Leftovers

• Loris Cro ☛ The Static Site Paradox

  Weird as it might be, it's not a great mystery why that is: it's easier to spin up a Wordpress blog than it is to figure out by yourself all the intermediate steps: [...]

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Secret Sculpture Built for John F. Kennedy's Grave Vanished in the 1970s. Half a Century Later, the Mystery Has Been Solved | Smithsonian

  The bronze wreath immortalized the moment when the members of the Honor Guard removed their hats and placed them on the president’s grave during his burial

• Aftermath Site LLC ☛ Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information

  When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment.

  What follows is a list of forums that range from at least interesting to good. I will attempt to contextualize the ones I know well. This post is by no means supposed to be complete and will be updated whenever I find more good forums.

• Seth Godin ☛ Everything costs

  But not all costs are the same.

  There are three kinds of costs that people get confused about, but understanding them, really understanding them–in your bones–unlocks opportunity.

  [...] Sunk costs: If you’ve invested time or money in something (a law degree, a piece of real estate, a bag of chips) that money is gone. All you have left is what you bought, and that is a gift… a gift from your former self. You don’t have to accept the gift if it’s no longer useful to you. Using a gift still has real opportunity cost, and if it’s keeping you from doing something better, walk away.

• James G ☛ the longevity of technical documents

  I have recently been reflecting on how technical writing goes out of date, and what that means as a technical writer. In the voice note below, I explore how technical documents have relevance far beyond their immediate utility as a reference material.

• Anne Sturdivant ☛ WeblogPoMo Challenges

  I'm about to pull the plug on a new domain for WeblogPoMo. This will get me working on next year's site soon. I've been thinking about how I want to use it above and beyond just WeblogPoMo as a single month. That is, I'd like to include other blogging challenges, including photoblogging and other related types of endeavors.

  The two immediate ideas I have are: some loose photo challenges over the next few months, possibly leading up to a group effort to work on a more holistic photo challenge that would include more people (that I'm already talking with) and probably a site and a lot more work than I would want to do alone; and a prompt challenge for writing, the first being an AMA type of challenge.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ How the AI Nobel Prizes Could Change the Focus of Research

    Baker, one of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize for chemistry, has long been one of the leading researchers in the use of AI for protein-structure prediction. He had been laboring away for decades at the problem, making incremental gains, recognizing that the well-defined problem and format of protein structure made it a useful test bed for AI algorithms. This wasn’t a fly-by-night success story—Baker has published more than 600 papers in his career—and neither was AlphaFold2, the Google DeepMind project that was awarded the prize by the committee.

  • The Conversation ☛ Google Deepmind founder shares Nobel prize in chemistry for AI that unlocks the shape of proteins

    To make such a leap in accuracy, AlphaFold2 uses deep learning and neural networks. Deep learning is a computer-based approach that simulates the way the human brain makes decisions. Neural networks mimic the human brain’s structure and function to process data.

    AlphaFold2 also makes use of massive databases of known protein structures and sequences. The neural network correlates the known three-dimensional shapes with the amino acid sequence. It can then derive rules for what shape a given sequence – the “letters” – will adopt.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ NASA to search for signs of life on one of Jupiter's moons

    NASA has until Nov. 6 to launch the probe and is currently waiting for Hurricane Milton to pass over Florida’s Space Coast.

    Once the spacecraft leaves its Cape Canaveral launchpad, it begins a five-and-a-half-year odyssey — first sling-shotting around Mars in early 2025, and then boomeranging back around Earth in late 2026 before it speeds toward the solar system’s largest planet and an incredibly dynamic moon.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ From software to reality?

    There has a noticeable shift in some scientific fields where theoretical models and simulations often not only precede experimental work, but replaces it. Fields like physics, biology, and environmental science now heavily rely on computational methods for data analysis, simulations, and modeling. This development is not new. The integration of computer science with other disciplines has created new hybrid fields. Computational biology, computational physics, and similar areas are not just applying computational techniques but are fundamentally changing how these sciences are approached. Microscopes have been replaced by computers.

  • Futurism ☛ Researcher Who Just Won the Nobel Prize Quit Google to Warn About Evil AI Coming for Us All

    As Reuters reports, American physicist John Hopfield and AI expert Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the coveted prize this week. Considered the "godfather of AI," Hinton's research in 2012 laid the groundwork for today's neural networks — but in 2023, he quit his job at Google to join a chorus of critics sounding alarm bells about the technology.

    In an interview with the New York Times last year about leaving his job as a vice president and engineering fellow at the tech giant, Hinton said he'd previously thought of Google as a "proper steward" of the powerful technology. That's until Microsoft partnered with OpenAI to unleash the latter's GPT-4 large language model (LLM), which powers ChatGPT, onto the masses.

    Though he didn't believe that AI was anywhere near its zenith at the time, the 76-year-old computer scientist suggested he saw the writing on the wall with the Microsoft-OpenAI deal.

  • [Repeat] MIT Technology Review ☛ Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer and figurehead of doomerism, wins Nobel Prize in Physics

    Hinton shares the award with fellow computer scientist John Hopfield, who invented a type of pattern-matching neural network that could store and reconstruct data. Hinton built on this technology, known as a Hopfield network, to develop backpropagation, an algorithm that lets neural networks learn.

    Hopfield and Hinton borrowed methods from physics, especially statistical techniques, to develop their approaches. In the words of the Nobel Prize committee, the pair are recognized “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Nobel Prize in Physics: How Hopfield And Hinton's AI Changed Our World

    The initial inspiration for artificial neural networks came from biology, but soon other fields started to shape their development. These included logic, mathematics and physics.

    The physicist John Hopfield used ideas from physics to study a particular type of recurrent neural network, now called the Hopfield network. In particular, he studied their dynamics: What happens to the network over time?

    Such dynamics are also important when information spreads through social networks. Everyone's aware of memes going viral and echo chambers forming in online social networks. These are all collective phenomena that ultimately arise from simple information exchanges between people in the network.

    Hopfield was a pioneer in using models from physics, especially those developed to study magnetism, to understand the dynamics of recurrent neural networks. He also showed that their dynamics can give such neural networks a form of memory.

  • Reuters ☛ Nobel physics prize 2024 won by AI pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton

    Heralded for its revolutionary potential in areas ranging from cutting-edge scientific discovery to more efficient admin, the emerging technology on which the duo worked has also raised fears humankind may soon be outsmarted and outcompeted by its own creation. Hinton has been widely credited as a godfather of AI and made headlines when he quit his job at Google (GOOGL.O) , opens new tab last year to be able to more easily speak about the dangers of the technology he had pioneered.

  • India Times ☛ Nobel Prize: Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel

    "In the same circumstances, I would do the same again, but I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control," Hinton, 76, told reporters after the announcement. Hinton, known as "the Godfather of AI", raised eyebrows in 2023 when he quit his job at Google to warn of the "profound risks to society and humanity" of the technology.

  • VOA News ☛ Pioneers in artificial intelligence win the Nobel Prize in physics 

    "This year's two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today's powerful machine learning," the Nobel committee said in a press release.

    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."

  • New York Times ☛ Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to 3 Scientists for Predicting and Creating Proteins

    That task once took months, or even decades. But A.I. models like AlphaFold make it possible to do that in a few hours or even minutes.

    That speed has real-world applications. AlphaFold has been cited in scientific studies more than 20,000 times, and biochemists have used the technology to accelerate the discovery of medicines.

• Career/Education

  • Time ☛ I Taught for Most of My Career. I Quit Because of ChatGPT

    This fall is the first in nearly 20 years that I am not returning to the classroom. For most of my career, I taught writing, literature, and language, primarily to university students. I quit, in large part, because of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.

    [...] Students who outsource their writing to AI lose an opportunity to think more deeply about their research. In a recent article on art and generative AI, author Ted Chiang put it this way: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.” Chiang also notes that the hundreds of small choices we make as writers are just as important as the initial conception. Chiang is a writer of fiction, but the logic applies equally to scholarly writing. Decisions regarding syntax, vocabulary, and other elements of style imbue a text with meaning nearly as much as the underlying research. [...] Many of my students were non-native speakers of English. Their writing frequently contained grammatical errors. Generative AI is effective at correcting grammar. However, the technology often changes vocabulary and alters meaning even when the only prompt is “fix the grammar.” My students lacked the skills to identify and correct subtle shifts in meaning. I could not convince them of the need for stylistic consistency or the need to develop voices as research writers. [...] As a result, I found myself spending many hours grading writing that I knew was generated by AI. I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students.

    So I quit.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Multilingualism in a global web

    Languages and how we grow to use them are fascinating topics. I learned three languages at school: Finnish, English and Swedish, and I’ve studied a bit of Italian, Czech, Dutch and Japanese on different times at my life but not enough of any of those to really be able to hold a conversation. I’d love to learn more though, especially Czech and Dutch have been in my interests lately.

    I grew up in a Finnish speaking family, in a completely Finnish speaking area. Yet, now in my mid 30s, I haven’t worked a lot in Finnish speaking environments or companies. Most of my adult career in tech and communities have been working in English speaking environments and I’ve worked in US and Germany as well.

  • Harvard University ☛ The true value of a liberal arts education

    “Precisely because it is general, when it’s well-executed, [a liberal arts education] is teaching you not a set of specific competencies in some specific thing, but rather giving you a set of tools to teach you how to think about the next problem over the horizon,” Deming said.

• Hardware

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Next AI breakthrough will need cheaper computing: Nvidia

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the future of artificial intelligence will be services that can “reason”, but such a stage requires the cost of computing to come down first.

    Next-generation tools will be able to respond to queries by going through hundreds or thousands of steps and reflecting on their own conclusions, he said during a podcast hosted by ARM Holdings CEO Rene Haas.

  • Justin Miller ☛ When Having a Computer Was Weird

    All of the machines are kitted out with various accessories such as game cartridges, CRT displays, cassette tape program loading and saving, disk drives and floppies, joysticks, musical keyboards, manuals, and contemporary books and magazines. Visitors can play games, write documents, try applications, or craft programs.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New Statesman ☛ The pumpkin is not just for Halloween

    Squash flesh is not homogenous; we are learning to distinguish between those for roasting, mashing or baking, just as we have with that other American import, the potato. The end of October will inevitably smell of candle-scorched pumpkin flesh, perhaps joined by the aromas of roasted squash with sage or cumin – and even the occasional pumpkin pie.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ 9 tips to strength train and avoid injuries as you get older

    My situation provided a clear conundrum: Copious research shows that strength training, particularly for older adults, is a critical piece of the health and longevity puzzle. Strength training builds muscle mass and strength, increases bone density and improves balance, which in turn helps prevent falls. It enhances joint mobility and reduces joint stiffness. It plays a role in metabolic health, reducing blood pressure and improving glucose metabolism. It even aids cardiac health.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Register UK ☛ Copilot's crudeness has left Microsoft chasing Google, again

    Having secured a stake in the leading purveyor of generative AI, it started to build it into products that attracted enormous attention, like Bing. Microsoft dangled the enticing prospect that its long-suffering search services could improve to the point at which they would challenge arch-rival Google.

    It hasn't happened. And now it looks like it won't – that Google will deliver a more useful AI, faster.

  • VOA News ☛ Wimbledon tennis tournament replaces line judges with AI in break with tradition

    The All England Club announced Wednesday that artificial intelligence will be used to make the "out" and "fault" calls at the championships from 2025.

    Wimbledon organizers said the decision to adopt live electronic line calling was made following extensive testing at the 2024 tournament and "builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology that has been in place for many years."

  • Don Marti ☛ fix Google Search

    I can’t quite get Google Search back to pre-enshittification, but this is pretty close.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ 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.

  • 404 Media ☛ The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes

    A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.”

    The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals.

  • MacRumors ☛ Apple Says Final iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle Models Are Now Obsolete

    Apple considers a device to be "obsolete" once seven years have passed since the company stopped distributing it for sale. Once a device is obsolete, it is no longer eligible for repair at an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider, with the only exception being MacBook battery replacements for up to a 10-year period.

  • Co-development outfit Kokku lays off staff at Portugal studio

    Co-development studio Kokku has laid off seven staff at its Portugal office following an operational review at the branch.

    A spokesperson for parent company OV Entertainment Group told PocketGamer.biz the move was made to put the studio in line with the firm’s overall strategic goals, “as well as support structured and scalable growth”.

    The office will continue to operate moving forward and the changes were not said to have impacted Kokku’s Brazil studios.

  • Computer World ☛ Big shift in IT employment shows new skills are needed [Ed: AI is not a skill; it's a buzzwords and an excuse companies give for failing; New economy, not new "skills"]

    Smaller organizations have also been scooping up talent left in the wake of more than two-years’ worth of layoffs by mega corporations. Last month, the number of unemployed IT professionals in the US dropped from 148,000 to 98,000, according to IT industry consultancy Janco Associates. Janco derived its findings from a US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released last week.

  "Microsoft cancelled the project after laying off staff at the company in January 2023" https://www.glitched.online/halo-infinite-2-was-reportedly-in-development-before-being-cancelled/

  • Halo Infinite 2 Was Reportedly in Development Before Being Cancelled

    ...Microsoft cancelled the project after laying off staff at the company in January 2023...

    [...]

    The report comes from reliable leaker extas1s who claims that Halo Infinite 2 was in development at 343 Industries before Microsoft hit the studio with layoffs back in January 2023. The sequel was apparently being built in the Slipspace Engine, similar to the first game, before its cancellation which caused the company to switch engines to Unreal Engine 5. This was all recently confirmed by Microsoft itself, which officially announced that new Halo games built in Epic’s engine were on the way.

  • EFF ☛ Election Security: When to Worry, When to Not

    Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable and that will ensure that the voters’ actual choices are reflected in the results. That’s as true as we head into the 2024 U.S. general elections as it always has been.

    At the same time, not every problem in voting technology or systems is worth pulling the fire alarm—we have to look at the bigger story and context. And we have to stand down when our worst fears turn out to be unfounded.

    Resilience is the key word when it comes to the security and the integrity of our elections. We need our election systems to be technically and procedurally resilient against potential attacks or errors. But equally important, we need the voting public to be resilient against false or unfounded claims of attack or error. Luckily, our past experiences and the work of election security experts have taught us a few lessons on when to worry and when to not.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ A Sale of 23andMe’s Data Would Be Bad for Privacy. Here’s What Customers Can Do.

      Selling a giant trove of our most sensitive data is a bad idea that the company should avoid at all costs. And for now, the company appears to have backed off its consideration of a third-party buyer. Before 23andMe reconsiders, it should at the very least make a series of privacy commitments to all its users. Those should include: 

      23andMe is already legally required to provide users in certain states with some of these rights. But 23andMe—and any company considering selling such sensitive data—should go beyond current law to assuage users’ real privacy fears. In addition, lawmakers should continue to pass and strengthen protections for genetic privacy. 

    • The Washington Post ☛ Concerned about privacy on TikTok? Change these settings now

      TikTok is a simple social media app that serves up a never-ending stream of short, addictive videos. Even without posting anything, users are trading their own information for access to the customized free feed.

    • VOA News ☛ New details emerge of how journalist-turned-spy kept watch on Navalny

      Disclosures from intelligence services have shed further light on how Pablo Gonzalez operated.

      Posing as a journalist, Gonzalez allegedly sent the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, photographs and the Wi-Fi passwords of venues for meetings of exiled opposition groups.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Researcher Slams OpenAI, Warns It Will Become the "Most Orwellian Company of All Time"

      But according to Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and prominent AI researcher, the worst is yet to come. In his assessment, OpenAI could soon take an even more dystopian pivot, à la George Orwell's novel "1984," by getting into the business of spying on you.

      "My guess is that OpenAI is going to become the most Orwellian company of all time," Marcus said during a seminar at Stanford's Center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence last week, as quoted by Business Insider. "What they're going to be pressed to do is become a surveillance company."

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Plan to fingerprint passengers on entry to EU to be delayed again

      Plans to fingerprint passengers entering the EU from 10 November are to be delayed for a third time after concerns were raised by France, Germany and the Netherlands, it has emerged.

      The introduction of the entry-exit system (EES) requiring non-EU citizens to have their fingerprints or photos taken before entering the Schengen area has already been delayed twice.

    • 9to5Mac ☛ Home Depot quietly begins rolling out Apple Pay support

      Just a few hours ago, I wrote about H-E-B finally caving to the pressure and rolling out Apple Pay to all of its locations. As it turns out, H-E-B isn’t alone in this change. According to multiple 9to5Mac readers and reports across social media, Home Depot has also recently started rolling out Apple Pay support.

    • The Register UK ☛ How smart TVs spy on you and harvest data

      Smart TVs are watching their viewers and harvesting their data to benefit brokers using the same ad technology that denies privacy on the internet.

      In a report titled "How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era," the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) outlines the expansive "commercial surveillance system" that has infested Smart TVs – aka connected TVs or CTVs – and video streaming services.

    • The Center for Digital Democracy ☛ How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era [PDF]

      But Tubi is not just a TV programming service; it is a key player in a massive data-driven surveillance system that has transformed the television set into a sophisticated monitoring, tracking, and targeting device.4 While news articles like the one cited earlier reveal nothing about Tubi’s internal operations, one need only read some of the company’s own descriptions to get a better understanding of how it actually functions. Tubi’s fundamental business model is based on harvesting rich and detailed information from its viewers, using the latest, state-of-the-art advertising technology (“ad tech”) tools. “We are an ad tech first platform,” the company boasts. “Everything we do is based on data.”5 Tubi promises advertisers access to “billions of rows of data on its customers,” gathered from their viewing behaviors.6 It works with some of the most important data brokers and ad-tech players in the industry—including TransUnion, LiveRamp, and The Trade Desk—to deliver data-driven and personalized target marketing through its hundreds of channels. Tubi’s data-engineering division works to ensure that Tubi can “personalize every aspect of the user’s experience, beginning with the content that they see, to how the content is displayed on the page to search,” and deploying “70+ machine learning models operating together behind the scenes.”7 Its in-house “brand and content studio,” Tubi360, enables marketers to engage in enhanced product placement by incorporating their brands directly into programming content to target individual viewers.8

• Defence/Aggression

  • Pro Publica ☛ Uvalde Releases Missing Police Videos From Robb Elementary Massacre

    City officials in Uvalde, Texas, released another trove of videos on Tuesday from officers responding to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, footage that they had previously failed to divulge as part of a legal settlement with news organizations suing for access.

    The new material included at least 10 police body camera videos and nearly 40 dashboard videos that largely affirm prior reporting by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE detailing law enforcement’s failures to engage the teen shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers. Officers only confronted the gunman 77 minutes after he began firing, a delay that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said cost lives.

  • YLE ☛ HS: Finns Party aiming to reduce quota refugees from Muslim-majority countries

    The proposal is currently under review by a working group composed of officials from the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo), and the Finnish Immigration Service Migri.

  • Spiegel ☛ "Mama, Pray for Me": The Women Soldiers Who Warned Israel of the Approaching Attack

    What then followed could have been prevented. Around 3,000 fighters from Hamas and other terror organizations broke through the border fence at around 20 sites on that October 7, 2023, before attacking cities, kibbutzim and army bases.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Weaponizing balloons

    North Korea's trash balloons have become a new headache for South Korea. The filthy contents stir up disgust and require considerable manual effort to clear the debris strewn across the ground.

    The North has sent over 6,000 trash balloons as of Wednesday, keeping South Korea's military on high alert while also occupied with detecting and retrieving them.

  • [Repeat] ADF ☛ Islamic State Group Affiliate Persists in Somalia’s Puntland Region

    Although Somalia is known as home to the extremist group al-Shabaab, another rival terrorist organization is making a name for itself in the Horn of Africa nation: the Islamic State Somalia, or ISSOM.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Hurricane Milton: As Storm Approaches, TikTok Is a Clout-Chasing Hellscape

    But on the social media app TikTok, some users who are ignoring the evacuation orders are using this time to post as much as possible, some hawking products or showing off their expensive cars in the process. “Yall evacuating while I’m staying home in flood zone A, laying down on my 3000 dollar couch waiting for the hurricane to [pass] over,” posted one user, seemingly spurred on by the thousands of comments urging him to evacuate before the storm made landfall. “The media is rage-baiting everybody into thinking this is some catastrophic thing. It’s gonna be bad. It’s gonna suck. But it’s not gonna be as bad as you guys think as long as you can swim,” said another. He’s since posted nine update videos, all assuring his followers that he’ll be fine in his high rise — with all except one netting over 1 million views. One Florida influencer, Mike Smalls Jr., spent Hurricane Helene streaming live on Kick from a shoddy campsite. He’s repeating the experiment for Milton, this time with another flimsy tent and an air mattress. (He did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment, but his ongoing stream has shown him struggling to keep water out of his air mattress.) Another used his hurricane content to also plug his sports betting empire. “This ground will be underwater tomorrow but your bank account won’t be if you take this bet.”

  • CS Monitor ☛ TikTok sees state lawsuits for knowingly addicting kids to its app

    More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Oct. 8, saying that the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health.

    The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky, and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok sued by 13 US states and DC, accused of harming younger users

    The lawsuits filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok's legal fight with U.S. regulators, and seek new financial penalties against the company.

    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.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey bans Discord after revelations of 'incel' cyberbullying, child exploitation

    Turkey has blocked access to Discord following revelations of widespread cyberbullying by incel (involuntary celibate) groups, some of which praised recent femicides, according to a decision announced on the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) website.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Blocks Discord Messenger Amid Growing Pressure On Tech Platforms

    According to Roskomnadzor, Discord had been involved in distributing content that violates Russian legislation, with almost 1,000 "illegal materials" found on the platform. The service had already been fined 3.5 million rubles ($36,270) in mid-September for alleged similar violations.

    Anton Nemkin, a member of the parliamentary Committee on Information Policy, told another Russian state news agency, RIA Novosti, that this move should be seen as a "signal to other foreign IT companies that [our] patience and willingness to negotiate are running out."

    Users of Discord had already begun reporting issues with the platform in September, with both the web version and the app experiencing service disruptions.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Russia’s ban of Discord chat program hurts its army fighting in Ukraine

    Russia has moved to ban Discord, a popular platform for real-time communication, drawing ire from the Russian military that has extensively used the app to coordinate units on the battlefield in Ukraine.

    The ban, announced by the internet regulator Roskomnadzor on Tuesday, highlights a glaring technology lapse within the Russian military. More than 2½ years into the war, it has failed to implement a secure, dependable Russian-made communications system, instead relying on privately owned platforms such as Discord and Telegram.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Hiltzik: The pointlessness of deficit hawks

    Long story short: Trump’s would be much worse in terms of increasing the federal debt than Harris’. According to the study issued Monday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Harris’ policies would expand the debt by $3.5 trillion over 10 years, Trump’s by $7.5 trillion.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Protesters clash with U of M police during demonstration on anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack

    Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with University of Michigan campus police Monday and at least one arrest was made during a demonstration march that marked the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

    “I don’t understand how there can be a celebration like this on the one year anniversary of [the attack],” Sean Peleg, a senior who is also Jewish told Michigan Advance. “Because one year ago today, Hamas invaded Israel. One year ago tomorrow, Israel responded. So for them to be saying this is a resistance celebration, no. This is a celebration of the terrorist attack that happened a year ago today, in my opinion.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ What I Learned Serving on a January 6 Jury

    About 1,500 people have been charged for their actions on January 6. Some brought weapons to the Capitol. Some committed acts of violence that were caught on camera. Some belonged to militias. And then there is a different category of defendant: someone with no criminal record who showed up on that day and went overboard and committed a crime.

    The families of January 6 defendants have long argued that the punishments their loved ones received were too severe. (The Supreme Court took up one of their arguments and agreed.) In this episode, we contemplate that enduring complaint in an uncomfortably personal way. Soon after we discovered that our new neighbor was Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, Lauren served as a juror on a January 6 case and emerged queasy about the outcome. We visit the defendant’s wife and talk to the judge in the case.

    This is the fourth episode of We Live Here Now, a six-part series about what happened when we found out that our new neighbors were supporting January 6 insurrectionists.

  • The Hill ☛ Susan Rice: Donald Trump's reported Putin calls likely violate Logan Act

    The law, which makes it illegal for American citizens to negotiate with foreign governments in dispute with the United States without prior approval, was introduced in 1799 and is meant to prevent unauthorized diplomacy from undermining the current administration’s position.

    Trump’s adherence to the Logan Act was raised after a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward alleged the current Republican nominee has repeatedly spoken with Putin since leaving office in early 2021.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Russian rampage against US tech continues with ban of Discord

    Discord, based in San Francisco, has 30 million to 40 million users in Russia, about 4% of its total users. Last week, Reuters reported that Russia’s regulator, Roskomnadzor, had ordered Discord to take down about 1,000 items which together contained “child pornography, calls for extremism, the involvement of minors in illegal activity, calls for suicide, LGBT propaganda, and pro-drug content.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Flash mob suspects charged in the robbery of Topanga Mall

    A separate flash mob robbery at the Westfield Topanga Shopping Center took place in August 2023 when a group of about 50 people robbed the mall’s Nordstrom store. The group coordinated their crime over social media, according to authorities. The group put out a call to organize a “crew” to target specific stores at certain times of day, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced in July when several of the suspects were sentenced to prison.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ Companies That Fought Climate Action Now Accused of Price Gouging Hurricane Milton Evacuees

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Florida Republicans Who Voted Against Funding FEMA Face Disaster

    When Congress was debating a short-term government funding resolution last month, Democrats pushed for the bill to include billions in additional disaster-relief funding. A cohort of far-right conservatives favored a stripped-down resolution that didn’t include the extra disaster-relief money — and ultimately got their way.

    The approved measure did, however, extend the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s funding through the end of the year; it just did not infuse FEMA — which is already operating at a deficit — with any additional funding in the heart of hurricane season. “The right-wingers here, the MAGA crowd, even after disasters happen, they have opposed disaster aid for communities in need,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) told Politico after the stop-gap bill passed.

  • Futurism ☛ A Massive Space Junk Disaster in Orbit Is Inevitable Now, Scientists Warn

    With our planet veritably surrounded by almost 30,000 objects bigger than a softball hurtling through space at extremely fast speeds, McKnight and his colleagues are looking for solutions to head off tragedy — but they might not be able to make it in time.

    "This grim reality," LeoLabs COO Dan Ceperly told Forbes, "means that collisions are not a question of if but when."

  • Ethan Zuckerman ☛ What if our nation is not built for climate change?

    These storms are likely part of a new normal, in which warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico evaporate more, supercharging storms with more wind energy and greater rainfall. A chart in the New York Times shows just how warm this season has been compared to the already warm past decade – surface temperatures for much of the Gulf is 90F (32C), and this excess heat was predicted to lead to a terrifying hurricane season for 2024. Those predictions seem to be coming true.

    In late August, 99% Invisible, the wonderful podcast from Roman Mars and crew on design and urbanism, ran a six-part series produced by Emmett FitzGerald called “Not Built for This”. Examining the surprising brittleness of American infrastructure in the face of climate change, the series is a portrait of a country that’s being transformed and doesn’t realize it yet.

  • New York Times ☛ Latest WWF Wildlife Survey Points to ‘Alarming’ Declines

    “There is no doubt that species populations are declining at alarming rates,” Dr. Jetz said.

    David Murrell, a biology professor at University College London who focuses on quantitative approaches, partnered with the authors of the Living Planet Index on an assessment of its reliability. They found that the index would need more data to increase confidence in the estimates, especially for amphibians and reptiles, and more generally in the global south. Nonetheless, the index is “one of our best guesstimates for the trends in animal groups,” Dr. Murrell said. “It is not perfect, but no perfect methods exist.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Truthdig ☛ AI Is Pushing Gas Demand to ‘Record Highs’

      Tech firms such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are building out an international network of data centers to provide the vast computing power for AI. Because those centers require enormous amounts of electricity, with a ChatGPT query using almost 10 times more power than a regular Google search, top executives at TC Energy now argue that AI is helping push gas demand to “record highs.”

    • Wired ☛ 69,000 Bitcoins Are Headed for the US Treasury—While the Agent Who Seized Them Is in Jail

      Over the four years that it has taken the US government to establish legal ownership of that massive sum of bitcoins—identified by the IRS as stolen proceeds of the Silk Road dark-web drug market—its value has grown to a staggering $4.4 billion dollars. The money's forfeiture appears to have been part of a deal that kept Individual X out of prison, though the terms of that deal have never been publicly disclosed.

      Instead, in a bizarre twist of fate, it's Gambaryan, the IRS criminal investigator who traced and seized that record-breaking sum of cryptocurrency, who is sitting in a Nigerian jail as those billions finally end up in US coffers.

    • The Local SE ☛ Thousands queue for Christmas tickets on Swedish trains

      State-owned train company SJ released its tickets for the Christmas period at 9am on Wednesday, with thousands waiting in the ticket queue just a few minutes later.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Portugal’s Deadly Wildfires Are Rooted in Its Authoritarian Past

    • The Guardian UK ☛ More than 100 raccoons besiege house of woman who had been feeding them

      Feeding wild raccoons around her home had seemed harmless enough, if odd, for one woman in the north-west for 35 years – until about 100 of them surrounded her home and demanded food.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FSF ☛ Free Software Foundation to serve on "artificial intelligence" safety consortium

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that it is taking part in the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s consortium on the safety of (so-called) artificial intelligence, particularly with reference to "generative" AI systems. The FSF will ensure the free software perspective is adequately represented in these discussions.

  • India Times ☛ Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus Tata Sons & billionaire of hearts, passes away: Life, education, business career milestones & timeline of India’s industry giant

    In 1991, Ratan Tata took over as the chairman of the Tata Group from his uncle, JRD, who had been in charge for more than half a century. Ratan Naval Tata, a titan of industry, passed away at the age of 86.

  • El País ☛ Mark Zuckerberg’s image makeover: Why the Meta CEO no longer dresses like a tech nerd

    Legend has it that Einstein purchased multiple versions of the same gray suit to avoid wasting brainpower on mundane decisions like choosing what to wear. This minimalist approach was later embraced by Steve Jobs. However, this philosophy of simplicity is being replaced by a new era marked by luxury and bling

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Workers vs Owners is still a key conflict in 2024

    Due to bugs in our political systems, more money means more power; the labor exploitation market failure is one of the primary ways the evil corporations gain money exponentially, so that’s something I want us to fix. If money wasn’t power to this degree, I wouldn’t’ve had as strong of a hangup on this.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Australian Cybersecurity Law: New Cyber Security Bill 2024

    The Australian government has announced its first standalone cybersecurity law, known as the Cyber Security Bill 2024 to upgrade the nation’s defenses against increasingly complex and threatening cyber threats. The introduction of this legislation marks a critical step in enhancing the security and resilience of Australia’s cyber environment and critical infrastructure.

    The government has recognized the urgent need for better cybersecurity measures. Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke emphasized the importance of this new legislative framework, stating, “We need a framework that enables individuals to trust the products they use every day.” He highlighted that the Cyber Security Bill would not only enhance protections for victims of cyber incidents but also promote engagement with the government in combating such threats.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Fossil fuel interests are working to kill solar in one Ohio county. The hometown newspaper Is helping.

      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.

    • VOA News ☛ Russian tabloid distorts Washington Post report on Ukraine to fit Kremlin propaganda narratives

      In summarizing that piece, AiF cherry-picked pieces from The Post and used them out of context, including that the Ukrainians’ support for their armed forces is declining. It also invented a quote stating that “Ukrainian officials fear mass [anti-government] protests” this winter due to power outages.

    • Alabama Reflector ☛ FEMA chief decries rumors, disinformation about hurricane recovery as worst ever

      FEMA has set up a webpage seeking to dispel rumors and disinformation about its response and recovery efforts.

      It says that in most cases the money FEMA gives to disaster survivors does not have to be paid back and notes that the agency “cannot seize your property or land.”

    • The Atlantic ☛ Why Politicians Lie

      For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social control media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

      I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work. (A typical insult: “The fact-checkers are basically just a P.R. arm of the Democrats at this point.”) PolitiFact and other media organizations published thousands of checks, but as time went on, Republican representatives and voters alike ignored our journalism more and more, or dismissed it. Democrats sometimes did too, of course, but they were more often mindful of our work and occasionally issued corrections when they were caught in a falsehood.

    • The Hill ☛ Kamala Harris calls Donald Trump’s hurricane comments ‘dangerous’

      Harris, on CNN, said she has spoken with local officials who are trying to combat misinformation and said she doesn’t know if they are Republicans or Democrats.

      “Let’s let the folks who are on the ground do the work they need to do right now in real time,” she said. “It’s about assisting with evacuation, getting the correct information out, battling the misinformation and putting in place the resources that can hopefully mitigate against the predicable damage.”

    • Michigan Advance ☛ FEMA chief decries rumors, disinformation about hurricane recovery as worst ever • Michigan Advance

      Criswell said she’s concerned the lies about various aspects of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene may have a chilling effect on whether people harmed by natural disasters apply for assistance. It could also potentially endanger first responders on the ground.

      “It’s just really demoralizing to them. It hurts their morale and they’ve left their families to be able to come in here and help people,” she said of first responders and FEMA staff.

      While no one has physically attacked FEMA staff or other emergency responders so far, Criswell said, she and others are closely monitoring misinformation as well as how people in areas hit by natural disasters react to it.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ FEMA chief decries rumors, disinformation about hurricane recovery as worst ever

      The volume and type of disinformation spreading about FEMA, as Southeast states struggle to recover from Hurricane Helene, is the worst Criswell said she has ever seen, following a “steady increase” in rumors following previous natural disasters.

      Incorrect information about FEMA and its response to natural disasters has been spreading through numerous avenues, including social media, podcasts and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s numerous comments and posts. Criswell did not name any politicians or other individuals during the call with reporters.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CPJ ☛ Authorities suspend Voice of America, extending censorship trend in Burkina Faso

    “Instead of seeking to constrain the media available to people in their country, Burkinabe authorities should focus on finding missing journalists Serge Atiana Oulon, Adama Bayala, Kalifara Séré, and Alain Traoré,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in New York. “The Burkinabe authorities must immediately lift the suspension of Voice of America and allow local media to work with international outlets without interference.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Volunteer at Site of Nemtsov’s Assassination Jailed 12 Years for Aiding Ukraine – Mediazona

    A Russian military court has sentenced a volunteer at the makeshift memorial to slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov to 12 years in prison for his involvement with the Ukrainian military, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday.

  • BIA Net ☛ Court orders block on bianet report on Turkey-Israel-Qatar military cooperation

    The law article which constituted the legal ground for the censorship will no longer be effective as of Oct 10, according to a Constitutional Court decision.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Why Reach journalists are being asked to write up to eight articles per day

    A separate email, sent by Birmingham Live editor Graeme Brown last month, suggested journalists should file at least eight stories per day unless they were newsgathering outside of the office.

    As first quoted by Hold The Front Page, Brown said: “We need to make more of shifts where people are not going out as drivers of volume. In practice, if you’re on a general shift and you’re not on a job, it should be at least eight stories a shift.”

  • CPJ ☛ At least 3 Ukrainian journalists assaulted over their work

    On September 26, in the western city of Sambir, two unidentified men in the street cursed Leskiv, a freelance journalist, attempted to physically attack him, and said that he should stop writing about the activities of the mayor and other local officials, according to a Facebook post by the journalist and a post by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local advocacy and trade group. The police have identified the two individuals, according to another Facebook post by Leskiv, who regularly reports on alleged corruption and wrongdoings involving local officials.

  • CPJ ☛ Croatian government minister Ivan Šipić targets journalist Ante Tomić in online attacks

    “We are concerned by Minister Ivan Šipić’s rhetoric targeting columnist Ante Tomić and other journalists and media in Croatia,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative, in Berlin. “Such hostile language from a top government official can have a chilling effect on press freedom and may put the safety of journalists at risk. We call on Croatian authorities to publicly denounce these attacks and reaffirm their commitment to protecting journalists.”

  • CPJ ☛ DRC journalists Patrick Lokala, Érasme Kasongo arrested, questioned over reporting

    Lokala, a reporter at the privately owned news site Télé News RDC, was arrested on Monday, October 7, after four judicial police officers using teargas broke into his home in Kinshasa, Lokala’s lawyer Nico Fail told CPJ.

  • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Authorities Confiscate Journalist's Home Built By Gulag Survivor

    Belarusian authorities have impounded the home of Alyaksei Dzikavitski, the acting director of Belsat TV, an independent Belarusian news channel based in Poland.

  • The Dissenter ☛ DOJ Addresses Police Interfering With Media At Protests

    The U.S. Justice Department advises police responding to demonstrations to consider anyone engaged in newsgathering activities as a member of the press.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Exports Jobs Due to Worker Protection Laws in Sweden

    Spotify is shifting jobs outside of Sweden to appease worker protection laws that prohibit IT personnel from working between midnight and 5 AM.

  • YLE ☛ Expert slams reform plans enabling privatisation of nearly half of Finland's water utilities

    "Yes, I think [water] should have a clear one hundred percent ownership on the public side," Katko said.

    The reform plans are perhaps an unexpected result of a citizens' initiative in 2021 aimed at preventing the privatisation of Finland's water supply. A vote on the matter marked the first time a citizens' initiative drew unanimous support from MPs.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Build or not build new jails: The question has beset L.A. since 1700s

    When you think of a prison town, you probably think of a place like Huntsville, Texas. Or maybe Forrest City, Ark. Or Susanville, Calif. Even if you don’t know them by name, you know the type: places where the population is half-incarcerated and virtually everyone works for or knows someone who works for a prison. In short, you probably do not think of a place like Los Angeles.

    But maybe you should.

  • Ken Shirriff ☛ Wealth distribution in the United States

    Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the 400 richest people in the United States. This inspired me to make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States. It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph, almost the entire US population is crammed into a vertical bar, one pixel wide. Each pixel is $500 million wide, illustrating that $500 million essentially rounds to zero from the perspective of the wealthiest Americans.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ The NRO invites Internet community to participate in ICP-2 questionnaire

    The proposed principles document is the first major step in the ASO AC’s work of revising ICP-2. It sets forth the core principles that the ASO AC believes should be reflected in the next version of ICP-2. In addition to principles on RIR governance, ecosystem, lifecycle, recognition, and operation, the document also provides principles for the potential ‘derecognition’ of an RIR if it fails to adhere to the criteria established.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • New Yorker ☛ On the Run from Netflix Autoplay

    It’s late. My eyes are bleary, bloodshot. My thumb aches with regret. I’m tired of this life—this endless scrolling, bouncing from show to show, all to stay one step ahead of the Netflix autoplay feature where they show you an incredibly irritating trailer if you stay on the tile for more than a second or two.

  • Mike Rockwell ☛ Apple Changed

    Today, if you want to run an operating system other than macOS on a Mac, you’re much better off running it in a virtual machine. But that’s pretty limiting. When Apple stops offering support for the machine, the host operating system will no longer receive software updates. And you’ll never be able to get the same kind of performance in a virtual machine as you would booting it natively.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Washington Post ☛ Amazon to expand prescription delivery to 20 additional cities

  Amazon plans to expand its drug delivery business as the company seeks more ways to insinuate itself into the daily lives of everyday Americans. The move would see the largest online retailer in the United States compete more directly with pharmacy retailers like CVS and Walgreens.

• Trademarks

  • Techdirt ☛ Warner Bros. Still Cutting Off Harry Potter’s Nose To Spite His Face

    It shouldn’t be news to any regular readers here that Warner Bros. has been a ridiculously jealous protector of all things intellectual property when it comes to the Harry Potter franchise. Harry Potter themed fan festivals? That’s banned magic, according to Warner Bros. Want to make a parody condom called “Harry Poppers”? Here comes Warner Bros. to kill the mood. A non-profit dinner with a Harry Potter theme, mostly to make a mother’s daughter happy? The Warner Bros. did its dementor thing to shut down all that joy.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Marc Jacobs, Nirvana Officially Settle Smiley Face Design Lawsuit

    Long story short, Nirvana maintained that Marc Jacobs had infringed on the logo, the defendant designer challenged the validity and enforceability of the copyright at hand, and word of a settlement finally surfaced in July of 2024.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Kim Dotcom Fends Off Arrest Before Conspiracy Theories & Reality Collide

    In August, New Zealand's Justice Minister authorized Kim Dotcom's immediate arrest and extradition. Dotcom's response to his followers on X was simple: "I'm not leaving." Another post mid-September - "we are very close to disaster" - led to Dotcom disappearing for three weeks. On his return, Dotcom said X had suspended his account, based on an extremely serious allegation. After accusing Elon Musk of failing to help, yesterday Dotcom warned that a Trump loss would see Musk indicted and "fighting for his life." Dotcom has a plan to avoid extradition; chaos like this provides the fuel.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Universal Music Files Copyright Lawsuit Against Chili's Parent

    In any event, the defendants allegedly have “no effective procedures for ensuring that the social media content posted for their Chili’s commercial restaurant businesses does not violate others’ copyrights,” according to the lawsuit.

  • Walled Culture ☛ Italy is losing its mind because of copyright: it just made its awful Piracy Shield even worse

    Walled Culture has been writing about Italy’s Piracy Shield system for a year now. It was clear from early on that its approach of blocking Internet addresses (IP addresses) to fight alleged copyright infringement – particularly the streaming of football matches – was flawed, and risked turning into another fiasco like France’s failed Hadopi law. The central issue with Piracy Shield is summed up in a recent post on the Disruptive Competition Blog: [...]

  • 404 Media ☛ Thousands of Internal AI Training Datasets, Tools Exposed to Anyone on the Internet

    Thousands of machine learning tools, including some belonging to large tech companies, are exposed to the open internet, letting anyone interact with them and potentially exposing sensitive data, according to a security researcher who shared their findings with 404 Media.