Leftovers

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong youth and culture magazine Breakazine to stop publishing in early 2025, ending 16 years of history

  Hong Kong youth and culture magazine Breakazine has announced that it will stop publishing from early 2025, ending its 16-year history. In a statement published on Facebook (Farcebook) on Thursday afternoon, the magazine said it had been increasingly hard to operate in recent years as production costs rose and people’s reading habits changed.

• Digital Music News ☛ Danny Elfman Slapped with Defamation Suit by Former Protégé Nomi Abadi

  Danny Elfman is being sued by a former protégé, composer Nomi Abadi, on grounds of defamation for comments he made to Rolling Stone in 2023 about her previous accusations that he sexually assaulted her. Composer Nomi Abadi is suing her former mentor, Danny Elfman, for defamation in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

• Wired ☛ At 25, Metafilter Feels Like a Time Capsule From Another Internet

  This month, the venerated site celebrates its 25th anniversary. It’s amazing it has lasted that long; it made it this far in great part thanks to West, who helped stabilize it after a near-death spiral. You could say it’s the site that time forgot—certainly I’d forgotten about it until I decided to mark its big birthday. Metafilter is a kind of digital Brigadoon; visiting it is like a form of time travel. To people who have been around a while, Metafilter seems to preserve in amber the spirit of what online used to be like. The feed is strictly chronological. It’s still text-only. Some members may be influential on Metafilter, but they don’t call themselves influencers, and they don’t sell personally branded cosmetics or garments. As founder Matt Haughey, who stepped down in 2017, says, "It's a weird throwback thing—like a cockroach that survived.”

• Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ Loki the comedian

  Wow, I don't know. Was Loki suddenly struck with brilliant inspiration? Or did he think 'Aha, I knew this idea would come in handy sooner or later!' They're both plausible, right?

• Michal Zelazny ☛ Made page

  Creation is the main theme of this blog. The whole reason it exists is to create and to share what I've created. Until now I have shared words and sentences that express my thoughts, but that is no longer the truth.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Andrew Stephens

  This is the 46th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Andrew Stephens and his blog, sheep.horse 🐑🐎

• Henrique Dias ☛ A Decade of Blogging

  Today is the 12th of July. For most people, this date doesn’t say much, but it marks the anniversary of this website, counting from the first ever blog post I wrote here. And… that was ten years ago, in 2014. Yes, gentle reader, this website is now officially a decade old!

  Ten years ago, the then fourteen year old Henrique decided to create a blog and wrote his first blog post. Reading it back, it is cringe, but I will let it keep living on this website. It is always nice to see how I have changed and how I have evolved. Funnily enough, I said I wanted to be Software Engineer on that post 10 years ago. And look at where I am now! The Current Website

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ 3D DNA Preserved for 52,000 Years in Freeze-Dried Woolly Mammoth Remains

    However, because of the way the 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth was preserved, the geometry of its genetic material remained surprisingly intact, allowing researchers to reconstruct its genetic code in remarkable detail. To do so, they used a novel technique known as “PaleoHi-C,” which helped them map sections of DNA and reassemble the genome in its original, three-dimensional configuration. In this case, studying the mammoth’s ancient DNA was like reading “an ordered stack [of pages] with dog-eared corners,” writes Scientific American’s Saima S. Iqbal.

  • Cell Press ☛ Three-dimensional genome architecture persists in a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth skin sample

    Nevertheless, ancient DNA studies have demonstrated that, in an appropriate context, DNA can survive for at least 2 million years.75 The above estimates suggest that, if preserved in a glassy state, the architecture of ancient DNA might still be well-preserved in samples of this age. Experiments to interrogate this ancient DNA architecture, such as those described in the present study, could therefore facilitate genome assembly, epigenetic studies, and architectural analysis for a broad array of extinct species, and could be useful in reconstructing ecosystems across geologic time.

  • Science News ☛ ‘Space hurricanes’ churn at both of Earth’s magnetic poles

    The researchers suspect that the storms are driven by shifts in Earth’s magnetic field caused by the solar wind (SN: 8/18/17). This barrage of charged particles from the sun splits magnetic field lines­. When the lines reconnect, they roil ionized gas in the ionosphere, driving flows of electric current upward, the team suggests. Flows then bend and begin to spin, leaving an “eye” at the center. That proposed process would be akin to the rise of warm, humid air at the center of a tropical cyclone.

• Education

  • Pro Publica ☛ Following Illinois Public Money to Shrub Oak International School

    ProPublica’s journalists live and work all over the country. We’re both based in Chicago, and, along with several of our colleagues, we are focused on telling stories about the Midwest. In recent years, the two of us have teamed up to cover ticketing and the use of seclusion and restraint in Illinois school districts.

    But if you’ve seen our work lately, you know we’ve been reporting on troubling conditions at an unregulated, for-profit boarding school for autistic students in New York — not exactly in our backyard. We’d been getting tips for a while from local sources who were worried about the effect of a 2022 Illinois law that made it easier for school districts to use public money to send students with disabilities to far-away schools.

  • The Hindu ☛ Digital University Kerala signs pact with UK-based university for Centre for AI

    The memorandum of understanding (MoU), which was exchanged at the International Conclave on GenAI in Kochi, marks a significant stride in advancing AI research and development between the two institutions, particularly with the advent of foundation models, AI hardware, Robotics and Generative AI. Industries Minister P. Rajeeve was present.

    DUK Dean Alex James exchanged the MoU with Sethu Vijayakumar, Director for Robotoics and AI at Alan Turing Institute and Chair Professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas Board of Education to study limitations on cellphone use in classrooms

    Randy Watson, the state commissioner of education, was given the task of forming a task force that included least two state school board members, students, classroom teachers, administrators and other education representatives. He suggested the co-chairs could be a student and a principal.

    He anticipated the state Board of Education would ask the task force to provide a framework for state policy or guidance for school districts to address the issue. State board members plan to determine at their August meeting boundaries for the task force. The report would be due in late 2024.

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ Huawei says ‘no specific evidence’ its tech has security risks after Germany ban

    Berlin has said it will phase out the use of components from Huawei and ZTE in its 5G networks.

  • Hackaday ☛ Newly Completed Overly-Complex Clock Synchronizes Multiple Mechanisms

    Some time ago [Kelton] was working on a clock inspired by Rube Goldberg contraptions. It uses only a single motor, and he’s proud to now show off the finished product (video, embedded below.)

  • Hackaday ☛ Build Your Own Hydroelectric Dam

    We have to admit that we often think about building unusual things, but we hadn’t really considered building our own hydroelectric dam before. [Mini Construction] did, apparently, and there’s a timelapse of the build in the video below.

  • Zach Flower ☛ My Journey into Computing

    By the time I graduated high school, that little HP tower was running Gentoo (Linux on the Desktop, baby) and was what I did all of my school work and tinkering on. I upgraded the components piece by piece, eventually outgrowing the original case and moving into a neon yellow acrylic case gifted to me by a friend who couldn't stand how bright it was in the corner of his bedroom.

    After enough time, I had upgraded enough parts to have two computers, one to use as a server and another for personal computing.

    Ship of Theseus? More like Tower of Flower.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Dual-core CPUs aren't dead yet — Intel Processor 310 rocking two P-cores debuts on Geekbench

    The 310 is unique in that it is only one of two Intel Processor models (so far) sporting no efficiency cores and classified as a Raptor Lake CPU (but still uses an Alder Lake die). In Geekbench, the chip's performance reflects this, boasting very good single-core performance compared to other Intel Processor variants, such as the N200 series. Multi-core performance is also quite decent, thanks to its use of HyperThreading technology. It enables the chip to approach the multi-threading power of a Core i3-N305, which comes with eight Gracemount efficiency cores.

  • AnandTech ☛ Applied Materials' New Deposition Tool Enables Copper Wires to Be Used for 2nm and Beyond

    Today's advanced logic processors have about 20 layers of metal, with thin signal wires and thicker power wires. Scaling down wiring with shrinking transistors presents numerous challenges. Thinner wires have higher electrical resistance, while closer wires heighten capacitance and electrical crosstalk. The combination of the two can lead to increased power consumption while also limiting performance scaling, which is particularly problematic for datacenter grade processors that are looking to have it all. Moving power rails to a wafer's back-side is expected to enhance performance and efficiency by reducing wiring complexity and freeing up space for more transistors.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Federal News Network ☛ NIH could use a little more follow through when it comes to ending contracts

    The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recently analyzed 30 NIH contracts and found many of them were not properly closed out.

  • 2024-07-06 [Older] NHS must be at the top of Labour’s to-do list say Greens

  • CBC ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Whitehorse hospital patients being treated in offices, hallways during latest capacity surge

  • Hackaday ☛ Surgery — Not Just For Humans Anymore

    Sometimes, a limb is damaged so badly that the only way to save the patient is to amputate it. Researchers have now found that humans aren’t the only species to perform life-saving amputations. [via Live Science]

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk's Neuralink says tiny wires of brain chip in first patient now stable

    "In upcoming implants, our plan is to sculpt the surface of the skull very intentionally to minimize the gap under the implant... that will put it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the threads," Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink's head of neurosurgery, said.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Meal, Ready-to-Bulk? Pentagon urged to add creatine to MREs

    “A broad body of clinical research has shown that creatine can enhance muscle growth, physical performance, strength training, post-exercise recovery, and injury prevention,” the body-broadening recommendation states.

  • Vox ☛ Smartphone and social media boundaries for kids, tweens, and teens

    The available research on smartphones’ effects on children is somewhat mixed, which can make it confusing for parents trying to make decisions when it comes to their kids’ tech exposure. Studies show when 1-year-olds spend more than four hours a day looking at screens, they have developmental delays and issues with communication, fine motor skills, and problem-solving at ages 2 and 4 (although only 4 percent of the study’s participants were exposed to more than four hours of screen time a day). As little as one hour on mobile devices has been linked to behavioral issues and inability to pay attention, according to a study among Japanese first graders. Constant use of devices prevents children from getting bored and letting their young minds wander. Frequent internet use can impede a child’s ability to create interpersonal relationships. In his new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that a “phone-based childhood” is to blame for negative mental health outcomes in kids.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Sad Future of Grocery Shopping

    The magic of the supermarket is that it hides the inherent variability of agriculture. Every clamshell of arugula might look the same from season to season, even if the harvests differ dramatically. Stable weather is one of the major factors necessary to keep supermarkets well stocked, Fraser said—and its future is not looking good with climate change. This week, extreme heat in California, where the bulk of America’s fresh produce is grown, singed salad greens and bruised berries. At the same time, Hurricane Beryl, an unprecedentedly strong and early storm that previously demolished farms in the Caribbean, flattened corn and sorghum crops in Texas.

    Heat, drought, flooding, and other climate effects are making it harder to grow crops, and importing them from elsewhere isn’t always an option. That certain crops are grown in just a few areas in the world has made food especially susceptible to shortages. An ongoing surge in sugar prices in the United States—reflected not just in table sugar but in all sorts of sweets—is being driven by unusually dry conditions in India and Thailand, where much of the global crop is harvested. And in March, a cyclone hit Madagascar, the world’s biggest vanilla producer, threatening about half its harvest and the price of ice cream.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Splash Damage Announces Layoffs After Four Years Without A New Game Release

    “Following a recent business review, we have reached a point where we must adapt our structure to better suit the needs of our current and future games. [...]"

  • Futurism ☛ Woman Arrested for Vandalizing More than a Dozen Self-Driving Waymo Vehicles

    While nobody was reported injured, NBC reports, law enforcement have placed Burton in custody with no bail "because of the public safety risk" Burton poses.

  • NBC ☛ San Francisco person accused of slashing tires of robotaxis — allegedly on camera

    Prosecutors say they have charged a person with 17 counts of vandalism for slashing the tires of Waymo robotaxis, the futuristic driverless cars that have become a cultural flashpoint in San Francisco.

  • Futurism ☛ Schoolchildren Sentenced for AI-Generating Nudes of Their Classmates

    The perpetrators, all aged 13 to 15, were convicted in Badajoz, Spain on 20 counts of creating child abuse images and 20 counts of "offenses against their victims' moral integrity," according to the Guardian. They were tried as minors, and their collective conviction marks one of the first in a growing pool of cases involving minors and the creation and dissemination of nonconsensual, AI-driven deepfake pornography in middle and high schools.

  • Techdirt ☛ Xbox Game Pass Gets ‘Enshittified’: Pay More, Get Less

    Karl Bode was just talking through some of the changes that Netflix is making to its subscriptions, most of which revolve around charging more for same or lesser service. In the case of Netflix, this means raising subscription rates while injecting advertisements where once there were none. This so-called “enshittification” process — a word I have very much come to love — follows a predictable track. Instead of writing that track out, I’ll just post Karl’s opening paragraph from the post above, as it’s perfectly written.

  • Techdirt ☛ Streaming’s Slow Enshittification Continues As Netflix Kicks Users Off Cheapest Ad-Free Tiers

    We’ve illustrated repeatedly how as streaming subscriber growth has slowed, streaming giants have had to pivot to some bad industry habits to ensure Wall Street gets those sweet improved quarterly returns. That’s included everything from utterly pointless layoff-creating mergers and price hikes, to annoying new restrictions and a steady increase in ads (that you have to pay more to avoid).

    Streaming giants want to drive users to advertising because there’s greater profit potential in charging more for ad placement and collecting user behavioral ad data than there is in subscriptions. So that’s the direction the industry is headed, whether consumers like it or not. Some people don’t mind the ads; personally they just remind me that I’m living in a shallow dystopia.

  • 404 Media ☛ Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable

    The paper, called “Gen AI: too much spend, too little benefit?” is based on a series of interviews with Goldman Sachs economists and researchers, MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, and infrastructure experts. The paper ultimately questions whether generative AI will ever become the transformative technology that Silicon Valley and large portions of the stock market are currently betting on, but says investors may continue to get rich anyway. “Despite these concerns and constraints, we still see room for the AI theme to run, either because AI starts to deliver on its promise, or because bubbles take a long time to burst,” the paper notes.

  • Data Transfer Initiative ☛ Data Transfer Initiative members Apple and Google introduce new photo and video transfer tool

    Beginning today, Apple and Google are expanding on their direct data transfer offerings to allow users of Google Photos to transfer their collections directly to iCloud Photos. This complements and completes the existing transfers that were first made possible from iCloud Photos to Google Photos and fulfills a core Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) principle of reciprocity. The offering from Apple and Google will be rolling out over the next week and is the newest tool powered by the open source Data Transfer Project (DTP) technology stack, joining existing direct portability tools available to billions of people today offered by DTI and its founding partners Apple, Google, and Meta.

  • [Old] Tedium ☛ Why I Bought My Old Newspaper’s Expired Domain Name

    “Something bad,” to be clear, is a huge, very real risk, and it’s been happening all over the internet in recent years. On Tuesday, my online pal Christina Warren had it happen to something she cared about—The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), the Apple-centric site where she first cut her teeth as a blogger in the late 2000s. That site, which shut down way back in 2015, was part of the Weblogs, Inc. network, best known for giving the world Engadget. Per Engadget, it appears the domain was quietly sold by its most recent owners, Yahoo, to an entrepreneur who specializes in AI-generated splogs. (It’s actually his second Apple-themed splog; he also owns iLounge.com, a famous iPod-era Apple site.)

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft 365's Chinese host uses little renewable energy

    The org's latest Clean Cloud research [PDF] considered China's ten cloud providers and 15 of its biggest datacenter operators, which collectively accounted for over 52 percent of China's Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market in the first half of 2023, and over 60 percent of the internet datacenter market in 2022.

    The group found that just eight – Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou Technology, GDS, VNET Group, Chindata Group, Shanghai AtHub, and Bohao Internet Data Services – have announced plans to operate entirely on renewable energy by 2030.

  • Macworld ☛ Massive AT&T data breach exposes records of nearly all its customers' calls and texts

    The company was clear that the content of calls and texts was not exposed. But the [crooks] have a record of every call or text made or received along with counts and call durations for some calls during those specific months.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Massive AT&T [breach] raises serious security concerns

    At scale, such information – known as metadata – can be used to create an intimate portrait of people’s lives and relationships.

  • Axios ☛ Massive AT&T [breach] compromises phone, text records of "nearly all" customers

    AT&T reported the [breach] to the FBI shortly after it was identified, but public disclosure of the [breach] was delayed twice due to a potential national security risk or threat to public safety, the FBI told Axios in a statement Friday.

  • Wired ☛ The Sweeping Danger of the AT&T Phone Records Breach

    The AT&T data is from both landline and cellular accounts and spans May 1, 2022, to October 31, 2022. A smaller, undisclosed number of people also had records from January 2, 2023, stolen in the breach. The company said on Friday that the data trove “does not contain the content of calls or texts” and does not include the date and time of communications. But attackers did make off with phone numbers and a massive amount of so-called “metadata” about calls and texts, including who contacted whom, call durations, and tallies of a customer’s total calls and texts. The trove also includes some cell site identification numbers—essentially cell tower data that can be used to approximate a cellphone's location when it made or received a call or text.

  • Security Week ☛ AT&T Data Breach: ‘Nearly All’ Wireless Customers Exposed in Massive [Breach]

    In an SEC filing, the global telecommunications giant said the stolen data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information.

  • The Record ☛ [Crooks] stole ‘nearly all’ call logs over six months from AT&T

    Metadata from “nearly all” call logs and texts made by AT&T customers over a six-month period in 2022 was stolen by [instruders] who breached the telecom’s data storage platform in April.

    AT&T filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that said the company learned of the incident on April 19. It confirmed to Recorded Future News that the breach occurred through the third-party cloud platform Snowflake — a data storage giant that has been beset by [intruders] who have targeted some of the company’s most prominent clients and leaked documents on hundreds of millions of people.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ US mobile giant AT&T suffers fresh massive data theft

    US mobile operator AT&T reported Friday that [intruders] had stolen call and message data from virtually all of its customers for six months in 2022 around 90 million people.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ AT&T discloses data breach affecting ‘nearly all’ cellular customers

    The company also published an overview of the breach in its online support portal. According to AT&T, the [intruders] gained access to call and text logs generated from May 1, 2022 to Oct. 31, 2022 as well as on Jan. 2, 2023. The compromised logs include the phone numbers that the affected users contacted, as well information about the number and duration of the calls they made.

  • The New Leaf Journal ☛ Traditional Search vs GenAI

    But regardless of whether Gartner’s prediction is accurate, I do find the trend of conflating generative “AI” with traditional search concerning. Back when we were randomly blacklisted by the Bing search engine, I wrote an article expressing my concern that language models being integrated into search engines were borrowing from writing by humans without proper attribution. Moreover, I noted that even in the cases where the search engine-language model duo cites its sources, Google, Microsoft, and the like are incentivized to design things in such a way as to keep users on their portals instead of on sites linked from their portals.

  • Ars Technica ☛ Threat actors exploited Windows 0-day for more than a year before Microsoft fixed it | Ars Technica

    Malicious code that exploits the vulnerability dates back to at least January 2023 and was circulating as recently as May this year, according to the researchers who discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft. The company fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-CVE-38112, on Tuesday as part of its monthly patch release program. The vulnerability, which resided in the MSHTML engine of Windows, carried a severity rating of 7.0 out of 10.

    The researchers from security firm Check Point said the attack code executed “novel (or previously unknown) tricks to lure Windows users for remote code execution.” A link that appeared to open a PDF file appended a .url extension to the end of the file, for instance, Books_A0UJKO.pdf.url, found in one of the malicious code samples.

• Security

  • CRN ☛ AT&T Says Huge Breach Affects Records Of ‘Nearly All’ Customers

    The breach only affects the records of phone and text messages and does not impact the content of the messages, AT&T said.

    AT&T disclosed having about 110 million wireless customers by the end of 2022, according to CNN.

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Adobe Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Citrix Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Microsoft Releases July 2024 Security Updates

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] CISA Releases Advisory Detailing Red Team Activity During Assessment of US FCEB Organization, Highlighting Necessity of Defense-in-Depth

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] CISA Releases Twenty-one Industrial Control Systems Advisories

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens Remote Connect Server

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens Teamcenter Visualization and JT2Go

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens Simcenter Femap

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens RUGGEDCOM

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens SIMATIC and SIMIT

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens SINEMA Remote Connect Server

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens JT Open and PLM XML SDK

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens TIA Portal and SIMATIC STEP 7

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Siemens SINEMA Remote Connect Server

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Rockwell Automation ThinManager ThinServer

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] CISA and FBI Release Secure by Design Alert on Eliminating OS Command Injection Vulnerabilities

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] CISA Releases Seven Industrial Control Systems Advisories

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Delta Electronics CNCSoft-G2

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric MELIPC Series MI5122-VW

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Johnson Controls Illustra Pro Gen 4

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Johnson Controls Software House C●CURE 9000

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Johnson Controls Software House C●CURE 9000

  • CISA ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] CISA and Partners join ASD’S ACSC to Release Advisory on PRC State-Sponsored Group, APT 40

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ Opting out of facial recognition at airports

       

      Next week the Algorithmic Justice League will be launching an awareness and  sousveillance campaign focused on the use of facial recognition in airports by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and its airport and airline partners.

    • India Times ☛ Samsung brings tech's latest fashion to wearable technology with AI twists in new watch and ring

      The South Korean electronics giant on Wednesday revealed that both its first-ever premium smartwatch and a smart ring heralding its entry into a niche market will include AI features that are supposed to help people monitor and manage their health.

    • The Atlantic ☛ AI Has Become a Technology of Faith

      Normally, I don’t write about vaporware—a term for products that are merely conceptual—but I was curious about how Altman and Huffington would explain these grand ambitions. Their very proposition struck me as the most difficult of sells: two rich, well-known entrepreneurs asking regular human beings, who may be skeptical or unfamiliar with generative AI, to hand over their most personal and consequential health data to a nagging robot? Health apps are popular, and people (myself included) allow tech tools to collect all kinds of intensely personal data, such as sleep, heart-rate, and sexual-health information, every day. If Thrive succeeds, the market for a truly intelligent health coach could be massive. But AI offers another complication to this privacy equation, opening the door for companies to train their models on hyper-personal, confidential information. Altman and Huffington are asking the world to believe that generative AI—a technology that cannot currently reliably cite its own sources—will one day be able to transform our relationships with our own bodies. I wanted to hear their pitch for myself.

    • Greece ☛ End of cash ‘is a near reality in many countries’

      The end of cash is already a near reality in many countries and will in a few years be a reality around the world. We are moving to a world where payments and other financial transactions, both within and across countries, will be cheap and practically instantaneous. This will be hugely beneficial in terms of access, convenience and cost. But it will also be a world in which we might cede most of our privacy to governments, financial institutions and corporations. It is important that these issues be debated at the level of society, rather than just among economists and technocrats, to put guardrails in place that prevent governments and corporations from becoming even more intrusive into our lives.

    • The Register UK ☛ Why Chromium tells Google sites about your CPU, GPU usage

      The feature is, from what we can tell, for performance monitoring and not really for tracking – Google knows who you are and what you're doing anyway when you're logged into and using its sites – but it does raise some antitrust concerns in light of Europe's competition-fostering Digital Markets Act (DMA).

      When visiting a *.google.com domain, the Google site can use the API to query the real-time CPU, GPU, and memory usage of your browser, as well as info about the processor you're using, so that whatever service is being provided – such as video-conferencing with Google Meet – could, for instance, be optimized and tweaked so that it doesn't overly tax your computer. The functionality is implemented as an API provided by an extension baked into Chromium – the browser brains primarily developed by Google and used in Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, and others.

  • Confidentiality

    • Trail of Bits ☛ Announcing AES-GEM (AES with Galois Extended Mode)

      Today, AES-GCM is one of two cipher modes used by TLS 1.3 (the other being ChaCha20-Poly1305) and the preferred method for encrypting data in FIPS-validated modules. But despite its overwhelming success, AES-GCM has been the root cause of some catastrophic failures: for example, Hanno Böck and Sean Devlin exploited nonce misuse to inject their Black Hat USA slide deck into the MI5 website.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Spiegel ☛ The Supreme Court's Immunity Ruling: "No One Can Guarantee that Trump Is the Last Maniacal Sociopath Who Will Want Power in America" - DER SPIEGEL

    DER SPIEGEL: Professor Tribe, the United States is currently celebrating Independence Day. But earlier this week, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that could hand future U.S. presidents with the powers of a king. Is the country on its way to becoming an autocracy.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Germany to ban Chinese telecom giants from 5G network

    Germany said Thursday it will phase out the use of components from Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE in its 5G networks in the coming years due to national security concerns.

    It was the latest move by Berlin to reduce economic reliance on Beijing that some fear have left it vulnerable, and follows warnings from the EU that the firms pose a risk to the bloc.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ A Transcript of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts' Speech About Our "Second American Revolution"

    Inevitably, when you cover a long event, there is a lot of material that doesn’t make it into the final story. Today I want to publish for you a transcript of the remarks that Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts gave on the conference’s opening day. It is important to remember that the Heritage Foundation is one of DC’s most prominent and well-connected right wing think tanks, with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, and a goal of helping to staff the government under a new Trump administration.

    Roberts, a former college president, is an influential and prominent figure in the conservative movement. I believe it is good for the public to hear exactly what people like this are saying right now. These remarks are transcribed from my own recording of his speech, and I have edited them down to a manageable length. I may post more transcripts from NatCon in coming days. These people may very well be the most influential voices in the federal government within six months.

  • Media Matters ☛ Unearthed video: Project 2025 director said project has “great” relationship with Trump and he’s “very bought in with this”

    Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official and the director of Project 2025, told a right-wing podcast last year that his group has a “great” relationship with former President Donald Trump, and “Trump's very bought in with this.” His comments fly in the face of Trump’s recent attempts to distance himself from Project 2025.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Isn’t Even Pretending Anymore

    Today, Trump is back at the helm of the Republican Party, but the anti-corporate rhetoric has disappeared. This time around, the former president isn’t even pretending to stand up to corporate power: He’s defending big business, cozying up to billionaires, and wooing CEOs. And instead of paying an electoral price for this reversal, the polls suggest that he’s winning over more voters—specifically, more working-class voters—than ever before. Trump’s first victory opened the door to an economically populist version of the GOP. His second could very well close it.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Australia Charges Married Couple With Spying for Russia

    "Foreign intelligence services are capable, determined and patient. They play the long game. The problem for them is ASIO does too," Burgess warned.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been "extensively" briefed on the spy case.

  • The Atlantic ☛ We Still Don't Know What to Do With the Endless Stream of Trump Lies

    I could go on, but what’s the point? As I wrote back in 2019, Trump is a master of what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt called “bullshit.” As a technical term, this is speech that might be false, but deception isn’t the main point. The bullshitter “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

    The stream of bullshit, in the Frankfurtian sense, remains one of Trump’s most potent tools. On the one hand, reporters can’t quote Trump’s false comments without caveat; on the other hand, the time spent debunking statements that were never designed to be true anyway distracts from important, fact-based conversations about actual problems. The issue with his NATO remarks is not that the anecdote is false; it’s that he is undermining America’s key alliance at a time when Russia is fighting a brutal war of annexation in Ukraine and threatening other European states, and Trump is, by his own account, happy to tell the Kremlin to go ahead.

  • Salon ☛ "I know nothing about Project 2025": Hundreds of Trump allies are tied to Heritage Foundation scheme

    In total, nearly 240 people were found connected to both Trump and Project 2025. Former Trump-era Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr even wrote an entire chapter; another contributor was anti-abortion advocate Lisa Correnti, who Trump appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

  • CNN ☛ Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved

    In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.

    Dozens more who staffed Trump’s government hold positions with conservative groups advising Project 2025, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime adviser Stephen Miller. These groups also include several lawyers deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to remain in power, such as his impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow and two of the legal architects of his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman.

  • NPR ☛ It seems like Project 2025 is everywhere. But what is it?

    It’s not Trump’s plan, but it is a plan made for Trump, who leaders have described as the “embodiment” of their efforts. And it outlines legal pathways Trump could take to implement some of his biggest policy goals.

  • Le Monde ☛ Trump won't 'give a penny' to Ukraine, Orban claims

    Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban asserted on Monday, March 11, that former US president Donald Trump told him during a meeting that he would "not give a penny" to the war in Ukraine – a claim Trump's team did not comment on.

    Orban – the only EU leader to have maintained ties with the Kremlin since Russia invaded Ukraine – traveled to Florida on Friday to meet his "good friend" Trump. He has frequently expressed hope for the Republican's return to power.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ What If You Had a Military Summit Defending the Future of Democracy and No One Gave a Damn?

    There was no description of the summit itself at all in the article. Nor was there a story on the summit anywhere on the dead tree front page.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Jews in Europe face rising antisemitism: report

    Even before Hamas' October 7 attack on Israeli civilians and the ensuing war in Gaza, the report noted that 96% of European Jews reported experiencing antisemitic incidents.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] US Lawmaker Says Israeli Hostage Photos Were Vandalized in Protest

  • Defence Web ☛ Mpumalanga recruiting crime prevention wardens

    The new MEC for Safety and Security in Mpumalanga, Jackie Macie, is looking to recruit over 1 000 crime prevention wardens to reduce crime in the province.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong 47: ‘Nothing wrong’ in voting for change, says ex-medics’ union chair Winnie Yu

    The former chairperson of a pro-democracy medics’ union who was convicted of subversion under the Beijing-imposed national security law has maintained that there was “nothing wrong” in seeking to use her vote in the legislature to bring about change.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Internal Security Dilemma in Pakistan

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Crisis and Expansion: Al-Qaeda Affiliates’ Threat to Global Security

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] ISS ready to assist new Police Minister

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Japan Says Keen to Deepen Security Ties With Philippines, US, Australia

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Philippines Wants to Boost Rice Cooperation With Vietnam to Ensure Food Security

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ How ready are Latvian residents for 'X' hour?

      Latvian Radio has taken to the streets to ask people about their attitudes towards the so-called 'X hour' ('X stunda') which is the preferred euphemism of officials for a major civil defense situation or natural disaster. Most people interpret it as most likely referring to war and invasion, particularly given Russia's actions in Ukraine.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia will welcome 421 Ukrainian children in camps this summer

      To allow a moment's respite from the horrors of war under a peaceful sky, Latvia will welcome 421 children from Ukraine this year. With the support of the Norwegian grant, 22 camps are planned throughout Latvia.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Czech president: Don’t expect a ‘significant breakthrough’ in the war in Ukraine for the ‘foreseeable future’

      The support required to allow Ukrainians to fully reclaim their territory is “not realistic at this time,” Petr Pavel argued at an Atlantic Council Front Page event.

    • European Commission ☛ Speech by Commissioner Simson at the Energy Community Donor Conference: 'Supporting Ukraine's resilience through the Ukraine Energy Support Fund'

      Thank you for being here today at this event to help Ukraine.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: What the NATO Summit did (and did not) deliver for Ukraine

      From an “irreversible” membership path to news about F-16s and air defense systems, Atlantic Council experts explain what the NATO Summit in Washington meant for Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Back in Sloviansk, Donbas, where the war in Ukraine started 10 years ago

      The first flashpoint of Russia’s hybrid war in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, and one of the first Ukrainian cities to be occupied and then liberated back in 2014, Sloviansk today finds itself once again under threat from the Kremlin’s armies.

    • The Age AU ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] Australia news LIVE: Russian-born Australian couple charged with espionage; Marles unveils $250m Ukraine aid package

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] Australia Charges Russian-Born Married Couple With Espionage

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] Finland to Vote on Turning Back Migrants Crossing From Russia

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Ghana’s Former President Mahama Launches Russian Language Version of his Political Memoir

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Russia-China Partnership: Implications for India

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Russia and India: Leaders of Multipolar World

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Russia: Human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov loses appeal

    • HRW ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Russia’s July 8 Attack on a Children’s Hospital in Ukraine

    • Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Russia Creates State-Sponsored, Censored Clone of Wikipedia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Faced With Threats From Russia and Its Asian Supporters, NATO and Indo-Pacific Partners Get Closer

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Attack on Russia's Belgorod Region Injures Five Children, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] UN Demands Russia Withdraw From Europe's Largest Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Elon Musk’s X Restricts Access to Report of Alleged Russian War Crime

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] NATO getting tough on China for backing Russia's war effort

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] NATO Allies Call China a 'Decisive Enabler' of Russia's War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Poland Hopes New NATO Training Center Could Prepare Ukrainians Living Abroad to Fight Russia

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Dutch intelligence services help the US to disturb Russian interference

    • CBC ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Ukraine rejects Russian claim that its own missile hit Kyiv children's hospital

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Russia issues arrest warrant for Yulia Navalnaya

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia hospital strike condemned at UNSC

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] US Justice Department Says It Disrupted Russian Social Media Influence Operation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] In a Diplomatic Quirk, Russia Chairs a UN Meeting Decrying Its Strike on a Ukraine Kids' Hospital

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] US Disrupts Russian Government-Backed Disinformation Campaign That Relied on AI Technology

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Russia Lacks Munitions, Troops for Big Ukraine Offensive, Says NATO Official

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Russian Court Orders Yulia Navalnaya's Arrest in Absentia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Russian Spy Service Accuses US of Plotting 'Regime Change' in Georgia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Russia Promises to Discharge Indians 'Misled' Into Joining Its Army, Indian Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] US Intelligence Official Indicates Russia Prefers Trump as Election Victor

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Are EU Sanctions Enough to Pressure Russia? Unpacking the Conflict

    • CBC ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Moscow promises to release Indian nationals misled into joining military, Indian officials say

    • CBC ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russian airstrikes kill at least 29 in Ukraine, damage Kyiv children's hospital

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russia jails director, playwright for 'justifying' terrorism

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] What is India's role in boosting Russia's war economy?

    • The Local SE ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Sweden's government labels Russia its biggest security threat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Indian Prime Minister Arrives in Russia on His First Visit Since Moscow Sent Troops Into Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Appreciates Hungary Efforts to Clarify Positions on Russia-Ukraine Conflict

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russia Says It Foils Ukraine Bid to Hijack Strategic Bomber

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russian Official Says U.S. Left Arms Treaty to Build Weapons to Menace China

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russia Says It Hit Defence Targets, Aviation Bases in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] A Kyiv Children's Hospital Is Struck by a Cruise Missile as Russia Bombards Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Ukraine Downs Three of Six Missiles Launched by Russia, Air Force Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Russian Missile Attack Kills 29, Hits Children's Hospital, Ukraine Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Russia: 49 drowning incidents over 24 hours, 7 children dead

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Ukraine updates: Drone strike hits Russian munitions depot

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] A Ukrainian Drone Triggers Warehouse Explosions in Russia as a War of Attrition Grinds On

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Russia Claims Strikes on Two Ukrainian Patriot Systems That Kyiv Says Were Decoys

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] State of Emergency in Parts of Russia's Voronezh Region After Ukraine Drone Attack

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Ukraine recruits criminals in fight against Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Ukraine: Russian strike leaves 100,000 without power

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Russian Drone Attack on Ukraine Hits Energy Facility in Sumy Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Russian Strikes Leave Thousands in Northern Ukraine Without Power and Water

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Modi to meet Putin: What to know about India-Russia ties

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Russia: Putin critic Kara-Murza taken to hospital, says wife

    • The Local SE ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] INTERVIEW: 'For Russia to be great again, Europe's democracies must fail'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Foreign Minister Says Moldova Has Right to Expel More Russian Diplomats

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill Eight, Injure 28 in Ukraine's East

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Russian Drone Attack Cuts Water Supply in Northern Ukrainian City, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Russian Opposition Figure Kara-Murza in Prison Hospital, Wife Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Two Killed in Ukrainian Strike on Donetsk Region, Russian-Backed Official Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Security agreements bridge the gap until Ukraine joins NATO

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Biden Vows US Will Not Walk Away From Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Ukraine's Ex Army Chief Zaluzhnyi Starts as Ambassador to UK

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] The New Delhi-Moscow Diplomacy and the Ukraine War

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] The Netherlands commits another €300 million on F-16s for Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] India and Austria talk peace for Ukraine during Modi's visit

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] NATO summit: Biden pledges more air defense for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] NATO to Take on Coordination of Some Ukraine Security Support. How That Will Work

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] UK's Starmer Urges NATO Unity for Ukraine, Pledges Military Aid

    • Gizmodo ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Reading the 1-Star Reviews of Ukraine’s Military Conscription App

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Fact check: Ukraine did not bomb a hospital in Kyiv

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Modi and Putin talk trade as Ukraine mourns airstrike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: US vows air defense after hospital strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Zelenskyy Is Adept at Pushing for the Aid Ukraine Needs, but NATO Membership Is Still Elusive

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] White House's Sullivan Outlines Plans to Strengthen NATO Support for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Ukraine's State Arms Producer Opens Office in Washington

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy to Deliver Address at Washington's Reagan Institute on Tuesday

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Dutch F-16s, Patriots will soon go to Ukraine; NL also donating mobile forensics lab

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Ukraine updates: Anger over Kyiv children's hospital strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv children's hospital hit in strikes

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] At the Paris Olympics, It Will No Longer Be Personal for Ukraine's Athletes. This Time, It's War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Ukrainian High Jumper Keeps Her Eye on the Raised Bar, but Her Mind Is Fixed on the War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Young Ukrainian Family Recalls Horror of Air Strike on Children's Hospital

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] In an Olympic Tuneup, Ukraine's Top High Jumper Breaks the 37-Year-Old World Record

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Dutch Ministers Pledge 'Rock Solid' Support for Ukraine on First Visit to Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Lithuanians Unite in Global Anthem Sing-Along, From Ukraine Frontline to Pacific

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] What Is the NATO Military Alliance and How Is It Helping Ukraine?

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Ukrainians feel at home but find Dutch language difficult, study shows

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] NATO Members Agree To Give Ukraine $43 Billion in Military Aid for 2025

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Putin Sees No Need for Nuclear Weapons to Win in Ukraine. but He's Also Keeping His Options Open

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] NATO Allies at Summit to Unveil Ukraine 'Bridge to Membership'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] NATO Leaders Will Vow to Pour Weapons Into Ukraine for Another Year, but Membership Is off the Table

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Expresses Gratitude to New British PM on Wartime Support

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Orban visits Trump in Mar-a-Lago, snubs Biden after NATO summit

      Hungary's far-right prime minister Viktor Orban held talks with former US president Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago Florida on Thursday, departing early from the NATO summit. According to Orban's spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, the meeting was focused on the "possibilities for peace". 

      "There must be PEACE, and quickly," Trump on Truth Social, reposting the Hungarian PM's port about the meeting. "Too many people have died in a war that should have never started!". 

    • Meduza ☛ Russian soldier reportedly opens fire on unit mates near Ukrainian border — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Dispatch from Odesskoye In remote Siberia, one family opposes a war their Ukrainian neighbors support — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Playing the populist’: To keep Russia’s protest-prone Khabarovsk region under control, the Kremlin takes a lesson from a former governor who got too popular — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ A growing crisis As Russia pushes on multiple fronts, cracks are appearing in Ukraine’s defenses — Meduza

    • Atlantic Council ☛ UK foreign secretary: Why NATO remains core to British security

      With a return of war to Europe and security threats rising, strengthening Britain’s relationships with its closest allies is firmly in the national interest, writes UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

    • France24 ☛ Russia increases income taxes for the wealthy to help fund Ukraine offensive

      Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a bill that raises income taxes for the rich, part of efforts to help fill government coffers depleted by the war in Ukraine. The tax hikes were being presented domestically as "systemic reforms".

    • France24 ☛ Defiant Biden vows to stay in race after verbal gaffes at NATO summit

      US President Joe Biden, who is facing intense scrutiny amid questions over his age, gave no indication he would consider dropping out of the electoral race in a press conference that lasted almost an hour on Thursday. He fielded tough questions from reporters about his mental acuity after he made two verbal slips, including mistakenly referring to his Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump" and to Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky as "President Putin", triggering gasps in the room.

    • Latvia ☛ Putin-praiser gets two months in prison

      The Riga City Court has sentenced a young man to two months in prison for war crimes and praising Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, according to a publicly available verdict, LETA reports July 12.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump May Attempt to Disavow Project 2025 - but He's not Disavowing Viktor Orbán

    One of the best debunkings of Trump’s false disavowal came from CNN, which made a list of the 140 Trump associates involved in Project 2025.

  • Muckrock ☛ Admiral Grace Hopper’s landmark lecture is found, but the NSA won’t release it

    On October 21, 2021, I filed a request for a copy of these historic videos. On May 7, 2024, the NSA provided a “no responsive documents” response. When I pointed out that this video was listed in the agency’s own “Television Center Catalog”, the agency provided a slightly more candid explanation:

    *When the search was conducted, our office reached out to the organization that would have the tape you requested if it still exists. We were informed that although there are some older video tapes that are potentially responsive, they are on a format that NSA no longer has the ability to view or digitize. Without being able to view the tapes, NSA has no way to verify their responsiveness. NSA is not required to find or obtain new technology (outdated or current) in order to process a request. We have made all reasonable attempts to find responsive records, and those that are potentially responsive are housed on/in unreadable media/system, therefore, the no record response is appropriate. My apologies that this wasn’t explained clearly in the response letter. *

  • VOA News ☛ Russian Defense Ministry denial of striking Kyiv children's hospital is false

    Russian military launched the long-range Kh-101 cruise missile that destroyed Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

    Based on evidence found at the scene, including the missile fragments with a serial number and part of the rudder, Ukraine's Security Service identified the rocket that hit the children's hospital in Kyiv as a Kh-101 strategic cruise missile.

    Dozens of witnesses captured on video and photos the moment the Russian Kh-101 missile struck the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital.

• Environment

  • [Repeat] The Strategist ☛ Australia should work with NATO on climate change

    NATO underlined its emphasis on climate risks by releasing a third annual Climate Change and Security Impact Assessment Report on the first day of the summit being held in Washington from 9 to 11 July. Meanwhile, the new NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence celebrated its recent accreditation. The report details widespread threats that climate change poses to NATO’s operating domains and geographic regions, and it contributes an analysis of climate risks facing such strategic competitors as Russia and China.

  • NPR ☛ How to live without plastics for a month, according to the founder of a global movement

    Going plastic-free made Prince-Ruiz build new habits in little ways she hadn’t anticipated. Sitting down to drink coffee at a cafe rather than downing it from a plastic cup while commuting made her more mindful. Making garlic bread from scratch instead of buying a frozen bag became a way to spend time with her son.

    “I think plastic, in some ways, is a symbol of how busy we've become; of the throwaway society that we've become,” Prince-Ruiz said.

  • Salon ☛ Out-of-control heat is making Earth more "weird" — and more deadly

    "Along with this warming, we see increases in deadly heat waves and droughts, but also an increased experience of 'global weirding,'" Dr. Twila Moon, a climatologist and deputy lead scientist at NASA's National Snow and Ice Data Center, told Salon. Such weirding, she explained, encompasses "more extreme weather events producing conditions that are entirely new for communities, weather whiplash as folks may experience quick swings between hot and cold or drought and flood, and many challenges for crops, wildlife, recreation, and being able to plan for what we previously considered normal weather conditions."

    "Every person should be asking 'What role can I play in reducing heat-trapping emissions and contributing less to burning coal, oil and gas?' and 'What steps can I take to help my community, coworkers, friends, and family to adjust to and prepare for these rapid changes and new extremes?'" Moon said.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Chevron deference is dead—and US climate action hangs in the balance

    The US Supreme Court's seismic decision to overturn Chevron deference ends decades of federal agencies’ regulatory authority to interpret laws’ where there is ambiguity. While not specifically about climate or energy, the change is deeply consequential for the current—and next—administration’s ability to act on these issues according to its agenda.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The NSA Has a Long-Lost Lecture by Adm. Grace Hopper

      Basically, the recording is in an obscure video format. People at the NSA can’t easily watch it, so they can’t redact it. So they won’t do anything.

    • NPR ☛ AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change

      Researcher Jesse Dodge did some back-of-the-napkin math on the amount of energy AI chatbots use.

      “One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes,” he says. “So, you can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.”

    • Salon ☛ Astronomers spot seven stars that may sport alien megastructures — but many are skeptical of aliens

      In the classic 1937 sci-fi novel "Star Maker," author Olaf Stapledon imagined a massive machine that could encompass an entire star, capturing its energy and harnessing it to provide near unlimited energy to space-faring civilizations. More than two decades later, Stapledon's creative thought experiment became a legitimate scientific concept when physicist Freeman Dyson published a 1960 paper in the journal Science. Dyson argued that, logically speaking, any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilization would develop such intense energy needs that they would need megastructures like those envisioned by Stapledon.

    • DeSmog ☛ Here’s What Nigel Farage’s Reform Party MPs Have to Say About Climate Change

    • International Business Times ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] TikTok Exec Reveals Why She Regrets Buying a New Tesla Despite Her $400,000 Salary

    • CBC ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] BMW recalling 44K vehicles in Canada over potentially deadly airbag issue

    • [Old]

      The Runs In Your Pantyhose Are a Conspiracy! | Crunchy Betty

    • [Old]

      Popular Mechanics ☛ Planned Obsolescence - Products Designed to Fail

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Compounding a Crisis: When Public Health Solutions Worsen Climate Change

  • Overpopulation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Imperial Irrigation District set to pay farmers to use less water

      Under a program approved by the board of the Imperial Irrigation District, farmers can now apply for federal funds to compensate them for harvesting less hay as part of an effort to ease strains on the Colorado River. Advertisement

      Paying growers to leave fields dry and fallow for part of the year represents a major new step by the district to help boost the levels of the river’s reservoirs, which have been depleted by chronic overuse, years of drought and higher temperatures caused by climate change.

    • Ohio State University ☛ Be Aware of Late-Season Potential Forage Toxicities

      Livestock owners feeding forage need to keep in mind potential for some forage toxicity issues late this season. Nitrate and prussic acid poisoning potential associated with drought stress or frost are the main concerns to be aware of, and these are primarily an issue with annual forages and several weed species, but nitrates can be an issue even in perennial forages when they are drought stressed. A few legumes species have an increased risk of causing bloat when grazed after a frost. Each of these risks is discussed in this article along with precautions to avoid them.

    • US News And World Report ☛ World Population Is Projected to Grow From 8.2 Billion to a Peak of 10.3 Billion in 2080s, UN Says

      Bucknell University mathematics professor Tom Cassidy told AP that newly published research in the journal Demography that he co-authored also calculates that population is likely to peak before the end of the century.

• Finance

  • Breach Media ☛ Where do Canada’s soaring corporate profits go? Not ‘back into the country’

    Loblaw and other corporate giants are investing less of their profits than ever before, putting the lie to the ‘trickle down’ promise of neoliberalism

  • Investopedia ☛ Unilever Discussing Layoffs With Workers, Up To 3,200 Cuts in Europe Reported

    Unilever (UL) said it is discussing layoffs with employees following news that the diversified consumer products company would be slashing a third of its office staff in Europe.

    In an email response to Investopedia on Friday, a Unilever spokesperson pointed to the company's March launching of a comprehensive productivity program intended to make “a leaner and more accountable” organization.

  • Business Insider ☛ Read Intuit CEO's message announcing over 1,000 layoffs due to performance — but the company is hiring 1,800 in areas like AI

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania leads among OECD in real wage growth

    Real wages of Lithuanian workers have grown at the fastest pace among the members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since late 2019, the Social Security and Labour Ministry reported on Thursday citing the organisation’s data.

  • Federal News Network ☛ IRS recovers $1B in crackdown on taxes owed by millionaires

    IRS is tapping into tens of billions of multi-year modernization funds in the Inflation Reduction Act to rebuild its workforce and beef up enforcement.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Peso strengthens in response to release of US inflation data

    U.S. inflation data issued Thursday boosted Mexico's peso to 17.78 to the U.S. dollar at market closing, its highest value since June 5.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Extreme weather and inflation spur perfect storm for home insurance

    Homeowners insurance is more difficult to get and more expensive than ever, largely because of more frequent extreme weather events. What are homeowners’ options and long-term solutions?

  • Reuters ☛ Unilever to cut a third of office jobs in Europe

    The company, whose shareholders include billionaire activist investor and board member Nelson Peltz, has already been trying to streamline its business.

    CEO Hein Schumacher, who took over last year, laid out plans in October to win back investor confidence after it had underperformed in the past few years.

  • GigaZine ☛ Game companies are prone to massive layoffs, but Japan is the exception, but the working conditions are far from ideal

    From 2022 to 2023, major IT companies such as Google , Amazon , and Microsoft continued to lay off 10,000 people, and Disney and GitHub also restructured 3% to 10% of their employees, among other large-scale layoffs. While layoffs are being implemented at various types of companies, serious layoffs have been continuing worldwide, especially in the gaming industry, since around 2022, with the few exceptions being Japanese game companies. Despite the lack of large-scale layoffs and even a large increase in wages , 'that doesn't mean Japan is close to a worker's utopia,' points out The Verge, an American technology news site.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Scoop News Group ☛ White House to require increased cybersecurity protocols for R&D institutions

    According to the memo, higher education institutions certified by the federal research agencies must implement a cybersecurity program consistent with the CHIPS and Science Act’s cybersecurity resource for research-focused entities. That implementation must occur one year following the final issuance of this document; the National Institute of Standards and Technology has posted an initial draft of the resource.

  • TMZ ☛ Meta Lifts Restrictions on Donald Trump Facebook, Instagram Accounts

    Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is rolling back restrictions on Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts ... making the reversal only days after Trump ripped Mark online.

    Meta announced Friday it was lifting all limits on Trump's official FB and IG pages as Trump gets closer to formally becoming the GOP nominee for president at next week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta drops restrictions on Donald Trump’s Facebook, Instagram accounts

    No politician has tested and contorted Meta’s content policies like Trump. The company famously suspended him alongside other platforms after January 6th, 2021. At the beginning of 2023, he was allowed back on Facebook and Instagram but still placed in the penalty box, with Meta saying at the time that “further violating content” could get his account suspended again for up to two years.

  • Molly White ☛ Follow the [Cryptocurrency]

    Did you know that the cryptocurrency industry has spent more on 2024 elections in the United States than the oil industry? More than the pharmaceutical industry?

    In fact, the cryptocurrency industry has spent more on 2024 elections than the entire energy sector and the entire health sector. Those industries, both worth hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, are being outspent by an industry that, even by generous estimates, is worth less than $20 billion.a

  • Federal News Network ☛ Meet something new for NASA — its first chief artificial intelligence officer

    NASA has a history of firsts. Now it has a new first: a first chief artificial intelligence officer. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin is that chief AI officer, Dave Salvagnini.

  • Tim Kellogg ☛ Request for Meetings

    Are you a decision maker at a company? Any industry. How are you approaching AI? I want to know more. Seriously.

    I want my next job to be “Head of AI”. The thing is, nobody is entirely sure what that means, so I’m on a path of discovery. I’m talking to as many people as I can find to learn what companies need, AI or not. Do you see AI as critical to your future? Why? How are you approaching that? And the big one: What would you expect from me in my first 5 months?

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ EU says X's blue ticks are deceptive, transparency falls short under social media law

    The European Union says blue checkmarks from Elon Musk's X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements in the first charges against a tech company since the bloc's new social media regulations took effect. The European Commission outlined on Friday the preliminary findings from its investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, under the 27-nation bloc's Digital Services Act.

  • The Record ☛ EU threatens Musk’s X with a fine of up to 6% of global turnover

    Thirdly, the Commission criticized the social media platform for failing to provide access to its public data for researchers. X is alleged to do this in two ways, firstly by banning independent access through scraping in its terms of service, and then by making it so difficult for researchers to access its API under research terms that they are left “with no other choice than to pay disproportionally high fees.”

  • Wired ☛ The EU Is Coming for X’s Paid Blue Checks

    Enabling any account to pay for a verification breaches the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), European Commission officials said on Friday, because it “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts.” X now has a chance to respond to the findings. If Musk cannot reach a resolution with the EU, the company faces fines of up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover.

  • Greece ☛ EU says X’s blue checks are deceptive, transparency falls short under social media law

    Regulators took aim at X’s blue checks, saying they constitute “dark patterns” that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.

  • VOA News ☛ EU: X's blue checks are deceptive 'dark patterns' that breach social media laws

    The rulebook, also known as the DSA, is a sweeping set of regulations that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting their European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

    Regulators took aim at X's blue checks, saying they constitute "dark patterns" that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.

  • JURIST ☛ Utah Supreme Court recognizes constitutional right to reform government in response to gerrymandering

    The Utah Supreme Court unanimously decided Thursday that Utah citizens have a constitutional right to reform their government in response to past redistricting efforts to divide Salt Lake City into four congressional districts, resulting in Republicans winning by a large margin.

  • RFERL ☛ Concern Rises Over Racial Extremism After Arrest Of Alleged White Supremacist Headed To Ukraine

    The U.S. Justice Department says ethnically motivated attacks are becoming a serious global threat and suggested the global community take them more seriously, a day after announcing the arrest of an 18-year-old accused of plotting an attack to advance his white-supremacist views.

  • RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Ambassador To International Organizations Resigns Amid Scandal

    Former First Deputy Ukrainian Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar (aka Dzhaparova) said on Facebook (Farcebook) on July 11 that she filed papers asking Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to relieve her from the post of full-time ambassador to international organizations in Vienna.

  • RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Top Prosecutor Wants International Court To Open Case On Kyiv Hospital Attack

    Ukraine's top prosecutor has called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Russia over a missile strike on a children's hospital in Kyiv earlier this week.

  • RFERL ☛ Kazakh Court Rejects Appeal Filed By Pro-Ukrainian Woman Against 'Hatred' Conviction

    The Shymkent City Court in southern Kazakhstan on July 12 rejected an appeal filed by a pro-Ukrainian resident, Qalima Zhaparova, against a two-year parole-like sentence she was handed in May on a charge of inciting ethnic hatred.

  • RFERL ☛ U.S. Diplomat Says Kyiv's Drive Toward Western Norms Will Thwart Moscow's Aggression

    Ukraine's position in its battle to repel invading Russian troops has improved recently and Kyiv's drive to integrate with Western democratic structures will ultimately triumph over Moscow's aggression, says U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James O'Brien.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Soldier Opens Fire At Fellow Servicemen In Belgorod Region

    A Russian soldier opened fire at fellow servicemen in the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine before fleeing the site.

  • RFERL ☛ OSCE Official Gets Jail Term For 'Spying' In Russian-Occupied Ukraine

    A court in Ukraine's Russian-controlled Donetsk region on July 12 jailed a member of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine for "espionage" in a judgment condemned by the European security organization.

  • RFERL ☛ Siberian Artist Gets 9 Years In Prison For Wiring $30 To Ukraine

    The Tomsk regional court in Siberia said on July 11 that 21-year-old artist Tatyana Laletina had been handed a nine-year prison term two weeks earlier for wiring money to a Ukrainian fund in the wake of Russia's unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.

  • RFERL ☛ UN Condemns Russia, Urges 'Urgent Withdrawal' Of Forces From Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

    The UN General Assembly on July 11 condemned "Moscow's failure to implement" resolutions by the assembly and the IAEA and demanded that Russia "urgently withdraw its military and other unauthorized personnel" from the occupied southern Ukrainian nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya.

  • RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Hails Ukraine Compact As 'Important Achievement' For Kyiv, Others

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed a new agreement on long-term support for Ukraine finalized at this week's NATO summit in Washington as an "important achievement" and praised the U.S. leadership for its "decisive action" to ensure Ukrainian security.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Why the NATO summit left Ukraine both grateful and disappointed

    The NATO summit’s communiqué said Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path to membership. It was a dramatic step that managed to annoy Russia even as it disappointed France and fell short of everything Volodymyr Zelenskyy had hoped for.

  • New York Times ☛ How Ukraine’s ‘Irreversible’ Path to NATO May Hinge on U.S. Election

    Hanging over the alliance’s summit in Washington this week was the shadow of the U.S. presidential election, which added a layer of unpredictability to the war and to the future of the bloc.

  • JURIST ☛ New Finland law allows border officers blocks asylum seekers from Russia

    Finland’s parliament passed a law Friday allowing border guards to stop asylum seekers from Russia. Parliament declared the bill “urgent” and quickly passed by a vote of 167-31. The law is temporary and will only be effective for one year after its enactment.

  • LRT ☛ Organisers cancel Oliver Tree’s concert in Vilnius over Russian firm connection

    A concert by the American singer Oliver Tree, which was due to take place in Vilnius on Sunday, has been cancelled, its organisers announced on Friday.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania will not send ministers to Hungary in reaction to Orbán’s Moscow visit

    Lithuania will reduce its political representation at meetings in Hungary in response to its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to Russia, while President Gitanas Nausėda will decide whether to go on a potential visit to Budapest together with the leaders of other European Union countries.

  • RFA ☛ Interview: White House ‘extremely concerned’ about closer Russia-North Korea ties

    Presidential adviser Mira Rapp-Hooper explains how NATO and key Indo-Pacific countries can cooperate on issues.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian, U.S. Defense Chiefs Discussed Lowering Escalation In Call, Moscow Says

    Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin discussed lowering the risk of "possible escalation" in a telephone call, the Russian Defense Ministry said on July 12.

  • RFERL ☛ Finland Passes Law To Block Migrants Crossing From Russia

    Finland's parliament passed a law on July 12 granting border guards the power to block asylum seekers crossing from Russia, after more than 1,300 people arrived in the country and forced Helsinki to close its border.

  • RFERL ☛ Sukhoi Superjet Crashes Near Moscow, Killing All 3 Aboard

    Emergency officials in the Moscow region said on July 12 that a Sukhoi Superjet 100 passenger plane crashed near the city of Kolomna, near the Russian capital, killing all three crew members on board.

  • RFERL ☛ Montenegrin High Court Acquits Alleged 2016 Coup Plotters

    The 13 Montenegrin, Russian, and Serbian individuals accused of an election-day coup attempt in Montenegro in 2016 were acquitted by that Balkan country's High Court, in a case in which authorities claimed to have thwarted a last-ditch conspiracy to derail Montenegro's NATO accession.

  • RFERL ☛ Federal Penitentiary Service Chief In Russia's Rostov Resigns After Hostage Crisis

    The chief of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) in Russia's southwestern Rostov region, Dmitry Berzrukikh, and his deputy resigned following a hostage-taking incident at detention center No.1 in the regional capital, Rostov-on-Don, last month.

  • The Straits Times ☛ ST Picks: How are Russian investments changing the face of Bali?

  • The Straits Times ☛ US’ Sullivan talks to Indian counterpart days after PM Modi’s Russia visit

    The two discussed "a wide range of issues of bilateral, regional and international concern" during their phone conversation.

  • The Straits Times ☛ As Balinese fret over Russian presence, firm behind new enclave treads carefully

    Nuanu is one of the latest Russian-backed properties in Bali, which has seen several such developments pop up recently.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Moscow condemns Australia 'paranoia' for espionage arrests of Russia-born couple

    SYDNEY - Russia has accused Australia of inciting \"anti-Russian paranoia\" for charging a Russian-born couple with espionage, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported on Saturday.

  • New York Times ☛ How Can Europe Reduce Its Military Dependency on the United States?

    With Washington looking toward China, and the possibility of another Trump presidency, Europe should do more for its own defense. Here are four key areas to watch.

  • New York Times ☛ Finland Passes Law to Turn Away Asylum Seekers at Border

    The country last year closed all land crossings with Russia, accusing Moscow of trying to weaponize migration. Russian authorities have called the accusations “unsubstantiated.”

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Uses NATO Summit to Assail Trump on Foreign Policy

    At his news conference, the president also acknowledged a new strategy to disrupt the growing ties between China and Russia but provided no details.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Moscow condemns Australia ‘paranoia’ for espionage arrests of Russia-born couple

    The Russian embassy said the arrests were aimed at sparking anti-Russian paranoia in Australia.

  • LRT ☛ Moscow-aligned Orthodox clergy not invited to Lithuanian president’s inauguration

    Clergy from the Lithuanian Orthodox Archdiocese, which is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, were not invited to President Gitanas Nausėda’s inauguration events on Friday.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • FAIR ☛ US Media Coverage of Anti-Vax Disinformation Quietly Stops at the Pentagon

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities throttling YouTube, source tells Meduza — Meduza

  • CPJ ☛ Libyan TV host Ahmed al-Sanussi arrested after corruption report

    On July 11, security forces arrested al-Sannusi, whose “Flosna” show covers local politics and economics on the independent Wasat TV, and held him in an unknown location, according to news reports, which said that the journalist had recently reported on allegations of government corruption.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Press Gazette publishes ultimate guide to reader conversion and monetisation

    Ten-page guide includes exclusive data and insights form leading publishers.

  • Press Gazette ☛ ‘Dismay’ at Standard over redundancy terms as daily print phased out

    Monday and Friday Evening Standard editions to end from 2 August.

  • ANF News ☛ KDP abducts a female journalist covering Turkish military activity in Amadiya

    According to the Zoom Medya agency, the KDP abducted a journalist, a cameraman and a driver accompanying them while they were reporting on the Turkish military deployment in Amadiya in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Turkish army is stepping up its occupation attacks and, with the help of the KDP, the ruling party in southern Kurdistan, is moving as if it were on its own territory. Turkish military personnel are carrying out identity checks and driving out the villagers.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Black Economic Boycotts of the Civil Rights Era Still Offer Lessons on How to Achieve a Just Society

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Right-Wing Group Hosts Summit to Teach Educators How to Undercut Their Unions

  • FAIR ☛ Shelby Green & Selah Goodson Bell on Utility Profiteering, Jane McAlevey on #MeToo & Labor

  • USMC ☛ Navajo Marine says religious waiver will help recruit more personnel

    A Native American Marine reservist who recently received a religious waiver to grow his hair out believes the approval will lead to more indigenous service members serving.

  • Techdirt ☛ FTC Fires A Warning Shot At Eight Companies Over ‘Right To Repair’ Violations

    Like a growing number of states, the FTC under Lina Khan continues to show it’s somewhat serious about protecting consumers’ rights to repair their own tech. In 2021 the agency issued a useful report busting a lot of lobbying myths about repairability, and over the last few years has been cracking down on companies that claim that using third-party parts or repair shops violates warranty coverage.

  • The Register UK ☛ Samsung's biggest union extends its strike indefiniately

    Unionized Samsung workers in South Korea have extended their three-day strike indefinitely, claiming that company leadership refused to listen to demands when an end date was on the table.

    The National Samsung Electronics Labor Union (NSEU) announced its intention to extend the strike in posts to its website today, reiterating demands for a 3.5 percent base-up pay raise, improved performance bonuses, and compensation for pay lost due to strike participation.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Vox ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] TikTok Shop is annoying on purpose

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Starts Thwarting YouTube Speeds

    Google disconnected its Google Global Cache (GGC) service, which allows local providers to offer the U.S. giant’s content with lower waiting times, from Russian servers as early as spring 2022, reports said at the time.

    The Russian government has been deliberately slowing down YouTube since Thursday and is “attempting to shift responsibility” for the issue onto Google, the independent news outlet Meduza reported, citing an anonymous Russian telecom industry source.

  • Meduza ☛ Traffic speeds reveal that Russia’s YouTube slowdown is targeted throttling, not Google Global Cache ‘equipment failure’

    In April 2021, researchers at the University of Michigan reported that the Russian authorities were throttling Twitter access through special-purpose deep-packet-inspection boxes (known as TSPU, or “technical-solution-for-threat-countermeasures,” devices) that are installed at Internet service providers. This technology allows Roskomnadzor to centralize more censorship control than was previously possible with the “middleboxes” that ISPs use to implement the agency’s blocklists. According to the researchers’ findings, Twitter-related domains triggered Roskomnadzor’s throttler, dropping data packets traveling faster than 128 kilobits per second. (Capped at this speed, it would take more than 18 hours to load a single 1-gigabyte video file.)

  • APNIC ☛ Assessing the security of Internet paths

    Critical Infrastructures (CIs) such as banks and telecom operators increasingly rely on cloud-based email services from Microsoft or Google. However, CIs often have limited insight into the security status of the paths their traffic might follow across the Internet to reach these cloud providers, which we consider a supply chain risk. We therefore developed a generic method that finds plausible Internet paths to clouds and other endpoints and identifies to what extent the Autonomous Systems (ASes) on a path support Route Origin Validation (ROV). We used our method for a case study to find secure paths from four CIs in the Netherlands to Microsoft’s cloud-based email service.

    This blog post is a summary of our paper at the Applied Networking Research Workshop 2024.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Apple Music Could 'Pull a Spotify' With Bundling, DMN Pro Finds

    To date, there’s been no concrete indication that a bundling pivot is in the cards for Apple Music. The negotiating perks of its current positioning, besides the upside of avoiding ample criticism and maintaining strong rightsholder relationships for various collaborations, are presumably worth more than the sizable tranche of possible savings.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ You must complain, as much as you can

    All right. We shall start by cheering you up. A handful of highlights from the last few years. We're talking about companies being forced to stop, pause, alter, or cancel their greedy decisions after customer backlash. While people aren't that smart, in general, there is still a basic, primal level of dignity we all wish to maintain. And once an offender crosses that line, people push back, quite hard. To wit: [...]

  • BoingBoing ☛ Spotify accuses indie band of "streaming fraud"

    Copyright takedowns are one already-obnoxious crutch that streaming companies rely on to cover their asses, in a way that tends to do more to hurt independent artists. But baseless accusing a band of committing fraud, while withholding the evidence and ignoring that clear Murphy's Law case that might explain the situation? That might be even more absurd.

    As a bonus irony, Walsh speculated about this exact scenario in a 2016 Vice article:

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Simon Willison ☛ hangout_services/thunk.js

  It looks like it's a way to let Google Hangouts (or presumably its modern predecessors) get additional information from the browser, including the current load on the user's CPU. Update: On Hacker News a Googler confirms that the Google Meet "troubleshooting" feature uses this to review CPU utilization.

• The Register UK ☛ White House urged to probe $1.5B G42-Microsoft AI deal • The Register

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ Judgment Day - coverage of the judgment preservation insurance market bubble

    In an article published by Carrier Management, Jonathan Stroud, General Counsel for Unified Patents, is quoted over the increase in sales of judgment preservation insurance (JPI). JPI is a type of insurance that covers the possibility that an award granted at the trial court level could be reversed or reduced on appeal.

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Our Mortal Waltz: The Dance of Death Across Centuries

    The sight of a skeletal corpse rarely inspires a rollicking jig. Yet for more than half a millennium, the dance of death in European visual art has imagined a tango between the quick and the dead. Allison C. Meier tracks the motif’s evolution across history, discovering how — through times of disease, war, and economic inequality — printmaking offered a means to both critique social ills and reflect upon new forms of human devastation.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Johannes Hartlieb’s Book of Herbs (1462)

    The only fully illustrated herbal from the incunabula period of German history.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ PornHub Owner Obtains Pirate Site Blocking Order From U.S. Court

    Adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo, the parent company of PornHub, has booked a significant victory in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a subsidiary at a California federal court. A broad permanent injunction against video platform Goodporn requires third-party services, including domain registries, Internet providers and search engines, to block the pirate site's domain names. Goodporn, meanwhile, is taking countermeasures.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Shield is Hiring a Pirate IPTV Blocker, No Skills or Experience Needed

    The company tasked with running Piracy Shield, Italy's controversial IPTV-blocking system, is looking for a new recruit. The successful candidate will spend weekdays, plus an hour during most weekends, monitoring pirate streams and then taking them down. Surprisingly, the job requires no experience and no in-depth skills, although knowing what an IP address does will be seen as a positive.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ WIPO, WIPO, what is heaven like?

    If WIPO managed food, then for every baker there would be three cops making sure you didn’t bake at home, and they’d take the seed from every apple. Deprivation is their business.

    The goatwraiths in their half–hollowed-out state can’t tell map from territory and they can’t tell cost from value.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Another Social Media Copyright Case: Beastie Boys Sue Chili’s Parent Over Alleged ‘Sabotage’ Infringement

    The parent company of Chili’s is facing a copyright monopoly infringement suit from the Beastie Boys over the alleged unauthorized use of “Sabotage” in a social control media video. Surviving Beastie Boys members Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz just recently submitted the complaint alongside the estate of Adam Yauch and others.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • Mid-Range Cameras

      I definitely do not need a new DSLR, but sometimes I look at them just to see if there's any interesting models. But wow, Nikon has completely ruined their interesting midrange cameras (a market segment Canon never really cared about either, why I got a Nikon in the first place IIRC). Like, I absolutely love my D7200, it's basically a “prosumer camera if you don't need a full-frame sensor”. But then its successor, the D7500, is clearly just a cost reduction rather than an iterative improvement because improved technology got developed. Other than being able to do 4K video and nominally having better autofocus in low-light—don't see anything about its performance in normal light though—large portions of what I like about the D7200 was gutted (they even put a worse sensor in!), it's basically just a slightly-nicer firmly consumer camera now. The only thing that I can see a justification for is removing support for non-CPU lenses since I assume I'm the only non-professional who cares about compatibility with film-era equipment.

    • 🔤SpellBinding: VEFNRSC Wordo: NAPES

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Internet/Gemini

      • [EN] re: I Broke Antenna But It's Fixed Now

        Ha! I thought my capsule was banned or something, I didn't think something was broken in the 'atom.xml' side. I had a few busy weeks and never crossed my mind contacting you, but in retrospect, it should be the first thing to do.