Leftovers

• Doc Searls ☛ Post flow

  I love the idea of using one’s blog (as Dave does) as the personal place to collect what one posts on various social media. So the flow, which we might call a postshed (would post shed be better because it’s easier to read?) is from social media clouds into one’s own river of blog posts. (Maybe postflow would be better. I invite better nouns and/or verbs.)

• Blake Watson ☛ Where I’m at with notetaking apps

  So, I’ve devised a plan to give me the best of both worlds—the ability to use different apps with zero time spent migrating notes. Here’s the trick—I’m committing to storing my notes as a folder of files.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Reflections on Connections

  Even though I live in the same city where I went to high school, I seldom see anyone from that era of my life. Our city is very transient, and most of my classmates came from military families. I occasionally run into one guy I served with, but we aren’t close. The jobs I held throughout my twenties didn’t yield any lasting friendships. I do have several people from my career in public schools that I still talk to, but of course, it’s not the same as seeing them every day.

• Robert Birming ☛ A Pair of Paragraphs

  [...] A few words, forming a sentence, and another, and suddenly we have a whole paragraph. And before we know it, we might discover that we've actually written two paragraphs.

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ Sports Betting Will Do to America What It’s Done to Australia

  Australia is the canary in the coal mine for sports betting, and Americans should pay attention to the destruction the industry has caused.

• Tracy Durnell ☛ The secret power of a blog

  Readers have different expectations for blog posts than more formal writing. Bloggers don’t need to be experts or have all the answers. Posts don’t have to be deep or long. The blog’s form is practically made for active learning, for sharing thoughts and updates over a span of time.

  We know, when we’re reading a blog, that we’re getting a glimpse into the writer’s active psyche, a tour of their studio as it were — not hearing their thesis presentation or reading their pre-print publication; hearing from other people being people is part of the appeal of blogs.

  Not every blog post will be great, but it’s worth writing anyway: it’s the coming back, the ongoing practice of writing, the commitment to self publishing that matters.

• Nathan Upchurch ☛ Obligatory Site Updates Post

  I now have a (human readable) sitemap, linked in the footer of each page, for easier discovery of the pages that aren’t listed in the menu at the top, such as colophon, and privacy pages, which are now separate from the about page.

  I haven’t automated this yet, mainly because I’m not sure how to best go about it; if any Eleventy enthusiasts out there have any suggestions, please let me know by commenting below using Mastodon!

• David Revoy ☛ My Webcomic Journey: Merging Projects and Learning Along the Way

  That was months ago, and, oh dear... a lot of things didn't turn out the way I thought they would.

  I wanted to give you an update on that, but I changed my mind so many times in the last few months that I felt too disoriented to even feel confident enough to write down a blog post about my webcomic journey.

  Now I feel like I'm moving in a new direction, and it's one that's sticking with me. So let me explain.

• Science

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] New LUNA facility will prepare astronauts for moon landings

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] RECOMMENDED — Astronauts will soon train for lunar landings at a new moon mock-up facility in Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ What is the point of a Nobel Prize?

    The prizes helped build the idea of the genius scientist — one who single-handedly drove science forward with their sheer brilliance.

    But in reality, scientific progress operates very differently, especially in contemporary research.

    Scientific discoveries are born from collaborations between hundreds of researchers around the world from different research fields. Science is a community — it is multi-disciplinary and diverse.

    Now, Nobel Prizes are commonly split between groups of scientists. But for every Nobel Laureate, there are thousands of other scientists, PhD students, and technicians who were part of the research — and did the experiments — but remain uncredited, at least among the general public.

  • The Local SE ☛ When did Swedes get so crazy about cinnamon?

    The earliest written evidence of cinnamon being used in Sweden appears in a recipe for the mulled beer Saint Bridget of Sweden, known as heliga Birgitta, served to guests at the funeral of her father in 1328, when half a kilogram of the expensive spice was used.

    "There are two main reasons for serving cinnamon here," Serra says of the use of cinnamon in the funeral beer. "It's to show your status, because it was an expensive import, to show that you're part of the continental European food culture, and it also has medical properties."

• Education

  • Josh Withers ☛ Why do we homeschool? | Withers Without You

    In a world moving towards artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, our hope is that our kids will shine in humanity and real intelligence.

    While their peers may be enslaved by iPads, social networks, and devices, we want our children to be empowered to love, communicate, enjoy, and help. When they’re adults I want to be so proud of them, and for that to happen I need to start today.

    “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” – Frank Herbert, Dune

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Ceefax: The Original News On Demand

    Long before we had internet newsfeeds or Twitter, Ceefax delivered up-to-the-minute news right to your television screen. Launched by the BBC in 1974, Ceefax was the world’s first teletext service, offering millions of viewers a mix of news, sports, weather, and entertainment on demand. Fast forward 50 years, and the iconic service is being honored with a special exhibition at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

  • Hackaday ☛ Doing 1080p Video, Sort Of, On The STM32 Microcontroller

    When you think 1080p video, you probably don’t think STM32 microcontroller. And yet! [Gabriel Cséfalvay] has pulled off just that through the creative use of on-chip peripherals. Sort of.

  • Henrique Dias ☛ Long Term Review of NuPhy Air Keyboards

    I have been using the same two NuPhy keyboards for almost two years, and I’ve also been wanting to write something about them for quite some time. Why not just do it?

    Back in 2022, I wanted to replace my higher profile Ducky One 2 Mini keyboard by something with a lighter and lower profile. Back then, I was also working at a coworking space, and I had noticed the switches I had on that keyboard were a tiny bit too loud.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Dare to dream

    On a related note, it became clear to me years ago that iPad Pros should have the front-facing camera on the long side of the device so that it would be higher and centered when using the iPad in that model’s native orientation. I asked for this many times over the years, and without fail, each time I would be told that it wasn’t possible due to physics. You simply couldn’t have the magnets needed to attach an Apple Pencil near the cameras otherwise the cameras wouldn’t work. Even if Apple agreed this would be better, it wasn’t possible due to “physics”. A few times this wasn’t told to me nicely, it was more in the “are you dumb? Don’t you know that magnets and cameras can’t mix?” And yet, I’m writing this on an iPad Pro with the camera centered on the long side of the screen, with an Apple Pencil magnetically attached to the same spot. Obviously they needed to rearrange things in both the iPad and the Pencil to make this work, but that’s my entire point: the world can change and we can usually get what we want if we try. My perspective is that as a user and a commentator, my job is to ask for what I want and it’s Apple’s (or whoever’s) job to make it happen.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Minister says veterans on Canada's Invictus team will get health coverage by 2025

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] German minister: Eating habit survey shows developing tastes

  • Pro Publica ☛ EPA Says It Plans to Withdraw Approval of Chevron Fuels Likely to Cause Cancer

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is planning to withdraw and reconsider its approval for Chevron to produce 18 plastic-based fuels, including some that an internal agency assessment found are highly likely to cause cancer.

    In a recent court filing, the federal agency said it “has substantial concerns” that the approval order “may have been made in error.” The EPA gave a Chevron refinery in Mississippi the green light to make the chemicals in 2022 under a “climate-friendly” initiative intended to boost alternatives to petroleum, as ProPublica and The Guardian reported last year.

  • Some blog housekeeping and a bit of shameless self-promotion

    You might have noticed—again!—that posting has been a bit…slow. That’s because I had a double deadline last Friday. A grant application I was working on was due then, as were the reviews I’m doing of grant submissions for an NIH study section. You might also remember that I had promised I’d get back to a more regular posting schedule as well, but that that promise fell through last week as well. As a result, I thought I’d explain.

  • VOA News ☛ Arkansas sues YouTube over claims it's fueling mental health crisis

    Attorney General Tim Griffin's office filed the lawsuit in state court, accusing them of violating the state's deceptive trade practices and public nuisance laws. The lawsuit claims the site is addictive and has resulted in the state spending millions on expanded mental health and other services for young people.

    “YouTube amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue,” the lawsuit said. “As a result, youth mental health problems have advanced in lockstep with the growth of social media, and in particular, YouTube.”

  • Science Alert ☛ Latest TikTok Acne Hack Could Put You at Serious Risk of Cancer

    Social media is full of questionable advice. But one of the latest skincare hacks some users are sharing online is seriously worrying.

    Some content creators on TikTok are claiming that getting a sunburn or spending time in a tanning bed will help get rid of acne.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • India Times ☛ From Microsoft to IBM: Tech layoffs cross 1 lakh mark as companies brace for more cuts ahead

    Layoffs across the tech sector continued into the second half of 2024, with several high-profile companies slashing jobs as part of their restructuring efforts. IBM, for instance, began a second round of layoffs, primarily targeting senior programmers, sales, and support staff as part of its ongoing "workforce rebalancing" strategy. The company aims to reduce a low single-digit percentage of its global workforce but expects to finish the year with roughly the same number of employees it had at the beginning.

  • Stephen Fry ☛ AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End?

    So many questions. The first and perhaps the most urgent is … by what right do I stand before you and presume to lecture an already distinguished and knowledgeable crowd on the subject of Ai and its meaning, its bright promise and/or/exclusiveOR its dark threat? Well, perhaps by no greater right than anyone else, but no lesser. We’ll come to whose voices are the most worthy of attention later.

    I have been interested in the subject of Artificial Intelligence since around the mid-80s when I was fortunate enough to encounter the so-called father of Ai, Marvin Minsky and to read his book The Society of Mind. Intrigued, I devoured as much as I could on the subject, learning about the expert systems and “bundles of agency” that were the vogue then, and I have followed the subject with enthusiasm and gaping wonder ever since. But, I promise you, that makes me neither expert, sage nor oracle. For if you are preparing yourselves to hear wisdom, to witness and receive insight this evening, to bask and bathe in the light of prophecy, clarity and truth, then it grieves me to tell you that you have come to the wrong shop. You will find little of that here, for you must know that you are being addressed this evening by nothing more than an ingenuous simpleton, a naive fool, a ninny-hammer, an addle-pated oaf, a dunce, a dullard and a double-dyed dolt. But before you streak for the exit, bear in mind that so are we all, all of us bird-brained half-wits when it comes to this subject, no matter what our degrees, doctorates and decades of experience. I can perhaps congratulate myself, or at least console myself, with the fact that I am at least aware of my idiocy. This is not fake modesty designed to make me come across as a Socrates. But that great Athenian did teach us that our first step to wisdom is to realise and confront our folly.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Robot car developer Cruise to pay regulator $1.5 million after S.F. crash

    Self-driving car company Cruise, owned by General Motors, must pay a $1.5 million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency said Monday, after ruling that the company knowingly withheld critical information about a horrific crash involving a pedestrian in San Francisco last year.

  • New York Times ☛ G.M. Reaches $1.5 Million Fine After Self-Driving Taxi Accident

    Cruise, the autonomous driving unit of General Motors, has agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty for failing to properly report an accident in which one of its self-driving taxis severely injured a pedestrian last year, a federal regulator said on Monday.

  • The Register UK ☛ California governor vetoes controversial AI safety bill

    On Sunday, Newsom (D) returned California Senate Bill 1047 to the legislature unsigned, explaining in an accompanying statement [PDF] that the bill doesn't take the right approach to ensuring or requiring AI safety. That said, the matter isn't concluded: Newsom wants the US state's lawmakers to hand him a better bill.

  • The Register UK ☛ Rackspace systems hit by zero-day exploit of third-party app

    The letter customers received also says there is no need for them to take any remediation steps, but "in an abundance of caution, we commenced rotation of the Rackspace internal device agent credentials."

  • Techdirt ☛ Gavin Newsom Vetoes Terrible AI Bill 1047, But Brace For Something Worse

    The problem was that the few folks who had legitimate concerns and legitimate interests were more than willing to hitch their wagon to a bunch of numbskulls.

    On the flipside, there were plenty of critics to 1047, and not all of them were great either. Some critics had legitimate concerns about how 1047 could stifle open source AI in particular, effectively locking in a few AI giants, but there were also some folks who went a little overboard on how terrible 1047 would be as well.

  • Futurism ☛ Cybertruck Gets FSD, Tries to Drive Onto Median in the Middle of Sunset Boulevard

    "Not so beautiful after all," the driver said, shortly after swerving into the correct lane, correcting himself seconds after praising the experience. "So it was gonna drive onto the median."

    The close call highlights the sheer dangers of testing out the flawed software in public. We've already seen our fair share of run-ins involving FSD — and the Cybertruck won't be any different, even if it is heavier and with strikingly sharp edges.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Gavin Newsom Vetoes AI Safety Bill Despite Hollywood Support

    SAG-AFTRA has supported two other AI-related bills in California this year designed to regulate the use of AI in the entertainment sector. Newsom signed both earlier this month.

  • VOA News ☛ California governor vetoes bill to create first-in-nation AI safety measures

    Newsom on Sunday instead announced that the state will partner with several industry experts, including AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, to develop guardrails around powerful AI models. Li opposed the AI safety proposal.

  • Security Week ☛ California Governor Vetoes Bill to Create First-in-Nation AI Safety Measures

    Newsom on Sunday instead announced that the state will partner with several industry experts, including AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, to develop guardrails around powerful AI models. Li opposed the AI safety proposal.

    The measure, aimed at reducing potential risks created by AI, would have required companies to test their models and publicly disclose their safety protocols to prevent the models from being manipulated to, for example, wipe out the state’s electric grid or help build chemical weapons. Experts say those scenarios could be possible in the future as the industry continues to rapidly advance. It also would have provided whistleblower protections to workers.

  • New York Times ☛ California’s Governor Gavin Newsom Vetoes Sweeping A.I. Legislation

    The first-of-its-kind bill, S.B. 1047, required safety testing of large A.I. systems, or models, before their release to the public. It also gave the state’s attorney general the right to sue companies over serious harm caused by their technologies, like death or property damage. And it mandated a kill switch to turn off A.I. systems in case of potential biowarfare, mass casualties or property damage.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ California Gov. Gavin Newsom shoots down divisive AI safety bill SB 1047

    In a message today explaining his decision, Newsom (pictured) argued that the SB 1047 bill doesn’t take into account whether or not AI systems are deployed in high-risk environments, are using sensitive data or involved in critical decision-making.

  • California ☛ Governor Newsom announces new initiatives to advance safe and responsible AI, protect Californians | Governor of California

    What you need to know: Governor Newsom announced that the “godmother of AI,” Dr. Fei-Fei Li, as well as Tino Cuéllar, member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Social and Ethical Implications of Computing Research, and Jennifer Tour Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley, will help lead California’s effort to develop responsible guardrails for the deployment of GenAI. He also ordered state agencies to expand their assessment of the risks from potential catastrophic events.

  • The Verge ☛ California governor vetoes major AI safety bill

    California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047) today. In his veto message, Governor Newsom cited multiple factors in his decision, including the burden the bill would have placed on AI companies, California’s lead in the space, and a critique that the bill may be too broad.

    “While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data. Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”

  • India Times ☛ AI safety bill: California governor vetoes contentious AI safety bill

    The bill's author, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener, said legislation was necessary to protect the public before advances in AI become either unwieldy or uncontrollable. The AI industry is growing fast in California and some leaders questioned the future of these companies in the state if the bill became law.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Randomness, Serendipity, and an “I Wouldn’t Recommend This” Algorithm

    I have to admit, I have a number of things in my life where I could say, “I would have never chosen ____, but it’s been one of the best things in my life!” Many things I would’ve never chosen, yet they came to me, and they’ve changed my perspective and outlook and my life.

    Where’s that algorithm?

  • Silicon Angle ☛ From LLMs to SLMs to SAMs, how agents are redefining AI

    Moreover, we see LLMs and SLMs evolving to become agentic, hence SAM – small action models. In our view, it’s the collection of these “S-models,” combined with an emerging data harmonization layer, that will enable systems of agents to work in concert and create high-impact business outcomes. These multi-agent systems will completely reshape the software industry generally and, more specifically, unleash a new productivity paradigm for organizations globally.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI researchers demonstrate 100% success rate in bypassing online CAPTCHAs

    In short, this study wasn't done purely to flex the inadequacy of reCAPTCHAv2 in the face of the awesome power of AI. If anything, the researchers conclude that the existence of strong, functioning captcha systems or similar are good if not "vital" to have for the future of a healthy Internet— and they're right! While the Introduction of the paper asserts that "we are now officially in the age beyond captchas", the conclusion affirms the "necessity for captcha technologies to evolve proactively, staying ahead of AI's rapid enhancements".

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China makes AI breakthrough, reportedly trains generative AI model across multiple data centers and GPU architectures

    This technique of training GAIs across different locations/architectures is essential for China to keep its AI dreams moving forward, especially as American sanctions have stopped it from acquiring the latest, most powerful chips to drive its research and development. Since Nvidia does not want to lose the Chinese market, it created the less powerful H20 AI chips that fall within Washington’s restrictive performance parameters. However, there are rumors that even these down-tuned chips might be banned soon, highlighting the uncertainty Chinese tech companies face in the current political climate.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] “When Spiders Share Webs”: Unveiling privacy threats of EU-funded INTERPOL policing programme in West Africa

    • Privacy International ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] When Spiders Share Webs: The creeping expansion of INTERPOL’s interoperable policing and biometrics entrench externalised EU borders in West Africa

    • Wired ☛ Cybertruck Finally Gets Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

      Tesla owners’ manuals maintain that the full-self-driving feature, or “FSD (Supervised),” should be used only if drivers are paying attention to the road. The feature reportedly turns off if it detects that drivers are looking elsewhere. Critics have argued that Tesla’s marketing incorrectly leads drivers to assume that FSD can truly drive itself and that the automaker hasn’t been proactive in preventing driver misuse.

    • The Register UK ☛ Remote ID verification tech is often biased and wrong

      According to the study, one of the products barely merits the term "functional," as it had a false negative rate of around 50 percent, and even the best performer still failed 10 percent of the time.

      In short, the technology used for remote identity verification is a mess.

    • The Register UK ☛ T-Mobile US agrees to $31.5M settlement after IT breaches

      Specifically, the telco has entered a legal settlement [PDF] with the FCC today that requires the carrier to pay a $15.75 million civil penalty to the US Treasury, and also spend $15.75 million over the next two years on its infosec program, including:

    • The Scotsman ☛ Businesses should weigh up the risks before using WhatsApp

      A key issue is the blurred lines between personal and professional communications. People are often much more informal on WhatsApp compared with a work email. Employees may feel comfortable sharing personal opinions or making jokes and there is a danger that if remarks are discriminatory, derogatory, or stray into the realms of harassment related to protected characteristics under the Equality Act, employers could potentially face claims if deemed to have been carried out in the course of employment.

    • Futurism ☛ Police Department Testing AI-Powered Detective on Real Crimes

      But there's no word yet on the accuracy rate of this Australia-developed platform, dubbed Soze, which is a major concern since AI models tend to spit out wildly incorrect results or hallucinate made up information.

      The Avon and Somerset Police Department, which covers parts of South West England, is putting the program through its paces by having Soze scan and analyze emails, social media accounts, video, financial statements, and other documents.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-22 [Older] Biden tells Quad allies: China 'testing us'

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Black Poll Workers Are Bracing for Security Threats Ahead of Election Day

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Home Affairs minister admits there is corruption at SA ports of entry

  • ANF News ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Military operation launched in ‘special security zones’ in Çatak countryside

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Langley’s Africom East Africa trip highlights resilience, commitment amid ongoing terrorism threats

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Remains of South African Freedom Fighters Arrive Home From Zimbabwe and Zambia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] Conflict keeps millions of children out of school in West and Central Africa

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-27 [Older] Joe Biden signs order to curb new gun technologies

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] 'After Hitler': Changing views of Nazism in postwar Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] China on the agenda as Vietnam's leader meets Joe Biden

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Congo: Displaced people caught between conflict and crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Japan acquits world's longest-serving death row prisoner

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Pakistan army says 8 militants killed in restive northwest

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Sudan: Fierce clashes in Khartoum as army launches offensive

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Dutch 'Mocro mafia' sets off alarm bells in Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] German far-right AfD party taps into young voters' fears, disillusionment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Germany: Police investigate blast at Cologne cafe

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Greece worried about consequences of German border checks

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Leaked files expose covert US government plot to ‘destabilize Bangladesh’s politics’

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Other Problematic Subject Trump Hid

    Before the September 10th presidential debate, did you notice Trump and his campaign never backed off on the Arlington National Cemetery brouhaha?

    Did you notice they actually leaned into their desecration of the cemetery with a campaign event?

    The profanement of war dead is a taboo which would have ended other politicians’ campaigns and political careers. Why did the Trump campaign continue so firmly in this direction?

  • The Scotsman ☛ 4 popular internet trends that turned deadly

    Taking part in viral challenges online has become commonplace in the 21st century.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Facebook throttles local League of Women Voters with an election coming up. Kansans, stay vigilant.

    After Facebook shut down Kansas Reflector’s page in April, we quickly received apologies from Meta’s spokesman and assurances that our content was not being targeted by the social media giant. It was all a mistake, he said.

    Nearly six months later, that sounds like a fib. A whopper. A taradiddle.

    Not because of how Meta has treated Kansas Reflector: Since our plight made national news, we have been able to post without issue. However, scarcely a week goes by without us receiving a message from a reader unable to share one of our stories or an advocate whose online presence has been somehow targeted. The latest, and perhaps most outrageous, example was the suspension of the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County‘s page on Facebook.

  • [Old] ABC ☛ Facebook suspends Kent League of Women Voters page. They don't know why.

    “We are a nonpartisan organization, so our information out there is really promoting voting and voting rights and just information about where to vote, some of basic information and guidelines that voters might not have,” explained chapter president Sherry Rose.

    She told News 5 the page was disabled on the eve of the March 19 primary election. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, did not provide the group with a specific explanation about what prompted the suspension or how to restore access.

  • India Times ☛ ByteDance plans new AI model trained with Huawei chips

    ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, plans to develop an AI model using Huawei chips due to U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI chips. ByteDance has ordered over 100,000 Ascend 910B chips but received fewer than 30,000. The new model will be less powerful than its existing Doubao AI model.

  • VOA News ☛ Thousands protest 'uncontrolled immigration' to Portugal

    Afonso added that European nations were ill-equipped to "decently" take in immigrants who were sometimes "forced to live on the street and fall into crime."

    Among the protesters was Chega leader Andre Ventura, whose party more than quadrupled its seats at this year's election.

  • VOA News ☛ Norway mulls building a fence on Russian border, following Finland's example

    “A border fence is very interesting, not only because it can act as a deterrent but also because it contains sensors and technology that allow you to detect if people are moving close to the border,” Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said in an interview with the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK published late Saturday.

    She said the Norwegian government is currently looking at “several measures” to beef up security on the border with Russia in the Arctic north, such as fencing, increasing the number of border staff or stepping up monitoring.

  • Futurism ☛ AI-Powered Hitler Running Rampant Online

    Through the magic of AI, it found, Hitler is now reciting his speeches in English in audio or video for platforms such as X-formerly-Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

    "Just seven AI-generated videos of Hitler speeches on YouTube, posted in 2024, had received 6.9 million views," reads the report.

    What's just as disturbing is that algorithms on these platforms amplify the reach of this content, similarly to how other extremist content goes viral online.

  • VOA News ☛ Iran uses UN meetings to attack Israel, whitewash destabilizing actions

    While Iran accuses Israel of being the aggressor force, the war in the Gaza Strip started when militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups attacked towns and settlements in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 250 hostages.

    Iran has provided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weapons, funding and training.

• Environment

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Bad Climate Socialism

    What you are seeing here is the unfolding of a process that is as certain as the rising sun. Humans emit greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This generates a lot of short term wealth as well as problems that reveal themselves in the long term, incentivizing companies to keep snatching profits as long as possible despite exacerbating the eventual costs of the problem. Natural disasters, particularly storms and wildfires, grow more intense over time. Insurance rates for homeowners in areas prone to these disasters rise, quickly becoming unaffordable. Said homeowners panic and demand relief from their politicians. This is where we are now.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The UK is done with coal. How’s the rest of the world doing?

    Coal is the most emissions-intensive fuel powering the grid today, and moving away from it, even to other fossil fuels, can help reduce climate pollution. Some countries have started to replace the fuel in earnest—members of the G7, a group of wealthy economies, have all agreed to phase out coal-fired power plants that don't use carbon capture by 2035. But coal is still booming in other parts of the world, especially in some larger countries where electricity demand is growing quickly.

  • NL Times ☛ Praying mantis seems to have settled in the Netherlands

    Incidental sightings of the European praying mantis, Mantis religiosa, in the Netherlands have been reported since 2009. Although they typically live in warmer regions, with global warming, they have been moving further and further north.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ The Escalating Threat of Electronic and Counter-Space Warfare among Global Powers

    Direct Ascent Anti-Satellite Weapons (ASAT) often make headlines globally when tested due to the dangerous debris they generate, posing significant risks to all satellites, whether civilian or military.

  • CBC ☛ The 'godfather' of microplastics research says we need to move faster to solve our plastic problem

    "We looked at the sand samples down the microscope, and in and amongst the sand grains we could see pieces that certainly didn't look like sand, and it was those pieces we confirmed to be plastics," said Thompson, now the head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University of Plymouth.

    At the time he coined the term "microplastics" to describe the tiny bits of plastic, many smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair, that he found on beaches all around the U.K.

  • CS Monitor ☛ How to fight urban warming? More American cities choose green spaces.

    Urban areas trap heat due to heat-absorbing surfaces like asphalt and concrete. More cities are adding trees and green spaces to cool the air temperature while heat waves become longer and hotter.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Oil pollution in North Sea is 'grossly underestimated,' suggests new report

    Growing up in Aberdeen, Scotland, the shadow of the Piper Alpha disaster loomed large over our community. The tragic explosion of the oil rig platform in 1988 claimed the lives of 167 people. Back then, I was blissfully unaware of the ecological ramifications of that disaster. But the spill of 670 tons of oil wreaked havoc on marine life and had a lasting impact on the marine environment that I love to explore.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Why are sea levels rising?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Germany: Flood warnings on Oder River in eastern Brandenburg

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-20 [Older] 'Water Is Flooding Everywhere' as Torrential Rains Sweep Through West and Central Africa

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-22 [Older] Iran: Coal miners trapped after deadly explosion

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] EU divided over higher tariffs for Chinese EV imports

    • DeSmog ☛ Evidence CEOs Tried to Illegally Boost Oil Prices Grows as FTC Bars Hess from Chevron’s Board

    • Wired ☛ These Record-Breaking New Solar Panels Produce 60 Percent More Electricity

      Commercially available solar panels today convert about 20 to 22 percent of sunlight into electrical power. However, new research published in Nature has shown that future solar panels could reach efficiencies as high as 34 percent by exploiting a new technology called tandem solar cells. The research demonstrates a record power-conversion efficiency for tandem solar cells.

    • H2 View ☛ Quest One opens Gigahub, cuts electrolyser production time by 75%

      Quest One has opened its proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser Gigahub in Hamburg, Germany, in the presence of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

      The German firm, previously known as H-TEC Systems, is expected to produce up to 5GW of PEM electrolysers per year at the facility when running at full capacity.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Coastal Restoration: Shifting Sand — for Better or Worse

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-20 [Older] Scientists in South Africa Say They Have Identified the First Known Outbreak of Rabies in Seals

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] Amazon: Who should pay for its protection?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] Eight bulls captured after escape from Massachusetts rodeo

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Octopuses work together with fish to hunt—and the way they share decisions is surprisingly complex

      Using sophisticated behavioral analyses of 3D videos captured from 120 hours of diving, Sampaio and team found that each partner in the interaction plays a specific role. There was, in fact, no true leader—they are democratic.

      The fish were responsible for exploring the environment and deciding where to move, while the octopus would decide if and when to move. Interestingly, controlled experiments showed the octopuses were guided by social information provided by the fishes.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Bank of Canada needs to 'stick the landing' now that inflation is at 2%: Macklem

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Fake Swish

    But this is also a caveat for Taler which isn’t as evil as Swish is (besides how the entire market capitalist system is misguided) but might have a similar vulnerability.

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] 2 Million Social Security Recipients to Gain $360 Monthly? US Congress Prepares to Tackle WEP, GPO Benefit Cuts

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] US Social Security Administration To Issue Two SSI Payments in One Month Due to Technicality

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Get therapy or pay rent? Millennials, Gen Z making hard choices when it comes to mental health

  • CBC ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Insured losses top $7B making this summer Canada's most destructive season

  • India Times ☛ Tech layoffs cross 1 lakh: Cisco, Microsoft cut more jobs in September; and other ‘job cut warnings’

    Tech companies job cuts have continued in the second half of 2024, with several major layoffs occurring across the industry. IBM initiated a new round of layoffs, primarily affecting senior programmers, sales, and support personnel, as part of their "workforce rebalancing" effort. Microsoft laid off 650 employees from its gaming division, focusing on corporate and support roles.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-22 [Older] Germany: AfD seeks further boost in Brandenburg election

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Opinion | Right-to-die legislation must consider concerns of African Americans

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] EU auditors say Africa fund 'spread too thinly'' to reduce migration

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Will a new president shift Sri Lanka's approach to India and China?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-24 [Older] Albanian PM has announced plans for the creation of a 27-acre sovereign state for a Sufi Muslim order in Tirana.

  • New York Times ☛ Why Stellantis, Owner of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, Is Struggling

    The company’s sales and profit have been plummeting. Dealers stuck with parking lots filled with unsold cars are publicly criticizing Stellantis and its chief executive in unusually harsh terms. Stellantis’s stock price has fallen almost 50 percent from its high point in March.

    On Monday, the company warned that profit for the year would fall short of earlier projections because of the cost to fix its ailing operations in the United States. Operating profit will be, at best, 7 percent of sales compared with an earlier forecast of more than 10 percent, Stellantis said. The news sent the company’s share price down roughly 14 percent in European trading.

  • World Wide Web Foundation ☛ An Update on the Future of the Web Foundation

    The landscape has fundamentally shifted with access to the Web rising dramatically - nearly 70% of the world are now online from just over 20% in 2009. There are many excellent organisations now defending the Web's principles and users’ rights online. The threats to the Web have increased too, social media’s dominant business model has brought about the commoditisation of users data and a concentration of power contrary to Tim’s original vision, impacting all aspects of society from our democracy to our individual wellbeing.

  • The Register UK ☛ Why the World Wide Web Foundation is shutting down

    When the foundation was founded in 2009, just over 20 percent of the world had access to the web and relatively few organizations were trying to change that, say Sir Tim and Leith. A decade and a half later, with nearly 70 percent of the world online, there are many similar non-governmental organizations trying to make the web more accessible and affordable.

  • India Times ☛ TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Google and Microsoft among 100 tech companies to sign Europe’s first-ever AI legal framework

    Over 100 tech companies such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro have pledged early compliance with the EU's AI rules through an AI Pact. This initiative helps organizations prepare for upcoming AI Act measures, some of which will be enforced by August 2027. Key players like Google and Microsoft are also part of this commitment.

  • IETF ☛ WG Action: Formed Secure Shell Maintenance (sshm)

    The main goal of the working group is to maintain the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. SSH provides support for secure remote login, file transfer, and forwarding UNIX-domain sockets, TCP/IP and X11. It can automatically encrypt, authenticate, and compress transmitted data.

    The SSHM working group facilitates discussion of clarifications, improvements, and extensions to the SSH protocol.

  • New Statesman ☛ How social media made weirdos of the political right

    The fact that the US right also spent those decades constructing an entire parallel reality through its media is not the only reason for that. But it surely can’t have helped. The Tories should beware.

  • The Register UK ☛ India scores its first fab, perhaps at Japan's expense

    Whatever went down behind the scenes, PSMC has a new collaborator, Japan isn't getting a fab, and India will – albeit a pretty boring one that won't make high margin or leading edge products. India's government will ignore that and trumpet this as a triumph for its manufacturing and export ambitions.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Online misinformation most likely to be believed by ideological extremists, study shows

      Political observers have been troubled by the rise of online misinformation—a concern that has grown as we approach Election Day. However, while the spread of fake news may pose threats, a new study finds that its influence is not universal. Rather, users with extreme political views are more likely than others are to both encounter and believe false news.

    • NPR ☛ To combat misinformation, start with connection, not correction

      People trust information more when it comes from sources or cultural contexts they are familiar with, so talking to your loved ones can make a difference. The big picture idea here? Start from a place of connection, not correction.

      Here are six ways to combat misinformation.

    • Oxford University Press ☛ Measuring receptivity to misinformation at scale on a social media platform | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic

      Measuring the impact of online misinformation is challenging. Traditional measures, such as user views or shares on social media, are incomplete because not everyone who is exposed to misinformation is equally likely to believe it. To address this issue, we developed a method that combines survey data with observational Twitter data to probabilistically estimate the number of users both exposed to and likely to believe a specific news story. As a proof of concept, we applied this method to 139 viral news articles and find that although false news reaches an audience with diverse political views, users who are both exposed and receptive to believing false news tend to have more extreme ideologies. These receptive users are also more likely to encounter misinformation earlier than those who are unlikely to believe it. This mismatch between overall user exposure and receptive user exposure underscores the limitation of relying solely on exposure or interaction data to measure the impact of misinformation, as well as the challenge of implementing effective interventions. To demonstrate how our approach can address this challenge, we then conducted data-driven simulations of common interventions used by social media platforms. We find that these interventions are only modestly effective at reducing exposure among users likely to believe misinformation, and their effectiveness quickly diminishes unless implemented soon after misinformation's initial spread. Our paper provides a more precise estimate of misinformation's impact by focusing on the exposure of users likely to believe it, offering insights for effective mitigation strategies on social media.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ InfoWars' victims and enemies consider buying it

      Over the past several years, courts in Connecticut and Texas have ruled that the face of the far-right network must pay the families of victims of the 2012 shooting in Sandy Hook nearly $1.5 billion in damages for repeatedly claiming falsely on his show that the shooting never happened. On Tuesday, a Houston judge ruled that a bankruptcy trustee could begin to liquidate and put up for auction Free Speech Systems, Jones’ media company and the parent of InfoWars.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ EFF Awards Night: Celebrating Digital Rights Founders Advancing Free Speech and Access to Information Around the World

    On September 12 in San Francisco’s Presidio, EFF presented awards to investigative news organization 404 Media, founder of Latin American digital rights group Fundación Karisma Carolina Botero, and Cairo-based nonprofit Connecting Humanity, which helps Palestinians in Gaza regain access to the internet.

    All our award winners overcame roadblocks to build organizations that protect and advocate for people’s rights to online free speech, digital privacy, and the ability to live free from government surveillance.  

    If you missed the ceremony in San Francisco, you can still catch what happened on YouTube and the Internet Archive. You can also find a transcript of the live captions.

  • FAIR ☛ Vance Dossier Shows Not All Hacks Are Created Equal

    Ken Klippenstein, an independent reporter operating on Substack and an investigative alum of the Intercept, announced (Substack, 9/26/24) that he had been kicked off Twitter (now rebranded as X). His crime, he explained, stemmed from posting the 271-page official dossier of Republican vice presidential candidate’s J.D. Vance’s campaign vulnerabilities; the US government alleges that the information was leaked through Iranian hacking. In other words, the dossier is a part of the “foreign meddling campaign” of “enemy states.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-22 [Older] Brazil: Supreme Court orders further documents from X

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] 75 years of Frankfurt Book Fair: World stage for protests

  • VOA News ☛ Russian journalism archive aims to protect independent voices from media suppression

    This is one of many examples of the Russian government’s attacks on free media, one that activists and archivists hope to counter. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media has been banned or blocked, and journalists are frequently imprisoned over trumped-up charges, according to Reporters Without Borders.

    To preserve over two decades of independent Russian journalism, exiled journalists and activists teamed up with PEN’s Freedom to Write Center to create the Russian Independent Media Archive, or RIMA.

  • Futurism ☛ Twitter Under "Free Speech Absolutist" Elon Musk Is Actually Suspending Way More People Than Before

    It's also striking that these numbers are climbing in spite of the fact that Twitter's user base appears to be dwindling. This could suggest an even more pronounced escalation in cracking down on users that break the site's rules — and it could also be a sign of the uptick in hate speech on the platform that many critics have blamed on Musk, who often boosts far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories himself.

    Needless to say, none of this evinces the laissez-faire, censorship-free paradise that Musk has often promised.

  • The Register UK ☛ China calls for realtime censorship of satellite broadband

    In its latest draft rules, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposes any organization or individual using terminal equipment with direct connection to satellite services is not allowed to "produce, copy, publish, or disseminate content prohibited by laws and administrative regulations, such as content that incites subversion of state power, overthrows the socialist system, endangers national security and interests, damages the national image, incites secession of the country, undermines national unity and social stability, promotes terrorism, extremism, ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination, violence, pornography, and false information."

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Hong Kong: Stand News editor sentenced to 21 months in jail

  • RFERL ☛ Afghan Journalists' Group Slams 10-Year Sentences Given To Reporters

    The Afghanistan Journalists' Support Organization (AJSO) has expressed concern at the 10-year prison sentences reportedly given to two reporters by a Taliban military court after their arrest in Kabul two months ago. [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-09-25 [Older] Germany: Charges pressed in Schumacher family blackmail case

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-09-26 [Older] Disability Rights Groups Challenge Canada's Assisted Death Framework

  • [Old] BSDly ☛ Are you aware what you lose by just clicking OK to get started using something?

    The right to privacy, the right to repair and the right to choose your tools for tasks at hand are aspects of the same. A new court ruling in Italy could help us regain righs that we were manipulated into giving up.

    It's likely you do not spend much time thinking about the fact that if you are an ordinary IT user in an industrialized country, you have most likely have been tricked into giving up rights. This happens on a scale that should be worrying to anyone concerned about human rights in general.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A sexy, skinny defeat device for your HP ink cartridge

    By the same token, all kinds of business keep evolving into something like a printer company. It turns out that in this enshittified, poorly regulated, rentier-friendly world, the parasitic, inkjet business model is extremely adaptive. Printerinisation is everywhere.

    All that stuff you hate about your car? Trapping you into using their mechanics, spying on you, planned obsolescence? All lifted from the inkjet printer business model: [...]

  • The Verge ☛ Spotify is back after a Sunday morning outage

    The outage affected both the app and the website — while the app wouldn’t play music, the website was having trouble loading. When I attempted to visit during the outage, I received a server error — let us know if you’re still having any problems

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Wired ☛ Epic Games Is Suing Samsung Now

  Early this month, Sweeney reached out to two senior Samsung executives to ask them to rethink the approach with Auto Blocker and allow for a smoother process to download legitimate software. Sweeney said a resolution couldn’t be reached that benefitted all developers, prompting the lawsuit. “We are going to continue to fight until there is a level playing field,” he says. He added that it “sucks” to sue Samsung, which has promoted Epic’s offerings in the past.

• The Washington Post ☛ Epic Games says Google found a new way to violate antitrust law

  The allegations are the subject of a new antitrust lawsuit on Monday filed by Epic Games, creator of the popular Fortnite video games, against Google and Samsung, the largest maker of Android phones.

  Epic alleges that Google and Samsung have schemed to essentially use Samsung as a proxy for behavior that the jury said Google had used to illegally squash competition.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Daniel Estévez ☛ Not-LoRa GRCon24 CTF challenge

      It’s not a secret that I don’t like LoRa and its popularity very much. This is rooted in the times where it was a proprietary and patented protocol, and the reverse-engineered SDR implementations were not very good. I just felt that it wasn’t a good idea to include LoRa so pervasively into the open source and amateur radio spheres, because the status of the protocol was completely opposite to what these communities stand for. Also, from the technical point of view, LoRa’s weak SNR performance is not at all impressive (just calculate the Eb/N0 that it needs to decode). The situation has perhaps changed somewhat over the last few years. Now SDR implementations such as gr-lora_sdr are certainly very good, and I think more technical documentation about the PHY is available (though don’t quote me on that, because I can’t find it). I also reckon that LoRa’s strong points are co-channel interference resistance and the fact that it performs much better than GFSK tranceivers in the same price range. In any case, doing a challenge track heavily inspired by LoRa was also a way of making some fun of myself.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Korea Times ☛ Telegram vows zero tolerance for deepfake pornography, says South Korea's media regulator

      Korea's media regulator said Monday that Telegram has pledged to adopt a zero-tolerance policy and immediately remove deepfake pornography and other illegal content from its platform, in cooperation with local authorities.

      The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) said it had a face-to-face working-level meeting with Telegram on Friday, raising concerns over deepfake content involving doctored images of Korean women, which has surfaced on Telegram in recent months.

• Copyrights

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-09-19 [Older] Participatory research and joint authorship/production of African datasets: Reflections on the African datasets split sheet

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Reseller Who Made Millions of Euros Sent to Prison For Eight Years

    A court in Greece has handed down one of the most punishing sentences on record to a man who resold pirate IPTV subscriptions. The Court of Thessaloniki heard that the local man sold subscriptions to thousands of customers, generating millions of euros. After the court sent him to prison for eight years, attention now turns to a seized customer database. The authorities are said to be preparing cases against customers, some of whom have already been arrested.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Wins Lawsuit Against Scammers Who 'Weaponized' DMCA Takedowns

    Google has obtained a default judgment against two men who abused its DMCA takedown system to falsely target 117,000 URLs of competitors' online stores. With none of the defendants showing up in court, a California federal court sided with the search engine. Through an injunction, the men are now prohibited from sending false takedown notices and creating new Google accounts.

  • [Repeat] Don Marti ☛ fair use alignment chart

    The techbro definition of fair use (what’s yours is open, what’s mine is proprietary) is clearly bogus, so we can safely ignore that—but it seems like Internet freedom people can be found along both axes of the fair use alignment chart.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Lessons Learned from a Fair Use Defeat

    Controlled digital lending is a service framework built around the legal theory that fair use allows libraries to scan a book owned in print and lend out the digitized version. Several different flavors of the service model have developed, but the flavor that has gotten most attention is one in which the library or service provider lends one digitized copy per copy of the print book it has bought and “sequestered,” a so-called “one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio.” Although in all flavors the theory is that copyright owner permission is not needed, there are various ways that digitized versions can come into library possession, for example through copying each book that has been sequestered or through a shared enterprise.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Copyright Directive’s Link Tax Has Been A Failure; Will Anyone Learn From This?

    It seems so long ago that people were trying to stop the worst aspects of the EU Copyright Directive. It was quite a battle, as Chapter 6 of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) recounts in detail. The final legislation was passed in March 2019, but it is important not simply to accept what happened and move on. The copyright industry used many dubious arguments to convince MEPs to vote for the new copyright framework. Although many of us pointed out the flaws in these at the time, we were drowned out by the chorus of well-paid lobbyists employed by the copyright world. Now that the EU Copyright Directive has been in force for a few years, we can begin to see its real-world effects. That allows us to compare them with the claims that were made to get the law passed.