Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Rlang ☛ Taking the data out of the glue with regex in R

    Regular expressions, or regex, are incredibly powerful tools for pattern matching and extracting specific information from text data. Today, we’ll explore how to harness the might of regex in R with a practical example.

    Let’s dive into a scenario where we have data that needs cleaning and extracting numerical values from strings. Our data, stored in a dataframe named df, consists of four columns (x1, x2, x3, x4) with strings containing numerical values along with percentage values enclosed in parentheses. Our goal is to extract these numerical values and compute a total for each row.

  • David Rosenthal ☛ Decentralized Systems Aren't

    Below the fold is the text of a talk I gave to Berkeley's Information Systems Seminar exploring the history of attempts to build decentralized systems and why so many of them end up centralized.

    As usual, you don't need to take notes. The text of my talk with links to the sources will go up at blog.dshr.org after this seminar.

  • Python

    • University of Toronto ☛ Please don't try to hot-reload changed Python files too often

      There is a person running a Python program on one of our servers, which is something that people do regularly. As far as I can tell, this person's Python program is using some Python framework that supports on the fly reloading (often called hot-reloading) of changed Python code for at least some of the loaded code, and perhaps much or all of it. Naturally, in order to see if you need to hot-reload any code, you need to check whether a bunch of files have changed (at least in our environment, some environments may be able to do this slightly better). This person's Python code is otherwise almost always idle.

Leftovers

• El País ☛ Three sailors rescued in the Pacific after calling for help with palm leaves

  The breakthrough came when the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon aircraft identified the three sailors on April 7 at Pikelot Atoll, confirming their presence and status. “In a remarkable testament to their will to be found, the mariners spelled out ‘HELP’ on the beach using palm leaves, a crucial factor in their discovery. This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location,” said Lt. Chelsea Garcia, the search and rescue mission coordinator on the day they were located.

• US Navy Times ☛ Navy, Coast Guard rescue men who spelled out ‘HELP’ with palm fronds

  The crew of a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon plane from Kadena Air Force Base in Japan spotted the three on Pikelot and dropped survival packages. The next day, a Coast Guard HC-130J Hercules plane from Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii dropped a radio the men used to report they were thirsty but all right, Arnold said.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Tracy Durnell

  This is the 33rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Tracy Durnell and her blog, tracydurnell.com

• The Atlantic ☛ Before Facebook, There Was BlackPlanet

  BlackPlanet went live in 1999, nearly three years before Friendster, four years before MySpace, five years before Facebook, and seven years before Twitter. In those early years, the internet was still seen by many as a giant library—a place where you went to find things out. Sure, the web had chat rooms, bulletin boards, and listservs. But BlackPlanet expanded what it meant to commune—and express oneself—online.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ NASA Is Set to Launch Its Next-Gen Solar Sail Into Deep Space

    Solar sails can harness that wind and provide propulsion for spacecraft. NASA is about to test a new solar sail design that can make solar sails even more effective.

    Solar pressure pervades the entire Solar System. It weakens with distance, but it's present. It affects all spacecraft, including satellites. It affects longer-duration space flights dramatically.

    A spacecraft on a mission to Mars can be forced off course by thousands of kilometres during its voyage by solar pressure. The pressure also affects a spacecraft's orientation, and they're designed to deal with it.

• Hardware

  • Luke Harris ☛ Safer Table Saws

    Yes! This is important. All table saws need a built-in safety system requiring more effort to disable and with less drawbacks than removable saw guards. I have been around many people who have been injured by table saws and have come close myself on several occasions. And I’ve encountered many table saws whose terrible guards and kickback jigs are either long lost or buried in the back of a PPE cabinet. No matter how confident one gets with a table saw, things can and will get unpredictable faster than one can react.

  • The Verge ☛ China is planning to ‘rip and replace’ Intel and AMD chips

    Under the order from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, telecom providers will have to check their networks for any foreign-made chips and then create a timeline for their removal. This change will mainly affect Intel and AMD, sources tell the WSJ, as the two California-based companies provide the “bulk” of the processors included in China’s networking equipment.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Texas Surgeon Accused of Manipulating Government Database to Deny Liver Transplants

    A respected Houston transplant surgeon has been accused of altering database information for patients waiting on a new liver — and now, his former employer is admitting that parts of the allegations are true.

    As the New York Times reports, surgeon J. Steve Bynon of Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston allegedly changed government database records to preclude his own patients from getting liver transplants, and many of them died while on the waiting list.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ No, AI won’t solve burnout!

    The idea that AI will, in any way, “lift the burden” on such mental health issues is so preposterous, so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that I physically can’t bring myself to think about it without fits of laugher at the sheer, uncut hubris.

    (I swear this is true, when I was drafting this post yesterday, I was giggling so much the barista asked me what was so funny. I said “techbros” which I’m not sure he understood, but he shared a grin).

  • Dave Rupert ☛ A weighted vest

    Putting my optimist hat back on, it might work this time. Maybe this is the one weird trick my body needs to activate dormant caveman genetics that will unleash my inner Adonis. Walking in hard mode seems sustainable for the time-being and I can already feel my ass morphing into a perfect badonkadonk.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ US braces for cicadas by the trillion as two broods of periodic insects coincide

    The simultaneous appearance of the two cicada broods – known as Brood XIX and Brood XIII – is a rare event, not having occurred since 1803, a year when Thomas Jefferson was US president. “It’s really exciting. I’ve been looking forward to this for many years,” said Catherine Dana, an entomologist who specializes in cicadas at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “For the public, it’s going to be a really special experience.”

  • Great Lakes Echo ☛ This year’s cicadas could contain contaminants—best to keep them off the dinner plate

    And a study from the University of Cincinnati Ohio found mercury levels in some cicadas approaching government consumption warnings for fish. Mercury concentration ranged from 0.01-4.46 parts per million, depending on where the bug was found. The Food and Drug Administration has set a maximum permissible level of mercury concentration in food as 1 part per million.

  • Arena Media Brands LLC ☛ Weird Recipe for Cooked Cicadas Isn't for the Faint of Heart

    They also have a life cycle that spans several years and spend most of their lives underground feeding on the sap from tree roots. Some only emerge every 13 or 17 years, coming up from the ground as adults in massive numbers.

    That's a good thing to know if you want to follow this recipe because you need 60 cicadas for every four people you serve, and the bugs must have freshly emerged and shed their exoskeletons. They will be soft and squishy, which makes them perfect for marinating and frying.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The cicadas are coming: An entomologist's take on a once-in-200-years event

    We, in the United States, tend not to eat insects. But other parts of the world actually love the fact that this insect protein is widely available and is good for you.

    I know several restaurants have tried putting cicadas on their menu, but people aren't always down for it. They taste kind of earthy. If you sauté them, especially with chili oil and soy sauce, they make a pretty good complement to food like rice and noodles.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Dumbphone Boom Is Real

    The growing dumbphone fervor may be motivated, in part, by the discourse around child safety online. Parents are increasingly confronted with evidence that sites like Instagram and TikTok intentionally try to hook their children. Using those sites can increase teens’ anxiety and lower their self-esteem, according to some studies, and smartphones make it so that kids are logged on constantly. Why should this situation be any healthier for adults? After almost two decades with iPhones, the public seems to be experiencing a collective ennui with digital life. So many hours of each day are lived through our portable, glowing screens, but the Internet isn’t even fun anymore. We lack the self-control to wean ourselves off, so we crave devices that actively prevent us from getting sucked into them. That means opting out of the prevailing technology and into what Cal Newport, a contributing writer for The New Yorker, has called a more considered “digital minimalism.”

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex

    Sexual strangulation, nearly always of women in heterosexual pornography, has long been a staple on free sites, those default sources of sex ed for teens. As with anything else, repeat exposure can render the once appalling appealing. It’s not uncommon for behaviors to be normalized in porn, move within a few years to mainstream media, then, in what may become a feedback loop, be adopted in the bedroom or the dorm room.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Adobe is buying videos for R50/minute to build AI model

    The software company is offering its network of photographers and artists US$120 (R2 250) to submit videos of people engaged in everyday actions such as walking or expressing emotions including joy and anger, according to documents. The goal is to source assets for AI training, the company wrote.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Kiss follows Abba into the musical AI afterlife

    The bigger question here is what this means for a wider music industry looking for life after streaming. Spotify Technology has been around for some 15 years; initially a digital underdog saving record labels from piracy, it’s now a billionaire-led incumbent that’s expanding into audiobooks and podcasts as music growth starts to slow and competition from social media rises. The price paid for the Kiss rights shows a lot of hope being pinned on the market for everything that isn’t the actual listening bit – merchandise, branding, hologram shows – which is currently worth an estimated $3.5-billion, according to consultancy MIDiA Research.

  • The Register UK ☛ Palo Alto Networks to fix exploited GlobalProtect zero-day

    The command-injection flaw, with an unwelcome top CVSS severity score of 10 out of 10, may let an unauthenticated attacker execute remote code with root privileges on an affected gateway, which to put it mildly is not ideal. It can, essentially, be exploited to take complete control of equipment and drill into victims' networks.

    Updates to fully fix this severe hole are due to arrive by Sunday, April 14, we're told.

  • The Hill ☛ Deepfake victims must punish Big Tech because Congress won’t

    That 2016 case is ever-relevant today as social media companies enjoy blanket protection over the growing problem of AI “deepfakes” — images of real people transformed into lifelike pictures and videos depicting them saying and doing things that never happened.

    There was a time, not long ago, when an altered picture — “photoshopped” was the common term — could be spotted a mile away. AI’s evolution has made detecting a real image from a doctored one nearly impossible.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ S.T.O.P. is Working to ‘Ban The Scan’ in New York

      Facial recognition is a threat to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. EFF supports strict restrictions on face recognition use by private companies, and total bans on government use of the technology. Face recognition in all of its forms, including face scanning and real-time tracking, pose threats to civil liberties and individual privacy. “False positive” error rates are significantly higher for women, children, and people of color, meaning face recognition has an unfair discriminatory impact. Coupled with the fact that cameras are over-deployed in neighborhoods with immigrants and people of color, spying technologies like face surveillance serve to amplify existing disparities in the criminal justice system.

    • Federal News Network ☛ GSA to pilot facial recognition option for Login.gov in May

      GSA’s rollout of facial recognition technology on Login.gov comes a year after its inspector general’s office found it misled agency customers and the Technology Modernization Fund board about meeting NIST’s IAL2 standard for remote identity proofing.

      The IG report found that, rather than conducting physical or biometric comparisons, such as through facial recognition or fingerprints, as required by NIST, Login.gov was instead using a third party to compare identification cards to information contained in LexisNexis.

    • The Record ☛ FISA Section 702 reauthorization passes in House on second try this week

      Section 702 allows the U.S. government to spy on foreigners without getting court approval but also inadvertently collects the communications of U.S. citizens. However, the program can continue operating until April 2025 because the FISA court recently granted a government request authorizing it for another year.

      House passage came after members churned through a handful of amendments, most notably a bipartisan one that would have required U.S. law enforcement to obtain a court warrant before searching for information about Americans retrieved by powerful electronic spying tools — a proposal that has been vigorously opposed by the Biden administration.

      The amendment was defeated in a 212-212 tie vote.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ House passes extension of expiring surveillance authorities

      To make matters wilder still, a rare tie vote defeated an amendment that civil liberties and privacy groups had fought hard to include. That amendment would have required a warrant to query data collected under the law on American citizens and organizations, as well as people on U.S. soil.

      Legislation renewing the authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act now moves to the Senate after decisive passage in the House by a vote of 273-147.

    • 404 Media ☛ Instagram Will Automatically Blur Nudes in Direct Messages

      The “nudity protection” feature will detect nudes in direct messages and automatically blur them, both when you’re getting a nude sent to you and when you’re attempting to send one to someone else. Users will also see a popup message that says, “Take care when sharing sensitive photos. The photo is blurred because nudity protection is turned on. Others can screenshot or forward your photos without you knowing. You can unsend a photo if you change your mind, but there's a chance others have already seen it.”

    • Hindustan Times ☛ House rejects adding a warrant requirement to US spy program

      A separate provision, ending warrantless surveillance of Americans, was also offered on the floor Friday but despite gaining support from strange bedfellows from the far-right and far-left, the measure ultimately failed to get a majority of the votes required to pass the House. The bill now goes to the Senate where its future is uncertain. The program is set to expire on April 19 unless Congress acts.

    • The Register UK ☛ Hospital websites share visitors' data with Google, Meta

      Academics at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed a nationally representative sample of 100 non-federal acute care hospitals – essentially traditional hospitals with emergency departments – and their findings were that 96 percent of their websites transmitted user data to third parties.

      Additionally, not all of these websites even had a privacy policy. And of the 71 percent that did, 56 percent disclosed specific third-party companies that could receive user information.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Belgium opens probe into Russian ‘interference’ in European Parliament

    He said a summit of EU leaders next week would discuss the allegations which have been raised just ahead of bloc-wide elections in June to choose a new parliament.

    De Croo said Moscow’s “clear” objectives were to “help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European Parliament and reinforce the pro-Russian narrative in that institution”.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ DIY landmine-clearing is putting Ukrainian farmers in danger

    Russia’s invasion has turned Ukraine into the world’s most heavily mined country. In Kherson and Kharkhiv Russian soldiers left minefields when they retreated. As well as laying mines to defend their positions, they used them to disrupt Ukrainian farming. One Russian rocket system—known as zemledeliye or “agriculture”—hurls mines up to 15km away from the launcher. Farming is a pillar of Ukraine’s economy: agricultural exports were worth $27.7bn in 2021, more than 40% of total exports. But 7.5% of Ukraine’s farmland is not in use, according to NASA, following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. There has been a human cost, too: 170 farmers have been killed, accounting for almost 20% of civilian deaths by landmines or unexploded ordnance, says Colonel Yevhenii Zubarevskyi, head of statistics at the defence ministry’s Mine Action Directorate. With spring sowing underway, what is being done?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Nigeria's Chibok girls: What happened 10 years ago

    One of those who managed to escape told Human Rights Watch

    that an insurgent asked the schoolgirls in the truck, "What kind of knowledge are you looking for here [at the school]? Since you are here to look for Western education, we are here to confront it and teach you the ways of Islam."

    The name of the militant group, Boko Haram, is usually translated as "Western education is forbidden."

  • VOA News ☛ Belgium investigates alleged Russian interference in EU elections

    Belgium authorities are investigating suspected Russian interference in upcoming European parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Friday, after claims that lawmakers were paid to promote Kremlin propaganda.

    De Croo added that Belgium's intelligence service has confirmed the existence of pro-Russian networks acting in several European countries, including Belgium, to undermine support for Ukraine.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Copper thieves strike again, mutilating a 100-year-old monument in MacArthur Park

    The theft — and its most coveted metal, bronze — belongs to a series of graceless robberies across the Southland and the country that have rendered streets dark, cemeteries without markers and public art destroyed.

    “I’ve been with the Department of Cultural Affairs for 27 years, and I’ve never seen this level of attack on public art and sculpture,” said Felicia Filer, director of department’s public art division.

    Filer described an increase in the theft of bronze sculptures and plaques starting about five months ago. And Los Angeles is not alone in these insults to history and dignity.

  • YLE ☛ Estonia: Russia used nationals abroad to sow discontent over Finland's border closures

    The agency's report, published on Friday, also noted that Russia was directing citizens of third countries to apply for asylum in Finland, Estonia and several other nations in a so-called hybrid influencing strategy.

    "Without concealing its involvement or fearing reputational damage, Russia openly sent migrants to the Estonian and Finnish borders. Russian border guards often instructed, directed and escorted groups of migrants. These migration attacks are designed to strain the receiving country’s border guard service and other state institutions, as well as to stir anxiety in society, incite extreme movements to react to news reports, and ultimately divide society," the report read.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Project Censored ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Russian Government Intensifies Online Censorship Ahead of Presidential Election

    • International Business Times ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Trump Says He Can End Russia-Ukraine War In 24 Hours By Giving Russia More Ukrainian Land

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Russian Missile Attack Kills Four in Odesa District, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Russians Flee 'Very Unusual' Floods in Boats Clutching Valuables, Food, Pets

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Ukraine Will Be Outgunned by Russia 10 to 1 in Weeks Without US Help, Top Europe General Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-08 [Older] An Espionage Scandal Rocks Austria, Laying Bare Alleged Russian Spying Operations Across Europe

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-08 [Older] Germany's AfD Says Lawmaker Accused of Taking Russian Cash Denies Wrongdoing

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-08 [Older] Record Floods in Russia's Urals Triggered by Melting Snow

    v

    • CBC ☛ 2024-04-09 [Older] Acrobats who defected from Russia in 1992 return to thank Newfoundland 'mom'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-09 [Older] China and Russia agree to boost ties in opposition to West

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-09 [Older] IOC gets its way as top Western nations all agree to Russian athletes at Paris 2024

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-09 [Older] China's Xi Meets With Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Show of Support Against Western Democracies

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Kara-Murza's wife says dream of a democratic Russia lives on

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Russian oligarchs win appeal to partially annul EU sanctions

    • CPJ ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Russia issues arrest warrant for exiled journalist Mikhail Zygar

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] As Russia's war drags on, Zelenskyy's term is up in Ukraine

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Hill ☛ Boeing whistleblower, aviation experts called to testify before Senate

    The hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, will feature NASA expert on safety culture Dr. Tracy Dillinger, University of Southern California professor and expert on aviation safety Dr. Najmedin Meshkati and Dr. Javier de Luis, an aeronautics expert at MIT, the committee announced.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Fires Researchers for Leaking Information

    Both men had worked on OpenAI's safety team, per the report, though most recently, Aschenbrenner had been working on its so-called "superalignment" efforts while Izmailov was tasked with researching AI reasoning. We've reached out to OpenAI and Microsoft, its major investor, for further context.

    While it's hazy what information the men leaked, it's been clear for months now both that OpenAI has become something of a leaky ship and that it was looking to do something about it.

  • [Old] MS Poweruser ☛ OpenAI now hires investigators to crack down on leakers from inside and other threats

    AI giant OpenAI faces a unique challenge: its rapid internal progress often gets spilled by insiders, fueling anxieties within the company. To combat leaks and secure its innovations, OpenAI is resorting to hiring investigators to “mitigate potential insider threats.”

  • NPR ☛ Another Boeing whistleblower says he faced retaliation for reporting 'shortcuts'

    In a virtual meeting with reporters, Salehpour said Boeing was so eager to meet its production goals that it took "shortcuts" when it fastened together the carbon-composite fuselage of the 787. That could dramatically shorten the life of the plane, he warned, potentially causing it to break apart in mid-flight.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ Prospective GB News Board Member is Fossil Fuel Investor

    According to his parliamentary register of interests, Lord Theodore Agnew has shares of at least £100,000 in Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned energy producer. Equinor has a majority stake in the Rosebank North Sea oil field, which has been dubbed a “carbon bomb” by environmental law charity ClientEarth.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Ex-Amazon techie stole $12 million in crypto through hacking. What happened next

      US District Judge Victor Marrero pronounced the sentence to 34-year-old Shakeeb Ahmed, an immigrant from Saudi Arabia, who pleaded guilty in December, Bloomberg reported. He pleaded guilty to taking advantage of the flaws in the decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms' ‘smart contracts’ to insert fake pricing data and generate $12 million inflated and unearned profits that he withdrew in cryptocurrency, the report added.

    • Politico LLC ☛ Unsolved mystery: How much power is crypto using? - E&E News by POLITICO

      “There’s just not a lot of transparency,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, the global head of grid edge at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie who focuses on topics such as demand flexibility and a decentralized power system. “You can look at the companies that are publicly traded, and they’ll discuss plans with estimates of megawatts [consumed]. But actual demand may be very different, so you only have partial clues.”

      Conditions on the U.S. grid may become increasingly tight. A December 2023 report from the consulting group Grid Strategies found that the forecast for electricity demand over the next five years nearly doubled over the past year, thanks to commitments for new industrial sites, data centers, extreme weather, and the electrification of homes and cars.

    • Vancouver Sun ☛ B.C. seeks to regulate electricity for cryptocurrency miners

      The statement says 21 projects, requesting a total of 11,700 gigawatt hours of power per year, were temporarily suspended from receiving power. It says that amount of electricity is more than double what the new Site C dam will be able to generate.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ The Race to Save the Dragon’s Blood Tree

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money

    The surest way to ignore such misalignment is by focusing exclusively on technical questions about AI model capabilities, divorced from the socioeconomic environment in which these models will operate and be designed for profit.

    Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not simply about preventing “monopoly”, “self-preferencing”, or “Big Tech dominance”. It’s about ensuring that the economic environment facilitating innovation is not incentivising hard-to-predict technological risks as companies “move fast and break things” in a race for profit or market dominance.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ AI is the biggest thing since the cloud: Amazon CEO

    The company began cutting hundreds of jobs in its Amazon Web Services division in April. In his letter, Jassy said AWS will be at the core of AI applications and models and “help democratise this next seminal phase of AI”.

  • CS Monitor ☛ From Gore to Trump: How America lost trust in elections

    It all came down to Florida. Palm Beach’s “butterfly” ballot, in which the name of the candidate was misaligned with the space voters pressed to mark their choices, confused many people. Other locales used punch-out ballots, which were difficult for some voters to punch out cleanly, leading to the “hanging chads” of paper that weary election officials were tasked with evaluating.

    A five-week legal battle followed. Democratic lawyers pushed for recounts, while Republicans sued to block them. Finally, after legal twists and turns in the state courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to stop the process. The ruling effectively delivered the state, and the presidency, to Governor Bush by a margin of some 500 votes.

    Bush v. Gore remains one of the most politically consequential Supreme Court decisions in American history.

  • [Old] North Carolina ☛ State Board Unanimously Certifies New Voting System

    The EVS 6.3.0.0 system now is one of several state-certified voting systems, which counties can choose from in determining the best system of casting and counting ballots for their voters.

    The new system includes an upgrade to the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, increased memory capacity, the new DS300 polling place scanner/tabulator, the new DS950 high-speed scanner/tabulator, and new reporting and ballot design modules, among other features.

  • [Old] Burlington County, New Jersey ☛ Burlington County Unveils New Voting Machines i

    Voting is done with the machine’s touch screen and there are multiple opportunities to review and change selections on screen before printing a paper ballot. After printing the ballot, voters can again check to verify their selections before casting their ballot by inserting it into a machine tabulator that scans and tabulates their selections.

  • [Old] Capitol Broadcasting Company Inc ☛ New voting machines in NC touted as safe and secure

    The new machines have more memory than older ones, and they run on newer operating software. However, the new machines will be just as secure, if not more secure, than the machines that they replace.

  • [Old] Government Media Executive Group LLC ☛ New York BOE expected to vote on the use of highly controversial electronic voting machines

    Experts have also questioned whether thermal paper is sufficient for keeping voting records for the necessary two years under state law. The state Board of Elections maintains that the records have proven durability in other jurisdictions.

    In another letter shared exclusively with City & State, the election security advocacy group SMART Elections laid out a series of technical arguments about why the ExpressVoteXL machines don’t measure up. In one theoretical scenario, the barcodes for two candidates get flipped by mistake – but the record readable by the voter shows the candidate they meant to vote for. They would be unaware of a mistake with the barcode and would rely on the readable receipt for confirmation. And if it shows the correct candidate, the voter would have no way of knowing that the barcode will record a different candidate, and no way of remedying the mistake. Continuing the scenario, a mandatory post-election audit for all races in New York would in many cases get run through a different machine, which SMART Elections confirmed would count the barcodes, not the paper records. “ES&S says at their demonstrations that encoding the vote in a barcode is basically identical to the way New York counts its votes now,” the letter reads. “But this is not true.”

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • TMZ ☛ O.J. Simpson Did NOT Make Deathbed Confession About Murders

      Of course, almost as soon as news broke of his death, people wondered if he'd spoken at all about the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It does play like the perfect movie scene, which clearly helped fuel the rumor -- but a source with direct knowledge tells us it's just that ... a rumor.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ France fights disinformation as Olympics, elections loom

      Another example is the Portal Kombat network: 193 websites established through a company based on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula that have spread pro-Russia propaganda in France, Germany and Poland.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Belgium probes Russian 'interference' in EU elections

      De Croo said investigators found that Russian groups are meddling in the elections to promote pro-Russia candidates, in an attempt to weaken European support for Ukraine.

      "Belgian intelligence services have confirmed the existence of pro-Russian interference networks with activities in several European countries and also here in Belgium," De Croo told reporters.

    • Noam Chomsky ☛ Noam Chomsky: Propaganda Wars Are Raging as Russia’s War on Ukraine Expands

      In the interview that follows, leading scholar and dissident Noam Chomsky, who, along with Edward Herman, constructed the concept of the “propaganda model,” looks at the question of who is winning the propaganda war in Ukraine. Additionally, he discusses how social media shape political reality today, analyzes whether the “propaganda model” still works, and dissects the role of the use of “whataboutism.” Lastly, he shares his thoughts on the case of Julian Assange and what his now almost certain extradition to the United States for having committed the “crime” of releasing public information about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq says about U.S. democratic principles.

    • Estonia ☛ Estonian Security Service: Annual Review 2023-2024 [PDF]

      As the reach of Russian state television channels in Europe is restricted and Russian-controlled information channels have lost credibility, Russian special services have redirected a significant portion of their influence operations towards social media platforms. This involves activating channels with established followings and user bases. For example, during the migration attack targeting Finland, social media groups of Russian-speaking individuals living in Finland witnessed invitations to engage in video production. These calls offered people the chance to voice their concerns regarding the closure of the Finland-Russia border. A week later, a video clip was produced and released on YouTube, using a channel owned by a Russian travel blogger with several million followers. To make it less conspicuous among their previous content, it was presented as a novel form of current affairs coverage. Attempts to repurpose previously established communication groups and channels into vehicles for propagating misinformation also extend to other popular social media platforms.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ Masked gunmen shoot Myanmar Christian leader during church service

    Paul Hkwi Shane Aung was hit in his jaw, hand and thigh, according to one man in the congregation, adding that he survived the attack, but is seriously injured.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Salman Rushdie recalls gruesome stabbing in new memoir, ‘The last thing..’

    In his first interview after the attack, Rushdie spoke to Anderson Cooper on CBS’s 60 Minutes, sharing, "One of the surgeons who had saved my life said to me, ‘First you were really unlucky, and then you were really lucky’. I said, ‘What’s the lucky part?’ and he said, ‘Well, the lucky part is that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife’."

    The attack occurred 33 years after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death due to the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ What UK really thinks about use of AI in journalism

    People in the UK are generally pessimistic about the potential impact of AI on journalism – but are more open to it when given examples of specific tasks it could be used for.

    A Yougov survey of 2,046 adults carried out in January and shared with Press Gazette found that 48% of people fear AI will have a negative effect on journalism.

  • CPJ ☛ One year into Sudan’s civil war, its media faces grave threats

    Yet one year into the war that has killed 14,000 people and displaced millions, journalists continue their struggle to cover its devastating impact.

    Here are the top challenges to journalism in Sudan: [...]

  • CPJ ☛ Argentine journalist gets death threats after reporting on illegal medication sales

    “Argentine authorities must immediately investigate the death threats against Argentine journalist Julio Ernesto López,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar. “Journalists should not be persecuted for providing a service of public interest to society, as was the case with his report.”

  • VOA News ☛ Mali junta bans media from covering politics

    The crackdown in Mali takes place at a time of broader instability in the West African country. Mali has experienced two military coups since 2020 and is struggling to respond to threats posed by militant groups tied to al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

    Conditions for media reporting there are already dangerous, with a risk of being targeted by militant groups for those on assignment outside the capital, Bamako.

  • Truthdig ☛ Hope Grows for Assange as Biden Considers Dropping Charges - Truthdig

    The U.K. High Court ruled last month that Assange could not be immediately extradited to the U.S., where he faces up to 175 years behind bars if convicted on all counts. The tribunal gave the Biden administration until April 16 to guarantee that Assange won’t face the death penalty. Absent such assurance, Assange will be allowed to continue appealing his extradition.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Iran’s Deadly Message to Journalists Abroad

    This was no petty street crime. The assailants left Zeraati’s iPhone, brand-new AirPods, pricey watch, and wallet full of cash untouched. With the help of a driver, they fled the scene and then the country, to an undisclosed destination, according to British authorities. The London police are investigating the attack as a potential case of terrorism. Its methods suggest that the assailants’ intention was not to kill Zeraati but to hurt him in a way that would warn all of us Iranian journalists working in the West: You could be next.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Five Years At Belmarsh: A Chronicle Of Julian Assange’s Imprisonment

    Assange is one of the only journalists to be jailed by a Western country, making the treatment that he has endured extraordinary. He has spent more time in prison than most individuals charged with similar acts.

    Since December 2010, Assange has lived under some form of arbitrary detention.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ Historic Tibetan Buddhist monastery is being moved to make way for dam

    But in April 2023 the government’s Department of National Heritage declared that the artifacts and murals inside the monastery were of “no significant value or importance” and that its relocation would proceed, he said.

  • International Business Times ☛ NYC Resto Employs Filipinos Via Zoom to Take Your Orders And Ask For 18% Tip

    A New York City restaurant chain has found a unique way to save on labour costs - replacing in-person staff with virtual greeters and cashiers. These Filipino hostesses on Zoom calls assist customers through screens. Despite the lack of in-person staff, they still expect customers to tip.

  • EFF ☛ What Does EFF Mean to You?

    What does EFF mean to you? We’d love to know why you support us, how you see our mission, or what issue or area we address that affects your life the most. It’ll help us make sure we keep on being the EFF you want us to be.

    So if you’re willing to go on the record, please send us a few sentences, along with your first name and current city of residence, to testimonials@eff.org; we’ll pick some every now and then to share with the world here on our blog, in our emails, and on our social media.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Submits Comments on FRT to Commission on Civil Rights

    In our submission, we reiterated our stance that there should be a ban on governmental use of FRT and strict regulations on private use because it: (1) is not reliable enough to be used in determinations affecting constitutional and statutory rights or social benefits; (2) is a menace to social justice as its errors are far more pronounced when applied to people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized groups; (3) threatens privacy rights; (4) chills and deters expression; and (5) creates information security risks.

    Despite these grave concerns, FRT is being used by the government and law enforcement agencies with increasing frequency, and sometimes with devastating effects. At least one Black woman and five Black men have been wrongfully arrested due to misidentification by FRT: Porcha Woodruff, Michael Oliver, Nijeer Parks, Randal Reid, Alonzo Sawyer, and Robert Williams. And Harvey Murphy Jr., a white man, was wrongfully arrested due to FRT misidentification, and then sexually assaulted while in jail.

    Even if FRT was accurate, or at least equally inaccurate across demographics, it would still severely impact our privacy and security. We cannot change our face, and we expose it to the mass surveillance networks already in place every day we go out in public. But doing that should not be license for the government or private entities to make imprints of our face and retain that data, especially when that data may be breached by hostile actors.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Apple M4 chips will overhaul entire Mac line with AI

    The company, which released its first Macs with M3 chips five months ago, is already nearing production of the next generation — the M4 processor — according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new chip will come in at least three main varieties, and Apple is looking to update every Mac model with it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: Apple is planning to bring new AI-focused M4 chips to entire line of Macs

    It’s reported that lower-end machines such as the Mac Mini will be fitted with an M4 chip codenamed Donan. For the midrange, the chip will go by the name of Brava, and for high-end devices such as the Mac Book Pro, the chip is the Hydra. It’s believed the Pro will be capable of supporting 500 gigabytes of RAM compared with the current 192 gigabytes. All three versions of the chip will have AI-processing capabilities above what the M3 is capable of.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ Apple's fails to escape UK App Store fee antitrust probe

  Apple's attempt to get the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to toss a lawsuit over its 30 percent App Store tax has failed, meaning the iMaker could eventually be forced to fork over £785 million ($980 million) in compensation to developers.

  In an order published today, a trio of CAT judges denied Apple's proposal to strike the case or issue a summary judgment. The tribunal decided unanimously that the claims that Apple was locking out competitors are actionable.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ No, “convenience” isn’t the problem

  The tactics that let a few startups into Big Tech are illegal under existing antitrust laws. It's illegal for large corporations to buy up smaller ones before they can grow to challenge their dominance. It's illegal for dominant companies to merge with each other. "Predatory pricing" (selling goods or services below cost to prevent competitors from entering the market, or to drive out existing competitors) is also illegal. It's illegal for a big business to use its power to bargain for preferential discounts from its suppliers. Large companies aren't allowed to collude to fix prices or payments.

  But under successive administrations, from Jimmy Carter through to Donald Trump, corporations routinely broke these laws. They explicitly and implicitly colluded to keep those laws from being enforced, driving smaller businesses into the ground. Now, sociopaths are just as capable of starting small companies as they are of running monopolies, but that one store that's run by a colossal asshole isn't the threat to your wellbeing that, say, Walmart or Amazon is.

• India Times ☛ apple uk lawsuit: Apple loses bid to throw out UK lawsuit over App Store fees

  Apple's bid to dismiss a lawsuit valued at nearly $1 billion was rejected on Friday, with a judge ruling it must face allegations it charged more than 1,500 UK-based developers unfair commission fees on purchases of apps and other content.

  Sean Ennis, a competition law professor and economist, is spearheading the case, which was filed at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) last year and alleges Apple charged developers unfair commissions of up to 30%.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • The Register UK ☛ AWS told to pay $525M in cloud storage patent suit

      Kove, which styles itself as a pioneer in high-performance computer storage and data management technologies, filed its original complaint [PDF] in 2018. It claims that AWS is infringing on three Kove-held patents in cloud services, such as the Amazon S3 storage platform, as well as in its DynamoDB database service, and in other related products and services.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Taylor Swift Pulled Music From Spotify—TikTok Payouts Are Worse

    Taylor Swift withheld her music from Spotify in 2017 with the release of Reputation. The singer sent fans to traditional outlets for downloads, vinyl, and CD sales. Now ahead of the release of The Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s music has returned to TikTok despite the UMG row—where artist payouts are even less.

  • Wired ☛ Tech Leaders Once Cried for AI Regulation. Now the Message Is ‘Slow Down’

    The real puzzle of this bill, which Schiff himself referred to in a committee meeting this week as a “first step,” is that no one knows whether using copyrighted work for AI training is legal. (Maybe it’s not such a puzzle when one notes that Schiff is running for a US Senate seat and that the bill is supported by all of Hollywood’s unions and trade groups.) Despite the current lack of reporting requirements, multiple suits have been filed against AI companies by creators who have identified their works in the data sets. (I should disclose here that I sit on the council of the Authors Guild, which is among a horde of plaintiffs suing OpenAI and Microsoft, and a supporter of Schiff’s bill. I speak for myself here.) The success of those lawsuits ultimately depends on whether the courts determine that the companies are violating the fair use provision of copyright laws.

    Whatever tack the courts take, it will be based on copyright law that didn’t anticipate an artificial intelligence that could suck up all the prose and images the world has to offer. Figuring out what fair use means in the age of AI is a job for Congress. That’s the kind of difficult decision that legislators need to make when dealing with an innovation that alters the landscape. And like privacy and other tech-driven modern problems, it is exactly the kind of decision that our 21st-century lawmakers manage to avoid. (Schiff staffers told me, “We are certainly waiting to see the fair use issue play out in the courts.”)

  • The Verge ☛ Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

    Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a “short term test for a small percentage of California users.” The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for linking Californians to news articles.

  • Google ☛ Why the California Journalism Preservation Act is putting support of the news ecosystem at risk

    As we’ve shared when other countries have considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by CJPA would be unworkable. If enacted, CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept. To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users. The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience. Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Delisted Thousands of ‘Music Piracy’ Domains in Response to UK Blocking Orders

    During CinemaCon 2024, the MPA announced a major push to cement pirate site blocking in U.S. law. Similar measures are commonplace in dozens of other countries including the UK, where ISP blocking is no longer a topic of discussion. Google plays along voluntarily and following requests from music industry group BPI, has already delisted thousands of domains previously blocked by court order.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Block Innovation By Supporting the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act

    Claiming to protect creators, or perhaps that should be 'identifiable copyright holders', the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act of 2024 has been introduced at the U.S. House of Representatives. At its core, the Bill requires those responsible for training or modifying a dataset, used to build a generative AI system, to notify the Copyright Office of any copyrighted works used in that process. In summary, AI must achieve the impossible, to benefit the few, or completely disconnect from the internet.