Leftovers

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Manually Computing Logarithms To Grok Calculators

    Logarithms are everywhere in mathematics and derived fields, but we rarely think about how trigonometric functions, exponentials, square roots and others are calculated after we punch the numbers into a calculator of some description and hit ‘calculate’. How do we even know that the answer which it returns is remotely correct? This was the basic question that [Zachary Chartrand] set out to answer for [3Blue1Brown]’s Summer of Math Exposition 3 (SoME-3). Inspired by learning to script Python, he dug into how such calculations are implemented by the scripting language, which naturally led to the standard C library. Here he found an interesting implementation for the natural algorithm and the way geometric series convergence is sped up.

• Education

  • The Nation ☛ At My High School, the Library Is for Everything but Books

    At the beginning of this transition last year, the school moved the College and Career Center into the library. This year, this school is removing any book that has not been checked out for over a decade.

    While school officials say the change is meant to cater to student needs and interests, it also feels like a capitulation to the basic fact that many in my generation simply don’t read much anymore—at least not books. A recent survey found that nearly 50 percent of American adults read zero books in 2023. Another by Gallup in 2022 found a similar decline in reading among young adults though not as severe as older age groups.

• Hardware

  • Liam Proven ☛ Liam on GNU/Linux

    There's an account of its creation entitled 9.2 Computers ontwerpen, toen ("Computer Designs, then") by the late Carel S Scholten, but sadly for Anglophone readers it's in Dutch.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Stuff in a Time Machine

    Not wanting to be a hypocrite, I've examined my home for signs of excessive, unused stuff. There are at least four primary areas where my ownership of certain items is a mark of shame. These areas are (in no particular order): kitchen cabinets, bookshelves, music collections, and clothes closets. None of the stuff came with the house. I know because I only recently moved in, and I know the house was empty before I did so.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • IT Wire ☛ Deep fakes in Australian schools

    With AI-generated images, anyone could find themselves the subject of disinformation campaigns, which might malign their character or professional reputation. Public figures and celebrities are natural targets, but no one is immune. We've seen examples where even poorly edited photos which clearly appear fake are circulated, it has a huge impact on the reputation of individuals. The speed at which misinformation travels means that by the time the truth comes to light, the damage is often already done.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft taps Lumen to bolster AI DC networks

    Modern large language models, like those being developed in Microsoft datacenters by OpenAI, are often trained on many terabytes – tens if not hundreds of TB – of data. Meanwhile, larger models demand bigger compute clusters containing tens of thousands of GPUs working in unison in order to train such systems in meaningful amounts of time.

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple's Clamshell iBook G3 turns 25

    For context, Wi-Fi predated the implementation in the Clamshell iBook G3 by a few years, but Apple's device was the first mass-market consumer device to feature the technology. The styling, however, was quite a change from the more sober hardware of before and since. If a customer was enamored by the iMac of the time, the iBook G3 would be equally welcome. If not, well, it was probably best to steer clear.

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ GoBlog can show GPX tracks as SVG now

    Taking inspiration from James, I implemented the SVG representation as well. It will be shown when the interactive map is disabled for a post.

    As my brain is a bit foggy currently, I asked Claude AI for help, because it usually provides me better programming help than ChatGPT. And it actually provided some adequate code drafts and also helped me customize and refactor the code. After asking why the SVG looked different from the polyline on the Leaflet map, it also provided my with some code for the Web Mercator projection, which I wouldn’t be able to implement in my current state myself. In the end, the SVG generation is less than 35 lines of Go code and is done on-the-fly when rendering a post page.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Art forgery, LLMs and why it feels a bit off

    Once I read these, I started to realise that it’s likely this exact same phenomenon in play when I was encountering LLM generated art, images or text. My brain knew it’s not “real” and that the effort put into it wasn’t human effort so it made me less interested in it all together – often even before seeing or reading it in the first place.

    "If you didn’t spend time writing it, why should I spend time reading it?"

  • Alphabet falls as margin fears, YouTube slowdown eclipse AI boost [iophk: apropos YouTube, reminders need to be made that the storage costs go up geometrically, bandwidth costs linearly, while revenue stays flat. Abandoning YouTube is not enough, people need to backup their videos locally before even considering publishing elsewhere.]

    Alphabet GOOG fell more than 3% on Wednesday on fears that its rising investments in AI infrastructure would squeeze margins and YouTube was facing tough competition for ad dollars

  • Google Delivers Mixed Q2 Results As Margins, Search Ads Beat, YouTube Misses

    Google stock fell Wednesday after parent Alphabet (GOOGL) reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped consensus estimates. The internet search advertising business and cloud computing unit topped expectations but YouTube missed.

  • Alphabet’s Search and Cloud growth shine in Q2 despite YouTube miss: analysts

    However, the analysts also noted some challenges. YouTube's revenue growth was slower than anticipated, and higher depreciation expenses are expected to weigh on future earnings.

  • Quartz ☛ Google stock is sinking because of high AI spending and sluggish YouTube performance [Ed: They only speak about YouTube revenue because expenses soared and they cannot make it profitable]

    While Google executives emphasized YouTube’s performance as strong, its ad sales grew less than expected. YouTube revenues increased 13% from last year, below Wall Street’s forecast of 16%. Deutsche Bank’s Ben Black said Google’s overperformance in Search and Cloud was “offset” by YouTube’s weak performance. Morgan Stanley analysts on Wednesday called the division’s results “disappointing” and lowered its price target for Google’s stock from $210 to $205. Bank of America lowered its revenue outlook for Google for the year given the YouTube results.

    But Wedbush’s Dan Ives, who also noted the weak YouTube performance, said, “Still, we do not think softer growth at YouTube should overshadow the transformation underway within the company’s core Search business.”

  • Market Screener ☛ Alphabet: Cloud boosts results, but YouTube flounders!

    Google's advertising revenues reached $64.6 billion, up from $58.1 billion the previous year. However, advertising revenue growth slowed compared with the start of the year. In particular, YouTube's advertising revenues, although up to $8.7 billion, fell short of analysts' forecasts.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Press Gazette ☛ How to make sure you are social media ready for job hunting

      While large organisations, like the BBC, do provide personal guidance for social media use for employees, not every company has one. And even if they do have one, it isn’t always available to review before you work there.

      And yet, many would-be employers do check candidates’ social media profiles, and there are specialist companies offering social media checks as a professional service too.

      With that in mind, here’s what to consider if you’re an active social media user, and thinking of a job change.

    • The Register UK ☛ School in hot water over facial recognition in canteen

      A statement from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said Chelmer Valley High School in Chelmsford broke the law when it introduced facial recognition technology (FRT) to take cashless canteen payments from students in March 2023.

      By processing biometric data to uniquely identify people, FRT can result in high data protection risks, the regulator said.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Le Monde ☛ Salman Rushdie's attacker faces terrorism charges

    Hadi Matar, a 26-year-old American of Lebanese descent who was already charged by the state of New York for the 2022 stabbing attack, has now been indicted by a grand jury on three counts that include attempting to provide material to support a foreign terrorist organization, said the indictment dated July 17 but not unsealed until now. That organization is Lebanon's Iran-backed movement Hezbollah, the US Justice Department said.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany shuts down Islamic Center Hamburg

    In a statement, the Interior Ministry said that it "banned the Hamburg Islamic Centre and its affiliated organizations throughout Germany to date, as it is an Islamist extremist organization pursuing anti-constitutional objectives".

    The ministry accused the organization of spreading Iranian revolutionary ideas, writing the IZH worked to spread those ideas "in an aggressive and militant manner."

  • NPR ☛ Why many scientists fear a second Trump term

    "It was a real threat to Americans' health and safety," Clement says. "We were working pretty hard to get people out of harm's way in Alaska, and no one would be doing that any longer in a coordinated fashion" at the Interior Department.

    Clement chose to resign and become a whistleblower, while others on his team chose to stay despite the challenges, and kept working to assist some Alaskan communities with the help of Congress. Ultimately, Clement was one of dozens of scientists who resigned or blew the whistle over what they saw as political interference and censorship of science by the Trump administration.

  • KnowBe4 ☛ How a North Korean Fake IT Worker Tried to Infiltrate Us

    How this works is that the fake worker asks to get their workstation sent to an address that is basically an "IT mule laptop farm". They then VPN in from where they really physically are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night shift so that they seem to be working in US daytime. The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs. I don't have to tell you about the severe risk of this.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • CS Monitor ☛ Kateryna the Coal Miner? War gives Ukraine its own ‘Rosie the Riveter’ phenom.

      The war in Ukraine is changing the social makeup of the country’s workforce, as Ukrainian women are taking on roles in industries like coal mining.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukrainians Are Turning to ‘Death Doulas’ Amid War With Russia

      The work of those who guide people coping with acute grief has grown in importance in war-torn Ukraine, where death has become a daily reality since the Russian invasion.

    • RFERL ☛ At Least 2 Killed In Russian Strikes On Ukraine As Danube Port Infrastructure Damaged

      Russia launched several missile strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, early on July 24, killing at least one civilian, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Presses China to Help Seek End to War With Russia

      A visit by the foreign minister of Ukraine to Guangzhou this week signals Kyiv’s desire to involve Beijing in peace talks that China has thus far largely snubbed.

    • Meduza ☛ Moscow car explosion reportedly injures Russian intelligence officer. Russia says it’s investigating ‘a Ukrainian connection,’ while Kyiv denies any involvement. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Everything from love to heroic death’: The Kremlin’s new cultural policy puts the war against Ukraine front and center in Russian art — Meduza

    • Latvia ☛ Sanctions against Russia are working, insist European Finance Ministers

      Latvian Finance Minister Arvils Ašeradens is among eight European Union finance ministers who have published a joint opinion piece insisting that sanctions against Russia are working.

    • Latvia ☛ 'Baltic Antifascists' activist SUPs into Russia from Latvia

      The man who illegally went into Russia from Latvia over the weekend with a SUP board is pro-Kremlin activist Staņislavs Bukains, accused in the criminal case of the so-called 'Baltic Antifascists' organization, the LETA news agency reported on July 24.

    • France24 ☛ French officials foil multiple plots to disrupt Paris 2024 Olympics

      Several plots to disrupt the 2024 Paris Olympics have been foiled by French authorities over the past weeks, according to officials. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin Wednesday said police on Tuesday arrested a young man in southwest France accused of planning “violent action” against the Games. On the same day, Paris prosecutors said a 40-year-old Russian-born man had been arrested in Paris on similar suspicions.

    • LRT ☛ Six Lithuanians stripped of citizenship after getting Russian passports

      Six people have been stripped of their Lithuanian citizenship after it emerged that they concealed having become Russian citizens, the Migration Department said on Wednesday.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Anti-War Activist Released From Extradition Center In Kazakhstan

      The Kazakh Bureau for Human Rights said on July 23 that Russian anti-war activist Natalya Narskaya was released from an extradition detention center in Almaty after spending exactly one year there.

    • RFERL ☛ Some 3,400 Tajik Nationals Turned Back From Russian Airports In Past 6 Months

      Some 3,400 Tajik migrant workers have not been allowed to enter Russia and turned back to Tajikistan from Russian airports over the last six months, the director of the Tajik Civil Aviation Agency, Habibullo Nazarzoda, told reporters on July 24.

    • Meduza ☛ Car explodes in Moscow, reportedly injuring Russian Defense Ministry officer — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Turkey Detains Russian Man Suspected Of Car Bombing In Moscow

      Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on July 24 that Turkish police have detained a Russian man suspected in a car bombing in Moscow earlier in the day that wounded two people, one of whom is reported to be a senior military intelligence officer.

    • New York Times ☛ DOJ Watchdog Attributes Roger Stone’s Reduced Sentence to Poor Leadership

      The Justice Department’s in-house watchdog released its report on the reduction of Roger Stone’s sentence in a 2019 case related to the Trump-Russia investigation.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘This is a one-way ticket’: Inside the Russian military unit that’s lost so many soldiers it’s known as the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Square Of Europe In Moscow Renamed As Square Of Eurasia

      The mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin on July 24 signed a decree renaming the Square of Europe in Moscow's center into the Square of Eurasia.

    • RFERL ☛ Kuleba Says Moscow Not Ready For Peace Talks 'In Good Faith'

      Ukraine remains ready to hold talks with Russia provided Moscow proves it's ready to negotiate in "good faith," but Kyiv has yet to see such inclination from the Kremlin, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reiterated on July 24 during talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

    • RFERL ☛ Kazakh Anti-War Activist Gets 10 Days In Jail Over Online Rap Song

      A Kazakh court on July 23 sentenced antiwar activist Maria Kochneva to 10 days in jail for performing a rap song online that was critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Adds Arrested Musician Eduard Sharlot To Terrorist List

      Russia's financial watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, on July 23 added to the list of terrorists and extremists musician Eduard Sharlot, who was arrested in November on his return from Armenia, where he publicly protested against Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Is Waging A 'Christian Jihad' In Occupied Ukraine, Military Chaplain Says

      Churches in occupied Ukraine are “loyal to Moscow rather than God,” Ukrainian Military Chaplain Mark Serhiyev said at a July 24 Congressional hearing, adding that Russia is waging a “Christian jihad” in the region.

    • RFERL ☛ 3 Dead, 4 Wounded In Shooting Between Ukrainian Troops In Kharkiv Region

      Three members of a Ukrainian military unit have been killed and four wounded in the Kharkiv region in a shooting between soldiers.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Dialogue between Kyiv, Beijing important, Ukraine’s foreign minister says during China visit

      Ukraine’s foreign minister said Tuesday it was important for Kyiv and Beijing — a close ally of Moscow — to speak directly about ending the war in Ukraine, during a visit to China.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine's top diplomat visits China, says Russia not ready for 'good faith' talks

      On visit to China for talks, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Russia was not ready to negotiate an end to the war in “good faith”. A key Russian ally, Beijing has refuted claims that it is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, and says it is seeking to bring both Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Lukashenka’s rhetoric toward Ukraine and the West has softened. His repression of Belarusians has not.

      Lukashenka is continuing his campaign of domestic repression and targeting Belarusians in exile—including the author of this article.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian ministries compare notes on long-term support for Ukraine

      On Wednesday, 24 July, Minister for Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže chaired an inter-institutional meeting on long-term support and security commitments for Ukraine, to discuss practical implementation of the agreement concluded by the President of Latvia and the President of Ukraine back in April.

    • Meduza ☛ Chechnya’s leader says a retail merger approved by Putin is a ‘hostile takeover’ executed by ‘devils.’ How a family feud over the future of Wildberries became a public scandal. — Meduza

• Environment

  • Low Tech Mag ☛ Thematic Book Series: How Circular is the Circular Economy?

    The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without environmental destruction or waste. However, growth makes a circular economy impossible, even if we recycle all raw materials and all recycling is 100% efficient. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. In addition, many modern products are too complex to recycle.

    In this series of articles, LOW←TECH MAGAZINE explores how the circularity of various technologies like bicycles, solar panels, and wind turbines evolves. Placing the recycling of resources in a historical context makes clear that we are not moving toward a circular economy but rather increasingly away from it.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Atlantic Council ☛ European energy security requires stronger power grids

      Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the urgency of strengthening Europe's power grid to meet the interrelated demands of energy security and decarbonization. Europe can build a resilient energy future by improving regional connectivity, increasing digitalization, investing in grid infrastructure, and reforming unwieldy regulations.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Species Spotlight: The Coastal Sage Scrub Oak, an Unassuming Cornerstone of its Ecosystem

• Finance

  • Quartz ☛ The Nasdaq plummets 650 points on its worst day of 2024 as Google and Tesla earnings drag down stocks

    The tech-heavy Nasdaq plummeted by over 650 points on Wednesday, marking its worst performance of the year. This sharp decline followed the release of quarterly earnings reports from Tesla and Google parent Alphabet that came late Tuesday.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Site36 ☛ Apartheid claim still considered anti-Semitic in Germany, Pride stickers “offending behaviour” against Israel

    The highest international court has found Israel to be in violation of the UN Convention on Racial Discrimination and Apartheid. The German organisation RIAS and the Berlin Register do not draw any conclusions from this.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • EFF ☛ Journalists Sue Massachusetts TV Corporation Over Bogus YouTube Takedown Demands

    The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts by Channel 781, an association of citizen journalists founded in 2021 to report on Waltham, MA, municipal affairs via its YouTube channel. The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EFF ☛ Briefing: Negotiating States Must Address Human Rights Risks in the Proposed UN Surveillance Treaty

    At a virtual briefing today, experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Access Now, Derechos Digitales, Human Rights Watch, and the International Fund for Public Interest Media outlined the human rights risks posed by the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty. They explained that the draft convention, instead of addressing core cybercrimes, is an extensive surveillance treaty that imposes intrusive domestic spying measures with little to no safeguards protecting basic rights. UN Member States are scheduled to hold a final round of negotiations about the treaty's text starting July 29.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Pentagon to review 20 Medals of Honor from Wounded Knee Massacre

    Reports about the Ghost Dance movement prompted the U.S. Army to guard reservations. On Dec. 29, 1890, troops from the 7th Cavalry were confiscating weapons from Lakota people when a struggle with a reportedly deaf man sparked a chaotic one-sided firefight. When the smoke cleared, dozens of cavalry troopers were wounded or killed by friendly fire — likely from their artillery — and hundreds of Lakota were dead.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• 404 Media ☛ Google Is the Only Search Engine That Works on Reddit Now Thanks to AI Deal

  Google is now the only search engine that can surface results from Reddit, making one of the web’s most valuable repositories of user generated content exclusive to the internet’s already dominant search engine.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: FTC vs surveillance pricing

  In antitrust law, there are many sins, but they often boil down to "price setting." That is, if a company has enough "market power" that they can dictate prices to their customers, they are committing a crime and should be punished. This is such a bedrock of neoclassical economics that it's a tautology "market power" exists where companies can "set prices"; and to "set prices," you need "market power."

  Prices are the blood cells of the market, shuttling nutrients (in the form of "information") around the sprawling colony organism composed of all the buyers, sellers, producers, consumers, intermediaries and other actors. Together, the components of this colony organism all act on the information contained in the "price signals" to pursue their own self-interest. Each self-interested action puts more information into the system, triggering more action. Together, price signals and the actions they evince eventually "discover" the price, an abstraction that is yanked out of the immaterial plane of pure ideas and into our grubby, physical world, causing mines to re-open, shipping containers and pipelines to spark to life, factories to retool, trucks to fan out across the nation, retailers to place ads and hoist SALE banners over their premises, and consumers to race to those displays and open their wallets.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Sustains Nike's Opposition to "4IR", Finding Confusion Likely with "AIR" For Shirts

    Footwear behemoth Nike, Inc. ran over pro se Applicant Timothy Jinks in this opposition to registration of the mark 4IR for "shirts." The Board found confusion likely with Nike's common law mark AIR for various types of shirts. Not a single DuPont factor weighed in applicant's favor. NIKE, Inc. v. Timothy Jinks, Opposition No. 91278263 (July 9, 2024) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Thomas W. Wellington).

• Copyrights

  • Public Knowledge ☛ The COPIED Act Is an End Run around Copyright Law

    This is the wrong bill, at the wrong time, from the wrong policymakers, to address complex questions of copyright monopoly and generative artificial intelligence.

  • Techdirt ☛ A Rare Copyright Win For The Public; But A Small One, Only In Canada, And Possibly Temporary

    It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger – creating a kind of copyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was the WIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition of any circumvention of copyright protection systems for any reason – even if it were for a legal purpose. This meant, for example, that if a work’s copyright had expired, it would be nonetheless illegal to access this public domain work if doing so required circumvention of any protection that had been applied. In effect, copyright term would become infinite.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Portal ‘Hikari-no-Akari’ Shuts Down Following Legal Pressure

    Hikari-no-Akari, a long-established pirate site that specialized in Japanese music, has closed its doors voluntarily. The drastic decision comes shortly after Sony Music Entertainment Japan obtained a subpoena, requiring Cloudflare to share the personal details of the operator. Despite the shutdown, the Recording Industry Association of Japan still plans to hold the site's operator accountable.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Five Men Behind Huge Pirate Streaming Site Want Their Convictions Overturned

    Five men found guilty of operating one of the largest pirate streaming services in the U.S. have filed requests for their convictions to be overturned. Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber, were convicted last month by a Las Vegas jury. Four of the men face up to 60 months in prison while Dallmann's maximum is 48 years.

  • Creative Commons ☛ Questions for Consideration on Hey Hi (AI) & the Commons

    “Eight eyes. Engraving after C. Le Brun” by Charles Le Brun is licensed via CC0. The intersection of AI, copyright, creativity, and the commons has been a focal point of conversations within our community for the past couple of years.