Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ The Book That Could Have Killed Me

  It is funny how sometimes things you think are bad turn out to be good in retrospect. Like many of us, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by science of all kinds. As I got older, I focused a bit more, but that would come later. Living in a small town, there weren’t many recent science and technology books, so you tended to read through the same ones over and over. One day, my library got a copy of the relatively recent book “The Amateur Scientist,” which was a collection of [C. L. Stong’s] Scientific American columns of the same name. [Stong] was an electrical engineer with wide interests, and those columns were amazing. The book only had a snapshot of projects, but they were awesome. The magazine, of course, had even more projects, most of which were outside my budget and even more of them outside my skill set at the time.

• Tim Bray ☛ Lounge Penguin

  Lounge, as in a jazz club. Penguin, as in GoGo Pengin, a piano/bass/drums trio. We caught their show at Jazz Alley in Seattle last week. Maybe you should go hit a jazz lounge sometime.

• Robert Birming ☛ Don't think

  This got me thinking (no pun intended) about my blogging doubts, due to my tricky relationship when it comes to writing in English. What Ray mentions is very much what happens when I don't write in Swedish:

  I think too much.

• Lee Peterson ☛ Productivity systems are useless if you don’t check in

  For me this means keeping my notebook where I can see and access it, I even take it out with me these days. Sometimes I’ll sit down at a cafe with it. What does help is using it as a journal taking notes throughout the day, seems I’m doing this I’ll also check my task list.

• David Mead ☛ Roasting time

  After a while I got to experience "first crack". A slow popping as the beans started to split. Adjusting the timer we then sat and listened for "second crack". The was certainly different from the first–Faster and higher. When that started the roaster was set to cool down.

  When the beans came out they were dark and had a slightly oily look to them. They smelt great! A lot of chaff was left behind.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Weinersmith and Boulet’s “Bea Wolf”(24 Jun 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

  Boy is this a wildly improbable artifact. Weinersmith and Boulet set themselves the task of bringing Germanic heroic saga from more than a thousand years ago to modern children, while preserving the meter and the linguistic and literary tropes of the original. And they did it!

• [Old] University of Kentucky ☛ Electronic Beowulf, Fourth Edition

• [Old] University of Michigan ☛ Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript | University of Michigan Press

  The story of Beowulf and his hard-fought victory over the monster Grendel has captured the imagination of readers and listeners for a millennium. The heroic Anglo-Saxon story survives to the world in one eleventh-century manuscript that was badly burned in 1731, and in two eighteenth-century transcriptions of the manuscripts.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Food Memories Are The Best

  I'm fortunate enough to have never suffered from income derived hunger at any point in my life. Other than through unintended weight gain, food has not been a stressor. Quite the contrary, I have a lot of happy memories associated with food and the people who have prepared it for me.

• Science

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ If it never breaks, you're doing it wrong

    The other lens to look at this through is what you give up to ensure no downtime. Downtime is expensive, and so is increasing amounts of uptime.

    Going from 9% to 99% uptime is pretty cheap. Going from 99% to 99.9% uptime gets a little trickier. And going from 99.9% uptime to 99.99% uptime is very expensive. Pushing further than that gets prohibitively expensive, not least because you will be seeking to be more reliable than the very components you depend on3! That shift to be more reliable than the components you use means a significant shift in thinking and how you design things, and it comes with a cost.

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ Scientists Built an Artificial Shark Uterus

    In a new paper published in Frontiers in Fish Science, the researchers show that this manufactured uterus can sustain midterm Moller’s lanternshark embryos for up to a year, about two-thirds of their normal 18-month gestation period. The scientists hope this system will help sharks in their aquarium and eventually be used to bolster wild populations of other endangered shark species.

• Education

  • Goodness Exchange ☛ Get Rid Of The Imposter Syndrome For Good! | Goodness Exchange

    Successful people, very successful people, feel that they accomplished what they did by chance or good timing or pure fluke. That they are not competent or skilled at all. And that someone will recognize this and expose them as ‘a fraud.’

    People in the grip of full-blown “Imposter Syndrome” attacks feel insecure, fearful and afraid to take risks or even mild initiatives. Their stomachs knot up, their blood pressure shoots up and they have trouble sleeping.

    The solution is simple. Not easy, but simple.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ How The CD-ROM Lost The Multimedia Dream To The Internet

    In the innocent days of the early 90s the future of personal computing still seemed to be wide open, with pundits making various statements regarding tis potential trajectories. To many, the internet and especially the World Wide Web didn’t seem to be of any major significance, as it didn’t have the reach or bandwidth for the Hot New Thingtm in the world of PCs: multimedia. Enter the CD-ROM, which since its introduction in 1985 had brought the tantalizing feature of seemingly near-infinite storage within reach, and became cheap enough for many in the early 90s. In a recent article by [Harry McCracken] he reflects on this era, and how before long it became clear that it was merely a bubble.

  • Herman Õunapuu ☛ Back to roots :: ./techtipsy

    This blog is running on a home server again.

    I have once again gained access to a competent internet connection1, and I think I have figured out the IPv6 setup as well2, leading to this change.

    The IP address is dynamic, there are occasional power outages and I might just mess up my configuration and bring it all down, but I get to brag about this setup so it all balances out.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Meduza ☛ Medical cannabis will soon become legal in Ukraine. What will this look like and why now? — Meduza

  • The antivax bizarro world view of vaccine safety studies, revisited

    Back in March, I wrote about an incident demonstrating how antivaccine activists weaponize vaccine safety studies to falsely portray vaccines as more dangerous than the disease. The example that I used was a study published by a large multinational research group in the journal Vaccine using the Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN) to examine thirteen medical conditions that the group considered “adverse events of special interest” (AESI) potentially associated with COVID-19 vaccination. The study involved examining the records of more than 99 million vaccinated individuals in eight countries, with the intention of identifying higher-than-expected cases of one or more AESIs after a COVID-19 vaccination, the investigation covering the most commonly used vaccines, the mRNA-based vaccines distributed by Pfizer and Moderna, as well as nonreplicating adenovirus vector-based vaccines. and protein-based vaccines. Overall, it was a massive undertaking that belied the frequent antivax lie that vaccines aren’t studied for safety and efficacy, but somehow antivaxxers tried to spin it as showing the vaccines to be horribly dangerous.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Looking for the Fountain of Youth? Try the gym and weight-resistance training now

    “Resistance training is in many ways the true fountain of youth,” Bamman said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I like to say the fountain of youth is the water cooler in the gym.”

    Of course, there are biological limits. But Bamman says the bulk of age-related decline in strength, flexibility and endurance is behavioural — putting too few demands on the body, not too many.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • 404 Media ☛ Has Facebook Stopped Trying?

    Facebook has been overrun with AI spam and scams. Experts say Facebook has stopped asking them for help.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Fighting Bots

    Is it ideal? Nope. But in lieu of a better solution, I'm just gonna continue doing my thing without worrying about it too much. Unfortunately there's dickheads in all walks of life, including the Internet.

  • Don Marti ☛ This site is opted out of AI. Perplexity.ai crawled it three times

    Quick test of the perplexity.ai thing. From here it looks like they ignored this site’s 3 layers of AI protection: [...]

  • India Times ☛ Beyond Nvidia: the search for AI's next breakthrough

    Nvidia, which makes the processors that are the only option to train generative AI's large language models, is now Big Tech's newest member and its stock market takeoff has lifted the whole sector.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ 'Slop': the rhetorical gambit of framing failure as partial success – Baldur Bjarnason

    The industry needs this term because if the “E-number additive, but for creative work” connotation of “AI” becomes a permanent fixture in the public’s mind, the consumer side of their burgeoning tech bubble is dead in the water.

  • Ben Tsai ☛ Not Another Chatbot!

    First, we know that LLMs depend on the data they are trained on. If users are having a hard time finding the information they need on your website or in your product’s documentation, throwing an LLM chatbot in front is not going to solve your problem.

    The problem is that your documentation is poor and you should fix that. The problem is that your information architecture is in shambles. The problem is that your website is confusing and unusable. Fix those problems!

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ EFF Opposes the American Privacy Rights Act

      While the bill has not yet been formally introduced, subsequent discussion drafts of the bill have not addressed our concerns; in fact, they've only deepened them. So, earlier this month, EFF told Congress that it opposes APRA and signed two letters to reiterate why overriding stronger state laws—and preventing states from passing stronger laws—hurts everyone.

    • Rachel ☛ Leaking URLs to the clown

      So, if you were thinking about using that particular app to read some feed containing something relatively private, guess what, they're reading it too.

    • India Times ☛ Apple and Meta have discussed AI partnership: report

      Facebook parent Meta Platforms has discussed integrating Meta's generative AI model into Apple Inc's recently announced AI system for iPhones, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

    • India Times ☛ China's ByteDance working with Broadcom to develop advanced AI chip

      The 5 nanometre chip - a customised product known as an application-specific integrated chip (ASIC) - would be compliant with U.S. export restrictions and manufacturing work would be outsourced to Taiwan's TSMC, the sources added.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Record ☛ Russia-linked group criticizes Biden, praises Trump in latest influence campaign

    CopyCop has shifted to U.S.-based hosts for registering new websites, likely trying to minimize its connections to Russian infrastructure, researchers said.

    As of late May, former U.S. President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are the most frequently mentioned people in CopyCop posts.

  • New York Times ☛ Hamas Skimmed $1 Billion in UN Aid for Weapons and Tunnels, Suit Says

    The suit, filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, said some of those dollars ended up funding the military operations of Hamas, the Islamist group that has controlled Gaza for nearly 20 years and has pledged to erase the Jewish state. The money trail is at the heart of the case against seven current and former top UNRWA officials who are accused of knowing that Hamas siphoned off more than $1 billion from the agency to pay for, among other things, tunneling equipment and weapons that aided its attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

  • VOA News ☛ Niger planned on China-backed oil pipeline — then troubles began

    A China-backed pipeline that would make Niger an oil-exporting country is being threatened by an internal security crisis and a diplomatic dispute with neighboring Benin, both a result of last year's coup that toppled the West African nation's democratic government.

    The 1,930-kilometer pipeline runs from Niger's Chinese-built Agadem oil field to the port of Cotonou in Benin. It was designed to help the oil-rich but landlocked Niger achieve an almost fivefold increase in oil production through a $400 million deal signed in April with China's state-run national petroleum company.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ One year after Prigozhin’s mutiny, the Wagner Group’s tactical legacy still influences the battlefield in Ukraine — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ After the mutiny What happened to the Wagner Group’s mercenaries in the year since Prigozhin’s ‘march on Moscow’? — Meduza

    • European Commission ☛ EU adopts 14th package of sanctions against Russia for its continued illegal war against Ukraine, strengthening enforcement and anti-circumvention measures

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 24 Jun 2024 The Commission welcomes the Council's adoption of a 14th package of sanctions against Russia. The new package responds to the needs and findings on the ground, and tackles enforcement issues.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Türkiye and the Russian military threat to NATO

      Despite heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia continues to pose a major threat to NATO. Leveraging Turkey will be key to the Alliance's response.

      >

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Kyiv Pride event highlights changing attitudes in wartime Ukraine

      Ukraine’s LGBTQI+ community is playing an important role in Ukraine’s ongoing European integration and defense against the Kremlin’s anti-Western crusade, writes Aleksander Cwalina.

    • France24 ☛ Kremlin warns US of ‘consequences’ after alleged Ukrainian strike on Crimea

      The Kremlin on Monday warned the United States of “consequences” and summoned its ambassador after Moscow said a Ukrainian strike with a US missile on Crimea killed four people.

    • France24 ☛ Euro 2024: Andriy Shevchenko speaks to FRANCE 24 on Ukraine’s final-stage hopes

      Ukraine’s former star player Andriy Shevchenko has spoken to FRANCE 24’s Selina Sykes ahead of the team’s final game in the group stage. Ukraine still have a decent chance of making it through to the round of 16 as all teams in Group E are tied on three points.

    • RFA ☛ Did Biden say US would help Ukraine fight to the last Ukrainian?

      Verdict: False

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Disputes Russia's Claim About Responsibility For Strike On Crimea

      The United States responded on June 24 to Russia's claim that it was to blame for a deadly attack on Crimea on June 23 by pointing the finger back at Moscow for starting the war and by saying that the weapons it provides are for Ukraine to use to defend its territory against Russian aggression.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Replaces Commander Of Ukraine's Joint Forces

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced that the commander of the Joint Forces of the Ukrainian military, Yuriy Sodol, is to be replaced.

    • RFERL ☛ Kyiv Says Russia Stepping Up Attacks With Banned Chemical Agents

      Ukraine has accused Russia of stepping up front-line attacks using prohibited hazardous chemicals, including tear gas, the latest in a series of allegations of battlefield abuses.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Missile Strike Kills 4 In Eastern Ukraine

      At least four people were killed and 34 injured on June 24 after Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said that two Iskander-M missiles destroyed on home and damaged 16 others in the town of Pokrovsk.

    • RFERL ☛ Another Kyrgyz Jailed For Fighting With Russian Troops In Ukraine

      The Osh regional court in southern Kyrgyzstan told RFE/RL on June 24 that a lower court had sentenced a local man, whose identity was not disclosed, to five years in prison two weeks earlier for joining Russian troops invading Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ North Korea's 'Deepening Military Cooperation' With Moscow Condemned

      The United States, South Korea, and Japan have condemned the deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, while a top North Korean military official has reiterated Pyongyang’s support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ EU Approves New Sanctions To Limit 'Russia's Criminal Actions Against Ukraine'

      The European Union's 27 members agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the target being "high-value sectors" including energy, finance and trade.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Near Ukraine war’s front lines, threatened villages try to build a future

      Like many Ukrainian villages once occupied by Russian forces, Staryi Saltiv straddles two outlooks: hope for a better future and trepidation that Russian troops could return.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Wars of the future will be awash with drones. The Pentagon is trying to keep up.

      Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East highlight the growing role of inexpensive drones in battle – pushing the Pentagon to rethink war-fighting strategy.

    • New York Times ☛ Death Toll in Dagestan Church and Synagogue Attacks Rises, Officials Say

      A deadly assault in the southern region of Dagestan has put a spotlight on the failing of Russian security services amid the war in Ukraine.

    • European Commission ☛ Questions and Answers on the 14th package of restrictive measures against Russia

    • Security Week ☛ US Sanctions 12 Kaspersky Executives

      The US has imposed sanctions on 12 individuals who have leadership roles at Kaspersky in Russia and the UK.

    • France24 ☛ Death toll rises in Russia's Dagestan region after coordinated attacks on churches, synagogues

      The death toll from a series of brazen attacks on churches and synagogues in Russia’s mainly Muslim region of Dagestan rose to 20 on Monday after gunmen went on the rampage in coordinated attacks in two of the republic’s most important cities.

    • JURIST ☛ UN Secretary-General warns Russia must ‘abide by’ UN Sanctions on North Korea

      UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Russia must abide by UN sanctions on North Korea, following an agreement between the two countries last week to provide military assistance to each other in case of military aggression.

    • RFERL ☛ EU To Downgrade Georgia Ties And Mull Finance Freeze, Borrell Says

      The European Union will downgrade political contacts with Georgia and consider freezing financial aid to the Tbilisi government after it pushed through a controversial "foreign agent" law, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

    • RFERL ☛ Fire In Office Building Near Moscow Reportedly Kills At Least 8

      At least eight people died in a fire that broke out on June 24 at an office building in the town of Fryazino near Moscow, Russian news media reports said.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Gets Four Years In Prison For Arson Attack On Lenin's Mausoleum

      A Moscow court on June 24 sentenced Konstantin Starchukov to four years in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow last year.

    • RFERL ☛ Whereabouts Of Five Tajiks Deported From Russia Unknown

      The parents of five young Tajik men from the volatile Gorno-Badakhshan region told RFE/RL on June 23 that their sons did not arrive at the airport in the southern city of Kulob, where they were expected to arrive from Moscow on June 20 after Russian authorities deported them for unspecified reasons.

    • RFERL ☛ Flooding Cuts Off 10 Villages In Russia's Far East

      Floods caused by heavy rains have cut off access to 10 villages in Russia's Far Eastern region of Primorye and are wreaking havoc with transportation in and around several other towns and settlements

    • RFERL ☛ Gunmen Kill At Least 20 In Attacks In Russia's Daghestan

      At least 20 people were killed, including civilians and police officers, when gunmen opened fire at two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, and a police station in separate attacks in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala in Russia's North Caucasus region of Daghestan.

    • New York Times ☛ Deadly Attacks in Russia’s Dagestan Region: What to Know

      Gunmen killed at least 20 people in attacks in two Dagestan cities. No suspects or motives have been identified, but the region has long been rocked by ethnic and religious violence.

    • New York Times ☛ Tuesday Briefing: Dagestan Attack Revives Terrorism Fears in Russia

      Also, a shift in Israel’s focus and extreme heat in Mecca.

    • Meduza ☛ Head of Russia’s Dagestan fires local official over relatives’ involvement in deadly terror attacks — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Catholic Priest In Belarus Not Released After Serving 45-Day Jail Term

      Catholic priest Andzhey Yukhnevich over the weekend after he served a 45-day jail term on charge of "violation of regulations for holding pickets," and extended his term until July 2 instead for unspecified reasons.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Federal News Network ☛ The nexus between data management tools, transparency and procurement policy

    Over the last several years, GSA has been using a series of data management tools to support the price evaluation of products under the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program. They include the Price Point Plus Portal (4P) tool, the Standardized Pricing Evaluation Logic (SPEL) tool, and, more recently, the FAS Catalog Platform (FCP). Underlying these tools is a price analysis algorithm that assesses or compares several pricing data points to generate a “market threshold” that can then be used to determine whether a proposed price is fair and reasonable based on the market information available to GSA.

    To its credit, GSA has met with industry and outlined how it uses the algorithm to compare prices and establish a “range of fair and reasonable pricing” for a proposed product or set of products. In addition, through the FCP, GSA now is providing Compliance and Pricing reports that call out relevant datapoints that the algorithm is looking at for evaluation purposes. The next logical step is to provide industry partners with direct access to the algorithm and pricing database. With this transparency, contractors would be able to use the tools to conduct their own analysis in support of their proposal preparation. (Of course, any access to this information would be contingent on ensuring the pricing data was sanitized to protect competitively sensitive pricing information.)

  • Axios ☛ "All the President's Men" at 50: Woodward, Bernstein share backstory

    Fifty years after publication of "All the President's Men," co-authors Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein met ABC's Jonathan Karl for a "This Week" interview in the Presidential Suite of the Watergate Hotel — part of the complex where a break-in wound up sinking President Nixon.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ Summer Reads: Lost Birds, Pummeled Pumas and Climate Anxiety

  • DeSmog ☛ Greenpeace Turns to Italy’s Highest Court in Lawsuit Against Oil Giant Eni

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Fireflies resurge in Michigan. This year's show is ‘best it’s going to be’

    Michigan families should enjoy them while they can, says Ben Pfeiffer, founder of the nonprofit organization Firefly Conservation & Research, who projects a continued decline in the bugs. The numbers seen in Michigan skies this summer, Pfeiffer warns, are “likely the best that it's ever going to be.”

    This summer’s lightning bug explosion is a result of drought-like weather preceded by warmer Spring conditions. This matured larvae into adult fireflies earlier. It’s during the adult stage, which lasts about two months, that fireflies show off their distinctive bioluminescence.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Stonehenge protest: If you worry about damage to British heritage you should listen to Just Stop Oil

    What Stonehenge may not withstand is climate change. The UK is set to experience warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, as well as an increase in the occurrence and severity of extreme weather which will include high winds and flooding. This will have an impact on the stones and their landscape, exacerbating erosion of the faces of the stones caused by freezing and thawing while much wetter or much drier soil undermines their stability.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Pro Publica ☛ The U.S. Oil Industry Has Repeatedly Stifled Efforts to Reform Well Cleanup

      Last year, representatives of New Mexico’s oil industry met behind closed doors with the very groups with which they typically clash — state regulators and environmentalists — in search of an answer to the more than 70,000 wells sitting unplugged across the state. Many leak oil, brine and toxic or explosive gasses, and more than 1,700 have already been left to the public to clean up.

      The situation is so dire that oil companies agreed to help try to find a solution.

    • H2 View ☛ Lhyfe to develop 10MW green hydrogen plant in Sweden

      Awarded under investment programme Klimatklivet, supported by the Swedish Environment Protection Agency, the plant will be capable of producing up to four tonnes per day of hydrogen based on a 10MW installed electrolysis capacity.

      The grant will fund the development and design phases, the supply of equipment and the construction work, representing around 40% of the total estimated investment in the project.

    • Jan Lukas Else ☛ First tour with my new bike

      Yesterday, I finally took my new bike for a longer ride. Instead of 30 km like the last time, this time I chose another way about 36 km the other way along the river. And instead of getting on the train back home, I went both directions with pure muscle power.

    • Michigan News ☛ Michigan schools have secured funding for 300+ electric buses. Here’s where they are. - mlive.com

      Michigan provided seven school districts with $4.2 million in grant funding to purchase cleaner, electric school buses in 2019.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ Wolves Vanished Across America, And We're Still Uncovering The Damage

      Loss of an ecosystem's apex predator causes domino effects through an ecosystem's food chain known as trophic cascades. As ecosystems can be such complex messes of interactions it's not always easy to see how trophic cascades will play out, particularly given they can be context-dependent.

      So not every trophic cascade is found in each landscape, even if the same species are present. Reintroducing lost species, like the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, can't necessarily repair all the broken connections either, once the cascade of changes have taken place.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Democracy Now ☛ “These Are Not Just Threats”: Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Project 2025 & Dangers of a Second Trump Term

    Democratic Congressmember Ayanna Pressley is a founding member of a congressional task force aiming to stop the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the moniker given to a Donald Trump-associated political plan to reduce the power of the federal government and push forward socially conservative policies. Pressley calls Project 2025 an “extreme manifesto” and explains why she has made preventing its coming into fruition a top priority during the 2024 election.

  • New Yorker ☛ It’s Time to Dismantle the Technopoly

    Yet these shortcomings don’t justify a status quo of meek adjustment. Just because a tool exists and is popular doesn’t mean that we’re stuck with it. Given the increasing reach and power of recent innovations, adopting this attitude might even have existential ramifications. In a world where a tool like TikTok can, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly convince untold thousands of users that maybe Osama bin Laden wasn’t so bad, or in which new A.I. models can, in the span of only a year, introduce a distressingly human-like intelligence into the daily lives of millions, we have no other reasonable choice but to reassert autonomy over the role of technology in shaping our shared story. This requires a shift in thinking. Decades of living in a technopoly have taught us to feel shame in ever proposing to step back from the cutting edge. But, as in nature, productive evolution here depends as much on subtraction as addition.

    In 2016, when I published my Op-Ed, many people weren’t yet ready to more aggressively curate the tools we allow in our lives. This seems to be changing. “Once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand: it does what it is designed to do,” Postman wrote. “Our task is to understand what that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open.” Our eyes are finally open. We’re left now to act on what we see.

  • Science Alert ☛ Astronauts Stranded With No Set Return Date For New Boeing Starliner

    After years of delays and two recent scrubbed launch attempts, Starliner finally launched on June 5, 2024 with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board.

    Although two of the spacecraft's thrusters failed during the flight, the spacecraft managed to reach the ISS and delivered 227 kg (500 lbs) of cargo. Additionally, five small leaks on the service module were also detected, and the crew and ground teams have been working through safety checks.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The virus Elon Musk is exporting back to South Africa

    The impact of Musk’s remuneration award will be felt far beyond corporate America. Executive remuneration has viral-type characteristics with a devastating global reach that ensures that any US developments invariably pop up in South Africa, usually after passing through the UK. To date, continental Europe, China and Japan appear to enjoy some protection against the full impact of the virus.

    Musk’s pay will be used as an additional prop to support the contention that CEOs are rare and precious and that their position at the top rung of the ladder is the work of a finely tuned market where supply meets demand at an excessive level of remuneration.

  • The Washington Post ☛ OpenAI adds Trump-appointed former NSA director Paul M. Nakasone to its board

    The appointment of the career Army officer, who was the longest-serving leader of U.S. Cybercom, comes as OpenAI tries to quell criticism of its security practices — including from some of the company’s current and former employees who allege the ChatGPT-maker prioritizes profits over the safety of its products. The company is under increasing scrutiny following the exodus of several key employees and a public letter that called for sweeping changes to its practices.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Molly White ☛ Issue 60 – Raging in favor of the machine

    I am back stateside after a quick jaunt to Switzerland for the This Next Thing conference, where I was honored to speak as Anil Dash’s “reciprocal pair”. We both spoke about the technology industry’s growing resistance to criticism, and I tried to end on an optimistic note by highlighting the opportunity I truly believe exists for those who want to build technology that serves people, not the other way around. I’ll share the recording if/when I’m able!

  • New York Times ☛ Death Sentence Reversed for Iranian Rapper Toomaj Salehi, Lawyer Says

    Mr. Salehi, 33, was one of the most prominent voices during the nationwide protests against Iran’s clerical rulers two years ago after the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini. Ms. Amini had been arrested after the country’s morality police said she had violated Iran’s rules on head scarves.

  • New York Times ☛ 2 Russian Women Put on a Play. Then the State Came for Them.

    The prosecution of a prominent playwright and a director in Russia over their work is a chilling sign of increased repression, cultural figures say.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Julian Assange to Plead to One Count of Espionage Act on Way Back to Australia

    This plea gets Assange little more than a way to avoid US trial (and that’s before we see the Statement of Offense). It still charges a foreigner with violating the Espionage Act, the key thing journalists fought to avoid. It’s not clear if it immunizes anyone else.

  • JURIST ☛ WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange free ahead of anticipated US plea deal

    WikiLeaks announced via X on Monday that Assange had been released on bail and then immediately departed the UK for Australia, where he is to reunite with his family. The organization noted that Assange had successfully negotiated a plea deal, but that its details had yet to be finalized: [...]

  • The Hill ☛ Julian Assange to plead guilty in exchange for release from prison

    Assange will plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate national defense information, under the plea deal, which still must be approved by a judge.

    Assange is slated to appear in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific. His plea and sentencing are scheduled for Wednesday morning, after which time he is expected to return to Australia.

  • Security Week ☛ WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Will Plead Guilty in Deal With US and Return to Australia

    Assange will plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said.

  • France24 ☛ WikiLeaks founder Assange expected to plead guilty to espionage charge

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected to plead guilty this week to violating US espionage law, in a deal that could end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, US prosecutors said.

  • Craig Murray ☛ The Happiest of Days - Craig Murray

    The guilty plea is of course coerced in the extreme and nobody should take it seriously. It gives a chance to claim hollow victory to the odious Biden regime, at the cost of a terrible precedent in law classifying journalism in espionage. But the precedent is only in a court of first instance so is not binding.

    I should be plain I have always advised Julian and Stella to take a plea deal if offered and get out of jail. I have no doubt this was a life or death choice. I also believe we will be grateful for the still greater contributions Julian’s immense intellect and capacity for radical thought will make to human development in the future.

  • New York Times ☛ Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Founder, Agrees to Plead Guilty in Deal With U.S.

    Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after Mr. Assange became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.

  • New York Times ☛ Assange Agrees to Plead Guilty in Exchange for Release, Ending Standoff With U.S.

    Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after the WikiLeaks founder became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.

  • New York Times ☛ A Timeline of Julian Assange’s Legal Saga

    A U.S. Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning downloads large batches of documents from a classified computer network and begins uploading them to WikiLeaks.

    They include a video of a U.S. helicopter strike in Baghdad in which a Reuters photographer was killed, incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world and hundreds of dossiers compiling intelligence allegations against Guantánamo detainees.

  • IT Wire ☛ Assange freed after US plea deal, expected back home

    The Australian had been holed up in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison for 1901 days. He is reported to have been granted bail by the British High Court.

    In a statement, WikiLeaks said: "Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.

    "This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty in deal with US and return to Australia

    WASHINGTON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RTL ☛ Festive welcome: Dalai Lama arrives in US for knee treatment

    The Dalai Lama was just 23 when he escaped the Tibetan capital Lhasa in fear of his life after Chinese soldiers eviscerated an uprising against Beijing's forces, crossing the snowy Himalayas into India.

    He stepped down as his people's political head in 2011, passing the baton of secular power to a government chosen democratically by some 130,000 Tibetans around the world.

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Social Etiquette

    This became the loudest noise in the restaurant within the moment of entering. Not only was the phone on speaker, but the woman holding the phone spoke back quite loudly into the device. I was immediately tilted and looking across from me - so was she. Who uses speaker phone in a public area? Not only that, but who walks into a fancy establishment and continues to talk on speaker phone?

    It appeared the individual was here to pick up some food for one of the delivery services, but it wasn't ready. Watching this individual then sit down on a 4-top table and still be talking on her speaker phone blew my mind. Did she not parse the vibe of the establishment and/or pick up on the patrons social cues all looking over at her?

  • New Yorker ☛ The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman

    Her greatest feat may also be among her least known—a raid of Confederate rice plantations on the Combahee River, in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, which liberated more than seven hundred enslaved Americans. She did not lead the raid, as some recent histories suggest, but she was integral to its success. For more than a year, Tubman gathered intelligence from formerly enslaved men and women fleeing the Confederacy, and she recruited troops, scouts, and pilots from around Port Royal, South Carolina, to help the Union Army fight its way through enemy territory.

  • Africa News ☛ Sierra Leone outlaws child marriage in new legislation

    One-third of all girls are married before their 18th birthday in the west African country, according to UNICEF.

  • Save the Children ☛ Sierra Leone Bans Child Marriage

    The Office of the First Lady said the Bill will address enforcement challenges by establishing penalties for violations and calling upon community leaders to support its implementation actively. By strengthening existing laws and enhancing their enforcement, the Bill seeks to create a more protective environment for children, particularly girls.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Yury Molodtsov ☛ The United Internet is Collapsing

    The internet is one of my favorite inventions of all time. When nobody was watching, it emerged as a global network without borders, but now the governments are returning the physical borders.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Michael Tsai ☛ Apple Found in Breach of DMA

• CS Monitor ☛ EU accuses Apple’s App Store of breaking new digital competition rules

  The rulebook, also known as the DMA, is a sweeping set of regulations aimed at preventing tech “gatekeepers” from cornering digital markets under threat of heavy financial penalties. The commission opened an initial round of investigations after it took effect in March, including a separate ongoing probe into whether Apple is doing enough to allow iPhone users to easily change web browsers, and other cases involving Google and Meta.

  Apple has been facing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic to tear down some of the competitive barriers around its lucrative iPhone franchise. The U.S. Justice Department has filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple this year, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market and boxing out competitors, stifling innovation, and keeping prices artificially high. App makers such as Spotify had complained for years about Apple’s requirement that subscriptions only be bought through iOS apps, allowing the company to take a commission of up to 30%.

• Hindustan Times ☛ Apple's App Store terms break EU tech rules, EU regulators say: Billions in fines possible

  Apple's App Store rules break the European Union's tech rules because they prevent app developers from steering consumers to alternative offers, EU antitrust regulators said on Monday, according to a Reuters report.

  The EU's tech rules are outlined in the new Digital Markets Act (DMA).

• VOA News ☛ Apple's App Store rules breach EU tech rules, EU regulators say

  The charge against Apple is the first by the Commission under its landmark Digital Markets Act which seeks to rein in the power of Big Tech and ensure a level playing field for smaller rivals. It has until March next year to issue a final decision.

  EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager cited issues with Apple's new terms.

  "As they stand, we think that these new terms do not allow app developers to communicate freely with their end users, and to conclude contracts with them," she told a conference.

• The Verge ☛ Apple is first company charged with violating EU’s DMA rules

  Under the DMA, Apple and other so-called gatekeepers must allow app developers to steer consumers to offers outside their app stores free of charge. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft are the six gatekeepers who had to be fully compliant with rules as of March 2024.

• New York Times ☛ Apple’s App Store Policies Charged Under New E.U. Competition Law

  Apple is imposing unfair restrictions on developers of applications for its App Store in violation of a new European Union law meant to encourage competition in the tech industry, regulators in Brussels said on Monday.

  The charges further escalated a tussle between Apple, which says its products are designed in the best interest of customers, and E.U. regulators, who say the company is unfairly using its size and considerable resources to stifle competition.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ Recommended Reading: Fromer and McKenna, "Amazon's Quiet Overhaul of the Trademark System"

    Despite all the hoopla about the Supreme Court's rulings in Tam, Brunetti, and Elster, how much do those rulings affect the everyday practice of trademark law? One could argue that Amazon and its Brand Registry have had much more of an impact.As Professors Fromer and McKenna argue: " In combination, Amazon’s business model and Brand Registry have overhauled the American trademark system, and they have done so with very little public recognition of the consequences of Amazon’s business approach." Fromer, Jeanne C. and McKenna, Mark P., "Amazon's Quiet Overhaul of the Trademark System" (June 19, 2024), California Law Review, Volume 113, forthcoming 2025.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ UMG, WMG, Sony Music File Litigation Against Hey Hi (AI) Music Services Suno and Udio for Massive Copyright Infringement

    The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on behalf of its major label clients Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group, announced the filing of two copyright monopoly infringement lawsuits against Hey Hi (AI) music services Suno and Udio, alleging the unlicensed use of copyrighted sound recordings to train their generative Hey Hi (AI) models.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ RIAA Sues Suno & Udio AI Music Generators For 'Trampling' on Copyright

    Major recording labels of the RIAA have filed a pair of broadly similar copyright lawsuits against two key generative AI music services. The owners of Udio and Suno stand accused of copying the labels' music on a massive scale and the labels suggest that they're already on the back foot. In pre-litigation correspondence, both were 'evasive' on content sources before citing fair use, which the RIAA notes only arises as a defense in cases of unauthorized use of copyright works.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Record labels file lawsuits against Hey Hi (AI) music generators Suno and Udio, alleging widespread copyright monopoly infringement

    Three major record labels said today they have filed lawsuits against the generative artificial intelligence music startups Suno Inc. and Uncharted Labs Inc., better known as Udio. The two separate lawsuits against Suno and Udio allege that the Hey Hi (AI) companies have carried out “widespread infringement” of copyrighted sound recordings at an “almost unimaginable scale”.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ IPTV Playlist Portal Survives DMCA Takedown From Warner Bros.

    Warner Bros. asked GitHub to remove a popular IPTV playlist linking portal. The Hollywood major requested the page to be removed as it referred to allegedly infringing Warner channels, including HBO and Cartoon Network. Faced with a potential takedown, the owners of the site swiftly removed all Warner Bros. content from the site. At the time of writing, it remains online.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ 1.3m Pirate IPTV Users 'Blacked Out' During Euro 2024, Italian Police Claim

    Italy's Guardia di Finanza has just outlined an anti-piracy investigation it links to Euro 2024. The operation led to searches targeting 13 pirate IPTV administrators, and 1.3 million pirate viewers reportedly had their screens "blacked out." The statement raises several important questions, but the decision to mention the "completely innovative way" the pirates obtained the content is not something usually discussed in public.

  • Wired ☛ US Record Labels Sue AI Music Generators Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement

    The music industry has officially declared war on Suno and Udio, two of the most prominent AI music generators. A group of music labels including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group has filed lawsuits in US federal court on Monday morning alleging copyright infringement on a “massive scale.”

  • 404 Media ☛ Listen to the AI-Generated Ripoff Songs That Got Udio and Suno Sued

    The record industry has filed a list of thousands of songs it believes have been scraped without permission, and has recreated versions of famous songs using Udio and Suno.