Leftovers

• [Updated] [Old] The Anarcat ☛ Playing with fonts again

  This time I seem to be settling on either Commit Mono or Space Mono. For now I'm using Commit Mono because it's a little more compressed than Fira and does have a italic version. I don't like how Space Mono's parenthesis (()) is "squarish", it feels visually ambiguous with the square brackets ([]), a big no-no for my primary use case (code).

  So here I am using a new font, again. It required changing a bunch of configuration files in my home directory (which is in a private repository, sorry) and Emacs configuration (thankfully that's public!).

  One gotcha is I realized I didn't actually have a global font configuration in Emacs, as some Faces define their own font family, which overrides the frame defaults.

• Henrique Dias ☛ Home Barista Training

  We started with a cupping session, where we tried different coffee beans that had been processed in different ways: washed, natural, honey, decaf and a darker blend of different coffees. When it comes to hands on experience, we had the opportunity to use an industry grade espresso machine and grinder to make a few drinks.

• [Old] Time ☛ Gates Gets Pied - Top 10 Odd Protests - TIME

  [...] the pie-ing of then-Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was especially stunning, if only because his assailant scored a bullseye. [...]

• [Old] BBC ☛ 'Pie terrorists' fined for Gates attack

  Mr Gates became a victim of Belgium's notorious "entarteurs" or pie throwers on a visit to the country last February.

  As the world's richest man attended a reception in Brussels, he was hit by four fresh cream tarts.

  Pictures of the computer magnate with fresh cream spattered over his face and suit were beamed around the world.

• [Old]

  CNET ☛ Gates gets creamed

  However, the billionaire, who is said to dislike even a touch from strangers, didn't seem to take the joke as well when he wasn't the one making it. He appeared shaken and angry as he rushed from the site of the creaming.

• Science

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ PLOS’s Next Big Thing

    Back in 2000, PLOS (or the Public Library of Science, as it was then known) was just the beginnings of an idea in the minds of co-founders Harold Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael Eisen. Nearly 25 years later, its goals remain unchanged: to break boundaries, empower researchers, redefine quality, and (back in 2003, when its first journal, PLOS Biology launched, most controversially), to open science. Importantly, PLOS has always viewed its success in achieving these goals in terms of adoption by the wider community. You may or may not agree about whether they have successfully advanced all of these goals, but we must surely all agree that they have definitely broken some boundaries in the cause of opening science.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Is the Nobel Prize still relevant today?

    Science has changed since the Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901. Is it time to forge a new way of recognizing outstanding science?

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Nobel Prize in physics awarded to 2 scientists for discoveries that enable machine learning

    Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”

    She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”

  • The Register UK ☛ AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton, John Hopfield win Nobel Prize

    "Hopfield described the overall state of the network with a property that is equivalent to the energy in the spin system found in physics; the energy is calculated using a formula that uses all the values of the nodes and all the strengths of the connections between them," it explained.

    By the time the entire network processes the data, it often reproduces the original image it was trained on, the Academy noted, but what made it truly special was its ability to store multiple pictures at the same time, and differentiate between them.

  • New York Times ☛ A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize

    The prize was given for a technology that Dr. Hopfield developed in the early 1980s called a Hopfield network and a related technique that Dr. Hinton helped create in the years that followed called a Boltzmann machine. The news surprised many physicists and artificial intelligence experts, including Dr. Hopfield and Dr. Hinton.

    In 2019, Dr. Hinton was part of a three-person group that received the Turing Award, often called “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for its work on neural networks. Last year, he made headlines across the world when he left his job as a researcher at Google and warned that the A.I. technologies he helped create could one day destroy humanity.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ AI pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton win Nobel Prize in physics

    The committee that issues the prize selected Hopfield for his development of an early AI model called the Hopfield network. The algorithm, which can fix distorted images, is based on concepts borrowed from the field of condensed matter physics. This is a branch of physics that focuses on the study of matter, particularly solids and liquids.

    Hopfield introduced the Hopfield network in a 1982 paper. Three years later, Hinton used the discovery to develop the Boltzmann machine, a groundbreaking deep learning model. The algorithm is based on not only the Hopfield network but also methods from the field of statistical physics, which uses statistical techniques to study particles.

  • India Times ☛ Pioneers in AI win the Nobel Prize in physics

    Two pioneers of artificial intelligence - John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton - won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of Deep Learning, wins Nobel Prize in Physics!

    Is Computer Science the New Frontier of Science? This prize might just prove that Computer Science isn’t just about coding; it’s the new science playground where groundbreaking theories are tested and innovations are born. Computer Science is now the epicenter of scientific discovery.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Of Course AI Just Got a Nobel Prize

    The Nobel committee focused its remarks on the foundational aspects of artificial neural networks: the ability to feed unfathomably large and complex amounts of data into an algorithm that will then, more or less undirected, detect previously unseen and consequential patterns in those data. As a result, drug discovery, neuroscience, renewable-energy research, and particle physics are fundamentally changing. Last year, a biomedical researcher at Harvard told me, “We can really make discoveries that would not be possible without the use of AI.” All sorts of nonchatbot algorithms across the internet, on social-media and e-commerce and media websites, use neural networks. In a presentation about today’s award, the theoretical physicist Anders Irbäck, another committee member, noted how these neural networks have been applied in astrophysics, materials science, climate modeling, and molecular biology.

  • CS Monitor ☛ AI pioneers John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton win Nobel prize

    The Nobel committee that honored the science behind machine learning and AI also mentioned fears about its possible flipside. Ms. Moons said that while it has “enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind.”

    Mr. Hinton shares those concerns. He quit a role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.

• Hardware

  • Steinar H Gunderson ☛ Pimp my SV08

    The Sovol SV08 is a 3D printer which is a semi-assembled clone of Voron 2.4, an open-source design. It's not the cheapest of printers, but for what you get, it's extremely good value for money—as long as you can deal with certain, err, quality issues.

  • The Register UK ☛ Free Starlink for Hurricane Helene victims not entirely free

    But try to sign up for the ostensibly "free" service in an area Starlink has designated as a Helene disaster zone, and surprise: You still have to pay for the terminal (normally $350, but reportedly discounted to $299 for disaster relief, though that's not reflected in Starlink's signup page), plus shipping and tax, bringing the grand total to just shy of $400.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Kevin Wammer ☛ Nothing more to prove

    After much introspection and discussions with loved ones, I have now found out what this all means to me — though I would not have chosen that title now; after all, people go to therapy for being ambition-less (and understandably so).

    Rather, how I see it now, is that I have nothing more to prove.

  • Anne Sturdivant ☛ Online is absolutely real life.

    We make big impacts on each other that we might take for granted because it is online. Our stories intermingle and leave marks that other people can feel. That happens even through words that we type into these glowing rectangles. As Lou says in The Real People: "When I think of them, it's that little multicolored square that I see. Of course, for the more eloquent and prolific ones, I also see the world they describe in their interactions with the rest of us." I can think of several "friends" I feel this way about when I think about them. I've never seen a real image of them, I only know of the illustration or Memoji they use to represent themselves. And yet they are real and I think about them sometimes offline going about my real life.

  • BBC ☛ TikTok sued for 'wreaking havoc' on teen mental health - BBC News

    A bipartisan group of 14 attorneys general accuse the company of using addictive features to hook children.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Register UK ☛ Netizens are torturing Google's AI podcast hosts

    Naturally, when an AI service is provided for free to the public, there will be those who want to probe the limits of the technology rather than use it for the stated purpose.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ APFS incompatibilities and how to live with them – The Eclectic Light Company

    APFS has many of the features of modern file systems that make most efficient use of space, and others that aren’t found in more traditional file systems like HFS+. While those should all work well when used locally with other APFS volumes, they can prove incompatible with other file systems, and may have untoward side effects. This article looks at those features that you could encounter problems with, and how best to work around them.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ How the Army is using AI during Hurricane Helene relief

    Maven is a data analysis and decision-making tool that takes in reams of data from multiple sources and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to visualize the information.

    The Pentagon originally adopted Maven to use geolocation data and satellite imagery to automatically detect potential targets on the battlefield. Its use in responding to Helene is the first instance Maven has been applied to hurricane response efforts, defense officials said.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Bye bye, blocking

    X’s revised block button will allow blocked users to see the posts from users who blocked them, but not directly interact. The revision streamlines a previously available loophole to blocked users, which allowed them to view users who blocked them using a separate account. For X, this is part of their purported reasoning for the change. Now, blocked users know exactly when their blocker posts, and can use a separate account to interact.

  • Ed Zitron ☛ OpenAI Is A Bad Business

    OpenAI, a non-profit AI company that will lose anywhere from $4 billion to $5 billion this year, will at some point in the next six or so months convert into a for-profit AI company, at which point it will continue to lose money in exactly the same way. Shortly after this news broke, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati resigned, followed by Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and VP of Research, Post Training Barret Zoph, leaving OpenAI with exactly three of its eleven cofounders remaining.

    This coincides suspiciously with OpenAI's increasingly-absurd fundraising efforts, where (as I predicted in late July) OpenAI has raised the largest venture-backed fundraise of all time $6.6 billion— at a valuation of $157 billion.

  • Windows Central ☛ The Surface Duo is dead — Microsoft pulls plug on $1,500 Surface Duo 2 after just one Android OS upgrade

    The Surface Duo 2 has just received its likely final security update, marking an end to Microsoft’s brief return to the smartphone market. The company originally launched Surface Duo 2 in October 2021, and promised to support the product with software updates for three years. Microsoft was only able to deliver one major Android version update in that time, a pitiful number for a $1,500 device.

    Microsoft already dropped support for the original Surface Duo last year, but at least that device saw more than one major Android version update. Launching with Android 10, the original Surface Duo was updated to Android 11 and Android 12L during its lifecycle — still short of the usual three major OS updates most Android makers deliver but better than the Surface Duo 2, which launched with Android 11 and was only ever updated to Android 12L.

  • Android Central ☛ Microsoft ends Surface Duo 2 support with final security update

    As the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 approaches its end of life, the company has rolled out a final update for the device.

  • Android Police ☛ Microsoft says its final goodbyes to the Surface Duo 2 with one last security update

    The tech giant's 2021-released Surface Duo 2, which was priced at $1,500 upon release, fell down a similar path with its weak battery life, inconsistent camera performance, buggy software, and an overall clunky form factor. Now, the second-gen foldable has also reached its end of life, with Microsoft rolling out the final security update for it.

  • 9to5Google ☛ Microsoft releases one last Android 12 update for Surface Duo 2 as it ends support

    The Microsoft Surface Duo 2 is quickly approaching its end of life and as that date nears, Microsoft has just released one last Android 12 update for the device.

    As opposed to foldables that ultimately won out, Microsoft’s concept for a book-style smartphone was a dual-screen device with no outer display. The well-built Surface Duo lineup was praised for its hardware and some of its concepts, but didn’t end up succeeding in part due to usability, camera, and software deficiencies.

  • Robinhood Europe UAB ☛ For Ubisoft, it’s been a wild ride — mostly downhill

    September might go down as the worst month in history for video game publisher Ubisoft. The French stalwart had a slew of miserable announcements, game delays, investigations, and devastating financial blows. In fact, the company best known for developing the acclaimed series “Prince of Persia” and “Assassin’s Creed” lost 41% of its value in September, as its stock plumbed a new 10-year low. Oh mon Dieu!

  • Computing UK ☛ Amazon eyes managerial layoffs to cut costs, report

    Amazon is reportedly preparing to cut up to 14,000 managerial positions by early next year, in a move aimed at saving the company around $3 billion annually.

    According to a Morgan Stanley report, as reported by Bloomberg, the job reductions are part of CEO Andy Jassy's strategy to enhance operational efficiency by increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers to at least 15% by March 2025.

    The plan is intended to simplify decision-making and reduce bureaucracy within the tech giant.

  • Let Halo End

    According to the newly rechristened Halo Studios, Halo is back, and this time, it’s more Halo than ever. And I mean, of course it is. As one of Xbox’s most iconic tentpoles, it is not – and likely never will be – allowed to die. But in a just world, the series would already be six feet under, with a Grunt dancing on its grave.

  • Tech Industry Layoffs Surge: Major Companies Restructure Amid Economic Challenges

    Microsoft has been at the forefront of these layoffs, cutting jobs at its African Development Centres in Lagos and Kenya. In January 2024, the company announced a reduction of 10,000 jobs, part of a broader strategy to scale down its workforce globally.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Wired ☛ What Google's U-Turn on Third-Party Cookies Means for Chrome Privacy

      Other browsers including Apple’s Safari have already eradicated third-party cookies that track people across the web and target them with adverts amid concerns about privacy. But as the world’s biggest browser with more than 65 percent share, Chrome’s decision to phase out cookies was set to be the final nail in the coffin for the intrusive trackers.

      The news, therefore, came as a shock to all sides. So why has Google undergone such a seemingly large U-turn on third-party cookies, how will Chrome include the online trackers going forward, and how will that impact your privacy?

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Google’s new phones can’t stop phoning home

      One of the most brazen lies of Big Tech is that people like commercial surveillance, a fact you can verify for yourself by simply observing how many people end up using products that spy on them. If they didn't like spying, they wouldn't opt into being spied on.

      This lie has spread to the law enforcement and national security agencies, who treasure Big Tech's surveillance as an off-the-books trove of warrantless data that no court would ever permit them to gather on their own. Back in 2017, I found myself at SXSW, debating an FBI agent who was defending the Bureau's gigantic facial recognition database, which, he claimed, contained the faces of virtually every American: [...]

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: China hacked Verizon, AT&T and Lumen using the FBI’s backdoor

      In 1994, Bill Clinton signed CALEA into law. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires every US telecommunications network to be designed around facilitating access to law-enforcement wiretaps. Prior to CALEA, telecoms operators were often at pains to design their networks to resist infiltration and interception. Even if a telco didn't go that far, they were at the very least indifferent to the needs of law enforcement, and attuned instead to building efficient, robust networks.

    • Techdirt ☛ Chinese Access To AT&T/Verizon Wiretap System Shows Why We Cannot Backdoor Encryption

      The law enforcement world has been pushing for backdoors to encryption for quite some time now, using their preferred term for it: “lawful access.” Whenever experts point out that backdooring encryption breaks the encryption entirely and makes everyone less safe and less secure, you’ll often hear law enforcement say that it’s really no different than wiretapping phones, and note that that hasn’t been a problem.

      Leaving aside the fact that it’s not even that much like wiretapping phones, this story should be thrown back in the faces of all of law enforcement folks believing that backdooring “lawful access” into encryption is nothing to worry about. Chinese hackers have apparently had access to the major US wiretapping system “for months or longer.”

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ China Possibly Hacking US “Lawful Access” Backdoor - Schneier on Security

      The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by law—CALEA—since 1994.

    • EFF ☛ FTC Findings on Commercial Surveillance Can Lead to Better Alternatives

      The report finds that market dominance can be established and expanded by acquisition and maintenance of user data, creating an unfair advantage and preventing new market entrants from fairly competing. EFF has found that  this is not only true for new entrants who wish to compete by similarly siphoning off large amounts of user data, but also for consumer-friendly companies who carve out a niche by refusing to play the game of dominance-through-surveillance. Abusing user data in an anti-competitive manner means users may not even learn of alternatives who have their best interests, rather than the best interests of the company advertising partners, in mind.

      The relationship between privacy violations and anti-competitive behavior is elaborated upon in a section of the report which points out that “data abuse can raise entry barriers and fuel market dominance, and market dominance can, in turn, further enable data abuses and practices that harm consumers in an unvirtuous cycle.” In contrast with the recent United States v. Google LLC (2020) ruling, where Judge Amit P. Mehta found that the data collection practices of Google, though injurious to consumers, were outweighed by an improved user experience, the FTC highlighted a dangerous feedback loop in which privacy abuses beget further privacy abuses. We agree with the FTC and find the identification of this ‘unvirtuous cycle’ a helpful focal point for further antitrust action.

      In an interesting segment focusing on the existing protections the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) specifies for consumers’ data privacy rights which the US lacks, the report explicitly mentions not only the right of consumers to delete or correct the data held by companies, but importantly also the right to transfer (or port) one’s data to the third party of their choice. This is a right EFF has championed time and again in pointing out the strength of the early internet came from nascent technologies’ imminent need (and implemented ability) to play nicely with each other in order to make any sense—let alone be remotely usable—to consumers. It is this very concept of interoperability which can now be re-discovered and give users control over their own data by granting them the freedom to frictionlessly pack up their posts, friend connections, and private messages and leave when they are no longer willing to let the entrenched provider abuse them.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ They've already got too much discipline

    The SD brownshirts here in Sweden seem to think hard discipline is the cure for gang [sic] criminals. That’s the opposite of what they need. The gang [sic] world is already one of fear and obedience.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Woodward book: Trump talked with Putin after presidency

    Former US President Donald Trump asked an aide to leave the room so he could have a private call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the latest book by famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

    In excerpts published Tuesday by The Washington Post, the writer says the current Republican White House candidate has maintained a personal relationship with the Kremlin boss even as Russia conducts a war against US ally Ukraine.

  • CNN ☛ ‘That son of a bitch’: New Woodward book reveals candid behind-the-scenes conversations of Biden, Trump, Harris and Putin

    In one scene, Woodward recounts a moment at Mar-a-Lago where Trump tells a senior aide to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

    “According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward writes.

  • CS Monitor ☛ After a year of war in Gaza, Hamas survives, mostly unseen

    Largely unseen above ground, Hamas has lost its security grip over much of Gaza. Amid a steep cost in civilian lives in Gaza, neither Israel’s ability to dislodge Hamas nor the movement’s postwar future is certain.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Ukrainian hackers hit Russian court site after online broadcast site

    According to pro-Kremlin media outlet Gazeta.ru, that attack took down Russian state television stations Rossiya-1, Rossiya-24, Rossiya Kultura, Karusel and around 80 regional television and radio stations. It reported that the attack had been attributed by Russian intelligence agencies to a Ukrainian-linked hacker group. The stations continued to broadcast their traditional analog signal.

  • VOA News ☛ US states sue TikTok, saying it harms young users

    The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness.

    "TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. "TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content."

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Faces 12+ Child-Safety Lawsuits from States and D.C.

    Bringing the focus back to the newest TikTok lawsuits, the lengthy complaints, the public copies of which are replete with redactions, share core arguments and key characteristics. Running with the District of Columbia suit, TikTok has allegedly “designed and cultivated a highly addictive social media application…that it knows harms children.”

    In short, the “highly addictive” side of the complaint refers to “algorithms that leverage user data to feed users personalized content recommendations,” attention-grabbing push notifications, “filters and effects that create idealizations of unattainable appearances for users,” infinite scroll, and the TikTok Coins “unlicensed virtual currency system,” per the legal text.

  • The Washington Post ☛ States sue TikTok in lawsuits saying addictiveness harms children

    More than a dozen states are filing lawsuits Tuesday accusing TikTok of harming the well-being of children by using addictive product features that keep them hooked on the platform, in a bipartisan salvo that amplifies the company’s legal perils as it tries to stave off a federal ban.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ TikTok sued by US states over ‘addictive’ features as Chinese-owned app’s legal woes grow

    More than a dozen US states sued TikTok Tuesday, alleging the app’s features are designed to deceive and addict users. The suit comes as the ByteDance-owned social media company strives to avoid a potential ban in the US after federal lawmakers, concerned over its Chinese owner and national security concerns, voted to force its sale or prohibit it entirely.

  • Nexstar Media Inc ☛ Trump spoke to Putin as many as 7 times since leaving office, Bob Woodward reports in new book

    The revelations were made in the famed Watergate reporter’s latest book, which also details President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘s assortment of burner phones. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.

  • BBC ☛ Russia on mission to cause mayhem on UK streets, warns MI5

    Russia's intelligence agency has been on a mission to generate "sustained mayhem on British and European streets", the head of MI5 has said.

    Giving his annual update on security threats faced by the UK, Ken McCallum said GRU agents had carried out "arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness" in Britain after the UK backed Ukraine in its war with Russia.

    MI5 had also responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022, he said, although he added the majority of its work still mostly involved Islamist extremism followed by extreme right-wing terrorism.

    The complex mix of terror-related threats and threats from nation states meant MI5 had "one hell of a job on its hands", he warned.

  • RFA ☛ To Lam shows fine art of Vietnamese balancing in world debut

    The new top leader in Hanoi cautiously manages ties with the US, Russia and China.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ ‘Endangering NATO security’: Poland slams Baltics’ slow modernisation of Via Baltica

      Without a motorway and high-speed railway connection between the Baltic states and Poland, NATO would face problems if it had to defend the region against a Russian attack, writes the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. Neighbours criticise the Baltics for being too slow to modernise Via Baltica, which the Poles say would be strategically important for military mobility.

    • JURIST ☛ Romania Constitutional Court blocks far-right politician from presidential elections

      Romania’s Constitutional Court on Saturday disqualified Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă, a far-right politician known for her pro-Russian views, from participating in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. This decision has reignited concerns regarding the country’s electoral integrity and democratic values.

    • Latvia ☛ Police in Latgale fight against war-glorifying symbols

      The Latgale Division of the State Police has detected three separate incidents of Z's being painted on buildings or road signs during the week. Criminal proceedings have been initiated for the use of Russian symbols of aggression and war in Balvi municipality, Latvian Television reported October 7.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Pushes Forward in Ukraine’s East After Fall of Vuhledar

      Russian troops have now entered Toretsk, a strategic hilltop city, and are pressing with assaults elsewhere in the Donetsk region.

    • RFERL ☛ Kharkiv Reels From Russian Strikes As NATO Chief Warns Of Rough Winter Ahead

      A Russian strike on an industrial plant in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, killed at least two people, local officials said, as NATO's new chief warned that Ukraine could be facing its roughest winter since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

    • RFERL ☛ Ahead Of EU Speech, Orban Says Current Ukraine Strategy 'Does Not Work'

      Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban – who has been assailed by the West for his often Russian-friendly stance – suggested that Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and pressed again for negotiations.

    • France24 ☛ North Korean military officers 'highly likely' killed in Ukraine, Seoul says

      Ukrainian media reports that six North Korean military officers were killed alongside Russian troops in a missile attack near occupied Donetsk are "highly likely" to be true, Seoul's defence minister said Tuesday. Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun told lawmakers that he expected North Korea to send more soldiers to support Russia's war effort.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Ending Russian impunity: Why Ukraine needs justice as well as security

      Failing to hold Russia accountable for war crimes committed in Ukraine would set a disastrous precedent for the future of international security and would create the conditions for more war, write Kateryna Odarchenko and Lesia Zaburanna.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ The West must learn defense tech lessons on the Ukrainian battlefield

      The Russia-Ukraine War is the most technologically advanced war in history but Western military strategists and weapons developers risk missing out on key lessons due to excessive caution, writes Edward Verona.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Elliot Ackerman in the Atlantic on Ukraine

      On September 30, Elliot Ackerman, non-resident senior fellow at Forward Defense, published a piece in the Atlantic with Karl Marlantes on the pace of battlefield innovation in Ukraine the inability of the West to both keep pace and to deliver arms in an effective and timely manner.

    • Latvia ☛ Charity debunks MP Šlesers' allegations of Latvian money 'stolen' in Ukraine

      Last weekend, a social control media storm was caused by a post by Saeima MP Ainārs Šlesers (Latvia First), where he shared a video of a Ukrainian MP exposing a corruption scandal in Ukraine. Šlesers asks the question - where does the money donated by Latvia go in Ukraine? The charity organization "Ziedot.lv" told Latvian Television that Ukraine reports to Latvia on donations received and used.

    • ADF ☛ ‘African Initiative,’ a New Russian Media Outlet, Promotes Disinformation

      A new Russian news service is drawing criticism for spreading misleading and harmful information in Africa.

    • New York Times ☛ Book Revives Questions About Trump’s Ties to Putin

      The journalist Bob Woodward cited an unnamed aide saying that Donald J. Trump had spoken to Vladimir V. Putin as many as seven times since leaving office. Multiple sources say they cannot confirm that report.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ As Russia Overtly Helps Trump Get Elected, Trump Continues to Check in with Vladimir Putin

      Because Trump has so successfully bullied journalists not to cover the Russia Russia Russia story, Vladimir Putin's clear outreach to Trump this election has gone largely ignored. Now that Bob Woodward has revealed that Trump has spoken with Putin around seven times in since he left office, that needs to change.

      [...]

      But the confirmation that Trump keeps speaking to Putin is important for several other reasons.

    • RFERL ☛ Prison Labor Allegations Surrounding German Lawmaker's Farm In Belarus Investigated

      German prosecutors in the land of Saxony have opened a preliminary investigation into reports that far-right lawmaker Jorg Dornau used prisoner labor at his farm in Belarus.

    • Meduza ☛ New Russian law lets criminal suspects join the army at any stage of their trial — and leaves their victims living in fear — Meduza

    • NYPost ☛ Igor Shesterkin eschews Rangers’ record contract offer with bigger money in mind

      Igor Shesterkin turned down a Rangers offer that would’ve made him the highest-paid goalie in NHL history.  ESPN’s Kevin Weekes reported on Tuesday that the star Russian netminder rejected an eight-year, $88 million extension with an average annual value of $11 million.

    • New York Times ☛ U.K.’s MI5 Chief Says Russian Spies Seek to ‘Generate Mayhem’

      The head of Britain’s domestic security service said Russia’s military intelligence service was pursuing “dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.”

    • RFERL ☛ Top Romanian Court Bans Pro-Russian Candidate From Presidential Race

      Romania's Constitutional Court has banned a pro-Russian, anti-EU, far-right candidate from running in the presidential election next month.

    • RFERL ☛ EU Parliament Blasts Russian Interference In Moldova Ahead Of Vote

      A draft resolution from the European Parliament warns Russia to stop its "provocations and attempts to destabilize" Moldova ahead of a crucial presidential election and referendum.

    • RFERL ☛ Yashin Advocates For Secession Rights In Russia's Federal Treaty

      Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition figure who was exchanged in a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the West in August, says Russia needs a new federal treaty that allows for regions to secede from the federation.

    • RFERL ☛ Putin, Pashinian Agree To Withdraw Russian Troops From Armenia-Iran Border

      Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 8 announced an agreement that will see Russian border guards withdraw from the Armenian-Iranian frontier checkpoint as of January 1, 2025.

    • RFA ☛ North Korea likely to send troops to support Russia: South’s defense minister

      North Korean leader Kim called Russia’s President Putin ‘my closest comrade.’

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Climate Change Is Drying Up All the World’s Rivers at an Alarming Rate

    Adding fuel to the fire, so to speak, is the natural change of weather patterns from La Niña to El Niño, two opposing climate patterns that are typified by sea surface temperatures in the Pacific warming up, leading to greater rain in some parts of the world, droughts in others, and warmer winters in typically cold climates.

    Though these cycles have been recorded for centuries, scientists say that climate change is exacerbating them — and making it harder for meteorologists to predict them.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Russia’s Arctic Geopolitical Ambitions

    Military tensions are escalating because the Russian Federation has strengthened military forces in the Arctic by reopening bases and installing advanced weapon systems. NATO members are concerned about security because of these changes, which could lead to a new arms race in the Arctic. Resource war is happening because the Arctic holds around 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the world’s untapped natural gas. Competition over resource control is causing significant concern. Shipping routes have an important role in the security landscape because Arctic ice is melting and creating new sea lanes, such as the Northern Sea Route. The Russian Federation’s control over the sea lanes creates problems of dependency concerns and could create problems for international trade if the Russian Federation controlled those sea lanes. The Russian Federation has made a very expansive claim to territory in the Arctic, which, due to overlap with other countries such as Norway and Canada, could lead to legal disputes and, perhaps, even diplomatic battles. Environmental risks that may be introduced by the Russian Federation’s engagement in the Arctic include oil spills, disruption to fragile habitats, and significant blowback to world environmental leaders because the Arctic environment represents a unique system of great vulnerability that could be adversely affected by any risks created such as these by the Russian Federation.

  • France24 ☛ Hurricane Milton strengthens to Category 5 storm, threatening further devastation to Florida

    Two weeks after Hurricane Helene plowed through the southeast of the United States, Floridians rushed to secure their homes and leave as Hurricane Milton was again upgraded to a Category 5 storm on Tuesday with the potential of doubling Helene's "storm surge". US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris turned the crisis into political talking points, with the latter spreading false claims about the White House's misuse of emergency funds.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Pro Publica ☛ The Secret Playbook Behind Effort to Kill Solar in an Ohio County

      Word tends to spread fast in rural Knox County, Ohio. But misinformation has spread faster.

      The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

    • Mere Civilian ☛ Powering technology via POE

      At the time of writing, I have six vacant POE ports on my UniFi system. Unfortunately, I have no other devices in my home that I can convert to POE. This means I have officially successfully completed Project POE.

    • GO Media ☛ Owner Claims Geico Is Cancelling Tesla Cybertruck Policies As It Doesn’t Meet ‘Underwriting Guidelines’ [Update]

      Cybertruck owners have had quite the year so far in 2024. They’ve had to clean own their brand new cars themselves, faced rusting problems brought on by transport issues and been hit with five recalls already. Now, owners are reporting that all this bad press has hit their insurance, with some Cybertruck drivers reporting that their insurance on the six-figure truck has been canceled.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Climate Disasters Are Coming. Are You Ready?

    • Science News ☛ To tell a right-trunked elephant from a lefty, check the wrinkles

      There’s a Sherlock Holmes tale in here somewhere: A clever observer could check wrinkles and whiskers on an elephant trunk to catch a left-trunker pachyderm perp masquerading as a righty, thanks to a new study of trunk skin wrinkles.

  • Overpopulation

    • teleSUR ☛ Colombia: Water Deficit Situation in Bogota Described as Alarming

      According to the source, this means that it is just seven per cent above the ceiling set by the mayor’s office to reach the so-called ‘zero day’, when the authorities will analyze the application of stricter policies regarding the supply of the vital liquid to the population.

• Finance

  • Adnan Siddiqi ☛ Getting Started with Candlesticks and Python

    Candlesticks are graphical representations of price movements in financial markets, typically showing the opening, closing, high, and low prices for a specific time period.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Tinder-parent Match names insider Steven Bailey as new CFO

    Bailey will replace incumbent Gary Swidler, who has been in the role for nearly a decade, on March 31. Swidler would, however, continue as the president of Match.

    Bailey joined Match in 2012 and is currently the senior vice president of financial planning and business operations.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Former Amazon executive Dave Clark raises $100M for new supply chain startup Auger

    One of the use cases that Auger plans to target with its platform is supply chain planning. That’s the task of determining the most efficient way to procure a given piece of merchandise and ship it to a company’s facilities. The process requires logistics teams to find a reliable supplier, identify the fastest delivery route and complete upwards of dozens of other steps.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Meta ‘Supreme Court’ of content funds center to handle TikTok, YouTube cases

    Meta’s Oversight Board is spinning off a new appeals center to handle content disputes from European social media users on multiple platforms, marking a major pivot of the experimental court, which is empowered to investigate the company’s handling of controversial posts.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Facebook, YouTube and TikTok users in Europe get forum to challenge social media content decisions

    An out of court dispute settlement body named the Appeals Centre Europe said Tuesday it has been certified by Irish regulators to act as a referee on content moderation disputes across the 27-nation EU, starting with cases involving Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

  • India Times ☛ Facebook, YouTube and TikTok users in Europe get forum to challenge social media content decisions

    The center is similar to Meta's Oversight Board, a quasi-independent body set up in 2020 that acts like a supreme court for thorny decisions about content moderation issues on Facebook, Instagram and Threads submitted by users around the world.

  • [Old] The Washington Post ☛ Meta’s Oversight Board, a model for the internet, is in limbo.

    Last summer, the situation was dire for Meta’s Oversight Board, an experimental court of journalists, analysts and experts empowered to investigate Meta’s handling of controversial posts. Meta, its sole funder, had privately threatened to pull back support, pushing the board to cut costs or seek new sources of revenue.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Musk's X to Be Reinstated in Brazil After Complying With Supreme Court Demands

    Despite Musk's public bravado, X ultimately complied with all of de Moraes' demands. They included blocking certain accounts from the platform, paying outstanding fines and naming a legal representative in the country. Failure to do the latter had triggered the suspension.

  • [Old] American Governance Foundation Inc ☛ Why Civilizations Collapse

    Despite being an excellent epistemic opportunity, civilizational collapse seldom inspires introspection among thinkers living through it. Mayan or Roman thinkers don’t seem to have reflected on their ongoing collapse. As institutions turn to cannibalizing each other, there is little patronage or emotional energy going towards accurately describing the wider process. The notable exception that proves the rule of civilizational delusion is the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China. It is an encouraging example, since it shows a societal failure arrested and reversed by an intellectual golden age called the Hundred Schools of Thought. Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism could only come into being with this kind of epistemic opportunity.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Press Gazette ☛ Putin speaks: RT uses AI to give Putin English language voice

      Putin Speaks project offers counter to Western Putin translations.

      [...]

      Russia’s state-controlled TV news network has revoiced a series of Putin’s key speeches using AI to show him delivering them in perfect lip-synched English.

      In the clips, collected under the ‘Putin Speaks’ project, the broadcaster has given Putin a young voice with a distinct but not heavy Russian accent.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Disaster Disinformation Is This Year's John Podesta Emails

      If NYT were engaged in journalism, they would have noted that even by the time Trump’s people made this claim, the affected GOP governors had already publicly commented on how satisfied they were by the Federal support they were getting.

    • The Hill ☛ FEMA warns of misinformation's impact on hurricane recovery, preparation

      The aftermath of Hurricane Helene has sparked a flood of misinformation online, with federal, state and local leaders sounding the alarm that it is complicating an already difficult recovery process in the South.

      The false claims began shortly after Helene hit Florida, Georgia and North Carolina late last month, leaving widespread destruction and a long road ahead for hundreds of thousands of residents.

    • VOA News ☛ US warns voters of disinformation deluge

      The latest assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued Monday, comes just 29 days before the November 5 election that will see U.S. voters choose the country's next president and cast ballots in hundreds of other state and local races.

      "We've continued to see actors ramp up their activities as we get closer to Election Day," said a senior U.S. intelligence official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

    • NPR ☛ Fact checking falsehoods about FEMA funding and Hurricane Helene

      Rumors, misinformation and lies about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene in the southeastern United States have run rampant since the storm made landfall, especially around funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

      The claims have become so widespread that FEMA set up a response page to debunk many falsehoods around how disaster funding works and what the agency’s response has been.

    • VOA News ☛ FEMA administrator continues pushback against false claims as Helene death toll hits 230

      Misinformation has spread over the past week in communities hit the hardest by Helene, including that the federal government is intentionally withholding aid to people in Republican areas. Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have questioned FEMA's response and falsely claimed that its funding is going to migrants or foreign wars.

      FEMA has dedicated part of its website to providing accurate answers to questions and addressing rumors on its response to Helene.

    • HowTo Geek ☛ AI Images Are Rampant on Facebook, Here's How to Spot Them

      The spread of AI-generated content is a tidal wave that can’t be stopped, and social networks like Facebook are full of it. So how can you spot this content, and why is it shared in earnest?

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ The X Corp. Shutdown in Brazil: What We Can Learn

    Unlike courts in many countries, the Brazilian Supreme Court has the power to conduct its own investigations in limited circumstances, and issue orders based on its findings. Justice Moraes has drawn on this power frequently in the past few years to target what he called “digital militias,” anti-democratic acts, and fake news. Many in Brazil believe that these investigations, combined with other police work, have helped rein in genuinely dangerous online activities and protect the survival of Brazil’s democratic processes, particularly in the aftermath of January 2023 riots.

    At the same time, Moraes’ actions have raised concerns about judicial overreach. For instance, his work is less than transparent. And the resulting content blocking orders more often than not demand suspension of entire accounts, rather than specific posts. Other leaked orders include broad requests for subscriber information of people who used a specific hashtag.X Corp.’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk has publicly criticized the blocking orders. And while he may be motivated by concern for online expression, it is difficult to untangle that motivation from his personal support for the far-right causes Moraes and others believe threaten democracy in Brazil.

    In August, as part of an investigation into coordinated actions to spread disinformation and destabilize Brazilian democracy, Moraes ordered X Corp. to suspend accounts that were allegedly used to intimidate and expose law enforcement officers. Musk refused, directly contradicting his past statements that X Corp. “can’t go beyond the laws of a country”—a stance that supposedly justified complying with controversial orders to block accounts and posts in Turkey and India.After Moraes gave X Corp. 24 hours to fulfill the order or face fines and the arrest of one of its lawyers, Musk closed down the company’s operations in Brazil altogether. Moraes then ordered Brazilian ISPs to block the platform until Musk designated a legal representative. And people who used tools such as VPNs to circumvent the block can be fined 50,000 reais (approximately $ 9,000 USD) per day.These orders remain in place unless or until pending legal challenges succeed. Justice Moraes has also authorized Brazil’s Federal Police to monitor “extreme cases” of X Corp. use. It’s unclear what qualifies as an “extreme case,” or how far the police may take that monitoring authority. Flagged users must be notified that X Corp. has been blocked in Brazil; if they continue to use it via VPNs or other means, they are on the hook for substantial daily fines.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Mom, I’m probably going to die soon’: Russian teenager in prison for anti-Putin flyers says cellmate brutally beat him

    Arseny Turbin, a Russian 16-year-old sentenced to five years in a juvenile detention facility on terrorism charges, told his mother in a recent letter that he’s suffered physical and psychological abuse in detention. Turbin’s supporters, who published an excerpt from the letter on Telegram, suspect that in addition to assaulting him, Turbin’s cellmates may be stealing his food. Here’s what we know.

  • VOA News ☛ Burkina Faso suspends VOA broadcasts

    In the communique that banned local news outlets from using any international media reports, the CSC said it noted the "dissemination of information of a malicious and biased nature" by national outlets using international media reports.

  • Pratik ☛ My guidelines for crossposting

    Why am I so selective about who reads what? Call it an immigrant or minority mentality or desire to cultivate different personas. I’ve had friends lose jobs while on an H1-B visa because of a blog post. I don’t want Google to know about my blog, so I block all search engines. I’ve done so for the last ten years before even I was on Micro.blog. Sometimes, I wonder why do I evangelize Micro.blog because it staying small is beneficial to me.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Justice Has Been Denied to Julian Assange, Who “Plead Guilty to Journalism”

    “I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175 year sentence with no effective remedy,” multi award-winning Australian journalist and publisher Julian Assange remarked, as he was addressing the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on 1 October.

    “Justice for me is now precluded,” the WikiLeaks founder continued, outlining that this was due to a number of stipulations the US had written into the plea agreement.

  • Yorkshire Bylines ☛ Assange: “I chose freedom over unrealisable justice”

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has appeared in public for the first time since regaining his freedom last June after a plea deal. He told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on Tuesday 1 October, that he had chosen freedom “over unrealisable justice”.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ EXPLAINED: Is China taking away people's passports?

    The ruling Chinese Communist Party has been gradually stepping up controls on officials' personal trips overseas since pandemic restrictions ended, with many working in state organizations required to hand in their passports for "safekeeping," amid concerns that they may not return.

  • RFA ☛ 4 Tibetan teens detained for resisting going to Chinese schools

    Chinese authorities detained four Tibetan teens from a shuttered Buddhist monastery school after they resisted being sent to schools run by the Chinese government, two residents living in Tibet told Radio Free Asia.

    The students, aged 15-18, had been attending the school of the Lhamo Kirti Monastery in Dzoge County in Sichuan province, where instruction was in Tibetan and subjects included Buddhist teachings.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Digital platforms refuse to recognise workers’ bodies

    The sixth annual study by Fairwork India on the work conditions of workers on 11 digital platforms, including Amazon Flex, bigbasket, BluSmart, Flipkart, Ola, Porter, Swiggy, Uber, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato, showed that they refused to recognise or negotiate with a collective or independent body of workers.

  • Michigan News ☛ Ann Arbor aims to shift public safety millage funds to unarmed alternatives to police - mlive.com

    The over $3 million per year the city receives would be split three ways going forward, with 40% helping launch an unarmed crisis response program, 40% for mental health and other supportive services for Ann Arbor Housing Commission tenants and 20% for pedestrian and bicycle safety projects.

  • The Hill ☛ Porn stars unite against Project 2025 with ad campaign

    “We must fight back against this ultra-conservative agenda that is rooted in religious conservatism, fearmongering, and the suppression of women’s rights,” Casey Calvert, one of the porn stars involved with the effort, wrote alongside the announcement of the ads.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Today in TLD shenanigans: dot io is being killed off

    Wishing a very pleasant rebranding to all techbros who squatted their web site in an unrelated nation because it made a good pun.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Ticketmaster Pauses Transfer of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tickets

  Despite boasting about its digital ticketing innovations having greatly reduced fraud “compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs,” Ticketmaster was the target of a data breach earlier this year that exposed “some” users’ names, contact information, payment information, and more. But the company insists that users’ passwords were unaffected in this data breach.

• France24 ☛ US judge says Google must open Android phones to rival app stores

  The order is the result of Google's defeat in an antitrust case brought by Fortnite-maker Epic Games, where a California jury decided that Google wields illegal monopoly power through its Android Play store.

  The San Francisco jury in December took just a few hours to decide against Google, finding that the company had embarked on various illegal strategies to maintain its app store monopoly on Android phones.

• India Times ☛ US judge orders Google to open up app store to competition

  A U.S. judge mandated significant changes to Google's mobile app operations. This includes offering Android users more choices for downloading apps and making in-app transactions. The injunction follows Epic Games' successful lawsuit against Google for monopolizing app access and payments. Google plans to appeal the verdict and seek a pause on the order.

• The Washington Post ☛ Google’s app store ordered to make sweeping changes in antitrust case

  A federal judge ordered Google to pry open its Android app store to competition Monday, continuing a wave of challenges to its power and that of other U.S. technology giants.

  U.S. District Judge James Donato largely sided with Epic Games, creator of the Fortnite video games, which won a jury verdict last year that found the Google Play app store operated as an illegal monopoly. Donato was tasked with mandating changes to Google’s app store to fix the behavior that was deemed illegal.

• India Times ☛ What comes next in Google's antitrust case over search?

  The U.S. Department of Justice is expected on Tuesday to tell a judge what actions Alphabet's Google should take after he ruled in August that it illegally monopolized online search in the United States, the latest step in a long legal process.

  Here is what has happened so far in the case and what comes next.

• The Hill ☛ Judge rules Google must open Android app store to competitors

  U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered the tech giant to allow for the distribution of third-party app stores and platforms through its own Android app store for a period of three years.

  The ruling marks a significant win for Epic Games, which sued Google four years ago for allegedly shielding the Play Store from competition.

• India Times ☛ US antitrust case: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

  The U.S. FTC's case against Amazon for anti-competitive practices in online retail will proceed, but some state claims were dismissed. Judge John Chun dismissed claims from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Oklahoma. The FTC accuses Amazon of raising prices with an algorithm, which it allegedly stopped using in 2019.

• Trademarks

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Local craft beer consumers lose loyalty when their favorite brands are acquired, finds study

    The research study published in the journal Marketing Science is called "Local Market Reaction to Brand Acquisitions: Evidence from the Craft Beer Industry." The authors of the study are Ali Umut Guler of Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey; Kanishka Misra of the University of California, San Diego; and Vishal Singh of New York University.

    The study found that there is a 15% drop in baseline product demand in local craft beer markets following the acquisition of specific craft beers by larger companies.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ACE Targets Piracy Giant HiAnime.to and Dozens of Other Streaming Sites

    HiAnime.to has become a primary destination for many anime viewers. The site boosted its traffic to 300 million visits in September following the shutdown of a major competitor. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the MPA and ACE, which are now targeting the site and several dozen competitors in a new DMCA subpoena push.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Orders Seizure of Real Estate & Vehicles in Pirate IPTV Investigation

    Authorities in Italy say that a major IPTV piracy investigation has uncovered a "sophisticated fraud" involving channels and content owned by Sky, DAZN, Netflix and Mediaset. Coordinated by the public prosecutor in the southern city of Lecce, specialist financial and forensic officers were able to identify four people suspected of piracy and money laundering offenses. A court ordered the preventative seizure of five pieces of real estate and two vehicles.

  • 404 Media ☛ Twitter Acts Fast on Nonconsensual Nudity If It Thinks It’s a Copyright Violation

    Researchers posted AI-generated nude images to Twitter to see how the company responds to reports of copyright violation versus reports of nonconsensual nudity.

  • Wired ☛ The Race to Block OpenAI’s Scraping Bots Is Slowing Down

    Robots.txt is not legally binding, but it has long functioned as the standard that governs web crawler behavior. For most of the internet’s existence, people running webpages expected each other to abide by the file. When a WIRED investigation earlier this summer found that the AI startup Perplexity was likely choosing to ignore robots.txt commands, Amazon’s cloud division launched an investigation into whether Perplexity had violated its rules. It’s not a good look to ignore robots.txt, which likely explains why so many prominent AI companies—including OpenAI—explicitly state that they use it to determine what to crawl. Originality AI CEO Jon Gillham believes that this adds extra urgency to OpenAI’s push to make agreements. “It’s clear that OpenAI views being blocked as a threat to their future ambitions,” says Gillham.

  • Federal News Network ☛ A snapshot of where most copyright claims are coming from

    A new study for the U.S. Copyright Office looks at the geographic distribution of copyright claims registered within the United States. The agency is hoping to get a sense of where the copyright system is used and how patterns of registrations differ across areas within the country. For more on what they found and how the office will use this information, Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu spoke with Michael Palmedo, a statistician with the Copyright Office on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.