Leftovers

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ Contrafactuals

  Making a list of pros and cons of getting in a time machine and going back to 1992 to run a nightclub.

• Heliomass ☛ Lesser Known London: Chislehurst Caves

  This post is somewhat devoid of photos due to the fact photography isn’t allowed in the caves. But it’s dark down there anyway, pitch black in fact. It’s why on arrival everyone gets given an oil lantern to light the way, just as people using the caves in the past would have had.

  And whilst the caves at Chislehurst are old, they’re not natural. In fact, they’re completely dug out by humans, dating from the 13th century and they sprawl all over the area stretching for a staggering 22 miles (35 km). It’s also not beyond reason there could be further passages which haven’t yet been discovered.

• Chuck Grimmett ☛ Recapturing the magic of the early blogging days

  What else can you do? Reclaim your stuff from social media and do more with your own site. Make it deep. Make it you.That’s where the magic is.

• ARRL ☛ Jamboree On The Air Brings Scouts Around the World Together

  The big weekend for Scouts around the world is here. Jamboree On - The - Air (JOTA) and Jamboree On - The - Internet (JOTI) is the world’s largest Scouting event. The three-day event runs from October 18 - 20, 2024 using amateur radio and the internet to connect Scouts worldwide for a full weekend of on-air and online activities that promote friendship and global citizenship. In 2023, JOTA/JOTI had a record 600,000 registered participants, a 40% increase compared to 2022, and included 7000+ Scout groups and tens of thousands of individual participants from 149 countries.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Steyn Viljoen

  This is the 60th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Steyn Viljoen and his blog, viljoen.space

• Yordi Verkroost ☛ Stop Optimizing Everything

  Then one day, he decided to take it easy. Instead of going all out, he relaxed and enjoyed the view along the way. When he got to the end of the ride, he checked his time, and it was forty-five minutes. Only two minutes slower than when he’d been pushing himself to the max. He couldn’t believe it. Two minutes slower, and he enjoyed the whole ride. He wasn’t tired or drenched in sweat.

  For me this story is a perfect example of how we’re always trying to optimize everything. We push ourselves to get the best possible results, but why? If doing just a little bit less gives you almost the same result and you can actually enjoy the process, why not take things a little more easy?

• Truthdig ☛ The Paleolithic Ideas That Shaped the Modern World - Truthdig

  Hudson’s research has already made inroads into modern life. Many contemporary economists rely on his understanding of financial history in the Ancient Near East. Hudson’s collaboration with the late anthropologist and activist David Graeber inspired his launch of the debt cancellation movement during Occupy Wall Street. Graeber’s book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” is a popularized adaption of Hudson’s research on the early financial systems of the Near East, encouraging Graeber to follow up and coauthor the bestselling book “The Dawn of Everything,” an overview of new interpretations in archaeology and anthropology about the many paths society can take.

  I reached out to Hudson for a conversation on these topics, starting with his reflections on what drew him into prehistory in the early 1970s and his collaborations with Harvard prehistorian Alexander Marshack.

• Science

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK Policy Address 2024: Liquor tax cut promotes trade, not drinking, commerce chief says

    Hong Kong’s liquor tax cut will promote the trade of high-end spirits rather than drinking, the city’s commerce chief has said, as he played down the policy’s impact on residents’ health.

  • Stamford Advocate ☛ Once-in-a-lifetime comet will be visible over CT tonight. Here's when.

    A “dirty snowball” that comes around about once every 80,000 years is causing a stir in the skies over Connecticut this week. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (also known as C/2023 A3 and Comet A3) will remain visible for the next few nights, and we only need to use our naked eyes to see it.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ See the Wreck of Ernest Shackleton's 'Endurance' in Astonishing Detail With This New 3D Scan

    The 3D model was created from more than 25,000 high-resolution images captured after the iconic vessel was discovered in March 2022.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This Newly Discovered, Octagonal Building in Armenia Is One of the World's Oldest Christian Churches

    The Armenian and German archaeologists have been studying Artaxata’s ruins since 2018, and the church’s footprint is their most significant discovery thus far. The site is composed of an octagonal floor plan nearly 100 feet across, laid with a “simple mortar floor and terracotta tiles,” according to the statement. The octagon has long been a significant Christian symbol: As a visualization of the number eight, it evokes the number of days that passed between Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and his resurrection, in addition to more generally representing rebirth.

  • ACM ☛ What Is Theoretical Computer Science?

    But my objection to “TCS is a branch of mathematics” is deeper than the sociological argument. I believe that thinking of TCS as a branch of mathematics is harmful to the discipline. The centrality of computing stems from the fact that it is a technology that has been changing the world for the past 80 years, ever since the British used early computing to change the tide of war in World War II. As computer scientists, we should look for inspiration from physics rather than from mathematics. Theoretical physics is highly mathematical, but it aims to explain and predict the real world. Theories that fail at this “explain/predict” task would ultimately be discarded. Analogously, I’d argue that the role of TCS is to explain/predict real-life computing. I am not saying that every TCS paper should be held to this standard, but the standard should be applied to branches of TCS. We should remember the warning of John von Neuman,e one of the greatest mathematicians and computer scientists of the 20th century, regarding the danger of mathematics driven solely by internal esthetics: “There is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance.”

• Education

  • Ali Reza Hayati ☛ Am I an engineer?

    So if someone has an engineering academic degree but practices medicine or philosophy or maybe is a salesman, is that person still an engineer or not? I’ve been called an engineer even when I was not working an engineering job, so I think people really don’t care about the title, as opposed to doctors who I think really care, but the question remains, is someone with an engineering degree who doesn’t practice, still entitled to be called an engineer?

  • University of Michigan ☛ U-M staff access to library resources | University of Michigan Library

    A recent library survey revealed that some people in the university community aren't aware they have full access to the U-M Library. Everyone with a current Mcard can use the library's spaces, services, expertise, events, exhibits, and one of the most comprehensive collections in the world.

    Our collection is built to serve research and scholarship, but there are plenty of general interest materials, including books, feature films, magazines, and newspapers. Among the highlights: [...]

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ The Resume of Life | Yordi

    And this is about more than just your resume. It's about life itself. Over time, it’s worth regularly checking where you are in life and where you want to go next. Your vision and mission don’t have to stay the same forever. As you update your resume to reflect your current professional life, you reevaluate your values and goals in life in general as well. Your career evolves, your values change, and your purpose changes as you get more experience.

  • [Old] Mandy Brown ☛ The case for rereading

    I’m not talking about just any kind of rereading here. If it’s been a decade since you’ve read a book, you aren’t so much rereading as reading it for the first time—again. I’m taking about rereading when the book is still reasonably fresh, maybe within a year. If more time has passed, you will have forgotten large parts of it, or misremembered, and will still experience some of the initial novelty you had with the first read. But a reread within a year, or a few at most, occupies a space where you can still recall enough to approach a book with familiarity. Instead of being surprised by a turn of events, you anticipate them; lines and phrases pop out as ones you remember, but they seem louder this time around, more resonant—as if they are lining up with the memory of the first time you heard them, wave patterns amplifying one another.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Spectre flaws continue to haunt Intel and AMD

    Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi of Swiss university ETH Zurich on Friday published details about a cross-process Spectre attack that derandomizes Address Space Layout Randomization and leaks the hash of the root password from the Set User ID (suid) process on recent Intel processors. The researchers claim they successfully conducted such an attack.

    Spectre refers to a set of attacks made possible because of the way processors conduct speculative execution - a performance optimization technique that involves making calculations in advance. The results can be used if needed, or otherwise discarded.

  • India Times ☛ Samsung: Samsung delays taking deliveries of ASML's chip gear for its new US factory, sources say

    The delay in equipment deliveries is a fresh setback to the Taylor project, which is at the heart of Samsung chairman Jay Y. Lee's ambition to expand beyond its bread-and-butter memory chips into contract chip manufacturing, which Taiwan's TSMC dominates.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Qualcomm abruptly cancels Snapdragon X Elite dev kit — refunds customers for mini PC, ends sales and support for the device immediately

    According to the letter that developer Jeff Geerling received, Qualcomm said, “…the Developer Kit product comprehensively has not met our usual standards of excellence and so we are reaching out to let you know that unfortunately we have made the decision to pause this product and the support of it, indefinitely.”

    Geerling and others who purchased the device previously pointed out that there had been long wait times for the device with little explanation as to what was going on.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Scheerpost ☛ It’s Time To Get Rid of Big Agriculture

    Gabbert asserts that big agriculture’s firm grasp on the industry is where the problems begin. Its lobby is amongst the biggest and Gabbert explains that there is no incentive to try and remedy the problems that come from this monopolization of an industry so essential to human survival. “I think that is really the crux of the whole problem, is money in politics,” Gabbert says.

    Reichl takes it back to what happened after World War II and how the U.S. government made an attempt to fight communism by cheapening the food making process, which turned farms into factories. “Almost everything that’s wrong with America comes from that policy. We’ve destroyed our health, our environment, our communities,” Reichl tells Scheer.

    The heart of their story lies with the farmers themselves, and how, despite being in charge of the most important aspect of human survival, they still tend to struggle the most in society. Reichl explains their significance in the film, stating, “I just wanted for us to be able to listen to their stories that they tell themselves about what has happened to them and what the American system has done to them.”

  • [Repeat] Craig Murray ☛ The Notional Health Service - Craig Murray

    Sixty years ago or so, when my siblings or I were sick enough to be in bed, my mother would phone the surgery and the GP would come to our home to see us. This was perfectly normal. It is probably difficult for Generation Z to believe this really used to happen.

    Now if I am sick enough to be in bed, I have to phone the surgery precisely at 8am and go through the lottery of getting in to the phone queue, rather than the engaged signal as the queue is at capacity. I may have to call numerous times.

    If I do manage to get into the queue I have to hope I get to the front of it before all appointments are taken. If I fail, I cannot make an appointment for the next day but have to try my luck again then, once more at precisely 8am, while a hundred other people are trying exactly the same thing.

    If I am fortunate enough to make it through the queue, I am de facto triaged by a receptionist with no medical qualifications but to whom I have to explain my medical symptoms.

    She will then, if she thinks I have a case, explain my symptoms to a doctor and I may come out of this process, not with the doctor coming to my home, nor with me attending the surgery, but with a phone call from the doctor and a down the line diagnosis.

    I find that everybody I have spoken to – and from all parts of the UK – has to put up with the same system. I cannot believe we have fallen in to accepting this.

  • The Conversation ☛ If your child is watching TV and playing online games, you should do it with them – here’s why

    Young children spend a lot of time using screens: watching television, playing on touchscreen apps, or facetiming with grandparents. In fact, research on global screen time guidelines has found that around 75% of children aged up to two years use some form of digital media daily, and 64% of children aged two to five years use it for more than an hour a day.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Chickpeas Could Become a Major Protein Source for Their Drought-Resistant Properties, Study Says

    According to the researchers, chickpeas are the fourth largest grown legume crop in the world, but they aren’t one of the nine primary crops on which humans base their diets.

    In response, the research team experimented with growing various types of chickpeas under drought conditions to test their resistance to test stress. Several different varieties grew successfully despite the drought conditions, and the researchers further determined that many chickpeas were also good candidates for urban farming.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg's Meta faces lawsuit in Massachusetts for features designed to addict teens, mental health concerns

    Meta Platforms must face a lawsuit by Massachusetts alleging the social media company purposely deployed features on its Instagram platform to addict young users and deceived the public about the dangers it posed to the mental health of teenagers, a judge ruled. The ruling came after a federal judge in California on Tuesday rejected a request by Meta to dismiss lawsuits by more than 30 states accusing it of fueling mental health problems among teens by making its social media platforms addictive.(Reuters) The ruling came after a federal judge in California on Tuesday rejected a request by Meta to dismiss lawsuits by more than 30 states accusing it of fueling mental health problems among teens by making its social media platforms addictive.(Reuters)

    Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp in Boston, in a decision made public on Friday, rejected Meta's request to dismiss claims by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell that it violated state consumer protection law and created a public nuisance.

  • PHR ☛ PHR Joins Deans of American University of Beirut (AUB) to Call for Protection of Health Care Amid Escalating Conflict in Lebanon

    The recent military escalation between Israel and Hezbollah is resulting in widespread and mounting harms to civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, health workers, patients, and the broader health system.

  • Off Guardian ☛ UK Accepts Big Pharma Money to Trial Drugs on the Unemployed

    Three days ago the British government announced a new scheme to inject obese people with weight loss drugs to try and tackle “worklessness”. Writing in the Telegraph – where else would a “Labour” minister write?

  • Latvia ☛ Latvia has EU's highest level of reported disability

    Latvia has the European Union's highest level of reported disability among the population according to Eurostat data published October 17.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • CS Monitor ☛ A week ago, Tesla showcased futuristic robotaxis. Then a pedestrian got hit.

    One week after Tesla unveiled prototype robotaxis and promised fully autonomous vehicles by 2026, the company is once again under investigation. Tesla has twice recalled its “Full Self-Driving” system in the past after cars ignored stop signs and hurt pedestrians.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Police Reports Written by AI... Seriously.

    A police report written by ChatGPT? What could possibly go wrong?!

  • Drew Breunig ☛ The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs

    We talk about so many things when we talk about AI. The conversation can roam from self-driving cars to dynamic video generation, from conversational chatbots to satellite imagery object detection, and from better search engines to dreamlike imagery generation. You get the point.

    It gets confusing! For laypeople, it’s hard to nail down what AI actually does (and doesn’t) do. For those in the field, we often have to break down and overspecify our terms before we can get to our desired conversations.

  • Peteris Krumins ☛ How to Get a USA IP Address

    Browserling is an online browser platform that provides users with USA IP addresses from anywhere in the world. It allows real-time browsing and cross-browser testing, making it ideal for accessing geo-restricted content and testing websites across different systems without additional software.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Critical GitHub Vulnerability Advisory: Act Now For Security

    The vulnerability, CVE-2024-9487, allows attackers to bypass SAML Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication, leading to unauthorized user provisioning and access to the GitHub instance. To exploit this vulnerability in GitHub, attackers must have the encrypted assertions feature enabled, direct network access, and a signed SAML response or metadata document. The combination of these factors presents a serious risk, emphasizing the urgency for organizations to implement the available patch.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post: Exploring the “Hopes and Fears” About Generative Artificial Intelligence in Web Scale Discovery - The Scholarly Kitchen

    The NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) was created in 2011 in response to the emergence of then-novel web-scale discovery layers. Back then, led by Serials Solutions Summon product and followed by EBSCO Discovery Service, OCLC’s WorldCat Discovery, and Ex Libris’ Primo, there was a lack of understanding about how these tools indexed full-text and A&I content, provided access, attributed metadata and usage, and more. The NISO Open Discovery Initiative’s goal has been fostering transparency and trust in web-scale library discovery. Our Recommended Practice provides guidelines that helped address the concerns expressed by librarians, content providers, and discovery providers when these new centralized indexes were at the cutting edge of technology.

  • Privacy International ☛ Automating the hostile environment: uncovering a secretive Home Office algorithm at the heart of immigration decision-making | Privacy International

    Artificial intelligence decision making systems have in recent years become a fixture of immigration enforcement and border control. This is despite the clear and proven harmful impacts they often have on individuals going through the immigration system. More widely, the harms of automated decision making have been increasingly there for all to see: from systems that encode bias and discrimination, as happened in the case of an algorithm used to detect benefit fraud in the Netherlands, to inaccurate software that had horrific consequences for sub-postmasters caught in the post-office horizon scandal.

    All the way back in 2020, the first warning signs were apparent in the immigration context when the Home Office agreed under the threat of litigation to withdraw a visa streaming algorithm that discriminated between certain nationalities. This year we, at Privacy International, have been investigating AI decision-making systems used by the Home Office. What we have found is that a number of highly opaque and secretive algorithms permeate immigration enforcement and play a role in decisions that can have life changing consequences for the migrants subject to them. This is all without any information being provided to migrants about the existence of the algorithm or how it uses their personal data.

  • Axios ☛ Anthropic CEO pens utopian vision of the future of AI

    Why it matters: The compulsion to share utopian AI roadmaps might mean that these CEOs and investors see breakthroughs right around the corner in their labs — and they want to make sure the world knows just how close we are to nirvana.

    Yes, but: It could instead mean that they know the industry has been slow to deliver on its promises, and an impatient public still isn't fully sold on the value of AI, so they'd better do a happy tap-dance.

  • New Statesman ☛ No one asked for Meta’s “AI chatbot”

    As with the metaverse, it’s difficult to pinpoint who exactly wants or needs this new feature (and who would be eager to shell out hundreds of pounds for a wearable to use it). Not only is there no evidence of interest; there is growing evidence of the opposite – this announcement comes just weeks after the viral “Goodbye Meta AI” Instagram graphic was shared over 600,000 times (and by many famous people), with users falling for the notion that sharing it would mean their data would not be used by Meta’s AI training models. Though ineffective, the popularity of this graphic illustrates a major resistance to AI from Meta’s user base.

  • The Register UK ☛ Post Office CTO had 'nagging doubts' about Horizon system

    The former CTO of the Post Office had "nagging doubts" about the Horizon system at the center of one of the most far-reaching miscarriages of justice in UK history, yet he continued to sign off statements to MPs attesting to its security and reliability.

    Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice launched in 2021 is ongoing.

  • Techdirt ☛ ExTwitter Makes It Official: Blocks Are No Longer Blocks

    It has been rumored for a while that Elon wants to remove the official “block” functionality on ExTwitter, but now it’s official. The company has announced that it will soon start rolling out a new version of “block” that no longer blocks content, only interactions.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Requires Georouting for All Wireless Calls to 988 - Inside Towers

      The FCC yesterday approved rules that will require all U.S. wireless carriers to implement georouting for calls to the 988 Lifeline, a suicide prevention hotline. These rules will make it easier to route such calls to the 988 Lifeline’s local intervention services, FCC officials said. Instead of routing calls by the area code of where an individual’s phone originated, the change will route the call to the nearest cell tower while protecting the caller’s privacy.

      Mental health and crisis counseling experts have long expressed that connecting callers with local crisis centers is important to connect those in need with life-saving public health and safety resources and enable them to speak with local counselors, according to the agency.

    • Wired ☛ This Prompt Can Make an AI Chatbot Identify and Extract Personal Details From Your Chats

      A group of security researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are now revealing a new attack that secretly commands an LLM to gather your personal information—including names, ID numbers, payment card details, email addresses, mailing addresses, and more—from chats and send it directly to a hacker.

      The attack, named Imprompter by the researchers, uses an algorithm to transform a prompt given to the LLM into a hidden set of malicious instructions. An English-language sentence telling the LLM to find personal information someone has entered and send it to the hackers is turned into what appears to be a random selection of characters.

    • The Record ☛ Europe launches ‘gait recognition’ pilot program to monitor border crossings

      A European Commission-funded biometric “gait recognition” program to study how to more easily identify people crossing the European Union’s external borders by examining their unique walking styles kicked off Thursday.

      The initiative, dubbed the PopEye Project, is supported by a €3.2 million ($3.5 million) grant that covers a three-year pilot testing the technology, according to TechTransfer, a program at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and a partner on the effort.

    • International Business Times ☛ Users Claim Apple Watch Can Help Predict If You Have COVID Or The Flu, Here's How

      "I started using Vitals when it first came out on the beta, and since then, I've gotten sick about twice," another user commented before adding that "both times it knew a couple of days in advance, and I hadn't felt anything wrong," the Reddit user wrote. "Kinda insane how useful this feature can be."

    • MacRumors ☛ Apple Watch Users Report Vitals App Detecting Illness Before Symptoms Appear

      The Apple Watch app, which analyzes key health metrics measured during sleep over the last seven days, appears to be providing early warnings of impending sickness for at least some Apple Watch wearers ahead of time. It's available on Apple Watch Series 8 and newer models, including the Apple Watch Ultra series, as long as the devices are running ‌watchOS 11‌.

    • Privacy International ☛ Protecting personal data during elections – the Council of Europe's new guidelines on the processing of personal data for the purposes of voter registration and authentication | Privacy International

      Elections and political campaigns are increasingly mediated by digital technologies. These technologies rely on collecting, storing, and analysing personal information to operate. They have enabled the proliferation of tailor-made political advertising. The recent proliferation of AI technologies is enabling ever more sophisticated content creation and manipulation in the context of elections.

      In parallel, governments are continuing to invest in digital technologies for the running of elections. These digital technologies are inherently data-intensive. Notably, several states are turning to biometric registration of voters and e-voting, ostensibly to curtail fraud and vote manipulation. This modernisation often results in the development of nationwide biometric databases. Such databases contain and are used for processing large amounts of personal data, and thus require heightened safeguards and protection. Often, increased reliance on technologies for purposes of voter registration and verification goes hand in hand with the involvement of private companies, which provide and often run the technologies processing data at population scale. Generally, the privatisation of public tasks and responsibilities can be deeply problematic if deployed without the necessary safeguards. The risks are exponentially higher in the electoral context, particularly where the use of technical products or services provided by a company is made essential to the voting exercise.

      It is in this context that in June 2024 the Council of Europe adopted its Guidelines on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data for the purposes of voter registration and authentication.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Register UK ☛ WeChat devs modded TLS, introducing security weaknesses

      Messaging giant WeChat uses a network protocol that the app's developers modified – and by doing so introduced security weaknesses, researchers claim.

      WeChat uses MMTLS, a cryptographic protocol heavily based on TLS 1.3. The devs essentially tweaked standard TLS but in turn that left the app with an encryption implementation, which "is inconsistent with the level of cryptography you would expect in an app used by a billion users, such as its use of deterministic IVs and lack of forward secrecy."

• Defence/Aggression

  • Wired ☛ What the US Army’s 1959 ‘Soldier of Tomorrow’ Got Right About the Future of Warfare

    Of course, the Army’s “GI of the future” unveiled more than six decades ago, like most fantastic visions of the decades ahead, didn’t totally come true. But some of the elements of the soldier’s ambitious kit did end up foreshadowing future innovations for American combat troops. Here’s a look at what the “soldier of tomorrow” from 1959 got right (and wrong) about the future of warfare.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump's GOP Is Running on a Platform of Freeing Seditionists and Cop Assailants

    The GOP candidate for President has a criminal docket. And in that criminal docket, today, the government included a post promising to free seditionists and cop-assailants with the same urgency with which Donald Trump promises to close the border. “My first acts,” the GOP standard-bearer stated, would include freeing the people who assaulted the Capitol on January 6.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Blue states should play “constitutional hardball”

    The GOP's game is called "constitutional hardball." Think: Mitch McConnell refusing to hold confirmation hearings on Obama's federal judiciary appointments, not never for Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat – then filling the Federal judiciary with the least-qualified, most FedSoc-addled lunatics in US history, all for lifetime appointments.

    As bad as this is at the federal level, it's even worse at in the states, especially the Republican "trifecta" states where the GOP holds the governorship and the state house and senate, where shameless gerrymandering and legislative attacks on hard-won ballot measures are the order of the day. GOP-held state governments engage in rampant interstate aggression, targeting out-of-state abortion providers, publishers, and journalists.

    This is a one-sided Cold Civil War, because state Dems, for the most part, are unwilling to play hardball in return (the closest they come is when, say, California sets strict emissions controls and manufacturers adopt them nationwide, rather than making special cars for the giant California market). Republicans engage in constitutional hardball and Dems refuse to fight back, a phenomenon called "asymmetrical constitutional hardball": [...]

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Opinion: Trump says criminality is genetic. Nazis showed where such talk can lead

    In a recent interview, Donald Trump claimed that 13,000 “murderers” have been admitted to the United States through an “open border.” He continued that for murderers, “it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

    That criminal activity is rooted in an offender’s genetic makeup is an old, largely discredited idea. For Trump to spout questionable science is hardly new. But the disturbing implications in what he said raise the specter of far worse crimes than anything one murderer could do.

  • EFF ☛ EFF to Third Circuit: TikTok Has Section 230 Immunity for Video Recommendations

    EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in support of TikTok’s request that the full court reconsider the case Anderson v. TikTok after a three-judge panel ruled that Section 230 immunity doesn’t apply to TikTok’s recommendations of users’ videos. We argued that the panel was incorrect on the law, and this case has wide-ranging implications for the internet as we know it today. EFF was joined on the brief with Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Public Knowledge, Reason Foundation, and Wikimedia Foundation.

    At issue is the panel’s misapplication of First Amendment precedent. The First Amendment protects the editorial decisions of publishers about whether and how to display content, such as the videos TikTok displays to users through its recommendation algorithm.

  • CBC ☛ Fast-food chains serving up halal food with a side of misinformation, expired certificates

    An entire restaurant can only be certified if every ingredient used at the location is checked by the certifier and follows the criteria needed to be halal, according to Subedar and other halal certification bodies. Also, there must be no pork products or alcohol served on the premises.

  • The Register UK ☛ ESPN hit with proposed fine for misusing emergency alert

    The Federal Communications Commission published an order today finding ESPN liable for six instances of broadcasting EAS sounds not to notify the public of an actual emergency, but to advertise its upcoming coverage of the NBA basketball season.

    "Transmitting EAS Tones in the absence of an actual emergency is not a game," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said in a press release.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Capitalist Threat to Democracy

    The threat to a true democracy that promotes material well-being, equality, and social solidarity is deeper than Donald Trump. It comes from a capitalism that can never make its peace with democracy.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Wired ☛ You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid

    Using a Toshiba T1000 PC running an early version of MS-DOS, Jenkin wrote a system using the most secure form of crypto, a one-time pad, which scrambles messages character by character using a shared key that’s as long as the message itself. Using the program, an activist could type a message on a computer and encrypt it with a floppy disk containing the one-time pad of random numbers. The activist could then convert the encrypted text into audio signals and play them to a tape recorder, which would store them. Then, using a public phone, the activist could call, say, ANC leaders in London or Lusaka, Zambia, and play the tape. The recipient would use a modem with an acoustic coupler to capture the sounds, translate them back into digital signals, and decrypt the message with Jenkin’s program.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Trump is selling $100K ‘Swiss-made’ watches. A search for who makes them took a bizarre turn

    Now, the watchmaker's origins are in question after CNN tried to track down the company behind the devices. They aren't based in Switzerland, but their address returns to a strip mall. In Wyoming. Next to an HR&Block and a Wendy's.

  • CNN ☛ The curious hunt for the company behind Trump watches

    But a CNN investigation into the manufacturing and distribution of the Trump-branded timepieces dead-ended at an innocuous-looking shopping center in a small city in remote northern Wyoming, not far from the border of Montana.

• Environment

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Insects will not make pet food more sustainable either

    Hobbs is Aaron Hobbs, executive director of the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture (NACIA), so Mandy Rice-Davies applies. The key point, which neither he nor Marion Nestle seem to have appreciated, but which you will because you listened to the recent episode on insects as food (for people and their pets), is that the “waste” that insects are reducing is usually a feed product that could be fed direct to livestock and, in some cases, people and their pets.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Pioneering river restoration declared a success

    "We had just the worst winter you can imagine post restoration in terms of the number of storms and sheer volume of rain. But despite it being record breaking conditions with high flowing water levels, the site responded really well, increasing the ability to store water within the site and lessening downstream storm flows, demonstrating the value of the restoration in providing resilience to hydrological extremes."

    To help the National Trust understand how the site has developed, researchers from several Universities (Exeter, Loughborough, Nottingham and Umeå in Sweden) have been involved with monitoring water flow, water quality and changes to habitat.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Five surprising ways that trees help prevent flooding

    Think of flood prevention and you might imagine huge concrete dams, levees or the shiny Thames barrier. But some of the most powerful tools for reducing flood risk are far more natural and widely recognizable: woodlands and green spaces. Trees offer much more than beauty and oxygen. Here's how trees help to protect us from floods.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Only 37% of Europe’s Surface Water Is Healthy, Study Finds

    According to the report, only about 37% of the surface water analyzed in 2021 was identified as having “good” quality or better, and only 29% had at least a good chemical status.

    A major contributing factor to poor chemical status was long-lived pollutants, like mercury or “brominated flame retardants.” If these were not a factor, the study says, 80% of the surface water would be in good health or better.

  • The Revelator ☛ 12 New Environmental Books You Need to Read This Autumn

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Why Alberta Should Scrap Its Misleading $7 Million Ad Blitz

    • Pratik ☛ Back to Commuting and Parking for Work

      Yay! It’s Friday, and I’m working from home today. Despite the President’s diktat, I got an exemption to work remotely twice a week. I will be on campus Tuesday through Thursday, which isn’t too bad. I’m still figuring out the fastest way to work since I park at a different UT garage.

      The fastest way depends on the time of day rather than the distance. Parking is a pain at UT Austin. Since COVID, UT Austin has had an Occassional Parking Perks (OPP) program which is basically pay as you park. You load up your account ($5/day) and use it as frequently as you want with no expiry dates. I’ve used this option for the past four years since the OPP is more economical if you are on campus only twice a week.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ France: Man charged with murder after running over cyclist

      "We can no longer tolerate this trivialization of violence on the roads. Like all other road users, cyclists and pedestrians who choose sustainable and environmentally friendly modes of transport have a fundamental right to safety," the group said on Friday.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI engineers claim new algorithm reduces AI power consumption by 95% — replaces complex floating-point multiplication with integer addition

      The new method, called Linear-Complexity Multiplication (L-Mul), comes close to the results of FPM while using the simpler algorithm. But despite that, it’s still able to maintain the high accuracy and precision that FPM is known for. As TechXplore reports, this method reduces the power consumption of AI systems, potentially up to 95%, making it a crucial development for our AI future.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Man who lost half-billion dollar Bitcoin HDD sues local authority for $500 million for not letting him dig through landfill

      Howells claims the legal action to be a last-resort initiative after becoming frustrated with years of rebuttals from Newport Council. The 8,000 Bitcoins would be worth £414 million ($538 million) today. However, Howells is asking for £495 million ($644 million), which reflects the peak valuation of the BTC cryptocurrency from earlier this year.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Takes Aim at 'Childfree' Ideology in Controversial Bid to Boost Birth Rates

      But experts argue that this legislation, which is currently under review by lawmakers and passed its first reading on Thursday, is “repressive” and fails to address the root issues behind the country’s flagging birth rates.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Housing Discrimination Is Collective, Cumulative, Continuing’: CounterSpin interview with George Lipsitz on the impacts of housing discrimination

    Janine Jackson interviewed author and UC/Santa Barbara research professor emeritus George Lipsitz about the impacts of housing discrimination for the October 11, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Josh Withers ☛ The enshittification of Squarespace and why you should own your own website | Withers Without You

    Private equity seriously is ruining so many beautiful things on the internet (see Bending Spoons) because founders and creators often struggle make a living online, they seek growth and revenue and find it hard, so they sell to PE because PE can make money online: gut the product, layoff staff, raise prices.

  • Positech Games ☛ An autistic introduction to the stock market

    As part of my job, because we supported real-time and historical trading software, my work PC had the complete suite of trading analysis software that the company provided. We were expected to be vaguely familiar with what it looked like, so we could check it worked ok. We were not expected to know anything about actual markets and trading, but just by being in that world 8 hours a day you cant avoid picking up a lot of tips and information.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CS Monitor ☛ Elon Musk is spending big to boost Trump’s turnout. Republicans worry it might flop.

    Elon Musk is pumping huge sums into a last-minute effort to boost Trump turnout. But get-out-the-vote efforts aren’t the rocket science he’s used to.

  • Insight Hungary ☛ EPP to Orban: "Time to go"

    The European People's Party (EPP) shared a post on Facebook featuring an image of Hungary's far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán emerging from a red backdrop, alongside the following caption: "Time to go." 

    The message left little room for interpretation: "It’s time to bring Hungary back closer to Europe and allow it a chance to recover from the consequences of poor leadership." The EPP had first shared this image on X last Wednesday, coinciding with Orbán’s rare appearance before the European Parliament's plenary session.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Opponents of MO Abortion Rights Amendment Turn to Anti-Trans Messaging

    The billboards have popped up along both Interstates 55 and 170 around St. Louis. They’re along I-70 between Columbia and St. Charles, in central Missouri. And there’s one across from a shopping center in Cape Girardeau, along the Mississippi River in the state’s southeast corner.

    In fact, as the Nov. 5 election approaches, motorists can see the billboards all over Missouri.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ OpenAI, Microsoft reportedly hire banks to renegotiate partnership terms

    The Wall Street Journal today cited sources as saying that OpenAI is being advised by Goldman Sachs. Microsoft, in turn, has reportedly hired Morgan Stanley. The two banks previously participated in a deal that gave the ChatGPT developer access to a $4 billion revolving line of credit.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft and OpenAI's close partnership shows signs of fraying

    Microsoft had already pumped $13 billion into OpenAI, and Nadella was initially willing to keep the cash spigot flowing. But after OpenAI's board of directors briefly ousted Altman last November, Nadella and Microsoft reconsidered, according to four people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    Over the next few months, Microsoft wouldn't budge as OpenAI, which expects to lose $5 billion this year, continued to ask for more money and more computing power to build and run its artificial intelligence systems.

  • NBC ☛ Harris courts male voters on fantasy sports, sports betting and video game platforms

    As part of the campaign's plan to attract male voters, the vice president's campaign launched a series of ads Friday on sports news sites like DraftKings and Yahoo Sports as well as video game sites like IGN and Fandom. Harris' is the first campaign to advertise on DraftKings.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Bitcoin traders are betting on a Trump victory

    While prediction markets have moved in Trump’s favour, the spread in most polls is well within the margin of error with less than three weeks to election day. Harris leads Trump by about 1.6 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. Trump is ahead by less than one percentage point in the equivalent measure for battleground states.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ DTE Energy [astroturfed] comments to push $456 million rate hike

      Comments submitted by businesses to Michigan regulators supporting DTE Energy's $456.4 million rate hike request appear to have been written by the utility itself, according to identifying data attached to the documents.

    • The Hill ☛ Election integrity: A bipartisan defense of U.S. election system

      Still, these false narratives have contributed to sharp divides among Americans when it comes to confidence in our elections.

    • US News And World Report ☛ Callers Responding to a False Election Claim Overwhelm Oregon Officials

      Oregon election officials were screening phone and email messages Friday after their system was overwhelmed and shut down because of a barrage of calls from people responding to a false claim that the state's voter pamphlet doesn't include Republican nominee Donald Trump.

    • 404 Media ☛ This Is Exactly How an Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Microtargeting Muslims and Jews With Opposing Messages

      An Elon Musk-funded group called Future Coalition PAC is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris. In areas of Michigan with relatively large Muslim populations, the Super PAC is painting Harris as a close friend of Israel and is suggesting that she is beholden to the beliefs of her Jewish husband Doug Emhoff; in parts of Pennsylvania with relatively large Jewish populations, the advertisements call Harris antisemitic and say she “support[s] denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands.”

      Meanwhile, a related PAC also funded by Musk is microtargeting likely Black voters on Snapchat with ads that says Kamala Harris is trying to ban menthol cigarettes (surveys have shown that 81 percent of Black smokers use menthols, and big tobacco has disproportionately marketed menthol cigarettes to Black Americans).

    • Futurism ☛ AI-Powered News Site Accidentally Accuses District Attorney of Murder

      That's bleak stuff, not to mention a crime that probably would have made national news. But there's an important reason why it didn't hit national airwaves: there was a murder, but the DA didn't commit it. They just charged the guy who allegedly did.

    • India Times ☛ TikTok let through disinformation in political ads despite its own ban, Global Witness finds

      But it called out TikTok for approving four of the eight ads submitted for review that contained falsehoods about the election. That's despite the platform's ban on all political ads in place since 2019.

    • Greece ☛ Government spokesman warns of misinformation dangers

      Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis addressed the rapid spread of misinformation during a seminar on fake news.

    • Forbes ☛ These Right-Wing Pundits Were Allegedly Funded By Russia—What To Know About DOJ Indictment

      The Justice Department filed an indictment Wednesday, accusing the Kremlin of pouring millions into a media company linked to prominent online right-wing commentators as part of an influence operation pushing pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation on social media.

    • NPR ☛ AI-generated images have become a new form of propaganda this election season

      This election cycle, such AI-generated synthetic images have proliferated on social media platforms, often after politically charged news events. People watching online platforms and the election closely say that these images are a way to spread partisan narratives with facts often being irrelevant.

    • The Register UK ☛ Uncle Sam puts $10M bounty on Russian [astroturfer] farm Rybar

      The US has placed a $10 million bounty on Russian media network Rybar and a number of its key staffers following alleged attempts to sway the upcoming US presidential election.

    • Truthdig ☛ The Big Lie: The Sequel

      This new generation of poll watchers also fueled conspiracy theories on social media. One of the most circulated videos claiming to expose fraud, for example, was taken by the volunteer observer Kellye SoRelle, who recorded a man at Detroit’s TCF Center removing a box from a van and placing it in a red wagon. Right-wing outlets quickly picked up the video and alleged that the box contained additional ballots being brought into a tabulation center after the polls had already closed. In reality, the man was a photographer for a local news station and the box contained his camera equipment. Incidents like these were not bugs but features of the Republican Party’s ballot monitoring program, designed to instill doubt in the election results.

    • Truthdig ☛ After Pushing False Election Claims, Right-Wing Activists Recruit Poll Workers

      Right-wing strategists still talk about what happened in Detroit in 2020, when poll watchers stood outside the absentee ballot counting center, banging on windows and shouting “Stop the count!” Conspiracy theories swirled that those volunteers had been kept out while something corrupt was unfolding inside. At one point the facility held almost double the number of permitted poll watchers of both parties.

      But the theories continue spreading four years later. “They kick people out that are observers, and they put cardboard over the window, and you’re supposed to trust what’s going on behind the cardboard?” Lance Wallnau, a leading Christian right influencer, said at an Arizona tent revival in April.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • VOA News ☛ Georgian groups defy 'foreign agent' law, team up to monitor crucial election

    A brutal crackdown on the demonstrations prompted Western powers to impose sanctions on some Georgian officials.

    Critics say the law mimics Russian legislation used to silence political opponents and independent media. The Georgian government insists the law is necessary to show who is funding political organizations.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Two Years of Semafor

    We’ve broken big news across our platforms, including the moves of companies like Nvidia and OpenAI, the showdowns between Wall Street and Washington, and the battle for the White House. Since launching, we’ve built a powerful, global C-Suite, policy-maker and opinion leader audience — including you — with over 750,000 newsletter subscriptions and more than 2,500 newsletters sent, which have been opened 115 million times. And our business has grown rapidly through global partnerships with over 65 of the world’s most influential companies.

  • Truthdig ☛ The Last Days of Mankind

    “In the beginning was the press and then the world appeared,” Karl Kraus wrote in 1921. The biblical allusion was no rhetorical flourish. Living through an apocalyptic era, the Austrian writer, and arguably the first major media critic, had reason to believe that journalism had moved from being a neutral filter between the popular imagination and the external world. It had taken charge of forging reality itself.

  • VOA News ☛ RSF director general calls China's repression of journalists 'totally insane'

    In an interview with Voice of America on October 14, Bruttin emphasized that Taiwanese media and foreign media in Taiwan face threats from Chinese political propaganda. He said that Taiwan, like many Baltic countries affected by Russian political propaganda, however, has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world.

  • BIA Net ☛ Three issues of pro-Kurdish newspaper Yeni Yaşam seized in a week

    Çelebi warned that these moves are part of a broader strategy by the government to control dissenting voices in the media.

    “If you want to dominate the social landscape as a ruling power and prevent any alternative voices from emerging, you apply this method of control over the press,” he explained. “The state’s judiciary, police, and military have been working for years to silence alternative voices.”

    He added that media outlets covering topics such as ecology, women’s rights, labor issues, and democracy, are bearing the brunt of the government’s efforts to monopolize the press. “These actions show that Turkey is not democratic, and the intolerance towards Kurds is clear,” he said.

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalists from the earthquake zone meet in Malatya: 'We received no assistance'

    The workshop, titled “Journalists Exist with Their Rights,” brought together nine journalists from Malatya, Elazığ, Urfa, Antep, Diyarbakır, and Adıyaman. The discussion focused on journalists' rights and freedom of expression, especially in the context of the earthquake. Participants also shared their experiences.

  • BIA Net ☛ Just silence the journalist, and I won't touch you!

    The BİA Media Monitoring Report covering July, August, and September shows that at least 164 journalists were tried in criminal cases, with five facing lawsuits for damages. Additionally, 68 journalists were subjected to threats from MHP and its affiliated political groups, and 77 journalists, with Hayko Bağdat being the latest addition, were convicted of “insulting the president.” Furthermore, concerns are growing over the increasing restrictions on journalists using YouTube, access bans based on “personal rights,” and the announcements by authorities of new or revised regulations regarding “influence agents.”

    Due to the sharp decline in media freedom and rule of law, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Turkey 158th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. RSF called on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as he marks his 10th year in office, to “implement comprehensive reforms to protect independent journalists and ultimately guarantee the right to access information in the country.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Kurov documentary traces Russian crackdown on free speech

    Unlike other wartime films showing death and destruction on the frontline, "Of Caravan and the Dogs," co-directed by Askold Kurov and an anonymous filmmaker, was primarily shot in the newsrooms of different Russian media outlets. Yet, despite the unspectacular settings, the heartbreaking documentary allows viewers to directly witness the final nails being put in the coffin of Russia's free press.

    DW met Kurov as the filmmaker was presenting "Of Caravan and the Dogs" in Berlin during the Dokumentale film festival.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Russia: Journalists report inhumane conditions in custody

    Two journalists, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, who stand accused of supporting an "extremist organization," have detailed the harsh conditions of their pre-trial detention in Moscow. In early October, the two men were transferred to a prison known as "Matrosskaya Tishina" ("Sailors' Silence"), which is notorious among human rights organizations for its bad conditions.

    DW has obtained a copy of a letter written by Konstantin Gabov: "The cell is overcrowded. Another inmate and I sleep on the floor," he reports. "During the day we sit on a bench without a backrest, as there's no space. The mattress, blanket and pillow are worn out, and there are bedbugs. The atmosphere here is oppressive."

  • CPJ ☛ Press freedom in Paraguay threatened by proposed law to control nonprofits

    On October 9, Paraguay’s Congress approved the Establishing Control, Transparency, and Accountability of Non-Profit Organizations Act and passed it to Peña, who has two weeks to sign it into law or veto it.

    The legislation, reviewed by CPJ, would require all nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive public or private money to submit financial reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance every six months. It would also require NGOs to list the people and legal entities that they work with. Organizations that fail to meet the requirements could be shut down.

  • CPJ ☛ Iranian-American journalist detained in Evin prison without access to lawyer

    CPJ is alarmed by reports that Iranian authorities arrested Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh in September in the capital, Tehran, and have since detained him in Evin prison without access to a lawyer, according to a former colleague, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of government reprisal.

    Some reports indicated Valizadeh was facing charges of collaborating with Persian-language media outlets abroad; CPJ was unable to confirm what charges or potential penalties he faces.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Telegraph bidder Dovid Efune’s New York Sun is obscure even in home city

    Under Efune The New York Sun has grown rapidly - although its reach still appears limited

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • FAIR ☛ To Be a Media Expert on Economics, It Helps to Have the Right Politics

    “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” John Maynard Keynes made this observation in 1936, in his masterwork The General Theory. Nearly a century later, readers and viewers of corporate media face the same fate.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Correct and Incorrect Conclusions About Democrats and Unions

    I have long made the case that the fate of the political left is tied to the fate of organized labor. A Bernie Sanders-esque candidate will always hit his head on an electoral ceiling as long as unions are marginalize in America, because union membership is a sort of demonstration of genuine democratic socialism in action that changes the electorate itself over time. The fact that the Democratic Party seems to be leaking union voters to the right is a real issue. But it is not the underlying issue. The underlying issue is that America needs more union members. And four years of a Biden administration has not been enough to produce that result.

    In the 1950s, one in three American workers was a union member, and today, one in ten American workers is a union member. More than 60 years of declining union density. This is the core problem that we need to solve. One element of solving that—and not the most important element!—will be Democratic electoral political wins, because the Republican Party is existentially opposed to increasing labor power. Democratic control of Washington is important to reviving the power of organized labor in the same way that having a nice, well-maintained playing field is important to winning the World Series. Yes, you need it, but there are a lot of other and frankly more vital steps, as well. I apologize for all the sports metaphors. But these things often get twisted in the public conversation.

  • Harvard University ☛ Are rich different from you and me? Would we be better off without them?

    But the company “exploits its employees, crushes unions, and takes out dead peasant insurance policies on workers who are going to die,” Malleson countered. “Its products are cheap because they’re made in sweatshops with abysmal conditions.”

    The solution is not so easy as taxing Walmart for redistribution to low-income employees and consumers, Rajagopalan said. “Then we’re assuming there’s a bureaucrat or central allocation plan that can provide those same loaves of bread and cans of milk. … That has been done before and hasn’t worked pretty much anywhere in the world.”

  • The Nation ☛ Donald Trump Just Insulted Every Autoworker in Michigan

    That line may not have gotten a lot of notice from media outlets that provide cursory coverage of industrial and labor issues. But it was definitely heard by autoworkers like Dawnya Ferdinandsen in Toledo, Ohio. Ferdinandsen is a member of United Auto Workers Local 14, which represents workers at the 2.8 million-square-foot General Motors Toledo Propulsion Systems plant. Workers there assemble transmissions that are used in Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick cars and trucks.

    In a video posted on social media platforms, Ferdinandsen responded to Trump’s comments by announcing, “I challenge you, Trump, to one full 12-hour day in any auto assembly plant. I want to see you assemble parts out of a box for 12 hours. Until you accept and complete this challenge, until you actually work a manual labor job, you keep the name of the UAW out of your mouth. Solidarity, y’all.”

  • Omicron Limited ☛ AI finds racial restrictions in millions of property records

    In 2021, California enacted a law that required the state's 58 counties to create programs to identify and redact deed records that include racial covenants.

    But the new law also poses a daunting task: Santa Clara County alone has 24 million deed documents, totaling 84 million pages, dating back to 1850. "Prior to this collaboration, our team manually read close to 100,000 pages over weeks to identify racial covenants," Assistant County Clerk-Recorder Louis Chiaramonte said, "and it was a challenging undertaking."

  • International Business Times ☛ Canadian Uber Drivers At Risk Of Earning Less Due To New AI-based Pay Model Protested By US Drivers

    Unlike the previous system, which based driver pay on ride duration, distance, and demand-based surge pricing, the AI-powered model considers additional factors such as pickup and drop-off locations, as well as the day of the week. While it maintains surge pricing, the use of AI to determine compensation prompts questions about whether driving for Uber will remain financially worthwhile in 2024.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?

    The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. It grew to hundreds of thousands of members in the 1930s and engaged in violent acts of racist terrorism. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.

  • Truthdig ☛ The Tipped Wage System Is Failing — and Removing Taxes Won’t Save It - Truthdig

    Like us, the vast majority of tipped workers in America — 66 percent — don’t earn enough to have to pay federal payroll taxes. So eliminating those taxes won’t benefit two-thirds of us at all.

    It would only help the upper earners, like fancy waiters at the fancy restaurants — or millionaire Wall Street types, lawyers or hedge fund managers who could reclassify their incomes as tips to dodge taxes.

  • India Times ☛ Not only heterosexuals, child marriage oppressive to all genders, sexual minorities: CJI

    The CJI said child marriage led to irreversible physical and psychological damage in girls and violated their Article 21 right that encompassed their choice in matters of selection of partner, time of marriage, reproductive freedom and sexuality.

  • Techdirt ☛ New FTC Rules Make It Easier To Cancel Services, Punish Companies For Being Annoying Little Shits About It

    Whether it’s taking on automaker privacy abuses, supporting right to repair reforms, or taking aim at Amazon’s attempt to dominate the entirety of online retail, she’s notably different from the feckless revolving door careerists that usually stock regulatory agencies, which is why the Barry Dillers, Reid Hoffmans, and Mark Cubans of the world are so hot and bothered.

    Enter the FTC’s latest effort: cracking down on the predatory and annoying ways companies try to prevent you from cancelling services. Cemented by AOL in its heyday, and perfected by everybody from the Wall Street Journal to your broadband and wireless phone provider, corporate America loves to make it as annoying as possible to simply cancel services, often actively hiding any way to do so.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • IETF ☛ draft-miller-ssh-agent-15 - SSH Agent Protocol

    Secure Shell (SSH) is a protocol for secure remote connections and login over untrusted networks. It supports multiple authentication mechanisms, including public key authentication. This document describes the protocol for interacting with an agent that holds private keys. Clients (and possibly servers) can use invoke the agent via this protocol to perform operations using public and private keys held in the agent.

    Holding keys in an agent offers usability and security advantages to loading and unwrapping them at each use. Moreover, the agent implements a simple protocol and presents a smaller attack surface than a key loaded into a full SSH server or client.

    This agent protocol is already widely used and a de-facto standard, having been implemented by a number of popular SSH clients and servers for many years. The purpose of this document is to describe the protocol as it has been implemented.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ YouTube is testing a cheaper 'Premium Lite' plan... that still has ads

    This update Premium Lite plan is being tested in Australia, Germany, and Thailand, according to Android Authority. Google previously offered Premium Lite in a few markets in Europe, which was similar in its limitations on extra mobile features but actually was ad-free. That particular offering was axed a year ago.

    The newer, ad-infested version of YouTube Premium Lite costs $8.99 Australian dollars, a savings of $8 per month versus the full version of Premium. If you subscribe on iOS, you’ll be charged a more hefty $11.99, presumably to give Apple its cut on the App Store.

  • Techdirt ☛ Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game

    We’ve been writing stories about how, when it comes to digital purchases, we typically do not own what we’ve bought. Instead of buying a product, such as the digital version of a video game, what we are instead buying is a non-transferable license to use that product. While readers here will be largely familiar with this annoying concept, most online retailers bury the language for this so deep inside their labyrinthian EULAs that the overwhelming majority of the public is none the wiser. Steam has traditionally been no different, which is how you get confused fans complaining about how a game they bought has been changed via an update, or how your Steam library just disappears when you shove off this mortal coil.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Stripe Still Holding Nearly $6.5M in Funds After Festicket Collapse

  The payment processor holds just shy of £6 million across multiple currencies relating to ticket and event related sales made by Festicket, compared to the £7.6 million it held when administrators were appointed in 2022. They report that processing by Stripe of chargeback requests received from ticket buyers has “largely ceased.”

• EFF ☛ A Flourishing Internet Depends on Competition

  Antitrust law has long recognized that monopolies stifle innovation and gouge consumers on price. When it comes to Big Tech, harm to innovation—in the form of “kill zones,” where major corporations buy up new entrants to a market before they can compete with them—has been easy to find. Consumer harms have been harder to quantify, since a lot of services the Big Tech companies offer are “free.” This is why we must move beyond price as the major determinator of consumer harm. And once that’s done, it’s easier to see even greater benefits competition brings to the greater internet ecosystem.

  In the decades since the internet entered our lives, it has changed from a wholly new and untested environment to one where a few major players dominate everyone's experience. Policymakers have been slow to adapt and have equated what's good for the whole internet with what is good for those companies. Instead of a balanced ecosystem, we have a monoculture. We need to eliminate the build up of power around the giants and instead have fertile soil for new growth.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Will Google finally cave in under US regulatory pressure?

  In August, a US federal court ruled that Google holds a monopoly in internet search and defends it against competitors through unfair means.

  "This is truly a historic ruling," says Ulrich Müller, who founded the German nonprofit Rebalance Now, a Cologne-based organization that advocates for limiting the power of large corporations.

  The ruling, he told DW, would show that "the extensive antitrust tools in the US are now being used more forcefully, even against domestic tech companies."

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ Human Models Horrified to Discover Their Faces Are Being Used for AI Propaganda

      Synthesia, a text-to-video AI company with a valuation of over one billion dollars, claims that its tech allows users to "create studio-quality videos with AI avatars" as easily as they can throw together a slide deck.

      The company's clientele is a wild mix, ranging from media stalwarts like Reuters and global accounting giant Ernst & Young to authoritarian regimes — a reality that's come as a terrible surprise to the human models whose faces Synthesia's AI models are trained on.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘It’s not me, it’s just my face’: the models who found their likenesses had been used in AI propaganda | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

      These videos are fake. They were generated with artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a startup based in east London. The company, Synthesia, has created a buzz in an industry racing to perfect lifelike AI videos. Investors have poured in cash, catapulting it into “unicorn” status – a label for a private company valued at more than $1bn.

      Synthesia’s technology is aimed at clients looking to create marketing material or internal presentations, and any deepfakes are a breach of its terms of use. But this means little to the models whose likenesses are behind the digital “puppets” that were used in propaganda videos such as those apparently supporting Burkina Faso’s dictator. The Guardian tracked down five of them.

• Copyrights

  • California State University Northridge ☛ The Importance of Originality in Academic Writing: How Students Can Avoid Plagiarism – Daily Sundial

    Do you ever feel like pulling your hair out when it’s time to write a research paper? Juggling dozens of tabs as you scramble to cram in quotes feels impossible, right? It’s super easy to accidentally lift a sentence or two without giving credit where it’s due. But copying someone else’s stuff is no joke – plagiarism can wreck your grade or even get you in hot water.

    The last thing you want is to get suspended because of a silly slip-up. Having to document every single fact makes your head spin. Well, fear not because there are ways to write papers that meet your teacher’s expectations. You can also seek help from a reliable ghostwriter and follow proven tips to get away with plagiarism. This article will break down exactly what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. You’ll also get some handy tricks for finding sources, taking notes, citing like a pro, and double-checking your work.

  • Nick Heer ☛ X Has Altered the Deal

    This is rude. It is a “clarifi[cation]” described in vague terms, and what it means is that users will no longer be able to opt out of their data being used to train Grok or any other artificial intelligence product. This appears to also include images and video, posts in private accounts and, if I am reading this right, direct messages.

  • The Verge ☛ Penguin Random House books now explicitly say ‘no’ to AI training

    Book publisher Penguin Random House is putting its stance on AI training in print. The standard copyright page on both new and reprinted books will now say, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems,” according to a report from The Bookseller spotted by Gizmodo.

    The clause also notes that Penguin Random House “expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception” in line with the European Union’s laws. The Bookseller says that Penguin Random House appears to be the first major publisher to account for AI on its copyright page.

  • The Register UK ☛ X to allow third parties to train AIs with user data

    Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts.

    The updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data, although it appears there will be some form of opt-out added. The specific paragraph reads: [...]