Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ What inspires your blogging?

  I've met a few people who want to start blogging, or blog more often, but have trouble coming up with things to write about. This inspired me to write about what inspires me (the meta world of blogging).

  I would also love to read about what inspires other bloggers. We already have the wonderful Why we write and Our blogging workflow posts, so let's add one more to the list:

  What inspires your blogging?

• Daniel Miessler ☛ The Fast-Slow Problem

  I’ve been obsessed lately with the concept of slow versus fast. I’m calling it the Fast-Slow Problem.

  It refers to the speed and amount of dopamine that you get from a thing. So in the distant past, an apple would have been a treat, and especially an apple pie because it took so long to prepare and enhanced those apples, which were themselves not easy to come by.

• Licensing / Legal

  • The Register UK ☛ Feds sue Adobe for 'hiding' subscription cancellation fees

    The complaint, filed by the US Department of Justice on Monday and made public in redacted form, claims "Adobe fails to adequately disclose to consumers that by signing up for the 'Annual, Paid Monthly' subscription plan ('APM plan'), they are agreeing to a year-long commitment and a hefty early termination fee ('ETF') that can amount to hundreds of dollars."

    If that's true, then Adobe was hitting subscribers with, for them, unexpected costs if they simply canceled a paid-by-month plan before the year was out.

  • New York Times ☛ FTC Sues Adobe Over Hard-to-Cancel Subscriptions and Fees

    U.S. regulators sued Adobe on Monday over claims that the company made it difficult to cancel subscriptions to Photoshop and other software, an escalation by regulators in a crackdown against such practices.

    The Justice Department said in its lawsuit that Adobe hid details of an expensive cancellation fee from consumers “in fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks.” Adobe’s website and customer service representatives made canceling additionally challenging, according to allegations in the suit.

  • The Verge ☛ Sonos says its privacy policy change wasn’t for dubious reasons

    After a change to its privacy policy drew a lot of attention last week, Sonos has responded and insists it’s still carefully protecting the personal data of its customers. The company removed a line — “Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers” — from its US privacy statement earlier this month.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ Nations realise they need to take risks or lose the race to the Moon

    The [NASA]-led Artemis-3 mission will place the first human boots on the surface of the Moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left the lunar surface in December 1972.

    The goal of the Artemis programme is to establish a permanent human presence on Earth’s natural satellite and an economy based around the Moon. Artemis-3 is scheduled for no sooner than September 2026. However, further delays are likely and there are many technical challenges yet to overcome. Some might wonder whether it is going to happen at all.

• Education

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ A List of My Hard-won Life Lessons

    I’m working on my context.md file for my personal Digital Assistant, and one part of that will be my model.md file, which is basically life lessons, or ways I view the world.

    I’ve been capturing them in various forms, but one useful way is as a set of highly-compressed pieces of wisdom.

    Here’s my list of uncommon knowledge that took me far too long to discover.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Wisconsin Supreme Court Will Hear a Challenge to Governor's 400-Year School Funding Veto

    At issue is a partial veto Evers made in the state budget in July 2023 that increased revenue public schools can raise per student by $325 annually until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Nigerian tech clubs keep deaf students connected

    The Deaf Technology Foundation, co-founded in 2017 by Wuni Bitrus, is working to make dreams like Ms. Sale’s possible. In addition to three clubs for coding and robotics that the foundation has started for deaf students in Jos, Nigeria, it has one each in Zamfara state and Abuja, the capital.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ Is the flip phone back? Why some people are switching to dumbphones

    When Leigh Tynan agreed to get her 13-year-old daughter a cellphone, she didn't want it to become a distraction.

    "When there's a smartphone or screen, you don't practise guitar, you don't read a book, you don't just be bored," she said. So instead of the very popular iPhone, she settled on a TCL Flip phone, with a key feature: no access to social media.

  • The Register UK ☛ US Surgeon General wants warning labels on social networks

    The introduction of warning labels on social media is not the end goal for Dr Murthy, who said he would like to see further regulation. "Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds," the Surgeon General said.

    Some of these measures would include things like not collecting information from children and limiting features such as notifications and autoplay. Dr Murthy also says social media networks should have to share their internal research and usage data with public scientists, so that it can be scrutinized, and to be subject to independent audits.

    "While the platforms claim they are making their products safer, Americans need more than words," he said. "We need proof."

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ US surgeon general seeks social media warning labels

    Murthy pointed to research showing that spending more than three hours a day on social media doubles the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms for adolescents.

    He said that schools should "ensure that classroom learning and social time are phone-free experiences" and that parents should create "phone-free zones around bedtime, meals and social gatherings."

    The US surgeon general said lawmakers had managed to address public health issues in the past like when they required seatbelts and airbags in cars, or when the the federal government introduced tobacco warning labels in 1965.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Surgeon General Calls For Safety Warning on Social Media Apps

    Murthy pointed to evidence showing that “adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms,” and that “nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.”

    “To be clear, a warning label would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people,” Murthy added. The Surgeon General called on Congress to pass additional measures that would “shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content,” as well as “prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll.”

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Surgeon General: Social Media Platforms Need a Health Warning

    One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.

    The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.

  • US News And World Report ☛ US Surgeon General Calls for Social Media Warning Labels to Protect Adolescents

    For a long time, Murthy has been warning that social media can profoundly harm the mental health of youth, particularly adolescent girls. In an advisory last year, he called for safeguards from tech companies for children who are at critical stages of brain development.

    A 2019 American Medical Association study showed that the risk of depression doubled for teenagers who were spending three hours a day on social media.

  • The Verge ☛ US surgeon general wants tobacco-like warning labels on social media

    The question of whether social media usage is connected to the mental health crisis facing minors in the US is hotly debated. Multiple other studies and reports suggest this is likely — and that companies like Meta have long been aware of the reported dangers — but some experts (and tech CEOs) believe the link between social media use and depressive symptoms in adolescents is lacking evidence and “might be exaggerated.”

    For Murthy, the question isn’t up for debate. He issued an advisory in May 2023 that, while acknowledging the subject wasn’t fully understood, warned that social media poses a “profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” At the time, the advisory encouraged minors, parents, and policymakers to take immediate steps to mitigate the risks — such as modeling responsible social media behavior and enabling more research into its health impacts — but now, Murthy is calling for more urgent action to be taken.

  • Axios ☛ Surgeon General calls for warning labels on social media platforms

    Why it matters: Murthy's call for congressional action comes amid rising awareness of the dangers of social media for young people, as platforms try to negate some of the harms while facing lawsuits for their roles in the youth mental health crisis.

    • "The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor," Murthy wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ How dirty is your weed? Joint investigation finds toxic pesticides

    The Times and WeedWeek purchased dozens of cannabis products from retail stores, then tested them at private labs. Out of 42 products tested, 25 had concentrations of pesticides above either state-allowed levels or current federal standards for tobacco.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Opinion: Native Americans face huge healthcare disparities. Here's a way to help

    These disparities are not genetic but rather a result of generations of land theft, broken treaty obligations, forced displacement, discrimination and Indigenous genocide, all of which have fueled poverty as well as the worst health inequities in our nation.

    Many treaties that ceded tribal lands to the U.S. required high-quality health services in return. That’s why the Indian Health Service was established. But the Indian health system remains grossly under-resourced and underfunded. IHS hospitals are four decades old on average, compared with the national average of 10.6 years; Veterans Affairs treats about 3.5 times as many patients as the IHS but employs 15 times as many physicians. The U.S. government budgeted $4,104 per patient enrolled in the Indian Health Service in 2018, compared with $8,093 per Medicaid enrollee, $13,257 per Medicare enrollee and $9,574 per VA patient.

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ Rice Farming Gets an AI Upgrade

    XAG Mekong gives farmers two options: buy a drone and operate it autonomously, or hire pilots to provide the machine and manage operations. The drones can be configured to scatter seed, spray pesticide, or spread fertilizer. The farmer or pilot first fills the drone with the right amount of material. Then, once the operator has set the parameters and mapped the field, using a mobile phone application, the machine runs automatically and returns when supplies run out. The machines can cut the labor requirements for managing some aspects of crop production by at least half.

    Because drones spray or scatter the ideal concentration uniformly over a precise area, farmers require less pesticide and fertilizer than they would if applying materials by hand, says XAG engineer Long Hung. This precision in turn reduces how much of the additives end up in the soil and flush into the river and out to the sea.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ New database boasts more than 200 years of data on crime and punishment in the Nordics

    The Historical Criminal Statistics database, a massive undertaking by University Lecturer in Criminology Miikka Vuorela at the University of Eastern Finland, makes statistics on crime and punishment openly accessible to everyone. The database covers the period from 1810 to 2022.

    In the Nordic countries, data on crime and punishment have been entered into various records for more than 200 years. However, accessing the earliest records has been difficult, requiring information to be searched from handwritten documents, year by year. Now, historical criminal statistics are accessible to everyone in an open database available online.

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ 🚭

    According to the WHO, 8 million people die due to smoking every year, “including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke”.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Using LLMs to Exploit Vulnerabilities

    The LLMs aren’t finding new vulnerabilities. They’re exploiting zero-days—which means they are not trained on them—in new ways. So think about this sort of thing combined with another AI that finds new vulnerabilities in code.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Takeaways from an AI event

    First, surprising none of you, we are well and truly in the AI hype cycle. Everything that has even a modicum of electronic processing and delivery is being called “AI”, to the point where the term is meaningless. I mean, it was a vague umbrella term that data scientists and researchers never used anyway, but now that marketers have got a hold of it… my electric toothbrush could claim to have AI in it now.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Accessible and ‘a pleasure to read’: how Apple’s podcast transcriptions came to be

    Shelburne and Wong are among the roughly 15% of adults in the US, some 37.5m people, who report difficulty hearing without an aid, many of whom rely on captions and transcripts to follow music, movies and podcasts. Video streaming companies like Netflix, Peacock and Hulu offer captions for nearly all their programming, and time-synced lyric captions have become increasingly standard in music streaming. The prevalence of video captions has been embraced by audiences beyond the disability community; 80% of Netflix viewers turn on captions at least once a month.

  • India Times ☛ X banned over 2 lakh accounts for policy violations in India in May

    In total, X banned 230,892 accounts in the reporting period.

  • Springer Nature ☛ ChatGPT is bullshit

    Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The intentional stance

    Every day, millions of people are joining the early adopters who are giving AI systems the benefit of the doubt, a stance of intent and agency. But it’s an illusion, and the AI isn’t ready for rights and can’t take responsibility.

    The collision between what we believe and what will happen is going to be significant, and we’re not even sure how to talk about it.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Blocking bots

    The other day I was emailing with Matthew “Starbreaker” Graybosch about his recent post titled “robots.txt: the Nuclear Option”. If you’re a regular reader of this site you know I love this kind of stuff and I especially love nuclear options when it comes to fighting silly tech.

  • Garrit Franke ☛ Host your own LLM

    I'm currently dipping my toes into Large Language Models (LLMs, or "AI") and what you can do with them. It's a fascinating topic, so expect some more posts on this in the coming days and weeks.

  • [Repeat] Jim Nielsen ☛ Notes From “You Are Not A Gadget”

    Here’s a corollary: emphasizing artificial intelligence means de-emphasizing natural intelligence.

    Therein lies the tradeoff.

    In Web 2.0, we emphasized the crowd over the individual and people behaved like a crowd instead of individuals, like a mob rather than a person. The design encouraged, even solicited, that kind of behavior.

  • Jeff Triplett ☛ 🤖 AI companies are becoming bad neighbors

    Until proven otherwise, AI companies are becoming the bad neighbors of the Internet. They block your driveway, let their dogs poop in our yard without picking it up, use your trashcans without asking, and ask you to get faster Internet after you discover they were still using your guest network after that one time they asked to use it because of an emergency.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The North Lines IN ☛ Ingenious Research Develops Homegrown Facial Recognition System with DRDO Support

      The Indian defence sector is set for a major boost as an ambitious AI startup has developed an indigenous facial recognition system with support from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Ingenious Research Solutions, an AI solutions provider based in Noida, has created ‘Divya Drishti', an AI-powered tool that performs highly accurate facial authentication using multiple physiological parameters.

    • GeekWire ☛ Amazon Dash Cart vs. 'Just Walk Out': We put the tech giant's new grocery strategy to the test – GeekWire

      • Dash Carts were the most frustrating option, and didn’t save us much time. We found the process of scanning and entering items into the high-tech shopping cart to be clunky, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate.

      • Traditional shopping — using a non-digital cart and paying at the cashier — was the easiest and most simple option. It did take more time, including a few minutes waiting in line at the cashier’s station.

    • India Times ☛ A report shows, India's non-cash payments on ecommerce platforms surge to 58.1% from 20.4% six years ago

      "This significant uptake of alternative payment solutions can be attributed to the widespread usage of mobile wallets, largely driven by UPI, which facilitates mobile payments in real-time simply by scanning QR codes," GlobalData report elaborated.

    • Wired ☛ Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers

      Thousands of people catching trains in the United Kingdom likely had their faces scanned by Amazon software as part of widespread artificial intelligence trials, new documents reveal. The image recognition system was used to predict travelers’ age, gender, and potential emotions—with the suggestion that the data could be used in advertising systems in the future.

    • The Register UK ☛ AWS is pushing ahead with MFA for privileged accounts

      Once MFA is required for their account, customers will have a 30-day grace period to turn on multi-factor auth, Arynn Crow, AWS senior manager for user authentication product, told The Register, adding that the IT giant considers "MFA such an incredibly important part of our customer security strategy."

• Defence/Aggression

  • CBC ☛ Trudeau says Canadians should be 'wary' of leaders who say foreign interference hasn't touched their teams

    Two weeks ago, NSICOP — a cross-partisan committee of MPs and senators — released a heavily blacked-out document alleging, based on intelligence, that some parliamentarians have been "semi-witting or witting" participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in Canadian politics.

    The report also said foreign interference is targeting federal party nomination contests, leadership races and other lower-level events.

  • CBC ☛ U.S. surgeon general wants warning labels on social media platforms

    Murthy said that the use of just a warning label wouldn't make social media safe for young people, but would be a part of the steps needed.

    Social media use is prevalent among young people, with up to 95 per cent of youth ages 13 to 17 saying that they use a social media platform, and more than a third saying that they use social media "almost constantly," according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Crucial for deterring Russian aggression’ The campaign to block TikTok in Ukraine

    A new petition published on the Ukrainian government’s website calls on the country’s lawmakers to block TikTok for the sake of national security. The document asserts that China openly collaborates with Russia and supports it in its war against Ukraine. It also says that Chinese law allows companies to collect information about TikTok users that can subsequently be used for espionage and intelligence purposes. Additionally, the author says that China has the ability to influence ByteDance’s content policy, including by using TikTok to spread propaganda messages or launch algorithm-driven disinformation campaigns.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ States struggle with unreliable federal funding for making sure elections are secure

    Rising misinformation and disinformation about elections, often fueled by conspiracy theories, as well as threats against election workers, make the grants especially important, according to elections officials.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ States struggle with unreliable federal funding for making sure elections are secure

    But U.S. House Republicans are seeking to eliminate funding for election security grants — known as Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, grants — in this year’s appropriations process, a move they unsuccessfully attempted last year as well.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Trump Isn’t Choosing a V.P. He’s Casting a Reality Show.

    A traditional vice-presidential search happens discreetly, with possible picks lobbying behind the scenes and through proxies while publicly downplaying their interest. Mr. Trump’s search is playing out more like a cattle call audition.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump calls Jan. 6 rioters 'warriors.' Can the dog whistle be any louder?

    That’s quite a promotion. “Warriors” is a word Americans generally apply to members of the armed forces, not militants who attack police officers with bear spray. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Thursday's debate.

    Trump has crossed a line from defending the Jan. 6 detainees to lionizing them.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Tipping points: Understanding the green Sahara's collapse

    When applying their methods to the desertification of the West Sahara, they found a clear early warning before the loss of vegetation, consistent with the crossing of a tipping point.

  • Technische Universität München ☛ Tipping points: Understanding the Green Sahara’s Collapse - TUM

    New study by Andreas Morr and Prof. Niklas Boers, researchers at TUM and PIK, introduces an advanced early detection method that provides more accurate and reliable early warnings, particularly under more realistic external conditions. Traditional methods assume that random disturbances in a system are uncorrelated in time. However, this is not realistic for climate systems, because it assumes each day's weather would be independent of the previous day. In reality, tomorrow's weather heavily depends on today's. This mismatch reduces the reliability of conventional methods for early warning signals. The new method by Morr and Boers addresses this limitation by developing estimators of system stability designed specifically for more realistic climate conditions.

  • Wired ☛ Banks Are Finally Realizing What Climate Change Will Do to Housing

    The banks may be starting to wake up to the financial risks, but it’s worth acknowledging that climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for years. More than a decade ago, Laura Moore, a professor in coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed concern about the risks posed to properties built in the Outer Banks. Now, some of those homes are collapsing as storms rapidly reshape the islands.

  • The Nation ☛ With Air-Conditioning, Have We Passed the Point of No Return?

    In so many places experiencing extreme heat, air-conditioning will become nothing short of a protective survival tool, but (all too sadly) it’s also a prodigious generator of—yes, of course!—greenhouse gases. The climate impact of air-conditioning and refrigeration, which together already account for more than 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from all sources, is expected to double in the next 25 years. If that happens, the world’s nations will be thrown even further off track when it comes to fulfilling their pledges to meet UN climate goals.

    The question is: Can we somehow work ourselves free of such a dependence on industrial cooling, or have we already passed the point of no return?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ Once Upon a Time, You Could Ride a Train Right Through the Orange Groves in Southern California

      The Super Chief was one of the named passenger trains and the flagship of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The streamliner claimed to be “The Train of the Stars” because of the various celebrities it carried between Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California.

    • Jan Lukas Else ☛ New Bike Day: My new Cube Hyde Race

      Because it’s a belt drive, and belt drives appears to be more complicated, at least the person at the shop said that, I would rather not fix flat tires myself, if that should happen on the rear wheel. Because of the breakdown assistance and a protection against theft and accidents, I decided to buy an insurance for that bike.

      And I also decided, to become part of Germany’s bicycle club, which is doing some lobbying for cyclists as a counter club to the car club. Germany is way too car friendly…

    • Kansas Reflector ☛ 'Dark Horse': 80 years ago, the first surplus jeep was sold in Kansas

      More than 650,000 jeeps were produced by various manufacturers, including Ford and Overland-Willys during World War II. Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander who later would become America’s 34th president, is widely reported to have said the small, all-purpose vehicle was among the most important things, including the C-47 transport airplane and the tank-killing bazooka, that contributed to victory.

      Eighty years ago, jeeps were ubiquitous during the D-Day invasion of Normandy and soon became synonymous with the American military. The jeep did the jobs that horses had formerly been used for in the Army, the heavy hauling of soldiers and supplies over rough terrain, but the curious little vehicles also seemed somehow like a living thing. It’s hard not to look at the grille and round headlights of a Jeep and not think of a face.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Cities Respond to Global Pollinator Decline

• Finance

  • The Verge ☛ Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later just months after launch

    Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later, its buy now, pay later service, the company confirmed to 9to5Mac. The service, which lets you take out “pay later” loans that can be paid in four payments over six weeks, only launched fully in the US in October 2023. In its place, Apple says that users will be able to apply for “installment loans” from credit cards, debit cards, and lenders when checking out with Apple Pay later this year.

  • 9to5Mac ☛ Apple discontinuing Apple Pay Later, ahead of new features launching this fall

    Apple has announced that it is no longer offering Apple Pay Later, the “buy now, pay later” service that launched in the United States last year. The change goes into effect starting today, Apple says. Existing users with open Apple Pay Later loans will still be able to manage them via the Wallet app.

    In its place, Apple is focusing on new features coming globally to Apple Pay later this year, including the ability to access installment loan offerings from eligible credit or debit cards, as well as Affirm.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Bankruptcy is very, very good

    Farming requires an enormous amount of skill, but even the most skillful farmer is a prisoner of luck. No matter how good you are at farming, no matter how hard you work, no matter how carefully you plan, you can still lose a harvest to blight, drought, storms or vermin.

    So over time, every farmer loses a crop. When that happens, the farmer can't pay off their debts and must roll them over and pay them off with future harvests. That means that over time, the share of each harvest the farmer has claim to goes down. Thanks to compounding interest, no bumper crop can erase the debts of the bad harvests.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Numeric Citizen ☛ When Will IT Support Guys Learn?

    Back to my call with my CEO, after trying to understand the situation and find a sound explanation, I told him that the type of answers he got was unacceptable. We are an IT company for god’s sake! He was shy of admitting the same and surprised by this nonsense. He is the CEO, a smart guy. We should do better.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Edward Brocklesby: hacker received advance notice of zero-day vulnerabilities in MH and NMH email software

    Brocklesby was maintainer of the MH package and therefore he received advance warning of the security vulnerability in both MH and NMH software. The warning was circulated in the debian-private cubby house approximately four days before a public bug report appeared. He may have received other personal emails or IRC chat messages about the issue before anybody else had time to protect their systems.

  • Federal News Network ☛ NSF initiative aims to bring better data to the cyber workforce challenge

    The Cybersecurity Workforce Data Initiative, authorized as part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, aims to “assess the feasibility of producing national estimates and statistical information on the cybersecurity workforce.” The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, housed within the National Science Foundation, is leading the initiative.

  • Fudzilla ☛ Former spook joins OpenAI [Ed: Way for Microsoft to bribe officials]

    A retired U.S. Army general and ex-director of the NSA, Paul Nakasone, has joined OpenAI as the latest addition to its board.

    Nakasone will play a key role in the Safety and Security Committee, contributing his expertise to strengthen OpenAI's cybersecurity initiatives, a testament to the company's commitment to safety and security.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fake news offers unexpected opportunities for trusted media

      Disinformation is acknowledged as one of journalism's, if not the democratic world's, biggest problems. Fake news and misleading visuals have deepened social division and interfered with elections, as well as having other destructive aspects. And generative artificial intelligence, or AI, where, for example, advanced computing allows users to make a minutes-long video from one photograph of a politician, is only about to make things worse.

      However at DW's annual Global Media Forum (GMF) in Bonn there was some unexpectedly positive news regarding the increase and spread of disinformation.

    • Reason ☛ Pentagon's Anti-Vaccine Psyop Is Yet Another Case of U.S.-Led Disinformation

      A government agency was spreading dangerous rumors about the coronavirus vaccine, playing on people's religious beliefs to sow chaos, Reuters revealed last week. Was it Russia? China? Iran, perhaps? The culprit turned out to be someone closer to home: The U.S. military.

      Both the Trump and Biden administrations signed off on a psychological operation aimed at discrediting Chinese-made vaccines, using fake social media accounts to target foreign countries, Reuters reported. The program ended in late 2021, after executives at Facebook and officials from other U.S. government agencies raised concerns about the content.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Dissenter ☛ Florida Prison Officials Ban Issue Of Socialist Newspaper Over Photo Of Dead Israeli

  • Meduza ☛ Elderly teacher flees Russia after facing criminal charges for telling students about atrocities in Bucha

    A 65-year-old schoolteacher has fled Russia after being charged with spreading “disinformation” about the Russian army for telling her students about atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Australian journalist says Chinese diplomats tried to ‘block’ her at event

    Cheng previously worked as an anchor for the Chinese state broadcaster CGTN until she was detained in Beijing in August 2020, sparking widespread condemnation from international press freedom groups. She was later convicted of espionage in a closed-door trial.

    After Cheng was released to Australia in October 2023, she revealed that she was jailed for the minor infraction of breaking an embargo by just a few minutes.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Judges Named for Assange Appeal

    The judges in Julian Assange’s two-day appeal hearing on July 9-10 are the same who granted Assange a rare victory last month: his right to appeal the Home Office’s extradition order to the United States.

    Justices Jeremy Johnson and Victoria Sharp granted Assange the right to appeal on only two of nine requested grounds, but they are significant: [...]

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Acclaimed journalist Eesha Pendharkar joins Maine Morning Star team

    “I think this opportunity to report on state government and examine the impact of laws on Mainers’ lives is what makes this new job most exciting for me,” she said.

  • ANF News ☛ Journalist Karakoç thanks everyone for their support

    Journalist Serdar Karakoç, who was detained from his home by the Dutch police on 23 May upon Germany's extradition request, was conditionally released on 14 June. During Karakoç's detention, many journalists, politicians and rights defenders published statements protesting the pressures on the free press.

  • VOA News ☛ American journalist jailed in Russia to be tried behind closed doors

    Gershkovich, a Russia correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been jailed for nearly 16 months on spying charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The U.S. State Department has also declared the 32-year-old wrongfully detained.

  • France24 ☛ Russia trial of US journalist Gershkovich on espionage charges to begin June 26

    On Monday, the Sverdlovsk regional court handling the case said in a statement that the trial would start on June 26 and be held behind closed doors.

    The 32-year-old faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

    Gershkovich, his family, his employer and Washington have denied all charges against him since the start, insisting that the outgoing journalist was just simply doing his job.

  • CPJ ☛ US journalist Evan Gershkovich to stand trial June 26

    “The start of Gershkovich’s trial comes after he has already spent more than 14 months behind bars for no other reason than his work as a journalist,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting members of the press for their work.”

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Sets Date for Start of Evan Gershkovich Trial

    A court in Russia said on Monday that the espionage trial of the imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich would start next week and that the proceedings would be held behind closed doors.

  • [Repeat] RFERL ☛ Belarusian Journalist Facing Extradition Says Fighting To 'Save My Life'

    [...] Belgrade's Higher Court on June 13 upheld his extradition ruling, but it can still be appealed. [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Walrus ☛ The Scourge of Self-Checkout

    In many ways, self-checkout is the shining jewel of enshittification. First, the technology can be deeply exasperating. According to one survey published in 2021, 67 percent of American customers said they’d experienced a failure at the self-checkout lane. Nor is it true that people whiz through: lines get clogged while staff assist with bar codes that aren’t working or payment problems. But the concept has also inspired some remarkable dystopian creativity. Amazon bragged about the Just Walk Out technology used in their Fresh grocery stores which sent customers their receipts after they had left the store with their items. However, the model was reportedly powered by low-paid workers in India who watched customers from afar and reviewed about 70 percent of purchases. (Amazon has denied these allegations.)

  • ANF News ☛ Lucaroni: Those who fought against ISIS were betrayed

    Yes. Suffice it to say that no one has condemned the perpetrators of the crimes against Yazidi women and men. Only Germany has issued two convictions against two former members of the Islamic State for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But most of the mercenaries are in prisons controlled by the Kurds and their wives and children are in the Al Hol camp in Syria, and many Western states only repatriate their citizens, who are criminals, through very slow bureaucracy. In addition, there are mass graves still to be dug in Shengal: ten years have passed. There are more than 2000 people abducted, of whom nothing is known. They are still missing, and too few families have been able to return home. Only some NGOs and foundations have done something concrete for reconstruction. But it's all too little.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Prison Labor in Texas is Modern-Day Slavery

    Working without pay in Texas prisons is a loophole in the 13th Amendment that the state takes full advantage of.

  • The Nation ☛ Democrats Must Change Their Whole Approach Toward White People

    In 1968, unapologetic white segregationist governor George Wallace of Alabama ran for president and won five states. Twenty years prior, South Carolina leader Strom Thurmond—who infamously conducted the longest filibuster in US history when he tried to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957—ran for president on the overtly segregationist platform of the Dixiecrats, and won four states. And 88 years before that, the entire presidential contest turned on the question of whether white people could legally buy, sell, and own Black people—48 percent of the voters backed pro-slavery candidates (the slave states couldn’t agree on a single candidate and divided their votes, making it possible for Abraham Lincoln to prevail with just 39 percent of the vote).

  • Reason ☛ Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Will Pardon More Than 100,000 Marijuana Offenders

    Moore says the pardons are an effort to remove the burdens of felony convictions, such as barriers to employment and housing, which have fallen particularly hard on minority neighborhoods that were targets of the drug war.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Jes Olson ☛ j3s.sh

    if you are unfortunate enough to browse a fandom wiki without an ad blocker, you will experience what i like to call "attention assault"

    upon opening a fandom page (for me, it was the hollow knight wiki), you will note the very subtle aroma of a 1/3 page banner ad, placed ever so daintily at the top of the page.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ TCS fined Rs 1,600 crore by US court for misappropriation of trade secrets

  “The court also assessed that the company is liable for $25,773,576.60 in prejudgment interest through June 13, 2024, it added in the filing as it received the adverse judgement passed by United States District Court, Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division on Friday.

• India Times ☛ Google loses bid to end US antitrust case over digital advertising

  The Justice Department and a coalition of states sued the tech giant last year, claiming it was unlawfully monopolizing digital advertising and overcharging users. The lawsuit seeks primarily to break up Google's digital advertising business to allow for more competition.

• Lee Peterson ☛ Apple is ruining App Store search

  As it’s beta season I seem to be moving between versions daily now and when I was taking a look at the App Store I was surprised at how bad it’s gotten. Maybe it’s a corner of the iPhone and iPad I don’t go to that much these days but it’s just plain bad.

• Trademarks

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Jean-Pierre Giraud, Possible Forgeries & Debian: elections, judgments, trademark already canceled, archaeologist

    People have been looking at the latest attacks against my family from rogue elements of Debianism.

    It is important to start with some fact checking.

    The big thing to remember is that I resigned from some of my voluntary activities around the time my father died. This is all an ongoing violation of my family's privacy that has been sustained over multiple years now. To confirm, the death of my father is a fact.

• Copyrights

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Internet Archive: The Largest Software Piracy Website

    Archive.org's massive collection of pirated material (game roms, computer software, & more) puts the entire service in legal jeopardy.

  • Adam Newbold ☛ Neatnik Notes · Gotta block ’em all

    This is the way the open web works: we put stuff out there, and it’s free for the taking. Only recently have we become more concerned with who’s doing the taking, and we’re trying to take steps to put some controls around that. But the example I shared above happens over and over, day after day, right under our noses. We can see it clearly in hindsight, but by then it’s too late—our content has been taken.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cloudflare IPFS 'Takedowns' Skyrocket, But Not For Long

    Cloudflare protects and facilitates access to millions of sites and services on the web. The company also offers an IPFS gateway, making it easier to access content on the censorship-resistant storage network. Takedown notices for this gateway have skyrocketed, according to the most recent transparency report, but that won’t be for long.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Sony DMCA Notice Nukes 200 Aniyomi Extensions as Tachiyomi Fork Feels Heat

    Less than six months ago, manga reader app Tachiyomi was forced to call it quits following legal threats from South Korean publisher Kakao. A popular project fork, Aniyomi, introduced anime into the mix, accessed using extensions from the app's 200+ strong library. A single DMCA notice from Sony Pictures has now taken all but three extensions offline.