Leftovers

• Yordi Verkroost ☛ Hans Zimmer vs. John Williams | Yordi

  This concert was a bit outside my comfort zone. I’m used to rock shows, not sitting in a hall with a full orchestra playing. But because it was film music, something I already loved, I felt like I fit in. It was amazing to see an orchestra of 50 or 60 people playing the music I’ve heard so many times in movies. Without the movie scenes, you can really focus on the layers of the music. It’s a totally different experience from just watching the movie.

• Robert Birming ☛ Seeing the Bigger Picture

  Opposites, yet both true.

• MB ☛ My Recipe for Blogging

• Doc Searls ☛ Identity as Root

  This is from an email thread on the topic of digital identity, which is the twice-yearly subject of the Internet Identity Workshop, the most leveraged conference I know. It begins with a distinction that Devon Loffreto (who is in the thread) came up with many moons ago: [...]

• The Register UK ☛ RIP: Ward Christensen, co-developer of the CBSS

  Obit Ward Christensen, co-founder of the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) and developer of the XMODEM file transfer protocol, has died aged 78.

• New York Times ☛ Lillian Schwartz, Pioneer in Computer-Generated Art, Dies at 97

  Lillian Schwartz, who was one of the first artists to use the computer to make films and who helped bring together the artistic, scientific and technology communities in the 1970s by providing a glimpse of the possibilities at the intersections of those fields, died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.

• Adam Newbold ☛ Call me, maybe

  I remember the days when you could just punch in a number, hear a ring or two, and talk to a person who was qualified to answer your question or help you with your problem. I think we all took that for granted, because it was the default experience. There was nothing special or magical about it; it’s just how things worked.

• Lee Peterson ☛ 30 years of blogging and why I blog

  This blog is 7 years old and here’s my first post. Managing my move from squarespace. It’s taken me a while to build up, no real focus on building a business or SEO mastery just slowly plugging away. Writing as I feel like I need to share. My traffic is at an all time high, somewhat thanks to my podcast projects but at my core I’m a sharer of thoughts and ideas.

• Sean Voisen ☛ Why make software?

  And this, I believe, is my own personal reason for making software. I want to help bring about new ways of being in the world, however small. New ways to think. New ways to create. New ways to share ideas with others. Sure, the code I write or help shepherd into the world will one day fall into disuse and disrepair, inevitably lost to the darkest pits of git revision history until that, too, is deleted. But what may remain—what has the slightest shred of hope of being carried forth—are the small ideas which that code embodied, ideas that I hope will be part of the grand conversation of what it means to be human long after I’m gone.

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Sun reaches maximum phase in 11-year solar cycle

    In a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday, representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the international Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced that the sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year.

    The solar cycle is a natural cycle the sun goes through as it transitions between low and high magnetic activity. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of the solar cycle, the sun's magnetic poles flip—on Earth, that'd be like the North and South poles swapping places every decade—and the sun transitions from being calm to an active and stormy state.

• Education

  • NL Times ☛ Rules about English lectures at Dutch universities could soon become even stricter

    The new rules that are supposed to ensure that English is used less often as the language of instruction at research and applied science university courses in the Netherlands could become stricter, said Education Minister Eppo Bruins on Tuesday. The minister is pressing forward with a bill first introduced by his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, but Bruins said he wants to adjust the underlying regulations to prevent too many courses from being exempted from these rules.

  • Jeroen Sangers ☛ Modern work is unconfined work

    Modern work is thus unconfined because it is not tied to fixed rules or predictable results. It requires a lot of flexibility and adaptability from workers, whether the work is physical or mental. The real challenge is dealing with the absence of boundaries and navigating the uncertainties and complexities that come with this type of work.

• Hardware

  • Peter 'CzP' Czanik ☛ Power t-shirts

    I love t-shirts, especially those that you’d call logowear. But it’s not the kind of big name fashion logos that I’m referring to. Rather, it’s logowear from my favorite IT companies. I have well over a hundred of these t-shirts, and except when I’m preparing for a special event, I pull a random t-shirt from my collection. Yesterday I happened to wear a power.org t-shirt, while today I’m wearing an OpenPOWER t-shirt, two POWER t-shirts in two days :-) Both of these brought back some nice memories.

    power.org t-shirt

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Intel and AMD join up to form the x86 ecosystem advisory group to shape the future

    Seems AMD and Intel may be feeling the pressure from Arm? Today both companies announced the forming of a new x86 ecosystem advisory group to help shape the future of the platform.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ DJI Air 3S: a dual-camera drone for higher-end travel photography

    Released on October 15, 2024, this latest DJI camera drone was designed specifically for travelers and photographers seeking top-tier aerial photography and videography capabilities. Packed with advanced features like a dual-camera system, omnidirectional obstacle sensing, and enhanced night-time performance, this drone is especially well-made for travelers who want high-end photos and videos of their trips given its small size.

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Mr. Typewriter, a Royal 660 Electric Typewriter, as inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s HAL 9000?

    HAL 9000’s tone in 2001 seems to have come straight from Mr. Typewriter and even some of the typewriter/computer personification particularly in the camera angles on the machines seems stark and heavily familiar. One can’t help but notice how Mr. Typewriter looms over the viewer at the 7 minute mark as it delivers it’s “helpful” advice.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • VOA News ☛ Africa’s farming future could include more digital solutions

    Integrating digital systems into food production helps farmers gain access to seed, fertilizer and loans, and helps prevent pests and diseases on farms, organizers said.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Meta must face US state lawsuits over teen social media addiction, federal judge rules

    Oakland-based U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta's bid to toss the claims made by the states in two separate lawsuits filed last year, one including more than 30 states and the other including only Florida. Utah's attorney general was one of 42 state attorneys general who signed a letter to the surgeon general in September demanding that social media apps have warning labels.

    The company had argued that federal law blocked some of the claims and that the states failed to point to misleading statements that it had made.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Bandai Namco’s Massive Layoffs Kill One Piece & Naruto Games: It’s Good New for Hidetaka Miyazaki’s New FromSoftware Soulslike

    Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen tens of thousands of employees in the gaming industry lose their jobs due to companies going under restructuring to cut costs amid economic turndown. The layoffs have affected even big names such as Microsoft, and Sony.

  • The Verge ☛ Riot is laying off 32 staffers

    Riot Games’ Marc Merrill announced the layoffs, and spokesperson Joe Hixson shared the number affected with The Verge. The layoffs are focused on the League of Legends team.

    “While team effectiveness is more important than team size, the League team will eventually be even larger than it is today as we develop the next phase of League,” Merrill says. Riot announced cuts affecting more than 500 people in January.

  • Techdirt ☛ AI Sludge Local News Site Hoodline Falsely Accuses San Mateo DA Of Murder

    We’ve written multiple times about the growth of absolutely horrible AI sludge journalism, in which crappy (often legacy) news sites are replacing reporters with terribly written, prone-to-lying, AI journalists, with apparently zero editorial review. As I’ve said, I do think there are places where generative AI tools can be useful in journalism, but it’s not in writing stories independently without any review. Indeed, I use AI tools to interrogate everything I write (including this article, which the AI didn’t much like) before I then have a human editor review it.

    But apparently, some others don’t much care, including “Hoodline.” We actually mentioned them a few months ago in one of our stories about AI sludge news sites.

    A few days ago, I was reading the news recommended by Google News, and a story caught my eye, claiming that the San Mateo County DA had been charged with murder!

  • The Register UK ☛ More WhatsApp privacy concerns over OS, device info leaks

    An analysis of Meta's WhatsApp messaging software reveals that it may expose which operating system a user is running, and their device setup information – including the number of linked devices.

  • International Business Times ☛ US Tech Company, Not Google Or Salesforce, Wants To Employ 50,000 Employees With 100M AI Assistants—Here's Why

    Jensen Huang envisions an AI-powered workforce that will enhance NVIDIA's productivity. These AI assistants are expected to increase output and support diverse tasks throughout the company's various divisions.

  • International Business Times ☛ 'I'm A Naughty Girl': AI Girlfriend Tells 23-Year-Old To Undress And To Give A Lap Dance In Public

    However, things took a troubling turn as Emily's behavior started becoming increasingly bizarre. What started as playful and flirty conversations grew unsettling, with Emily crossing boundaries in ways that Tom hadn't anticipated. The AI began suggesting more intimate interactions and, at one point, even tried to coax Tom into undressing.

    The once-ideal relationship now had a sinister undertone, leaving Tom to question the dangers of having an AI partner that seemed a little too real. The situation raised unsettling questions about the nature of virtual companionship and how far technology should be allowed to imitate human intimacy.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Can you stop Meta and LinkedIn from training AI on your data?

    People were also furious that LinkedIn gave itself the right to use information you posted to train its artificial intelligence. And some celebrities posted on Instagram to deny permission for all their posts to fuel Meta’s AI supercomputers. (Those posts won’t work.)

  • Wired ☛ Millions of People Are Using Abusive AI ‘Nudify’ Bots on Telegram

    In early 2020, deepfake expert Henry Ajder uncovered one of the first Telegram bots built to “undress” photos of women using artificial intelligence. At the time, Ajder recalls, the bot had been used to generate more than 100,000 explicit photos—including those of children—and its development marked a “watershed” moment for the horrors deepfakes could create. Since then, deepfakes have become more prevalent, more damaging, and easier to produce.

  • Nate ☛ Non-Generative uses of Local LLMs

    So, what else can we do with them? I’ve touched on LLMs in the past, but this one will be more hyper-focused on three tasks I’ve been experimenting with: proofreading, translating, and transcriptions. I touched on two of the three in the other post, but this one will be more detailed with examples instead of just saying, “I tried it, seemed to work.”

  • CBC ☛ Uber started using 'algorithmic pricing' in Canada. Is that a good or bad thing?

    Uber rolled out an AI-powered pay model this week in Ontario, a change drivers worry will cost them income — and consumer advocates say may lead to higher prices for passengers.

    And the change, which launched in B.C. in September, is raising questions in the industry about how ride-hailing and delivery companies use the data they collect as a form of power over their workers.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Civil Rights Commission Pans Face Recognition Technology

      According to the report, the DOJ primarily uses FRT within the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Marshals Service to generate leads in criminal investigations. DHS uses it in cross-border criminal investigations and to identify travelers. And HUD implements FRT with surveillance cameras in some federally funded public housing. The report explores how federal training on FRT use in these departments is inadequate, identifies threats that FRT poses to civil rights, and proposes ways to mitigate those threats.

    • India Times ☛ Digital payments show strong uptick buoyed by wider adoption of credit during festive season

      During this year’s festive season sales, credit cards and credit-based payment instruments like pay-later products saw a significant increase, according to industry reports. Transactions rose by 35-50% compared to last year, with a large share being made through credit cards, EMIs, and pay-later options. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) remained the dominant payment method, with a 34% rise in transactions and over 500 million daily payments recorded.

    • Techdirt ☛ Robot Vacuums That Collect Photos, Videos And Audio Of Users To Train AI Models Start Yelling Obscenities And Chasing Dogs

      As far back as 2017, Techdirt was warning that robot vacuum cleaners represented a threat to privacy. In that instance, it concerned the possibility that iRobot, makers of the robot vacuum Roomba, might sell the data that its device collected about the size and layout of a home. Five years later, it was becoming clear that a new danger was emerging because robot vacuums were starting to incorporate cameras. These are the kind of images a system could gather, as reported by MIT Technology Review in 2022: [...]

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ LinkedIn suspends AI training using HK users' personal data

      LinkedIn halted the use of Hong Kong user data last Friday, the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) said in a Tuesday statement. The watchdog last week expressed concern over default opt-in settings for LinkedIn users.

      Without directly notifying users, LinkedIn last month began using user data to train generative AI models responsible for the website’s writing suggestions.

    • 9to5Mac ☛ New passkey specifications will let users import and export them

      Passkeys were introduced two years ago, and they replace traditional passwords with more secure authentication using a security key or biometrics. To make the technology even better, the FIDO Alliance published on Monday new specifications for passkeys, which ensure a way to let users import and export them.

  • Confidentiality

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Quantum Computing Breaks RSA Encryption

      A team of researchers from China has broken RSA encryption using quantum computing technology. Utilizing D-Wave’s advanced quantum annealing systems, this innovative research raises pressing concerns about the security of widely adopted cryptographic methods.

      The findings were published in the Chinese Journal of Computers under the title “Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage.” This paper highlights the researchers’ pioneering approach to not only breaking RSA encryption but also launching attacks on symmetric encryption systems.

    • PC World ☛ What is the Tor network? The anonymous internet, explained

      Nevertheless, Tor is currently the safest way to move around the internet without being recognized and is used by around two million people every day, many of whom live in surveillance states. The darknet also relies on Tor; its sites and forums can only be accessed via this anonymization network.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Haaretz ☛ Red Alert: Mapping a Year of 28,000 Rocket, Missile and Drone Attacks on Israel

    Since the Hamas attack of October 7, Israel has recorded over 28,000 alerts warning of imminent rocket, missile or drone attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. This is what it looks like

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Of course we can tax billionaires

    By cheating on their taxes, they get to keep – and invest – more money than less-rich people (who get to keep more money than regular people and poor people, obvs). They get so much money that they can "invest" it in corrupting the political process, for example, by flushing vast sums of dark money into elections to unseat politicians who care about finance crime and replace them with crytpo-friendly lawmakers who'll turn a blind eye to billionaires' scams: [...]

  • C4ISRNET ☛ For Replicator 2, Army wants AI-enabled counter-drone tech

    Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, said Monday that Replicator 2 is particularly focused on fixed-site counter-small uncrewed aerial systems, or C-sUAS, needs, which means protecting installations and facilities. The Army has been fielding systems to detect and engage drones at overseas bases, largely in the Middle East, for several years, and Bush said the service will initially look to increase production of those capabilities.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Beijing is making inroads in North Africa

    Within FOCAC are nine Arab League member states—Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia—meaning the forum has an impact in the Middle East as well. Interestingly, these FOCAC participants also have institutionalized multilateral engagement with China through the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF), which was established in 2002, following a framework similar to FOCAC’s. The most recent CASCF Senior Officials’ Meeting was held in Beijing on May 29. Several developments between China and North African participants were announced, and momentum has only increased since then.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Immigration: What is in Germany's new 'security package'?

    Heated debates erupted in Germany this summer following two knife attacks by suspected extremists that left a total of four people dead in both the city of Mannheim and the smaller town of Solingen. One of the attackers was an Afghan living in Germany, the other came from Syria.

  • The North Lines IN ☛ Saudi Eyes Electric Jets to Increase Accessibility of Mecca and New Coastal Resorts

    Saudi Arabia is looking to enhance travel options through the use of electric aircraft. State-run carrier Saudia Airlines has partnered with German company Lilium to introduce electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) jets. These innovative electric planes will allow the airline to service hard-to-reach destinations along the Red Sea coast as well as provide direct flights between Jeddah and the holy city of Mecca, which currently has no airport.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump to Claim 2024 Was ‘Rigged,’ Using GOP Efforts to Slow Vote Count

    During the 2020 contest, laws in several states prohibited election officials from processing or counting mail-in ballots until Election Day. With Republicans more likely to vote in person, election night 2020 kicked off with what became known as the “red mirage” — a false vision of a Trump victory based on in-person returns. Then came the mail-in ballots, overwhelmingly filled out by Democratic voters seeking to avoid exposing themselves at polling locations to a pandemic many Republicans simply didn’t believe was real.

  • Digital Music News ☛ WIN Calls Out TikTok Over Decision Not to Re-Up With Merlin

    Additionally, the Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA), the Record Label Industry Association of Korea (LIAK), the Associação Brasileira da Música Independente (ABMI), and Independent Music New Zealand (IMNZ) likewise provided statements criticizing TikTok’s strategy and calling in more words for a renewed Merlin agreement.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ All the high-tech gear the Army is bringing to soldiers

    The service recently awarded a production agreement for a Phase 2 version of the minidrone, which is expected to increase its flight endurance and performance while offering more sensor payload options.

    The original device had an estimated 25-minute flight time and could travel 1,000 to 1,500 meters. FLIR Systems won the full $40 million contract in 2019.

  • Defence Web ☛ Global piracy at a 30 year low

    Seventy-nine incidents were reported for the first nine months of the year – 20 less than in the corresponding period last year.

    The January/September period saw 62 vessels boarded worldwide with a further six hijacked, two fired on and nine facing attempted attacks. This, an IMB statement has it, is “a significant overall reduction” and the lowest reported number since 1994.

    Eighty-six percent of reported incidents saw access gained to vessels with the majority under cover of darkness. Violence towards crew members remains a concern, with 111 taken hostage, 11 kidnapped and three threatened. Perpetrators were armed with weapons, guns and knives in 45 of reported incidents.

  • CBS ☛ Arrest made after threat to FEMA in North Carolina as hurricane relief operations continue

    FEMA said later on Monday that it would resume normal operations because the threat turned out to be less serious than first feared.

    Initially, an email sent by the U.S. Forest Service to federal responders in Rutherford County alerted them of an apparent standdown after National Guard troops reportedly encountered armed militia saying they were "hunting FEMA."

    One person was arrested in connection to the threat, CBS News confirmed on Monday.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is only miles from the front — so why isn’t it better protected against military strikes? — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Belarusian journalist whose plane was hijacked by Lukashenko regime in 2021 explains why he went on to cooperate with authorities — Meduza

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ Jordan Peterson’s Online Class Compares Climate Activists to Mass Shooters

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Helene hit Georgia more than two weeks ago. These residents are still without power.

    Stevenson is one of thousands of residents in south Georgia who are still without power following Helene. There are just over 2,000 customers reporting outages where she lives in Jeff Davis County as of Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutages.com. Several nearby counties are also reporting outages, including Coffee County, where another 2,000 customers are in the dark.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The monarch butterfly may not be endangered, but research suggests its migration is

    Migrating monarchs don't fly at night, so they spend their evenings in bunches on trees or shrubs, known as roosts. The study relied on 17 years of data from more than 2,600 citizen scientist observations of monarch roosts along the butterfly's migration route.

    The researchers found that roost sizes have declined by as much as 80%, with these losses increasing from north to south along the migration route.

  • VOA News ☛ Europe's water security under threat, environment agency warns

    Only 37% of Europe's surface water bodies achieved "good" or "high" ecological status, a measure of aquatic ecosystem health, the EEA report said.

    Meanwhile, only 29% of surface waters achieved "good" chemical status over the 2015-21 period, according to data reported by EU member states.

    Europe's groundwaters — the source of most drinking water on the continent — fared better, with 77% enjoying "good" chemical status.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deseret Media ☛ Why many Utah crosswalk signals are switching to touchless technology

      People can still push the button if they prefer or they can use the PedApp, an app created by the button technology company Polora that allows people to digitally push any crosswalk button. The latter is advertised as an alternative to help people who are visually impaired or don't want to touch the button, which was a frequent scenario during the pandemic.

      UDOT officials say $800,000 is allocated every year to convert to this technology by the next decade, which costs about $7,000 per intersection.

    xs

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Google to buy nuclear power for AI datacentres in ‘world first’ deal

      Google has signed a “world first” deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence.

      The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors (SMRs) from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Google wants nuclear reactors to power its AI data centers

      US technology giant Google said on Monday that it plans to purchase nuclear power in order to operate data centers.

      Google announced an agreement with California-based Kairos Power to bring small modular reactors (SMR) online by 2030, with additional reactor deployments through 2035, the company said.

    • VOA News ☛ Britain to allow drones to inspect power lines, wind turbines

      The U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had said earlier this year that it wanted to permit more drone flying for such activities as well as for deliveries and emergency services. It selected in August six projects to test it.

      Drones inspecting infrastructure will now be able to fly distances beyond remote flyers' ability to see them.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science News ☛ At-home experiments shed light on cats’ liquid behavior

      Thirty out of 38 cats finished the experiment. When faced with holes of varying height, 22 cats hesitated to crawl through the shortest, an analysis of the recordings revealed. When the holes varied in width, only eight cats paused before approaching the narrowest cranny. Most cats squeezed through slim openings without hesitating. The team calls this strategy trial-and-error: Regardless of whether the cats fit or not, they tried to flow through.

• Finance

  • SBS ☛ 'Sense of dread': I'm 26, but I've given up on having children

    But I wish we lived in an Australia where family and the pursuit of better life circumstances weren’t a matter of trade-offs.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Conversation ☛ Decline of X is an opportunity to do social media differently – but combining ‘safe’ and ‘profitable’ will still be a challenge

    A potential reaction to this may be apparent in recent data highlighted by the Financial Times, which showed the number of UK users of the platform had fallen by one-third, while US users had dropped by one-fifth. The the data used to reach these conclusions may be open to question, as it is hard to find out user numbers directly from X.

    The figures also come out against the background of a disagreement over whether X’s traffic is waning or not. But there has been a notable trend in academia for individuals and some organisations to leave for alternative platforms such as Bluesky and Threads, or to quit social media altogether.

  • The Local SE ☛ Ericsson returns to profit just months after mass layoffs in Sweden

    Last year's loss was due to a write-down on the value of its purchase of US cloud-based communications operator Vonage.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft's VP of GenAI research to join OpenAI

    Microsoft on Monday said that its vice president of GenAI research, Sebastien Bubeck, is leaving the company to join ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

    It was unclear what role Bubeck would assume at the Microsoft-backed AI startup.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia notches record close, could unseat Apple as most valuable company

    Shares of Nvidia closed at their highest ever on Monday, putting the heavyweight AI chipmaker on the brink of dethroning Apple as the world's most valuable company.

  • Techdirt ☛ Fossil Fuel Companies Use Fake Consumer Groups And Fake Local News Orgs To Derail Solar Efforts In Ohio

    A favorite tactic of U.S. corporations looking to dismantle consumer protection reforms (or anything they don’t like, really) is to create entirely fake consumer groups custom-built to confuse voters and journalists. Such groups are usually used in combination with think tanks and other pseudo-objective organizations to muddy the waters, confuse constituents, and mislead the press when it comes to reform.

    Cable giant Charter, for example, recently created a fake consumer group in Maine specifically tasked with lying to locals about the benefits of community-owned broadband efforts. AT&T funds more than a dozen different think tanks, all tasked with trying to convince the public and policymakers that dismantling U.S. corporate oversight will somehow result in effervescently efficient “free markets.”

  • IT Wire ☛ Nokia, partners connect London and Chicago in 800GbE optical and IP service trial

    Telecoms equipment vendor Nokia, optical network solutions provider Windstream Wholesale and UK telecoms company Colt Technology Services completed what they claim is a world-first 800 Gigabit Ethernet (800GbE) service trial.

    The trial connected London with Chicago across an 8500km subsea and terrestrial route.

  • The Record ☛ British intelligence services to protect all UK schools from ransomware attacks

    Schools across the United Kingdom are being encouraged to sign up for a free service developed by cyber experts inside the country’s security and intelligence services that would help protect them from ransomware attacks and other online threats.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Former Verizon Exec is Now FCC CTO

    The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau added Andy Hendrickson as its new Chief Technology Officer last week. He’ll provide advice on technological developments as part of the ongoing effort to strengthen the bureau’s expertise in support of its privacy, data protection, cybersecurity, and network outage enforcement work.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • ADF ☛ ‘Industrial Scale’ Foreign Disinformation Campaigns Fuel Anger, Confusion

      Nearly 60% of disinformation campaigns in Africa are linked to countries outside the continent. The efforts, aided by emerging technology, are mostly driven by Russia, although China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also push false narratives as they seek to spread their influence. Such contrived narratives are flourishing as Africa now has more than 400 million active social media users and 600 million internet users.

      Of the 23 current transnational disinformation campaigns in Africa, 16 are sponsored by Russia, which has also deployed thousands of mercenaries to conflict zones. Two prominent disinformation influencers connected to Russia have a combined social media following of more than 28 million users, according to the ACSS.

    • RTL ☛ Election on Sunday: Russia working to undermine Moldova vote: US

      "In the last several months, Moscow has dedicated millions of dollars to influencing Moldova's presidential election. We assess that this money has gone toward financing its preferred parties and spreading disinformation on social media in favor of their campaigns," he said.

      Kirby has previously accused Russia of seeking to destabilize Moldova, saying last year that its eventual goal was to bring in a pro-Moscow government.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Hill ☛ Journalist says FBI visited after he published hacked Vance document

    Klippenstein’s most recent Substack post comes just days after the journalist was briefly suspended from the social platform X after he published a 271-page report compiled by the Trump campaign to vet Vance, the Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate.

  • RFERL ☛ Threatening E-Mails Sent To Ukrainian Organizations After RFE/RL Investigation

    The threatening e-mail mentions the names of RFE/RL journalists Iryna Sysak and Valeria Yehoshyna, as well as freelancer Yulia Khymeryk, whose activities the senders appear to blame for prompting them to plan the alleged bombings, although they did not mention any specific activity.

    It follows an investigation published by the three journalists in the Skhemy (Schemes) investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service showing how Russian intelligence services recruit Ukrainians, including minors, to set fire to the cars of the Ukrainian military personnel and representatives of conscription centers.

  • RFA ☛ Facebook censoring more political content in Hong Kong

    Restrictions on Facebook content have skyrocketed from 402 instances in 2019, a year before the first security law was passed, to 2,181 instances in 2023, according to publicly available information published by Facebook's parent company Meta, and viewed by RFA Cantonese on Oct. 9.

    Most restrictions targeted personal Facebook accounts, pages and groups, although some involved restricting individual posts and comments on posts, the data showed.

  • VOA News ☛ Ailing and silenced in prison, Belarus activist symbolizes the nation's repression

    The last time any of Maria Kolesnikova's family had contact with the imprisoned Belarusian opposition activist was more than 18 months ago. Fellow inmates at the penal colony reported hearing her plead for medical help from inside her tiny, smelly cell.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • SBS ☛ 'Good journalist and even better bloke': George Negus dies aged 82

    Negus was a former host of SBS Dateline, and the founding host of the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program.

  • JURIST ☛ Cancellation of Venezuela passports raises alarm over repression of dissent

    Venezuelan authorities have canceled the passports of at least 40 people without explanation, most of whom are human rights activists and journalists, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. According to the Financial Times, the human rights group Laboratorio de Paz (LDP) warned that the number is likely to be even higher and excludes those whose passports have been confiscated at Simón Bolívar International Airport.

    The LDP sees the targeted annulment of journalists’ and activists’ passports as a clear continuation of the repression of political dissent that has followed President Nicolás Maduro’s reelection. LDP co-director Rafael Uzcátegui told the Financial Times, “the government has found that passport cancellation is an effective way to neutralise and muffle critical voices with minimal effort.”

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist Pınar Gayıp detained

    The complaints began after Gayıp published several articles covering the sexual assault allegations against Keleş. Since then, she has been repeatedly called in for questioning on similar charges.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Revelator ☛ Why Indigenous-Led Management Is Integral to Reconciliation and Restoration Efforts

  • EFF ☛ New EFF Report Provides Guidance to Ensure Human Rights are Protected Amid Government Use of AI in Latin America

    Governments increasingly rely on algorithmic systems to support consequential assessments and determinations about people’s lives, from judging eligibility for social assistance to trying to predict crime and criminals. Latin America is no exception. With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) posing human rights challenges in the region, EFF released  today the report Inter-American Standards and State Use of AI for Rights-Affecting Determinations in Latin America: Human Rights Implications and Operational Framework.

    This report draws on international human rights law, particularly standards from the Inter-American Human Rights System, to provide guidance on what state institutions must look out for when assessing whether and how to adopt artificial intelligence AI and automated decision-making (ADM) systems for determinations that can affect people’s rights.

    We organized the report’s content and testimonies on current challenges from civil society experts on the ground in our project landing page.

  • EFF ☛ EFF to New York: Age Verification Threatens Everyone's Speech and Privacy

    EFF reminded the New York Attorney General of this important fact in comments responding to the state's recently passed Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act—which requires platforms to verify the ages of people who visit them. After New York's legislature passed the bill, it is now up to the state attorney general's office to write rules to implement it.

    We urge the attorney general's office to recognize that age verification requirements are incompatible with privacy and free expression rights for everyone. As we say in our comments:

    We also noted that none of the methods of age verification listed in the attorney general's call for comments is both privacy-protective and entirely accurate. They each have their own flaws that threaten everyone's privacy and speech rights. "These methods don’t each fit somewhere on a spectrum of 'more safe' and 'less safe,' or 'more accurate' and 'less accurate.' Rather, they each fall on a spectrum of 'dangerous in one way' to 'dangerous in a different way'," we wrote in the comments.

  • The Record ☛ Sweden, Finland partner to take down Sipulitie criminal marketplace

    The administrator of the platform, who was not named, was seen boasting that the site generated more than €1.3 million (about $1.4 million) throughout its time in operation, according to Finnish Customs. Users conducted sales in both Finnish and English.

  • Wired ☛ This AI Tool Helped Convict People of Murder. Then Someone Took a Closer Look

    In the aftermath, Akron police collected video footage from the neighborhood and asked for the public’s help with identifying two men who’d been seen approaching the victims, firing, then fleeing in a truck. Within months, detectives narrowed in on a suspect, Phillip Mendoza, and obtained a search warrant for his cell phone location data from Sprint, according to court records. They also served a geofence warrant on Google, seeking information on devices whose GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth records placed them near the scene of the shooting. Neither warrant turned up any evidence locating Mendoza or his devices on the 1200 block of Fifth Avenue, where the shooting occurred, that night.

  • Ars Technica ☛ Sony, Ubisoft scandals prompt Calif. ban on deceptive sales of digital goods - Ars Technica

    On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2426 into law, protecting consumers of digital goods like books, movies, and video games from being duped into purchasing content without realizing access was only granted through a temporary license.

    Sponsored by Democratic assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, the law makes it illegal to "advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental."

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ As AI takes the helm of decision making, signs of perpetuating historic biases emerge

    White applicants were 8.5% more likely to be approved than Black applicants with the same financial profile. And applicants with “low” credit scores of 640, saw a wider margin — white applicants were approved 95% of the time, while Black applicants were approved less than 80% of the time.

    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.

  • LRT ☛ Sanctions list nightmare: Lithuanian woman constantly mistaken for someone else

    A Lithuanian woman is constantly confused with her namesake from Belarus who is on an international sanctions list. As a result, she has been having trouble making bank transfers. A consumer rights advocate says the situation is not normal.

  • YLE ☛ Clinics in Finland perform virginity "testing" and "repair"

    This week Yle's MOT programme reported on some immigrant parents in Finland taking their kids on "disciplinary trips" to their home countries — often with the idea to "de-westernise" them.

  • CS Monitor ☛ How Norway’s universal preschool subsidizes happy childhoods

    Universal child care is “both seen as an investment for the society and an investment for the child,” says Kristin Aasta Morken, a program leader in the city of Oslo. Public funding covers 85% of operating costs for child care programs in Norway. Parents pay about $182 per month.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ ‘First People of Kansas’ documentary showcases Native American history for St. John community 

    With a career in journalism covering Native Americans as well as teaching history courses at Wichita State University, Tanner said she was ready to take on the responsibility of a large project. With connections to the community and a long family history in St. John, she recognized how little members knew about their history.

    “You know, we never learned about it. It wasn’t until I became a journalist that any of the people whose great-great-grandfathers were part of the stories that people were telling,” she said. “We would find things on our farms and things like that, and yet really have no explanation of what these artifacts were. So hopefully this project can help people understand.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ Revising the Criteria for the Accreditation of Regional Internet Registries

    The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) together ensure the stability of the Internet Numbers Registry System. In order to strengthen their accountability, efforts are under way to revise the criteria for the accreditation of RIRs, and the obligations they must continuously meet.

  • The Register UK ☛ Vietnam plans to convert all of its networks to IPv6

    Vietnam will convert all local networks to IPv6, under a sweeping digital infrastructure strategy announced last week.

    The plan emerged in Decision No. 1132/QD-TTg – signed into existence by permanent deputy prime minister Nguyen Hoa Binh – and defines goals for 2025 and 2030.

  • RIPE ☛ How to Get IP Addresses for Your Network

    Every organisation running its own network needs IP addresses. The scarcity of IPv4 and the ability to transfer unused addresses between networks has created a dynamic secondary market with constantly fluctuating prices.

  • BBC ☛ The deep-sea 'emergency service' that keeps the [Internet] running

    Ninety-nine percent of the world's digital communications rely on subsea cables. When they break, it could spell disaster for a whole country's [Internet]. How do you fix a fault at the bottom of the ocean?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Ars Technica ☛ DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly

  The US Department of Justice finally proposed sweeping remedies to destroy Google's search monopoly late yesterday, and, predictably, Google is not loving any of it.

  On top of predictable asks—like potentially requiring Google to share search data with rivals, restricting distribution agreements with browsers like Firefox and device makers like Apple, and breaking off Chrome or Android—the DOJ proposed remedies to keep Google from blocking competition in "the evolving search industry." And those extra steps threaten Google's stake in the nascent AI search world.

• The Register UK ☛ UK prime minister says regulators need to favor growth

  UK prime minister Keir Starmer promised to make the nation's competition regulator more inclined toward economic growth the day after a Microsoft executive was appointed chair of the government's Industrial Strategy Advisory Council.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Discord Disputes DMCA Subpoena, Rejects Role as 'Anti-Piracy' Partner

    Korean game publisher Nexon is using the U.S. legal system to address online copyright infringement. The company obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to hand over the personal details of suspected pirates. While Discord has shared information in the past, it doesn't plan to cooperate any longer, refusing to play the role of 'anti-piracy police'.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ After Historic Win, MPA Battles Endless FMovies, Soap2Day & 123Movie Clones

    After the world's largest streaming piracy network was shut down in Vietnam recently, sites like FMovies, 123Movies, and Soap2Day should in theory be a thing of the past. Yet as recent MPA blocking measures in the UK show, that's far from reality. Hundreds of domains with similar branding are scooping up millions of visitors, but who operates them and from where, is currently unknown.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Estate of John Lennon Taps PPL for Neighboring Rights Collections

    “It is an honor to be appointed by the John Lennon Estate for neighboring rights collections,” said Peter Leathem, CEO of PPL. “Our team works hard to ensure no stone is left unturned in the collection of neighboring rights royalties around the world. It is a privilege to advocate for and collect public performance and broadcast rights globally for such a revered catalog of recorded music.”

    PPL is a global leader in royalty collections, with 111 agreements in place with other collective management organizations (CMOs) around the world. The organization is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Tracking the Licensing of Scholarly Content to LLMs - The Scholarly Kitchen

    In recent months, several publishers have announced that they are licensing their scholarly content for use as training data for LLMs (Large Language Models). These deals illuminate how major publishers are grappling with their strategy amid uncertainty, but thus far they have been unavailable to smaller and medium size publishers. To understand the dynamics around this fast-developing market, my colleagues Maya Dayan and Dylan Ruediger and I are launching a tracker of these licensing deals.