Leftovers

• Mediocregopher ☛ 🚀 What is Gemini?

  Gemini is a new minimilistic internet protocol which values the user's reading experience over all else. In other words it's a new, alternative web.

  At its core, browsing gemini feels very much like the web you're familiar with: you enter a URL into the browser, and the browser displays the content at that URL to you. Where gemini and the web differ is in the user experience.

  Gemini encourages a slower pace of web browsing, centered around text rather than images and video. To understand what browsing gemini feels like, look no further than this page: all text and links, extremely fast, with no bells-and-whistles. Gemini users prefer the experience of reading a well-written article or journal entry over a big, interactive, media-rich social media feed.

• Flamed Fury ☛ IndieWeb 101

  Great question, here’s how I view it:

  IndieWeb: A movement focused on specific protocols and practices (like POSSE) to create a decentralised, user-controlled web.

  Independent Web: A broader collection of individuals who build and maintain their websites independently, without necessarily adopting the specific protocols of the Indie Web. Also known as the small web, smol web, web revival etc…

  Both the IndieWeb and Independent Web promote the idea of owning your own content, on your own website, ultimately giving you control over your data, privacy and how you interact with others online.

• Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Panic Stations

  Someone kindly mentioned that a link I POSSEd to Mastodon seemed to be broken. I went to check, and was faced with a terrifying screen that told me that my CMS was correctly installed, but no Administrator had been created and would I like to create one. Yikes!

• Lou Plummer ☛ I Just Gotta Be Me

  I don't fault anyone who blogs anonymously or chooses not to reveal much personal info. We are all in different places in our lives. We have different needs, different comfort levels and different goals. I'm a pretty happy guy and I feel like a success, not because I achieved a bunch of lofty goals or made millions of dollars. I didn't. What I did do was survive stuff that could have killed me or made me permanently miserable. I have decent or better than decent relationships with every important person in my life. I have the gumption to speak out wherever and whenever I feel like it and I do so regularly, on this blog, at the dinner table, in the office and in public when it's called for.

• Derek Sivers ☛ How to make the best possible translation of a book?

  But then how should I approach its translation? I’m willing to spend time and money to help make the best possible translations into Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Maybe other languages, too, based on the potential audience. My books have been the primary creations of my life, and will be what’s left of me after I’m dead, so I’d like to help make great translations of them while I’m here.

• Science

  • The Scotsman ☛ Shock as research shows Stonehenge stone comes from Scotland

    But the new investigation, led by Australian scientists, concluded that the monumental Altar Stone is “95 per cent” likely to actually originate over 460 miles from Salisbury Plain in north east Scotland. The study, however, does not provide direct evidence about how the stone got to its world-famous location in Wiltshire.

    The revelation that it travelled so far will raise questions about its journey given the limits of human technology during Neolithic times.

• Education

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Your manager wants you to be productive ...

    If you think I harbor disdain for mid-level management borglings, sycophants and their minions, you're absolutely right. I do. The perfect blend of cowardice, lack of imagination, shifty morals, and inability to truly inspire others is hard to like. And yet, these seem to be the defining characteristics of the vast majority of managers in the tech world. Wherever you work, whatever your role, there's a pretty good chance, at least 80% I'd say, your manager will be Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. Or one of his near-identical clones. On top of that, your boss wants you to be productive! Hear hear.

    More disdain. Indeed, whenever I hear any workplace mention "let's measure productivity", my BS klaxons fire off. Not because the concept is bad. No. It's because the concept is completely misplaced, misguided, and impossible to achieve. And in this article, I will explain why, and also vindicate thousands upon thousands of people who tried to tell their manager it can't be done, only to be met with a blank stare of incomprehension. Begin, we shall.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Many high school students can't read. Is the solution teaching reading in every class?

    Every teacher at her San Diego charter school, Health Sciences High and Middle College, teaches students literacy skills, regardless of the subject. That’s because so many students arrive at the school struggling with basic reading, some scoring at the first- or second-grade level, said Douglas Fisher, a school administrator. Advertisement

    The goal is for high school graduates to attain “reading levels ready for college.”

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Foundry's GPU cloud opens for business, ish

    The Palo Alto, California-based cloudy upstart aims to be more than another rent-a-GPU cluster provider. A major emphasis of Foundry Cloud Platform (FCP) to help users cut through the complexity of deploying training, fine tuning, and rolling out inference models.

    Specifically, Foundry claims that if a customer reserves 1,000 GPUs for X number of hours, whether that's days or weeks, they'll actually get all that compute. This isn't a trivial task, especially with larger clusters used for things like training, as the mean time to failure can be quite low.

  • The Register UK ☛ Raptor Lake patch may only work with default power settings

    Owners of Intel's 13th and 14th Gen Core processors may need to stick to the chip giant's official power limits in order to safely use their CPUs.

    A new version of Intel's microcode limits the voltage applied to the Raptor Lake family of 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors to 1.55 volts, which is supposed to prevent the components from frying themselves. But on one such motherboard, Gigabyte's high-end Z790 Aorus Master X, that 1.55 volt limit only works if users stick to the official "Intel Default Settings" power limits.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • India Times ☛ Google Pixel 9: Google launches Pixel 9 Smartphones, Pixel Watch 3 amid renewed AI push

      But it raises questions about how well Google is safeguarding personal data and how regulators will react to the tech giant's push to make users even more dependent on its platform.

      A US judge last week handed Google a major legal blow, ruling in a landmark anti-trust case that it has maintained a monopoly with its dominant search engine.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Google announces new lineup of AI-powered Pixel 9 phones, Pixel Watch 3 and more

      Although Google has kept the details on the Tensor G4 close to the vest, the company said that it would make web browsing 20% faster and apps launch 17% faster. Android Authority reported that the chip is a semicustom chip built in collaboration with Samsung, using Arm for the central processor and graphics cores, and Google’s in-house silicon for AI, photographic processing and security.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-04 [Older] Gerber brand of infant cereal recalled due to possible bacterial contamination

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Sonos Struggles to Repair Broken App Amid Layoffs of 100 Employees.. What’s Next for the Audio Giant?

    On August 14, 2024, Sonos announced it laid off approximately 100 employees. This decision comes as the company struggles to fix its broken app while promoting its new Ace headphones. The layoffs primarily affected the marketing department, as Sonos aims to streamline operations and focus on product development.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft Services Agreement update warns of AI limitations

    In an update to the IT giant's Service Agreement, which takes effect on September 30, 2024, Redmond has declared that its Assistive AI isn't suitable for matters of consequence.

    "AI services are not designed, intended, or to be used as substitutes for professional advice," Microsoft's revised legalese explains.

  • Tim Kellogg ☛ Does Prompt Caching Make RAG Obsolete?

    Don’t change your prompt. If you have a string.format() in your prompt (i.e. dynamic data), you’re going to pay 25% more on every prompt. On the other hand, you could quickly save a ton of money if your prompt is static.

  • New York Times ☛ Uber, Facing Sexual-Assault Litigation, Pushes Plan That May Curb Suits

    Uber has spent millions trying to get a proposal on the Nevada ballot that would restrict the legal fees that bankroll many lawsuits against companies.

  • New York Times ☛ California A.I. Bill Causes Alarm in Silicon Valley

    The debate over the A.I. bill, called SB 1047, is a reflection of the arguments that have driven intense interest in artificial intelligence. Opponents believe it will choke the progress of technologies that promise to increase worker productivity, improve health care and fight climate change.

    Supporters believe the bill will help prevent disasters and place guardrails on the work of companies that are too focused on profits. Just last year, many A.I. experts and tech executives led public discussions about the risks of A.I. and even urged lawmakers in Washington to help set up those guardrails.

  • Techdirt ☛ Pittsburgh Might Be The Latest Major City To Drop ShotSpotter After Years Of Underwhelming Results

    Re-branding isn’t going to save ShotSpotter. While it would prefer to be called “SoundThinking,” its flagship product is still its acoustic detection tech — something the company claims reliably detects gunshots.

    Whatever the preferred (and trademarked) nomenclature, the claims the company makes are rarely backed up by facts. Even when it works, it still kind of doesn’t. It scrambles officers to areas where shots may have been fired, only for officers to realize there’s little value in wandering around a neighborhood in search of a shell casing or two to justify their presence, much less the tech’s existence.

  • The Record ☛ DARPA awards $14 million to semifinal winners of AI code review competition

    The two-year competition run through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was originally announced last year at the DEF CON hacking conference, pitted dozens of teams against each other in a contest to see who could use AI to create systems that can automatically secure the critical code that undergirds prominent systems used across the globe.

    More than 90 teams were whittled down to 39 before the semifinal competition took place. Each of those 39 teams was given access to AI tools provided by Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic.

    The seven winners — made up of university researchers, students and others — were announced at the end of the DEF CON conference last weekend in Las Vegas.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ DHS is planning to collect biometric data from migrant children—”down to the infant”

      The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to collect and analyze photos of the faces of migrant children at the border in a bid to improve facial recognition technology, MIT Technology Review can reveal. This includes children “down to the infant,” according to John Boyd, assistant director of the department’s Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), where a key part of his role is to research and develop future biometric identity services for the government.

      As Boyd explained at a conference in June, the key question for OBIM is, “If we pick up someone from Panama at the southern border at age four, say, and then pick them up at age six, are we going to recognize them?”

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Texas Sues GM for Collecting Driving Data without Consent - Schneier on Security

      Texas is suing General Motors for collecting driver data without consent and then selling it to insurance companies: [...]

    • CNN ☛ Texas sues General Motors, alleging illegal selling of driver data

      General Motors is the first car manufacturer to be hit with a lawsuit after the attorney general’s office opened an investigation into several manufacturers in June for allegedly collecting mass amount of data and then illegally selling it.

      With the lack of a detailed, modern data privacy and security law at the federal law, many states are stepping in to pass their own regulations to protect consumers in the ever-growing data brokerage market.

    • Texas ☛ Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues General Motors for Unlawfully Collecting Drivers’ Private Data and Selling It To Several Companies, Including Insurance Companies | Office of the Attorney General

      Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued General Motors for its false, deceptive, and misleading business practices related to its unlawful collection and sale of over 1.5 million Texans’ private driving data to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent.

      This action follows Attorney General Paxton’s June 2024 announcement that he opened an investigation into several car manufacturers regarding allegations that the companies had improperly collected mass amounts of data about drivers directly from the vehicles and then sold the information to third parties.

    • Logikal Solutions ☛ Time for Class Action to Block Avast Settlement

      For those who don’t know, Avast got caught selling your data despite all of their claims to “privacy.” They now have a “settlement” with the FTC where they pay a token fine and agreed to “strict oversight.” We all know just how well “strict oversight” worked for Boeing. Manufacturing planes under “strict oversight” of the FAA and they still fell out of the sky. No Settlement Without Medium Security Prison Time for Management is Acceptable

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Iran executes man over killing of Revolutionary Guard

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Ethiopia faces kidnapping crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Chaos and confusion at Lebanon's major airport

  • RTL ☛ Threat report: Iran [crackers] target Harris and Trump campaigns: Google

    A [cracker] group known as "APT42" linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps went after high-profile individuals and organizations in Israel and the United States, including government officials and political campaigns, according to a threat report released by Google.

    Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris's campaign said Tuesday it had been targeted by foreign [crackers], days after rival Donald Trump's campaign suggested that it had been [breached] by Iran.

  • VOA News ☛ Google says Iranian group trying to [breach] US presidential campaigns

    Google said Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country's Revolutionary Guard had tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump since May.

  • BIA Net ☛ Instagram continues to censor Hamas posts despite agreement with Turkey

    The Turkish government had imposed the ban from August 2 to August 10 after the platform removed posts from Turkish officials commemorating the Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in a July 31 attack in Tehran. The government lifted the ban after reaching an understanding with Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to work on content moderation issues.

  • France24 ☛ Ukraine to unleash robot dogs on its front lines

    "We have surveillance soldiers who get sent on reconnaissance missions (who) are most of the time very highly trained people, very experienced people (and) always exposed to risks," said the operator who called himself "Yuri", as he showed it off to AFP journalists.

    "This dog limits the risk for soldiers and increases operational capabilities. This is the core function of the dog," said the operator, who works for a British company providing military equipment.

  • The Strategist ☛ As Orban assaults democracy, EU must boldly reclaim its integrity

    EU leaders can do all the damage control they want, but Orban is achieving his goal of making the Union appear confused, discordant and weak. Having internalised key lessons of the Soviet era, he knows that empires and institutions begin to falter once they become objects of ridicule.

    This has contributed to the growing impression that, in a world increasingly defined by geopolitical power plays and realpolitik, the EU’s moral authority and commitment to values-based governance are quaint and ineffective—relics of the past. A lack of visionary leadership and cohesion among key members have only compounded the problem.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Ford County clerk claims compliance with Kansas Legislature's subpoena on election security audit

    The Legislature also learned from last year’s audit reports that county election security policies weren’t sufficiently detailed. Auditors recommended the Kansas secretary of state, who serves as the state’s top election officer, oversee training of election staff.

    “State law has almost no requirements related to training county election officers and workers,” the audit report said. “No one tracks county election officers’ training.”

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘I still blame Putin’: Residents of Russia’s Kursk region on fleeing Ukraine’s offensive, searching for missing relatives, and whether their views on the war have changed — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘The special military operation just got extended’ Russian elites expected Ukraine’s incursion to end within days. Now they’re starting to panic. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Rumor has it Putin tasked his ex-bodyguard with ending Ukraine’s cross-border offensive. Is Alexey Dyumin really Russia’s ‘shadow defense minister’? — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ The Kursk gambit A week on, Moscow has yet to halt Kyiv’s unexpected incursion, but Russian pressure hasn’t let up on the front lines in Ukraine — Meduza

• Environment

  • BIA Net ☛ Fish ‘can’t survive beyond 30 meters of depth’ in Turkey’s Marmara Sea due to oxygen depletion

    The latest findings from a research expedition conducted by the Middle East Technical University’s (METU) Institute of Marine Sciences reveal severe oxygen depletion in Marmara Sea, an inland sea located in northwestern Turkey.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • India Times ☛ Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms raises stake in rival Bitfarms to 18.9%

      Riot acquired 1 million common shares of Bitfarms on Tuesday, representing about 0.22% of issued and outstanding Bitfarms common stock.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ This California zoo is closing its elephant exhibit. Will more follow?

      After 20 years living in the Oakland Zoo, the park’s last remaining African elephant, Osh, will be relocated to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee later this year, the zoo announced in a press release.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Global stock market crash: What's next for investors?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Germany: Industrial orders up for first time in 6 months

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Germany: Budget dispute threatens government’s stability

  • CEO Who Laid Off 1,800 Workers Claimed That 1,050 Of Them Were ‘Underperformers’ — Hurting Their Chances Of Getting Another Job

    Global financial company Intuit recently announced its plan for layoffs based on employee performance, according to an email from the CEO.

    Employees were told that the bar of expectations was being raised significantly, and if they didn't meet the threshold, they no longer had a place within the company.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Atlantic Council ☛ The UN finally advances a convention on cybercrime . . . and no one is happy about it.

    On August 8, a contentious saga on drastically divergent views of how to address cybercrime finally came to a close after three years of treaty negotiations at the United Nations (UN). The Ad Hoc Committee set up to draft the convention on cybercrime adopted it by consensus, and the relief in the room was palpable. The member states, the committee, and especially the chair, Algerian Ambassador Faouzia Boumaiza-Mebarki, worked for a long time to come to an agreement. If adopted by the UN General Assembly later this year, as is expected, it will be the first global, legally binding convention on cybercrime. However, this landmark achievement should not be celebrated, as it poses significant risks to human rights, cybersecurity, and national security.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Cisco reveals plan to cut thousands of jobs as it beats earnings forecast

    Cisco had already announced one major round of layoffs back in February, when it said it was eliminating about 4,000 jobs, or 5% of its workforce. This second round of job cuts will be even more significant. Cisco, which is based on San Jose, California, did not specify the exact number of positions that will be axed, but it had 84,900 employees as of July 2023, so based on that figure, it’s likely that about 5,900 jobs will be lost.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa publishes national AI policy framework

    The policy framework is the “first step” in developing a national AI policy for South Africa, the department said.

    Once finalised and published, the AI policy will serve as the “foundational basis” for creating AI regulations and potentially an AI Act in South Africa.

  • The Register UK ☛ Indian govt bins bill equating influencers and broadcasters

    India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has withdrawn a flagship bill after criticism that it would require online content creators to register and be subject to the same laws as broadcasters.

    The Ministry Xeeted that feedback on the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) bill, which was made public in November 2023, had led it to conduct "a series of consultations with the stakeholders."

    "Further additional time is being provided to solicit comments/suggestions till 15 October, 2024. A fresh draft will be published after detailed consultations," wrote MIB.

  • [Repeat] Ubuntu ☛ The Cyber Resilience Act: What it means for open source

    The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is nearly upon us. This wide-reaching piece of legislation will introduce new requirements, checks and balances on developers, retailers and device manufacturers; many of the looming demands haven’t gone down well in the open source community.

    In this blog, I’ll examine the CRA’s impact on open source, give some expert insights into where the Act is a force for good and where it leaves some grey areas, and show you what you should be thinking about to prepare for its arrival if you use or create open source.

  • Techdirt ☛ AT&T Gets A Wrist Slap For Advertising A Satellite Calling Service That Doesn’t Exist

    Most recently, AT&T found itself in lukewarm water for lying about a satellite calling service that doesn’t exist. At least not yet. AT&T’s been running ads claiming that it now offers Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS), which as the name implies, lets you make calls when out of range of cellular towers by using low Earth orbit satellites.

    The problem: while AT&T has struck a deal with AST SpaceMobile to hopefully offer such a service someday, the service doesn’t actually exist yet. This has apparently rankled AT&T competitors like T-Mobile, which filed complaints with the The BBB National Advertising Division (NAD). NAD, after several appeals, encouraged AT&T to stop running ads for a service that doesn’t exist: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • PC Mag ☛ Democrat Calls for Investigation Into X for Political Misinformation, Censorship

      As Engadget reports, Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), requesting an investigation into election-related misinformation being published by the Grok AI chatbot on X.

    • Engadget ☛ Now it’s Democrats who want the House to investigate X for political censorship

      Nadler cited reports that Grok, X’s AI chatbot, falsely claimed Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris missed deadlines in nine states, making her ineligible to appear on their ballots. Harris didn’t miss any deadlines and will appear on all 50 states’ ballots.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Meta kills off misinformation tracking tool CrowdTangle despite pleas from researchers, journalists

      Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms.

      Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch and NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, sent a letter to the company asking that it keep the tool running through at least January so it would be available through the U.S. presidential elections.

    • The Strategist ☛ Protecting our elections against tech-enabled disinformation

      A century on, electoral administrators around the world are dealing with a radically changed democratic landscape. Concerns about moonlight—or its absence—have been replaced by the pervasive presence of disinformation and false narratives, the rise of new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, occasional madcap conspiracy theories, threats to electoral workers, and the need to maintain citizens’ confidence in electoral outcomes.

      Together, these dramatic changes will demand the ongoing vigilance of legislators, regulators and civil society. Increased focus and resourcing on this continually emerging space can harness the opportunities it presents while lessening the potential negative effects already being experienced.

    • Wired ☛ Kamala Harris' Rally Crowds Aren't AI-Generated. Here's How You Can Tell

      The Harris campaign responded with its own post saying that the image is "an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan."

      Aside from the novel use of "AI" as a verb, Trump's post marks the first time, that we know of, that a US presidential candidate has personally raised the specter of AI-generated fakery by an opponent (rather than by political consultants or random social media users). The accusations, false as they are, prey on widespread fears and misunderstandings over the trustworthiness of online information in the AI age.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-03 [Older] Labrador man denied long-sought hearing about his detainment for a tweet

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ UK judge Neuberger, who ruled on Jimmy Lai, mulls role on media freedom panel

    The IBAHRI told HKFP that, earlier this summer, the British judge had informed the coalition that he was rethinking his position. Neuberger told the group: “In view of my continuing role as an Overseas Non-Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, I am in the process of considering my position as Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, in consultation with my Deputy Chairs. I will issue a statement with my decision as soon as practicable. In the meantime, the High Level Panel will continue its vital work within the Media Freedom Coalition, ably led by its Deputy Chairs.”

  • VOA News ☛ Taliban use license suspensions, arrests, closures to pressure media in Afghanistan

    The suspension of broadcast licenses, arrests and closures of news outlets in Afghanistan show that the Taliban continue to exert pressure on media, watchdogs say.

    In recent weeks, the Taliban-run Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority, or ATRA, suspended 17 broadcast licenses assigned to 14 media outlets in eastern Nangarhar province. The privately owned Kawoon Ghag radio station in Laghman province has also been shuttered, according to media watchdogs.

  • Press Gazette ☛ 22 UK local newspapers closed in the past two years

    Press Gazette’s latest research suggests at least 293 local newspapers have closed since 2005.

    Four titles were launched in print between the end of July 2022 and the start of August 2024.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ urges Mongolia not to contest investigative journalist’s appeal against conviction

    “The Mongolian government must halt its escalating use of lawfare against journalists and protect their rights to report,” said CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Unurtsetseg Naran’s reporting serves the public interest by exposing government corruption and wrongdoings. She should not be punished for it.”

  • Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ Poor Richard's Almanack

    Benjamin Franklin wrote and published Poor Richard's Almanack annually from 1732 to 1758. Paper was expensive and printing difficult and time-consuming. The type would be inked, the sheet of paper laid on the press, the apprentices would press the sheet, by turning a big screw. Then the sheet was removed and hung up to dry. Then you can do another printing of the same page. Do this ten thousand times and you have ten thousand prints of a sheet. Do it ten thousand more to print a second sheet. Then print the second side of the first sheet ten thousand times and print the second side of the second sheet ten thousand times. Fold 20,000 sheets into eighths, cut and bind them into 10,000 thirty-two page pamphlets and you have your Almanacks.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CTV News ☛ Teen falling asleep on courtroom field trip sent to jail

    “Although the judge was trying to teach a lesson of respect, his methods were unacceptable,” chairperson Marissa Ebersole Wood said. “The group of students should have been simply asked to leave the courtroom if he thought they were disrespectful.”

    Judge Aliyah Sabree, who has the No. 2 leadership post at the court, released a statement Wednesday night, saying King's conduct “does not reflect the standards we uphold at 36th District Court.”

    “I am committed to addressing this matter with the utmost diligence,” Sabree said.

  • 404 Media ☛ Inside the FBI's Dashboard for Wiretapping the World

    The system, called Hola iBot, allowed FBI analysts to plot peoples’ physical movements on a Google Maps style interface, provide summaries of their conservations, and draw social connections between users. In the eyes of one FBI agent, Anom became more of a social network for criminals than a messaging app.

  • Wired ☛ UAW Files Federal Labor Charges Against Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Alleging They Tried to ‘Threaten and Intimidate Workers’

    US workers—both unionized and nonunionized—cannot be fired for engaging in protected strikes, according to the National Labor Relations Board. In his comments, Trump “stated a position which is a violation of law, flat and simple,” says William B. Gould IV, a professor at Stanford Law School and former chair of the NLRB. Trump could be seen as acting as an agent for Musk’s companies, Gould says, and his words could potentially interfere with votes to unionize at companies.

  • Harvard University ☛ How a few Facebook posts brought heat on Ugandan professor 

    Sylvester Danson Kahyana has written poetry and children’s literature, but what seems to have gotten him in trouble was what he wrote on Facebook. Amani Matabaro Tom is a longtime activist who spoke out on child labor abuses and environmental effects of mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  • JURIST ☛ HRW finds Taliban in Afghanistan responsible for most serious women's rights crisis

    HRW reported, “Afghanistan is the only country where girls are banned from education beyond the sixth grade.” It listed Taliban abuses such as its sex-based restriction of women’s movement, employment, education, healthcare access, and enjoyment of sports and parks. HRWalso remarked on the Taliban’s lack of protection for women from sex-based violence. The organization expressed, “The Taliban’s education bans guarantee future shortages of female health workers.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Afghan life remains dire as Taliban mark 3 years of rule

    Since seizing power, the Taliban have rolled back progress achieved in the previous two decades when it came to women's rights.

    They have banished women and girls from almost all areas of public life.

    Girls have been barred from attending school beyond sixth grade, and women have been prohibited from local jobs and nongovernmental organizations. The Taliban have ordered the closure of beauty salons and barred women from going to gyms and parks. Women also can't go out without a male guardian.

  • HRW ☛ Afghanistan: Taliban Tighten Grip 3 Years into Rule | Human Rights Watch

    The Taliban have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis since taking power in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. Afghanistan is also experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with aid severely underfunded, thousands of Afghans forced back into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and thousands of others expecting to emigrate to Western countries still waiting.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Taliban have ruled Afghanistan for 3 years. Here are 5 things to know

    Culture wars and rewards The Taliban supreme leader sits atop a pyramid-like ruling system as a paragon of virtue. Mosques and clerics are on one side. On the other is the Kabul administration, which implements clerics’ decisions and meets with foreign officials.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ I was imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban for protesting gender apartheid in Afghanistan

    On August 15, 2021, Kabul fell to the Taliban. Zholia Parsi, who was in Kabul at the time, had spent fourteen years as a teacher before joining the last republican government of Afghanistan as a member of the Supreme Council for Reconciliation. After the Taliban took over, Parsi helped create the “Spontaneous Women’s Protest Movement of Afghanistan” to demonstrate against rising gender apartheid in her country. For this, the Taliban imprisoned and tortured her, a story she recounts below.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ ADSL is at death's door in South Africa

    Copper-based DSL technology – the most common form of which in South Africa is ADSL, or asymmetric DSL – has been replaced by newer, more reliable and faster fibre networks as well as fixed-wireless solutions based on 4G/LTE and 5G technologies. Fibre links can provide more than a thousand times as much bandwidth as copper, and signals can travel more than 100 times further.

  • The Register UK ☛ Indian telcos told to block scam telemarketers for two years

    India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) on Tuesday directed telcos to stop calls from unregistered telemarketers – and prevent them from using networks again for up to two years – as part of an effort to curb spam and scams.

  • India ☛ TRAI issues Directives to Access Providers to disconnect all telecom resources of unregistered Senders for making spam calls and to blacklist such Senders under Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR- 2018)

    In a major step to curb the increasing number of spam calls, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated all Access Service Providers to stop voice promotional calls whether pre-recorded or computer generated or otherwise from all Unregistered Senders or Telemarketers (UTMs) using SIP/ PRI or other telecom resources, as per following Directions: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Tedium ☛ Hey, Patreon: Don’t Let Apple Win This Round

  But I do know that Patreon should never have been at risk of this awkward moment in the first place. This week, Conte announced that the company was having to reset its entire business model at the behest of Apple, a massive, inflexible company that wants three out of every ten dollars the internet creates just because it built a digital storefront on a pocket slab.

• Matt Birchler ☛ Apple opens up NFC to payment apps world wide, not just in the EU

  So not only can other apps do this, other apps can take over the "double-press the side button" shortcut on iPhones. This means Google Pay, PayPal, ShopPay, or countless other existing, popular wallets could be your wallet and accessed in a moment to pay in stores (after they've added support for this, of course). Wonderful!

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Considers Breaking Up Google to Address Search Monopoly

  The Justice Department and state attorneys general are discussing various scenarios to remedy Google’s dominance in online search, including a breakup of the company.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street

  Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.

  The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Barry Manilow Sues Hipgnosis Over Allegedly Missing Bonuses

    However, it’s not a secret that massive offers were integral as the company executed its song-rights landgrab. Less widely known is that many of the sizable deals at hand include clauses awarding additional cash to sellers if their catalogs meet certain commercial performance goals.

  • India Times ☛ Copyright group takes down Dutch language AI dataset

    Dutch-based copyright enforcement group BREIN has taken down a large language dataset that was being offered for use in training AI models, the organization said on Tuesday.

    The dataset included information collected without permission from tens of thousands of books, news sites, and Dutch language subtitles harvested from "countless" films and TV series, BREIN said in a statement.