Leftovers

• Light Blue Touchpaper ☛ RIP Ross Anderson | Light Blue Touchpaper

  Someone else will undoubtedly say it much better than I will here but one of us has to break the very sad news: Ross Anderson died yesterday.

• Techdirt ☛ Details Emerge Of Facebook’s Long History Of Spying On Encrypted User Communications Across Different Apps And Service

  Last week you’ll recall that after a closed-door intelligence briefing, some members of Congress leaked word to Axios that they were “shocked” by various TikTok behaviors.

• Pete Brown ☛ On not engaging with people who are wrong on the internet

  More and more often of late, I am finding that the best course of action when I run across someone or something online that I disagree with is to roll my eyes and move on.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Adrianna Tan

  This is the 31st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Adrianna Tan and her blog, popagandhi.com

  Adrianna's blog was suggested by Winnie Lim in her interview, back in February. I love discovering new blogs thanks to recommendations. I especially love to see how the various blogs all connect and influence echother. The web, the best social media platform.

• Matt Fantinel ☛ Thinking of a redesign

  I recently wrote about my website’s 5th anniversary, and made a little retrospective of its past layouts. Which made me realize it has looked pretty much the same for the last 3 or 4 years.

• RTL ☛ Becoming basic: Song lyrics are getting simpler, more repetitive: study

  You're not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

  Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music fans everywhere.

  A team of European researchers analysed the words in more than 12,000 English-language songs across the genres of rap, country, pop, R&B and rock from 1980 to 2020.

• James G ☛ Rediscovering routines

  I like the ritual of making the tea. Sometimes, I notice I have some dishes to put away, so I do that while I am making the tea. I love putting dishes back in their place. The metallic sound the spoons and forks make when I put them back in their tray is oddly delightful. I feel relaxed. All I need to do is put the utensils in their place.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Project Gemini ☛ Project Gemini

    Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents. That's not a new idea, but it's not old fashioned either. It's timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class concept, not a vestigial corner case. Gemini isn't about innovation or disruption, it's about providing some respite for those who feel the internet has been disrupted enough already. We're not out to change the world or destroy other technologies. We are out to build a lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader's privacy, attention and bandwidth.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Against All Odds, Japan’s Toppled Moon Lander Is Still Alive

    "According to the acquired data, some temperature sensors and unused battery cells are starting to malfunction," the recent post reads, "but the majority of functions that survived the first lunar night was [maintained] even after the second lunar night!"

    As this latest update indicates, it's clear that SLIM is, for all its upside-down-ness, faring way better on the Moon than, say, Odysseus, its privately-manufactured and publicly-funded American counterpart that was officially pronounced dead earlier this week.

• Education

  • Approach with Alacrity ☛ 101 things I would tell my self from 10 years ago

    10 years ago, I started my freshman year of college. This is the advice I needed to hear, not the advice you need to hear. In fact, some of it may be actively bad for you. See Should you reverse any advice you hear?

  • Ben Tsai ☛ Career Advice

    I've been counseling graduate students recently on their job searches, now that the CMU MHCI design capstone has wrapped up. I consolidated some of the messages I've been giving into 10 points: [...]

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Toshiba M4K Group microcontrollers for motor control get expanded flash & memory capacity

    Toshiba has included eight new products with 512KB/1MB flash storage capacity and four packages in its M4K Group of Arm Cortex-M4-powered microcontrollers. The M4K Group is part of Toshiba’s TXZ+ Family Advanced Class, consisting of five groups of low-power, high-performance 32-bit microcontrollers.

  • Hackaday ☛ Video Killed The Radio Alarm Clock

    For decades now, MTV has been on a bizarre trajectory given its original name was an acronym for Music Television. In the original days in the 80s and 90s it kept mostly true to its name, but starting around two decades ago they expanded into reality and other non-musical television programming and have now left it largely behind. Plenty of those who grew up in its heyday have an understandable amount of nostalgia for the channel as a cultural touchstone, and [Derf] used MTV archival footage to build a video alarm clock which helps him keep in tune with the past.

  • Hackaday ☛ Experiencing Visual Handicaps And Their Impact On Daily Life, With VR

    Researchers presented an interesting project at the 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces: it uses VR and eye tracking to simulate visual deficits such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and other visual diseases and handicaps.

  • Hackaday ☛ Electrospinning Artificial Heart Valves

    When you think about additive manufacturing, thoughts naturally turn to that hot-glue squirting CNC machine sitting on your bench and squeezing whatever plastic doodad you need. But 3D printing isn’t the only way to build polymer structures, as [Riley] shows us with this fascinating attempt to create electrospun heart valves.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ 101st Airborne first Army unit to field Next Generation Squad Weapons

    The weapons, which soldiers spent more than 25,000 hours developing and testing, are set for use by close combat forces such as infantry, special operations, scouts, combat engineers, combat medics and forward observers. The weapons and optics will drop the “X” in their names once fielded, Army Times also reported.

  • ABC ☛ Harvard removes book binding made from dead woman's skin from library

    Arsène Houssaye’s "Des destinées de l’âme" was published in 1879, however, the volume in question was bound in human skin by French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland and has been in the University's collection since 1934, according to Harvard's announcement Wednesday.

    The book's premise is a reflection on the soul and life after death, and a handwritten note by Bouland inserted into the volume states that "a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering," according to the University.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • El País ☛ The benefits of shutting up

    Journalist Dan Lyons published a book last year called STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut, which asks the question, “Do we really need everyone on this planet sharing all their opinions about everything all at once?” Lyons is quoting YouTuber Bo Burnham, whose question forms the main theme of the book. Amid the constant noise, staying silent is not only generous to others, it’s therapeutic for oneself. It’s also a key skill for professional growth since restraint of the tongue helps you make fewer mistakes and offers health benefits. Trying to cut through all the noise to present your views can be stressful and frustrating. People who steer clear of controversy often earn more credibility.

  • Gizmodo ☛ A Toxic Grass Is Spreading in the U.S., Threatening Livestock

    The disorder, fescue toxicosis, costs the livestock industry up to $2 billion a year in lost production. “Fescue toxicity is the most devastating livestock disorder east of the Mississippi,” said Craig Roberts, a forage specialist at the University of Missouri Extension, or MU, and an expert on fescue.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Federal News Network ☛ White House sets ‘binding requirements’ for agencies to vet Hey Hi (AI) tools before using them

    The Biden administration is calling on federal agencies to step up their use of artificial intelligence tools, but keep risks in check

  • Wired ☛ Here’s Proof the AI Boom Is Real: More People Are Tapping ChatGPT at Work

    Not everyone agrees, and in recent months there’s been a backlash. AI has been oversold and overhyped, some experts now opine. Self-styled AI-critic-in-chief Gary Marcus recently said of the LLM boom, “It wouldn’t surprise me if, to some extent, this whole thing fizzled out.” Others claim that AI is mired in the “trough of disillusionment.”

  • The Register UK ☛ HPE bakes LLMs into Aruba control plane

    Instead, the LLMs are part of Aruba Network Central's AI searching function. In other words, it's basically a chatbot baked into the search field at the top of the web interface. Type a question in and the LLM spits back a contextualized response – or so it's hoped.

    Aruba, like many in the wired and wireless LAN arena, has been integrating machine learning-based analytics and other functionality for years now for things like traffic analysis and anomaly detection.

  • Matt Webb ☛ Who will be the new babysitters for my new needy AI apps? (Interconnected)

    So we’ve got traditional jobs to be done plus the pseudo-social interaction that AI allows.

  • Quartz ☛ OpenAI is nerovus Voice Engine cloning tool will be used in scams

    It’s not clear what kind of training data was used to build Voice Engine, a sore spot for AI companies that have been accused of violating copyright laws by training their models on protected works. Companies like OpenAI argue their training methods count as “fair use” under U.S. copyright law, but a number of rights holders have sued, complaining they weren’t compensated for their work.

  • Quartz ☛ How AI chatbots are censored and what they won't say

    Gizmodo asked five of the leading AI chatbots a series of 20 controversial prompts and found patterns that suggest widespread censorship. There were some outliers, with Google’s Gemini refusing to answer half of our requests, and xAI’s Grok responding to a couple of prompts that every other chatbot refused. But across the board, we identified a swath of noticeably similar responses, suggesting that tech giants are copying each other’s answers to avoid drawing attention. The tech business may be quietly building an industry norm of sanitized responses that filter the information offered to users.

  • Quartz ☛ AI metal detectors come to New York City subways

    As for how the AI comes into play, well that wasn’t made clear in the demonstration. Evolv, the maker of the metal detectors, claims on its site that AI develops patterns of what an object is based on its shape and metal content. This lets the detectors quickly determine if a metal item is a cell phone or a gun. Who knows what happens if someone has a gun on them shaped like an iPhone?

  • The Atlantic ☛ The End of Foreign-Language Education

    It later becomes clear that their language revolves around allegories rooted in the Tamarians’ unique history and practices. Even though Captain Picard was translating all the words they were saying, he “couldn’t understand the metaphors of their culture,” Krebs told me. More than 30 years later, something like a universal translator is now being developed on Earth. But it similarly doesn’t have the power to bridge cultural divides the way that humans can.

  • Futurism ☛ Grindr Working on Chatbot You Can Sext With

    The company partnered with custom chatbot startup Ex-human in December. The plan at the time was to create "AI wingmen," per Bloomberg, to help users date other living humans.

    But Grindr is now reportedly looking to take things a lot further. According to Platformer, the company is busy rewriting its terms of service to allow chatbots to be trained on a user's DMs if they consent, laying the groundwork for "AI boyfriends" that can flirt, sext, and be in a "relationship" with paying users.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI and Trust

    A 15-minute talk by Bruce Schneier.

  • Futurism ☛ AI-Powered "Family Guy" Stream Devolves Into Endless Screaming

    The reason behind this bizarre behavior is pretty straightforward and seemingly an open secret among streamers.

    On its wiki, AI Peter lists some "common gags and running jokes."

    "The AI Language Model that AI Peter uses does not like parsing special characters in prompts and will frequently output 'hallucinated' nonsensical phonemes and sounds in response to being directly prompted to pronounce these characters," reads the entry.

    And characters like an asterisk or semicolon cause characters to have a so-called "stroke."

  • Ben Tsai ☛ AI: Has the Horse Left the Barn?

    llms are not designed to tell us what is true. they don't lie or truth-tell or hallucinate. they output information that sounds good and coherent. relating to them as agents with reason is dangerous and harmful. couple that with the fact that these major LLMs players are not transparent about the data they are trained on, and that it is perhaps impossible to secure the data of these models, we're headed down an unnerving path.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] US FTC Could Bring Suit or Reach Settlement With TikTok Over Privacy Probe, Says Source

    • Engadget ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Authorities reportedly ordered Google to reveal the identities of some YouTube videos' viewers

    • Axios ☛ Congress bans staff use of Microsoft's AI Copilot chatbot

      Driving the news: The House's Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor, in guidance to congressional offices obtained by Axios, said Microsoft Copilot is "unauthorized for House use."

      • "The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services," it said.

      • The guidance added that Copilot "will be removed from and blocked on all House Windows devices."

    • India Times ☛ Meta Platforms: Meta cannot delay US FTC from reopening privacy probe, court says

      Meta Platforms cannot delay the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from reopening a probe into alleged privacy failures by its Facebook unit while the company pursues a lawsuit challenging the agency's authority, a U.S. court ruled Friday.

      The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its order found that Meta had not shown its challenge was likely to be successful. The court said Meta has "not met its heavy burden of showing entitlement to an injunction pending appeal."

    • TechCrunch ☛ Facebook snooped on users' Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal | TechCrunch

      Facebook’s engineers solution was to use Onavo, a VPN-like service that Facebook acquired in 2013. In 2019, Facebook shut down Onavo after a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use Onavo so the company could access all of their web activity.

      After Zuckerberg’s email, the Onavo team took on the project and a month later proposed a solution: so-called kits that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific subdomains, “allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage,” read an email from July 2016. “This is a ‘man-in-the-middle’ approach.”

      A man-in-the-middle attack — nowadays also called adversary-in-the-middle — is an attack where hackers intercept internet traffic flowing from one device to another over a network. When the network traffic is unencrypted, this type of attack allows the hackers to read the data inside, such as usernames, passwords, and other in-app activity.

    • Pedestrian Group ☛ Glassdoor Is Less Anonymous Than Ever Before

      Glassdoor built its company on allowing employees and former employees to leave honest, anonymous reviews, and did not always require users to provide their name in order to leave them. Now, to be clear, there’s no recorded instance I could find of an anonymous post having a name added to it, and thank goodness for that. (I have reached out to Glassdoor and will update this post if I hear back.)

      But anyone who wants to keep their criticism of a current or previous employers on the down low—say, anyone who went out of their way to write a Glassdoor review without giving themselves away—should take notice of these policies, which attach your real name to an account. Glassdoor’s policies say it uses your name and address “for verification purposes only, to make sure everyone is who they say they are.” Despite that, Glassdoor was forced by New Zealand court order to reveal the identity of negative reviewers back in 2022, so there are good reasons people might not want their names associated with their accounts.

    • Business Insider ☛ Glassdoor Adding Full Names to Profiles, Some Users Deleting Accounts

      • Glassdoor now requires new users to sign up with their full name, job title, and employer's name.

      • It's also started adding the full names of its users to their profiles.

      • Details are visible only to the user, but some are deleting their accounts over privacy concerns.

    • TechRadar ☛ Glassdoor added real names to supposedly anonymous profiles

      For the uninitiated, Glassdoor is a website where people write reviews of their previous and current employers, bosses, and companies. As one might expect, the reviews are often negative, as they discuss toxic company culture, shady practices, and more. For that reason, people enjoyed their anonymity on Glassdoor, creating user profiles that held no concrete information about who they were.

      Rightfully so, too, as there were reports of companies trying to discover the identities of people who left bad reviews about them, possibly looking to retaliate in one way or another.

    • Futurism ☛ Twitter Caught Selling Data to Government Spies While Complaining About Surveillance

      According to the report, the data is sold to the surveillance firm Dataminr, which uses AI technology to constantly monitor public activity on social media and other parts of the web.

      In doing so, its clients, often law enforcement, can receive customized real-time alerts on what's brewing online, which helps them respond to natural disasters or — much more ominously — spy on protests, notes The Intercept.

      In emails between Dataminr and the US Secret Service it obtained with a Freedom of Information Act request, the story revealed that the surveillance firm pays for special access to a "firehose" of data from Twitter. Sent in July 2023, they also confirm that practice continued under Musk.

    • Reuters ☛ Portugal orders Sam Altman's Worldcoin to halt data collection

      Worldcoin encourages people to have their faces scanned by its "orb" devices, in exchange for a digital ID and free cryptocurrency. More than 4.5 million people in 120 countries have signed up, according to Worldcoin's website. Portugal's data regulator, the CNPD, said there was a high risk to citizens' data protection rights, which justified urgent intervention to prevent serious harm. More than 300,000 people in Portugal have provided Worldcoin with their biometric data, the CNPD said. The regulator said it had received dozens of complaints in the last month about unauthorised collection of data from minors, "deficiencies in the information provided to the data subjects" and "the impossibility of erasing the data or withdrawing consent."

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Portugal suspends Sam Altman's Worldcoin over data privacy fears

      Portugal's National Data Protection Commission justified its decision, stating it was "safeguarding the fundamental right to data protection, in particular of minors," it said in a press release.

      The CNPD said it had received dozens of complaints from parents about Worldcoin collecting data from their children without their consent.

      The suspension would be for three months in order for it to "conclude its investigation and take a final decision," the CNPD added.

    • NDTV ☛ Sam Altman's Worldcoin Ordered To Stop Data-Collection In Portugal

      Portugal's data regulator has ordered Sam Altman's iris-scanning project Worldcoin to stop collecting biometric data in Portugal for 90 days, the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday.

    • Sean Coates ☛ Sean Coates blogs about Matter and Privacy

      This poses a couple serious problems. The main problem is: if I lose my data, how can I recover it?

      Well, the short answer here is: we can't. We can't identify you by email to reset your password. We don't have your email address (associated with your data, at least), and you don't have a password. Even if we did have those things, we don't have your data so we can't restore it.

      Right now the app has backup/restore functionality and we expect users to use that to protect themselves from data loss. We've put a lot of thought into storing these backups for a user, but having that user identify themselves is a difficult problem. Storing that data on behalf of the user, in a way that we can't get to it is also a problem. But a very interesting problem. I think we have good solutions to these problems that we expect to build into the app before we're out of beta, and I also hope to post about this in the future.

    • Quartz ☛ PornHub stays in Florida for now despite age verification law

      The Sunshine State recently passed HB 3, a law that prohibits children aged 14 or younger from using social media without parental consent. The law also stipulates that “pornographic or sexually explicit websites” will need to “use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children.” Pornhub and its parent company, Aylo, have repeatedly criticized these kinds of requirements, claiming that they are ineffective and do not respect users’ privacy. (Whether Pornhub really cares about user privacy is a hanging question; last year the platform was accused of breaking the GDPR—the landmark European privacy law—by illegally harvesting user data).

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ France seeks help from allies to bolster security during Paris Olympics

    France has asked its foreign allies to send several thousand members of their security forces to help guard the Paris Olympics, officials said Thursday, underlining the strains caused by the sporting extravaganza which begins in July.

  • Techdirt ☛ When It Comes To TikTok Hyperventilation, Financial Conflicts Of Interest Abound

    Earlier this month we noted how despite all of the sound, fury, and hyperventilation surrounding the push to ban TikTok, most Americans don’t actually support such a move (you know, the whole representative democracy thing). Support is particularly lacking among young Democrats, a demographic the Biden administration has struggled to connect with in the wake of the ongoing carnage in Gaza.

  • France24 ☛ Haiti's future governing council vows to restore ‘public and democratic order’

    The governing council that aims to oversee a political transition in Haiti vowed Wednesday to restore "public and democratic order" in its first statement to the Caribbean nation wracked by a worsening security crisis.

  • Pro Publica ☛ What Is the Status of the Uvalde Investigation?

    Nearly two years after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, investigations have offered strikingly different assessments of the botched law enforcement response, fueling frustrations and additional calls for transparency from victims’ families.

    Many families had expressed hope that law enforcement officers would be held accountable after a scathing Justice Department report in January detailed “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.” At an associated news conference, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said lives could have been saved had law enforcement acted sooner. But just two months later, Uvalde residents said they felt whipsawed when a private investigator hired by the city cleared all local police officers of wrongdoing, even praising some of their actions.

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Bolsonaro hid at Hungarian embassy last month

    Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Hungarian ambassador, Miklós Halmai to clarify the circumstances surrounding the stay of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, at the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights last month. This incident occurred as federal police investigations closed on some of Bolsonaro's closest associates.

    Security footage obtained by The New York Times shows that in early February, shortly after two of Bolsonaro's aides were arrested on suspicion of plotting against the Brazilian government, the former president sought refuge at the Hungarian embassy, conveniently located near the presidential palace he once occupied.

  • Site36 ☛ Was Hans-Jürgen Rose murdered by German police? Group files criminal charges against officers after 26 years

  • The Register UK ☛ Execs in Japan busted for outsourcing jobs to North Koreans

    Robast reportedly obtained application development work from Japanese customers through a business brokering website, then outsourced it to North Koreans – who the executives may have believed were living in China. The action is believed to have been carried out without the knowledge or consent of the customers.

  • US News And World Report ☛ DA Suggests Donald Trump Violated Gag Order With Post About Daughter of Hush-Money Trial Judge

    Manhattan prosecutors are suggesting that Donald Trump violated a gag order in his hush-money criminal case this week by assailing the judge’s daughter and making a false claim about her on social media

  • Reason ☛ Conviction for Writing Software for ISIS Upheld

    The court held that the conviction was consistent with the First Amendment, as applied in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010): [...]

  • VOA News ☛ World Braces for Islamic State to Build on Moscow Attack

    Already, some European countries have issued heightened threat alerts while increasing security. Italy, in particular, cites the approach of the Easter holiday as one reason for additional concern.

    The latest propaganda from Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, has only served to reinforce such worries.

    In a statement Thursday marking 10 years since IS first announced its now-defunct caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spokesperson Abu Huthaifa al-Ansar called on followers to target “crusaders,” especially in Europe and in the United States.

  • New York Times ☛ How the Israel-Hamas War Has Roiled TikTok Internally

    TikTok has been dogged for months by accusations that its app has shown a disproportionate amount of pro-Palestinian and antisemitic content to users of its hugely popular video platform. TikTok has strongly rejected those arguments, and its executives have met multiple times with Jewish groups to discuss those concerns. But the claims of bias have nevertheless helped fuel the debate over a House bill passed this month that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or have it face a ban.

  • New Statesman ☛ Trump's religious right doesn't understand Jesus

    As for economic justice, in the season of Lent leading up to Easter, one of the Church readings, mentioned in all four gospels, is of Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple. “He found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” This was a religious as well as monetary issue but it reveals an intense opposition to the economic status quo of the time, which was not radically different from that of today.

    Then there is, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24, and Luke 18:25) and “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me” (Matthew 25:35). And, again in the gospel of Matthew, when a rich young man asks what he must do to obtain eternal life, Jesus replies that he should sell everything and give the money to the poor.

    When he juxtaposes war and peace his words in the original Koine Greek are far more militantly opposed to violence than they appear in English. And surely his insistence that “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” is entirely clear.

  • The Times Of Israel ☛ Erdogan says Turkey ‘firmly’ backs terror group Hamas, compares Netanyahu to Hitler | The Times of Israel

    “No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization,” he said in a speech in Istanbul. “Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them.”

    Hamas is listed as a terror organization by the US, Israel, the UK, the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Photo of woman's body being paraded by Hamas wins award, sparks outrage

    In a chilling video, verified by CNN, Louk was seen being displayed on a vehicle by armed militants in Gaza who are chanting "Allahu Akbar," an Arabic phrase meaning "God [sic] is Great."

    Shani Louk went missing while attending the Supernova music festival in southern Israel where Hamas attacked on October 7, killing over 1,400 people. Louk's mother later received information from the Israeli military that her daughter is dead.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ U-M eyes ‘disruptive activity’ crackdown amid Israel-Hamas war protests

    U-M announced the draft policy Wednesday after pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted a weekend honors convocation, forcing President Santa Ono to cut short a speech amid shouting. Sponsor

    “No one has the right to infringe on the exercise of others’ speech and activities by disrupting the normal celebrations, activities, and operations of the University,” the draft policy states.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Taliban announces it will start stoning women to death in public

    The Taliban announced that they are returning to the "good ol' days" when raped women were flogged and stoned to death in public. The Taliban's supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, justified this bronze-age policy as a continuation of their struggle against Western influences, declaring on Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan, "We will flog the women … we will stone them to death in public [for adultery]. You may call it a violation of women's rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles. [But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan. The Taliban's work did not end with the takeover of Kabul, it has only just begun," he said."

  • Breaking Media Inc ☛ Like Elon Musk And Twitter Before Them, Investors In Trump's Newly Public Social Media Company Will Lose Millions - Above the Law

    In a rational marketplace, this $5 billion valuation would be laughable. The first nine months of last year saw Trump Media incur a net loss of $49 million, while it took in a paltry $3.3 million in advertising revenue. There is also an inherent problem in that the bathroom musings of a 77-year-old facing four criminal indictments (containing nearly 100 felony counts) are Truth Social’s main draw. Also, there is Truth Social’s anemic user count: 494,000 monthly active U.S. users.

    One can (while holding one’s nose) imagine a world in which Trump wins the 2024 election and finds a way to funnel taxpayer money to Truth Social (to himself, in other words, as the majority shareholder) like he did with many of his other businesses during his first term. Other than that scenario, it is difficult to conceive of a way in which Truth Social, and by extension Trump Media & Technology Group, does anything over time other than lose a tremendous amount of money for its investors. Of course, this did not stop Trump Media, trading under the ticker symbol DJT on the Nasdaq, from surging in value during its first day of public trading on March 26, because Trump’s rabid supporters never fail to recklessly throw their money at him.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Poland: Police raid suspected Russian spy network

    Polish authorities said on Thursday that they had carried out searches in connection with a suspected Russian spy network in Poland, following intelligence provided by the Czech Republic.

    "Actions aimed at organizing pro-Russian initiatives and media campaigns in EU countries have been documented," Poland's Internal Security Agency (ABW) said in a statement.

    The operation was carried out with support and coordination from other European partners, especially the Czech Republic which said on Wednesday it had busted a Moscow-financed network.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Poland Demands Explanation From Russia After a Missile Enters Its Airspace During Attack on Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ US allocates $228m to Baltic security

      The United States has allocated 228 million US dollars for security assistance to the Baltic states, and Lithuania will get a third of this amount, Lithuania’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Russia Violates Poland's Air Space in Attack on Ukraine, Poland's Armed Forces Say

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russia adds 'LGBT movement' to list of extremist groups

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Two Units Offline After Fire at Russia's Rostov Power Plant, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Massacre, Manhunt and Mourning: How Russia's Deadliest Attack in Years Unfolded Over the Weekend

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Moscow Shooting Poses Awkward Questions for Russia's Intelligence Agencies

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Russians Mourn the Victims of the Moscow Concert Hall Attack

    • Vox ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] The battle for blame over a deadly terror attack in Moscow

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Russia in mourning after Moscow concert hall attack

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia launches fresh strikes on Kyiv, Lviv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] 4 Men Charged in Moscow Attack, Showing Signs of Beatings at Hearing as Court Says 2 Accept Guilt

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Russia's Crocus Group Vows to Restore Concert Hall After Deadly Rampage

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Russia Attacks Ukrainian Gas Storage Site; Ukraine Ramps up Power Imports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Ukraine Says It Hit Two Russian Warships in Strikes on Crimea

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] From Beslan to the concert hall: Terror attacks in Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Ukraine updates: Drones strike Russia's Belgorod and Samara

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] A Russian Soyuz Rocket With 3 Astronauts Blasts off to the International Space Station

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Deadly Attack on Moscow Concert Hall Shakes Russian Capital and Sows Doubts About Security

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Four Detained Gunmen Are Not Russian Citizens, Says Interior Ministry

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Islamic State Releases Photo of Alleged Attackers in Russia Shooting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Putin Says Gunmen Who Raided Moscow Concert Hall Tried to Escape to Ukraine. Kyiv Denies Involvement

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Security Experts Say Islamic State Claim for Russian Concert Attack Is Credible

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Soccer-Russia Cancels Paraguay Friendly Following Moscow Shooting Attack

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Putin Vows to Punish Those Behind Russia Concert Massacre

    • CPJ ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russian journalist Igor Kuznetsov given 3-year suspended sentence, remains behind bars

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] UN report details ‘climate of fear’ in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine

    • CBC ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russia, China reject U.S.-led Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN

    • CBC ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] What is ISIS-K and why did it attack Russia?

    • CBC ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] At least 40 dead in Moscow-area concert hall attack as ISIS claims responsibility

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russia, China veto UN resolution for cease-fire in Gaza

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russia: Gunmen fire into crowd at concert hall near Moscow

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russian hackers targeting German politicians — report

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia launches 'largest' attack on energy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Belgian Police Conduct Raids After Suspected Russian Diamonds Seized

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Russia Says United States Must Share Any Information It Has on Attack Near Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] US Has Intelligence Confirming Islamic State Responsibility for Russia Attack, Officials Say

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-21 [Older] EU summit: Leaders wrap up with attention on Gaza, Russia

    • The Age AU ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] The strain on the faces of mums and teachers shows, but they hold it together for the preschoolers

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Ukraine updates: Deadly airstrike hits Kharkiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] House Speaker Mike Johnson Is Committed to Advancing Ukraine Aid. but It Will Be a Difficult Task

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Putin Tells Pilots: F16s Can Carry Nuclear Weapons but They Won't Change Things in Ukraine

    • AntiWar ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] What Does the Coup in Niger Tell Us about the War in Ukraine?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv and Moscow report overnight strikes

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Putin: Concert Hall Attack Conducted by Islamists, but Suggests Ukraine Link

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Hungary’s Support for Israel Exposes Its Fake Pacifism

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] Concert Hall Attack Dents Putin's Tough Image. He Tries to Use It to Rally Support for Ukraine War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Finding Money: How the Pentagon Dug Down and Found $300M for Ukraine but Is Still Deep in the Red

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Putin Says Concert Attackers Were Fleeing to Ukraine When Detained

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] Ukraine Not Involved in Moscow Attack, Says Kyiv Military Intelligence Spokesman

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] US House Democrats Offer to Protect Republican Johnson for Ukraine Aid

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy: We Need Air Defences and Political Will From Our Partners

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Ukrainian Presidential Adviser: Ukraine Had Nothing to Do With Moscow Shootings

    • Meduza ☛ ‘What kind of life will they have?’ Russian doctors on what the country’s anti-abortion shift means for their work and the pregnant women in their care — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Putin’s Last Term: Part Z’: Animator Egor Zhgun retells Russia’s past six years in cartoons — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ St. Petersburg law enforcement conducting raids, deporting migrants en masse, say human rights activists — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Number of injured in Moscow terrorist attack exceeds 380 — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Russian elites are still sharks’ Journalist Catherine Belton on how Putin remade Russia in the KGB’s image and then took on the West — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ A trip to Bishkek’s Dordoi Bazaar with writer Caroline Eden — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Techdirt ☛ Unsealed Documents Provide More Details On Federal Investigators’ YouTube Dragnet

    Earlier this week, reporting by Thomas Brewster for Forbes uncovered yet another way law enforcement is expecting companies like Google to perform their investigative work for them.

  • The Nation ☛ The Nuclear Explosion That Makes US Aid to Israel Illegal

    Because of this official gag order, Americans are deliberately kept in the dark regarding the dangerousness of Israel’s illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons—weapons that have never been subject to international inspection and are therefore of questionable safety. And then there is the problem of that secret cache of nuclear weapons being controlled by a number of top Israeli officials whose extreme positions would sanction their use. Last November, Israeli Minister Amichai Eliyahu said one of Israel’s options in the war is to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. “That’s one way,” he said. Another Israeli official, Revital “Tally” Gotliv, urged her government to use “everything in its arsenal,” including “doomsday” weapons, against Hamas. “Who would have imagined that, just as we have been worrying about Pakistani weapons falling into the hands of Islamic fanatics, we would come to the point where we have to fear Israel’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Israeli fanatics?” said Gilinsky.

• Environment

  • RFA ☛ In isolated South China Sea territory, Filipino fisherman see ‘dwindling catch’

    “Yesterday, I went out for fishing but I only got around four kilos (8.8 pounds) of small fish, just enough to cover my gasoline and food for two days,” he told BenarNews.

    “Yearly, our catch declines because of the illegal fishing by the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Some of them were using dynamite and cyanide,” Hugo told BenarNews in Filipino outside a small grocery store where he hangs out with friends.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China ships bottles of melting Tibetan glacier water Maldives

    China has sent more than a million bottles of water from melting Tibetan glaciers to the Maldives, officials said Thursday, a gift from the world’s highest mountains to a low-lying archipelago threatened by rising seas.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexicana airline faces US $840M lawsuit from Texas company

      The state-owned airline, which launched operations in December, is being sued for breach of contract in a U.S. federal court in New York.

    • DeSmog ☛ Where Was Exxon Planning to Inject CO2 in Louisiana? It’s a Trade Secret.

      While two dozen carbon capture projects are proposed in Louisiana, figuring out exactly where companies plan to inject carbon dioxide underground for storage is a bit of a mystery. That’s because a state law passed in 2021 regulating carbon capture includes a provision allowing companies to claim a wide range of project information — including location — as trade secrets. 

      The state law mirrors a federal provision that also allows companies to classify the location of their injection site as “proprietary business information” (PBI), which means that, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the most the agency can say without violating PBI status is the parish or county where carbon dioxide will be injected into deep geological formations.

    • The Drone Girl ☛ 10 beloved restaurants that offer drone delivery from in America 

      So why are restaurants like Wendy’s or Mendocino looking to drone delivery companies? For starters, off-premise business for restaurants has been growing since the pandemic — and drones can bring that food off-premises.

      Another reason is sustainability. Drones offer up to 94% lower energy consumption per package than other vehicles, providing a greener alternative for companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

    • The Hill ☛ Politics aside, what’s the plan for US central bank digital currency?

      Efforts are moving at a glacial pace in the U.S. Meanwhile, over 130 countries are exploring one. “BRIC” nations including Russia and China have banded together to create a blockchain-based payment system that would support global trade and investment flows and possibly even serve as a way to skirt U.S.-mandated financial sanctions.

      There’s more than national security and economic dominance at stake, like the possibility of a reimagined American financial system with more competition among financial institutions — both decentralized and traditional — that would provide more choices for U.S. consumers. There’s also the realization of technological initiatives that would transform the movement of money and payments domestically and globally for the better.

    • The Verge ☛ Sam Bankman-Fried is still gambling

      What Bankman-Fried did not say was that he had, in fact, committed crimes and he wouldn’t do it again. Instead, he talked about the “mistakes” he’d made, how he’d assisted the FTX customers in dealing with the bankruptcy estate, that he hadn’t actually engaged in witness tampering, and that, in fact, the FTX estate had “billions” more than necessary to repay the customers, and that has been true the whole time. He didn’t say a word about his lenders, two of which went bankrupt, or the investors, whose money is gone.

      It struck me that Bankman-Fried was going with the strategy he’d outlined in a document, submitted as evidence by the prosecution. He was simply going to blame the bankruptcy lawyers, as outlined in points 4, 5, 6, and 9 in his little Google Doc.

    • The Drive ☛ Nobody Told EV Owners How Quickly They Burn Through Tires

      Automotive dealer software company CDK Global published a lengthy study about EV service in late 2023. In it, one respondent said that “when it comes to EVs, tires are the new oil change." We published a story last August about Rivian R1Ts needing new rubber after as few as 6,000 miles. Not all EV owners deal with such egregious wear, but considering most service shops recommend oil changes every 5,000 miles on gasoline-powered cars, the comparison checks out in that case.

    • Spiegel ☛ Electric Shock: An Existential Crisis in the German Auto Industry - DER SPIEGEL

      Electric cars are selling poorly, and many German manufacturers are still focusing on the combustion engine. The threat from cheaper Chinese competitors is growing. Might this be the death knell of Germany's fabled automobile industry?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • New York Times ☛ Germany’s Beloved Dachshund Could Be Threatened Under Breeding Bill

      The bill would strengthen laws around dog breeding, but Germany’s kennel club worries that the legislation could lead to bans on several breeds.

    • El País ☛ Philanthropist group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create ‘European Yellowstone’

      “‘Only if someone buys these forests and places them in private hands can we save them, at least until the state realizes the importance of preserving them,’ the director of a national park jokingly let slip,” says Barbara Promberger. At that point, the Austrian biologist and her husband Cristoph, a German forester, set out to find philanthropists and conservationists to raise funds to buy large tracts of forest to halt deforestation and, at the same time, promote ecotourism in support of local communities. “This national park has to serve to protect nature, but also to economically develop the areas involved,” says Barbara, who has lived in a tiny village in Brasov province for 30 years. As a conservation model, they were inspired by the Tompkins project launched in the 1990s to restore habitats in southern Chile and Argentina, and also by the Bavarian Forest National Park.

    • Science News ☛ Chickadees use memory ‘bar codes’ to find their hidden food stashes

      These neural combinations act like bar codes, and identifying them may give key insights into how episodic memories — accounts of specific past events, like what you did on your birthday last year or where you’ve left your wallet — are encoded and recalled in the brain, researchers report March 29 in Cell.

      This kind of memory is challenging to study in animals, says Selmaan Chettih, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. “You can’t just ask a mouse what memories it formed today.” But chickadees’ very precise behavior provides a golden opportunity for researchers. Every time a chickadee makes a cache, it represents a single, well-defined moment logged in the hippocampus, a structure in the vertebrate brain vital for memory.

  • Overpopulation

    • NPR ☛ The Colorado River rarely reaches the sea. Here's why

      A study published last year found that during the megadrought, human-caused global warming decreased the Colorado River's natural flow by roughly the amount of water that can be stored in Lake Mead — the nation's largest reservoir.

      It's long been known that the Colorado River — and the 40 million people who rely on it — are facing a crisis. Water is overallocated. More is promised to cities and irrigators than typically exists. Climate change is shrinking the available pool.

    • Science Alert ☛ Birth Rates Are Plummeting in Most Nations, And The World Isn't Prepared

      Human birth rates will continue to drop drastically over the coming century, and within just 25 years, over two-thirds of countries' populations will be in decline.

    • The Lancet ☛ Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

      Accurate assessments of current and future fertility—including overall trends and changing population age structures across countries and regions—are essential to help plan for the profound social, economic, environmental, and geopolitical challenges that these changes will bring. Estimates and projections of fertility are necessary to inform policies involving resource and health-care needs, labour supply, education, gender equality, and family planning and support. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 produced up-to-date and comprehensive demographic assessments of key fertility indicators at global, regional, and national levels from 1950 to 2021 and forecast fertility metrics to 2100 based on a reference scenario and key policy-dependent alternative scenarios.

• Finance

  • Hindustan Times ☛ GE layoffs: 1,000 jobs to be cut in LM Wind Power, Indians may be hit as well

    General Electric layoffs: LM Wind Power will focus on external customers only and this will impact staffers in India as well.

  • Tech layoffs are back: what does it mean for your job?

    Instead, the U.S. has been the worst hit––more than 179,000 workers lost their jobs in tech in 2023 and so far this year, that figure is already over 40,000, according to layoffs.fyi.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Civic Party officially folds after 18 years

    Hong Kong’s Civic Party, which was once the city’s second-largest pro-democracy party, has officially shut down after 18 years – joining dozens of other civil society groups which folded in the wake of a Beijing-imposed national security law.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ University of Hong Kong seeks to limit tourist flow on campus after student, resident complaints

    The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is to introduce measures on tourist flow management on campus following an influx of visitors from the mainland. Local media have reported on the grounds being as “crowded as Disney,” with mainland tourists barging into lecture halls for photo-taking during lectures.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s new national security law ‘unduly limits’ human rights and freedom, UN experts say

    Hong Kong’s new homegrown national security law will “unduly limit” human rights and freedom in the city, six UN experts have said as they urged authorities to review and reconsider the legislation.

  • Democracy Now ☛ ESG Funds Under Attack: Why Republicans Are Targeting Socially Responsible Investing

    Republicans are on a “crusade” against responsible investing, says Andrew Behar, CEO of the nonprofit group As You Sow that promotes corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy. His group was subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee this week as Republicans probe whether investments that take into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns violate antitrust laws. Republicans have introduced bills in dozens of states across the U.S. to limit state bodies from working with banks and other financial firms that take things like climate change into consideration in their investments. ESG is “a framework for assessing risk,” Behar says. “Basic good business says you want to assess and address risk, and that’s what they’re trying to suppress.”

  • EFF ☛ U.S. Supreme Court Does Not Go Far Enough in Determining When Government Officials Are Barred from Censoring Critics on Social Media

    The case, Lindke v. Freed, came out of the Sixth Circuit and involves a city manager, while a companion case called O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier came out of the Ninth Circuit and involves public school board members.

    The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring individuals’ speech in public forums based on the viewpoints that individuals express. In the age of social media, where people in government positions use public-facing social media for both personal, campaign, and official government purposes, it can be unclear whether the interactive parts (e.g., comments section) of a social media page operated by someone who works in government amount to a government-controlled public forum subject to the First Amendment’s prohibition on viewpoint discrimination. Another way of stating the issue is whether a government official who uses a social media account for personal purposes is engaging in state action when they also use the account to speak about government business.  

    As the Supreme Court states in the Lindke opinion, “Sometimes … the line between private conduct and state action is difficult to draw,” and the question is especially difficult “in a case involving a state or local official who routinely interacts with the public.”

  • Security Week ☛ Energy Department Invests $15 Million in University Cybersecurity Centers 

    The US Department of Energy (DOE) on Thursday announced a $15 million investment in university-based electric power centers to bolster cybersecurity in the energy sector.

    The funding, the DOE says, will go to six universities selected by the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), which will partner with industry stakeholders and the DOE National Laboratories for cybersecurity research and training development.

  • Security Week ☛ Pentagon Outlines Cybersecurity Strategy for Defense Industrial Base 

    The cybersecurity strategy published this week covers fiscal years 2024 through 2027 and its primary mission is to ensure the generation, reliability and preservation of warfighting capabilities by protecting operational capabilities, sensitive information, and product integrity.

    The Pentagon’s cybersecurity strategy for the DIB has four main goals, each with multiple objectives.

  • USDOD ☛ Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Strategy 2024 [PDF]

    Achieving the objectives laid out in this strategy requires coordination of effort across all DoD entities in alignment with the NDS, the National Cybersecurity Strategy, and the DoD Cyber Strategy. The Department plays a key role in educating, measuring, and driving improvements in all matters related to DIB cybersecurity. Protecting critical defense information and preserving competitive advantage requires the Department to invest in measures to bolster DIB cybersecurity, while being cognizant of the risk associated with burdensome compliance costs that discourage competition. Successful implementation of the DoD DIB Cybersecurity Strategy requires engagement external to the Department and the Department to set an example of cyber resiliency.

  • Quartz ☛ Microsoft, OpenAI plan $100 billion 'Stargate' supercomputer [Ed: Vapourware and lies]

    The Information, citing unnamed sources, reports that the data-center would house a supercomputer made up of millions of AI chips, and is being referred to as “Stargate.” People who spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and who have viewed Microsoft’s cost estimates told The Information that the project could reach $100 billion, and that Microsoft would likely finance it. The proposed project costs about 100 times more than some of the largest data centers today, and Microsoft executives want to launch it as soon as 2028, according to The Information.

  • India Times ☛ TCS: TCS says it trained 3.5 lakh employees in generative AI skills

    On Friday, the Tata group company announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recognised it with Generative AI competency partner status.

  • India Times ☛ Facebook News: Facebook News tab will soon be unavailable as Meta scales back news and political content

    The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarisation.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Fact Checkers debunk new Senegalese President viral video as a deepfake

      It turns out a lot about the video is not true.

      The person in the video is not Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s President Elect. It’s Ousmane Sonko, who is said to be Faye’s mentor. This ofcourse can just verified by checking Faye’s pictures on the internet. He’s not the person in the video.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] EU asks Facebook, TikTok to identify and label AI deepfakes

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Who Is Jeff Yass, The Trump Money Man Reshaping American Social Media?

    • HPV lies: Another example of how everything old antivax has been reborn as “new” again

      In the name of taking one for the team in order to debunk nonsense about Kate Middleton’s announcement that she had been diagnosed with cancer last week, I foolishly signed up for a free seven day trial of COVID-19 vaccine-caused “turbo cancer” quack William Makis‘ Substack, which is why I figured I’d better get one last post out of it before the free trial expires. Thankfully, Makis is very predictable and provided a perfect topic the other day, a Substack post entitled Childhood Vaccines – HPV Vaccine (Gardasil) injuries & deaths of young girls – injury of 12 year old soccer player Holly, High school lacrosse player Amanda Ratner, death of a 14 year old Mexican girl. Yes, as I keep saying about the new anti-COVID-19 vaccine movement that quickly turned into just antivaccine, everything old is new again. So, of course, Makis is now fear mongering about HPV vaccines, a topic that I used to write extensively about. Naturally, the reason is obvious. Makis has fully embraced the narrative that vaccines—in particular, COVID-19 vaccines—kill.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Lizzo says, 'I QUIT,' after performance at Biden’s re-election fundraiser; cites bullying and lies

    American rapper and singer Lizzo has sent shockwaves through the music industry with a sudden announcement. The artist took to her Instagram to share an ‘I Quit’ letter following her performance at Biden’s re-election fundraiser. The 35-year-old blamed bullying and lies as the driving forces behind her decision. It's still unclear whether she meant quitting music-making or leaving social media platforms, but fans have been rallying behind her, hitting back at online critics and those who are slamming her.

  • VOA News ☛ Distance No Guarantee of Safety for Russia’s Exiled Journalists

    Babloyan is one of a handful of Russian exiles who are believed to have been poisoned since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. More suspected poisonings took place before then.

  • RFA ☛ 2 Vietnamese bloggers charged for criticizing death penalty case

    Vietnamese authorities on Thursday arrested and charged two Facebook bloggers for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe the interests of the state” for posting comments about the handling of a case of a death row inmate, Vietnamese media reported.

    The Security Investigation Agency of the Binh Duong provincial police charged Nguyen Duc Du and Hoang Quoc Viet under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, saying their social media posts about death row inmate Ho Duy Hai being unjustly sentenced had insulted judiciary agencies.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Article 23: Hong Kong again blasts BillBC over security law coverage

    The Hong Kong government has for the second time this month condemned the BBC’s reporting on the new security law. It is the latest in a string of press releases and letters lashing out at foreign media over their coverage of Article 23’s enactment last Saturday.

  • JURIST ☛ New Hong Kong national security legislation blocks first prisoner’s early release

    Hong Kong’s recently enacted Safeguarding National Security Ordinance blocked the first inmate’s sentence remission under the Prison Rules on Tuesday.

  • Reason ☛ Journal of Free Speech Law: "Investigative Deception Across Social Contexts," by Prof. Alan Chen

    The first of twelve articles from the Knight Institute’s Lies, Free Speech, and the Law symposium.

  • Techdirt ☛ Bungie, YouTuber Settle Lawsuit Over Fraudulent DMCA Takedowns For YouTube Videos

    Almost exactly two years ago, we discussed a strange story in which video game publisher Bungie sued a bunch of John Does specifically for inputting fraudulent DMCA takedown claims on YouTube videos that contained Bungie content. Those notices purported to be from Bungie in some cases, but even Bungie’s own YouTube channel was hit by some of them as well. Later on, Bungie unmasked one of the Does as YouTuber Lord Nazo, real name Nicholas Minor, as one of the perpetrators of these takedown notices. In those discussions, we mentioned that while Bungie will come out looking like the good guy here if its claims were correct, the real story here is just how wide open for abuse YouTube’s DMCA takedown process is.

  • Techdirt ☛ Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Most Moderated Word On Meta

    Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

  • Techdirt ☛ India Banned TikTok, It Didn’t Go Well

    We know that a lot of politicians (and media folks) in the US are pushing to ban TikTok. It has seemed notable, of course, that European countries don’t seem all that worried about TikTok, which should raise questions about how serious the “threat” really is. However, one major country did decide to ban TikTok a few years ago: India.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Scheerpost ☛ John Kiriakou: How the CIA Destroys Its Own

    In light of recent developments in the Julian Assange extradition case, former CIA officer John Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, to delve deeper into the contradictions within the United States government and intelligence agencies regarding the disclosure of classified information and the veil of secrecy they maintain.

    As highlighted in earlier episodes, John Kiriakou’s role as the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. torture program vividly illustrates the consequences of airing the government’s dirty laundry—it unleashes its full might upon you.

  • Vox ☛ Evan Gershkovich: Why a Wall Street Journal reporter has spent a year in Russian jail

    It’s been a year since Gershkovich, who had covered the country for five years at that point, was arrested by Russian security forces. He was on assignment in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains nearly 900 miles east of the Journal’s Moscow bureau. And because of Russia’s opaque and autocratic justice system, the trial — when it comes — will likely be conducted in secret. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in a Russian penal colony.

    The US government says he is “wrongfully detained” — a designation the US applies to citizens detained overseas on what it considers to be unfounded charges and whose release it is actively working to secure.

  • Vox ☛ Gaza, Evan Gershkovich, and more: A very bad year for press freedom

    One thing Gershkovich had in common with many Russian journalists who have run afoul of the state: His arrest was bogus. Within two weeks, the US government officially designated him as “wrongfully detained.” Reporters Without Borders (RSF), meanwhile, considers him a “Russian state hostage.” Despite a year of pre-trial hearings and extensions on his detention, Russia has publicly provided no clear evidence to substantiate its allegations.

    For the media that remains in the country, it has also “had a huge chilling effect, with further self-censorship,” Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said over email.

    That all serves Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aims amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. But what’s happened to Gershkovich isn’t just about Putin.

  • VOA News ☛ UK Anti-Terrorism Police Investigate Stabbing of Persian-Language Journalist

    British counterterrorism detectives are investigating after a journalist working for a Persian-language media organization was stabbed Friday in London amid fears he had been targeted because of his job, police said.

  • IranWire ☛ Iranian Journalist Stabbed in London

    An Iranian journalist with a London-based, Farsi-language TV news channel was attacked outside his house Friday, the network reported.

    Pouria Zeraati, the television host of the "Last Word" program of Iran International channel, was assaulted by a group of unidentified individuals as he left his London home.

    Zeraati sustained knife wounds across several parts of his body.

    He is currently in a stable condition but remains hospitalized, the network reported.

  • BBC ☛ Pouria Zeraati: Iran International TV host stabbed outside London home

    The Met said counter-terrorism officers had been assigned due to "the victim's occupation as a journalist at a Persian-language media organisation based in the UK".

    It added this was "coupled with the fact that there has been a number of threats directed towards this group of journalists".

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Iranian journalist stabbed outside his London home

    The Telegraph understands he was heading to work at around 3.15pm when he was approached by a man outside his house in south-west London.

    The man attempted to engage him in conversation before another suspect came up behind him and began slashing him with a knife.

    The two attackers then went off in a waiting car nearby, which was being driven by a third suspect.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Iran International journalist stabbed outside London home

    Pouria Zeraati, a presenter for Iran International, was reportedly attacked by a group of men as he left home on Friday. He was taken to hospital and is in a stable condition, the channel said.

    The Metropolitan police confirmed that officers were called to an address in Wimbledon, south London, at 2.49pm, and that a man in his 30s had sustained an injury to his leg. It said the man’s condition was “not believed to be life-threatening” and that an investigation had been opened. No arrests have yet been made.

  • RFERL ☛ Moscow Court Charges Journalist Who Covered Navalny's Trials

    Favorskaya covered Navalny’s court hearings for years and filmed the last video showing the Kremlin critic alive on February 15 at a court hearing that he took part in over video link from an Arctic prison. The next day, Navalny suddenly died in the prison.

  • VOA News ☛ One Year in Russian Jail for Evan Gershkovich

    Friday marks one year since Russian police detained The Wall Street Journal reporter in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,600 km east of Moscow, on espionage charges widely viewed as bogus.

    To date, the Russian government has not provided any evidence to substantiate its charges, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

  • VOA News ☛ Growing Number of Americans End Up in Russian Jails — Prospects for Their Release Are Unclear

    Arrests of Americans in Russia have become increasingly common as relations between Moscow and Washington sink to Cold War lows. Washington accuses Moscow of targeting its citizens and using them as political bargaining chips, but Russian officials insist they all broke the law.

  • AntiWar ☛ Assange's 'Reprieve' Is Another Lie, Hiding the Real Goal of Keeping Him Endlessly Locked Up - Antiwar.com

    The US has had years to clarify its intention to give Assange a fair trial but refuses to do so. The UK court’s latest ruling is yet more collusion in his show trial

  • Vox ☛ Ronna McDaniel and Candace Owens show how MAGA broke the media

    Objectively, this is all absurd: No news organization should have to face consequences for taking a stand against anti-democratic lies or antisemitic bigotry. But it’s important to understand why it’s happening: The conservative movement, the backbone of one of our two major political parties, is off the rails.

    That brute reality has thrown American media out of whack. Mainstream outlets are forced to choose between traditional notions of objectivity and platforming obscenity; right-wing outlets have lost whatever ability they once had to keep their followers onside.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • ACLU ☛ Quiz: State Legislation and the Part You Play

    State legislation can have an immense impact on your civil rights, for better or for worse. And even though state lawmakers are tasked with determining which bills get turned into laws, you hold a lot of power to make these decisions because you elect candidates into office. Take this quiz to learn about lawmaking at the state level, and how you can play a part in this process at the ballot box.

    Click to see Quiz

  • Reason ☛ Tennessee Generally Bans Political and Religious Discrimination by Financial Institutions

    From a newly enacted bill: A financial institution shall not deny or cancel its services to a person, or otherwise discriminate against a person in making available such services or in the terms or conditions of such services, on the basis of: [...]

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-23 [Older] 'I Will Not Feed a Demon': YouTuber Ruby Franke's Child Abuse Case Rooted in Religious Extremism

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Journalists strike over pay at Scottish broadcaster STV

    A second strike is set for Tuesday 16 April if an agreement is not made before then.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • WhichUK ☛ Best and worst broadband providers revealed: Big Four outdone again by smaller rivals

    As price rises loom, the big broadband providers are coming up short when it comes to their connections and customer service

  • Hackaday ☛ The Most Annoying Thing On The Internet Isn’t Really Necessary

    We’re sure you’ll agree that there are many annoying things on the Web. Which of them we rate as most annoying depends on personal view, but we’re guessing that quite a few of you will join us in naming the ubiquitous cookie pop-up at the top of the list. It’s the pesky EU demanding consent for tracking cookies, we’re told, nothing to do with whoever is demanding you click through screens and screens of slider switches to turn everything off before you can view their website.

  • Techdirt ☛ Even The Most Well-Meaning Internet Regulations Can Cause Real Harm

    Here’s how people advocating for internet regulations for “bad speech” think things will work: an enlightened group of pure-minded, thoughtful individuals will carefully outlaw dangerous speech that invokes hatred, or encourages bad behavior. Then, that speech will magically and cleanly disappear from the internet, and the internet will be a better place.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ No, Starlink is not disconnecting terminals in Zimbabwe.... At least not yet

    In February, reports suggested Starlink equipment belonging to hundreds of customers had been deactivated. The kits would have been smuggled from a country like Zambia, Mozambique and Eswatini where Starlink is licensed and operating. So it is happening outside Zimbabwe for now.

  • Quartz ☛ Scientists made broadband internet go 4.5 million times faster

    In partnership with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan and Nokia Bell Labs in the United States, Aston researchers were able to transfer data at a rate of 301,000,000 megabits per second using standard optical fiber. That’s compared to the average UK broadband performance at 69.4 megabits per second. In the United States, average download speeds are faster, averaging 242.4 Mbps, but the breakthrough is still over a million times faster.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Governor of Oregon signs popular right-to-repair bill into law

    Oregon Governor Tina Kotek today signed Senate Bill 1596 into law, joining a growing list of other U.S. states that believe citizens should have more options to repair their consumer products. Oregon follows California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York, which each have similar laws, covering about 70 million Americans in total.

  • EFF ☛ Restricting Flipper is a Zero Accountability Approach to Security: Canadian Government Response to Car Hacking

    EFF explores toilet hacking

    While it is useful as a penetration testing device, Flipper Zero is impractical in comparison to other, more specialized devices for car theft. It’s possible social media hype around the Flipper Zero has led people to believe that this device offers easier hacking opportunities for car thieves*. But government officials are also consuming such hype. That leads to policies that don’t secure systems, but rather impedes important research that exposes potential vulnerabilities the industry should fix. Even with Canada walking back on the original statement outright banning the devices, restricting devices and sales to “move forward with measures to restrict the use of such devices to legitimate actors only” is troublesome for security researchers.

    This is not the first government seeking to limit access to Flipper Zero, and we have explained before why this approach is not only harmful to security researchers but also leaves the general population more vulnerable to attacks. Security researchers may not have the specialized tools car thieves use at their disposal, so more general tools come in handy for catching and protecting against vulnerabilities. Broad purpose devices such as the Flipper have a wide range of uses: penetration testing to facilitate hardening of a home network or organizational infrastructure, hardware research, security research, protocol development, use by radio hobbyists, and many more. Restricting access to these devices will hamper development of strong, secure technologies.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ Amazon fined almost $8M in Poland over 'dark patterns'

  Poland's competition and consumer protection watchdog has fined Amazon's European subsidiary around $8 million (31.9 million Zlotys) for "dark patterns" that messed around internet shoppers.

  The preliminary ruling applies to Amazon EU SARL, which oversees Amazon's Polish e-commerce site, Amazon.pl, out of Luxembourg. Poland's Office of Competition and Consumer Protection said the decision, subject to appeal, reflected misleading practices related to product availability, delivery dates, and drop-off time guarantees.

• NPR ☛ 'Green bubble shaming' at play in DOJ suit against Apple

  When someone with an Android texts an iMessage user, the quality of photos and videos is shoddy; you can't do live location tracking; you can't react to texts the same way; those suspense-building bouncing ellipses indicating someone is writing do not exist; and the conversation is less secure. To top it off, green bubbles lead to mockery.

  Some have dubbed this phenomenon "green bubble shaming."

  And while it might seem frivolous, the bubble issue became much more serious last week, when it was cited by the Justice Department as an example of how Apple allegedly abuses its power.

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Today’s Obviousness Key: Motivation to Combine

    In patent monopoly law, the “motivation to combine” doctrine plays a central role in determining whether a claimed invention is obvious under our guiding statute, 35 U.S.C. § 103. The doctrine is particularly relevant in cases involving “combination patents,” where the claimed invention consists of elements individually known in the prior art.

    In patent monopoly law doctrine, we mentally construct a fictional Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA) and ask the legal question of whether the claimed invention would have been obvious to the PHOSITA.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Bedrock IP entity Cobblestone Wireless 4G/5G patent monopoly challenged

    On March 26, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,924,802, owned and asserted by Cobblestone Wireless, LLC, an NPE and entity of Bedrock IP Co., Ltd. The ‘802 patent monopoly relates to wireless communication systems that transmit signals simultaneously over a communication channel at different RF center frequencies.

  • Unified Patents ☛ $2,000 for Edge Networking Systems network patent monopoly prior art

    Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,893,095, owned by Edge Networking Systems LLC, an NPE. The ‘095 patent monopoly relates to a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications.

  • JUVE ☛ Michalski Hüttermann sets up China desk with Dompatent lawyer [Ed: Pure spam disguised as news. JUVE used to do journalism before onboard bribes to push illegal things (UPC) and spam the Web with fake articles or fake rankings.]

    Wanze Zhang (42) is no stranger to Michalski Hüttermann, having gained her first experience in IP at the patent monopoly attorney firm after completing her law studies in Cologne. She then moved to the Cologne law firm Maxton & Langmaack in 2013. >

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ $2,000 for Key Patent Innovations entity Malikie Innovations video encoding patent monopoly prior art

      Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 10 of U.S. Patent 9,179,147, owned by Malikie Innovations Limited, an entity of Key Patent Innovations Limited. The ‘147 patent monopoly relates to the use of soft decisions and iterative coding in Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and H.264 compliant video encoding.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Straight outta …?

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-03-24 [Older] [Guest post] Horological IP and the customization of watches [Ed: It's NOT "IP"]

  • Right of Publicity

    • Jonathan Faber ☛ ELVIS Act amends Tennessee Right of Publicity law with AI provisions

      Tennessee’s Right of Publicity statute has been amended to provide broader provisions against artificial intelligence. Specifically, the amendment fortifies the concept of voice and the vulnerabilities AI could take advantage of if left unchecked.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikToker Slapped With Nearly $803,000 Damages Bill in Sony Music Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

    A federal judge has officially slapped a TikToker with an over $800,000 infringement fine in a complaint levied by Sony Music Entertainment (SME). District Judge Mark T. Pittman signed off on the sizable damages award in a final judgement today, after SME levied the straightforward infringement action in March of 2023.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Universal Music Inks Expanded Spotify Partnership Deal, Covering ‘New Promotional and Social Features,’ Amid Fentanylware (TikTok) Dispute

    Days after finalizing a bolstered pact with Hybe, Universal Music Group (UMG) has expanded its relationship with Spotify to include social features and more. UMG and Spotify formally announced their broadened tie-up this morning, as the major label’s catalog remains conspicuously absent from TikTok.

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] [Guest post] Navigating the high notes: Taylor Swift's copyright dispute

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] [Guest post] Works of applied art – the difference between design and copyright law

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Telegram Block Averted For Now But Escalating Threat is Far From Over

    A week ago today in Spain's National Court, a judge rubber-stamped a request from rightsholders to have Telegram blocked in its entirety, nationwide. Following a fierce backlash, execution of the order was suspended, representing a victory of sorts for the eight million or so users of Telegram in Spain. What seems clear, however, is that in one form or another, these types of actions seem unlikely to go away.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ 'The New York Times Needs More than 'Imagined Fears' to Block AI Innovation'

    The legal battle between The New York Times and Microsoft over ChatGPT's alleged copyright infringement has the potential to be a landmark case. |In court this week, Microsoft responded by reiterating its request to dismiss several key claims. The newspaper took its VCR comparison too literally, the company notes, stressing that 'imagined fears' alone are not sufficient to block AI innovation.

  • Techdirt ☛ Of True Fans And Superfans: The Rise Of An Alternative Business Model To Copyright

    It’s true that it is no longer possible to depend on these outdated institutions to sustain a large-scale modern creative ecosystem, but the good news is we don’t have to. The rise of the Internet means that not only can anyone become a patron, sending money to their favorite creators, but that collectively that support can amount to serious sums of money. The first person to articulate this Internet-based approach was Kevin Kelly, in his 1998 essay “1000 True Fans”:

  • The Register UK ☛ Vultr deletes user data ownership ToS clause after outcry

    Cloud server provider Vultr has rapidly revised its terms-of-service after netizens raised the alarm over broad clauses that demanded the "perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free" rights to customer "content."

    The red tape was updated in January, as captured by the Internet Archive, and this month users were asked to agree to the changes by a pop-up that appeared when using their web-based Vultr control panel.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • Preparing to Disconnect

      My wife and will soon take a trip to a remote cabin with a few friends. We are deliberately planning this excursion to disconnect as much as possible: get away from the hustle of the city, detox from the Internet, and connect with each other and the natural world.

      I began thinking about what to pack this morning. The essentials came to mind first: rugged clothing, medicines, camping chairs, and so on. But after I mentally checked off obvious provisions, my mind almost immediately wandered to what electronics I might want to bring. I have a Game Boy Micro: it could be fun to play offline games on that for a while. Or I could bring my DevTerm and sync articles from Gemini using offpunk before leaving. Or perhaps I could bring my ThinkPad with Navigatrix installed and test out connecting to the Internet via radio.

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Programming

      • Old Books

        I think software engineering should make progress by building on a foundation of whatever previous work has proved its worth. Sometimes this occurs, e.g. a new SCM system must be better than git. However, for programming languages I don't think this holds true at all, otherwise thinking back to when I started to get interested in the field we should be using a safe, native-code language derived from Turbo Pascal instead of C++.