagues Ontario diabetics and pharmacists

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Panic as circus lion roams Italian seaside town

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] U.S. union workers at General Motors appear to have voted down tentative contract deal

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Ontario to ban unpaid restaurant trial shifts as part of new labour law coming today

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Deutsche Bahn reduces trains, ends talks as union strikes

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Germany: Number of bankruptcies continues to grow

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] German rail union announces 20-hour train strike

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Germany: 20-hour rail strike leads to major disruption

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Germany: Rail strike ends after 20 hours

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Canadian rent prices hit new high for 6th month in a row, report suggests

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] This therapist can't afford her dream job — and gave it up so she could pay rent

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Tax havens: Corporations win big, but who loses?

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Office workers still aren't back in full force, so what's next for Canada's downtowns?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] EU: Gender pay gap still at 13%, commission says

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • International Business Times ☛ Meta Splits Up Its Responsible AI Team To Focus More On Generative AI

    Meta has reportedly split up its Responsible AI (RAI) team, which was formed to regulate the safety of its artificial intelligence (AI) ventures.

    According to an internal post cited by The Information, Meta will be putting more resources into generative artificial intelligence.

    The report further suggests the company will move most of the RAI members to its generative AI product team, while others will work on the company's infrastructure.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ More Advertisers Halt Spending on X in Growing Backlash Against Musk

    The entertainment company Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony have joined other prominent brands in halting their spending on X. IBM cut off its advertising on X on Thursday, while Apple, Lionsgate, the entertainment and film distribution company, and Paramount Global, the media giant that owns CBS, all paused their ads on Friday.

    The spending freeze comes as X has fought to win back advertisers who were wary of spending on the platform after Mr. Musk took it over a year ago and said he would loosen content moderation rules. Major brands tend to be cautious about placing their ads next to posts with offensive or hateful speech.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Biden and Xi hash out economic rivalry at rare talks

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-11 [Older] Decoding China: Xi and Biden have to find common ground

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] How the Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco is seen in Germany

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Trudeau and Xi exchange hellos at APEC summit but don't formally meet

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Canada PM Says He Hopes to Meet China's Xi One Day Once Tensions Defused

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Canada-India trade talks won't resume until India co-operates with Nijjar investigation, minister suggests

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-11 [Older] FBI seizes New York mayor's phones in corruption probe

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] King Charles launches new food scheme on 75th birthday

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Liberia: George Weah in presidential election runoff

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] Poland: Opposition politician elected speaker of parliament

  • Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Tesla Investors Call for Elon Musk to Be Suspended, Apple Pulls Ads on X

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Liberia: President concedes defeat in razor-thin vote

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Argentina election: Choosing between a rock and a hard place

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Germany's socialist Left Party fights for its survival

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] UK: David Cameron returns to government as foreign secretary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] US Supreme Court adopts ethics code amid increased scrutiny

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] YouTube will let musicians and actors request takedowns of their deepfakes

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] YouTube Cracks Down on Future 'AI Drakes' With Updated Policies

    • International Business Times ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] YouTube Set To Roll Out New Updates To Its AI Policy, What's Changing?

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] YouTube Now Sells the AI Soul of Your Favorite Musician

    • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] YouTube's first AI-generated music tools can clone artist voices and turn hums into melodies

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] From Fake Drakes to Robo-Weathermen, Here Are the Top AI Stories You Missed This Week

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Apple, Disney, IBM pull ads from X over antisemitic material

    • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Apple, Disney among brands reportedly pulling ads from X amid growing antisemitic content backlash

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Documenta committee resigns in wake of antisemitism claims

    • VOA News ☛ Distort and Deceive: One Pro-Assad Influencer's Disinformation War on Israel

      She focused on spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories about the United States, Israel and allies while whitewashing the actions of the Assad regime and Russia during the Syrian war.

      [...]

      Sulsi is a contributing commentator to Russia-state-owned outlets RT and Sputnik, and Iran’s state-run Press TV.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] YouTube will now let breastfeeding and twerking videos be monetized

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Lawmakers question Apple over cancellation of Jon Stewart's show

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] Bar Association Urged to Fight Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Voices

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] In Federal Lawsuit, Owner of Medical Marijuana Dispensary Says Mississippi Censors Business Owners

  • Project Censored ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Context, Connections & Cracks in the Facade of Propaganda: A Deeper Look at Israel/Palestine

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] DW's Tania Krämer recognized for outstanding journalism

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-15 [Older] 'Day of the Imprisoned Writer' remembers persecuted authors

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-14 [Older] India: Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy faces prosecution

  • The Dissenter ☛ Lawsuit Against Alleged CIA Spying On Assange Visitors: A Rare Court Hearing

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] Iran: Fears for the health of imprisoned Peace Prize laureate

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Quebec man alleges racial profiling, police brutality at Edmonton International Airport

  • CBC ☛ 2023-11-12 [Older] What's coercive control? This MP wants it criminalized after seeing the impact on her family

  • CBC ☛ WeWork has failed. Like a lot of other tech startups, it left damage in its wake

    But the collateral damage of startups celebrated for "disrupting" traditional industries can go far beyond investors — hurting not just the old guard but also customers who are stuck with what's left.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza aid paused amid telecom outage

• Monopolies

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Apple joins Meta and ByteDance in contesting the EU’s ‘gatekeeper’ designation

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] The Morning After: Apple will adopt RCS in 2024

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Apple will offer RCS support starting in 2024

  • TechRadar ☛ 2023-11-16 [Older] Apple Announces Intention to Support RCS Messages ‘Next Year’

  • Bloomberg ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Witness Testifies That Apple Gets 36 Percent of Google Revenue From Safari Search Deal

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-11-13 [Older] Google reportedly pays Apple 36 percent of search advertising revenues from Safari

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ StreamSafely: Anti-Piracy Campaign or Multi-Million Dollar Marketing Machine?

      A new phase of the StreamSafely.com anti-piracy campaign is underway. Visitors to the portal are advised that pirate streaming sites aren't what they seem and the content on offer acts as a smoke-screen for credit card fraud, identity theft, and so much more. But what about the entities behind the StreamSafely campaign; who are they and what's in it for them? Indeed, about that....

    • VOA News ☛ Artists Push for US Copyright Reforms on AI, But Tech Industry Says Not So Fast

      But, Perlmutter asks, as humans feed content into AI systems and give instructions to influence what comes out, "is there a point at which there's enough human involvement in controlling the expressive elements of the output that the human can be considered to have contributed authorship?"

      That's one question the Copyright Office has put to the public.

      A bigger one — the question that's fielded thousands of comments from creative professions — is what to do about copyrighted human works that are being pulled from the internet and other sources and ingested to train AI systems, often without permission or compensation.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Brrr

    It gets quite cold now in the mornings, and so the quest has gone from staying cool to keeping warm, as it does. After this year's summer however, I'm still not complaining.

    I was initially worried a few weeks ago when I reformatted and went over to Ubuntu, but I have since found it to be a really nice daily driver. There are no programs I miss from MacOS; in fact I found HomeBank, for one, which is really nice for keeping track of finances. I think Gnome is quite pretty and very usable, and it all feels much lighter than MacOS. That leaves me with one last machine running MacOS, and who knows how much longer Apple will support Intel.

  • Pretty sneaky, sis

    There is an old commercial for the boardgame “Connect 4” where the sister wins over her brother by the brother just plain not noticing an otherwise plain-as-day and straight-forward, direct victory attempt.

    To the consternation of boardgame snobs everywhere, who never want to win via just a blunder, who not only want to capture the king but actually create a checkmate position where no matter what the other player tries to do, it’s over. (“No, you can’t move your knight there, your king is in check”.)

    We’ve seen this in the eurogame scene, where some game groups have a culture of allowing infinite takebacks and even giving advice. “We want to play against you at your best”, they say, “that’s why we have this culture.”

  • Netflix's "Pluto" is wonderful

    My favorites are End of Evangelion, Texchnolyze, and Ergo Proxy. Serial Experiment Lain was cool too, but I spent most of my time just enjoying the atmosphere without having a clue what was happening.

  • Warm Regards

    Quite the community here. Been lurking without an account for the last few days or so. Lots of interesting musings around. Not sure if I'll be terribly active, mostly just lurk while sipping on my drink.

  • Gig pig

    Last night's performance was a blast. I somehow didn't know in advance that our friends who performed with us had a gig of their own later in the night at another venue that they wanted us to join in on. That was much simpler for us for being able to simply "plug in" instead of dealing with equipment. That said, I was up/out far too late for my age, especially sporting more than a few double Jameson's, and a THC gummy - always interesting to experience being able to sing and play guitar while unable to remember my name....

    But, whoa, I didn't awaken for good until 8:23am, which is pretty damned late for a more 5:00am-ish riser.

• Politics and World Events

  • “Woke commie PC bullshit”

    “OOP can be better for GUI contexts, and FP can be better for CLI contexts.”

    “‘OOP’? ‘CLI’? I don't know what those mean. Stop making up words.”

    “You don't have experience with computer programming?”

• Technology and Free Software

  • Fedora Workstation as my primary computer on my aging HP laptop.

    I think I've mentioned before that I use Fedora Workstation as my primary computer on my aging HP laptop. I've been running Fedora on this laptop since I believe Fedora 28 and I've pretty much upgraded in place all the way up to Fedora 37.

    I should note that I've always used the base Gnome Desktop...not because I particularly like it but because it just wasn't worth the time for me to switch. I run Gnome in classic mode and for the most part it stays out of my way.

  • on difficulty in video games

    first, a couple disclaimers: i'm not talking about the shitty social dynamics that often crop up online around difficult video games here. they're interesting and important and worth discussing, but they also aren't the focus of this post. in addition, most of my experience with difficult games comes from modded celeste, and some parts of this don't generalize very far beyond that. in particular, celeste is mainly about mechanical difficulty with relatively little emphasis on reaction time, which is very different from eg. puzzle or fighting games

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Lunatic drivetrains

      Remember three years ago when I made a gemlog post (one of the very few which doesn't also exist as a phlog post, due to uninsteresting historical details) about unconventional bicycle drivetrains[1], and I described 2x1 and 3x1 drivertrains (as in, 2 or 3 chainrings and a single rear cog) as being "definitely the lunatic fringe of drivetrains"?

    • Hello coincidence my old friend

      which had what seemed to be useful content for helping one write smol html, as it were.

      *Which*, in turn, had me wondering if maybe I should be doing me some bihosting/double-posting...? Keep the html tag overhead minimal? Or per Adele's html recommendations?

      Decisions, decisions....

  • Programming

    • the readability of soft-wrapped text

      i think there's something important that's usually missed when discussing soft-wrapped text: text width

      this might just be a me thing, but i find it really unpleasant to read anything long that's all that much wider than the standard 80/72 columns that hard-wrapped text is usually at. *something* between the person writing the text and the medium where it's being displayed should do this width-limiting, and when all the tooling for viewing text is built on the assumption that that'll happen as the text is written, it means that soft-wrapped text is really unpleasant to read

    • Ah, so that's the definition of a unit test

      Via The big TDD misunderstanding (2022) | Hacker News [3], “The Big TDD Misunderstanding. 💡Originally, the term “unit” in “unit… | by Oliver Wolf | Mediu [4]” (also via Lobste.rs [5])

      I think I finally have the answer to my question, “what is a ‘unit test?’ [6]” and … wow! And to think I was doing that all along at The Enterprise.

      When I wrote the regression tests, I set each test up to be independent—each test got its own unique test data in the various “databases” we were using (we weren't really using a database, but custom binary data files based off a periodic database dump) and in theory, we could have run the tests in random order. In fact, during my last year there, I almost added that feature to the regression test, but by then, I was so burned out with The Process™ [7] that I just never bothered. It's a shame that, because I think it would have been an interesting form of test to perform.