Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ If You Can’t Say Anything Nice

  You know what your mom would say, right? This week, we got an above average number of useless negative comments. A project was described as looking like a “turd” – for the record I love the hacker’s angular and futuristic designs, but it doesn’t have to be to your taste. Then someone else is like “you don’t even need a computer case.” Another commenter informed us that he doesn’t like to watch videos for the thirtieth time. (Yawn!)

• Robert Birming ☛ Diverse Delights

  A few days ago, I wrote about a growing idea to split this blog into two. I've been experimenting with this "behind the scenes" for a few days, and now I have an even better understanding of what the right path is for the moment.

  The blog will remain as it is.

• Robert Birming ☛ Making Writing a Natural Part of Our Day

  Although I write every day and have a certain routine for it, I don't think it's the most important thing (I'll come back to that).

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Chris O'Donnell

  This is the 59th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Chris O'Donnell and his blog, odonnellweb.com

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Remembering John Wheeler: You’ve Definitely Heard Of His Work

    Physicist John Archibald Wheeler made groundbreaking contributions to physics, and [Amanda Gefter] has a fantastic writeup about the man. He was undeniably brilliant, and if you haven’t heard of him, you have certainly heard of some of his students, not to mention his work.

  • Hackaday ☛ Cockroaches In Space: Waste Processing And A Healthy Protein Source Combined

    As the current frontier of humanity in space, the International Space Station is heavily reliant on Earth not only for fresh supplies but also as a garbage disposal service for the various types of waste produced on the ISS by its human occupants. As future manned missions take humans further away from Earth, finding ways to reprocess this waste rather than chucking it out of the nearest airlock becomes a priority. One suggested solution comes from a Polish company, Astronika, with their insect bioreactor that can process organic material into useful biomass.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Oceanographer Dawn Wright: ‘When we reached the bottom, we saw a beer bottle’

    At around 1,000m you get into complete darkness. Through the sub’s portholes, we saw bioluminescent jellyfish and worm-like siphonophores, which flashed back at us when Victor flashed the sub’s lights on them. The first moments of reaching the bottom were disheartening – we saw a beer bottle – but the rest was wonderful. We observed vast fields of boulders: evidence of the two tectonic plates that are colliding in that zone (the old, heavy Pacific Plate is diving underneath the Philippine Sea Plate). And we saw tiny creatures such as anemones, sea cucumbers and amphipods [a type of crustacean] – all withstanding huge pressure and functioning in complete darkness and cold. Our images and samples are being studied by marine biologists.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Earth hit by another major solar storm

    This latest geomagnetic storm comes just months after a severe storm impacted the planet in May, degrading Starlink satellite internet services and other communication systems.

  • LRT ☛ Colourful auroras lit Lithuanian sky – photos

    On Thursday evening, the sky of Lithuania was bathed in the colour of the Northern Lights.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Comet last seen by Neanderthals to brighten night skies

    With an orbit of 80,000 years, Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was last visible from our planet during the era of the Neanderthals, according to NASA.

  • VOA News ☛ Sky-gazers treated to another aurora show

    When this eruption, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), arrived at Earth about 1600 GMT on Thursday, it triggered a strong geomagnetic storm.

    This storm in turn sparked northern and southern lights — aurora borealis and aurora australis — in swaths of Europe, the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

  • Futurism ☛ The Creepy Sounds the Earth Made When Its Magnetic Field Flipped Will Haunt Your Dreams

    Using data from the European Space Agency's three-satellite Swarm mission delving deep into our planet's magnetic field, Danish and German researchers have managed to map and recreate the sounds of what is known as the Laschamp event, which resulted in Earth's magnetic field briefly flipping 41,000 years ago.

  • Futurism ☛ The Space Force's Top-Secret Spaceplane Is About to Do a Sick Stunt

    As SpaceNews reports, the Department of Defense's secretive X-37B craft is slated to do some aerobraking maneuvers while it passes through Earth's upper atmosphere, essentially using atmospheric drag to alter its orbit and save on fuel.

• Education

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ If Kansas schools know social media harms students, why do they use Instagram?

    If the fake story of this irresponsible dentist strikes you as odd — and it should — then I ask you to consider the gentle hypocrisy of what our schools are doing: limiting cellphone use during school hours but simultaneously moving school announcements, student contests and even classroom projects to social media.

    At a moment when students are confused enough about how to interact with their cellphones, it’s a bewildering double standard. Ignore your phones and be skeptical about social media, except for social media that we, the schools, provide for you, which you are almost certainly viewing on your phone.

  • NPR ☛ Beyond books: How a public library in Ohio's Rust Belt is spurring economic growth

    Tucked in the basement of a stately 1940s art deco building, the brightly-lit room has flexible meeting spaces, cubicles and computers for anyone to use.

    Librarians hold drop-in hours and take one-on-one appointments. They also hosts classes on topics like bookkeeping, grant writing and business plan development.

    And it's all free.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ A VIC-20 With No VIC

    [DrMattRegan] has started a new video series to show his latest recreation of a Commodore VIC-20. The core of the machine is [Ben Eater’s] breadboard 6502 design. To make it a VIC-20, though, you need a “VIC chip” which, of course, is no longer readily available. Many people, of course, use FPGAs or other programmable logic to fake VIC chips. But [Matt] will build his with discrete TTL logic. You can see the first installment of the series below.

  • Hackaday ☛ Approximating An ADC With Successive Approximation

    [Igor] made a VU meter with LEDs using 8 LEDs and 8 comparators. This is a fast way to get one of 8 bits to indicate an input voltage, but that’s only the equivalent of a 3-bit analog to digital converter (ADC). To get more bits, you have to use a smarter technique, such as successive approximation. He shows a chip that uses that technique internally and then shows how you can make one without using the chip.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Realizing Meshtastic's Promise with the T-Deck

    There is a lot that does work, though—even some of the simple things that leave a great first impression, like a boot screen, smooth scrolling (mostly), changing the alert tone, and other essential settings. It may seem silly to some people, but those surface-level bits of polish can really rope in first-time users.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Google's sycamore quantum chip beats classical computers running random circuit sampling

    A team of engineers, physicists and quantum specialists at Google Research has found that reducing noise to a certain level allows the company's sycamore quantum chip to beat classical computers running random circuit sampling (RCS).

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Henrique Dias ☛ On Getting Older and Belonging

    People change as they get older. There’s no other way around it, it is what it is. And while changes can occur at all times in life, the most dramatic changes arguably occur during the adolescence and the first years of adulthood (I didn’t search for scientific evidence to back this up, but it sounds logic to me). I feel like we, as people, are very easily shaped in our early twenties.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Is healthy eating becoming out of reach for Utahns?

    That said, millions of Americans still struggle to pay for groceries even if prices have eased. A recent poll by Savings.com found that 1 in 3 Americans stress about being able to put food on the table, and nearly 80% of American adults have reduced their grocery list because of high prices.

  • RFA ☛ In new film, Dalai Lama says inner peace is key to happiness

    In the film, the 89-year-old Buddhist leader talks about balancing age-old Tibetan Buddhist traditions with contemporary values of a globalized society that is struggling with war, violence and environmental concerns.

    “Our 21st century will not be an easy century,” the Dalai Lama says in the film. “Lot of difficulties come. Destructive actions come from destructive emotions. So, now our world needs knowledge about our mind, about our emotions, and how to tackle these emotions.”

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Hackaday ☛ All System Prompts For Anthropic’s Claude, Revealed

    For as long as AI Large Language Models have been around (well, for as long as modern ones have been accessible online, anyway) people have tried to coax the models into revealing their system prompts. The system prompt is essentially the model’s fundamental directives on what it should do and how it should act. Such healthy curiosity is rarely welcomed, however, and creative efforts at making a model cough up its instructions is frequently met with a figurative glare and stern tapping of the Terms & Conditions sign.

  • Is There a Future for the Video Game Industry?

    Video games. It is a pastime I have enjoyed since I was five. But now, at the ripe old age of 39, I am beginning to wonder if the video game industry has a future, if it will crash like it did in 1983. The reasons for this are multifaceted.

  • Layoffs Intensify: Boeing Likely To Cut Around 17,000 Jobs Globally Amid Ongoing Strike, Production Delay

    Boeing, one of the world's largest aerospace companies, is set to announce its second-quarter results today. The company has already signalled significant workforce reductions and financial challenges, reflecting the impact of a machinist strike and ongoing production delays. Last Friday, Boeing revealed plans to cut 10% of its global workforce-roughly 17,000 jobs-due to financial pressures worsened by a month-long strike in the Seattle area, according to a report by AFP.

  • The Register UK ☛ Russia is actively scanning everything for known vulns

    The group behind the campaign is none other than APT29, the same crew that pulled off the SolarWinds hack. In other words, this is a serious threat.

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation ☛ Update on SVR Cyber Operations and Vulnerability Exploitation

    Targets of opportunity represent entities with Internet-accessible infrastructure vulnerable to exploitation through publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, weak authentication controls, or system misconfigurations. SVR cyber operators consistently scan Internet-facing systems for unpatched vulnerabilities. This mass scanning and opportunistic exploitation of vulnerable systems, as opposed to more targeted operations, increase the threat surface to include virtually any organization with vulnerable systems. The SVR takes advantage of opportunistic victims to host malicious infrastructure, conduct follow-on operations from compromised accounts, or to attempt to pivot to other networks.

  • ABC ☛ Hackers take control of robot vacuums in multiple cities, yell racial slurs

    Robot vacuums in multiple US cities were [breached] in the space of a few days, with the attacker physically controlling them and yelling obscenities through their onboard speakers.

    The affected robots were all Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2s — the exact model that the ABC was able to hack into as proof of a critical security flaw.

  • The Verge ☛ [Intruders] took over robovacs to chase pets and yell slurs

    Someone gained access to Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni robotic vacuums across several US cities earlier this year and used them to chase pets and yell racist slurs at their owners, reported ABC News in Australia this week.

    The outlet spoke with multiple Deebot X2 owners who say their Deebot X2s had been [breached] in May, including Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, who said he was watching TV with his family when a noise “like a broken-up radio signal or something” started coming from the robot’s speaker. He said after he reset his password and rebooted the robot, it began again, only this time the sound was clearly a voice — he guessed a teenager’s — yelling slurs.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta suggests AI Northern Lights pics are as good as the real thing

    Meta has a suggestion for folks like me who forgot to go outside and look at the Northern Lights on Thursday night: just use AI to fake it! But Threads users who replied to Meta’s idea, posted along with three AI-generated images of the Aurora Borealis Meta last night, seem to disagree.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ As AI takes the helm of decision making, signs of perpetuating historic biases emerge

    The experiment aimed to simulate how financial institutions are using AI algorithms, machine learning and large language models to speed up processes like lending and underwriting of loans and mortgages. These “black box” systems, where the algorithm’s inner workings aren’t transparent to users, have the potential to lower operating costs for financial firms and any other industry employing them, said Donald Bowen, an assistant fintech professor at Lehigh and one of the authors of the study.

    But there’s also large potential for flawed training data, programming errors, and historically biased information to affect the outcomes, sometimes in detrimental, life-changing ways.

  • India Times ☛ Infosys to no longer send job offer letters and attachments, the company will ...

    Infosys to no longer send job offer letters and attachments, the company will ... Infosys has reportedly adopted a new hiring approach. The IT company no longer issues job offers and attachments over email to new recruits. Instead, it now requires candidates both freshers and experienced hires, to log into the company's internal system to access their job application details, reports ET.

  • India Times ☛ Apple accused of restricting workers' slack, social media use by US labor board

    The U.S. National Labor Relations board accused Apple of interfering with workers' rights to collectively advocate for better working conditions by restricting their use of social media and workplace messaging app Slack, the agency said on Friday.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ More on My AI and Democracy Book

    Everything is subject to change, of course. The manuscript isn’t due to the publisher until the end of March, and who knows what AI developments will happen between now and then.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Why Space Force chose commercial firms to build its new ground system

    The Space Force wants to transition the first of its space domain awareness satellite programs to a new cloud-based ground system as soon as next spring — and rather than work with a traditional defense contractor, it’s formed a consortium of small, commercial firms to help it modernize satellite operations.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ Schools Are Using AI Surveillance to Catch Students Vaping Inside Bathrooms

      As the Denver Post reports, the Cheyenne Mountain School District in Colorado Springs already boasts a network of 400 AI-powered facial recognition cameras scattered throughout its school buildings. The school district argues they ensure school safety and facilitate responses to emergency situations. Critics, however, argue that spending district money to put kids under sci-fi-esque surveillance comes with a slew of practical and ethical concerns.

      According to the report, the company behind the facial recognition cameras has also installed smart air sensors, designed to detect whether a kid is vaping or smoking weed.

      The idea is that if the air sensors detect vape or THC-laden smoke in bathrooms, surveillance cameras can then be used to locate and identify the culprit.

    • Denver ☛ Colorado schools, colleges have started using AI surveillance cameras

      AI facial-recognition functionality means school administrators or security officers can upload a photo into the system identifying someone as a “person of interest.” When anyone matching that photo is caught on camera, school officials are notified and immediately given the relevant video footage.

      The cameras can also pinpoint and track people using search terms. For example, a principal could type in that a student wearing a red shirt and yellow backpack ran away from their classroom, and the AI-enabled camera system could find students matching that description and quickly determine which way they went.

    • The Record ☛ National Public Data files for bankruptcy, citing fallout from cyberattack

      National Public Data is one of the biggest background check companies, allowing its customers to search billions of records with instant results. In a case management summary submitted alongside the bankruptcy filing, the company said “a large portion” of their business “serves healthcare institutions” that “prohibit entry of individuals with background issues.”

      The company admitted in August that a late December 2023 data breach was the source of personal information that was sold on the dark web in April 2024 and again throughout the summer.

      Names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses and dates of birth were included in the leaked database. At the time, National Public Data said it had “cooperated with law enforcement and governmental investigators” examining the incident but has not provided an update since then.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Defence Web ☛ Terror attacks increase in Togo as Sahel extremists encroach - defenceWeb

    Gnassingbé blamed the violence on the Islamic State group in the Greater Sahara and the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, which is linked to al-Qaida.

    Northern Togo is rife with banditry, and gold, drugs, arms and fuel smuggling, which aggravates local tensions and provides terrorists with financial resources.

  • YLE ☛ Border Guard suspects extensive human smuggling via Russia last autumn

    Siitari said that the illegal immigration across the border was arranged from outside Finland. He said that suspects organised the asylum seekers' route to Finland through Russia and advised them via social media channels.

  • RTL ☛ Between two sides: Christian villagers 'trapped' in south Lebanon crossfire

    Jarjour's hometown is among a handful of Christian villages in south Lebanon that have largely been spared the worst of the violence but remain caught between the two sides.

    "When Israel bombards, it flies over our heads. And when Hezbollah fires back, it also whizzes by above," Jarjour told AFP by phone during a rare moment of [Internet] connectivity.

  • RTL ☛ Metz: Illegal immigrant smuggling ring to Luxembourg busted

    On Friday, the public prosecutor's office of the specialised interregional court (Jirs) in Nancy announced the indictment of four men suspected of having smuggled 300 migrants from Turkey into the Schengen area since 2022.

  • VOA News ☛ Norway introduces temporary border checks after terror threat level raised

    The checks will apply until October 22, according to a police statement.

    It cited “a challenging threat picture” and the October 8 announcement by the security agency PST that it was increasing Norway's threat level from “moderate” to “high,” the second-highest level on a five-tier scale. PST pointed to an increased threat to Jewish and Israeli targets in particular.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Norway Introduces Temporary Border Checks After Its Terror Threat Level Was Raised

    It cited “a challenging threat picture” and the Oct. 8 announcement by the security agency, PST, that it was increasing Norway's threat level from “moderate” to “high,” the second-highest level on a five-tier scale. PST pointed to an increased threat to Jewish and Israeli targets in particular.

  • VOA News ☛ Poland to suspend asylum rights amid pressure on Belarusian border

    Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “the state must regain 100% of the control over who enters and leaves Poland,” and that a territorial suspension of the right to asylum will be part of a strategy that will be presented to a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Polish news agency PAP reported.

  • JURIST ☛ Poland prime minister announces country will suspend right to asylum

    In his statement, Tusk explained that the increased number of migrants has been caused by a “hybrid war” tactic, referring to Belarusian border guard efforts to help migrants cross the Polish border. Further, Tusk also blamed smugglers and traffickers for the surge. Tusk then stated how important integration processes for people coming into Poland are. According to the Prime Minister, people coming to legally work, study or live in Poland, must “respect Polish standards and customs … they must want to integrate”.

  • New York Times ☛ How China has Encroached on Nepali territory

    The Nepalis have other complaints, too. Chinese security forces are pressuring ethnic Tibetan Nepalis not to display images of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in Nepali villages near the border, they say. And with the recent proliferation of Chinese barriers and other defenses, a people have also been divided. The stream of thousands of Tibetans who once escaped Chinese government repression by fleeing to Nepal has almost entirely vanished.

    Yet Nepal’s leaders have refused to acknowledge China’s imprints on their country. Ideologically and economically tied to China, successive Nepali governments have ignored a 2021 fact-finding report that detailed various border abuses in Humla.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Your Scary 2024 Election Risk Recap

    I do not make predictions about exactly what will happen in presidential elections, because I don’t know and neither do any of the people who do make predictions. If I had to bet money I would bet that Kamala Harris will win, though there is still clearly a significant chance that she will lose. The fact that I think that should be taken as worthless, analytically speaking. Most people formulate their own predictions based on walking around their neighborhoods and talking to people they are friends with and looking at Facebook posts. This is useless. High quality national polls are the only worthwhile pieces of predictive information that you can get. Still, as we have seen in recent elections, polling averages a few weeks out can be far from the eventual vote counts in the handful of swing states that will decide the election. In elections, as in most things, it is much more useful to just work for the outcome you want than to waste all your time in trying to predict what that outcome will be.

  • VOA News ☛ Who are Japan's Nobel Peace Prize winners Nihon Hidankyo? 

    Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

    Below are some facts about the background and efforts of the movement.

  • France24 ☛ Japanese nuclear bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

    The group received the honour "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again," said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

  • New York Times ☛ Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to Nihon Hidankyo For Its Efforts to Rid of Nuclear Weapons

    On Friday, Nihon Hidankyo, a collective of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its decades-long campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

    The group was honored by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ A-Bomb Survivors Use Nobel Peace Prize to Share Anti-Nuke Message With the Young

    Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded for its decadeslong activism against nuclear weapons. The survivors, known as hibakusha, see the prize and the international attention as their last chance to get their message out to younger generations.

  • New York Times ☛ Rise of the Dragons: Fire-Breathing Drones Duel in Ukraine

    So they gave a new weapon a newer twist, attaching thermite-spewing canisters to drones and creating a weapon capable of spitting out molten metal that burns at 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Soldiers call them “dragon drones.”

  • The Washington Post ☛ Russia’s forces are illegally using Starlink terminals against Ukraine

    The issue has renewed Ukrainian frustrations over Elon Musk, SpaceX’s mercurial chief executive. Some of the soldiers criticized Musk by name, saying his company has not done enough to crack down on illicit use and casting doubt on his desire to fix the problem, saying he appears to have favorable views toward Russia.

  • RFA ☛ TikTok owner moves toward AI, lays off 500 Malaysian moderators

    Chinese social media platform TikTok said it laid off nearly 500 employees in Malaysia who were tasked with deleting inappropriate content, and will replace them with cheaper artificial intelligence tools, but analysts questioned whether machines could do a better job.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok slashes hundreds of jobs in AI shift

    Social media platform TikTok said it will slash hundreds of jobs, with a significant number of employees in Malaysia expected to be affected, as the company shifts to AI-assisted content moderation.

  • Deseret Media ☛ TikTok was aware of risks kids and teens face on its platform, legal document alleges

    The redacted information — which was inadvertently revealed by Kentucky's attorney general's office and first reported by Kentucky Public Radio — touches on a range of topics, most importantly the extent to which TikTok knew how much time young users were spending on the platform and how sincere it was when rolling out tools aimed at curbing excessive use.

• Environment

  • SBS ☛ Aurora Australis visible from Australia

    Those wanting to try to see the lights should find a south-facing spot without light pollution.

  • Futurism ☛ Wildlife Populations Have Shrunk a Shocking Amount in Just 50 Years, Report Finds

    Between 1970 and 2020, land populations have dropped by 69 percent on average, the analysis found, while marine populations have fallen by 56 percent. Freshwater populations suffered the worst at an 85 percent decline. That brings us to the overall figure of 73 percent, which is four points more than it was in 2018.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Fighting climate change with financial reform

    To some extent, I see the fight against climate change resting on a range of financial reforms and backing labor power. Because climate change is another lens on the same problem America has struggled with for ages: prioritizing corporate profit above all else. We’re still dealing with the poverty, despair and resentment born from crushing unions and corporations offshoring and deskilling American manufacturing — and more and more, white collar labor too — and the fractured supply and crap quality consumers are stuck with.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ Solar Planes Are Hard

      A regular comment we see on electric aircraft is to “just add solar panels to the wings.” [James] from Project Air has been working on just such a solar plane, and as he shows in the video after the break, it is not a trivial challenge.

    • DeSmog ☛ Reform’s First 100 Days of Climate Science Denial in Parliament

    • DeSmog ☛ Methodology and Assumptions

    • Futurism ☛ Tesla's Disappointing Robotaxi Event Sent Shares of Uber and Lyft Soaring

      Tesla's stock took a dive following its much-hyped but disappointingly lackluster robotaxi event.

      But ironically, Uber and Lyft — two ride-sharing companies who theoretically stand to lose some of their dominance if a competitor's driverless taxi service takes off — saw their stocks soar.

    • Heliomass ☛ Managed Decline - Montreal's Transit Crisis

      The justification is a fiscal one: A reduction in ridership since the pandemic is blamed, in spite of ridership being on a consistent upward trend. But there are needs to “cut costs”.

      My view for most of the time I’ve lived in Montreal is these services have been set up to fail for a long time. What these lines need is reliable, regular, all day service. It’s a simple formula shown to increase ridership. The better the service, the more people will use it.

      Suggesting closure is the polar opposite of what needs to happen.

    • Ben Congdon ☛ Lake Union's Lonely Trolley: SLU Streetcar Ridership | Ben Congdon

      Out of curiosity, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for streetcar ridership data last year. I had all but forgot about the data I received back, but was recently reminded when I read reporting that the SLU streetcar had to close for several weeks due to an electrical issue.

    • The Verge ☛ The FBI secretly created an Ethereum token to investigate crypto fraud

      The FBI created a cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets, the government revealed on Wednesday. The FBI’s Ethereum-based token, NexFundAI, was created with the help of “cooperating witnesses.”

      As a result of the investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged three “market makers” and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets. The Department of Justice charged 18 people and entities for “widespread fraud and manipulation” in [cryptocurrency] markets.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Omicron Limited ☛ AI empowers iNaturalist to map California plants with unprecedented precision

      The researchers used a type of artificial intelligence called a convolutional neural network, which is a deep learning model, to correlate the citizen science data for plants in California with high-resolution remote-sensing satellite or airplane images of the state. The network discovered correlations that were then used to predict the current range of 2,221 plant species throughout California, down to scales of a few square meters.

• Finance

  • Pro Publica ☛ Arizona’s Low-Income Families Aren’t Using School Vouchers

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Goodbye to an old spreadsheet

    I ended up creating a LibreOffice Calc workbook analogue of YNAB with a few additional features, and spent a few days sanitising and importing data into this new format. Everything is manually entered, so no expense ever surprised me.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Korea Times ☛ Boeing to cut 17,000 jobs, delay first 777X jet as strike hits finances

    CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a message to employees that the significant downsizing was necessary "to align with our financial reality" after an ongoing strike by 33,000 U.S. West Coast workers halted production of its 737 MAX, 767 and 777 jets.

  • Geshan ☛ Unblocking Software Engineers: Overcoming Non-technical and Technical Roadblocks

    Writing code is a small part of your job as a software engineer. You will also be communicating and managing expectations. In this post, you will learn about where software engineers get blocked while executing a task and how you (as a product person) can unblock them. You will also figure out ways to unblock yourself as a software engineer. Let’s get started!

  • WikiMedia ☛ Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Results - Meta

    The following table describes the calculations that happened in order to achieve the result above. In each round of calculation, the candidate(s) who achieved more votes than the quota are declared elected. Their surplus votes above the quota are redistributed to the remaining candidates. If nobody achieves the quota, the lowest ranking candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates. To understand this better, please refer to the Meta-wiki page about Single Transferable Vote.

  • WikiMedia ☛ Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024

    While these candidates have been ranked through the vote, they still need to be appointed to the Board of Trustees. They need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. New trustees will be appointed at the next Board meeting in December 2024.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Associated Press ☛ Right-wing influencers were duped to work for Russian operation, US says

      They have millions of followers online. They have been major players in right-wing political discourse since Donald Trump was president. And they worked unknowingly for a company that was a front for a Russian influence operation, U.S. prosecutors say.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Hurricane disinformation rampant in US election campaign

      Biden, however, didn't just criticize the profiteers. He also condemned the "reckless, irresponsible disinformation and outright lies that continue to flow" since Hurricane Helene — much of which are being spread by the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

      Trump spreads dangerous hurricane disinformation

    • VOA News ☛ Report focuses attention on Serbia's spread of Russian propaganda

      A media watchdog group's report is prompting renewed scrutiny of the role Serbia is playing in the dissemination of Russian propaganda in the Balkans, particularly as it concerns Moscow's war on Ukraine.

      "Thanks to the Serbian government's grip on the media and favorable political environment, RT — formerly Russia Today — uses its Belgrade office to adapt the Kremlin's narratives before disseminating them across southeastern Europe," said the report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which was updated early this week.

    • New York Times ☛ Twitter Banned Them. What Happened When Elon Musk Reinstated Them?

      Ms. Greene and Mr. Jones are among a large set of users who were barred from the site for spreading misinformation, inciting violence or otherwise violating its rules — and were reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform, then known as Twitter, two years ago.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Trump calls for CBS to lose its license over Kamala Harris‘ interview

    Former US president, Donald Trump said on Thursday that CBS News should lose a broadcasting license over how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, even though the federal government does not issue licenses for such television networks.

    Trump’s push came after CBS aired Harris’s interview with “60 Minutes,” which came after he backed out of sitting for his own interview with the show, according to the network.

  • ANF News ☛ Turkey bans Kurdish-language film Rojbash from commercial release

    The Culture and Tourism Ministry has blocked the theatrical release of Rojbash, a film that tells the story of a group of Kurdish stage actors reuniting after 25 years.

    The ministry deemed the film "unsuitable for commercial circulation," a decision that prompted a legal challenge from the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), which announced that it had filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban.

  • VOA News ☛ UK government is urged to raise pro-democracy tycoon's case with China 

    Lai, 76, is the founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily, which supported mass pro-democracy protests in the economic hub.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Alexei Navalny Wrote He Knew He Would Die in Prison in New Memoir - The Moscow Times

    Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin's top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir which will be released on October 22.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Ukrainian Reporter Died in Russian Detention, Kyiv Says - The Moscow Times

    The circumstances of her arrest were not made public and it was not clear where she was being held inside Russia.

  • New Yorker ☛ Prison Diaries: An Excerpt from Alexei Navalny’s Memoir, “Patriot”

    Navalny emerged from a coma on September 7th. A week later, he announced his intention to return soon to Russia, despite the obvious danger. Doctors concluded that Navalny had been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent called Novichok. While recovering in the German countryside, he began writing his memoir, “Patriot,” and investigating the attempt on his life. He had no doubt that it had been the decision of Vladimir Putin and the work of the F.S.B., the Russian security services, but he was determined to uncover the details. During an unforgettable telephone call, which was filmed for a documentary about his life, Navalny duped an F.S.B. agent into describing how agents had broken into his hotel room in Tomsk and dosed his clothing with the poison.

  • RFERL ☛ In Afghanistan, The Taliban Wages War On Music

    The Taliban announced in August that it had destroyed over 20,000 musical instruments in Afghanistan in the past year. [...]

  • VOA News ☛ Alexey Navalny wrote he knew he would die in prison in new memoir

    Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin's top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir, which will be released October 22.

    The New Yorker published excerpts from the book Friday, featuring writing from Navalny's prison diary and earlier.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russian Court Orders Arrest of CNN Journalist for Kursk Reporting

    A Russian court on Friday ordered the arrest in absentia of CNN journalist Nick Paton Walsh for reporting from Ukrainian-held territory in Russia's Kursk region.

    Moscow has launched several criminal proceedings against Western journalists who had produced reports from the Kursk region after Kyiv's surprise August incursion.

  • VOA News ☛ Venezuela cancels passports of dozens of journalists, activists, FT reports

    Venezuela has canceled the passports of dozens of journalists and activists since President Nicolas Maduro claimed a reelection victory, part of what rights groups say is an intensifying campaign of repression against the authoritarian president's opponents, the Financial Times reported Saturday.

    At least 40 people, mostly journalists and human rights activists have had their passports annulled without explanation, the newspaper reported, citing Caracas-based rights group Laboratorio de Paz.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukrainian Journalist Viktoria Roshchina Dies in Russian Captivity, Ukraine Says

    Viktoria Roshchina, a Ukrainian journalist who went missing in August 2023 while reporting from territories occupied by Moscow’s forces, has died in Russian custody, Ukrainian officials said.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Efforts to Organize Amazon Are Advancing Across the US

    Last week, Amazon warehouse workers in San Francisco organizing with the Teamsters marched on the boss to demand union recognition. It’s one of many organizing efforts targeting the logistics giant that are gaining ground across the country.

  • JURIST ☛ HRW: Afghanistan ex-policewomen face sexual abuses and threats

    N0t only have the current authorities failed to establish any mechanism for former policewomen to report sexual abuse safely, but the repeal of relevant laws and protective institutions also hindered their access to justice. Many former policewomen have been forced to conceal their identities and seek asylum abroad. Economic hardship, fear of Taliban persecution, and the trauma of previous abuses have severely impacted the mental health of these women, with some now requiring medical treatment for anxiety and depression.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • VOA News ☛ Undersea cables emerge as source of friction in South China Sea

    Since 2020, according to published reports, the United States has been urging countries in the region to avoid using a Chinese company to repair or lay new cables at the bottom of the sea out of concern that China could intercept and monitor sensitive communications passing through the cables.

    It has also been urging companies to route new cables around the perimeter of the sea, avoiding the central part of the waterway claimed by China based on historic maps showing a 10-dash line that infringes on the exclusive economic zones of several other countries.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Frank Meeuwsen ☛ It turns out I have a linkblog on Feedland

      When I load the feed in my FreshRSS reader, the results vary. I edited a few linkblogs to give them a title and a short description. These load fine in FreshRSS. It’s still a bit of a guess to click on the title in the feed to load the linked article. So when there is no title, you just see the URL of Feedland, which actually leads to the original, linked article. To be honest, this is confusing.

    • [Old] The United Kingdom ☛ Open Standards principles

      Government technology must remain open to everyone. These principles ensure our future technology choices will be affordable, secure, and innovative. We know there are areas of government which have not yet fully embraced these principles, and we are determined to create an environment where openness can succeed.

      The Open Standards Principles apply to every aspect of government IT and will improve public services for all users.

      Open standards are for everyone.

    • [Old] Project Gemini ☛ Gemini hypertext format, aka "gemtext", specification

      This document specifies the "gemtext" hypertext format. Gemtext is intended to serve as the "native" response format of the Gemini file transfer protocol, in the same way that HTML is the native response format of HTTP [RFC7230], although it can be used for any other purpose for which it is suitable. Gemtext is served via Gemini using the as-yet unregistered MIME type text/gemini.

    • [Old] Project Gemini ☛ Gemini network protocol specification

      This document specifies the Gemini protocol for file transfer. It can be thought of as an incremental improvement over Gopher [RFC1436] rather than a stripped down HTTP [RFC7230]. It runs over TCP [STD7] port 1965 with encryption provided by TLS [RFC8446] with a simple request and response transaction. It can serve arbitrary digital content with a specific MIME type [RFC2045], but is most frequently used to serve lightweight hypertext documents which use a related by separately specified format: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Science Alert ☛ Voice Cloning Sounds Like Science Fiction, But It's Already Happening

      Voice cloning, a type of deepfake technology, creates a digital replica of a person's voice by capturing their speech patterns, accent and breathing from brief audio samples.

      Once the speech pattern is captured, an AI voice generator can convert text input into highly realistic speech resembling the targeted person's voice.

      With advancing technology, voice cloning can be accomplished with just a three-second audio sample.

    • CNN ☛ AI voice-cloning scams could target millions of people, Starling Bank warns

      They have already affected hundreds. According to a survey of more than 3,000 adults that the bank conducted with Mortar Research last month, more than a quarter of respondents said they have been targeted by an AI voice-cloning scam in the past 12 months.

      The survey also showed that 46% of respondents weren’t aware that such scams existed, and that 8% would send over as much money as requested by a friend or family member, even if they thought the call seemed strange.

• Copyrights

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas professors debate severity of plagiarism, response to WSU president's dissertation

    “There is a big difference between clerical/grammatical errors and not citing the author,” said Dudley, who graduated from WSU’s physician assistant program in 2008. “Both fall under the definition of plagiarism, but I think we can agree one is way worse than the other.”

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cuevana Announces Voluntary Shutdown Following MPA Pressure

    With many millions of regular visitors, Cuevana.biz is one of the largest pirate streaming sites in Latin America. However, the site may not be around for much longer. A notice posted by the operators, who claim to be Mexican students, suggests that they will voluntarily hand over their domains to the MPA, which recently reported the site to the U.S. government.