Links 30/06/2024: LLMs Under Fire and Dictatorship of the Old
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
-
Leftovers
-
CS Monitor ☛ In Gambia, a youthful country grapples with how to care for its elders
Advocates for Africa’s growing elderly population are pushing their governments to consider policies that make their societies more “age friendly.”
-
Hackaday ☛ Hosting Your Own PixMob Party Made Easy
Over the last few years, it’s been increasingly common for concertgoers to be handed a light-up bracelet from PixMob that synchronizes with the others in the crowd to turn the entire audience into a music visualizer. They’re a clever way of enhancing the concert experience, but unfortunately, they don’t do anything once you leave the show. Or at least, that used to be the case.
-
Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Shields up
Unsubscribe and report as spam, block numbers, walk away from commercial social media[2]. Publish your own content, block AI crawlers[3] and follow other folks that are doing the same.
The web is being flooded by companies that don't know the difference between quality and quantity and you'll be best served by ignoring it.
-
Chris O'Donnnell ☛ You Don't Need a Now Page
I don't see the point, so mine is gone. You do you.
-
James G ☛ The stories for me
Perhaps the words I needed to hear is that writing does not necessitate publishing, especially with regard to blogging. The greatest potential of a story, a dream, or a feeling of wonder may not be its distribution for any audience greater than one's best friends. There is nothing like lighting someone's world with a funny story that you haven't told anyone else. The joy of watching awe build up in someone’s eyes as you share the words of an untold tale is magical. While stories shared online can delight many, there is nothing like telling an unpracticed story intimately to a friend (and laughing as you try to remember all the details!).
-
Mike Rockwell ☛ Retiring #OpenWeb
As for the #OpenWeb site, it will remain up for the foreseeable future. I don’t have any reason to remove it at the moment. I imagine it will be taken down at some point, though, if I decide to re-use the domain for a new project.
-
Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Alison Wilder
This is the 44th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Alison Wilder and her blog, alisonwilder.net
-
Vox Media Network ☛ I Have a Terrible Memory. Am I Better Off That Way?
To my mind, the world is split into people like my sister and people like me: Rememberers and Forgetters. My friend Sarah is a Forgetter. “A few years after a period ends, it disappears,” she says. “Save for a few especially emotional moments, there are entire swaths of my life that are blank.” My friend Henry is a Forgetter too. (Henry and Sarah are both pseudonyms.) “Whenever I’m reading an interview where someone is talking about how they got to where they are, they’ll drop these anecdotes, and I’m like, What? I don’t have anecdotes like that,” he says. When I asked a friend at work about her memory, she said, “I guess if I picked, say, the summer after sixth grade, I could remember what books I was reading, which friend I was hanging out with most, the time she cut my hair, what math exercises I did, and what I was doing on the computer. You can’t?” Rememberer.
-
Scott Willsey ☛ I Do It for Myself
That’s it exactly. It’s not about public notoriety or the dopamine hit of notifications and increasing follower counts. I don’t care at all about those things. I care about doing things I find interesting, and if someone ever finds one of my posts useful, that will be wonderful! That’s what I want! But it’s not what I need in order to keep doing it.
-
Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
-
Kevin Wammer ☛ Homescreen July 2024
Thanks to new customization options in iOS 18, and the fact that I decided to kill some of my more expensive subscriptions, I freed up a few slots on my homescreen. This had me rethink how I like to use my phone. And the answer is as little as possible.
-
-
Science
-
Science Alert ☛ Good News! Turns Out You Don't Need to Be Perfect to Get The Job Done
Science has just confirmed it.
-
Science Alert ☛ Strange, Glowing Shapes Have Been Identified in Jupiter's Atmosphere
There, in the ionosphere, concentrations of ionized hydrogen cause a near-infrared glow in arcs, bands, and spots that suggest the wild planet is far wilder than we even suspected.
-
-
Education
-
Mandy Brown ☛ After the rupture
I OFTEN HEAR from people right after a layoff, and more than once I’ve yearned for a word in the English language that means both “condolences” and ”congratulations.” Not to diminish the harm that can come from layoffs—they can absolutely be traumatic and devastating, and we desperately need better safety nets. But I also want to name the sense of relief and opportunity that often emerges after a big rupture, the generative combination of fuck it and what’s possible now? energy that leads people in directions they had long considered impractical but which now seem ripe for exploration. I see this experience a bit like what happens after an intense fire burns a stretch of forest down to ash: seeds that were dormant and waiting for just that moment suddenly germinate and stretch up to the clear, bright sun.
-
Techdirt ☛ Civil Rights Complaint Filed Against Illinois Schools For Using Cops To Handle Normal Discipline Issues
For a long time we’ve been pointing out just how dangerous it is to turn over school discipline problems to cops. Sure, there are reasons schools might need a police response to an incident, but putting cops on staff has allowed administrators to abdicate their duties and turn incidents that could be resolved by educators and parents into arrests, criminal charges, and — as is always the case when cops are involved — acts of brutality.
-
-
Hardware
-
Jonathan Pallant ☛ The History of PC Audio
One major setback with the Adlib was the lack of PCM samples - you could have music, and beeps and boops, but no gun shots, and no sampled screams from the alien monsters you were shooting. In 1989 Creative Labs fixed this with the Sound Blaster - basically an Adlib with added 8-bit mono 23 kHz PCM channel for sound effects. This quickly replaced the Adlib as the must-have sound card for PC, but because the FM synthesis was the same as the Adlib, games often supported both (you just didn't get any sound effects if you didn't have a Sound Blaster). Later revisions included the Sound Blaster Pro, which added stereo PCM audio, Sound Blaster Pro 2, which upgraded the FM synthesis to the backwards-compatible Yamaha YMF262 "OPL3", and the Sound Blaster 16, which upgraded the PCM support to 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz on a 16-bit ISA card.
-
Polarhive ☛ Hardware Upgrades 🛠️
I am 0.9999/4 part an engineer! I’ve cleared all my courses and bank 44/160 credits in my pocket. I took a much needed break from college; visited a couple of friends and family. A free mind and a whole lot of free time in hand before the next semester.
a treehouse
This warrants a blog post of it’s own — I’ve got some new hardware and plans I’d like to talk about to cover up for the months I’ve left you on read on your :3
-
-
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
-
Mexico News Daily ☛ After a 4-year legal battle, Monsanto drops lawsuit against Mexico’s GMO corn ban
Monsanto won a favorable judgement in 2022, but eventually gave up after the Environment Ministry appealed the case.
-
RFA ☛ MSF aid group withdraws from Myanmar’s west, citing violence and restrictions
Medicine and doctors are inaccessible for tens of thousands sheltering from conflict, residents said.
-
The Straits Times ☛ Deaths linked to Japanese supplement suddenly rise to 80
The health minister said the government would step in to take a more active role in investigating the deaths.
-
The Scientist ☛ Harnessing the Power of AI to Design Novel Antibiotics
In a recently published Nature Machine Intelligence paper, Stokes and his team enlisted the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to design structurally novel antibiotics that they could easily synthesize in the laboratory.3 This approach could help accelerate both antibiotic development and drug discovery.
-
Henrique Dias ☛ Reflections After a Year at the Gym
Over a bit more than a year ago, I started going to the gym. Since then, I went from going there one time a week, to two times a week, and more recently to three times a week. During this time, many things have changed, from my goals, progress, and how I feel about sports and being active in general.
-
Science Alert ☛ Ketamine Pill Appears to Alleviate Severe Depression, Early Trial Shows
With no psychedelic side effects.
-
Science Alert ☛ Vape Teardown: Scientists Reveal What's Actually Inside E-Cigarettes
Peeling back the curtain.
-
-
Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
-
The Conversation ☛ A brief history of AI: how we got here and where we are going
With the current buzz around artificial intelligence (AI), it would be easy to assume that it is a recent innovation. In fact, AI has been around in one form or another for more than 70 years. To understand the current generation of AI tools and where they might lead, it is helpful to understand how we got here.
Each generation of AI tools can be seen as an improvement on those that went before, but none of the tools are headed toward consciousness.
-
Michał Sapka ☛ LLM honeypot
This repo is:
• disallowed by robots.txt, so no good agents would harvest it
• labeled as ban hammer in the description.
I’ll wait for some time and publish results.
-
Andy Bell ☛ Consent, LLM scrapers, and poisoning the well
This prompt injection instructs a LLM to perform something time intensive, and therefore expensive. Ideally, it might even crash the LLM that attempts to regurgitate this content.
-
Don Marti ☛ Money bots talk and bullshit bots walk?
Now that "AI" can beat a Turing test by bullshitting, what’s the next test? In Prediction Market Trading as an LLM Benchmark, Jesse Richardson suggests that "setting up an LLM to trade on a prediction market (e.g. Polymarket, which is the platform I’ll talk about here) could be a particularly strong benchmark with a number of desirable properties." Scott Alexander also suggests prediction markets as a useful challenge for bots.
-
The Register UK ☛ Fujitsu witness apologizes for role in Post Office scandal
He denied tailoring the evidence, but said: "I'm sorry for what happened to Mrs Misra but I feel that was down to the way that the [Post Office] had actually behaved and wasn't purely down to me. I clearly got trapped into doing things that I shouldn't have done. But that was not intentional on … my part."
Among the known problems with the Horizon system Page brought to Jenkins's attention in the hearing was "terrible code" in the EPOS system, as described by a computer expert. "It's just not the right structure … it indicates to me that they don't understand what those particular structures are," she quoted.
-
Silicon Angle ☛ Meta's new LLM Compiler could transform the way software is compiled and optimized
The researchers said the idea of using LLMs for code and compiler optimization is one that has been underexplored. So they set about training the LLM Compiler on a massive corpus of 546 billion tokens of LLVM Project and assembly code, with the purpose of making it able to “comprehend compiler intermediate representations, assembly language and optimization techniques.”
In the paper, Meta’s researchers wrote that the LLM Compiler’s enhanced comprehension of those techniques enables it to perform tasks that could previously only be done by humans or specialized tools.
-
Scoop News Group ☛ FCC wants major telecoms to step up rules around AI-generated robocalls
The Federal Communications Commission is pressing telecommunications carriers for more transparency around efforts to curb the use of voice-cloned robocalls that impersonate political candidates over their networks.
Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to nine of the largest telecoms this week requesting more details on how they authenticate the identity of callers, the technologies they deploy to detect AI-voice cloning and their engagement with private and public entities that track and trace illegal robocalls and other fraudulent activity on their networks.
-
[Repeat] Security Week ☛ Polyfill Domain Shut Down as Owner Disputes Accusations of Malicious Activity
The domain was used to host polyfills, small bits of JavaScript code that provided older browsers with modern functionality and expanded websites’ compatibility without additional work from developers.
Polyfill has been around for over a decade, and earlier this week there were over 100,000 websites automatically loading and executing code from polyfill.io in visitors’ browsers.
-
Cyble Inc ☛ Multiple Flaws Found In Emerson Rosemount Gas Chromatographs
Security experts have identified multiple vulnerabilities in widely used industrial gas chromatographs manufactured by Emerson Rosemount. These flaws could potentially allow malicious actors to access sensitive information, disrupt operations and execute unauthorized commands.
-
Wired ☛ This Viral AI Chatbot Will Lie and Say It’s Human
The startup’s bot problem is indicative of a larger concern in the fast-growing field of generative AI: Artificially intelligent systems are talking and sounding a lot more like actual humans, and the ethical lines around how transparent these systems are have been blurred. While Bland AI’s bot explicitly claimed to be human in our tests, other popular chatbots sometimes obscure their AI status or simply sound uncannily human. Some researchers worry this opens up end users—the people who actually interact with the product—to potential manipulation.
-
Even more layoffs: Ubisoft cuts 33 employees from Toronto studio
Ubisoft’s “targeted realignment” results in layoffs at its Toronto studio.
Ubisoft has decided to dismiss 33 employees from its Toronto studio in yet another round of layoffs. This move is expected to further delay the already-struggling Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Splinter Cell remakes that the studio has been working on.
Many companies in the gaming and tech industries have been going through waves of layoffs for over a year now with different justifications for their cuts. In this case, Ubisoft claims they are conducting "a targeted realignment to ensure it can deliver on its ambitious roadmap."
-
-
Security
-
Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
-
Cyble Inc ☛ Chrome To ‘Distrust’ Entrust Certificates: A Shakeup For Web Security
Digital certificates (SSL/TLS) play a vital role in ensuring secure connections between users and websites. These certificates issued by trusted CAs act as a security seal – more like a blue tick for websites – and helps users gauge the legitimacy of the website. It also ensures an encrypted communication to prevent data breaches.
However, Chrome is removing Entrust from its list of trusted CAs due to a concerning pattern of “compliance failures, unmet improvement commitments, and the absence of tangible, measurable progress” over the past six years. Entrust’s repeated shortcomings in upholding security standards have led Google to lose confidence in their ability to act as a reliable CA.
-
-
Privacy/Surveillance
-
India Times ☛ AI companies train language models on YouTube's archive − making private videos a privacy risk
The promised artificial intelligence revolution requires data. Lots and lots of data. OpenAI and Google have begun using YouTube videos to train their text-based AI models. But what does the YouTube archive actually include?
Our team of digital media researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst collected and analyzed random samples of YouTube videos to learn more about that archive. We published an 85-page paper about that dataset and set up a website called TubeStats for researchers and journalists who need basic information about YouTube.
-
[Repeat] Scoop News Group ☛ House panel abruptly cancels federal privacy bill vote
The legislation, known as the American Privacy Rights Act, emerged in April with bipartisan and bicameral support among the leaders of the respective committees with the most jurisdiction to take action on the topic. The House Energy and Commerce panel was slated to mark up the bill Thursday.
At the moment the markup was about to begin, staff announced its cancellation. Numerous reports had pointed to objections to the bill from House GOP leaders, coupled with industry concerns about the bill’s ramifications for businesses and from other groups upset that some civil rights protections had been removed.
-
-
-
Defence/Aggression
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong hits back after Taiwan advises citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to city and mainland China
The Hong Kong government has condemned Taiwan authorities after the self-ruled island issued its second-highest travel warning for Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.
-
The Straits Times ☛ China tells Taiwanese to visit ‘in high spirits’, despite execution threat
Taiwan's government raised its travel warning for China this week.
-
RFA ☛ China trying to ‘normalize’ incursions in Taiwan Strait, Taipei says
The Chinese coast guard has increased patrols in prohibited waters around Kinmen islands.
[...]
Koo told a hearing at the Taiwanese legislature on Wednesday that by stepping up its activities in the prohibited and restricted waters around Kinmen, China is trying to establish a new normal.
-
Hackaday ☛ Cleaning Up World War 2’s Legacy On The Seafloor With Robots
Until the 1970s, a very common method to dispose of unneeded munitions was to simply tip them off the side of a ship. This means that everything from grenades to chemical weapons have been languishing in large quantities around Europe’s shorelines, right alongside other types of unexploded ordnance (UXO).
-
JURIST ☛ HRW demands Houthi accountability for arbitrary arrests and disappearances in Yemen
Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised alarm on Wednesday over the arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances conducted by Houthi officials in Yemen since May 31, 2024.
-
RFERL ☛ Two Dead As Gunmen Reportedly Attack Vehicle With Ballot Boxes In Iranian Election
Unidentified gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying election boxes in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province, killed two security force members and injuring several others, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported early on June 29.
-
TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ This is how the US-built pier to bring aid to Gaza has worked — or not
It’s been a long and difficult road for the pier, which has been battered by weather and troubled by security problems. Here’s a look at how it started and where it is now.
-
France24 ☛ The 'Kagame generation': Many young Rwandans support president, but others seek change
Rwandans are expected to re-elect Paul Kagame to a fourth term in next month's presidential election. Having guided the country since he put an end to the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, the president presents himself as a father figure, guaranteeing stability and prosperity for millions of citizens. For the past 24 years, he has been re-elected with no less than 93 percent of the vote. Most Rwandans under the age of 30 have only known Kagame as head of state. But many observers describe his regime, in which only one opposition party is tolerated, as authoritarian. Although the overwhelming majority of young people fully back the presidential party, some are looking for change. Our reporters went to meet the "Kagame generation".
-
The Straits Times ☛ Ramyeon broth is damaging South Korea’s highest mountain, warn officials
Discarded broth along the valley’s stream makes it impossible for aquatic insects to live in contaminated water.
-
RFA ☛ China, Japan honor bus attendant who died in Suzhou knife attack
School bus attendant Hu Youping died from her injuries after trying to protect a Japanese mother and child.
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Top US official tells China that Washington’s support of Philippines is ‘ironclad’
A top US official on Thursday told a Chinese counterpart that Washington’s defense commitments to the Philippines were “ironclad” after a violent clash in the South China Sea. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell “raised serious concerns” about Chinese actions in a call with Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, the State Department said.
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Rise in Chinese visitors’ duty-free allowance expected to add at least HK$2.7 billion to Hong Kong economy
An increase to the duty-free allowance for people entering mainland China from Hong Kong is expected to generate at least HK$2.7 billion for the city’s economy, the government has said.
-
New York Times ☛ Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97
Her warning of a big buildup of enemy troops poised to attack South Vietnam in 1968 was ignored, a major U.S. Army intelligence failure during the war.
-
The Nation ☛ We Just Witnessed the Biggest Supreme Court Power Grab Since 1803
The thing is: The US Constitution, flawed though it is, has already answered the question of who gets to decide how to enforce our laws. The Constitution says, quite clearly, that Congress passes laws and the president enforces them. The Supreme Court, constitutionally speaking, has no role in determining whether Congress was right to pass the law, or if the executive branch is right to enforce it, or how presidents should use the authority granted to them by Congress. So, for instance, if Congress passes a Clean Air Act (which it did in in 1963) and the president creates an executive agency to enforce it (which President Richard Nixon did in 1970), then it’s really not up to the Supreme Court to say, “Well, actually, ‘clean air’ doesn’t mean what the EPA thinks it means.”
-
Vox ☛ The Supreme Court just rewrote America's separation of powers, in Loper Bright v. Raimondo
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo fully consolidates the Court’s dominance over federal agencies within the executive branch of government. It is a radical reordering of the US separation of powers, giving the one unelected branch of government all of its own power, plus much of the power that Congress has vested in the executive branch.
-
The Nation ☛ America Lost the Debate
A war criminal and a white-collar criminal walk into a bar—except it isn’t a bar, it’s CNN Studios in Atlanta, where the farce of American democracy is on display. In the days leading up to the year’s first presidential debate, Trump—his fundraising efforts boosted by his conviction—shouted about Biden being on drugs. The incumbent administration, meanwhile, continued cozying up to Israel, rubbing shoulders with its leaders and pledging support in the event of an all-out war with Lebanon. The Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon has been crossed thousands of times since October 7, while Israel flouted Biden’s so-called red line on Rafah. US weapons shipments continued despite Biden’s explicit acknowledgment that American bombs were being used to slaughter civilians. The death toll in Gaza is approaching 40,000, with 20,000 children buried or missing, and 500,000 Palestinians on the brink of starvation. Stateside, though, it’s circus season—and I, like any American with an Internet connection, have a front-row seat.
-
La Prensa Latina ☛ Panama and US sign agreement to repatriate irregular migrants
Mulino pointed out that this humanitarian crisis affects the country in many aspects, including security, health care, the environment, and the economy. At the same time, he stated that caring for illegal travelers has cost the State more than 100 million dollars.
-
Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
-
-
Transparency/Investigative Reporting
-
Deutsche Welle ☛ Panama court acquits 28 in Panama Papers trial
A Panama court on Friday acquitted 28 people charged with money laundering in cases at the center of the Panama Papers and Operation Car Wash scandals.
The names of those acquitted were not provided in the statement.
-
-
Environment
-
Idiomdrottning ☛ Not enough polarization
There are two different media camps. Or three, rather. One with MAGA lies and propaganda, one looking at the real problem and the real facts, and in between there’s a bulwark of false balance.
That’s something we’ve got to fix, and media is a huge part of the problem here, and by media I mean all media from CNN to WhatsApp to Telegram to Trump Social.
I wanna see a media that’s better at telling the hard climate truths and politics with real options, not just greenwashed weaksauce symbolic gesture theater.
-
VOA News ☛ Russian satellite breaks up, forces space station astronauts to shelter
The event took place about noon EDT (1600 GMT) Wednesday, Space Command said. It occurred in an orbit near the space station, prompting U.S. astronauts on board to shelter in their spacecraft for roughly an hour, NASA's Space Station office said.
Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, did not respond to a request for comment or publicly acknowledge the event on its social media channels.
U.S. Space Command, which has a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created "over 100 pieces of trackable debris."
-
Energy/Transportation
-
Atlantic Council ☛ Accelerating the energy transition in the Eastern Caribbean
Countries in the Eastern Caribbean are among the world’s most energy insecure nations. These countries grapple with high electricity costs that undercut economic competitiveness and growth, are heavily dependent on petroleum products, and are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
-
H2 View ☛ POSCO to decarbonise steel production in South Korea
POSCO Holdings has announced a hydrogen-fuelled steel production plant in Pohang, South Korea, according to reports.
-
-
Wildlife/Nature
-
Deccan Chronicle ☛ Elephants’ herd spotted near Tirumala ghat road
People passing in their vehicles found six elephants near the seventh mile elephant arch, close to the ghat road. They saw elephants uprooting the nearby trees.
-
-
-
Finance
-
Mexico News Daily ☛ Schneider Electric CEO in Mexico says he ‘believes’ in nearshoring
With 10 plants and one in construction, Schneider Electric is ready to capitalize on Mexico's nearshoring potential.
-
Manuel Moreale ☛ Ads hypocrisy
The discourse around advertising on the web is messy. And the pervasiveness of ads doesn’t help. You can just see how advertising manages to find its way into almost everything. But if you’re a creator of any kind it’s important to recognise the hypocrisy in some of the arguments that are floating out there. The most glaring example is YouTube. People often argue that by watching YouTube with adblockers I’m stealing revenues from creators. Fair. The proposed solution is to pay for YouTube Premium. Again, fair. My question is: are creators going to upload YT Premium exclusive versions of the videos without their sponsors' ad reads baked in? The answer is no because that’s where the vast majority of the revenues come from for them. And that’s another example of the hypocrisy that’s powering this entire business model.
-
-
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
-
France24 ☛ Denmark seeks to take the wind out of foreign flags
The Danish flag, the Dannebrog, "is the most important national symbol", Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said in a statement, adding that "the flags of other countries cannot be freely flown".
Hummelgaard said foreign flags would not be banned, and could be used for sporting, demonstrations and other events.
-
RTE ☛ Denmark seeks to take the wind out of foreign flags
There has been a debate on the issue since a court case was taken against a Danish man who flew the US flag in his garden.
Denmark's supreme court ruled that he was free to do so as a 1915 protocol could not be applied.
The government scrapped this and politicians agreed a new arrangement.
-
Copenhagen Post ☛ Dannebrog's got company: Supreme Court rules that all national flags can be raised in Denmark - The Copenhagen Post
The rules were set out in several regulations in a 1915 executive order issued during World War I.
Denmark was neutral and did not want to get involved in the war. So, the justice minister, Carl Theodor Zahle, emphasised that foreign flags should not be flown – especially not the flags of belligerent nations. The order referred to a royal resolution dating back to 1854.
-
Hamilton Nolan ☛ Dictatorship Of The Old
This is not a partisan thing. It is not even a political thing. This is the outcome of any system in which wealth and power naturally accumulate over time, and in which—here is the important part—there is no real mechanism for ensuring that old people don’t come to dominate everything. Let me give you another example of such a system, outside of the world of politics: The United States economy. Compounding interest on investment returns ensures that the people who do have money, meaning the people who therefore have social and political influence, tend to grow ever richer as they grow older. (Those without money are perfectly able to stay broke in their old age, but they are the part of the population that never got a chance to call the shots in the first place.) Because money here buys political power, what you get is an enormous ocean of wealth dispensed by old Adelson types, telling their politicians of choice how to dance, and then, within the parties, old leaders who put in their decades of lowly committee work to ascend to the top determined to stay there until they are plucked from their office chairs and whisked directly to the crematorium.
-
The Register UK ☛ Nokia to buy Infinera for $2.3B
Nokia is set to buy optical networking biz Infinera in a $2.3 billion transaction, the companies have confirmed.
The Finnish networking giant says it has a definitive agreement to acquire California-based Infinera to increase its scale in optical networking and accelerate its own product roadmap.
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Meta warns it may block news from Facebook in Australia
Meta struck deals with Australian media firms including News Corp and the Australian Broadcasting Corp when the law was brought in Australia but has since said it will not renew those arrangements beyond 2024.
It now falls on Australia’s assistant treasurer to decide whether to step in and force Facebook to pay for news content. The assistant treasurer has said he is still collecting advice but that Meta seems to respect the law only when it suits.
-
The Straits Times ☛ Maldives US envoy says China, US and India are all important partners
Maldives has raised US and Indian concerns by signing defence agreements with China.
-
The Straits Times ☛ A saucy tale from Kolkata’s Chinatown
The Chinese sauce firms in the city are a rare tale of success for a community in decline.
-
Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
-
Security Week ☛ GetReal Labs Emerges From Stealth to Tackle Deepfakes
Incubated for two years by Ballistic Ventures, GetReal Labs has launched to combat manipulated content and deepfakes.
-
-
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Ex-Bar Association chair says he left Hong Kong after being warned by nat. sec. police of possible sedition charge
The former chairperson of the Hong Kong Bar Association has said he left the city two years ago after being warned by national security police that he could be charged for sedition over his past comments in a book and on a social control media platform.
-
-
Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
-
JURIST ☛ CPJ calls for release of Uganda journalists
Mubiru, managing editor of the news website theGrapeVine, and Sengooba, a reporter for the same outlet, were charged on June 20 by the Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court in Kampala. Their lawyer, Nasser Kibazo, indicated the charges relate to two news stories: a dispute between lawyer Steven Kalali and High Court Judge Alexandra Nkonge Rugadya and another implicating the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) in parliamentary corruption scandals. Both journalists pleaded not guilty and were remanded to Luzira Prison until their next court date.
-
CPJ ☛ Russian journalist Timofei Ilyushin held for 2 days in Transnistria
CPJ has documented reports of at least seven journalists who have been obstructed or detained while reporting in the Transnistria region in recent years.
-
-
Civil Rights/Policing
-
Federal News Network ☛ The Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision
The Supreme Court has upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections. The court Friday delivered a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests, ruling in cases brought by fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island. The court’s six conservative justices overturned the decision colloquially known as Chevron, with the liberal justices in dissent.
-
Press Gazette ☛ NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet to step down after 13 years
Stanistreet said the days of general secretaries leading unions until they retire "are behind us".
-
RFA ☛ Tibetan political prisoner hospitalized following severe illness
Thupten Lodoe’s jailing was part of a larger crackdown on Tibetan writers and intellectuals.
-
Jacobin Magazine ☛ Private Prisons Are Profiting From Harsher Sentencing Laws
Private prisons across the US are lobbying lawmakers for stricter sentencing laws. Benefitting from increased occupancy rates, these corporations are filling their pockets and enriching their shareholders.
-
New York Times ☛ Uber and Lyft Agree to Give Massachusetts Drivers Minimum Pay
Uber and Lyft settled a yearslong legal dispute with the attorney general in Massachusetts on Thursday, agreeing to pay their drivers in the state a minimum rate with some benefits.
-
-
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
-
Internet Society ☛ Return to Everest: Happily Connected Sherpas
Many of us who have had reliable Internet access for years can easily take it for granted and not notice the impact it has on our lives. A community in Nepal reminds us of the opportunity it brings.
-
Public Knowledge ☛ Supreme Court Decision in Loper Jeopardizes Net Neutrality, All Consumer Protections
No consumer protection is safe.
-
RIPE ☛ Paola Grosso: Defining a Responsible Internet
For many, the Internet is essentially a black box. We connect with other endpoints to send and receive data, but we have little insight into what happens in between. Dr Paola Grosso talks about how CATRIN seeks to provide more visibility and control so we can make more responsible decisions on how we traverse the Internet.
-
EFF ☛ Mississippi Can’t Wall Off Everyone’s Social Media Access to Protect Children
Mississippi’s law (House Bill 1126) requires social media services to verify the ages of all users, to obtain parental consent for any minor users, and to block minor users from being exposed to “harmful” material. NetChoice, the trade association that represents some of the largest social media services, filed suit and sought to block the law from going into effect in July.
EFF submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of NetChoice’s First Amendment challenge to the statute to explain how invasive and chilling online age verification mandates can be. “Such restrictions frustrate everyone’s ability to use one of the most expressive mediums of our time—the vast democratic forums of the internet that we all use to create art, share photos with loved ones, organize for political change, and speak,” the brief argues.
Online age verification laws are fundamentally different and more burdensome than laws requiring adults to show their identification in physical spaces, EFF’s brief argues: [...]
-
-
CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you
There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.
-
Licensing / Legal
-
[Old] Salon ☛ Let's Get This Straight: Microsoft's Halloween scare
It's not about Netscape: Whatever happens in Washington, the browser conflict is yesterday's battle. The new David that the Goliath of Redmond has in its sights is the free Linux operating system and the "open source" software development community that built it. The Halloween Document, a lengthy memo dated Aug. 11 by Microsoft engineer Vinod Valloppillil, which open source advocate Eric Raymond posted to the Net, argues that Linux and open source software "pose a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft." It analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the open source movement and proposes strategies for Microsoft to neutralize the "threat."
In other words, batten down the hatches -- Microsoft is likely to go after the informal community of hackers and geeks who have gathered online and collectively developed Linux, the Web server Apache, the scripting language Perl and other "free" software. Just as a flurry of internal Microsoft memos about the growing threats of the Web and Netscape led to Gates' historic December 1995 announcement that the company would embrace the Internet, the Halloween Document may signify the beginning of another round of Microsoft vs. the World. Only this time the company isn't fighting a competing corporation -- it's fighting an idea.
-
[Old] The Register UK ☛ How MS played the incompatibility card against DR-DOS
[...] Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future. :-)", which is clear enough, and it should be noted that the pair were both high level Microsoft executives. Fake errors: should we tell the techies? Microsoft had a separate motion for dismissal of the AARD-related perceived incompatibilities. The message generated if DR DOS was used with Windows 3.1 betas was: [...]
-
-
Copyrights
-
New York Times ☛ Record Labels Sue Hey Hi (AI) Music Generators, Inside the Pentagon’s Tech Upgrade and HatGPT
A little something for everyone: lawsuits, fighter jets and Casey in a bucket hat.
-
Torrent Freak ☛ OpenDNS Suspends Service in France Due to Canal+ Piracy Blocking Order
This month, a French court went along with a demand from Canal+ to tighten up previously obtained anti-piracy measures. The court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to poison their DNS records to prevent these third-party services acting as workarounds for existing pirate site blockades. Cisco's response became evident on Friday when it withdrew its OpenDNS service from the entire country.
-
Lee Peterson ☛ Microsoft thinks it’s ok to steal your content - LJPUK
Wow, what a typical tech bro that speaks before thinking. Some really poor comments from them on AI and a blatant misunderstanding of copyright. These are the sorts of comments and attitude that make me all in favour of a hard regulation of large tech companies. Wow, just wow.
-
-
Gemini* and Gopher
-
Technology and Free Software
-
Internet/Gemini
-
Generating and Using Identifiers (Part 2)
Last month, I did a post about snowflake and UUIDv7 identifiers[1]. I was pretty happy with it, but then I was playing around with Clew[2] which is a recent, smaller web search engine and decided to look up my identifers post just to check it out.
-
-
-
Monopolies/Monopsonies
-
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.