Leftovers

• The Verge ☛ The Verge’s favorite home office keepsakes

  We asked the folks here at The Verge what they have on their desks or in their offices that they keep just for the hell of it — because they like it, because it means something special, or just because. Here are some of the answers we got.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ Blogging & Listening

  When you read a great blog post, the feeling you often get is: “I already knew this, I just hadn’t been able to express it!”

  In this sense, writing a great blog post is about listening.

• Robert Birming ☛ Comfort Zone Challenges

  I think it's healthy to step outside our comfort zone from time to time. This was a small thing, obviously, but it's still a step in the right direction.

• Science

  • The Straits Times ☛ Race to the Red Planet: China accelerates Mars mission timeline, signals confidence in exploration

    A similar plan to retrieve samples from Mars by the US is hindered by technical challenges and a ballooning budget.

  • nLab ☛ Conway's law in nLab

    Conway argues informally as follows: a human cannot design a system component which interacts with another component without some sort of communication with that other component’s designer, even indirectly through forwarded messages or documentation. As such, if any two components interact, then their designers must have communicated. Therefore the process of assigning designers to components must preserve adjacency. This assignment also is a function on vertices and therefore a graph homomorphism?.

    Note that Conway writes of “linear graphs,” which are graphs that include virtual vertices representing compositions of system components. Each virtual vertex is equivalent to a collection of edges, and the reader may verify that they are preserved by graph homomorphisms.

• Education

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Climb, fall, learn, repeat — in defence of monkey bars

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Conferences

    Over the last month I attended three different conferences around Tampa and that was more than I attended all of last year. Every conference I feel like I want to dump some thoughts on somebody about said event, but this time I just want to generalize it all from 10 years of conferences and blog about it.

  • [Old] Jamie Brandon ☛ Why start a new database conference?

    Somehow I am organizing a conference called Have you tried rubbing a database on it?

    This isn't what I planned to do this year. How did this happen?

  • Jamie Brandon ☛ HYTRADBOI 2025

    2025 Feb 28. Put it in your calendar.

    It's been three years since HYTRADBOI. Long enough that I've mostly forgotten how stressful it was to run a conference and it's starting to seem like a good idea again.

• Hardware

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2024-09-11 [Older] Qualcomm QuickCharge? Apple Fast Charge? Various Fast Charging Protocols Explained

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Extreme Hours, Fatal Consequences: Two Major US Banks Revamp Policies After Associate's Death

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Five college athletes hospitalized after workout with Navy SEAL

    One study done by the Defense Health Agency and released in April looked at cases of rhabdomyolysis in the U.S. military from 2019-2023. It described rhabdomyolysis as a “largely preventable condition” that “persists as an occupational hazard of military training and operations.”

  • [Old] Time ☛ Drug Makers Manipulate Patents to Keep Insulin Prices High

    A Nov. 16 study highlights how the ease of manipulating the Orange Book has caused pricing issues for one group of therapeutics: insulin products. The gaming of the patent process is rife in the insulin marketplace, says William Feldman, an associate physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a lead author of the new study, published in PLOS Medicine. And even in the wake of a March 2023 commitment from manufacturers to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month, “you still have a system where there’s not enough competition, and prices are still too high for these drugs that have been around for a long time,” Feldman says.

  • [Old] PLOS ☛ Patents and regulatory exclusivities on FDA-approved insulin products: A longitudinal database study, 1986–2019 | PLOS Medicine

    Insulin is the primary treatment for type 1 and some type 2 diabetes but remains costly in the United States, even though it was discovered more than a century ago. High prices can lead to nonadherence and are often sustained by patents and regulatory exclusivities that limit competition on brand-name products. We sought to examine how manufacturers have used patents and regulatory exclusivities on insulin products approved from 1986 to 2019 to extend periods of market exclusivity.

  • [Old] Vox ☛ The absurdly high cost of insulin, explained | Vox

    When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They wanted everyone who needed their medication to be able to afford it.

    [...]

    “As solutions to the insulin-cost crisis are being considered,” a new New England Journal of Medicine editorial argues, “there is value in remembering that when the patent for insulin was first drafted in 1923, Banting and Macleod declined to be named on it. Both felt that insulin belonged to the public. Now, nearly 100 years later, insulin is inaccessible to thousands of Americans because of its high cost.”

  • NPR ☛ FTC sues insulin middlemen, saying they pocket billions while patients face high costs

    PBMs are essentially the middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurance providers. Their job is to reduce drug prices. But the process is complex and opaque, and critics say they're actually driving prices up for patients.

  • [Old] The Lancet ☛ Insulin products and patents in the USA in 2004, 2014, and 2020: a cross-sectional study - The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology

    The number of patents listed with the FDA for approved insulins increased from 11 in 2004, to 28 in 2014, and 100 in 2020 (appendix p 2). Of the 18 products listed in 2004, seven had patents (ranging 1–5 patents per product; IQR 0–2·5) and the other 11 did not. Of the 25 products listed in 2014, 21 had patents (ranging from 1 to 8 patents per product; IQR 1–4) and four did not. In 2020, 29 of 43 products listed had patents (ranging 1 to 41 patents per product, IQR 0–19) and 14 did not (appendix p 2). The number of products with just one patent increased from one in 2004 to nine in 2020 (figure). Of the 100 total patents covering the 29 insulin products with at least one patent listed in the Orange Book in 2020, 41 were associated with Afrezza, a novel inhaled insulin. Patents covering Afrezza included 39 from Mannkind, one from DCA Design International, and one from Zealand Pharma (appendix p 2).

  • [Old] NIH ☛ Insulin in America: A Right or a Privilege? - PMC

    But in the United States, access to insulin had never been a problem. As a medication required for survival by 10% of those with diabetes, it was always available, although for decades quite crude by today’s standards. The insulin patent from the University of Toronto was sold for $1 with the understanding that cheap insulin would become available (3). Through the years, insulin remained affordable. Even with the introduction of human insulin in 1982 ($14 per vial) and then insulin analogs in 1996 ($24 per vial), the increases in insulin pricing did not seem to be a concern. At least in the United States, the vast majority of patients requiring insulin had access to all of the insulin analogs as they were developed.

  • New York Times ☛ Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

    The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.

    The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Axios ☛ All-bot app SocialAI stirs debate over AI-driven social media

    A new app that gives each user a private, Twitter-like social network populated exclusively by chatbots has stoked a wider debate about the purpose and value of online communication.

    The big picture: At first blush, SocialAI, the all-bot platform, might sound like "pure artifice" or an "AI void" (Wired) — but its 28-year old creator pitches it as an antidote to the toxicity of today's "real" social media.

  • Joel Chrono ☛ The GBA experience I wanted

    I must admit, I am extremely happy with this device. Recently, my sister borrowed my Miyoo Mini Plus and proceeded to never give it back. I do miss some of the features, especially the Activity Tracking that allowed me to see how much time I played my games, but other than that, I have absolutely no problem with this being my only retro handheld.

    Anbernic has been releasing tons of devices ever since the SP came out, the RG40XXH, the RGB40XXV, the RGCube, the RG406V, and many more. But the SP’s form factor remains unmatched, and even if one with a 4 inch screen came out, I don’t think it would hit the nostalgia factor as much as this one does.

  • Greg Morris ☛ No Hallucinating, That’s An Ad

    When the idea of using an LLM as a search engine started floating around, this is where I expected we would end up. Not because I am some kind of expert, but if you can be sure on anything online, it’s that it eventually ends up with adverts.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ A brief history of QuickDraw and PICTs

    The original Macintosh running Classic Mac OS was dependent on a great many components, but the most important of all was its graphics system QuickDraw. Without that, none of the windows, icons and images that were composed into its human interface would have happened. Although almost everything from QuickDraw has now been superseded and removed from modern macOS, you can still open most of its QuickDraw images saved in its custom format, PICT.

  • Colin Leroy-Mira ☛ Fuck capitalism in general and fuck Youtube in particular

    The only problem is that video’s expensive – in terms of storage and bandwidth. So most Peertube instances tend to be small and specialized. You won’t find everything you want to find on one single Peertube instance.

    So this week-end, I’ve searched for a real solution, and I’ve found SepiaSearch.

• Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

  • University of Toronto ☛ TLS certificates were (almost) never particularly well verified

    Recently there was a little commotion in the TLS world, as discussed in We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI. As part of this adventure, the authors of the article discovered that some TLS certificate authorities were using WHOIS information to validate who controlled a domain (so if you could take over a WHOIS server for a TLD, you could direct domain validation to wherever you wanted). This then got some people to realize that TLS Certificate Authorities were not actually doing very much to verify who owned and controlled a domain. I'm sure that there were also some people who yearned for a hypothetical old days when Certificate Authorities actually did that, as opposed to the modern days when they don't.

    I'm afraid I have bad news for anyone with this yearning. Certificate Authorities have never done a particularly strong job of verifying who was asking for a TLS (then SSL) certificate. I will go further and be more controversial; we don't want them to be thorough about identity verification for TLS certificates.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • India Times ☛ Apple Intelligence: Apple’s big bet on AI tech Faces EU regulations hurdle

    In June this year, Apple announced it would not roll out its AI features under Apple Intelligence in the EU market over ‘regulatory uncertainties’ and privacy concerns stemming from the Digital Markets Act.

  • VOA News ☛ US to propose ban on Chinese software, hardware in connected vehicles, sources say

    The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems.

Defence/Aggression

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] North Korea releases rare images of uranium enrichment plant

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] German navy vessels sail through Taiwan Strait

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-19 [Older] Colombia suspends peace talks with ELN rebels

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] BAC: Hungarian firm in focus of Hezbollah pager explosions

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Canada in Talks About Joining Expanded AUKUS, Defence Chief Blair Says

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Body of Turkish-American Activist Killed in West Bank Arrives in Turkey

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Kremlin Says It Disagrees With Turkey's Erdogan That Crimea Should Return to Kyiv's Control

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Mother, Relatives Charged Over 8-Year-Old Girl's Killing in Turkey

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-15 [Older] Will Turkey's bid to join BRICS speed up EU accession?

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-14 [Older] An American Activist Killed by Israeli Fire Is Buried in Turkey as Israel Strikes Gaza

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-14 [Older] Turkey Arrests Suspected Istanbul Church Attack Planner Linked to Islamic State

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-19 [Older] Taiwan Deepening Security Cooperation With US, Other 'Allies'

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-19 [Older] Taiwan Security Bodies 'Paying Great Attention' to Hezbollah Beeper Explosions

• NL Times ☛ Parents want clear age guidelines for kids and smartphones

  Parents in the Netherlands would like clear age standards for when to let their kids have smartphones and use social media, according to a survey by research platform Pointer. Many parents who have already given their children their own smartphones later regretted that decision.

  PanelClix surveyed a representative group of over 1,200 parents with kids between the ages of 8 and 18. Over 1,000 of the parents have already given their children their own smartphones, typically around the age of 11. In retrospect, about a third would have waited longer.

• France24 ☛ 300-kilo WWI bomb removed in Belgrade

  The 305mm "Morser M.11" howitzer shell, found last Wednesday, was used by the Austro-Hungarian army during the July 1914 siege of the capital during World War I, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic ahead of the removal operation.

• The Daily Star ☛ 300-kilo WWI bomb removed in Belgrade

  A century-old artillery round weighing nearly 300 kilogrammes (660 pounds), was safely removed yesterday from a construction site near the Serbian Parliament in Belgrade, police said.

• Newsquest Media Group Ltd ☛ Small boats total passes 24,000 for the year so far as 707 make Channel crossing

  The “dramatic reductions” in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Italy is something the Government wants to understand, he added.

• Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • RFERL ☛ Latest Russian ICBM Test May Have Failed, Satellite Images Suggest

    New satellite images show a large hole at a Russian cosmodrome that experts say may be the result of a failed intercontinental ballistic missile test.

  • The Strategist ☛ A Turkish brick in the BRICS bloc—is Turkey choosing between East and West?

    Recent reports suggest that Turkey is positioning itself to join BRICS, the political-economic bloc founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China in the mid-2000s. Speculation that Turkey has made a formal application to join comes ...

  • France24 ☛ Zelensky lands in US to discuss 'victory plan' with Biden

    As Biden continues to oppose Ukraine's use of NATO weapons on targets inside Russian territory, Zelensky arrived in the United States on Sunday to present his war plan to US President Joe Biden, as well as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. With talks between Ukraine and Russia seemingly at a standstill, Zelensky seeks to present his most powerful allies his 'victory plan' to achieve a "fair and stable peace", which he hopes to have ready by November.

  • RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Visits U.S. Arms Plant Ahead Of Meetings With World Leaders

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited a Pennsylvania arms plant producing munitions critical for his country's war effort ahead of meetings this week with President Joe Biden and other world leaders

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Killer Who Ate Human Heart Returns Home From Ukraine War

    A Russian man convicted of murder and of cooking and eating the heart of one of his victims has returned home from the war in Ukraine, at least temporarily, local media reported.

  • RFERL ☛ Moscow Says It Will Not Participate In Second Ukraine Peace Summit

    Moscow will not participate in a second peace summit planned by Ukraine for later this year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on September 21.

  • RFERL ☛ Kazakhstan Detains Russian Citizen Wanted By Moscow For Anti-War Stance

    A Russian citizen has been detained in Kazakhstan after Moscow put him on an international wanted list after he condemned the invasion of Ukraine.

  • RFERL ☛ Mothers, Wives, Children Of Russian Soldiers Protest, Demand Demobilization

    A group of wives, mothers, and children of mobilized Russian soldiers deployed in their country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine protested outside the Defense Ministry in Moscow, with an unspecified number of detentions reported.

  • RFERL ☛ 21 Wounded In Nighttime Russian Strikes On Kharkiv High-Rises

    Russian military strikes hit high-rise apartment buildings in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, leaving dozens wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack this week.

  • New York Times ☛ Takeaways From ‘The Deserter’ in The New York Times Magazine

    Here is what we can learn about the Russian military and its soldiers from the story of ‘Ivan’ and ‘Anna’ in The New York Times Magazine.

Environment

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Central European Flooding Widens as Death Toll Rises

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-19 [Older] UN Chief Urges Divided Nations to Approve Blueprint to Address Global Challenges From Climate to AI

• Counter Punch ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Bring on the Climate Doomers! We Need More of Them

• University of Michigan ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Jane Fonda talks climate policy and 2024 presidential race at Rackham

• The Age AU ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] ‘Perverse’: Woodside, Shell spend millions getting into offset game

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Climate-Related 'One-Two Punch' Seen Driving Los Angeles Wildfires

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Global Health Fund Says Health, Climate, Conflict 'Triple Whammy' Hits World's Poorest

• Vox ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Why everywhere seems to be flooding right now

• TruthOut ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Company Operating Exploded Pipeline in Texas Has Faced Major Climate Protests

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Fortified Bouillon Cubes Are Seen as a Way to Curb Malnutrition in Africa as Climate Worsens Hunger

• Vox ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Changing With Our Climate

• Vox ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] This coastal tribe has a radical vision for fighting sea-level rise in the Hamptons

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] BlackRock Promised to Be Climate-Conscious. The Joke’s on Us.

• Scheerpost ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Departures From Climate Action 100+ Highlight U.S.-Europe Divide Over ESG Investing

• TruthOut ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Climate Crisis Is the Defining Issue of Our Time. Where Was It at the Debate?

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Polluting Puff: Asthma Inhalers Are Big Contributors to Climate Change

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-14 [Older] Young Climate Activists Ask US Supreme Court to Revive Their Lawsuit Against the Government

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-14 [Older] Climate Protesters Block Dutch Highway While Police Strike

• Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Climate Finance Regime, a Neo-Colonialist Tool?

• Counter Punch ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Climate Catastrophe Smashes Heat Records, as Plutocrats, Politicians Twiddle Their Thumbs

• Truthdig ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Texas Is the King of Greenhouse Emissions. It’s Also in the Path of the Climate Change Storm

• Vox ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Can the world stop a massive oil spill in the middle of a war zone?

• Vox ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] The remarkable reason why these bugs are seeking out devastating wildfires

• The Straits Times ☛ Torrential rainfall in Korea forces 1,500 to evacuate, causes widespread damage to homes, roads

  Some are unable to return home and are staying at temporary shelters.

• New Yorker ☛ Volodymyr Zelensky Has a Plan for Ukraine’s Victory

  The Ukrainian President on how to end the war with Russia, the empty rhetoric of Vladimir Putin, and what the U.S. election could mean for the fate of his country.

• Energy/Transportation

  • DeSmog ☛ Energy Policy Shouldn’t be in Hands of Politicians, British Gas Boss Tells Labour Minister

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Energy equity, renewables and addressing the consequences of rising energy burdens

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] ET PV: The University of Toledo is testing tech for space solar with terrestrial applications

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] North Carolina appeals court upholds Duke Energy’s lower net metering rates

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Clean Cooking Energy Affordability In Tanzania Is Still A Puzzle

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] NREL breaks ground on $224M energy materials processing facility

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] U.S. finalizes Section 301 tariffs, doubling rate on solar panels

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] U.S. polysilicon manufacturer eyes mid-October for first Qcells shipment

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Oregon tribe sues over federal agency plans to hold an offshore wind energy auction

  • The Local DK ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Denmark’s Jørgensen to get role as EU energy commissioner

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] Europe's New Energy Commissioner Takes on Housing as Well as Fuel

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Consumers Energy may get $770M from feds to fix century-old Michigan dams

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] 'Invest In Renewable Energy': Finance Guru Reveals Four Things He'll Do To Protect His Money If Kamala Harris Wins US Elections

  • Heliomass ☛ Station Stories: East Finchley

    Today’s East Finchley stands as a testament to another era. When standing on the platform it’s not a stretch to imagine yourself waiting for steam trains to speed you out to the London suburbs. We can imagine an alternative future where the Northern Heights project had worked out and East Finchley was a transit hub with services to Elstree, Edgware and Finsbury Park as well as High Barnet and Camden Town.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Clean energy laws and funding fuel Michigan jobs and economic growth, new study says

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Want lower emissions? Build more transmission, PNNL says

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] MISO and its market monitor differ on storage’s role in transmission planning

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-12 [Older] NextStar Energy battery plant on track for production late 2025 while competitors delay projects

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Can Namibia's strategy to cull animals save them?

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Japanese documents reveal 21 horses died after export from Canada

Finance

• CBC ☛ 2024-09-11 [Older] This is the scene at a job fair in Windsor, the city with Canada's highest unemployment

• CBC ☛ 2024-09-12 [Older] Midnight deadline looms for Air Canada and its pilots to reach a deal

• International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] 'My Millionaire Husband Forced Me To Take Social Security At 62': Boomer Considers Divorce After Husband Refuses To Give Her Money

• International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] 70-Year-Old With $1,622 Monthly Social Security Benefit Cuts Rent to $500 With This Simple Move

• CBC ☛ 2024-09-11 [Older] Details emerge of accused, buyer in Churchill portrait heist

• Wave of Tech Layoffs Continues Into 2024, Impacting 60,000 Workers

  Major players such as Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Microsoft have all made significant workforce reductions in the early months of this year.

  This ongoing trend is not limited to large corporations; numerous smaller startups have also been affected, with some ceasing operations entirely.

  The layoffs reflect a broader shift in the industry as companies adapt to economic pressures and increasingly embrace AI and automation technologies, leading to concerns about the future of jobs that were once considered secure.

• IBM Layoffs: Senior programmers, sales hit in ongoing “workforce rebalancing”

  IBM has initiated another round of layoffs as part of its ongoing “workforce rebalancing” effort, with a focus on senior-level programmers, sales, and support personnel. This follows the company’s earlier announcement of a global workforce reduction of 1% to 1.5%.

• Volkswagen Layoffs: German Car Manufacturer VW Prepares To Lay Off Its Employees in China To Lower Costs Amid Sales Decline, EV Shift

  Volkswagen AG has reportedly begun to lay off employees in China as the company faces challenges in the region. The job cuts can be seen as part of VW’s strategy to manage costs amid a decline in sales and a shift toward electric vehicles (EVs) in the Chinese market. Volkswagen is looking to reduce its workforce to align with the changing automotive industry. These job cuts at Volkswagen are said to adapt to the changing demands of the EV market and manage declining sales.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Germany's political landscape is more fractured than ever

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Germany: Suspect detained in plot to kill soldiers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Indian opposition leader, Arvind Kejriwal, granted bail

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Pope Francis wraps up 12-day Asia-Pacific tour

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Bolivia: Clashes erupt at Evo Morales' protest march

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] EU to withhold €200 million from Hungary over asylum fine

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Pravin Gordhan, a South African Government Minister Who Was Activist Against Apartheid, Dies at 75

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] South African Anti-Corruption Minister Gordhan Dies, Aged 75

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] Argentina's Milei Pledges to Protect Fiscal Balance in Budget Speech

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-14 [Older] South Africa's Deputy President 'Ok' After Collapsing During Speech

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Jony Ive confirms he is working on an OpenAI hardware design project

  We aren’t surprised that this particular product design collaboration has come about. This time last year it emerged that Ive and OpenAI's Sam Altman were having conversations about creating hardware for artificial intelligence. At the time, unnamed sources also indicated that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had also been involved in the talks.

• Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

  • RFERL ☛ How Russia Spreads Fake News In The Balkans

    In February, VIGINUM, the French government body that monitors foreign digital interference, released a report on a pro-Russian propaganda network it called "Portal Kombat."

    It identified some 193 websites that aimed to broadly spread information from pro-Russian sources as well as Russian news outlets and institutions.

    For four months, RFE/RL tracked websites in multiple languages targeting audiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia, the undisputed lead target of the propaganda during the period RFE/RL monitored.

  • [Old] Associated Press ☛ Election 2024: Elon Musk shares a deepfake video that mimics Kamala Harris

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

  • The Record ☛ California enacts laws regulating use of deepfakes in election ads

    Arguably the most significant of the newly enacted measures is a bill which mandates that large online platforms delete or label deepfake ads focused on elections in a specific timeframe running up to voting day.

    That legislation also requires the platforms to design features which easily allow users to report deepfake content and authorizes candidates, election officials, elected officials, the state’s Attorney General and district attorneys to obtain court orders to challenge online platforms failing to follow the law.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Spanish-language radio listeners in US face a growing threat from false information - lonestarlive.com

    While misinformation and disinformation are shared in many languages and aimed at many audiences, they target Spanish-speaking radio listeners in specific ways that have caused alarm among academic researchers and political activists.

    Many radio stations and radio hosts that serve Latino audiences remain committed to broadcasting information that is true and factual. But there is growing concern this election year that Latino voters may be making decisions at the ballot box based on information that is incorrect or deliberately inaccurate.

  • BBC ☛ 'I hate Trump, she likes him - we both think he staged assassination attempts'

    Wild Mother - the online alias of a woman called Desirée - lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

    About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.

    The two women are poles apart politically - but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.

    Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.

Censorship/Free Speech

• US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] First Conviction Under Hong Kong's New National Security Law for Wearing 'Seditious' T-Shirt

• HRW ☛ 2024-09-18 [Older] Meta’s Oversight Board Rules ‘From the River to the Sea’ Isn’t Hate Speech

• Counter Punch ☛ 2024-09-17 [Older] The Florida State Sunshine Bank: How a State-Owned Bank Can Protect Free Speech

• New York Times ☛ Opinion | Putin Is Hunting Down Ordinary People All Over the World

  But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s war — or were forced out, accused of not embracing it enough. These low-profile dissenters are subjected to surveillance and kidnappings, too. Yet their repression happens in silence — away from the spotlight and often with the tacit consent, or inadequate prevention, of the countries to which they have fled.It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.

Civil Rights/Policing

• BIA Net ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] How couriers in Turkey build solidarity and protest networks through digital means

• BIA Net ☛ 2024-09-16 [Older] European court demands response from Turkey over imprisoned MP Can Atalay