Leftovers

• Latvia ☛ Stradiņš hospital files lawsuit against construction company

  The Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital (Stradiņš Hospital) has filed its first lawsuit to recover damages from the former builder, LLC Velve, for unlawful conduct and non-fulfilment of the contract. The first lawsuit has been filed for contractual damages of more than EUR 1 million, according to a hospital statement June 5.

• TechTea ☛ TechTea - Website Update: Adding Blogroll and JSON Feeds

  This website has been a major hobby for me lately. This time I added a couple new features that add a lot to the site. These are a blogroll and JSON Feeds.

• Keenan ☛ I really like everyone on my blogroll, but I'm sorry to say that it must die

  I started mine because I wanted to enthusiastically share cool fuckin' websites. I love seeing people's creativity, reading their words, and being exposed to their art. There are seemingly endless options out there, which means my blogroll could quickly become a huge, sprawling, unruly list. Some people do that! No shade. I just don't think that fits my vision. I want to curate.

  But ever since I built this thing, I've only ever added to it, even as it started to feel bigger in scope than I wanted. And I realize that the reason for this bloat was that the thought of removing someone made me feel bad on their behalf (whether they're as sensitive and anxious as I am or not, which also feels kinda presumptuous and rude? I dunno, my brain is stupid). What sites I keep or remove would, in the end, be an arbitrary decision guided largely by this weird puristic mindset of keeping things contained. Small. Manageable. It would not be a subjective assessment of them as a person, or the perceived quality or value of their work.

• NL Times ☛ Netherlands might skip next year's Eurovision after Joost Klein controversy

  Previously, AvroTros also said that an agreement had been made that Klein would not be hounded by cameras immediately after his performance. This led to the controversy behind the scenes moments after Klein's second semi-final round performance, when the singer was pursued by Eurovision crew members backstage, including a camerawoman. An altercation between the two took place, but accounts of the incident vary. Initial reports suggested it became physical, and that the woman's camera was damaged, though police in Malmö, Sweden, said they could not find evidence of that clime.

• Air Force Times ☛ How Gustav the pigeon broke the first news of the D-Day landings

  Although the loyal RAF homing pigeon was known as a “reliable” flyer, this fateful journey had been difficult for him. Gustav flew for five hours and 16 minutes across a distance of 150 miles to deliver the news, amid darkened skies and a headwind of about 50 miles per hour, according to the Imperial War Museum.

  Aside from difficult weather conditions, the perils of war — including hawks trained by the Nazis to kill Allied carrier pigeons — were omnipresent dangers.

• The Verge ☛ Seven Samurai’s 4K restoration is headed to theaters

  To celebrate its 70th anniversary, Akira Kurosawa’s black-and-white epic Seven Samurai is coming back to theaters with a new 4K restoration.

• James G ☛ Website seasons

  How should a website change with the seasons?, I wrote in my notes earlier today. This follows on from an experience last night where, as bed time started to approach, I found myself bleary-eyed and wondering: could a website be different as time passes? Could a website adapt to night time so that readers have an easier experience perusing information? In this same vein: how, more broadly, could a website adapt to the passage of time? How could a website adapt to the seasons?

• Science

  • CS Monitor ☛ Climate science and uncertainty in an age of misinformation

    It wasn’t that he was hiding anything, or that the research was wrong. It was just that the paper was deliberately focused in one narrow direction – the direction most likely, he claimed, to capture the attention of journal editors.

    The formula for getting published, he wrote, “is more about shaping your research in specific ways to support pre-approved narratives than it is about generating useful knowledge for society.” And when it comes to climate science, he alleged, that preapproved narrative is that “climate change impacts are pervasive and catastrophic.”

• Education

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ How to converse online

    Is this workflow ideal? I write something, you read it on the site, in your RSS reader, or in your inbox, you send me an email, I reply to you and off we go? Those are a lot of steps and there’s substantial friction involved. You need to decide to send me an email, hunt for my email address, write something, and overcome the weirdness of sending an email to a stranger. It’s a lot. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to leave a quick comment? Shouldn’t I have comments on my site? Well, no. Comments are easily one of the worst ways to have meaningful conversations online. I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a smart, thoughtful conversation in a comment section, I’m just saying it’s bloody hard. Comments are performative. You write knowing the other people will see your comment and so it’s not just a conversation between you and me. It’s a conversation between you, me, and the countless other people who will stumble on this page at any point in time.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Maine libraries abruptly pause interlibrary loans over contract dispute

    Kennebunk Free Library also shared a message from the Maine State Library, which holds the service contract. According to that statement, the contract is set to expire on June 30. After a competitive bidding process, it was awarded to a new vendor, the Missouri-based Stat Courier, but one of the unsuccessful bidders filed an appeal, leaving the service in legal limbo.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ 11th Grade English

    My classes were a breeze, except math at which I was never any good. I took Geometry and passed with absolutely no room to spare, making a 70 for the year. My fondest memories were of that English class with Mr. Stanton. I ended up loving him so much that I can't tell how much I learned in his class. My biggest academic memory was being chosen to read aloud Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Mr. Stanton didn't approve of the state's choice of textbooks and he had us use these old falling apart relics from the late 60s. When we had to study grammar, he let us know that he hated it as much as we did but that we must all soldier on. But it wasn't his literature instruction that made me so fond of him. It was his love of poetry and his fierce belief that I was a poet.

• Hardware

  • PC World ☛ Intel abandons hyperthreading for Lunar Lake CPUs

    Why? The reason is complicated, but basically it’s no longer wanted as Intel strives to maximize power efficiency in portable laptops. The performance cores or P-Cores on the new Lunar Lake series are 14 percent faster than the same cores on the previous-gen Meteor Lake CPUs, even with the multi-thread-processing of hyperthreading disabled.

  • Barry Sampson ☛ Barry Sampson | And Here's The Punchline

    I think this has all worked out really well. I've got what I wanted, spent less than expected, and buying secondhand means continuing the useful life of a tool that was built to last.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 168 students referred to public hospital over ‘severe mental health needs’ between Dec and Mar, gov’t says

    Hong Kong schools referred 168 cases of students with “severe mental health needs” to public psychiatric services between last December and this March, according to the city’s education chief, amid an upward trend in student suicides.

  • The Hill ☛ Our culture’s trashing of boys and men is having toxic consequences

    Such disturbing sentiments are widespread in the U.S. and are part of a growing trend in Western cultures — popularly called Gender Disappointment. An Australian psychologist who specializes in antenatal and postnatal care conducted a Facebook survey and found that Gender Disappointment is most common in women, who unabashedly want daughters, not sons. One woman posted on a mothers’ chat board that the “vast majority” of women on “every social media (Facebook, Instagram) site or general website (Netmums, Mumsnet, Reddit)” voice this gender bias. “There are websites like ingender and genderdreaming just dedicated to Gender disappointment…some of them are straight out Boy bashing or anti boy posts.”

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Portfolio Media Inc ☛ Microsoft Blasts Gamers' Bid To Add To Activision Appeal

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Clears Way for Antitrust Inquiries of Nvidia, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft and OpenAI

    The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission agreed to divide responsibility for investigating three major players in the artificial intelligence industry.

  • New York Times ☛ The Rise and Fall of BNN Breaking, an AI-Generated News Outlet

    BNN Breaking had millions of readers, an international team of journalists and a publishing deal with Microsoft. But it was just an Hey Hi (AI) chop shop.

  • Creative Commons ☛ Recap & Recording: “Open Culture in the Age of AI: Concerns, Hopes and Opportunities”

    In May, CC’s Open Culture Program hosted a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Open Culture in the Age of AI: Concerns, Hopes and Opportunities.” In this blog post we share key takeaways and a link to the recording.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Treasury seeks information on AI uses and risks in the financial sector

    The request for information, released Thursday, asks for comments on advancements in existing AI tools and on emerging AI technologies that can benefit the financial sector. The RFI has specific callouts for information on the use of AI in financial products and services, risk management, capital markets, internal operations, customer service, marketing and regulatory compliance.

  • The Verge ☛ Apple might reveal a new ‘Passwords’ app next week

    Apple already lets you save your passwords across your iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro using iCloud Keychain. The new app would sync the same way but with logins separated into different categories, such as accounts, Wi-Fi networks, and passkeys. However, Bloomberg says the new Passwords app would extend support for Windows as well — there’s no word about support for Android.

  • Simon Willison ☛ Accidental prompt injection against RAG applications

    RAG stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. It’s by far the most effective way of providing “new knowledge” to an LLM system. It’s quite a simple trick: you take the user’s question, run a search for relevant documentation fragments, then concatenate those plus the user’s question into a single prompt and send that to the LLM.

    Any time there’s concatenation of prompts, there’s a risk for prompt injection—where some of the concatenated text includes accidental or deliberate instructions that change how the prompt is executed.

  • US News And World Report ☛ US Election Officials Split on AI Disclosure Rules for Political Ads

    The proposal would not prohibit AI-generated content within political ads.

    There is growing concern in Washington that AI-generated content could mislead voters in the November presidential and congressional elections. The FCC said AI will probably play a substantial role in 2024 political ads.

  • Axios ☛ OpenAI employees' open letter can't slow AI's juggernaut

    The latest open letter seeking to slow the runaway train of AI development is likely to prove as ineffectual as the last one.

  • JURIST ☛ Australia introduces bill to criminalise sexually explicit deepfakes

    According to the bill, the offense will carry a charge of up to six years imprisonment for sharing non-consensual sexually explicit deepfake content. The bill also provides two aggravated offenses targeting repeat offenders and the creators of the content. Both aggravated offenses carry a potential sentence of up to seven years imprisonment. On the other hand, the new offenses will solely apply to sexual material featuring adults and child abuse material will continue to be handled under specific, separate charges.

  • Australia ☛ Podcast interview - The Briefing LiSTNR | Our ministers – Attorney-General’s portfolio

    SIEBERT: How widespread is it in Australia?

    ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It's impossible to say how widespread it is, but the complaints that we are hearing tell us that it is increasingly widespread. We've seen incidents of it in the United Kingdom in the United States and we know with the introduction of artificial intelligence, the widespread availability of artificial intelligence, that it is every day getting easier to produce this kind of deepfake sexually explicit material.

    SIEBERT: So, you'll be introducing legislation into Parliament today that would make it a crime to share the fake pornography without consent. What about the people who make it and the AI companies that can enable it? What happens to them?

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Page Uses AI-Generated Image of Disabled Veteran to Farm Engagement

    Needless to say, the woman isn't real. She's AI-generated, and to many, that's obvious. In addition to the woefully incorrect American flag tacked onto the uniform, the last name that would normally appear on a soldier's pocket is an illegible clump of blobs that, when zoomed out, gives off only the semblance of lettering. Her teeth, eyes, and ears are also blurry and uncanny, as are her poorly defined hands.

    And yet, despite these obvious flaws, the image has gone viral: at present, it has more than 62,000 reactions, nearly 5,000 comments, and 2,500 shares. And judging by the comments section? A lot of folks — particularly older men — absolutely think she's the real deal.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft adds NTLM to the Deprecated Features list

    Active feature development for all versions of NTLM (NT Lan Manager) has now ceased, although the protocol will linger for a while. Microsoft said: "Use of NTLM will continue to work in the next release of Windows Server and the next annual release of Windows."

  • Arca Noae ☛ Server status update for June 5, 2024

    Currently, email and our bug tracker are temporarily offline. This includes subscription renewal notifications, new ISO download notifications, as well as incoming contact submissions from our contact page. We are working diligently to address the issue, and will post an update when the matter has been resolved.

  • Bloomberg dubs Changi Business Park’s low occupancy a “blow to SG’s regional hub ambitions”

    Companies such as Citigroup, JP Morgan, and IBM have office spaces at Changi Business Park. However, IBM has gone from occupying 12 floors to two, and Bloomberg cited a property listing that says Standard Chartered Plc is looking to lease out two floors of at least 58,000 square feet of office space.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HKFP warns of scam site using website branding and singer G.E.M., as Meta continues to profit from fraudsters

      Fraudsters are using near-identical clones of HKFP and SCMP’s websites to deceive Hongkongers into signing up for a crypto scam named “Trade 2.1 Neupro.” Meta has, in turn, been profiting from such campaigns over the past year, with countless “sponsored” ads appearing across Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram locally.

    • Security Week ☛ Why Hackers Love Logs

      Computer log tampering is an almost inevitable part of a system compromise. Why and how do cybercriminals target logs, and what can be done to protect them?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Press Gazette ☛ £13.6bn damages claim against Surveillance Giant Google on behalf of UK publishers to go to trial

      Competition Appeal Tribunal certifies major lawsuit against Surveillance Giant Google alleging anti-competitive practices.

    • Free Press Journal ☛ Meta Hit With 11 Complaints In EU For Using Personal Data To Train AI Models

      Eleven complaints were filed against Meta (formerly Facebook) in European countries on Thursday over proposed changes that would allow the company to use personal data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models without seeking consent, potentially violating European Union (EU) privacy rules.

    • India Times ☛ Google Maps makes big change on how users location data is stored

    • India Times ☛ Meta hit with privacy complaints in Europe over AI plans

      A Vienna-based privacy campaign group filed complaints in 11 European countries against Meta on Thursday, saying the global tech giant's planned privacy policy change would allow "unlawful" use of personal data for artificial intelligence technology. Through the complaints, the group asks data protection authorities in the 11 European countries to stop Meta's new privacy policy before it enters into force in late June and fully investigate it.

    • [Repeat] The Strategist ☛ The high cost of GPT-4o

      GPT-4o gobbles up not only users’ own information but also third-party data that are revealed during interactions with the AI service. Let’s assume you are seeking a summary of a New York Times article’s content. You take a screenshot and share it with GPT-4o, which reads the screenshot and generates the requested summary within seconds. For you, the interaction is over. But OpenAI is now in possession of all the copyrighted material from the screenshot you provided, and it can use that information to train and enhance its model.

    • Joel Chrono ☛ I have an iPhone now

      My workplace assigned me an iPhone SE, and I had no choice but to accept it.

    • VOA News ☛ Many Americans still shying away from EVs despite Biden's push, poll finds

      A new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency requires that about 56% of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2032, along with at least 13% plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars. Auto companies are investing billions in factories and battery technology in an effort to speed up the switch to EVs to cut pollution, fight climate change — and meet the deadline.

    • Tutao GmbH ☛ Cars are becoming data harvesting nightmares

      The automobile industry has discovered a great new source of profits, selling your data. With new interconnected models, car manufacturers are collecting your private driving data, recording video and audio, and mining personal information to the extend of data about your genetic code or sexual activity. By doing so they are mirroring big tech data harvesting strategies to create profiles of you to sell these to a variety of shady data brokers. Here’s what you need to know.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Brazil is buying lots of Chinese EVs. Will that continue?

      Over the course of 2023, the value of Chinese BEV exports to Brazil surged eighteen-fold as automakers like BYD expanded their presence in the country. Chinese BEVs accounted for 92 percent of Brazil’s total BEV imports in this period.

      This trend has continued durably thus far. As of April 2024, Brazil has surpassed Belgium as the top export market for China’s EVs.

    • [Repeat] NYOB ☛ Microsoft violates children’s privacy – but blames your local school

      In the wake of the pandemic, schools in the European Union have increasingly begun to implement digital services for online learning. While these modernisation efforts are a welcome development, a small number of big tech companies immediately tried to dominate the space – often with the intention of getting children used to their systems and creating a new generation of future “loyal” customers. One of them is Microsoft, whose 365 Education services violate children’s data protection rights. When pupils wanted to exercise their GDPR rights, Microsoft said schools were the “controller” for their data. However, the schools have no control over the systems.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ First insight: 42 key points of the secret #EUGoingDark surveillance plan for the new EU Commission

      Specifically, according to the 42-point surveillance plan, manufacturers are to be legally obliged to make digital devices such as smartphones, smart homes, IoT devices, and cars monitorable at all times (“access by design”). Messenger services that were previously securely encrypted are to be forced to allow for interception. Data retention, which was overturned by the EU Court of Justice, is to be reenacted and extended to OTT [Internet] communications services such as messenger services. “At the very least”, IP connection data retention is to be required to be able to track all [Internet] activities. The secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data is to be prohibited. Where requested by the police, GPS location tracking should be activated by service providers (“tracking switch”). Uncooperative providers are to be threatened with prison sentences. The results of the hacking of an entire communication service, as in the Encrochat case (the evidence has been rejected by some courts), shall be used as evidence in court.

    • Netzpolitik ☛ 9984/24 LIMITE COSI 88 ENFOPOL 245 IXIM 138 CATS 42 COPEN 261 CYBER 170

      [PDF]

      The input reflected above, as well as detailed discussions in three HLG Plenary meetings, nine expert group meetings, a public consultation meeting, and written contributions, allowed the identification of key problem drivers that underpin the challenges set out above and provide a rationale for the recommendations.

      Regarding access to data at rest in a user’s device, the HLG identified as main issues: the lack of cross-border law enforcement cooperation concerning the sharing of digital forensic tools; the insufficient cooperation between law enforcement and the relevant providers, manufacturers and suppliers of hardware and software, hampering the ability to access the data in clear; the difficulty to gain lawful access to a user’s device and, if access is possible, extracting and decrypting the data and metadata available to obtain intelligible information that can be of use to investigations and presented as admissible evidence in court.

      The HLG considers the pace of technological developments related to encryption of information on devices to be rapid to the point that existing decryption tools and techniques are becoming ineffective. This is especially true in cases where suspects and organised crime groups make use of specifically designed communication devices and networks. The time required to decrypt data extracted from devices is also a significant issue: experts reported that this might take up to two years in some instances. The degree of difficulty involved in decrypting bespoke devices that have been designed and marketed exclusively for criminal purposes is even higher and presents further challenges to digital forensics departments across the Member States.

    • Wired ☛ Microsoft’s Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought

      Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the company's new Recall feature, which stores a history of your computer desktop and makes it available to AI for analysis, as “photographic memory” for your PC. Within the cybersecurity community, meanwhile, the notion of a tool that silently takes a screenshot of your desktop every five seconds has been hailed as a hacker's dream come true and the worst product idea in recent memory.

      Now, security researchers have pointed out that even the one remaining security safeguard meant to protect that feature from exploitation can be trivially defeated.

    • Eric Bailey ☛ Workplace discrimination: another terrible thing Windows Recall might enable

      Unlike contemporary employee monitoring solutions, Recall captures a level of detail that is effectively a realtime video playback of not only everything you do on your device, but also how you go about doing it.

      Through the lens of a mandatory work install, Recall can track the precise movements and actions of employee behavior when interfacing with work systems. This easily opens up the potential for creating efficiency-tracking mechanisms—especially automated, machine vision-powered approaches.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft Research chief scientist has no issue with Recall

      The Register noted when Recall was introduced at Microsoft Build last month that the software – which builds an archive of screenshots taken every few seconds and logs user activities, so that past actions can be recalled – presents a significant privacy risk. As recently described by author Charlie Stross, it is "the product nobody wanted" and "an utter privacy shit-show."

    • The Verge ☛ Windows AI feature that screenshots everything labeled a security ‘disaster’

      Microsoft is about to launch a new AI-powered Recall feature that screenshots everything you do on your PC. Recall is part of the new Copilot Plus PCs that are debuting on June 18th, but experts who have tested the feature are already warning that Recall could be a “disaster” for cybersecurity.

      Recall is designed to use local AI models to screenshot everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve anything in seconds. There’s even an explorable timeline you can scroll through. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models.

    • NYOB ☛ noyb urges 11 DPAs to immediately stop Meta's abuse of personal data for AI

      Over the past few days, Meta has informed millions of Europeans that its privacy policy is changing once again. Only on closer inspection of the links in the notification did it become clear that the company plans to use years of personal posts, private images or online tracking data for an undefined "AI technology" that can ingest personal data from any source and share any information with undefined "third parties". Instead of asking users for their consent (opt-in), Meta argues that it has a legitimate interest that overrides the fundamental right to data protection and privacy of European users. Once their data in the system, users seem to have no option of ever having it removed ("right to be forgotten"). noyb has now filed complaints in 11 European countries, asking the authorities to launch an urgency procedure to stop this change immediately, before it comes into force on 26 June 2024.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ The E.U. Is Voting. It’s Never Mattered More.

    Hundreds of millions of voters across 27 nations will turn out this weekend to cast their ballots, but the European Parliament is the least powerful of the European Union institutions. It is often derided as a talking shop. Its 720 members have limited powers, and, while a few are ascendant stars, a few are retired politicians, or even criminals.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ How American medical institutions helped make D-day a success

    “The nature of warfare was very, very different in 1944,” said Dr. Leo A. Gordon, an affiliate faculty member in the Cedars-Sinai History of Medicine Program. “Therefore, the nature of medicine was very, very different.”

    Gordon spoke with The Times about an aspect of World War II that’s often overlooked.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Remembering D-Day: Key facts about the invasion that altered WWII

    With veterans and world dignitaries gathering in Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the landings, here’s a look at some details about how the operation unfolded.

  • The Record ☛ Chinese nationals plead guilty to running Zambia scam operation

    Police seized 13,000 SIM cards and a handful of SIM boxes — devices that disguise international calls as local. According to Banda, the “illicit operations” extended to mobile and online communication with people in Singapore, Peru, the United Arab Emirates and other African countries. Zambian law enforcement didn’t reveal the exact nature of the scams.

  • The Nation ☛ The Planet Could Bear the Scars of a Second Trump Term... Forever

    A second helping of Donald Trump can do endless damage on any number of fronts. But with the climate crisis, he can do damage that will last, in human terms, forever—damage that will be visible in the geologic record for eons to come. His actions can literally help melt the poles and raise the oceans—and in the pages of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, his conservative legions have made it abundantly clear that they will.

  • Haaretz ☛ TikTok Worries Israel. Meanwhile, 22 of Its Ministers Are Hooked on the App

    'TikTok is a strategic threat to national security': a discussion at the Knesset exposed the Israeli government's failure to address the growing problem of manipulation by the social platform used by 3.8 million Israelis – including the National Security minister

  • India Times ☛ A realistic way to protect kids from social media? Find a middle ground

    Ahmed Othman, a teenager from Massachusetts, avoids TikTok and credits his parents, computer scientists, for teaching him about social media's impact on mental health. He is among the minority of teens not on TikTok, as per Pew Research Center data.

  • NPR ☛ Missouri joins other red states in trying to stamp out ranked choice voting

    Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates and ensures the winner gains majority support, as compared to the vast majority of elections, where someone can win with a plurality of votes.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Taliban 3.0: Not rebels, but government

    In 2021, the Taliban won a crushing and lightning victory and returned to power. US and NATO troops have left Afghan territory, and the Islamic Emirate has been reincarnated. That is, the Taliban believes that the Emirate has existed all this time, but it was in a state of war against the occupiers. Al-Qaeda has since replaced the Islamic State and its Afghan-Pakistani branch, Khorasan Province. But this organization takes an extremely hostile and uncompromising position against the Taliban. In their view, the Afghan movement is too soft on outside forces and has retreated from global jihad against the infidels. In this Khorasan Province is right. The Taliban seek agreement with the region’s countries and the international community. This has exacerbated the conflict situation with neighboring Pakistan. The fact is that the Pakistani military played an important role in strengthening the Taliban and its successes.

  • BIA Net ☛ Germany started training its own imams to replace the ones sent by Turkey

    More than 1,000 imams in Germany are deployed and paid by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, Diyanet. Germany wants to gradually replace them with German-trained clerics, but it will be a long process.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Islamists threaten children in Mozambique

    Since 2017, a group of extremist militants pledging allegiance to the Islamic State has waged a fierce terror campaign in Mozambique’s northernmost province, Cabo Delgado. Around 6,000 people have died in the fighting, and more than a million have been displaced. This year alone, 100,000 people have fled their homes. Some 60,000 of them are children, deepening the trauma of a generation that has grown up in the shadow of a brutal guerilla war that is largely invisible to the outside world.

  • Defence Web ☛ Soldiers confiscate R6 million plus worth of contraband from Zimbabwean smugglers

    Zimbabweans seemingly rule the roost when it comes to moving illegal goods, be it drugs or contraband, into South Africa. Evidence of this comes from the Joint Operations Division of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) in the May statistics for the national border protection tasking – Operation Corona.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Embassy in Beirut Targeted With Gunfire

    An attacker was wounded and arrested, the Lebanese Army said. An embassy security guard was injured.

  • JURIST ☛ China authorities tighten security and suppress commemoration of Tiananmen Massacre anniversary

    Beijing’s Tiananmen Square saw increased security measures on Tuesday, in response to the 35th anniversary of China’s suppression of pro-democracy protests on the site. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, police arrested four individuals and thwarted efforts to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Ambrey says Greek-owned bulk carrier was allegedly targeted by Houthis in Red Sea

    CAIRO - British security firm Ambrey said on Thursday a Greek-owned bulk carrier was allegedly targeted by Yemen's Houthis while travelling northbound in the Red Sea.

  • JURIST ☛ Germany debates deporting Afghanistan migrants who threaten public safety following fatal police stabbing

    Germany is considering deporting Afghan migrants who endanger public security back to Afghanistan, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters on Tuesday. Her remarks follow the fatal stabbing of a policeman by a 25-year-old Afghan at an anti-Islam event.

  • Latvia ☛ Daugavpils stabbing suspect commits suicide

    A man wanted for the attack on Daugavpils hospital official Inta Vaivode at the end of May has committed suicide, the LETA news agency reports June 5.

  • AccessNow ☛ First-time culprit: France blocks Fentanylware (TikTok) in New Caledonia [Ed: China is not free speech, China is against it. That ought to be recognised. AccessNow is shilling for Chinese interference and riots being promoted by Fentanylware (TikTok) in New Caledonia.]

    In New Caledonia, French authorities blocked TikTok. This measure is disproportionate, unnecessary, and another bad omen for democracy.

  • La Quadature Du Net ☛ TikTok censorship in New Caledonia: a review of a democratic failure [Ed: TikTok is a weapon, it is controlled by the CPC]

    On 23 May 2024, the Conseil d’État rejected a request from La Quadrature du Net for an interim ruling against the blocking of TikTok in New Caledonia. To justify this unfair decision, the court stated that there was no urgency for a ruling, since the blocking would soon cease, according to the government. It took more than 24 hours after the end of the state of emergency for the social network to become accessible again. This episode marks a milestone in the rise of authoritarianism in France and the failure of our institutions to prevent it.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Early European parliament election results point to hard-Right vote faltering

    The hard-Right appeared to falter in the first vote of the EU elections as exit polls showed a Left-wing coalition winning the top spot in the Netherlands...

  • Politico ☛ EU election exit poll: Far-right Wilders makes big gains in Netherlands, but narrowly beaten

    Poll suggests Wilders’ party on track for seven seats in European Parliament, but Labor-Green alliance is set for eight.

  • RFERL ☛ Slovak PM Posts Speech Online In First Since Assassination Attempt

    Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico says he hopes to return to work around late June or early July.

  • New York Times ☛ Slovak Prime Minister Speaks Publicly for First Time Since Assassination Attempt

    Robert Fico said in a video address that he hoped to return to work in the coming weeks. He blamed the political opposition for the attack, a notion that the parties have strongly denied.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ Security Service finds no unlawful activity regarding EP elections so far

      The State Security Service (VDD) has not yet detected any attempts to illegally influence the results of the European Parliament (EP) elections in Latvia, VDD told the news agency LETA on June 5.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Donald Trump ‘panics’ when asked if he'd declassify Epstein documents, netizens wonder ‘what is he afraid of?’

    After being convicted in a hush money case, former US President Donald Trump recently appeared on Fox & Friends Weekend. The hosts, including Rachel Campos-Duffy, asked several questions to Trump such as whether he would declassify JFK and 9/11 files if elected to the White House in November. In his latest interview, Trump was asked if he would declassify JFK and 9/11 files if elected to the White House in November.(Getty Images via AFP) In his latest interview, Trump was asked if he would declassify JFK and 9/11 files if elected to the White House in November.(Getty Images via AFP)

    The GOP leader's response went viral on social media as he appeared to flail when asked if he would declassify the documents of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was once friendly with Trump.

• Environment

  • The Verge ☛ UN calls on tech and media to stop taking fossil fuel ad money — but gets nothing in response

    “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising,” Guterres said during a speech in New York City yesterday.

    Guterres called out tech, media, and PR companies for accepting ad money from the fossil fuel industry even though a safe climate depends on replacing coal, oil, and gas with cleaner energy. Each of the past 12 months has smashed heat records, the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed yesterday.

  • CS Monitor ☛ World Oceans Day: How rising sea temperatures affect Earth’s climate

    Oceans are changing as global temperatures increase, a shift that could have huge consequences for everyone on Earth. But the story of this portion of the planet’s surface is also one of hope and potential, especially when it comes to climate change, according to scientists and environmental advocates.

    These dual messages are the focus of this year’s World Oceans Day, an international holiday occurring every June 8.

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ Using Trash to Track Other Trash

    For more than a decade, boat crews working farther west, in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, had been telling the Taits about how abandoned fishing nets were circling the gulf, ensnaring and strangling sea turtles and dugong. These so-called ghost nets had either broken free from commercial fishing vessels and gotten lost, or were cut loose by fishers after getting snagged on rocks. Weighing a few tonnes each, the nets that boat crews had chanced upon in the gulf were often too big for them to heave out of the water. They’d typically report the finds to the authorities, but by the time anyone with an appropriately equipped vessel could head out to retrieve one, the mass of tangled rope had often vanished from sight.

    Perhaps, Brett thought, Tangaroa Blue could solve the problem using their newfound GPS buoys. The trackers are “such a high-tech piece of equipment,” Tait says. They’re obviously not cheap, and for them to go to a landfill “seemed like such a waste.”

  • RFA ☛ China sends glacial water from Tibet to the Maldives, raising concerns

    China gifted 3,000 metric tons of Tibet’s glacial water to the island nation of the Maldives in two separate batches in March and May — the same months it unveiled and implemented water conservation regulations at home.

    The Water Conservation Regulations set limits on water usage within administrative regions and prioritizes water conversation work in Tibet and other parts of China.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Michigan Bottlers Still Get Free Water, Despite Whitmer’s Tough Talk

    Nestle was extracting hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater a year, which it bottled and sold under the Ice Mountain brand. The only cost: a $200 yearly fee per site. The company asked the state for a 60% boost in how much it could take from a well that draws from the source of two cold-water trout streams. At the time, the Flint water crisis was still in the spotlight, contributing to broad pushback. Nearly 81,000 public comments opposed the permit request; 75 supported it.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan bottlers still get free water, despite governor’s tough talk

    The bottling of Michigan water has tested leaders from both parties over the years. In 2001, when a New York town advertised its willingness to sell “crystal clear well water,” Republican Gov. John Engler wrote the mayor to remind him that the water was likely connected to Lake Ontario. Per an informal agreement signed in the 1980s, he said, any such sale would require the approval of all Great Lakes governors. The town dropped the plan.

    Months later, after public resistance killed Perrier’s efforts to locate in Wisconsin, Engler welcomed the Nestle-owned business to Michigan. It began pumping water from rural Mecosta County, about 110 miles northwest of Lansing.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Reason ☛ Glenn Youngkin Withdraws Virginia From California's Electric Vehicle Mandate

      Youngkin's administration says the state will adhere to federal emissions standards beginning in 2025.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Pair launches civil suit against Hong Kong crypto exchange JPEX to recover HK$1.85 million

      Two people have lodged a civil claim against Hong Kong crypto exchange JPEX in a bid to recover more than HK$1.85 million, with a lawmaker saying 10 more plan to take similar action after falling victim to the city’s largest cryptocurrency scandal to date.

    • Daniel Pocock ☛ Upfield Railway campaign notes for West=On=Track Ireland

      In my previous blog about Ireland's West=On=Track community meeting from May 2024, I mentioned our experience in the campaign to save the Upfield Railway in Melbourne, Australia. The campaign was successful, the railway was saved and I hope to bring the same experience to the West of Ireland.

      Whether I am elected or not, one of the highlights of my campaign was supporting the West=On=Track group. One of the local radio stations used some of my quotes with a picture of a train. The quote is derived from similar principles as Metcalfe's law in telecommunications networks.

    • New Statesman ☛ An assisted cycle through scenic Silesia

      I quickly learned that the electric motor on the bike provides little more than psychological help; if you put the thing in turbo mode it only works if you’re in a low gear, so your legs are pedalling ridiculously fast, albeit with little resistance. But they’re still moving. You are still expending energy. If I’d been a Deliveroo driver I’d have chucked it in a hedge and asked for a real e-bike, illegally modified if possible. With a V-twin 500cc engine. I thought grimly of the aches and pains I’d be suffering the next day.

    • NL Times ☛ Alarming amount of fatbike injuries involve brain trauma; 40% of victims younger than 14

      “We think fatbikes will follow the same trends as the e-bike,” Bakker told Nieuwsuur. “There was a fourfold increase in the number of injuries among young victims in five years.” Fatbikes can go even faster than electric bikes. Their maximum speed is limited to 25 kilometers per hour, but they can quite easily be boosted to reach speeds of over 45 km/h. Bakker, therefore, worries that the fatbike injuries trend may be even worse than for e-bikes.

    • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Heroic bicycle ride

      The Eroica is a bicycle ride dedicated to vintage bicycles (pre-1987) and held in Tuscany on the first Sunday in October. I have known about it for a while, and encountered it accidentally last year. This year, back near Buonconvento with The Squeeze, I packed the Brompton thinking I might, at the very least, go for a little pedal. Then on Tuesday, when I saw that the formal Eroica passed right below the place where we are staying, I decided to do a bit more than that, which I did yesterday.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Russia is winning the energy war and plunging Ukraine into darkness

      Russia’s first attempt to destroy the Ukrainian power grid, which began in October 2022 and continued until March 2023, ultimately failed to achieve its objective. However, the current campaign has so far proved much more successful. Russia has clearly learned important lessons from its earlier air offensive, and has also benefited from growing gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses caused by delays in Western military aid.

      In the past five months, Russia has managed to damage or destroy all of Ukraine’s thermal and hydroelectric power plants. The latest large-scale wave of missile and drone strikes on June 1 resulted in damage to power-generating facilities in five different regions across Ukraine, leading to warnings from officials that extended periods without electricity are now inevitable and will likely remain a feature for many months to come.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Should Tourists Swim with Endangered Sea Turtles?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CS Monitor ☛ Kansas Supreme Court rules voting is not a right. What does that mean for elections?

    Lawsuits against three different segments of a Kansas election law were thrown out by a 4 to 3 decision in the Kansas Supreme Court when it found there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

  • Wired ☛ US National Security Experts Warn AI Giants Aren't Doing Enough to Protect Their Secrets

    Legal experts at the time warned it could be just one of many examples of China trying to unfairly compete in what’s been termed an AI arms race. Government officials and security researchers fear advanced AI systems could be abused to generate deepfakes for convincing disinformation campaigns, or even recipes for potent bioweapons.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War

    The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel, four Israeli officials said. The ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out, according to the officials and the documents.

    The campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X. At its peak, it used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. The accounts focused on U.S. lawmakers, particularly ones who are Black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.

  • Michael Geist ☛ Pay Up and Shut Up: How The CRTC Has Removed Canadians From Broadcast and Internet Policy

    Last December, I appeared before the CRTC as part of Bill C-11 hearings, where I emphasized the need for the Commission to pay attention to competition, consumer choice, and affordability. My takeaway from that appearance was that “my intervention met with skepticism from some Commissioners who see their role as guardians of the broadcasting system on behalf of longstanding beneficiaries with little regard for the impact on consumers or the risks to competition.” It turns out that was a pretty good read of the situation as this week’s Bill C-11 streaming ruling acts as if consumers, competition, and affordability are irrelevant issues that are at best someone else’s concern. The result is that Canadians has been largely removed from broadcasting and Internet policy at the regulator, expected to pay up and shut up.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Threat Source ☛ The sliding doors of misinformation that come with AI-generated search results

      Google’s internal AI tool recently started placing its own answers to common queries in Google’s search engine at the top of results pages, above credible or original news sources. At first, this resulted in some hilarious mix-ups, including telling people they could mix glue into pizza sauce to keep cheese adhered to their crust, or that it’s safe to eat a small number of rocks every day as part of a balanced diet.

      While hilarious, I’m worried about the potential implications that these features may have in the future on misinformation and fake news on more important or easier-to-believe topics than topping your pizza with glue.

    • Vox ☛ How algorithms, influencers, and users work together to spread misinformation

      The influencers, along with TikTok, made money off the sale of this misleading book. I brought all this to the attention of TikTok. The videos I flagged to a company spokesperson were removed after a review for violating TikTok’s policies banning health misinformation.

      The book remained for sale in the shop, and new influencers stepped in. Nonetheless, I haven’t stopped seeing TikTok Shop promotions for this book, The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies, since.

    • DeSmog ☛ The EU Elections Candidates Spreading False Narratives on Food and Farming

      DeSmog identified six MEP candidates who regularly used false narratives on food, farming and climate to win over voters.

      From Germany and the Netherlands to Italy, France, Spain and Poland, high-profile right-wing and far-right politicians were aided by their strong online presence.

      They posted misleading narratives to tens of thousands followers on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X and Facebook, as well as spreading false claims at in-person events.

    • The Record ☛ Russia-aligned operation targeted US users on X to discredit protests in Georgia

      Researchers have identified a network of malicious accounts targeting American users on social media platform X to discredit protests in Georgia sparked by an unpopular Russian-style law that threatens the independence of local media.

      This campaign was likely orchestrated by the Russia-linked malign network Doppelgänger, known for spreading disinformation in the U.S. and Europe, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) released earlier this week.

    • Digital Forensic Research Lab ☛ Doppelganger targets US audience on X to discredit Georgian protests - DFRLab

      In the latest iteration, the operation targeted US audiences with content discrediting protests in Georgia. Georgians are protesting against the ruling Georgian Dream party, which passed a Russian-style foreign agents law that targets non-governmental organizations, media, and individuals who associate with international organizations. Many within and outside of Georgia fear the legislation could be used to silence independent media and civil society.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ Beijing dissidents allowed home early due to security funding cuts

    The government has slashed the budget for preemptive 'stability maintenance' measures, activists say.

  • BIA Net ☛ Censorship on a letter from prison describing hunger

    This time, instead of the usual redaction of some sentences, entire sections of the letter were completely covered up and only sent as a photocopy.

  • Reason ☛ Report: E.U. Censorship Laws Mostly Suppress Legal Speech

    European speech regulations reach way too far to muzzle perfectly acceptable content.

  • IT Wire ☛ eSafety commissioner drops case against X over stabbing videos

    In a statement on Wednesday, Julie Inman Grant said: "After weighing multiple considerations, including litigation across multiple cases, I have considered this option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children.

    "As a result, I have decided to discontinue the proceedings in the Federal Court against X Corp in relation to the matter of extreme violent material depicting the real-life graphic stabbing of a religious leader at Wakeley in Sydney on 15 April."

  • Adam Newbold ☛ The discomfort litmus test

    It’s far more challenging to sit with your discomfort and contemplate it. But that’s the space in which we can learn more about ourselves and the world, explore what really matters to us, and ultimately improve ourselves. None of that is overly enjoyable, and it takes a lot of time and energy to do. But it’s very much worthwhile, especially if you prefer to see the world as it truly is, as opposed to as how you fashion it for yourself.

  • RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Kremlin Critic Yashin Loses Appeal Against Fine Over 'Foreign Agent' Status

    A Russian court on June 5 rejected an appeal filed by imprisoned opposition politician Ilya Yashin against a fine he was ordered to pay over what authorities called a violation of the law on "foreign agents."

    Yashin is serving an 8 1/2-year prison term for his criticism of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

  • New York Times ☛ A Russian American Is Sentenced in Russia Over Social Media Posts

    While it is common for people who criticize the war and Russian officials to be prosecuted in the country, the sentence against Mr. Malev, a first-time offender, was unusually harsh, his lawyer and a relative said.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Canada’s Extremist Attack on Free Speech

    The Online Harms Act states that any person who advocates for or promotes genocide is “liable to imprisonment for life.” It defines lesser “hate crimes” as including online speech that is “likely to foment detestation or vilification” on the basis of race, religion, gender, or other protected categories. And if someone “fears” they may become a victim of a hate crime, they can go before a judge, who may summon the preemptively accused for a sort of precrime trial. If the judge finds “reasonable grounds” for the fear, the defendant must enter into “a recognizance.”

    A recognizance is no mere promise to refrain from committing hate crimes. The judge may put the defendant under house arrest or electronic surveillance and order them to abstain from alcohol and drugs. Refusal to “enter the recognizance” for one year results in 12 months in prison.

    This is madness.

  • Variety ☛ 'Breaking the Cycle,' Thai Political Doc, Gets Theatrical Release

    The film is also a diary of just how close the inexperienced, but highly-motivated, generation of political novices twice came close to grabbing power and using it to install a more democratic system of governance. Both times they were betrayed and over-powered by slippery allies and undermined by tactically-deployed lawfare.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Stanford Newspaper Reporter Arrested While Covering Demonstration Against Israel's War On Gaza

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

    Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

    It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

    And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

  • RFERL ☛ Kazakh Journalist Loses Appeal Against Fine For Voicing Support For RFE/RL

    The charge stems from an article she posted on her ProTenge Telegram channel in January where she raised issues faced by Radio Azattyq in obtaining official accreditation from the Foreign Ministry, which had sparked fears that the government was trying to stifle independent media.

    Maricheva praised Radio Azattyq for what she called its professionalism, stressing the importance of the broadcaster's programs in Kazakhstan.

  • The Hindu ☛ ‘A cartoonist who never offends is most likely not saying anything of value’

    Dave spoketo The Hindu about his career as a political cartoonist, his views on political cartoons facing criticism and his ongoing exhibition at the Indian Cartoon Gallery in Bengaluru.

  • The Hindu ☛ Tributes paid to journalist B.R.P Bhaskar

    B.R.P. Bhaskar, who passed away on Tuesday, was a distinguished journalist, renowned for his unwavering commitment to truth and justice over a career spanning more than seven decades, writer M.N. Karassery said here on Thursday at an online remembrance meeting organised by the Vakkom Moulavi Memorial Research Centre (VMMRC).

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist covering news in Hatay receives death threat

    Journalist Kazım Kızıl, who was covering the fire in Gülderen, revealed that he was threatened by company employees while taking footage.

    In the footage shared by Kızıl on his social media account, the person, identified as a company employee, said, “Look, you will make us take action. You will get your mouth and nose broken, maybe you will get yourself killed. You've had your fill, clear off."

  • Site36 ☛ Press freedom wins in Germany: Acquittal for editor of Free Radio Dreyeckland from Freiburg

    The article with the link did not constitute support for the continued operation of the banned association, explained presiding judge Axel Heim, and made it clear: “A critical journalist must be allowed to criticise prohibitions”. It was clear from the previous days of the trial that Heim would not agree with the prosecution. The allegations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office were made “out of the blue” and “at random”, explained the court, for example, when rejecting a motion for evidence.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ Nigeria labour strikes pause as negotiations take a hopeful turn

    Nigeria’s labour unions announced on Tuesday that they would officially pause an indefinite strike over minimum wages to conclude negotiations with the Federal Government of Nigeria.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Dept. of Labor report confirms rapid rise of remote work in Maine

    Between 2018 and 2023, the number of jobs in Maine across all industries increased by 4%. Over that same period, the total number of worksites grew by 21%, according to the DOL report — a trend that occurred at a similar rate nationally.

    “This is primarily from the remote work revolution,” the agency’s report reads. “It is a combination of people moving to the state while continuing to work for an employer located elsewhere, and from residents of the state gaining jobs that allow them to work here for employers located elsewhere.”

  • Maine ☛ Remote Work, New Worksites and the Industry Structure of Jobs [PDF]

    • Before the pandemic, jobs and worksites increased at similar rates.

    • The number of worksites has spiked since then.

  • The Nation ☛ Pregnant Workers Are Seeking Justice After Being Penalized on the Job

    The PWFA requires employers to give their workers accommodations for pregnancy, such as unpaid time off for medical appointments, unless employers can prove it would pose an undue hardship, a somewhat high bar—the EEOC has made it clear that they have to present actual evidence to make this claim. Before last June, because Lawson lives in Indiana, she might have had no recourse; although 30 states and Washington, D.C. had passed their own versions of the law before the federal one, hers was not one of them. Now she, and all other American workers, are protected when they need changes at their jobs to continue working and stay healthy when pregnant, including not just unpaid leave but also accommodations like more breaks or even the ability to carry a water bottle.

  • Reason ☛ Woman Struck by Train While Locked in Police Car To Get $8.5 Million Settlement

    Last year, Rios sued the officers responsible. This week, two Colorado towns agreed to pay her a whopping $8.5 million settlement.

  • JURIST ☛ Taliban publicly flogs more than 60 people in Afghanistan

    Commenting on the statement, Associate Women’s Rights Director at Human Rights Watch, Heather Barr called out UN hypocrisy over the increasingly dire situation of women and girls saying:

    "This dire human rights news makes it even more baffling that the UN is convening states for talks on Afghanistan in less than a month with a focus on (checks notes) economic development, counter narcotics, and climate—and bending over backwards pleading for the Taliban to attend."

  • Scheerpost ☛ How Tens of Thousands of Grad Workers Are Organizing Themselves

    Instead, we’re training workers up on organizing methods, tapping into their knowledge of their own workplaces and co-workers… and then letting the organizing snowball, as workers train others who train others, and the campaign takes on a life of its own.

    This isn’t how UE or other unions typically organize. But the grad upsurge demanded a new way of doing things. We had to release the reins to catch up to how fast the workers were going.

  • [Repeat] Tedium ☛ Is AI Being Built For The Manager Class Alone?

    I know this is a weird question to bring up this far into the computer revolution, but: Who are computers for?

    Is the target audience for the average computer a jet-setting executive or sales person, trying to figure out how to keep the machine running? Is it the high-flying creative or developer, hoping to reach new levels of expression or productivity? Is it the office drone or startup jockey? Or is it the nebulous end user, constantly in consumption mode, looking for new ways to enjoy their favorite TikTok video or Wikipedia page?

  • Antipope ☛ Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?

    Surprise! It turns out that the unencrypted database and the stored images may contain your user credentials and passwords. And other stuff. Got a porn habit? Congratulations, anyone with access to your user account can see what you've been seeing. Use a password manager like 1Password? Sorry, your 1Password passwords are probably visible via Recall, now.

    Now, "unencrypted" is relative; the database is stored on a filesystem which should be encrypted using Microsoft's BitLocker. But anyone with credentials for your Microsoft account can decrypt it and poke around. Indeed, anyone with access to your PC, unlocked, has your entire world at their fingertips.

    But this is an utter privacy shit-show. Victims of domestic abuse are at risk of their abuser trawling their PC for any signs that they're looking for help. Anyone who's fallen for a scam that gave criminals access to their PC is also completely at risk.

    Worse: even if you don't use Recall, if you send an email or instant message to someone else who does then it will be OCRd and indexed via Recall: and preserved for posterity. Now imagine the shit-show when this goes corporate.

  • 404 Media ☛ Inside a Kidnapping Planned on the FBI's Secret Chat App

    This article is adapted from my new book DARK WIRE. The book follows drug traffickers worldwide who used an encrypted messaging app called Anom. Little did they know, the FBI ran Anom for nearly its entire existence. The agency, along with partners at the Australian Federal Police (AFP), put a backdoor into Anom, intercepting every message sent across the platform. At this point in the narrative in mid-2021, Anom has spread around the globe, and the FBI has roped in more than a dozen countries to act on the intelligence. But, Anom is buckling under its own weight, and the agents find it hard to keep tempo with the sheer number of chats. As I show in the book, at least one successful assassination was planned on the FBI’s own chat app. What if another murder fell through the cracks?

  • VOA News ☛ Jailed Nobel Laureate targets sex abuse in Iranian prisons

    Located in southern Tehran, Kahrizak Prison again drew attention for the alleged torture and rape of detainees following the June 2009 post-election protests.

    Mohammadi said the practice of tacitly approved state-led sexual harassment and rape of activists and protesters in Iranian prisons has continued as an instrument "of torture, intimidation, and coerced confessions ... to suppress popular protest movements."

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • AccessNow ☛ #KeepItOn: Syria must end internet shutdowns during national exams

    We're sending an open letter to authorities in Syria to #KeepItOn during exams and call for #NoExamShutdown.

  • James G ☛ Brainstorming a new indie web search engine

    I would like for there to be more tiny search engines that are focused on a particular topic. It would be cool if I could type in "coffee" into an indie web search engine and see what other bloggers have written about on the topic.

    A few years ago, I built an IndieWeb search engine that crawled ~1,000 sites once per week. In total, the tool indexed more than 500,000 pages. It took many months of my free time to build that search engine tool. TL;DR: web search is hard.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ FCC moves ahead on [Internet] routing security rules

    Under the notice of proposed rulemaking on Border Gateway Protocol security, which now will go to a public comment period before final adoption, broadband [Internet] providers would have to develop and maintain private BGP security plans. The top nine providers would be required to provide quarterly public reports on their progress to the FCC.

    According to the Defense and Justice departments, a Chinese telecommunications company has used BGP vulnerabilities to misroute U.S. [Internet] traffic at least six times, said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. But BGP wasn’t designed with security in mind, she said.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Investors bullish on Netflix push into live sports

    It would be another example of how apeing the traditional TV model is paying off for the US$280-billion company. Moving into the kind of programming that has historically been the purview of linear television could well be the catalyst that drives the stock back to the record peaks of 2021.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The FTC Doesn’t Want Booksellers Talking Competition in Its Amazon Case

  A recent motion by booksellers in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) quixotic monopolization case against Amazon highlighted the contradictions...

• India Times ☛ US clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

  Federal regulators are proceeding with antitrust investigations into Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia in the AI industry. The Justice Department and FTC are leading the investigations, signaling increased scrutiny into AI technology.

• Axios ☛ U.S. to open broad antitrust probe into AI giants

  U.S. regulators are moving ahead with antitrust investigations into the roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, per a source familiar with the matter.

  Why it matters: The broad probe shows the intensifying scrutiny of AI and regulators' concern of the technology's concentration within some of the largest companies in the world.

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Clears Way for Antitrust Inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

  Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of Nvidia, the biggest maker of A.I. chips, has violated antitrust laws, the people said. The F.T.C. will play the lead role in examining the conduct of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and made deals with other A.I. companies, the people said.

  The agreement signals intensifying scrutiny by the Justice Department and the F.T.C. into A.I., a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to upend jobs, information and people’s lives. Both agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies. After a similar deal in 2019, the government investigated Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta and has since sued each of them on claims that they violated antimonopoly laws.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ YouTube Processed a Billion Content ID Copyright Claims in Six Months

    YouTube's latest Transparency Report shows that fewer copyright holders used the Content ID system to protect their works. Despite the modest decline, the claim volume continues to grow. For the first time, the number of processed claims exceeded one billion in the six-month reporting period.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Organized Crime Unit Arrest Suspected Sky TV Pirate - What About His Users?

    Officers of the North East Regional Organized Crime Unit say they arrested a man on Wednesday under suspicion of supplying articles for use in fraud in connection with illicit Sky TV streams. The 52-year-old from Stockton-on-Tees was arrested and subsequently released under investigation, including for suspected money laundering. So what are the implications for his alleged customers?

  • Patrick Breyer ☛ #StopKillingGames: EU Commission comments on the killing of video games

    Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer sees a need for action: “In their terms and conditions, computer game manufacturers regularly reserve the right to arbitrarily terminate video games at any time, even if they have just been purchased. In my opinion, this is an unfair and ineffective contractual clause under the EU unfair terms directive, but legal clarification will take a long time. Compensation does not help the community anyway. To protect video games as cultural assets, as well as the gaming communities, we need new EU legislation that allows the community to take over and continue orphan games. The EU Commission must take action here, instead of putting the industry’s profit interests above everything else.”