Leftovers

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Why do blogging and fiction writing use different creative energy?

  Both blogs and books are written for an audience, but blogs are a dialogue, while fiction is a narrative. I use blogging as a tool for thinking and making meaning. Fiction writing is not itself a sense-making process for me, but told out of — after — sense-making.

• Robert Birming ☛ When to Start Blogging?

  Are you sitting on a bunch of texts waiting to find your voice? Get them out there! That's where they do good – both for others and for yourself.

• Jason Tucker ☛ Scanning paper documents and auto sorting into folders based on content

  My plan is to use an old Xerox copier that has network scanning capabilities and scan a collection of documents and have them OCR and saved to a holding place to be read, filtered and put into folders with a persons name on it and the files named for what each document is. The documents are mainly forms that were filled out with handwriting and the other documents are things collected as the person was a member of the organization. The forms go back to most likely the 1950, heck even earlier and most likely are about 500 or so folders, one for each person.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ Stephen Hawking Was Wrong—Extremal Black Holes Are Possible

    But even black holes have edge cases—and those cases have their own insights to give. Black holes rotate in space. As matter falls into them, they start to spin faster; if that matter has charge, they also become electrically charged. In principle, a black hole can reach a point where it has as much charge or spin as it possibly can, given its mass. Such a black hole is called “extremal”—the extreme of the extremes.

    These black holes have some bizarre properties. In particular, the so-called surface gravity at the boundary, or event horizon, of such a black hole is zero. “It is a black hole whose surface doesn’t attract things anymore,” Gundlach said. But if you were to nudge a particle slightly toward the black hole’s center, it would be unable to escape.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • “MAHA”? Antivax conspiracy monger RFK Jr. is not the one to “make America healthy again”

    [Orac note: You might have noticed that posting has been a bit…slow. That’s because I have a double deadline on Friday. A grant application I’m working on is due then, as are the reviews I’m doing of grant submissions for an NIH study section. Yes, this will be an ugly week, meatspace work-wise. After this RFK Jr. post today, I might manage to post something as a distraction from plowing through so much reading and writing of dense scientific prose, but don’t be surprised if you don’t see anything new here until the weekend or next week.]

  • Deseret Media ☛ Austrian woman convicted of fatally infecting her neighbor with COVID

    An expert testified a virological report showed that the virus DNA matched the woman and the deceased, proving the defendant "almost 100% transmitted it," according to the report.

    "I feel sorry for you personally — I think that something like this has probably happened hundreds of times," the judge was reported to have said Thursday. "But you are unlucky that an expert has determined with almost absolute certainty that it was an infection that came from you."

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Paul Conkin’s Zettelkasten Advice

    [...] Further, he says that Conkin admonished students that for every hour they spend reading, they should spend an hour in reflection. [...]

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • RTL ☛ Microsoft cutting more jobs from its gaming unit

    Microsoft is cutting about 650 more positions from its gaming unit as it continues to tighten its belt following the blockbuster buyout of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard.

    The elimination of mostly corporate and support roles across Microsoft Gaming is intended to "organize our business for long-term success" in the aftermath of the $69 billion acquisition, unit chief Phil Spencer told employees in a memo viewed by AFP.

    "Today is one of the challenging days," Spencer said in the memo. "I know that going through more changes like this is hard."

    The Communications Workers of America (CWA) labor union, which includes members in the video game industry, called the layoffs "extremely disappointing," coming on the heels of Sony Interactive Entertainment subsidiary Bungie announcing 220 layoffs in July.

  • Game Rant ☛ Xbox Working on Backward Compatibility Issues

    Xbox has recently acknowledged the backward compatibility issues on Xbox One and Series X/S, revealing that the team has issued a fix for the problem. However, some Xbox players may still be running into these serious issues.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China proposes mandatory red flags placed on all AI-generated content posted online

    The primary purpose of this being a "draft" plan until October, despite the fact that China will enforce this as it pleases, seems to be to give platforms a chance to prepare since the public comments will likely not factor into the final version of this plan. As The Register points out in its coverage, widespread regulation like this (particularly in censorship) is typical of how China treats the Internet— but that doesn't necessarily make this a bad idea.

  • International Business Times ☛ Check Your Receipts! Home Depot To Pay $2M Settlement For False Advertising And Overcharging Customers

    Do you always check your receipts after making a purchase? If not, you might be getting overcharged without even realising it.

    Last week, Home Depot, the popular hardware retailer, was ordered to pay nearly $2 million in a settlement following claims of false advertising and overcharging customers. The settlement stems from a civil enforcement case that several California district attorneys brought, accusing the company of unfair competition and deceptive pricing practices.

  • 404 Media ☛ Google Serves AI Slop as Top Result for One of the Most Famous Paintings in History

    Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of links they usually see in results. As first spotted by a user on Twitter, when people searched for “Hieronymus Bosch” on Google, it included a couple of images from the real painting, but the first and largest image they saw was an AI-generated version of it.

  • Michal Pitr ☛ Inference Engine: Accelerating with CUDA - by Michal Pitr

    In this post, we’ll focus on optimizing throughput: the number of inference requests processed per second. Tradeoffs between throughput and latency are pretty common. In ML applications, we often care about maximizing throughput while staying within overall latency tolerations.

    First things first, we need to set up the benchmark. I’ll be using the MNIST neural network from part 1 of this series. We’ll time how long it takes to process 10000 images and calculate the throughput.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Governments often struggle with massive new IT projects

    Idaho’s State Controller’s Office found itself in that position six years ago when it sought to overhaul all its business operation systems. Scott Smith, the chief deputy controller, and project manager of Luma, said they were trying to maintain systems that they were losing technical support for.

    Each agency had built its own homegrown system or had procured its own up until that point. There was a desire to modernize operations statewide and do an audit on return on investment for taxpayers. The project got the name Luma, an attempt for the state to “enlighten, or shine a light on” its existing systems and update them, Smith said.

  • Idaho Capital Sun ☛ Idaho’s new Luma business system missing data, security controls, audits find

    Luma replaces a patchwork series of legacy business systems that dated to 1987 and 1988 that Idaho State Controller’s Office officials have said outlived their useful life, and were vulnerable to security threats and natural disasters that could take a physical data center offline.

  • Drew Breunig ☛ When is a Minicar as Dangerous as a 3-Ton Truck?

    The red line in the chart above is Milwaukee, MN, where bored kids first discovered the cars could be stolen with a screwdriver and USB cable. Eventually, they started posting their joyrides to TikTok, YouTube, and Snap. Right around May 2022 – when Tommy G posted his viral documentary about “Kia Boys” on YouTube – the phenomenon bubbled up above the local Milwaukee subculture and spread to other markets.

    A software update shipped in 2023 cut theft rates by more than half – among those cars that had the update applied. My city’s police department even mailed letters to local Kia owners, encouraging them to take action:

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Press conference in Marseille against Data Centers [Ed: Well, "the wake of the Artificial Intelligence paradigm" is false. They parrot the hype/lie.]

      In the wake of the Artificial Intelligence paradigm, data centres are set to proliferate all over the country. These server warehouses dedicated to processing and storing computer data generate numerous conflicts over the use of water and electricity. They take up land and cause environmental pollutions. They are monopolising public funds and accelerating the current bio-climatic crisis.

    • The Register UK ☛ Oracle cloud AI will enable mass surveillance, says Ellison

      "If Elon and Satya [Nadella] want to pick us, that's a good sign - we have tech that's valuable and differentiated," Ellison said, adding: "One of the ideal uses of that differentiated offering? Maximizing AI's public security capabilities."

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Predator Spyware Maker Intellexa Targeted In U.S. Crackdown

      The U.S. Treasury Department today sanctioned five individuals and one entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium for their role in “developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology that resents a significant threat to the national security of the United States.”

      Today’s action by the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) follows a similar action in March that alleged that the consortium’s “Predator” spyware had been used to target U.S. government officials, journalists, and policy experts.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Apple’s Lawsuit Against NSO Group Has Been Dropped at the Company’s Request, but Meta’s Continues – Pixel Envy

      WhatsApp appears to be continuing its suit against NSO Group. On the same day Apple filed its request to dismiss its case, WhatsApp attorneys were scheduling depositions (PDF). I hope Meta does not shy away from fully litigating this. It is important to hold vendors like these accountable for the abuse of their software.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Register UK ☛ China’s quantum* crypto tech may be unhackable

      QKD works by generating pairs of entangled photons, and using math to tell if one of the pair has been observed in flight. Thus it is hard enough at scale, but reality is far harsher than that.

      Every explanation of QKD you'll see will have the classic crypto threesome of Alice sending Bob a message while being snooped on by Eve. It is Eve's observation of the photons that triggers the protection, goes the narrative, as in the quantum world the observation of one of an entangled pair discloses the state of the other.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Four boxes

    The “four boxes” system of democracy seems like it’s not fully thought-through; it doesn’t fundamentally address the two-party consequence of FPTP voting, the ratchet effect caused by that, and the ever-increasing flow of money and corruption. I sure hope someone smart figures out a way to patch this world up a bit!

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Pope crosses line by intruding in U.S. election — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    Pope Francis has no business weighing in on the U.S. presidential election.

    It’s already unconscionable that the Vatican has been waging a global war against abortion and contraceptive rights, seeking not only to deny Roman Catholic followers but all non-Catholics control of their own reproduction, families and lives. Notably, 82 percent of the world is not Catholic. Yet the Vatican is committed to trying to enforce its cruel Roman Catholic doctrine everywhere, creating acute and unnecessary misery, compounding poverty and harming women’s health, particularly in the poorest Catholic counties.

  • New York Times ☛ Will Fentanylware (TikTok) Be Banned in January? That Question is Headed to Court

    For years, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have been under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and intelligence officials for the app’s ties to China. They have argued in congressional hearings and in court filings that the app poses national security concerns because the Chinese government could use it to access sensitive information about Americans or to spread propaganda. They pushed a law, signed in April, that requires ByteDance to either sell the app to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban.

  • New York Times ☛ TikTok Faces Tough Questions From Judges in Fight Over U.S. Ban

    TikTok on Monday pushed back against a law that would force the popular video app to sell to a non-Chinese owner or be banned, in what is shaping up to be a landmark case.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ TikTok jousts with US appeals court in attempt to avoid nationwide ban

    The three judges concentrated their questions mainly around two topics: How can the U.S. be sure the app isn’t sharing data with the Chinese government and what will TikTok do to ensure the algorithm isn’t exploited by bad actors to start sharing harmful propaganda?

  • US News And World Report ☛ Democracy Declined for 8th Straight Year Around the Globe, Institute Finds

    The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or International IDEA, said election credibility is threatened by turnout dropping and results are increasingly being contested. One in three elections are being disputed in some way, it said.

    The organization with 35 member governments said the average percentage of the voting age population who actually cast ballots has declined from 65.2% in 2008 to 55.5% in 2023.

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok faces a skeptical panel of judges in its existential fight against the US government

    Attorneys for TikTok and a group of creators suing to block the law popularly known as “the TikTok ban” made their case before a panel of three judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Though the bill seeks a divestment of the app from its Chinese owner ByteDance by a January 19th deadline, the company says the ultimatum is in truth a ban that would stifle the speech of TikTok and its creators, and improperly limit the information Americans are able to receive.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok fights ban in court hearing, facing skeptical judges

    They also cited the government’s concern over how ByteDance developers in China could curate TikTok’s recommendation algorithm for American users.

  • Wired ☛ Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk

    The incident was the latest in a long line of increasingly incendiary political posts from Musk, whose substantial defense contracts with the US government may give him access to highly sensitive information even while he makes potential threats against the sitting commander in chief. And they point to the more pressing risk that Musk’s recent rhetoric has posed: the potential to inspire further political violence.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ US military completes withdrawal from Niger

    Earlier this year, Niger’s ruling junta ended an agreement that allowed U.S. troops to operate in the West African country. A few months later, officials from both countries said in a joint statement that U.S. troops would complete their withdrawal by the middle of September.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Betting on elections threatens confidence in voting and should be banned, US agency says

    The company accepted an unknown number of such bets last Friday during an eight-hour window between when a federal judge cleared the way and when a federal appeals court slammed the brakes on them.

    Those bets are now on hold while the appellate court considers the issue at a hearing Thursday.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Japan's campaign against memorials to 'comfort women' comes to Germany

    Similar fights over memorials to the comfort women have played out elsewhere — including Southern California — but the dispute has special resonance in Germany, with its own travails in coming to terms with an ugly history.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Nation ☛ JD Vance Can’t Even Bullshit Properly

    A closer examination of Vance’s exchange with Bash does not exonerate Trump’s running mate but rather makes clear that he is knowingly polluting the clear waters of truth. The crucial part of the verbal tussle between Vance and Bash went like this: [...]

• Environment

  • University of Michigan ☛ UMich researchers identify warming weather in the Great Lakes

    The researchers used historical data between 1959 and 2021 from the ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis dataset, which provides information on past atmospheric and oceanic conditions, to analyze trends in large winter storm systems in the Great Lakes region.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ How Italy’s largest fossil fuel company uses ‘green’ bonds as a loophole to keep financing hydrocarbons

    • EFF ☛ The Climate Has a Posse – And So Does Political Satire

      Enter the Yes Men, skilled activists who specialize in elaborate pranks that call attention to corporate tricks and hypocrisy. This time, they’ve created a website – wired-magazine.com—that looks remarkably like Wired.com and includes, front and center, an op-ed from writer (and EFF Special Adviser) Cory Doctorow. The op-ed, titled “Climate change has a posse” discussed the “power and peril” of a new “greenwashing” emoji designed by renowned artist Shepard Fairey: [...]

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Anthrax in Zimbabwe: Caused by Oppression, Worsened by Climate Change

    • The Conversation ☛ The silent conversations of plants

      In addition to these senses, we also have equilibrioception (the ability to maintain balance and body posture), proprioception (the sense of the relative position and strength of our body parts), thermoception (sense of temperature changes), and nociception (ability to sense pain). All these abilities have enabled humans to become highly sophisticated in communication and engagement with the natural world.

      Other species, particularly plants, use their senses to spread information in their own way.

• Finance

  • Now Verizon lays off nearly 5,000 workers

    Verizon is the latest tech company to announce cuts, expecting to lose 4,800 employees by March, with about half of those leaving in September.

  • FSF ☛ Free software in the EU needs your help! Join the ongoing Digital Europe Freedom Programme consultation by September 20 [Ed: FSF once again gives a platform to the man who slanders RMS]

    In support of Free Software Foundation Europe, we would like to ask for help in securing sustainable funding for free software in the European Union. We have until September 20 to participate in an ongoing consultation for the Digital Europe Programme. Below is more information on how you and your organization can advocate for long-term support for free software in the EU, via Free Software Foundation Europe President Matthias Kirschner:

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • EFF ☛ Unveiling Venezuela’s Repression: Surveillance and Censorship Following July’s Presidential Election [Ed: EFF doing regime change abroad, or playing a role in it]

    This is part one of a series. Part two on the legacy of Venezuela’s state surveillance is here.

    As thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets across the country to demand transparency in July’s election results, the ensuing repression has been described as the harshest to date, with technology playing a central role in facilitating this crackdown.

    The presidential elections in Venezuela marked the beginning of a new chapter in the country’s ongoing political crisis. Since July 28th, a severe backlash against demonstrations has been undertaken by the country’s security forces, leading to 20 people killed. The results announced by the government, in which they claimed a re-election of Nicolás Maduro, have been strongly contested by political leaders within Venezuela as well as by the Organization of American States (OAS),  and governments across the region. 

  • The Dissenter ☛ UK Using Terrorism Law To Silence Journalists, Protesters Who Commit 'Speech Crimes' [Ed: Hamas activists are now "journalists"?]

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Personnel update

    This is inspired by receiving a "personnel update" when a friend was fired many years ago. It felt coldly impersonal for such a deeply personal event, so I imagined what it would be like if the same approach were taken to other deeply personal events.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself

    In general, it is better to think of even the politicians on your own side not as role models to be admired but rather as basically disreputable figures who are necessary to deal with but who should always be looked down upon and forced to prove, through action, that they are not pieces of shit.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Heritage Foundation Admits KOSA Will Be Useful For Removing Pro-Abortion Content… If Trump Wins

    With KOSA stalled out in the House as many Republicans have rightly realized that it makes no sense and can be used to censor content they might support, as well as content they don’t support, Heritage Foundation has kicked off a new push to flip House Republicans. This comes the same week that supporters of KOSA brought a bunch of misguided parents to the Hill to push for the bill under the false premise that it would protect children. It won’t.

    One of the things Heritage is passing around is a “myth vs. fact” sheet that is so batshit crazy that I had four different people in DC send me copies on Friday pointing out how crazy it is. I don’t have the time or patience to go through all of the nonsense in the document, but I want to call out a few things.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ EFF: Calling for Genocide of Jews is OK, but Republicans Protesting is a Crime

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation pushes extreme Leftist politics while pretending to fight for privacy and free speech.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Surfer Today ☛ SurferToday celebrates its 17th anniversary

    The list of contributing writers at SurferToday has been growing fast - almost 150 - with more and more people wanting to share their stories, experiences, feelings, and reflections.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • ACLU ☛ Know Your Rights Game Show: Home Edition!

    This September the ACLU is hitting the road with artists, influencers, advocates and community members to make sure voters know their rights and have a plan to vote. Each stop on our ACU bus tour will be an energizing community experience that combines entertainment and surprises with critical information about our most fundamental rights and freedoms.

    Can't make the tour? Dive into the online version of our Bus Tour’s Know Your Rights Game Show quiz. Test your knowledge of our most fundamental civil liberties, and see how you measure up!

  • New York Times ☛ Amazon Tells Employees to Return to Office Five Days a Week

    The new rule — up from a three-day-a-week mandate set in 2023 — appears to be the most stringent return-to-office decision among big tech companies and could be a harbinger of more to come.

  • The Register UK ☛ Amazon CEO wants his staff back in the office full time

    The chief exec said the hybrid model of working partially at home and the rest in the office, which has been running for the past 15 months at the internet superpower, will come to an end January 2, 2025. At that point, staff will be expected to come in full time, with some exceptions granted, and hot-desking will be canceled - except for those departments that had it before the coronavirus upended everything.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Rent is eating up a greater share of tenants’ income in almost every state

    Three presidential swing states had among the biggest increases in the share of renters who spent that much on housing: Arizona (to 54% from 46.5%), Nevada (to 57.4% from 51.1%) and Georgia (to 53.7% from 48.4%). The numbers are based on a Stateline analysis of American Community Survey data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Florida and Maine also saw large jumps.

  • Papers Please ☛ TSA again backs down from its REAL-ID threats

    The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has again backed down from its decades-old threats to start requiring all airline passengers to show ID that the TSA deems to be compliant with the REAL-ID Act of 2004. But the new rules proposed by the TSA would create new problems that won’t go away until Congress repeals the REAL-ID Act.

    In a notice published in the Federal Register on September 12th , the TSA has proposed another two-year postponement of the most recent  of the “deadlines” the agency has imposed on itself for REAL-ID enforcement.  But that postponement would be combined  with interim rules for the next two years that ignore the law and invite arbitrariness in how travelers are treated.

    The TSA notes that “frustrated travelers at the checkpoint may also increase security risks” if the TSA stopped allowing travelers to fly without REAL-ID. But the TSA doesn’t mention its current procedures for flying without any ID or its position in litigation that no law or regulation requires airline passengers to show any ID. Instead, The TSA claims without explanation that without this postponment, “individuals without  REAL ID-compliant DL/ID or acceptable alternative would be unable to board federally regulated aircraft.”

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Windows Media Player loses the ability to play DRM media on older PCs

    With this deprecation of legacy DRM services, you will no longer be able to play DRM-protected media of any kind in Windows Media Player, Silverlight, Windows 7, and Windows 8. According to Windows Latest, that also means no more streaming of DRM content to Xbox 360.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Wired ☛ OpenAI Messed With the Wrong Mega-Popular Parenting Forum

    This spring, after Mumsnet discovered that AI companies were scraping its data, the company says it decided to try to strike licensing deals with some of the major players in the space, including OpenAI, which initially expressed willingness to explore an arrangement after Mumsnet first reached out. After talks with OpenAI fell apart, Mumsnet in July announced its intention to pursue legal action.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Movie Companies Take DMCA Subpoena 'Shortcut' Dispute to Court of Appeals

    Earlier this year, a Hawaiian district court blocked movie companies' efforts to unmask alleged BitTorrent pirates using a DMCA subpoena 'shortcut'. The filmmakers requested the court to reconsider its position, but without success. Undeterred, the filmmakers are now petitioning the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to review the lower court's findings.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Eddy Grant Wins: Trump's 'Fair Use' of 'Electric Avenue' Was Anything But

    British musician Eddy Grant has prevailed in his copyright infringement lawsuit against Donald Trump and his 2020 campaign team over their infringing use of the iconic track 'Electric Avenue'. After consuming four years of Grant's life, the case turned on a fair use defense; under scrutiny of the court, it effortlessly failed to convince on any of the four factors that combine to indicate a permitted, non-infringing use of a copyright work.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • 🔤SpellBinding: EILMNUO Wordo: AMISS

  • Politics and World Events

    • Making cracks where the light could shine through at last

      in Briefing for a Descent into Hell, 1971. Twenty years later Leonard Cohen would rediscover a similar turn of phrase: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Trains

      • We really don't need announcements in train stations

        The effect of the constant announcements in train stations in England is simply to make them less viable as Third Places, to stop people who just want to converse or think.