Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Low-Gravity Playground Looks Highly Entertaining (and Useful)

  With US astronauts scheduled to return to the Moon in 2026, it might be nice for them to really and truly know ahead of time what the gravity situation is going to be like. At 1/6th Earth’s gravity, the difference can be difficult to simulate.

• Tedium ☛ Cassingle Culture

  Why the single version of the cassette didn’t feel as worthy of a purchase as, say, a 45. Or, perhaps, even a digital download.

• Flamed Fury ☛ Rebuilding The Web

  This post isn’t about rewilding the web or building out new infrastructure to compete with big tech, but how we, as members and participants of the independent web, can help rebuild the connections that made the web diverse and fun to surf again.

• Dan Q ☛ Shared Email Addresses

  Sure, the need for most of these solutions would evaporate instantly if more services supported multi-user or delegated access3. But outside of that fantasy world, shared aliases seem to be pretty useful!

• Dustin ☛ This site will be deleted

  If you read this in your RSS reader, there will be no more posts, and the feed will eventually 404, so you could remove it from your list now if you want.

• Science

  • Science Daily ☛ Why males pack a powerful punch

    But even with roughly uniform levels of fitness, the males' average power during a punching motion was 162% greater than females', with the least-powerful man still stronger than the most powerful woman. Such a distinction between genders, Carrier says, develops with time and with purpose.

• Education

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Learning your own learning process

    I wanted to look at whatever they had for me to look at and notice what about it stood out to me — or if nothing did, wonder why it was important. To see it as it really exists first, to look with unfiltered eyes, and then to apply a label.

• Hardware

  • The Age AU ☛ Cirque du Soleil Luzia at Claremont Showgrounds Perth

    “As far as I’m aware, there isn’t anything else out there that travels like this,” he explains. “I’ve seen plenty of rain curtains before, but they’re always fixed. To bring something like this on the road is a pretty complex thing to do.”

    Westland hails from Tasmania, where he originally did his apprenticeship as a plumber. His job saw him relocate to Perth, and eventually to Canada. It was there he made the industry contacts that led him to join the Cirque during its London season of Luzia.

  • Hackaday ☛ Printed Portable Computer Inspired By The Classics

    These days, laptop computers are all more or less the same, at least externally. Some are thicker than others, they might come in different colors, or with a 360° hinge that lets you flip the screen around the back and use it as a tablet, but overall they’ve all got the same shape and proportions. The industry, and indeed the users, eventually agreed on the best way to make a computer portable and are now fully committed to it.

  • Hackaday ☛ An RC Tracked Robot, Without The Pain

    Small robots can be found at all levels from STEM toys for kids all the way through to complex hacker projects. Somewhere along that line between easy enough for anyone to build and interesting enough for hackers lies the PlayCar, from [ComfySpace]. It’s a small build-it-yourself tracked robot that’s controlled from your smartphone via an app.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Demo Party On A Chip

    The demoscene has provided our community with its artistic outlet since the first computers which could handle graphics, and has stayed at the forefront of technology all the way. For all that though, there’s a frontier it hasn’t yet entirely conquered, which exists in the realm of silicon. To address this cones the ever awesome Tiny Tapeoput, who are bringing their ASIC-for-the-masses scheme to the world of demos with an ASIC demo competition.

  • Hackaday ☛ You’ve Got The Portable Radio, Now What About The Antenna?

    There’s an old saying in the amateur radio community that when it comes to antennas all you need is a piece of wet string. This may be a little fanciful, but it’s certainly true that an effective antenna can be made with surprisingly little in the way of conductor. It’s something [Evan Pratten VZ3ZZA] demonstrates amply with a description of the antenna he took camping in a Canadian provincial park.

  • Hackaday ☛ The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart: A Maglev Bridge To Life

    Outside of the brain, the heart is probably the organ that you miss the most when it ceases to function correctly. Unfortunately, as we cannot grow custom replacement hearts yet, we have to keep heart patients alive long enough for them to receive a donor heart. Yet despite the heart being essentially a blood pump, engineering even a short-term artificial replacement has been a struggle for many decades. A new contender has now arrived in the BiVACOR TAH (total artificial heart), which just had the first prototype implanted in a human patient.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ We May Have Found a Target For Treating The Fatigue of Long COVID

    Here's where it begins.

  • LRT ☛ Housing affordability in Lithuania still below pre-pandemic levels – what can be done?

    Housing affordability in Lithuania is still worse than it was before the Covid 19 pandemic. The Bank of Lithuania argues that regulation should discourage housing-as-investment purchases, while some politicians argue for a property tax.

  • No, “right-to-try” has not “saved thousands of lives,” contrary to Donald Trump’s claims

    Back in the beforetime (i.e., before 2020, when COVID-19 changed everything), a frequent topic for me dating back a decade was the push for “right-to-try” laws. The very first time that I wrote about “right-to-try,” I compared the idea to the movie Dallas Buyers’ Club, noting that it might make material for a great movie but that it was terrible for patients and terrible policy. (More detail on why a little later.) I also noted how, with the support of the “free market” Goldwater Institute, right-to-try laws started metastasizing to various states, including my own. Ultimately, these laws passed in state after state after state. As long as they stayed at the state level, however, right-to-try laws were largely performative and ceremonial, given that the federal government, through the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), regulates drug approval, not the states. Basically, these state laws gave the illusion that something was being done, when, in fact, at the federal level nothing changed.

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Integrate rest into your work and practice

    Resting depends on what you're resting from. If you're doing labor all day, then rest will probably involve sitting down, and it may not preclude thinking hard. If you're programming all day, then rest will probably involve stepping away from the computer and doing something physical, which might involve moving heavy things. And if you're very fatigued, resting might involve doing nothing: no thinking, no lifting, just lying in bed.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Screen Time

    In closing, I love the quote from David Foster Wallace that I used as a lead on this post. I have shared it many times. I still believe in its inner truth as it applies to algorithmically driven social media and meaningless doom scrolling. I don't subscribe to it as a blanket condemnation of the entire medium, however.

  • Deseret Media ☛ 'We kind of lost him': Why Jordan School District was named lead plaintiff in suit against Meta, TikTok

    After being given a cellphone for his birthday as he entered middle school, Logan Dunford experienced a dramatic shift in personality, his father said, leading to slipping grades and negative mental health impacts.

    "Logan was not prepared to be sucked into the social media world that was waiting for him, nor were his mother and I aware of what was happening on the other end to suck him in," Dunford said. "We kind of lost him."

    That struggle continued for years, he said, until "on his own, Logan decided that the problem was not his cellphone, it was social media. And on his own, he decided to delete all social media apps from his phone."

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft admits 8.5 million CrowdStruck machines estimate was lowballed

    Microsoft has admitted that its estimate of 8.5 million machines crashed by CrowdStrike's faulty software update was almost certainly too low, and vowed to reduce infosec vendors' reliance on the kernel drivers at the heart of the issue.

    Redmond posted an incident response blog on Saturday – titled "Windows Security best practices for integrating and managing security tools" – in which veep for enterprise and OS security David Weston explained how Microsoft measured the impact of the incident: by accessing crash reports shared by customers.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • By the Numbers: Fear of layoffs and AI have far-reaching organizational effects [Ed: Nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence (AI)]

    But according to a report from MarketWatch, layoff figures are on a slight downswing year-over-year. The report found that 70% of employees are bracing themselves for perceived impending layoffs, whether they’re likely to happen or not. More than half (55%) of employees who took part in the survey believe that the national unemployment rate is higher than it was during the height of the COVID pandemic (which topped out at 11%), despite it currently being just 4.1%.

  • San Francisco Real Estate Struggles Amid Record Office Vacancy Rates, Despite AI Boom [Ed: There is no "boom", it's just a bubble that will go boom! Microsoft shut down offices there...]

    San Francisco’s commercial real estate woes are largely attributed to two major factors: the struggle to bring employees back to the office post-Covid and a slowdown in the tech sector, which has led to over 530,000 layoffs since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi. Major tech companies like Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, and Salesforce have all experienced significant downsizing.

  • The Verge ☛ The gymnastics world braces for an AI future

    The governing body of international gymnastics has pushed for an AI-assisted aid for judges. But what justifies the tremendous expense for such a system? The World Gymnastics Championship held an answer, and it might not have anything to do with gymnastics at all. The governing body of international gymnastics has pushed for an AI-assisted aid for judges. But what justifies the tremendous expense for such a system? The World Gymnastics Championship held an answer, and it might not have anything to do with gymnastics at all.

  • 404 Media ☛ Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)

    Dark Visitors tracks hundreds of web crawlers and scrapers, attempts to explain what each scraper does, and lets website owners constantly update their site’s robots.txt file, which is a set of instructions that tells bots if they have permission to crawl a site. We have seen time and time again that AI companies will often find surreptitious ways of crawling sites that they aren’t supposed to, or, in some cases, they simply ignore robots.txt. This has led some sites to block all crawlers regardless of what they do, or to only specifically allow a few select ones (Reddit is now only being crawled by Google because of this). This can have the effect of blocking search engines, internet archiving tools, and academic research, even if that wasn’t the website owner’s intention.

  • The Register UK ☛ Meta's AI safety system defeated by the space bar

    Meta's machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks – special prompts to make neural networks behave inappropriately – is itself vulnerable to, you guessed it, prompt injection attacks.

  • The Washington Post ☛ A field guide on how to spot fake pictures

    Photographs have a profound power to shape our understanding of the world. And it’s never been more important to be able to discern which ones are genuine and which are doctored to push an agenda, especially in the wake of dramatic or contentious moments.

    But advances in technology mean that spotting manipulated or even totally AI-generated imagery is only getting trickier.

  • BoingBoing ☛ AI crawlers run up a website's hosting bill

    Web crawlers for search have long used a surprising amount of bandwidth and sometimes CPU resources. Website owners, however, want these crawls in most cases because they are how discovery now works on the Internet. AI crawlers training themselves on the content, however, really doesn't benefit the site owner and, in this case, costs them a lot of money.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Research in Detecting AI-Generated Videos - Schneier on Security

    The latest in what will be a continuing arms race between creating and detecting videos: [...]

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ We've Been Thinking About AI All Wrong

    Great question. An Intelligence Pipeline is a series of Intelligence Tasks that result in a useful output. And Intelligence Tasks are functions that can only be done using human intelligence.

    Here are some real-world examples.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The other shoe dropping on 'AI' and office work

    What’s interesting about this is that the study isn’t trying to measure productivity but instead feelings of productivity.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ Catholic Priest Sues Grindr After He Gets Caught Using It

      Later allowed to resume ministry as a parochial administrator, Burrill is now suing Grindr in California's Superior Court for selling the data that ultimately outed him — and to find out who, exactly, his information was sold to.

      "We want answers so we can use that as a warning to other Grindr users," explained Gregory Helmer, the priest's attorney, in an interview with WaPo.

    • EFF ☛ Senators Expose Car Companies’ Terrible Data Privacy Practices

      When it comes to the price that companies can get for selling your driving data, the numbers range wildly, but the data isn’t as valuable as you might imagine. The letter states that Honda sold the data on about 97,000 cars to an analytics company, Verisk—which turned around and sold the data to insurance companies—for $25,920, or 26 cents per car. Hyundai got a better deal, but still not astronomical numbers: Verisk paid Hyundai $1,043,315.69, or 61 cents per car. GM declined to share details about its sales.

      The letter also reveals that while GM stopped sharing driving data after The New York Times’ investigation, it did not stop sharing location data, which it’s been sharing for years. GM collects and shares location data on every car that’s connected to the [Internet], and doesn’t offer a way to opt out beyond disabling [Internet]-connectivity altogether. According to the letter, GM refused to name the company it’s sharing the location data with currently. While GM claims the location data is de-identified, there is no way to de-identify location data. With just one data point, where the car is parked most often, it becomes obvious where a person lives.

    • EFF ☛ EFF’s Concerns About the UN Draft Cybercrime Convention

      The proposed UN Cybercrime Convention is an extensive surveillance pact that imposes intrusive domestic surveillance measures and mandates states’ cooperation in surveillance and data sharing. It requires states to aid each other in cybercrime investigations and prosecutions, allowing the collection, preservation, and sharing of electronic evidence for any crime deemed serious by a country’s domestic law, with minimal human rights safeguards. This cooperation extends even to countries with poor human rights records. Negotiations for this treaty began in 2022, initiated by a controversial proposal from the Russian Federation. If adopted, it will rewrite surveillance laws worldwide. Millions of people, including human rights defenders, journalists, security researchers, and those speaking truth to power, will be affected. Without clear, enforceable safeguards, the treaty risks becoming a tool for state abuse and transnational repression rather than protecting human rights. Below are our main concerns. For a comprehensive list, please refer to our redlines and appeal to EU Delegates.

    • EFF ☛ Why You Should Hate the Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty

      Tech companies and their overseas staff, under certain treaty provisions, would be compelled to help governments in their pursuit of people’s data, locations, and communications, subject to domestic jurisdictions, many of which establish draconian fines.

      We have called the draft convention a blank check for surveillance abuse that can be used as a tool for human rights violations and transnational repression. It’s an international treaty that everyone should know and care about because it threatens the rights and freedoms of people across the globe. Keep an eye out for our posts explaining how.

    • RTL ☛ Targeting 'dissenting voices': UN cybercrime text faces new scrutiny from tech firms, rights groups

      The document could thus require governments "to facilitate investigations into things like same-sex conduct, criticizing one's government, investigative reporting, participating in protests or being a whistleblower," said Human Rights Watch executive director Tirana Hassan.

      Rather than a cybercrime treaty, the text "actually resembles a global surveillance treaty that would address all crime," she told reporters, adding that it exceeds "even the most expansive possible interpretation of its mandate."

      The 40-nation Freedom Online Coalition warned that the treaty "could be misused as a tool for acts of domestic and transnational repression and other human rights violations."

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ UK police say two children killed in 'ferocious' knife attack, suspect arrested

    Two children were killed and 11 people injured in a stabbing incident at a dance class in northwest England on Monday, UK police said. A 17-year-old from Banks in Lancashire has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

  • RTL ☛ 80th anniversary of WWII escapes: Exploring northern Luxembourg's 'Smugglers' Path'

    On 30 August 1942, the German occupiers ordered the forced conscription of Luxembourgish men born between 1920 and 1924, later extending this to those born up to 1927. Many of the conscripted men went into hiding to avoid military service, seeking refuge on farms and in the forests around Troisvierges in northern Luxembourg. As these hiding places became overcrowded, escape routes were sought.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ French police arrest far-left suspect after rail sabotage

    However, Darmanin warned against jumping to conclusions because the perpetrators could have been manipulated.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ U.S. Department Of Justice Urges Court To Reject TikTok Appeal

    The government argues that TikTok poses a significant national security threat due to its Chinese ownership, citing concerns about data collection and potential manipulation of content by the Chinese government. To support its case, the Justice Department is submitting a classified document to the court, detailing additional security concerns and including declarations from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the DOJ’s National Security Division.

  • JURIST ☛ Sudan rights group says at least 25 killed in RSF attacks on El-Fasher

    At least 25 people were reportedly killed and dozens wounded in an attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Saturday on the city of El-Fasher in western Darfur, local pro-democracy activists El-Fasher Resistance Committees shared on Facebook.

  • BIA Net ☛ Erdoğan says Turkey could use military force against Israel ‘just as we did in Libya and Karabakh’

    The president has both criticized Netanyahu’s speech in the US Congress and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for rejecting their invitation to speak in Turkey’s parliament.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Hits Lebanon in Overnight Strikes After Soccer Field Attack

    Diplomats were scrambling to prevent a surge in fighting, officials said, after Israel retaliated for the rocket fire that killed at least 12 children and teenagers in an Israeli-controlled town.

  • New York Times ☛ A Village’s Anguish Over 12 Children Lost to a Rocket Strike

    A stunned hush of collective mourning fell over Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, after the attack from Lebanon.

  • JURIST ☛ Gaza health ministry reports Israel Defence Forces kill 30 in school strike

    Israel struck a school in central Gaza on Saturday, and the Hamas-run health ministry reported that the attack injured 100 and killed at least 30 Palestinians.

  • France24 ☛ Israeli strike on Gaza school housing field hospital kills at least 30, says health ministry

    An Israeli air strike hit a school housing a field hospital in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people and wounding more than 100, said the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The Israeli military said its strike targeted Hamas "terrorists" operating from the school.

  • France24 ☛ Deadly strike fired from Lebanon into Golan Heights sparks fears of regional war

    A rocket fired from Lebanon struck a football pitch and killed at least 12 young people in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on Saturday, Israel's army said, claiming the rocket was fired by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, who denied any connection to the incident. This strike raised fears of a wider regional conflict, as it is the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, according to the military's chief spokesman.

  • RFA ☛ North Korea increases production of 152-millimeter artillery shells

    Officials in the country assume that the shells are for Russia to use in Ukraine.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ Zelensky visits frontline Kharkiv region as Russia claims advances in Donetsk

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday visited special forces in the Kharkiv region, where the military said it had repelled six Russian attacks over the past day. Zelensky’s visit comes as Moscow said its forces had captured Vovche, a settlement in the Donetsk region northwest of Avdiivka, and Progres and Yevgenivka, villages a few kilometres away from Vovche.

    • JURIST ☛ 5 civilians dead and 15 wounded in Ukraine province following Russia strikes

      Russian military officers allegedly killed five civilians and wounded 15 on Saturday following strikes in the Donetsk province, Ukraine. Vadym Filashkin, the governor of the province, reported that the shelling wounded more civilians, including children. Three people were killed in Ivanivka, one in Kostiantynivka, and one in Toretsk.

    • LRT ☛ Russian media exiles get a hard landing in the Baltics

      After Russia invaded Ukraine, Riga became a hub for exiled Russian journalists. Among the first to arrive was TV Rain, a flagship of independent Russian media.

    • RFERL ☛ Fencer Kharlan Wins Ukraine's First Paris Olympics Medal

      Saber-fencing world champion Olha Kharlan won Ukraine's first medal at the Paris Olympics on July 29, giving her country something to celebrate as it battles invading Russian forces.

    • RFERL ☛ Slovakia Threatens To Halt Diesel Supplies To Ukraine Unless Oil Transit Restored

      Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on July 29 that his country would halt diesel supplies to Ukraine if Kyiv fails to restore oil flows from Russian group LUKoil through its territory.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Announces Up To $1.7 Billion In Security Assistance For Ukraine

      The United States on July 29 announced two assistance packages for Ukraine valued at $1.7 billion.

    • RFERL ☛ Another Indian National Dies Fighting With Russian Troops In Ukraine

      NDTV television in India reported on July 29 that another Indian citizen has died while fighting alongside Russia's armed forces in Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Warrants Issued For Members Of Anti-War Youth Movement In Exile

      A Moscow court on July 29 issued arrest warrants for two more self-exiled members of the Vesna youth movement over their public condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Strikes Russian Energy Facilities For Second Day In A Row

      Ukraine launched a wave of drone strikes deep inside Russian territory early on July 29, damaging energy facilities in two regions, Russia's Defense Ministry and regional officials said a day after a reported Ukrainian attack set a Russian oil refinery on fire.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine's freedom, book by book

      Book reading, from the war trenches to the bedrooms of children, has helped Ukrainians assert their cultural independence and mental toughness.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine’s Olha Kharlan Wins Bronze in Fencing at Olympics

      The war has torn apart old alliances in fencing, and heightened the acrimony between Russia and Ukraine.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Everyone is afraid’: The Kremlin says it wants Russian soldiers who fought in Ukraine to take up ‘leading positions’ in government — so where are they? — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Accreditation Revoked For 4 Russian Journalists Covering Olympics

      The Paris 2024 Organizing Committee confirmed on July 29 that the accreditation of four journalists with the Russian state-run news agency TASS has been revoked.

    • RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Veteran Russian Rights Defender Orlov's Whereabouts Unknown

      Less than three weeks after the Moscow City Court upheld the 30-month imprisonment of veteran rights activist Oleg Orlov was moved from a detention center in the city of Syzran, the Memorial human rights group said on July 29.

    • RFERL ☛ Prosecutors Seek Lengthy Prison Terms For 2 Jailed Chechens Allegedly From Basayev's Group

      Prosecutors asked a military court in Russia to sentence two alleged members of the late Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev’s group to 24 years in prison each over their alleged participation in a terrorist attack in Chechnya in 2005.

    • RFERL ☛ Vucic Says Serbia, Russia To Jointly Mark 80th Anniversary Of Belgrade Liberation

      Serbia and Russia have agreed to jointly mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade from under the Nazi occupation, President Aleksandar Vucic said July 29 after talks with Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Bocan-Kharchenko.

    • RFERL ☛ Moscow-Friendly Armenian Blogger Barred From Entering Moldova

      Armenian blogger Mika Badalian, who is close to fugitive pro-Russian Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor, was barred from entering Moldova last week, RFE/RL has learned.

    • RFERL ☛ 1 Dead, Several Missing After Dam Bursts On Major Shipping Canal In Russia

      Officials in Russia's northwestern region of Karelia said on July 29 that one person died and several are missing after a temporary dam burst on the White Sea-Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal).

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Russia is relying on unwitting Americans to spread election disinformation, US officials say

      By DAVID KLEPPER WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election.

    • Meduza ☛ Whereabouts of four Russian political prisoners unknown after unexpected prison transfers — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Train derails in Russia’s Volgograd region, reportedly injuring at least 140 people — Meduza

    • LRT ☛ Latvia asks Lithuania’s assistance in policing its border with Belarus

      Latvia has asked Lithuania to send 10–15 border guards to help it handle irregular migration on its border with Belarus.

    • LRT ☛ Poland to let security forces use arms with impunity, activists bemoan ‘license to kill’

      Polish lawmakers on Friday, July 26, voted to allow the security forces to use lethal weapons with impunity in response to active threats, including at the tense border with Belarus.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ How to Blunt the ‘New Climate Denial’ with Better Language

  • Energy/Transportation

    • SANS ☛ 'Quickie: Password Cracking' Energy, (Sun, Jul 28th)

    • Futurism ☛ [Cryptocurrency] Fans Disgusted by Trump's Rambling Appearance at Bitcoin Event

      The price of Bitcoin actually fell following Trump's remarks, indicating a muted response.

      Even [cryptocurrency] enthusiasts who were willing to give Trump a pass for his regressive beliefs, criminal record, and keen interest in ending democracy in the US weren't impressed.

    • Wired ☛ People Are Using Memecoins to Bet on the US Election

      Beyond financial speculation, the coins serve no purpose and promise no utility, but over the course of the US presidential election campaign, their market performance has correlated with the political fortunes of the individuals they depict.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Renewables overtake fossil fuels to provide 30% of EU electricity

      Wind turbines and solar panels have overtaken fossil fuels to generate 30% of the European Union’s electricity in the first half of the year, a report has found.

      Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

    • Molly White ☛ When did cryptocurrency policy become a voter issue?

      Congressional hopefuls adding to their platforms unexpected promises about supporting “blockchain innovation”.

      Especially combined with the broad perception among everyday people that cryptocurrency is a years-old fad that died off somewhere between NFTs becoming cringe and FTX exploding, I’m seeing a lot of confusion: when did cryptocurrency suddenly become a major issue for US voters?

      I don’t believe that it has.

    • Hamilton Nolan ☛ [Cryptocurrency], As a Political Characteristic

      The first thing that needs to be said about cryptocurrency is that it has no socially redeeming reason to exist. The primary thing that it is actually useful for is buying things on the [Internet] that are illegal. I guess there could be a situation where freedom fighters could use it to purchase weapons to wage a revolution against a repressive regime. That is a pretty niche scenario though. That is not the sort of thing that causes big banks and investment firms and institutional money managers to flock to something. That’s not why any of us are talking about this stuff.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Rwanda’s Inyambo: The Cows Who Are Treated Like Royalty — But Still Face Risks to Their Survival

• Finance

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ World’s top auction houses racing to expand in Hong Kong despite economic slowdown

    Three of the world’s top auction houses are racing to expand in Hong Kong, eager to woo young Asian buyers even as the global art market retreats from pandemic-era highs.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • IT Wire ☛ Lenovo names Dr.Tolga Kurtoglu as new Chief Technology Officer

    Lenovo says Dr. Kurtoglu, renowned for his groundbreaking work in the IT industry, brings a wealth of experience from leading roles within the IT industry, including CTO of HP Inc. and Global Head of HP Labs, CEO of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and lead for the product development group at Dell. He holds numerous patents and has published multiple papers in the fields of automation and machine intelligence, computational design, systems engineering, and 3D/digital manufacturing.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Inside the powerful Peter Thiel tech network that launched JD Vance

    “The best way for them to [instate] their elitist scheme and reactionary views is regulatory capture,” investor Del Johnson posted on X, using a term to describe the private sector’s control of the regulatory process. “You haven’t seen anything yet if you let the VC class get into the presidency.”

    This report is based on 17 interviews with people familiar with Vance’s rise in the Valley, his relationship with Thiel, and the tech world’s ambitions for him should he win the country’s second-highest political office, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationships.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Thoughts on politics and communities

    Years ago, during the COVID era, the 37signals company got into hot water online because they announced in an internal communication that they were going to ban “societal and political discussions” on their internal work chat. The announcement is online if you’re interested in reading it.

    People online reacted in all sorts of ways to that news and many, many opinion pieces got published. I remember talking about it with a few people privately and had some interesting conversations around that topic. As you can see, years later, positions on topics such as politics and religion are still controversial in the context of online spaces.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Utopian ghouls

    I’m a huge proponent of UBI as soon as possible, it’s one of my main issues, but I’m at the same time scared of it and see it as not sustainable. So why am I so for it? Because I see it as a stepping stone to tide us over while we figure out new economics, new ways to handle tasks and give out resources, not as the be-all-end-all.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Politics and Communities

    People on 500 Social can still seek out and discuss political topics with others, I'd just prefer they didn't publish post about them there. But if someone is having a political discussion and a member of 500 Social wants to chime in, who am I to say they can't? Of course they can. Like I said, it's important.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Manipulated video shared by Musk mimics Harris' voice, raising concerns about AI in politics

      A manipulated video that mimics the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she did not say is raising concerns about the power of artificial intelligence to mislead with Election Day about three months away.

      The video gained attention after tech billionaire Elon Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday evening without explicitly noting it was originally released as parody.

      The video uses many of the same visuals as a real ad that Harris, the likely Democratic president nominee, released last week launching her campaign. But the video swaps out the voice-over audio with another voice that convincingly impersonates Harris.

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ Seven favourite hidden narratives of Russian propaganda

      Nevertheless, when analysing narratives about Ukraine and its war against unprovoked Russian aggression, one can find some stories much more digestible than others and more difficult to be labelled as pure propaganda from Russia or its political and media satellites. The text below will be useful to those who need arguments in such disputes.

    • VOA News ☛ Russia’s top spymaster falsely claims Kremlin does not interfere in other countries’ affairs

      Interference in the internal political affairs of foreign nations is a deeply rooted key part of Russia’s foreign policy. To project influence, Moscow habitually goes beyond diplomacy, using malicious hybrid strategies and, in many instances, war.

      Just a few widely reported, comprehensively documented examples of Russian meddling in the affairs of foreign nations: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ Thailand court jails activist Arnon Nampa for four extra years upon royal defamation convictions

    A Thailand court imposed Thursday an additional four-year imprisonment on an activist and human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa for defaming the Thai royal family and violating the Computer Crime Act through two social control media posts made between January and April 2021.

  • The Register UK ☛ Minister: Malaysia is working on an [Internet] kill switch

    Said did not expand on what Malaysia wants the power to block, nor the circumstances under which it will be permissible to do so. She did write that the government wants social media platform providers and [Internet] messaging services to take more responsibility for the role their products play in online crimes such as fraud, child sexual abuse material, sexual harassment and solicitation, plus bullying. Such actions, the minster explained, are "in line with legislative initiatives enforced in various other countries."

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ US Still Won't Comply With Spanish Investigation Into CIA-Backed Operation That Targeted Assange

  • VOA News ☛ Morocco pardons 3 journalists held for years

    Human Rights Watch has accused Morocco of using criminal trials, especially for alleged sexual offenses, as "techniques of repression" to silence journalists and government critics.

  • France24 ☛ Morocco's King Mohamed VI pardons imprisoned journalists, activists

    Morocco's King Mohammed VI pardoned three journalists, as well as an activist and a historian on Monday to mark his 25th anniversary as monarch. Rights groups criticised the journalists' detentions as repressive tactics to silence critics. In total, 2,476 people were pardoned.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Papers Please ☛ 5th Circuit reads travel blacklists into Federal law

    In a decision issued last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has offered the first appellate opinion on whether there is any basis in law for the U.S. government’s creation and use of a system of “watchlists” (blacklists) to determine who is allowed to travel by air and how they are treated when they travel, as well as to impose other sanctions.

    Numerous lawsuits have challenged various aspects of the government’s blacklistsing system and its application to airline passengers, but this is the first time that any U.S. appellate court has ruled on whether Congress has given the various agencies that created, maintain, and use these lists any statutory authority to so so.

    The 5th Circuit panel found multiple mentions in Federal law of the use “databases” for “screening” of airline passengers. But that begs the question that was actually presented. As the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued in their brief on appeal:

  • The Register UK ☛ CBP needs warrant to search phones, says yet another judge

    US border agents must obtain a warrant, in New York at least, to search anyone's phone and other electronic device when traveling in or out of the country, another federal judge has ruled.

    Judge Nina Morrison of the Eastern District of New York issued a decision [PDF] last week that Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) officials need a warrant to search citizens and non-citizens' electronics in all but the most exceptional of circumstances.

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple agrees to terms with US store union for first time

    Apple is on the verge of entering its first-ever agreement with a stateside retail employee union, caving to demands from store workers who threatened to walk off the job in May.

    The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers' Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (IAM CORE) said Friday it had reached a tentative three-year deal between Cook & Co and the roughly 85 employees the union represents at Apple's store in Towson, Maryland.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Various Global Efforts to Tackle Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Issue

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 200 million women and girls living today have undergone FGM, with the highest prevalence found in countries across Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia (WHO, 2020). The practice varies widely in form and severity, encompassing everything from the removal of the clitoral hood to more severe forms that involve infibulation. FGM has no health benefits and is associated with numerous complications, including severe pain, bleeding, infection, and long-term psychological effects (WHO, 2018).

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ French fiber sabotaged to cause net outages across country

    Major French telecom firms Bouygues, SFR, and Free were all affected by the attacks, which apparently could have only been carried out by an "axe or grinder," according to an SFR spokesperson in a statement to Le Monde. SFR didn't specify what parts of its cable network were hit, merely saying it was vandalized in "several departments."

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Fiber Optic Cable Sabotage Disrupts France's Telecom Network

    SFR, France’s second-largest telecom operator, confirmed extensive damage to its long-distance cables. “Our long-distance fiber optic network was the victim of acts of vandalism last night in several departments. Disruptions may remain in the most impacted areas. All our teams are mobilized to allow you to connect again with those and what are essential to you,” the telecom operator said.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Very short note on the EU's DMA and DSA regulations

  Americans also overestimate how emotionally invested Europeans are in their own big companies. You’re generally not going to get the same sort of emotional “how dare they touch my favourite company” when the EU acts against a big European website.

  The DSA attempts to regulate “harmful content” on social media and that’s when things get quite a bit iffy as a politician’s idea of harmful isn’t the same as that of a child welfare organisation, researcher, or education expert.

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Lovevery Argues that APEX Jurisdiction Holding Undermines Anti-Counterfeiting Efforts

    Most recently, toy-maker Lovevery has filed an amicus brief supporting en banc review.  Lovevery is an American company that specializes in educational toys for babies and toddlers. According to its motion for leave to file an amicus brief, Lovevery does a substantial portion of its business through online retailers like Amazon. The company says it has a strong interest in the case because the panel’s expansive “extrajudicial enforcement” theory of personal jurisdiction could impede  its ability to protect patent monopoly rights without risking being sued in distant forums.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ High-Tech Karaoke Piracy Crackdown, 18 Arrested and Streaming Servers Seized

    Karaoke may not scale the heights of popularity it once did in the West, but after more than 50 years the format may still be generating around $5 billion a year for rightsholders. That may explain why Hong Kong Customs carried out a month-long crackdown, arrested 18 people, and for the very first time, seized hardware and remote servers powering an online karaoke streaming system.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ 'Indian Police Pinpoint Seat of Movie “Camming” Pirate by Analyzing the Film Angle'

    Recording first-run movies in cinemas, an activity commonly known as "camming", is seen as a major threat to filmmakers worldwide. In India, the practice was elevated to a criminal offense last year and law enforcement is on high alert. A few days ago, a camming suspect was caught in the act after the filming angle of a previous upload, reportedly identified the cinema and a 'hot seat'.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Ad Blocking Infringes Copyright? Ancient Sony Cheat Lawsuit May Prove Pivotal

    Despite suffering losses in a legal battle that has dragged on for years, German publishing giant Axel Springer is refusing to give up on its claim that ad blocking software illegally interferes with its business model. Thus far, Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, has come out on top. However, with Axel Springer's reformulated claims now rooted firmly in copyright law, the stakes are high at Germany's highest court. A long-running lawsuit involving Sony and a cheat device may yet hold the answers.

  • Digital Music News ☛ South Africa Stands Its Ground On Fair Use Expansions Vs. AI

    The International Intellectual [sic] Property [sic] Alliance (IIPA), which represents the ESA, MPA, and RIAA, among others, recently published its findings on the latest eligibility review of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Led by the US Trade Representative (USTR), the process determines which sub-Saharan African countries are eligible for certain trade benefits, and which, at the opposite end of the spectrum, should be sanctioned.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

    Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.

    That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.