Links 22/07/2024: Internet Optimism and Kamala Harris Policies Debated
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-17 [Older] Armani and Dior under investigation by Italy authorities
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Seth Godin ☛ The new reality of old media | Seth's Blog
Two things have changed for books, music and visual media:
1. Shelf space and broadcast schedules disappeared. There’s room for everything, all the time.
2. The cost of creating and publishing work in any of these media has dropped to zero. When anyone can make a video or a song, anyone will.
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R Scott Jones ☛ The two futures of social media
As the web and social media fractures a bit, it feels like two distinct futures of social media are unfolding—two entirely different ways to participate socially online.
On the one hand, you have mega platforms, like Instagram, X, and TikTok—those that are now focused on viral entertainment. On the other, you have personal blogging, the fediverse, and small niche communities—those that are focused on personal community.
Here’s how I think they line up: [...]
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Robert Birming ☛ Do you unmustify?
Today I heard a term coined by Swedish author Micael Dahlén: Unmustify. An active way to remove some of the things we think we have to do in life.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ Thoughts on digital communities
I think this is a good definition. We begin by making it clear that we need “living things” to have a community and considering the weird AI phase we’re going through that’s probably worth stating. So bots are out, humans are in.
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Michal Zelazny ☛ Forum
Community is one of the main topics I touch on here. My community, my social media is an email and iMessage, but I thought I could do more.
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Lou Plummer ☛ Free Blogging Advice
I got an email from someone who'd just started a blog at BearBlog. He asked for some advice on how to become an active member of the IndyWeb community. All I could honestly do was list the tools I've used and can personally vouch for. Feel free to adapt and share this as you see fit.
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Idiomdrottning ☛ Put that in your CLI and smoke it
Always a quid-pro-quo with these guys. I’m not on board with shackling our world of imagination and sharing-is-caring to the zero-sum world of beers. Since we can make copies there’s no limit to how much we can lift each other up, how many shoulders we can stand on.
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Science
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The Atlantic ☛ USA Swimming Has a Secret Weapon: Linear Algebra
Ono, who typically studies abstract patterns in numbers and special functions called “modular forms,” began collecting and analyzing acceleration data from Wilson and other Emory swimmers to identify and quantify their weaknesses. “It got to the point where I could just see what an athlete was doing without actually watching them swim,” he says.
Within two years, Wilson had won national collegiate championships; he would go on to earn a gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. By then, Ono was at the University of Virginia, where he worked alongside Todd DeSorbo—the head coach for both UVA swimming and the U.S. Olympic women’s swim team. Ono will join the Olympic-team staff in Paris later this summer as a technical consultant. “I feel like we’re all in this together, trying to make something new,” he says.
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Science Alert ☛ Mysterious 'Dark Comets' Could Be The Majority of Near-Earth Objects
How did they get here...?
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Science Alert ☛ This Plant Is So Extreme Scientists Think It Could Thrive on Mars
It's surprisingly resilient.
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Science Alert ☛ Digging Holes at The Beach Can Be Deadly, And Many People Don't Realize
More dangerous than shark attacks.
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Science Alert ☛ Protecting Just 1.2% of Earth's Land Could Stave Off Mass Extinction
Not all hope is lost.
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Education
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] UN decries 'shocking' attacks on Bangladesh student protests
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Tedium ☛ Droodles & Mad Libs: The Brain Games That Dominated The ’50s
Today in Tedium: Everyone is familiar with Mad Libs, those hilarious fill-in-the-blank stories that most of us experienced in childhood. In 2024, however, they seem like a distant memory of childhood. But before they were even a thing, their creators were involved with television writing and creating 1950s viral content (OK, one of them was). The idea of droodles and Mad Libs are at once bizarre and ingenious. And there really isn't much information about them on the internet, making them the perfect Tedium topic. Droodles and Mad Libs are the perfect combination of interesting and tedious. And in today's Tedium, we're taking a look at their fascinating story. — David @ Tedium
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Hackaday ☛ Ask Hackaday: Should We Teach BASIC?
Suppose you decide you want to become a novelist. You enroll in the Hackaday Famous Novelists School where your instructor announces that since all truly great novels are written in Russian, our first task will be to learn Russian. You’d probably get up and leave. The truth is, what makes a great (or bad) novel transcends any particular language, and you could make the same argument for programming languages.
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Hardware
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404 Media ☛ Developing and Scanning My Own Color Film: A Rewarding, Infuriating Hobby
There are many good guides to developing film at home; this isn’t going to be one of them, exactly. But I am going to explain my setup, what I use, how I do it, and get into the fact that I essentially have absolutely no idea what I am doing but am enjoying the process nonetheless.
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Howard Oakley ☛ Last Week on My Mac: Picking dates and times – The Eclectic Light Company
When Apple offers us the first Macs with M4 chips they should please those who want more precise timing. As their CPU cores use the ARMv9.2-A instruction set architecture, they should feature 1 GHz timers, introduced in ARMv9.1-A. One of the surprises of the first three families of M-series chips has been their relatively coarse-grained time resolution: their Mach Absolute Time increments every 41.67 nanoseconds, while the M4 should be capable of 1 nanosecond increments, as supported by Intel CPUs.
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Bissell recalls more than 3 million hand-held steam cleaners after dozens of people burned
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Logikal Solutions ☛ Why the World is Abandoning Netgear
There was a time when Netgear owned the consumer networking router and hub market. Not anymore. Customers are running away screaming. Somehow a Keller MBA must have been put in charge of things. Cut costs by using Agile and TDD so no actual Software Engineering occurs, then further cut costs by getting rid of all actual testing. For the ultimate in cost savings, eliminate customer service and refuse to fix anything. Just declare the product EOL (End of Life).
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Ben Congdon ☛ AI Tools in Mid-2024
I’ve been in a mode of trying lots of new AI tools for the past year or two, and feel like it’s useful to take an occasional snapshot of the “state of things I use”, as I expect this to continue to change pretty rapidly.
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James Stanley ☛ I made an LLM-powered Colonel Blotto game
It turns out GPT-4o isn't a very good Blotto player. It improves if you feed it a copy-and-paste of Jonathan Partington's Colonel Blotto Page, which I now do, but it's still not great. (Incidentally, if anyone is interested in a 2024 revival of the 1990 tournament, get in touch, we should do it).
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Don Marti ☛ Sunday Internet optimism
Over on the social control media sites there have been a bunch of very serious posts from very serious people explaining how surveillance advertising is here to stay and the best we can do is put some "privacy-enhancing technologies" on it. This sounds dismal and awful—ads according to the faufreluches so the big shots get ads for sweet cars and good jobs, retirees get precious metals scams, those with money get legit investments, those without get predatory finance, you know, all the same tricks and discrimination but with more math to make it harder to understand. So instead I’m going to do some Internet optimism today. What happens if instead of reimplementing surveillance advertising, we just get rid of it?
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Defence/Aggression
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-20 [Older] Iran can produce material for nuclear bomb in weeks, US says
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] 40 killed in migrant boat fire off Haiti's coast: UN agency
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] Belarus sentences German man to death for 'terrorism': rights group
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-17 [Older] China halts US nuclear arms talks over Taiwan weapons sales
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-17 [Older] Australia, Netherlands lead MH17 commemorations, 10 years on
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] France: Arson attack in Nice leaves several dead
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] ICJ to rule on Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Israeli parliament 'firmly' opposed to a Palestinian state
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Kashmir: What's behind the recent militant attacks in Jammu?
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VOA News ☛ Taiwan must protect its sovereignty, know its own history, president says
Speaking to the DPP's annual convention, Lai said those who fought to bring democracy to Taiwan — martial law only ended in 1987 — had a clear understanding of the island's place in the world.
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Air Force Times ☛ How the sixth-generation fighter jet will upend air warfare
“You want it to be fast, you want it to fly high,” said Hinote, who was the Air Force’s former deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements. “You want it to fly a long way. You want it to be as stealthy as possible — not only in radar frequency … [but also] in the infrared spectrum as well.”
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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LRT ☛ ‘We cannot become Ukrainian journalists’ – interview with TV Rain editor
TV Rain saw its Latvian broadcast licence revoked after a major hiccup on live television – the host said, clumsily and falsely, that the broadcaster was helping better equip Russian conscripts fighting in Ukraine.
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JURIST ☛ Far-right Ukrainian politician Iryna Farion, known for anti-Russian campaigns, shot and killed
Ukraine Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko announced Friday that Iryna Farion, a former nationalist politician known for her staunch advocacy of Ukrainian language use over Russian, was fatally shot in Lviv.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Faces Tough Choices As U.S. Election Looms, Kyiv Mayor Says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy faces a politically fraught time as the presidential election in the United States looms, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Official Criticizes Red Cross Over Prisoner-Visitation Claims
Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner said the “vast majority” of Ukrainian prisoners who have been returned to the country in exchanges with Russia said they had no communication with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) while they were being held.
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The Straits Times ☛ Tougher tone on Israel, steady on NATO: how a Harris foreign policy could look
Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to stick largely to Joe Biden's foreign policy playbook on key issues such as Ukraine, China and Iran but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she replaces the president at the top of the Democratic ticket and wins the U.S. November election.
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France24 ☛ Russia says intercepted US bomber planes ‘approaching’ its border in Arctic
Russia on Sunday said two US bomber planes had approached its border in the Arctic and that it had scrambled fighter jets to make them turn away. Moscow has previously accused the United States of making reconnaissance drone flights over neutral waters in the Black Sea to help Ukraine, and has said it could lead to "direct confrontation" between Russia and NATO.
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RFERL ☛ Russians, Belarusians Among Those Denied Visas To Attend Olympics Amid Spy Fears
France has denied visas to some foreigners, including Russians, to attend the Olympic Games amid espionage concerns, the nation's interior minister said in an interview.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Scrambles Fighter Jets To Meet U.S. Arctic Patrol
Russia said on July 21 that it scrambled fighter jets to prevent two U.S. strategic bombers from crossing its border over the Barents Sea in the Arctic.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ 'Russia’s Google’ exits the country — Yandex plans to triple its Nvidia GPU deployments
After nearly two years of negotiations, the Russian-founded tech and search giant Yandex is rebranding in the EU under a new name.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Juan Betancourt and Larry Hebert
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ Since Leaving Butler, Trump Has Foregone the Best Medical Care and Is Withholding CT Scan Results
Having gone an entire week exhibiting little curiosity about Trump’s medical condition, many outlets snapped this up as if it was credible.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ How Trump and Republicans are gaslighting women voters
Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance scrubbed his website of absolutist antiabortion rhetoric during last week’s Republican National Convention. On Monday, the day former President Trump named Vance as his running mate, Vance’s Senate campaign website espoused “the sanctity of all life” and called for “eliminating abortion.” By Tuesday afternoon, the language was gone, according to HuffPost, and then the website itself disappeared as it redirected users to Trump’s website.
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Environment
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Wildfires pose increasing risk to California oil wells
More than 100,000 wells in 19 states west of the Mississippi River are in areas that have burned in recent decades and face a high risk of burning in the future, with the vast majority in California, according to a study published recently in the journal One Earth.
What’s more, nearly 3 million Americans live within 3,200 feet of those wells, putting them at heightened risk of explosions, air and water pollution, infrastructure damage and other hazards.
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-16 [Older] Saskatchewan says $28M in carbon tax money 'safe for now' after striking deal with federal government
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Energy/Transportation
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] India: Passenger train derails in Uttar Pradesh
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-17 [Older] Ontario's Crypto King lied about income, has 'no remorse,' trustee's lawyer tells bankruptcy hearing
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Ontario's Crypto King will likely remain bankrupt until after criminal charges are resolved
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Serbia: Activists warn of protests if Rio Tinto lithium mining goes ahead
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] EU, Serbia sign key lithium deal
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] EU, Serbia sign lithium deal as global clean tech race speeds up
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] This new Canadian North flight simulator brings pilot training closer to the real thing
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] Stellantis tells owners of over 24,000 hybrid minivans to park outdoors due to battery fire risk
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Wildlife/Nature
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] Polar bear death closes Wild Canada exhibit at Calgary Zoo
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] RCMP rescue bear that locked itself inside car in Belcarra, B.C., on hot day
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-14 [Older] B.C. Wildfire Service says several new fires ignited by lightning
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Wildfires prompt evacuations of northern Alberta oilsands sites
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-15 [Older] Concern grows for Metro Vancouver's butterflies as sightings plummet by more than half over last year
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Evacuations ordered as B.C. wildfires grow
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Smoky skies across much of B.C. as wildfires grow
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Calgarians can finally water their parched gardens and lawns — though with some limitations
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Finance
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] How a heat wave causes inflation in Ivory Coast
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] WestJet and mechanics' union ratify contract in aftermath of strike
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India Times ☛ Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs on why companies are making job cuts - Times of India
In May 2023, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna predicted AI and automation replacing 30% of HR and non-customer facing roles within five years. The company laid off employees in March 2024.
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] Fewer home sales and lower average housing prices in Canada compared to last year
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Canada selling one New York apartment to cover cost of new $9M condo
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] Canada, China pledge to mend relations after foreign affairs ministers meet in Beijing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-19 [Older] Vietnam: Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong dies aged 80
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VOA News ☛ What to know about Kids Online Safety Act and its chances of passing
Supporters, however, hope it will come to a vote later this month.
Proponents of the Kids Online Safety Act include parents' groups and children's advocacy organizations as well as companies like Microsoft, X and Snap. They say the bill is a necessary first step in regulating tech companies and requiring them to protect children from dangerous online content and take responsibility for the harm their platforms can cause.
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US News And World Report ☛ What to Know About the Kids Online Safety Act and Its Chances of Passing
Social media platforms would also have to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. They would also be required to limit other users from communicating with children and limit features that “increase, sustain, or extend the use” of the platform — such as autoplay for videos or platform rewards. In general, online platforms would have to default to the safest settings possible for accounts it believes belong to minors.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Fake News and Propaganda
Fake news, often defined as deliberately misleading or fabricated information, has become a pervasive force in today’s media landscape. The advent of social media has accelerated the spread of such content, allowing it to reach millions within moments. Unlike traditional forms of misinformation, fake news is often designed to evoke strong emotional reactions, making it particularly effective in polarizing societies. This is where propaganda, which is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view, intersects with fake news. Both aim to manipulate public perception, but propaganda is often more systematically orchestrated, typically by governments or political entities.
The impact of fake news and propaganda can be profoundly damaging. Democracies rely on an informed electorate to make decisions. When voters base their choices on false information, the very foundation of democratic governance is undermined. Elections have been notably susceptible to such manipulation, as seen in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, where misinformation campaigns reportedly influenced voter behaviour. This erosion of trust in democratic institutions is a global issue, with similar tactics employed in elections worldwide, from the Philippines to Brazil.
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France24 ☛ Online conspiracy theories abound after major global IT [sic] crash
A faulty software update to an antivirus program operating on Microsoft Windows on Friday not only caused technology outages across the world, affecting companies and services from airlines and banks to TV channels and financial institutions, but also the proliferation of conspiracy theories on social media. The event illustrates the "volatile nature of the information ecosystem", Rafi Mendelsohn, vice president at the disinformation security company Cyabra, told AFP.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-17 [Older] Compact: Debate about banning the far-right magazine goes on
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Russian exiles report canceled ID cards
After the start of the war on Ukrainein 2022, many Russians fled their country with only a state-issued identification card. Around 110,000 Russians have found refuge in Armenia alone, according to estimates by the Russian news portal The Bell.
That's where exiles Daniil Chebykin and Richard King, co-founders of the Omsk Civic Association, were among the first Russians to report that their ID cards had been revoked. Classified as "extremist" by Russian authorities, their organization addresses problems in their southwest Siberian city, protests the war in Ukraine, and fights corruption.
After both activists left Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, they eventually lost access to their Russian banking apps and SIM cards. They later found out, via the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry website, that their ID cards had also been declared invalid. Their experience is not an isolated case.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Bangladesh: Protesters set light to state broadcaster
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VOA News ☛ Outrage after Italy reporter attacked at neo-fascist event
Italian politicians including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed outrage Sunday after a journalist was beaten up in the northern city of Turin by suspected neo-fascists.
On Saturday night, the reporter for La Stampa daily came upon by chance a party being held by the neo-fascist fringe group CasaPound, involving smoke bombs and fireworks. He started filming with his phone.
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India Times ☛ Meta content moderation vendors hit by global cyber outage
The social media giant experienced a SEV1 as a result of the disruptions, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, using Meta's term for a "code red"-style alert involving high-stakes problems with its systems that require urgent attention.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] Giorgia Meloni height jibe costs Italian journalist €5,000
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Saudi Arabia: Executions rise despite pledge to human rights
The number of executions in Saudi Arabia has risen sharply in the first half of this year. As of July 15, the state executed 98 men and two women for charges related to murder, terrorism and drugs. This marks a 42% increase compared to the same period in 2023, according to a recent report by the Berlin-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR).
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Axios ☛ Trump: UAW's Shawn Fain should be "fired immediately"
Fain went further in a Friday statement to Axios, calling Trump "the billionaires' hero, mascot, and lapdog."
"Don't get played by this scab billionaire. Stand up and fight for more," Fain said.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-18 [Older] German court rejects New York Times case over Wordle rights
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft defends Game Pass price changes, tells FTC that adjustment offers multiplayer for less
On Thursday, the FTC submitted a letter to the Ninth Circuit Court accusing Microsoft of product degradation following its Activision-Blizzard acquisition. At issue was Microsoft’s removal of day-one new release access to subscribers, something gamers had under the less expensive console-only Game Pass base tier. Under the new Game Pass Standard tier, $4 per month more expensive than the previous entry-level plan, gamers get multiplayer functionality but lose out on included access to new games.
The FTC alleged that constituted “the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger,” something the FTC claims it was worried about from the beginning of the merger talks. For its part, Microsoft doesn’t agree. The company pointed out in its own letter to the Circuit Court that under previous pricing, what its new Game Pass Standard offers was actually more expensive.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Z-Library: More Domains Seized Than Any Other Pirate Site in History
Law enforcement agencies have a selection of tools at their disposal for disrupting or shutting down problematic websites. In the broader picture, domain name seizures are still relatively rare but for the operators of Z-Library, it's unlikely to feel like that. In fact, no other pirate site in history has had more domains seized by law enforcement than Z-Library; yet incredibly, it's still online.
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The Korea Times ☛ English band hires musicologist to analyze NewJeans' 'Bubble Gum' over plagiarism concerns
English jazz-funk band Shakatak has hired a musicologist to find out whether K-pop girl group NewJeans' new single, "Bubble Gum" plagiarized its 1981 hit, "Easier Said Than Done," shortly after the quintet's agency Ador denied the allegations.
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[Repeat] New York Times ☛ Data for A.I. Training Is Disappearing Fast, Study Shows
The study, which looked at 14,000 web domains that are included in three commonly used A.I. training data sets, discovered an “emerging crisis in consent,” as publishers and online platforms have taken steps to prevent their data from being harvested.
The researchers estimate that in the three data sets — called C4, RefinedWeb and Dolma — 5 percent of all data, and 25 percent of data from the highest-quality sources, has been restricted. Those restrictions are set up through the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a decades-old method for website owners to prevent automated bots from crawling their pages using a file called robots.txt.
The study also found that as much as 45 percent of the data in one set, C4, had been restricted by websites’ terms of service.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Technology and Free Software
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Internet/Gemini
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0.24.0 update of Gemini Protocol is breaking a bunch of libraries and tools
The 0.24.0 update to the Gemini spec from 16.1 changes the format of the header line in a way that is breaking clients like amfora, and tools such as gemget, anything based on gemini.go, SmolNetSharp, Gemini.Net, etc.
The breaking change is that, now for 4x, 5x, and 6x responses, the space between the response code and meta field is optional, and only present if there is a meta field. In other words "51" is a valid response, but "51 " (trailing space) is not. Before the 0.24.0 spec, a trailing space was always required after the status code, so "51 " (trailing space) was valid, but "51" was not.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.