Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Foosbar: The World’s Best* Foosball Robot From Scratch

  [Xander Naumenko] is back with another bonkers project. This is the same creator that built a working 32-bit computer inside a Terraria world. This time it’s a bit more physical of a creation: a self-playing foosball table.

• Hackaday ☛ Automating 3D Printer Support Hardware

  While 3D printers have evolved over the past two decades from novelties to powerful prototyping tools, the amount of support systems have advanced tremendously as well. From rudimentary software that required extensive manual input and offered limited design capabilities, there’s now user-friendly interfaces with more features than you could shake a stick at. Hardware support has become refined as well with plenty of options including lighting, ventilation, filament recycling, and tool changers. It’s possible to automate some of these subsystems as well like [Caelestis Workshop] has done with this relay control box.

• University of Michigan ☛ Friends should intellectually challenge you

  When I imagined college as a place for intellectual growth, I visualized riveting exchanges with professors and radical arguments in textbooks. When I stepped foot on campus, however, I realized that my ivy-covered academia fantasies perpetuated rigid expectations of what qualified as “growing my perspective,” and I had underestimated the importance of developing relationships [...]

• New York Times ☛ Auriea Harvey’s Digital Worlds Are Love Stories, Without Neat Ends

  The first survey of the influential Net artist turned game developer traces the evolution of digital art from the 1990s to today.

• Reason ☛ Plaintiff's Idaho Murder Libel Claim Beats Defendant's "Tarot Readings" and "Psychic Intuition"

  "[T]he only support for Defendant's statements about Plaintiff is that Defendant's 'spiritual investigation' into the murders using 'intuitive tarot readings' led her to Plaintiff."

• James G ☛ Pattern: Auto-extract data in a publishing tool

  As I have been designing a tool to publish blog posts on this website, I have been thinking about how the tool can adapt to my workflows. I have thus been able to implement several custom features that are useful for how I work. For example, there is a button that lets me format a blog post as a poem using all of the correct markup.

• Education

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 1 in 5 Nepalese youths in Hong Kong sent to Nepal against their will, as NGO warns of ‘alarming’ school dropout rate

    Approximately one in five Nepalese youths in Hong Kong has been sent to Nepal by their parents, with most being made to go against their will, a NGO has said as it highlighted an alarming student dropout rate among the ethnic minority community.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ 2024 Business Card Challenge: Tiny MIDI Keyboard

    The progress for electronics over the past seven decades or so has always trended towards smaller or more dense components. Moore’s Law is the famous example of this, but even when we’re not talking about transistors specifically, technology tends to get either more power efficient or smaller. This MIDI keyboard, for example, is small enough that it will fit in the space of a standard business card which would have been an impossibility with the technology available when MIDI first became standardized, and as such is the latest entry in our Business Card Challenge.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong announces plan to ban use of e-cigarettes, even in private

    Hong Kong announced plans on Thursday for a blanket ban on e-cigarettes, citing a “consensus” on the need for action and their impact on the health of young people. The move came about two years after the Chinese city banned the import, manufacture and sale of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.

  • Federal News Network ☛ DoJ employee advocacy group calls for better federal health care coverage of infertility treatments

    The employee advocacy group is asking OPM to expand health carrier requirements to cover IVF treatments, on top of medications, for plan year 2025.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Should parents regulate their children’s social control media feeds? A New York bill says ‘yes.’

    New York lawmakers are making a final push to regulate children’s social control media feeds in an attempt to curb addiction. Critics of the bill are concerned that this would undermine users’ privacy and First Amendment rights.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Infected blood scandal: How good journalism made a difference

    Sue Douglas and Caroline Wheeler on their role securing justice for victims of Britain's biggest ever medical scandal.

  • Latvia ☛ Latvia has EU's third-highest rate of deaths from cancer

    Data for 2021 published by Eurostat on June 6 show that Latvia has the third-highest rate of deaths from cancer in the European Union, and that Latvian men have the highest rate of all.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • New York Times ☛ That Much-Despised Fashion Company Apple Ad Could Be More Disturbing Than It Looks

    Tech companies are running low on new experiences to offer us. A new ad for the iPad contains revealing hints of where they could go next.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ US regulators reportedly set stage for antitrust probes into Nvidia, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft and OpenAI

    The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have reportedly reached an agreement that will allow them to launch antitrust probes into Nvidia Corp., Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI. The New York Times reported the development today, citing people familiar with the matter. The agreement is expected to be finalized in the coming days.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Why artificial intelligence will never replace your job

    Artificial Intelligence people keep reassuring everyone else their jobs are safe. What is it about Hey Hi (AI) that makes people think it could possibly replace them?

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Human or Not?

    by Hey Hi (AI) 21 Labs

    Chat with someone for two minutes, and try to figure out if it was a fellow human or an Hey Hi (AI) bot. Think you can tell the difference?

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Emily M Stark ☛ Why even a little plaintext matters

      Attackers abuse plaintext webpages to deliver malware and browser exploits. In several well-documented, high-profile, and extremely disturbing cases, attackers have used unencrypted HTTP redirects to deliver spyware. Any visit to any unencrypted website would be sufficient as a vector for this type of attack. The complexity or sensitivity of the legitimate destination website is irrelevant to the attack.

      There are two arguments that I’ve heard people use to attempt to dismiss this attack vector.

    • The Register UK ☛ 'New York Times source code' leaks online via 4chan

      According to the unnamed netizen, the information includes "basically all source code belonging to The New York Time Company," amounting to roughly 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files now available for download from peer-to-peer networks. Details on how to get the files were shared by the poster on 4chan.

      While The Register has seen what's said to be a list of files in the purported leak, we have not yet verified the legitimacy of the leak, and the newspaper did not respond to inquiries about the case.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ General election: ORG launches tool to help people opt out of data processing by political parties

      Digital campaigners, the Open Rights Group (ORG) are helping the public to opt out of the processing of their data by political parties in the run up to the General Election. Political parties collect, buy and process data about people’s views, voting preferences and demographics.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Apple is building a password manager

      The new app is powered by the iCloud Keychain, a long-existing Apple service that can sync passwords and account information between different devices. This capability was previously hidden inside the company’s settings app or presented when a user logs in to a website.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Another Police App, TSCOP, [Cracked]

      The app also has an integrated facial-recognition system (FRS). Police officials can use FRS to identify criminals, unknown bodies at crime scenes or even missing children. The then DGP M. Mahender Reddy had said, “Images will be compared against Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and other police databases.”

    • NYOB ☛ Two are better than one?! Kurier forced users to give their consent

      Repeated violation of the law. This is not the first time the Austrian data protection authority (DSB) has been confronted with this violation. noyb has filed a complaint concerning an almost identical forced banner on profil.at in 2022. Back then, the DSB ordered the news magazine to adapt its website and obtain legally compliant consent. This never happened. Instead, the Kurier media group, to which both Profil and Kurier belong, decided to extend its practice to kurier.at and challenge the authority’s decision. There’s no final court judgement yet.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft pushes ahead with Recall, makes it opt-in

      Microsoft is not giving up on its controversial Windows Recall, though says it will give customers an option to opt in instead of having it on by default, and will beef up the security of any data the software stores.

      Recall, for those who missed the dumpster fire, was announced on May 20 as a "feature" on forthcoming Copilot+ Windows PCs. It takes a snapshot of whatever is on the user's screen every few seconds. These images are stored on-device and analyzed locally by an AI model, using OCR to extract text from the screen, to make past work searchable and more accessible.

    • Futurism ☛ Windows Feature That Records Everything You Do Can Easily Be [Breached]

      Cybersecurity expert Alex Hagenah created an aptly named tool called TotalRecall, which can exploit this oversight by pulling all the data Recall can extract — a public demonstration to warn others of the feature's daunting implications.

      "The database is unencrypted. It’s all plain text," he told Wired. "It’s a Trojan 2.0 really, built in," he added, referring to commonly-used spyware.

    • The Record ☛ Microsoft reverses course, makes Recall feature opt-in only after security backlash

      Recall allows the company’s new line of Windows 11 Copilot+ devices to screenshot every action a person takes on their PC. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hailed the tool as a way to “recreate moments from the past” — allowing customers to look back on their previous actions and search for things they may have forgotten.

      The tech giant has faced a sustained, withering backlash from cybersecurity experts and privacy activists after unveiling the feature on May 20 before its scheduled release date on June 18. It was initially enabled by default and required users to turn it off themselves.

  • Confidentiality

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta faces backlash in Europe over training AI with Facebook and Instagram data

      Meta will use public and nonpublic posts, with the data collection going back to 2007. This will also include accounts that have gone “dormant,” meaning people who seem to have stopped posting.

      Everything appears to be up for grabs, with the exception of personal conversations, although Meta has said that conversations between users and businesses are fair game. This work will begin on June 26.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New Yorker ☛ Fighting Trump on the Beaches

    Biden’s fiery D Day speech in Normandy warns against the ex-President’s isolationism, while Trump is back home, targeting “the enemy within.”

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Seeks to Echo Reagan With Normandy Speech to Honor D-Day

    At Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, President Biden plans to follow one of the former president’s most iconic speeches with his own testimonial to democracy and the need to resist isolationism.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Espionage with a Drone

    The US is using a World War II law that bans aircraft photography of military installations to charge someone with doing the same thing with a drone.

  • New York Times ☛ D-Day Photos: Veterans Remember Normandy Invasion on 80th Anniversary

    Veterans of the pivotal battle of World War II are disappearing. Europe, facing new conflict, recalls what their comrades died for.

  • JURIST ☛ Israel judge on ICJ genocide panel resigns citing personal reasons

    Aharon Barak, former Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme Court and a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) panel weighing genocide charges against Israel, announced his resignation from the ICJ on Wednesday in a letter widely circulated on X (formerly Twitter).

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian PM Anwar calls for an end to violence in Myanmar

    Malaysia would not stand for the violence happening in the world, said Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan thanks US for sale of F-16 fighter jet parts, says it shows ‘commitment to defence’ against China

    Taiwan thanked the United States on Thursday for approving the sale of equipment and parts for F-16 fighter jets, saying it would help the island defend itself against China. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and last month launched drills around the self-ruled island days after the inauguration of new President Lai Ching-te.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Military Defends Strike on Gaza School Building, Saying It Targeted 30 Militants

    Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters were hiding inside three classrooms, a military spokesman said.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Israeli strike draws condemnation. US issues urgent call for Gaza cease-fire.

    Israel hit a U.N. site in Gaza where civilians were taking shelter. It said it was targeting Hamas fighters hidding inside. Some 40 were reported killed, including women and children.

  • France24 ☛ Hamas has not yet responded to latest Gaza ceasefire proposal, says Qatar

    Hamas has not yet given its response to the latest ceasefire proposal to the mediators and is still studying it, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Thursday, adding that Qatar, Egypt and the US mediation efforts are still ongoing. The news came as Spain said it will join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, its foreign minister announced.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Airstrike Sets off Chaos at Gazan Hospital

    Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, inundated by a rapidly rising casualty count, is so full that the crowds themselves are hampering treatment.

  • France24 ☛ Dozens reported killed in Israeli 'targeted air strike' on UN-run school in Gaza

    Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday with what it described as a targeted airstrike on up to 30 Hamas fighters inside, while a Hamas official said 40 people including women and children were killed as they sheltered in the U.N. site.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strike Kills Dozens at Former School Where Civilians Were Sheltering

    The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas operatives at a U.N.-run school complex. Palestinian officials said the dead included women and children.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strike Kills Dozens at Civilian Shelter in Gaza

    The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants who were hiding in the complex in an effort to evade attack. The former U.N. school was housing 6,000 displaced Gazans.

  • New York Times ☛ Video Analysis Shows Israeli Strike Used Bomb That Appeared to Be U.S.-Made

    A video of munitions debris filmed at the school complex in central Gaza where thousands of Palestinians were sheltering showed remnants of a GBU-39, a bomb that is designed and manufactured by Boeing.

  • New York Times ☛ Gazans Weep and Pray Over Loved Ones Killed in U.N. School Strike

    The deadly strike on a United Nations school-turned-shelter is a bitter reminder, Gazans say, that each place they flee eventually gets caught up in the bloodshed.

  • RFERL ☛ The Azadi Briefing: Blacklisted Taliban Minister's Foreign Visit Triggers Outrage

    Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, a U.S.-designated terrorist who has a $10 million bounty on his head, visited the United Arab Emirates on June 4.

    Haqqani, accompanied by the Taliban's intelligence chief, met the U.A.E. president in Abu Dhabi.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ WWII bomb at Frankfurt Airport detonated safely

    Frankfurt police announced late on Friday that a World War II bomb discovered at Frankfurt Airport had been successfully detonated.

    The phosphorus bomb was discovered during construction work around the new Terminal 3.

  • VOA News ☛ Polish soldier dies after being stabbed at Belarus border 

    Migrants have been rushing to the eastern border since 2021, when Russian ally Belarus opened travel agencies in the Middle East, presenting a new, unofficial route into Europe.

    The European Union accuses Belarus of manufacturing a refugee crisis at its border by pushing migrants to illegally cross the border.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ How the UAE Subverts Democracy Far Beyond Its Borders – DAWN

    Yet one of America's closest partners in the Middle East not only represents the very rule of monarchs and the moneyed, but is also actively trying to subvert democracy around the world, including in the United States. The United Arab Emirates has demonstrated a blatant disregard for the rule of law and individual rights, engaging in widespread spying and surveillance tactics against critics and dissidents both within and outside its borders. The Emirati regime has been accused of employing sophisticated cyber-surveillance tools to hack into the phones, email accounts and digital communications of activists, journalists and even foreign government officials.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ 'Teeth of the storm': World War II veterans recall service in ceremony at Eisenhower museum

    All three men, who are all 98 years old, were asked the same question at the end: What do you want the people to remember about the war? All three said something similar.

  • YLE ☛ GPS interferences affecting tractors on Finland's eastern border

    "There are strips in the field that have not been tilled. Six or seven strips make up an area of about ten hectares," says Pekonen as he drives his tractor across his field.

    Farming today is largely precision farming, where a tractor automatically cultivates, sows and fertilises an exact part of the field.

    This requires satellite or other positioning data. If the positioning fails, the tractor will work the wrong part of the field, which can result in losses.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ D-Day, 80 years on: Veterans cross the Channel once again

    Ceremonies began in the United Kingdom and France on Wednesday, remembering the pivotal moment in history on June 6, 1944, when more than 150,000 Allied soldiers arrived in France by sea and air to drive out the forces of Nazi Germany.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 80 years of D-Day: Beginning of the end for Nazi Germany

    When Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler learned of the invasion, he is said to have gleefully remarked: "As long as they were in England, we couldn't lay our hands on them. Now, we finally have them where we can beat them."

    The German army, the Wehrmacht, had indeed been preparing. The coast of occupied France had been heavily secured with bunkers and artillery emplacements, known as the Atlantic Wall. However, the largest German military units were waiting in the wrong place, near Calais, where the English Channel is at its narrowest. The Wehrmacht had fallen for a deliberate deception.

  • The Register UK ☛ Sino firms using banned chips on US soil to avoid sanctions

    Basically, it sounds as though Alibaba, Tencent, and China Telecom want to rent or purchase American hardware to use within the US in a way that won't blatantly bust Uncle Sam's sanctions.

    TikTok parent company ByteDance has been caught up in this caper, too, and it's brought its US infrastructure partner Oracle into the mix with it - ByteDance has reportedly been renting access to some of Nvidia's best chips from Oracle.

  • RTL ☛ Thankful appreciation: 'You saved the world': WWII veterans shine on D-Day

    Around 180 veterans in their late 90s or even over 100 were guests of honour at D-Day commemorations in France on Thursday, many attending in wheelchairs for possibly the last time.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • University of Michigan ☛ Don’t fall for ‘bothsidesism’

    “Bothsidesism” describes when journalists, in their quest to appear unbiased, give equal weight to both sides of an argument, even when one side is demonstrably false. This can also manifest in applying different standards to both sides to make them appear equal. This thought process, also called “false balance,” is faulty. Just because two arguments exist opposed to each other does not make them inherently equal or worthy of balanced coverage.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Crime stats disappear from public view amid LAPD records overhaul

    The Police Department has stopped posting crime numbers to its public website after rolling out a new recordkeeping system and changing the way it counts burglaries, assaults and other crimes.

    Officials say that the changes will more accurately capture the level of public safety citywide, and that efforts are underway to get the statistics back online for the public. But for months there has been no easy way to track crime trends in the city.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ More Than 160 Groups Call on UN to Stop Promoting Carnivorous Fish Farming as ‘Sustainable’

    The group’s letter and petition – co-written by the Argentina-based Global Salmon Farming Resistance, Greek nonprofit Katheti, and the U.S. campaign group Don’t Cage Our Oceans – highlights the ecological dangers of industrial-scale, marine open-net pens in particular.

    Fish producers use these pens to enclose and farm huge numbers of carnivorous fish – the fastest growing food sector in the world. The fish must eat aquafeed that contains fishmeal and fish oil that is made from wild-caught, nutritious pelagic (oily) fish, like mackerel, anchoveta, and sardines, much of which originates from the Global South. In some parts of the world, this puts industrial fish farmers in direct competition with local communities for nutritious, low-cost protein, which has led to accusations that the industry is re-routing nutrients away from the poor to feed consumers in the Global North.

  • Wired ☛ Each of the Past 12 Months Broke Temperature Records

    Beyond records, the EU is highlighting the fact that the one-year period ending in May was 1.63 degrees Celsius above the average temperatures of the 1850–1900 period, which is used as a baseline for preindustrial temperatures. That's notable because many countries have ostensibly pledged to try to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial conditions by the end of the century. While it's likely that temperatures will drop below the target again at some point within the next few years, the new records suggest that we have a very limited amount of time before temperatures persistently exceed it.

  • YLE ☛ Extinction Rebellion protest stops Helsinki traffic

    According to the police, approximately 1000 people have attended the protest, however Elokapina are expecting 2000 people to attend, according to their press release.

  • Vox ☛ What if even Death Valley gets too hot?

    When Wines and I spoke, she talked about some of the cracks that are emerging in a place that is accustomed to such extreme temperatures. Even for the hottest place on Earth, there’s a threshold for heat acclimation.

    But perhaps even scarier is what that might mean for the rest of us.

  • New Statesman ☛ Peatlands are nature's unsung climate warriors - New Statesman

    Contrary to their unfair grim reputation, peatlands are ecological powerhouses. They cover around 3 per cent of the world’s land surface but are responsible for storing between 25 and 30 per cent of the Earth’s soil organic carbon stock. This is more than the world’s tropical and temperate rainforests combined. Their secret lies in their retention of water; what is unique about peatlands and wetlands is that they are constantly flooded. The presence of water, and lack of oxygen, slows down the decomposition of organic material in the soil by microbes. Over thousands of years, that plant material builds up, allowing carbon to accumulate, creating peat.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • European Commission ☛ Speech by Commissioner Urpilainen at the European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN) Conference 2024

      I'm delighted to be with you here this evening.

    • Vox ☛ Ditching congestion pricing is a big mistake

      Hochul’s decision reflects a broader problem in American urban planning: who we design our cities for. When it comes to street design in particular, drivers are often lawmakers’ chief consideration, not transit riders or pedestrians. That’s why so many highways plow through so many downtowns and residential neighborhoods; why parking spaces are often prioritized over bus or bike lanes or expanded sidewalks; and why congestion pricing seems so politically unfeasible in New York and elsewhere.

      When cities are designed with mostly drivers in mind, they tend to be built for commuters and not residents, making them less attractive to live in or even visit outside of work. The decision to scrap the congestion pricing, even temporarily, once again puts commuters over residents and drivers over transit riders.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Signals to make drivers behave

      It’s also not just car drivers. Irrespective of why it got this bad, Sydney bus drivers are some of the worst I’ve ever interacted with, as a passenger and a pedestrian. I’ve done my phone filming trick around more than a few of them that queue across this same intersection, and the look of apoplectic rage their drivers give me could melt the metal frame of the bus around them. Pity they don’t have as much concern for the dad pushing a pram, or the woman in a wheelchair, or the kids with their schoolbags, who now all have to walk into the middle of the intersection because their bad driving blocked the pedestrian crossing… for the third light cycle.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • New York Times ☛ An Oregon Forest Is in Trouble. Part of the Response: Logging.

      Officials in Oregon say they need to cut trees, including some healthy ones. The reaction shows how complex land management has become as forest health declines.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Rare 7-foot fish washed ashore on Oregon's coast garners worldwide attention

      In research published in 2017, Nyegaard discovered through genetic sampling and observation that the hoodwinker sunfish, or Mola tecta, was a different species than the ocean sunfish, Mola mola. "Tecta" in Latin means hidden or disguised, referring to a new species that had been hiding in plain sight.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Register UK ☛ Tokyo takes on Tinder by developing its own dating app

      The efforts are intended to help boost the country’s dwindling population and were announced a day before health ministry data revealed Japan’s birth rate had hit a new record low of 1.2 children per woman in 2023.

• Finance

  • New York Times ☛ European Central Bank Cuts Interest Rates for the First Time Since 2019

    The quarter-point reduction comes as inflation in the eurozone cools, prompting the E.C.B. to move before the Federal Reserve in the United States, where rates remain high.

  • RFA ☛ North Korea punishes money changers to stop soaring exchange rates

    The US dollar used to hover around the 8,000 won mark, but now it is worth more than 13,000.

  • RFA ☛ Rising prices for instant ramen, pickles hit low-income Chinese

    Even street-food vendors are hiking prices, driven by the rising cost of raw ingredients like pork and coriander.

  • [Repeat] Taler ☛ GNU Taler news: GNU Taler v.11 released

    We have addressed over 70 individual issues, our bug tracker has the full list. Notable changes include: [...]

  • US News And World Report ☛ Internet Group Sues Georgia to Block Law Requiring Sites to Gather Data on Sellers

    An internet trade group is suing the state of Georgia to block a law requiring online classified sites to gather data on high-volume sellers who advertise online but collect payment in cash or some other offline method.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • RTE ☛ RTÉ announces dedicated Elections Results Coverage

    RTÉ has announced details of comprehensive elections results coverage across digital, television, and radio platforms beginning this weekend. After the public have had their say and voted this Friday 7 June, they will be able to follow all the results on RTÉ’s digital platforms and in over 30 hours of dedicated TV and radio elections results programming.

  • Irish Independent ☛ Elections 2024: Irish Independent has every count, live blogs, county-by-county updates, podcasts and video

    The Irish Independent will be the essential destination for rolling election coverage of the local and European elections, including updates from reporters at every count centre in the country.

  • New York Times ☛ Hunter Biden’s Addiction Upended His Family. Has Your Family Had Similar Woes?

    His marriage fell apart as his addiction to crack cocaine deepened. The Times would like to speak with families shaken by a loved one’s drug addiction.

  • RFA ☛ China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomat to take up post in Cambodia

    The appointment of Wang Wenbin as ambassador follows a rapid expansion of bilateral ties.

  • RFA ☛ INTERVIEW: Former ‘little pink’ supporter of Beijing on what made him change

    ‘One day, we will be able to retake Tiananmen Square,’ says Yang Ruohui.

  • RFA ☛ In China, Turkish foreign minister calls Urumqi and Kashgar ‘Turkic’ cities

    Meanwhile, protesters in Istanbul blast a song-and-dance performance featuring Uyghurs as whitewashing by Beijing.

  • ACLU ☛ This November, Freedom is on the Ballot

    In less than six months, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will once again face off for the presidency. While a presidential rematch is relatively rare — this marks the first time since 1956 — the outcome of this particular rematch will have an outsized impact on our civil rights and civil liberties. Beyond any one issue being on the ballot this November — freedom is on the ballot in no uncertain terms.

    While the ACLU does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office, we know that a potential second Trump administration and a potential second Biden administration will be drastically different when it comes to our civil rights and civil liberties. A second Trump administration will be disastrous for our most fundamental rights and freedoms, while a second Biden administration will bring a mix of challenges and opportunities that largely leaves these rights and freedoms intact. At the ACLU, we’re prepared for either scenario. Our legal, policy, and advocacy experts have identified the constitutional challenges that each candidate will bring, and the concrete actions the ACLU will take in response.

    Starting next week, we will share our findings in a series of 13 memos — seven memos on a potential second Trump administration and six on a potential second Biden administration — to be released through August. The memos will address a range of issues, including immigrants’ rights, abortion access, LGBTQ justice, racial equity, police reform, and more.

    To move the national discourse beyond agonizing over potential challenges to analyzing potential solutions, our memo series outlines not only the threats to our freedoms, but also includes comprehensive, substantive, and actionable solutions the ACLU will use to block the punches — egregious attempts to ignore the Constitution — or lessen the blows.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Disinformation Spreads Amid E.U. Elections

      Those claims are part of an abundance of deceptive content aimed at voters electing a new European Parliament, spread by far-right politicians, information operatives based outside Europe and others, according to disinformation researchers. It is coming in the form of recycled videos and photos presented as current, misinterpretations of policy proposals and inflammatory political ads, addressing topics like agriculture, climate change and migration. Foreign propaganda, even content explicitly prohibited by the European Union, continues to seep into the information ecosystem.

      In recent weeks, disinformation about the 27-nation bloc reached its highest level since tracking began in 2023, according to the European Digital Media Observatory, a collaboration among fact-checkers, academics and others focused on disinformation.

    • LRT ☛ Russian propaganda targets Baltics’ energy policies – study

      “The study identified five narratives developed in the Russian media over the last three years,” the company said in a press release.

      “The reports consistently push the idea that the Baltic countries themselves are to blame for the surge in electricity and gas prices in 2022 due to their decision to withdraw from Russia’s sphere of influence and synchronise their electricity grids with Western Europe,” it said.

      According to Mediaskopas, the Kremlin is also trying to undermine confidence in green energy by claiming that it “will not save” the Baltic states.

    • Futurism ☛ Microsoft Sued For AI Article Accusing Innocent Man of Sexual Misconduct

      According to the NYT, that AI-powered news service, "BNN Breaking," produced an article claiming that an Irish broadcaster named Dave Fanning was due to face "trial over alleged sexual misconduct," complete with a photo of a photo of the falsely accused media figure. Worse yet, the erroneous reporting was scooped up by MSN — the somehow not-dead-yet Microsoft site that aggregates news — and was featured on its homepage for several hours before being taken down. Fanning is now suing both BNN and Microsoft for defamation, arguing that the article was live long enough to cause reputational damage.

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

      A fly-by-night journalism outlet called BNN Breaking had used an A.I. chatbot to paraphrase an article from another news site, according to a BNN employee. BNN added Mr. Fanning to the mix by including a photo of a “prominent Irish broadcaster.” The story was then promoted by MSN, a web portal owned by Microsoft.

    • India Times ☛ AI-Generated News Outlet: The life, death and rebirth of an AI-generated news outlet

      The falsehood, visible for hours on the default homepage for anyone in Ireland who used Microsoft Edge as a browser, was the result of an artificial intelligence snafu.

      A fly-by-night journalism outlet called BNN Breaking had used an AI chatbot to paraphrase an article from another news site, according to a BNN employee. BNN added Fanning to the mix by including a photo of a "prominent Irish broadcaster." The story was then promoted by MSN, a web portal owned by Microsoft.

      The story was deleted from the internet a day later, but the damage to Fanning's reputation was not so easily undone, he said in a defamation lawsuit filed in Ireland against Microsoft and BNN Breaking. His is just one of many complaints against BNN, a site based in Hong Kong that published numerous falsehoods during its short time online as a result of what appeared to be generative AI errors.

    • The Atlantic ☛ China Is Losing the Chip War

      And perhaps nothing encapsulates Xi’s predicament better than the microchip. Xi needs the smallest and fastest chips to fulfill his dream of transforming China into a technology powerhouse. But China doesn’t make them. Nor does China make the immensely complex equipment needed to manufacture them. For that, Xi must rely on the U.S. and its allies—and their willingness to share the technology.

      But those nations are no longer willing. Amid intensifying competition, Biden exploited American dominance in semiconductors to gain an advantage and hold back China’s technological and economic progress. The chip tells us a lot about the true balance of power between the U.S. and China, and the difficulties Xi faces in his efforts to tip that balance his way.

    • Business Insider ☛ Microsoft Exec Blames Azure Layoffs on the 'AI Wave' in Leaked Memo - Business Insider

      In the email, Zander said the company will halt services in preview, such as Azure Operator 5G Core (AO5GC) and Azure Operator Call Protection. The Azure Operator Nexus team will move to the Cloud + AI organizations' Azure Edge and Platform product line.

    • Futurism ☛ Microsoft Lays Off 1,500 Workers, Blames "AI Wave"

      Off the back of a strong third quarter, Microsoft is reportedly laying off somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 workers across its Azure cloud and mixed reality departments. And in a leaked memo as tone-deaf as it is bland, an executive at the company proclaimed that their peons' sacrifices are not in vain, for they are being done on the altar of the almighty "AI wave."

    • India Times ☛ US election officials split on AI disclosure rules for political ads

      FEC vice chair Ellen Weintraub on Thursday supported the May proposal by U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who asked the commission to advance a proposed rule that would require disclosure of AI content in both candidate and issue advertisements. FEC Chair Sean Cooksey criticized the plan.

    • India Times ☛ ByteDance plans $2.1 billion investment in Malaysia for AI, minister says

      As part of the deal, the latest in a number of global tech companies expanding into Southeast Asia, ByteDance will also expand its data center facilities in Malaysia's Johor state through an additional 1.5 billion ringgit investment, Investment, Trade And Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz said.

    • DeSmog ☛ Fossil Fuel Interests Spent Millions to Tank Clean Air Bills in Colorado

      But in a text message to subscribers, Energy Citizens, the API-funded astroturfing group that took a central role in the ad campaign, claimed its own win.

    • Futurism ☛ Google Hires Weight Loss Drug Exec With Zero Tech Experience as New CFO

      After a nearly year-long search, Google's parent company has found its next chief financial officer — and it's one who has no experience in big tech.

    • Reuters ☛ Alphabet names Lilly executive Anat Ashkenazi as CFO

      Ashkenazi will join Alphabet on July 31. Until then, Porat will continue as finance chief, including through the company's second-quarter earnings.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Reason ☛ Does the First Amendment Protect Speech on Private Property?

    Yes, when the restriction is being imposed by the government.

  • RFA ☛ Media Watch: ‘Little Pinks’ use Hey Hi (AI) in Tiananmen Square massacre debate

    But experts advise against using Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot as a ‘fact-checking’ tool.

  • JURIST ☛ Australia drops legal battle against X over church stabbing footage

    Australia’s e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant announced in a press release Wednesday that Australia has dropped its legal battle against Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) to have graphic footage of a church stabbing in Sydney removed from the social control media platform.

  • Reason ☛ Journal of Free Speech Law: "Defamation, Presumed Damages, and Reputational Injury: A Legal and Philosophical Inquiry," by Prof. Benjamin C. Zipursky

    An article from the Defamation: Philosophical and Legal Perspectives symposium, sponsored by the Center for Legal Philosophy at UC Irvine.

  • The Straits Times ☛ HK arrests 3 people for ‘insulting’ China’s national anthem at World Cup qualifier

    The trio are between ages 18 and 31.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 3 arrested in Hong Kong over allegedly insulting China’s national anthem during World Cup qualifier

    Three people have been released on police bail after being arrested on suspicion of insulting China’s national anthem during a 2026 World Cup Asian qualifier in Hong Kong. Two men and one woman were apprehended under the National Anthem Law on Thursday night at Hong Kong Stadium, where Iran secured a 4-2 victory against the […]

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Parents sue Florida Board of Education over book ban policy

    The legislation in question (HB 1069) requires local school boards to adopt policies regarding objections by parents to the use of specific material, but these parents contend that the law “only provides a mechanism for a parent to object to the affirmative use of material; it does not provide a mechanism for a parent to object to the lack of use or discontinued use of material.”

    Florida saw more books challenged for removal than any other state last year, according to data released by the American Library Association.

    The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court Northern Division of Florida by: [...]

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 'Glory to Hong Kong' removed from streaming platforms again

    DGX music, the creator of the song that became popular during the 2019 protests and unrest, said on Thursday that US distributor DistroKid had taken down the song “inexplicably,” after the song was first removed by Scottish distributor EmuBands due to a Hong Kong court order.

  • VOA News ☛ Russia’s requests to block YouTube is ‘political censorship,’ says rights group

    Several videos have been blocked by YouTube since February, according to a group of media and digital rights groups. While some of the videos were later reinstated, they no longer appeared in search results.

    Last month independent Russian news website OVD-Info said it received a notice from YouTube informing it that the Russian media regulator had found their content in violation of a law.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Germany’s Welt moved focus from volume to value after hitting 200,000 subscribers

    Welt's director of premium Falk Schneider on the German title's "lock-in tools" to boost subscriber engagement.

  • RFA ☛ Australian journalist Vicky Xu starts a new life in Taiwan

    Xu says the democratic island is like a parallel universe version of what China could have been.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Mill Media set to double staff total to 22 as it reveals London expansion

    The Substack-based outlet is tapping into £350,000 of investments it received last year.

  • CPJ ☛ At least 5 journalists harassed or assaulted covering pre-election events in Mozambique

    Mozambican authorities should investigate the harassment and assault of at least five journalists covering election-related events since March, and take concrete steps to ensure the press can freely and safely report on matters of crucial public interest leading up to the country’s October general elections, said the Committee to Protect Journalists on Friday.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban orders shutdown of broadcaster Tamadon TV

    In a breaking news announcement earlier that day, Tamadon TV stated that a Taliban delegation was inside its station to shut down operations. However, later the TV station confirmed that the suspension of its operations was postponed until Saturday. The Taliban has not announced an exact date that it plans to close the station.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK police rebut HKJA criticism of obstructing reporting

    According to the press group, its chairman Ronson Chan, who is a multimedia journalist for digital outlet Channel C, was accused of breaching the police cordon while he was reporting in Causeway Bay on Tuesday night.

  • CPJ ☛ Cuban journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca released, forced into exile

    “Although we welcome Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca’s prison release, it is disconcerting that the Cuban government has forced Valle into exile rather than allowing him to do his job,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The Cuban government should allow journalists to work freely, without fear of imprisonment or forced exile.”

  • Miami Herald ☛ Cuba frees imprisoned journalist but forces him into exile | Miami Herald

    Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, a Cuban independent journalist who had been imprisoned in Cuba since 2021 because of his reporting, was released Wednesday on the condition that he leave the island for exile in the United States.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ Samsung Workers Strike, the First in the Company’s History

    The South Korean tech giant is at odds with some of its employees as it is trying to reassure investors that its memory chip business can meet demand.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Amazon Labor Union Looks Set to Affiliate With the Teamsters

    “Today is an historical day for labor in America as we now combine forces with one of the most powerful unions to take on Amazon together,” wrote ALU President Chris Smalls on Twitter/X. “We’re putting Amazon on notice that we are coming!”

    Smalls and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien signed the agreement on June 3, according to a copy I obtained.

  • International Business Times ☛ 'Quit Or Accept Minimum Wage': Chinese Company's Ultimatum To 1000 Autoworkers As EV Sales Drop

    According to a Tuesday interview with Nikkei, Lisa, a factory worker at the Li Auto Factory and a newlywed bride, stated that over 1,000 employees, including herself, were presented with the option to either resign or accept minimum wage until business conditions pick up.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Pay gap widens with CEOs receiving hefty raises in 2023

    The typical chief executive compensation package for S&P 500 companies jumped nearly 13% last year. It would take a worker in the middle of a company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make their CEO’s annual salary at half the companies surveyed.

  • The Nation ☛ Police Can Be Held Liable for Killing a Dog but Not a Black Person

    Apparently, this is a controversial opinion—at least for the judges on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The 11th Circuit covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, three states with a lot of dogs and Black people. In two rulings handed down this week, the circuit took wildly different stances on the protections afforded to dogs versus Black people.

    Both cases involved questions about qualified immunity. In each, plaintiffs tried to sue law enforcement for monetary damages after law enforcement screwed up. But the outcomes were decidedly different.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ E pur si muove: Sometimes steering is virtual

    Phased array antennas and their role in model LEO communications.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ 2G and 3G shutdown in SA a big headache for merchants

    Earlier this month, TechCentral reported that the communications ministry has set a “preliminary” deadline of 31 December 2027 for all 2G and 3G networks be switched off – potentially giving those still reliant on these older technologies just 42 months to deal with the issue.

    If merchants want to maintain connectivity to bank-managed services, they will have to upgrade their payment terminals to 4G- or 5G-capable versions before this deadline.

  • Futurism ☛ Remote Amazon Tribe Finally Gets Internet, Gets Hooked on Porn and Social Media

    The Marubo have been using Starlink since September, after an American woman bought them some antennas to connect to the satellite network.

    Now, some in the tribe fear that the internet poses an existential threat to their culture. Young people kill time by fiddling with their smartphones instead of socializing the old-fashioned way, isolating them from their elders. By being exposed to the outside world, some of the teenagers now dream of exploring it. Alfredo fears that this could mean the tribe's culture and history, which has been passed down orally, could be lost.

    "Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don't even talk to their own family," he told the NYT.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • India Times ☛ Netflix tests biggest TV app redesign in 10 years

    The video streaming pioneer wants to increase the time that viewers spend on the app to help retain customers and draw subscribers to its new, lower cost plans with advertising.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• KFTC Needs to Stop Pretending: DMA-style Regulation Isn’t Coming to the U.S. in 2024

  According to recent Korean press articles, Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) officials have been promoting Korean policy proposals [...]

• Rolling Stone ☛ Phish Fan Banned from Sphere for Bong Rip: 'No Regrets'

  Of course, by the time @acid_farts emerged from the psychedelic show, his clip was already viral in the online Phish community. He’d also tagged the official Sphere account to notify them of his stunt. “That was maybe, maybe a little oops,” he says. Having lost his Wi-Fi signal shortly after posting on Instagram, he hadn’t realized just how widely the footage was circulating until it was too late to do anything about it. The veteran of 187 Phish concerts, who has caught the Vermont band live consistently from age 13 up through his late thirties, recalls thinking: “Well, I guess I’m gonna have to live with this decision.”

• Digital Music News ☛ Bong Ripper at the Phish Concert in The Sphere Gets Banned

  He says he faced no repercussions on the night he ripped the bong. Instead, he says he believes his plans to see Dead and Company triggered the legal notice. “I opened it up and there was this letter saying you’re banned from going to the Sphere,” the fan says. “I was like, I’m literally leaving for the Sphere right now.”

• Patents

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ The broadening of the Bolar provision proposed by the European Commission: will the arguments the European Commission and the EU Member States used before the WTO backfire on them?

    As most readers will be well aware, one of the hottest topics in the patent monopoly world is the broadening of the Bolar provision envisaged in the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union code relating to medicinal products for human use [...]

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Father’s Day Gear Guide

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Mishandled Disclosures: A Greek Tragedy in IP Law

    Neuropublic S.A., a Greek technology company, has filed a federal lawsuit against the law firm Ladas & Parry LLP, with several claims stemming from the firm’s alleged mishandling of Neuropublic’s confidential invention disclosure — sending it out to a third party (“PatentManiac”) for a preliminary novelty search which then (again allegedly) further leaked the disclosure. Although the case does not involve submission to Hey Hi (AI) algorithms, some of the questions here are similar to those many  IP attorneys are considering when onboarding new Hey Hi (AI) tools.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ Austrian patent monopoly attorney firms join technical and UPC forces [Ed: UPC is illegal and unconstitutional, but this publisher is being paid to legitimise this crime]

      The long-established law firm Haffner & Keschmann has been merged into Sonn Patentanwälte. The joint firm has been operating under the name Sonn Patentanwälte IP attorneys since the beginning of June. It has 12 patent monopoly attorneys, eight of whom are partners of the firm.

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Fighting on Two Fronts: UPC Court of Appeal denies a stay pending parallel, accelerated, opposition proceedings [Ed: UPC is illegal, but these profiteers do not bother informing anyone about this (anymore)]

      On 28 May 2024, the UPC Court of Appeal (in decision UPC_CoA_22/2024) upheld a decision of the Court of First Instance, Central Division (Paris Seat) not to stay revocation proceedings before the UPC pending parallel opposition proceedings before the EPO concerning the same patent.

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ $10,000 for Lab Technology communication patents prior art

      Unified has added 5 new PATROLL contests, each with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by Lab Technology, LLC, an NPE. The patents generally relate to communication systems for mobile phones.

      The contests will expire on August 30, 2024. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ UPC denies preliminary injunction against UEFA for use of VAR technology ahead of EURO 2024 [Ed: UPC is an illegal kangaroo court; it ought not exist and those who promote it should be investigated]

      On 3 June 2024, the UPC’s Hamburg Local Division rejected a PI application against UEFA (Union des Associations Européennes de Football) and Kinexon GmBH (a technology partner) in regard to the use of video-assistance referee (VAR) technology at the upcoming European Championship in Germany.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Reverses Section 2(d) Refusal of "CREATIVE HOME IDEAS" in view of Weakness of Two Cited Marks

    In a dubious decision, the Board reversed a Section 2(d) refusal of the mark CREATIVE HOME IDEAS for various home decor products, including pillows, curtains, and rugs [HOME Disclaimed], finding confusion unlikely with the registered marks CREATIVE HOME [HOME disclaimed] and HOMEIDEAS for overlapping and related goods. In light of applicant's third-party registration evidence and the ordinary meanings of CREATIVE, HOME, and IDEAS, the Board accorded the cited registrations an "attenuated scope of protection."

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Programming Prayer: The Woven Book of Hours (1886–87)

    An illuminated prayer book woven on mechanical looms programmed by punch card.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ The Launch of Our Mid-Year Fundraiser!

    Our Mid-Year Fundraiser is launched, and the new postcards theme will be Heat.

  • Techdirt ☛ Top EU Court Says There’s No Right To Online Anonymity, Because Copyright Is More Important

    The key problem is that copyright infringement by a private individual is regarded by the court as something so serious that it negates the right to privacy. It’s a sign of the twisted values that copyright has succeeded on imposing on many legal systems. It equates the mere copying of a digital file with serious crimes that merit a prison sentence, an evident absurdity.