Distributions and Operating Systems

• BSD

Leftovers

• Games

  • Chris ☛ Poker is Surprisingly Generous

    That struck me as oddly generous, especially compared to my previous experience of generally losing money in poker, and the statistic that 60 % of players lose money.

    In this article I’m going to talk about no limit Texas hold’em, which is probably one of the more popular forms of poker and has been for a while. A lot of it may apply also to other variants.

  • Chris ☛ Computing Poker Win Rate From Sessions

• Standards/Consortia

  • [Old] Håkon Wium Lie ☛ Cascading Style Sheets

    The topic of this [dissertation] is style sheet languages for structured documents on the web. The hypothesis is that the web calls for different style sheet languages than does traditional electronic publishing. Further, the design of a style sheet language that fulfills the specific requirements of the web, namely Cascading Style Sheets, is described. The [dissertation] can be divided into a why part (Chapter 1-5), a how part (Chapter 6-9), and where to go from here (Chapter 10).

  • IEEE ☛ Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

    The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies including the Alto—the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface—and the first laser printer.

    The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a networking technology that allows high-speed data transmission over coaxial cables. Ethernet has become the standard wired local area network around the world, and it is widely used in businesses and homes. It was honored this year as an IEEE Milestone, a half century after it was born.

• [Old] Henrik Karlsson ☛ A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

  This gave me a first glimpse of the social mechanics of the [Internet]. Looking at the traffic data, and talking to readers, I could retrace how my words had traveled through the network, and I got a sense of why. I didn’t fully understand it; I don’t think anyone does. But like a scientist who’s got hold of an alien artifact, I proceeded by gleefully and semi-randomly pushing every button I could find to see what happened. I would think of a series of funny finger movements and then I’d say to myself, LOL I wonder what this combination does? And then I’d try.

• Zach Flower ☛ Sunday Reboot — November 26, 2023

  I've long been fascinated by the concept of weekly roundups. They've always felt like a great distillation of thoughts and intentions for the coming (or closing) week, and while I've enjoyed reading them from other writers, I've been hesitant to start my own through some irrational avoidance of "copying" someone else's awesome idea for myself.

• Riccardo Mori ☛ A long-overdue status update

  The issue turned out to be simple in nature, but since the system was failing silently, it took me a while before realising what was going on, and an additional little while to troubleshoot and resolve matters. The consequences have been a bit disastrous, though. Essentially, if you wrote me an email between mid-October and mid-November 2023, I couldn’t access it before 20 November or so, and it’s now part of a pretty sizeable email backlog I’m trying to go through in my spare time.

• Hackaday ☛ Walking Desk Is More Annoying Than A Standing Desk

  We’re often told that sitting is bad for our backs, for our necks, and even our general health. The standing desk aims to solve this by keeping us in a more vertical position while we work. [Joel Creates] took this a step further by creating a walking desk that’s motorized and keeps him on the move.

• Hackaday ☛ Retrotechtacular: Studio Camera Operation, The BBC Way

  If you ever thought that being a television camera operator was a simple job, this BBC training film on studio camera operations will quickly disabuse you of that notion.

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ A fullerene-like molecule made entirely of metal atoms

    In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they created the molecule by accident while they were conducting research experiments with antimony, potassium and gold atoms.

  • Science Alert ☛ Extraordinary Claims About Small-Brained Human Ancestor Overhyped, Say Experts

    Big claims need rock-solid evidence.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Tiny Speaker Busts Past Sound Limits With Ultrasound

    Conventional speakers work by moving air around to create sound, but tiny speakers that use ultrasonic frequencies to create pressure and generate sound opens some new doors, especially in terms of maximum achievable volume.

  • Hackaday ☛ 3D Printing A Nifty Sphere Without Supports

    [DaveMakesStuff] demonstrates a great technique for 3D printing a sphere; a troublesome shape for filament-based printers to handle. As a bonus, it uses a minimum of filament. His ideas can be applied to your own designs, but his Giant Spiralized Sphere would also just happen to make a fine ornament this holiday season.

  • Hackaday ☛ Come For The PCB Holder, Stay For The Tour Of FreeCAD

    PCB holders are great tools. Not only is the PCB Solder Fren from [PistonPin] a nice DIY design, it offers some insight into the parts design process with FreeCAD.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury

    “It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger and a policy expert at the Center for a New American Security who published a report in 2018, funded by the Defense Department, about the dangers of repeated blasts from firing weapons. “We’ve known for years that these weapons are dangerous. There are simple things we can do to protect people. And we’re not doing them.”

  • International Business Times ☛ Google Meet, Zoom, Teams Have Negative Effects On Brain, Heart, Study Finds

    The purpose of the study was to explore videoconference fatigue (VCF) from a neurophysiological perspective and understand how it impacts the human brain. Based on the neurophysiological data, which involved scanning the brains and hearts of the students, revealed that those who participated in the 50-minute video conferencing session showed major changes in the nervous system.

    The participants displayed increased brain activity, which is a sign of fatigue. Aside from this, the individuals exhibited reduced attention, which could be due to the intense cognitive demands of video conferencing.

  • Axios ☛ Paternity leave pays "lifelong dividend" in parental instincts, research finds

    By spending quality one-on-one time with the newborn, the changes observed in fathers' brains corresponds with a similar change in mothers' brains in response to parenting, caregiving, pregnancy and lactation, said psychologist and researcher Darby Saxbe.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ At Meta, Millions of Underage Users Were an ‘Open Secret,’ States Say

    Now the unsealed complaint, filed on Wednesday evening, provides new details from the states’ lawsuit. Using snippets from internal emails, employee chats and company presentations, the complaint contends that Instagram for years “coveted and pursued” underage users even as the company “failed” to comply with the children’s privacy law.

    The unsealed filing said that Meta “continually failed” to make effective age-checking systems a priority and instead used approaches that enabled users under 13 to lie about their age to set up Instagram accounts. It also accused Meta executives of publicly stating in congressional testimony that the company’s age-checking process was effective and that the company removed underage accounts when it learned of them — even as the executives knew there were millions of underage users on Instagram.

  • India Times ☛ Court document claims Meta knowingly designed its platforms to hook kids: report

    Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew - but never disclosed - that it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The complaint, originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.

    According to the reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens and said it doesn't design its products to be addictive to younger users.

  • Science Alert ☛ Our Brains Can't Actually 'Rewire' Themselves, Neuroscientists Say

    The extraordinary capacity for the brain to rewire itself after a stroke, an amputation, or sudden loss of vision or hearing has been shown repeatedly in studies over decades. At least, that's what we all thought.

    Now, writing in eLife, two neuroscientists – Tamar Makin and John Krakauer – argue that the most influential experiments in this field don't conclusively show that the brain can functionally reorganize itself.

  • Vox ☛ The US doesn’t have universal health care — but these states (almost) do

    Overall, the number of uninsured Americans has fallen from 46.5 million in 2010, the year President Barack Obama signed his signature health care law, to about 26 million today. The US health system still has plenty of flaws — beyond the 8 percent of the population who are uninsured, far higher than in peer countries, many of the people who technically have health insurance still find it difficult to cover their share of their medical bills. Nevertheless, more people enjoy some financial protection against health care expenses than in any previous period in US history.

  • JURIST ☛ Romania launches investigation into top government officials over vaccine procurement scandal

    The National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) of Romania announced Thursday the initiation of a criminal investigation into a high-profile case involving the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines targeting three individuals, including former Prime Minister Florin Cîțu and former Ministers of Health Vlad Voiculescu and Ioana Mihăilă, for alleged crimes of abuse of office.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China’s respiratory illness surge not as high as pre-pandemic: WHO official

    The surge was linked to circulation of several kinds of pathogens, most prominently influenza.

  • Science Alert ☛ China Faces Surge in Respiratory Illnesses: WHO Requests More Info

  • Science Alert ☛ There's One Simple Aspect of Everyday Life Linked to Better Wellbeing, Study Finds

    Easier said than done?

  • Science Alert ☛ Unusual Cluster of Eye Syphilis Cases in The US Sparks Worry

  • Science Alert ☛ Bizarre Discovery of Intact Housefly in Man's Intestines Shocks Doctors

    There are just two ways it could have gotten there.

  • Science Alert ☛ Cutting Back on One Amino Acid Increases Lifespan of Middle-Aged Mice Up to 33%

  • Science Alert ☛ Honeybees Suffer Unnecessarily in Human-Made Hives, Study Finds

    We're causing them needless distress.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Can you pass the wasabi? It may help enhance memory in seniors, research says

    Wasabi has 6-methylsulfinyl hexyl isothiocyanate, known to be anti-inflammatory, antioxidant.

  • Project Censored ☛ Oil and Gas Proximity Linked to Substantial Risks

    Researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) measured the effects of oil- and gas-drilling sites on the health of pregnant women living within six miles of drilling operations during a thirteen-year period. The study, reported in DeSmog in January 2022, was the first that specifically examined the impacts of oil and gas drilling on hypertension in pregnant women.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Bryan Cantrill ☛ What punch cards teach us about AI risk

    I (finally) read Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. This book had been on my queue for years, and I put it off for the same reason that you have probably put it off: we don’t like to confront difficult things. But the book is superlative: not only is it fascinating and well-researched but given the current level of anxiety about the consequences of technological development, it feels especially timely. Black makes clear in his preface that IBM did not cause the Holocaust (unequivocally, the Holocaust would have happened without IBM), but he also makes clear in the book that information management was essential to every aspect of the Nazi war machine — and that that information management was made possible through IBM equipment and (especially) their punch cards.

  • ABC ☛ Pentagon steps on AI accelerator as age of lethal autonomy looms

    Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China. The ambitious initiative — dubbed Replicator — seeks to “galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in August.

  • El País ☛ Pentagon’s AI initiatives accelerate hard decisions on lethal autonomous weapons

    While its funding is uncertain and details vague, Replicator is expected to accelerate hard decisions on what AI tech is mature and trustworthy enough to deploy - including on weaponized systems.

  • Simon Willison ☛ Prompt injection explained, November 2023 edition

    One of the areas Nikita Roy and I covered in last week’s Newsroom Robots episode was prompt injection. Nikita asked me to explain the issue, and looking back at the transcript it’s actually one of the clearest overviews I’ve given—especially in terms of reflecting the current state of the vulnerability as-of November 2023.

    The bad news: we’ve been talking about this problem for more than 13 months and we still don’t have a fix for it that I trust!

  • Security Week ☛ Pentagon’s AI Initiatives Accelerate Hard Decisions on Lethal Autonomous Weapons

    Artificial intelligence employed by the U.S. military has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces’ missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia. It tracks soldiers’ fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Wired ☛ Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records

      The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED. Records show that the White House has provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure—a maze of routers and switches that crisscross the United States.

    • [Old] New York Times ☛ Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s

      For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.

      The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.

    • Wired ☛ US Privacy Groups Urge Senate Not to Ram Through NSA Spying Powers

      The 702 program is controversial for its collection of communications of “US persons.” The program legally targets roughly a quarter million foreigners each year, gathering the content of their text messages, emails, and phone calls, but collaterally intercepts an unknown but presumably large amount of American communications as well. This interception takes place with the compelled cooperation of US telecommunications companies that handle [Internet] traffic at stages along global networks.

    • Off Guardian ☛ How your DNA is being used against you

      What started as a way to monitor violent criminals or sex offenders, is now a way to collect the DNA of any “person of interest”.

      But that isn’t all.

      Over the years, scientists have been perfecting their methods for collecting DNA and have turned their attention to environmental DNA, or eDNA.

• Defence/Aggression

  • RFERL ☛ One Killed, 21 Injured In Suicide Attack On Market In Pakistan

    One person was killed and 21 others were injured, including Pakistani soldiers, in a suicide attack on November 26 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in northwestern Pakistan, authorities said.

  • France24 ☛ Sierra Leone government says 'calm has been restored' after armed clashes

    Sierra Leone's president said most leaders of attacks on the nation’s main military barracks and prisons had been arrested and normalcy had returned across the country after a 24-hour curfew was relaxed to a dusk-to-dawn lockdown.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Beijing frets over Taiwan opposition split as parties go on the attack over China ties

    Split opposition gives DPP increased chance of victory in Taiwan's first-past-the-post system.

  • RFA ☛ Asia's communist regimes are breaking their intergenerational social contracts

    China, Laos and Vietnam have set aside norms on power transfer and kept elders in charge.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ The proliferation of the far-Right in Europe

    Populist parties with Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant, and anti-globalist beliefs that stayed in the margins before the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, have once again found a favourable wind following the 2015 surge in refugee arrivals. A high inflation rate exacerbating the cost of living has given them another boost. Migrants and minorities, as always, have become a convenient scapegoat for economic uncertainties currently seen all over Europe, compounded by the war in Ukraine, fluctuating oil prices, and rising unemployment. Leaders espousing populist and nationalist narratives are trying to harvest this discontent.

  • France24 ☛ Far right’s Geert Wilders seals shock win in Dutch election after years on political fringe

    Beating all predictions, the PVV won 37 seats out of 150 on Wednesday, coming in well ahead of a Labour-Green alliance led by former EU commissioner Frans Timmermans and the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, which slumped to 24 seats .

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea lashes out at critics and hints at more satellite launches

    It also criticised a joint statement by the US, South Korea and other countries aimed at its recent satellite launch.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea deploys troops, weapons near border after military pact suspended: Yonhap

    North Korea has deployed soldiers and heavy weapons at guard posts near the border with South Korea following the suspension of a military accord between the countries, news agency Yonhap reported on Monday, citing South Korean military officials. REUTERS

  • RFA ☛ N Korea restores armed guard posts along border with the South

    Pyongyang blames U.S., S Korea for inter-Korean deal termination.

  • RFA ☛ China, Vietnam hold joint patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin

    The two countries hold two joint patrols back-to-back amid tensions in the South China Sea.

  • JURIST ☛ China expands mosque closure campaign beyond Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch reveals

    The Chinese government has increased mosque closures in the northern Ningxia region and Gansu province, according to a report released on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. The government has previously faced international scrutiny for its treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, a Chinese Muslim ethnic minority.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • AntiWar ☛ Four Myths About Putin

      In the Russo-Ukrainian war, US propaganda has exploited a time tested syllogistic sophistry. First you identify the nation at war with the individual who leads the nation. It is not Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is Putin’s war on Ukraine. Then you identify the individual with Hitler.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia downs over 20 drones in Moscow and surrounding regions, one crashes into residential building — Meduza

    • France24 ☛ Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian attacks a day after drone barrage on Kyiv

      Russia said Sunday it had downed Ukrainian drones over four regions, including Moscow, as well as two Ukrainian missiles over the Azov Sea headed for Russia, a day after Kyiv reported what it called the largest drone attack on Ukraine since Moscow launched its offensive in February last year.

    • RFERL ☛ Deputy Head Of Ukraine's Chess Federation Killed In The War

      Artem Sachuk, a renowned chess player and vice president of Ukraine's Chess Federation, has been killed in action while defending his country against Russia's unprovoked invasion, the federation announced on November 26.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Shelling Of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson Regions Wounds One

      Russia shelled civilian infrastructure and settlements in Ukraine's southern regions of Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk overnight, regional officials said on November 27.

    • RFERL ☛ Pope Francis Reflects On 'Tormented' Ukraine Marking Holodomor Remembrance Day

      Pope Francis on November 26 called the Holodomor a “lacerating wound” that has been made even more painful for Ukraine by the ongoing war.

    • RFERL ☛ Report: Russia Orders Arrest Of Spokesman For Facebook (Farcebook) Parent Company

      Russia has reportedly ordered the arrest of the chief spokesman for Facebook (Farcebook) parent company Meta, accusing him of promoting terrorism.

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Women Protest Long Deployments for Soldiers in Ukraine

      “Make way for someone else,” a new grass-roots movement demands as women challenge the official argument that the mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukrainian Attack Cuts Power to Some Russian-Occupied Areas

      The assault on energy infrastructure, a significant theater in the war, followed a large-scale Russian drone attack on Kyiv.

    • RFERL ☛ Three Hungarian Citizens, One Russian Among Hostages Released By Hamas

      Three of the hostages released on November 26 by Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU, are Hungarian citizens, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook.

    • YLE ☛ "It's politics and we are pawns": How Russia is pushing migrants towards Finland

      Three recently-arrived migrants tell Yle about how Russian authorities facilitated their trips to the Finnish border, including Telegram promotions, Yandex taxis and the requirement to buy a bicycle.

    • YLE ☛ Monday's papers: Call to close eastern border, Finnish armour sales, Arctic chill

      A top item in many morning newspapers is a call by Finns Party leader and finance minister Riikka Purra for Finland to completely close the border with Russia.

    • YLE ☛ PM: Finland prepared to shut entire eastern border

      The Finnish Prime Minister says Russia is shamelessly exploiting citizens of third countries.

    • AntiWar ☛ Reflections on Another Truce: Why There Is Still No Peace on Earth

      After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later as Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an abrupt end. The world had descended into a “77-Years War”.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian government to hold heads of highly subsidized regions, including Chechnya and annexed Ukrainian territories, responsible for shrinking federal deficit — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Part of Ukraine’s Russian-annexed Donetsk region without power after Ukrainian shelling, says Kremlin-appointed ‘DNR’ head — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ West to provide Ukraine with military ships for escorting vessels carrying grain in Black Sea, says Zelensky — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ The Witch Hunt Underway in Russia

      Expressing feminist views in Russia is now an increasingly dangerous thing to do.

    • Meduza ☛ Finnish government reportedly planning to fully close border with Russia — Meduza

• Environment

  • APNIC ☛ What if the cloud was under the sea?

    The other problem I see is that subsea cables typically break out into a ‘headend’, which itself then has to forward traffic into many different kinds of DCs. Presumably, you can make some kind of grand central station subsea terminus to interconnect more and more of these units, but I suspect that the class of service that it makes sense to locate at the head will tend to identify itself and exclude many other models. Including, of course, the ones where technical staff need to physically enter the room and interact with the machines!

  • The Straits Times ☛ China turns to households in fight to slash carbon emissions

    Local governments are encouraging citizens to ditch cars, plant trees and cut energy use with rewards schemes.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ Airloom’s Whacky Wind Clothesline Turbine Idea

      What if you don’t put airfoils on a central, spinning axis, but instead have them careen around a circular track? If you’re a company called Airloom, you’d say that it’s a very cheap, very efficient and highly desirable way to install wind-based generators that can do away with those unsightly and massive 100+ meter tall wind turbines, whether on- or offshore. Although grand claims are made, and venture capital firms have poured in some money, hard data is tough to find on their exact design, or the operating details of their one and only claimed kW-level prototype.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Beijing court begins compensation hearings for MH370 victims’ families

      Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared nearly 10 years ago.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China says it values follow-up to MH370 incident

      China values the follow-up to the incident of MH370, a Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing nearly 10 years ago, and hopes all sides maintain close communication and properly handle this issue, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Chinese families of missing Malaysia MH370 plane seek compensation in court

      A Beijing court on Monday began compensation hearings for the Chinese relatives of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared over the Indian Ocean almost a decade ago, the plaintiffs said.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Herd of elephants step on car with family inside on Malaysia highway

      The passengers in the car, along with the driver, were unhurt.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s First Lady Kim Keon-hee explains dog meat ban plan to Queen Camilla

      The Asian country said earlier in November that it plans to ban the eating of dog meat.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean city turns to matchmaking to boost low birth rates

      Blind-dating events are one of many policies Seongnam city has rolled out to improve birth rates.

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea to double tax refund benefit for foreign tourists from January

    The latest move is aimed at boosting the tourism industry.

  • RFA ☛ Chinese firms suffer shrinking profits amid challenging recovery

    Foreign-invested companies were hardest hit: official data.

  • YLE ☛ Consumer confidence in Finland holds firm, but remains weak [Ed: When sales are low the national media speaks about feelings and sentiments instead]

    Respondents to the monthly confidence survey noted in particular their concerns for the current unemployment situation in Finland, which over 60 percent said was likely to deteriorate.

  • YLE ☛ Helsinki's construction slump could mean future housing shortage

    The number of apartments built in Helsinki over the next two years will clearly be below the peak when more than 7,000 per year were completed.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ NIO to slash workforce by 30% as it bets on robots and AI

    Ji said that Nio's ultimate vision was to achieve full automation, or a labor-free system, at its manufacturing sites in the future, relying on advanced AI and robotic technologies. He, however, admitted that it took work to give a specific time frame for this goal.

  • RFERL ☛ Report: Russia Orders Arrest Of Spokesman For Facebook Parent Company

    [...] The decision against Andy Stone was revealed on November 26 by Russian news site Mediazona, which said the Justice Ministry order was made in February 2023. [...]

  • Meduza ☛ Meta spokesperson placed on Russia’s wanted list, ‘arrested’ in absentia for ‘aiding terrorism’

    Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry has placed Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on the federal wanted list. It appears he has been on the list since February of this year, according to Mediazona, who found the information in the ministry’s database.

  • India Times ☛ Russia puts Meta spokesman Andy Stone on wanted list

    Stone is listed on Russia's interior ministry's list of wanted people, without further detail.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Hindustan Times ☛ ‘Misinformation is our bigger concern than deepfake’: Karnataka IT minister after Centre's move

      “The Union government must set its priorities right. There is no doubt about the dangerous consequences of deepfake, but the fact is that misinformation is the bigger issue for a democracy. The Supreme Court has already expressed its concern on misinformation that is being circulated across social media but what has the union government done?” Priyank told reporters.

    • The Strategist ☛ Singing the CCP’s tune: foreign influencers and China’s propaganda strategy

      In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, China faced international scrutiny over its draconian control measures and the nature and origin of the pandemic.

    • The Register UK ☛ Beijing fosters foreign influencers to spread its propaganda

      That bolstering of legitimacy happens in China and elsewhere. The policy brief quotes a state media worker as saying Beijing aims to "cultivate a group of 'foreign mouths,' 'foreign pens,' and 'foreign brains' who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments" at home and abroad.

      At home, foreign influencers are useful even when they counter Chinese voices: according to the policy brief, a foreigner's account was promoted by Beijing as it painted a rosier picture of COVID containment measures than posts by Chinese citizens.

    • Off Guardian ☛ Lies, Lies, and More Lies

      I was also a bit tired of being seen by friends and family as a kook. Being “interested” in all this was one thing, but actually believing it was another. The JFK event is probably the granddaddy of conspiracy theories. If you include alien stuff like UFOs, abductions, captured space crafts, etc. maybe it is number two, but regardless, it is up there. No decent person believes such crap.

      I think being convinced that the official story on such a massive event simply was not true had a deep impact on how I saw the rest of the world. Although this realization did not sink in as deeply as it should have (Covid allowed the full realization—yes, I must admit, very late in the game) it did indeed plant the seed that compels me to question just about everything that is in the mainstream.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ Twitter Files Reveal Pressure to Suppress Alternative Views

    Twitter has banned selected political voices, supported covert government operations, censored posts exploding the myth of large-scale Russian interference in the 2016 election, silenced anti-vaccine activists, and more. The following examples of the released files, as presented by journalist Matt Taibbi at Racket News, suggest the extent of government intrusion into Twitter’s operations:

  • Meduza ☛ Russian education minister says West waging ‘information war’ against Russia’s new school history textbook — Meduza

  • New York Times ☛ How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life

    Google has a zero-tolerance policy for child abuse content. The scanning process can sometimes go awry and tar innocent individuals as abusers.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New Statesman ☛ Chris Atkins: “If we solved reoffending, we’d prevent 80 per cent of all crimes”

    He spent two and a half years inside, and while he found the experience devastating (“I teetered on the brink of madness a few times”), since being released he has put it to good use. In 2020 he published A Bit of a Stretch, based on the diaries he kept while at Wandsworth. Time After Time looks at the question of incarceration from the other side: what happens to offenders once they are released, and why do so many of them end up going back to prison?

  • BIA Net ☛ Protesting greenhouse workers in İzmir climb rooftop on 98th day

    Five women workers were detained after threatening to commit suicide if their demands were not met.

  • RTE ☛ President Michael D Higgins calls for RTÉ documentary to be shown in schools and watched by all, ahead of tonight’s broadcast

    Powerful RTÉ documentary reveals the story of 12-year-old Patrick McDonagh who died by suicide

  • New York Times ☛ A Final Wave of Sex-Abuse Lawsuits as One-Year Window Closes in New York

    Since the Adult Survivors Act was passed, more than 3,000 civil suits have been filed, some aimed at politicians and others at institutions including hospitals and jails.

• Monopolies

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australian regulator calls for new competition laws for digital platforms

    Also proposed: Mandatory obligations on digital platforms to tackle scams, harmful apps, fake reviews.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Several Piracy-Related Arrests Spark Fears of High-Level Crackdown

      A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. A long-running investigation involving Denmark's Special Crime Unit appears to be the common denominator. Coincidentally, several groups have stopped releasing.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Rightsholders Reported Five Million Unique 'Pirate' Domain Names to Google

      Over the past several years, copyright holders have asked Google to remove URLs from five million unique domains. These include blatant pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay, but also legal streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+. What stands out most is that a tiny fraction of all domains are responsible for the majority of the trouble.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — EXMOSUI Wordo: JIBES

  • Going under

    in the thought where I was born lived a no-ho-tion of being free

  • See also: the more things change

    My wife repurposed the bulk of the Thanksgiving leftovers as "turkey pot pies", now frozen, ready for future ease and joy of consumption.

    I plowed through a bunch of "ctrl-c" gemlogs yesterday. It was the usual exploration of pretty much nothing, mostly "hello-world"-grade half-assedness.

    In a way I get it because writing seems to be rocket science for most people. But I admit wanting to discover gobs of younger people way smarter than me expressing themselves in new and exciting plethoric ways as some sort of reassurance an apocalypse isn't imminent.

    But, no. When it wasn't "hello world", it was brief expressions of cluelessness a la "coming soon", "what is this place?", "okay so I made a page, now what?", "this is so cool", a single link back to the same page, etc.

• Technology and Free Software

  • A bare metal C64 emulator

    Well, sunday was somewhat frustrating due to the need to finish some paperwork that should have been done an eternity ago so i needed something to vent this frustration. In an lucky occurence i remembered that i wanted to look into the BMC64 project i had stumbled upon some time ago... and i remembered, that i have a raspberry pi 2 lying around in a drawer...

    So, what IS the BMC64? Well, its an "bare metal" fork of the VICE C64 emulator running on an raspberry pi. Why is that cool? Because you have nearly no boot time, no need to shut the thing down after usage and on the whole it just feels like an real C64.