GNU/Linux

• Instructionals/Technical

Leftovers

• Jim Nielsen ☛ Blog Posts vs. Social Posts

  The power of a good blog post is like the power of compound interest: the impact seems minor and insignificant to start, but as time passes the effects compound and become quite substantial.

• Manton Reece ☛ Micro.blog servers for 2024

  Here’s the current list of our servers. I’m going to start linking to this blog post from the logs page so it makes a little more sense. Eventually, the easter egg will probably be a distraction and I’ll remove it.

• Thomas Rigby ☛ How I write Day Notes

  As it is, whenever I have a spare few minutes, I add a few historical notes from before I started. These are cobbled together from memories dredged up from looking at that day's photos from previous years.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Personal Wi-Fi hotspots at coffee shops

  Especially at airport coffee shops, you see names in all sorts of languages and scripts. It’s like a little global community, brought together temporarily and possibly never again.

• Leon Mika ☛ My Home Computer Naming Scheme

  Having a server or desktop naming scheme is one of those fun little things to do when working with computers. Growing up we named our home desktops after major characters of Lord of the Rings, such as Bilbo, or Frodo, but I never devised a scheme for myself when I started buying my own computers. I may have kept it up if we were doing likewise at work, but when AWS came onto the scene, the prevailing train of thought was to treat your servers like cattle rather than pets. Granted, it is probably the correct approach, especially when the lifecycle of a particular EC2 instance could be as short as a few minutes.

• Adolfo Ochagavía ☛ To broadcast or not to broadcast

  One of my friends, an outstanding programmer who likes to fly under the radar, frequently tells me he admires my “ability to broadcast”. I guess he refers to the fact that I’m keeping a blog, and that I’m not afraid of writing with transparency about my adventures in software engineering. To me, it all feels natural, so his comment motivated me to explain in more detail why I’m doing what I’m doing. Who knows, maybe it will encourage others to start “broadcasting” too!

• Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ Colleges Still Don’t Have a Plan for AI Cheating

    But his vision must overcome a stark reality on college campuses. The first year of AI college ended in ruin, as students tested the technology’s limits and faculty were caught off guard. Cheating was widespread. Tools for identifying computer-written essays proved insufficient to the task. Academic-integrity boards realized they couldn’t fairly adjudicate uncertain cases: Students who used AI for legitimate reasons, or even just consulted grammar-checking software, were being labeled as cheats. So faculty asked their students not to use AI, or at least to say so when they did, and hoped that might be enough. It wasn’t.

    Now, at the start of the third year of AI college, the problem seems as intractable as ever. When I asked Jensen how the more than 150 instructors who teach ASU writing classes were preparing for the new term, he went immediately to their worries over cheating. Many had messaged him, he told me, to ask about a recent Wall Street Journal article about an unreleased product from OpenAI that can detect AI-generated text. The idea that such a tool had been withheld was vexing to embattled faculty.

  • InfoQ ☛ Five Behaviours to Become an Effective Staff-Plus Engineer

    Blanca Garcia Gil takes a step back and goes through a handful of skills that when applied strategically will help one amplify their impact in a team.

  • Jason Scott ☛ The Dying Computer Museum

    There’s a lot to take in with this verbiage, but let’s keep going, for now.

    In 2012, the Living Computer Museum opened its actual, physical doors to the public in Seattle. A year later, I visited. It was rather nice. I got a grand and lovely tour by some very polite and friendly people, some of whom I’d known for years. The rooms, well appointed, well-lit, and in the case of the machine rooms, done to a sparkling arrangement, clamored for my attention and approval.

• Hardware

  • AnandTech ☛ CXL Gathers Momentum at FMS 2024

    The migration of server platforms from DDR4 to DDR5, along with the rise of workloads demanding large RAM capacity (but not particularly sensitive to either memory bandwidth or latency), has opened up memory expansion modules as one of the first set of widely available CXL devices. Over the last couple of years, we have had product announcements from Samsung and Micron in this area.

  • Hackaday ☛ This Is Not A Laptop, It’s A KVM Combo

    A spare monitor and keyboard are handy things to have around, but they’re a bit of a hassle. They are useful for hardware development, plugging in to headless servers, or firing up a Raspberry Pi or similar single-board computer (SBC). If that’s something you do and portability and storage space are important to you, then you may be interested in the CrowView Note.

  • Hackaday ☛ Get More Freedom With This Guitar Pedal

    When the electric guitar was first produced in the 1930s, there was some skepticism among musicians as to whether or not this instrument would have lasting impact or be a flash-in-the-pan novelty. Since this was more than a decade before the invention of the transistor, it would have been hard then to imagine the possibilities that a musician nowadays would have with modern technology to shape the sound of an instrument like this. People are still innovating in this space as well as new technology appears, like [Gary Rigg] who has added a few extra degrees of freedom to a guitar effects pedal.

  • Hackaday ☛ Portable Router Build: Finding An LTE Modem

    Ever want your project equipped with a cellular interface for a data uplink? Hop in, I have been hacking on this for a fair bit! As you might remember, I’m building a router, I told you about how I picked its CPU board, and learned some lessons from me daily-driving it as a for a bit – that prototype has let me learn about the kind of extra hardware this router needs.

  • Hackaday ☛ Historical Microsoft And Apple Artifacts Among First Christie’s Auction Of Living Computers Museum

    Recently the Christie’s auction house released the list of items that would be going up for sale as part of the first lot of Living Computer Museum items, under the banner “Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection”. One auction covers many ‘firsts’ in the history of computing,  including a range of computers like an Apple 1, and a PDP-10, as well as early Microsoft memos and code printouts. The other auctions include such items like a Gemini Spacesuit as worn by [Ed White] and a signed 1939 letter from [Albert Einstein] to [US President Roosevelt] on the discovery by the Germans of a fissionable form of uranium from which a nuclear weapon could be constructed.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Sometimes, I can't talk

    I also use chat for meetings. I tried to do text-to-speech but ended up having trouble finding adequate Linux tooling for it and realized I was just adding an extra layer without much benefit. So instead, I use chat in meetings when I'd speak, and as long as people expect it it works well! I have done this at work and with friends, and it's worked out quite well.

  • Pedro ☛ Reclaiming my time online

    I’m going to try another of my experiments. For a while, I am going to stop using social media, including Micro.blog and Mastodon.

  • [Old] Wired ☛ Japan’s karoshi culture was a warning. We didn’t listen

    For decades, Japan has grappled with the problem of people overworking themselves to death. Now, it’s a global issue [...]

  • Google reviews for “alternative cancer clinics”: A marketing tool?

    One longstanding topic of this blog (and my not-so-super-secret other blog) has been the discussion and evidence-based discussions of why so-called “alternative cancer cures” are not cancer cures and “alternative cancer clinics” peddle quackery. Of these, the Burzynski Clinic in Houston has been a frequent toping of my writing since 2011 or so, because discussing the “discovery” of its founder, Polish expat Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, has provided excellent fodder to discuss why “alternative cancer cure” testimonials are almost never good evidence of efficacy, the manipulation of clinical trials by quacks, and how toothless state medical boards and the FDA have long been trying to stop these cancer quacks, such that after nearly five decades, Burzynski is still preying on cancer patients selling his antineoplastons and a “make it up as you go along” grab bag of expensive (and legitimate FDA-approved) targeted therapies, sold by a pharmacy in which he had a stake, as well as his “rebranded” orphan drug. Of course, the US is not the only country with these clinics. They can be found in Germany, Mexico, and many other countries as well and have existed for a very long time, with authorities in these countries seemingly unable or unwilling to shut them down.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Missouri Funds Anti-Abortion Group That Works in Other States

  • NL Times ☛ 2024-08-15 [Older] Extreme weather putting severe pressure on Dutch apple, pear harvests

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ The 4 Components of Top AI Model Ecosystems

    I have been thinking a lot about the competition between OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google for who has the best pinnacle AI model.

    I think it comes down to 4 key areas.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Assessing Broadcom-VMware eight months on

    Our advice to large VMware customers has been to evaluate your enterprise license agreement expiration and work backwards from that timeframe. Isolate core workloads that can take advantage of the full VMware Cloud Foundation stack, pay the Broadcom tax and avoid complex and risky migrations for this portion of your estate.

  • Digital First Media ☛ GM lays off more than 1,000 software employees, 600 in Michigan

    General Motors Co. is laying off more than 1,000 salaried employees in its software and services division globally, according to a source familiar with the matter, including about 600 employees working at its Global Technical Center in Warren.

  • Forbes ☛ The Great Tech Reset: Unpacking The Layoff Surge Of 2024

    3. The AI Factor: Artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping the tech landscape, creating both opportunities and threats. While AI promises to generate new jobs and boost productivity, it also poses a significant risk to those who fail to adapt. IBM’s decision to cut 3,900 jobs in its marketing and communications division while freezing hires for roles that could be replaced by AI is a stark illustration of this trend. The shift toward AI-driven efficiency is forcing companies to rethink their workforce strategies.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Procreate Dev: "I really BEEPing hate generative AI"

    Maker of graphic design software for iPad declares "No AI Features" policy.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Age AU ☛ ASIC shuts down more than 7000 scam websites

      More than 5500 of the website take-downs were investment scams and more than 1000 were “phishing” scams. Cryptocurrency investment scams accounted for more than 600 of the shutdowns.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Court to California: Try a Privacy Law, Not Online Censorship

      The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit correctly rejected rules requiring online businesses to opine on whether the content they host is “harmful” to children, and then to mitigate such harms. EFF and CDT filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case earlier this year arguing for this point.

      The court also provided a helpful roadmap to legislatures for how to write privacy first laws that can survive constitutional challenges. However, the court missed an opportunity to strike down the Act’s age-verification provision. We will continue to argue, in this case and others, that this provision violates the First Amendment rights of children and adults.

      In 2022, California enacted its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AADC). Three of the law’s provisions are crucial for understanding the court’s ruling.

• Defence/Aggression

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-16 [Older] Colombian Authorities Ramp up Security at Top Courts' HQ Due to Attack Risk

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-08-15 [Older] 8594 vacancies at SAPS Detective Services a “big concern”

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-15 [Older] Chicago Police Chief Highlights Officer Training as Critical to Democratic Convention Security

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-15 [Older] Taylor Swift Excitement Eclipses Security Fears for London Fans

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-13 [Older] Austria to bolster security after Taylor Swift concert plot

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-13 [Older] Haiti's Child Death Toll Mounts as Security Mission Lags

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-08-12 [Older] Somali piracy surges as new threat diverts resources

  • The Atlantic ☛ We Still Need to Trump-Proof America

    Trump’s presidency served as a warped civics lesson of sorts, through which Americans learned just how much the president can get away with. Many of the constraints that past presidents operated within, such as releasing their tax returns or demanding Justice Department investigations of political enemies, turned out to be matters of norms, not legal obligation. And even where legal limitations were on the books, Trump proved skilled at identifying loopholes—such as when he exploited Washington, D.C.’s lack of sovereignty to violently deploy the National Guard against protesters in the capital following George Floyd’s murder in the spring of 2020.

  • Logikal Solutions ☛ The Real Reason Ammo Prices Are So High

    Boiled down to a shot glass, that’s the problem. Globalization and worthless management practices known as Six Sigma and LEAN has allowed MBAs to justify becoming reliant on Russia and China for our ammunition supply chain. You know, the two countries we would most likely shoot at. No, you can’t make this shit up. If you want to know why Putin and Xi are so cocky lately it’s because they know we could only shoot at them for a little while. Two other shooting wars have really drained what little supplies we had.

    One of the major black powder mills only recently got cleared to begin modernizing and start back up. This was after a “whoopsie!” event. Yes, it feels strange to be talking about black powder in 2024 since everybody mentally associates that with flintlocks but it is a major component of artillary. Cost cutting and short-cuts will always lead to “whoopsie!” MBAs can’t help themselves even when the product is gunpowder. They ought to just smoke on the shop floor!

  • Air Force Times ☛ Soldier indicted for lying about involvement in insurrectionist groups

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization, claimed Monday that Nix belonged to Patriot Front, a white supremacist group. The SPLC also claimed Nix ran a channel on Telegram that aimed to find and release the personal information of journalists, politicians and liberal activists, a practice known as doxxing.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ NATO wants to be a leader on climate security. Here are the next steps to get there.

    As part of an ongoing project, we have been seeking to answer these and related questions about NATO’s adaptation to climate change. To do so, we have thus far interviewed sixty-three political and military officials from allied delegations and other offices from sixteen member states across all of NATO’s geographic regions. Our project, which began in the spring of 2023, is funded by the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How the European Parliament helps normalize the far right

    But some observers are worried that having ECR representatives in such powerful committee leadership positions could not only influence the parliamentary agenda, but also lead to a normalization of the far right within the European Parliament and progressively undermine democratic values.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Inside the Virginia Newsroom Trying to Save Afghanistan From Tyranny

    Even though it operates abroad—or perhaps because it operates abroad—Amu TV is one of the most effective chroniclers of life under Taliban rule. With one of Amu’s editors, Aram devised a plan to travel to Deh Khawak, the remote village where the tip originated. The Taliban had barred outsiders from entering the town, so Aram disguised herself from head to toe in colored fabric native to the area. Because the group had cordoned off the victims’ home, she maneuvered from neighbor to neighbor, probing for evidence. When a Taliban official sent her a voice message confirming the incident, Aram reported her findings through an encrypted portal. Soon after, Amu published the story online. Afghans around the world read Aram’s work, which apparently enraged the Taliban: They set out to find her.

  • New Yorker ☛ Infiltrating the Far Right

    Vincent wasn’t a Fed, though. He was one of a growing number of far-left vigilantes who are infiltrating the far right. Sometimes such impostors adopt false online personas in order to gain entrance to chat groups or private servers. Others, like Vincent, go undercover in the real world, posing as white nationalists to attend meetings and demonstrations. Some even participate in low-level crimes in order to establish their credibility—almost like undercover F.B.I. agents do, though they lack any of the protections, training, or restraints that come with a badge.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Reintroducing Pablo: How a GRU spy infiltrated the Russian opposition, wound up in a Polish prison, and returned to Moscow in a historic prisoner swap — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ High risk, high reward: As Ukraine pushes forward in Russia’s Kursk region, the outcome will depend on what forces can be spared from other fronts — Meduza

• Environment

  • The Independent UK ☛ River Medway has dangerous levels of cancer causing toxic chemicals

    The River Medway in Kent is polluted with dangerous chemicals which can cause cancer, breathing problems and harm wildlife, new testing has revealed.

    Testing from the Environment Agency (EA) has found the river contains chemicals used in industrial processes, as well as road paving and flea repellents.

  • The Register UK ☛ Estimated datacenter water use shoots up in Virginia

    Concerns over the environmental impact of datacenters in the US state of Virginia are being raised again amid claims their water consumption has stepped up by almost two-thirds since 2019, and AI could make it worse.

    Virginia is described as the datacenter capital of the world, particularly Northern Virginia – as reported by The Register recently – where it is understood there are about 300 facilities.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Environmentalists sound alarm over Virginia's data centers as water consumption skyrockets

    The extensive amount of water consumption is not a surprise, as Virginia is considered to be the data center capital of the world, home to more than 300 such facilities. The data centers mostly use water for cooling the servers and other racks of infrastructure they house, the main concern is that this consumption will only increase as the adoption of AI proliferates. That’s because AI training tasks are considered to be even more energy-intensive than regular computing workloads.

    The report adds that some of Virginia’s data centers are located in water-stressed regions, including some areas that are suffering from ongoing drought.

  • Wired ☛ Climate Change’s Latest Deadly Threat: Lightning Strikes

    In rural India, stormy weather, a lack of knowledge, and scant protections are combining to kill thousands every year, with climate change likely to raise the threat as lightning becomes more common.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Kemi Badenoch Accepts £10,000 From Chair of Tufton Street Climate Denial Group

    • DeSmog ☛ Canada Will Spend $300 Million on Hydrogen Export to Germany

    • NL Times ☛ Increasing mixed-use roads making Amsterdam less accessible to cyclists, critics say

      According to De Pater, more and more places on the city’s main cycling network have become mixed-use roads. “Things are made more difficult for cyclists everywhere by those shared spaces. In the city center, for example, the route from east to west is almost inaccessible. A few alleys that used to be very accessible for cyclists are almost closed off. The Damstraat is almost impossible to get through, and more and more alleys - look at the nine streets, for example - are more or less closed off for cyclists,” she told the broadcaster.

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ August 19, 1897: The First Electric Taxis Driven in London

      The Bersey Electric Cab (also known as the London Electrical Cab) was an early electric-powered vehicle and the first electric taxi cab in London. Developed by Walter Bersey the vehicles reportedly had a top speed of 12 mph (19 km/h) and could carry two passengers.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Conversation ☛ Babies and animals can’t tell us if they have consciousness – but philosophers and scientists are starting to find answers

      Animals are another challenge to the study of the mind. Most people think animals like chimps and dogs are conscious, but how far away from humans on the tree of life does consciousness go?

• Finance

  • Truthdig ☛ 2024-08-16 [Older] The Real Fix for Social Security

  • Game Rant ☛ Corsair Hit With Layoffs

    Adding to the seemingly relentless layoffs in the video game industry over the past year, Corsair has announced that it plans to let go of roughly 90 staff members in an "organization change." While Corsair remains one of the top companies for self-built PC products and gaming accessories, the continuous financial struggles of the industry have once again resulted in a workforce reduction.

    Throughout 2023, dozens of AAA and indie game publishers, development studios, and hardware manufacturers saw massive layoffs, leading to thousands of employees without work. Repeated layoffs by Embracer Group, Microsoft, and other top companies sought to "reduce costs" and "restructure work models," leading to instability within the larger video game industry as a whole. It now seems that Corsair has been hit by similar uncertainty, as employees across the company received an unfortunate memo.

  • The Register UK ☛ GM axes 1,000+ jobs in software and service division, majority in US

    General Motors (GM) is cutting more than 1,000 salaried positions worldwide in its software and services division, with the majority based in the US.

    The layoffs, as initially reported by CNBC, include about 600 positions at GM's Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

    A GM spokesperson confirmed that most of the affected workers are indeed based at the Detroit-area tech campus. However, the automaker did not confirm the exact number of employees impacted by the layoffs. The affected GM employees were informed this morning.

  • Mastercard cuts 3% of jobs despite stellar Q2 performance

    Global payments giant Mastercard, has revealed plans to reduce its workforce by three per cent as part of a comprehensive restructuring initiative.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Corporate Bullshit

    The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.

    It's a four-stage plan:

  • Techdirt ☛ Suing Apple To Force It To Scan iCloud For CSAM Is A Catastrophically Bad Idea

    The complaint in the putative class action asserts that Apple has chosen not to invest in preventive measures to keep its iCloud service from being used to store child sex abuse material (CSAM) while cynically rationalizing the choice as pro-privacy. This decision allegedly harmed the Jane Doe plaintiff, a child whom two unknown users contacted on Snapchat to ask for her iCloud ID. They then sent her CSAM over iMessage and got her to create and send them back CSAM of herself. Those iMessage exchanges went undetected, the lawsuit says, because Apple elected not to employ available CSAM detection tools, thus knowingly letting iCloud become “a safe haven for CSAM offenders.” The complaint asserts claims for violations of federal sex trafficking law, two states’ consumer protection laws, and various torts including negligence and products liability.

  • Reuters ☛ X says it is closing operations in Brazil due to judge's content orders

    Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil "effective immediately" due to what it called "censorship orders" by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company's legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform.

  • [Old] European Commission ☛ Commission sends preliminary findings to X for breach of DSA

    Today, the Commission has informed X of its preliminary view that it is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.

    Transparency and accountability in relation to content moderation and advertising are at the heart of the DSA. Based on an in-depth investigation that included, among others, the analysis of internal company documents, interviews with experts, as well as cooperation with national Digital Services Coordinators, the Commission has issued preliminary findings of non-compliance on three grievances: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Futurism ☛ Swifties Erupt in Fury After Donald Trump Uses AI to Fake Taylor Swift Endorsement

      Hours after sharing an AI-generated image of vice president Kamala Harris leading a fake communist rally, the former president took to Truth Social to "accept" a fabricated endorsement from Taylor Swift and her clans of fans known as the Swifties.

    • Wired ☛ Trump Shares AI-Generated Images Claiming Swifties Are Supporting Him

      However, Trump’s post appears to contain a mixture of real and AI-generated images that falsely suggest a widespread and coordinated movement of Swifties for Trump. Using a tool created by nonprofit True Media to detect the spread of election-related deepfakes, WIRED found that many of the images shared by Trump show “substantial evidence of manipulation.”

    • Futurism ☛ After Falsely Accusing Kamala Harris of Using AI, Donald Trump Posts AI Slop About Her on Twitter

      Now, Trump is using AI to further double down on his chosen line of attack — an escalation that raises questions of whether it's ethical for a presidential candidate to utilize AI-generated imagery to attack their opponent, and where we draw the line at what we consider propaganda.

      What's more, in an incredible twist of irony, Trump falsely accused Harris just last week of using AI to drum up fake imagery of a large crowd greeting her at the airport. The photos, of course, were real.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ EFF and Partners to EU Commissioner: Prioritize User Rights, Avoid Politicized Enforcement of DSA Rules

    Clarification is necessary because Breton’s letter otherwise reads as a serious overreach of EU authority, and transforms the systemic risks-based approach into a generalized tool for censoring disfavored speech around the world. By specifically referencing the streaming event between Trump and Musk on X, Breton’s letter undermines one of the core principles of the DSA: to ensure fundamental rights protections, including freedom of expression and of information, a principle noted in Breton’s letter itself.

    The letter plays into some of the worst fears of critics of the DSA that it would be used by EU regulators as a global censorship tool rather than addressing societal risks in the EU. 

    The DSA requires very large online platforms (VLOPs) to assess the systemic risks that stem from “the functioning and use made of their services in the [European] Union.” VLOPs are then also required to adopt “reasonable, proportionate and effective mitigation measures,”“tailored to the systemic risks identified.” The emphasis on systemic risks was intended, at least in part, to alleviate concerns that the DSA would be used to address individual incidents of dissemination of legal, but concerning, online speech. It was one of the limitations that civil society groups concerned with preserving a free and open internet worked hard to incorporate. 

  • RTL ☛ Silencing critics: Nicaragua shutters 1,500 NGOs as crackdown continues

    The government has jailed hundreds of critics, real and perceived, since protests against his regime in 2018 that were met with a crackdown the UN said left more than 300 people dead.

    Monday's announcement was the single-largest targeting of NGOs to date, bringing the total to more than 5,100.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Islamic scholar criticises DYFI's pork challenge in Kerala

    Nasar Faizy Koodathai, a prominent leader of Samastha Kerala Jam-Iyathul Qutba Committee, criticised the pork challenge of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala and said the Left organisation was trying to sneak in blasphemy in the name of 'challenge'.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • FUDZilla ☛ Mike [Magee] is dead

    He left the Newswire and co-founded The Register, the UK's first Internet-based IT tabloid, with John Lettice in 1994. Magee focused on computer chip reporting in the newsletter, and Lettice covered software.

    "We realised the chip industry was worth about $200bn a year then, and we were down the pub one day and said, ‘Why don't we do a newsletter because we can and this is a big, big market, and nobody else seems to be doing much about it," Magee said.

    The Rodgister used the slogan "Biting the Hand That Feeds IT" to reflect its iconoclastic attitude, attracting a following among IT professionals and investors.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Two Kansas leaders want you to know they support free speech, despite police shredding it in Marion

    It’s a free speech miracle.

    Or something close to one, at least. In the week after my scathing column about the lack of reaction from Kansas political leaders to the one-anniversary of the raid on the Marion County Record, I heard back from Republican Senate President Ty Masterson and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Both wanted to reassure Kansans of their commitment to the First Amendment.

    Count me relieved, although mildly irritated that it took a public shaming to reach this point.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Cat-killing sheriff's deputies back on the job in Kern County

    “That’s very interesting,” said Barbara Hays, who runs the Cat People. As the organization that’s cared for feral cats at Hart Memorial Park, located northeast of Bakersfield and adjacent to the shooting range, it is the animal rights group closest to the situation. Youngblood hasn’t contacted her about the disposition of the case, she said.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Benedict Evans ☛ Competing in search

  However, there's another virtuous circle: everyone uses Google because it's the default, it's the default because it’s the best and because Google pays other tech companies billions of dollars a year in revenue shares as ‘traffic acquisition costs’ (TAC) to make it the default, and it’s the best and Google has those billions to pay because everyone uses it. In 2022, Google paid Apple about $20bn (about 17.5% of Apple’s operating income, and a 36% revenue share) and other companies $10bn to make it the default, which was close to 20% of Google’s search advertising revenue. And this was the center of the US competition case that was decided this week.

• NYPost ☛ How Harris campaign's Big Tech ties could undermine Google antitrust breakup effort

  The Kamala Harris campaign’s cozy ties with Big Tech have sparked worries that Google will be allowed to wiggle out of a proposed breakup of its search empire if she is elected president, The Post has learned.

  Harris is close to Paul Weiss – the white-shoe law firm leading Google’s defense in another major antitrust case targeting its digital ad business. Karen Dunn, the firm’s top litigator, is helping Harris with debate prep. Likewise, the firm’s chairman Brad Karp is reportedly heading up a “Lawyers Committee for Kamala Harris” to raise cash for her White House bid.

• Make Tech Easier ☛ 2024-08-15 [Older] Apple Breaks Own Rules for Spotify but Not WeChat

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • EFF ☛ NO FAKES – A Dream for Lawyers, a Nightmare for Everyone Else

      Under NO FAKES, any human person has the right to sue anyone who has either made, or made available, their “digital replica.” A replica is broadly defined as “a newly-created, computer generated, electronic representation of the image, voice or visual likeness” of a person. The right applies to the person themselves; anyone who has a license to use their image, voice, or likeness; and their heirs for up to 70 years after the person dies. Because it is a federal intellectual property right, Section 230 protections – a crucial liability shield for platforms and anyone else that hosts or shares user-generated content—will not apply. And that legal risk begins the moment a person gets a notice that the content is unlawful, even if they didn't create the replica and have no way to confirm whether or not it was authorized, or have any way to verify the claim. NO FAKES thereby creates a classic “hecklers’ veto”: anyone can use a specious accusation to get speech they don’t like taken down.

• Copyrights

  • The Independent UK ☛ Isaac Hayes estate sues Trump campaign over use of song ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’

    The suit, filed in Georgia federal court, also names the Republican National Committee and conservative activist group Turning Point USA.

    Lawyers for the Hayes family argue Trump owes the estate $150,000 for each alleged unauthorized use of the song, which the Trump campaign has allegedly used over 100 times.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Aussie Piracy Survey: 'Poor Picture' & 'Slow Device' = Cybersecurity Issues

    Creative Content Australia has new anti-piracy campaign underway alongside the release of its annual Piracy Behaviors and Attitudes survey. In line with current anti-piracy trends, the group hopes to draw attention to the downsides of using pirate sites. "More than two million Australians who admit to visiting illegal streaming sites or pirate sites say they’ve experienced a form of online crime." Let's take a closer look.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Feds Seize Domain Names of Sports Streaming Site Streameast

    U.S. law enforcement authorities appear to have seized several domain names of live sports streaming site Streameast, which is particularly popular in America. A seizure banner accuses the operation of criminal activity and warns of prison sentences. Nevertheless, the site's operators have already made a restart and are vowing to keep going until sports streams are affordable for everyone.