Leftovers

• Nick Heer ☛ ‘Everything Is a Conspiracy Theory When You Don’t Trust Anything’ – Pixel Envy

  Green quotes the saying “everything is a conspiracy theory if you don’t know anything” but, as he is wont to point out, that is negative and unkind. A better version, he says, is “everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t trust anything”.

• Science

  • Rlang ☛ Dyson’s Algorithm for the Twelve Coins Problem

    In her earlier “The Twelve Coins Puzzle” Nina used an algebraic notation to allow her to search long enough to solve the 12 coins problem. There wasn’t really any deep algebra to the solution, the “algebraic notation” is just a mathematician’s favorite method to write sparse vectors. And the sparse notation makes things a bit easier.

    However, Dyson’s solution solves the problem for many different counts of coins and discusses the optimality of the solution. However, the solution procedure is a variation of a previously written up method that was shown to be wrong. So we have to read very carefully and even after that are living a Knuth quotes:

    "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

• Education

  • ARRL ☛ 2024 Pacificon Inspires Next Generation of Radio Amateurs

    The organizing committee works all year on pulling together an impressive program. This year included an exceptional lineup of forums, seminars, hands-on activities, and exhibits. But the standout this year was the tremendous effort to include and engage young hams and prospective hams.

  • Robert Birming ☛ Growth Through Challenge

    That's just how it is with everything in life. From our first stumbling steps and throughout life, we're beginners from time to time. We do, we make mistakes, we redo, we do it right, we learn, and we develop.

• Hardware

  • New York Times ☛ The White House Bet Big on Intel. Will It Backfire?

    A plan to revive U.S. chip manufacturing rests partly on a company that is firing workers and delaying factories, even as the government pushes for the opposite.

  • ABP ☛ Intel To Cut 1,300 Jobs In THIS Region Amid Ongoing Tech Layoffs

    Intel is planning to lay off 1,300 employees in Oregon as part of its cost-cutting measures. The layoffs will impact four offices and are scheduled to start on November 15, lasting for two weeks. According to a report from Times Of India, affected employees will not have the option to transfer to other roles within the company.

    This decision is part of a larger wave of layoffs sweeping through the tech industry in 2024, impacting major players such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Meta. Contributing factors include economic uncertainty, rising interest rates, the rapid evolution of AI, and the over-hiring that occurred during the pandemic.

  • Stock market today: Wall Street finishes mixed after Tesla soars and IBM slumps

    Wall Street drifted to a mixed finish Thursday after Tesla surged to one of the best days in its history, while IBM slumped to its worst in six months.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.2% to break its first three-day losing streak since early September. It bounced between losses and gains through the day, and it was roughly evenly split between stocks rising and falling.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia supplier SK Hynix sees no AI chip oversupply as profit soars to record

    South Korea's SK Hynix on Thursday posted a record quarterly profit as the Nvidia supplier booked strong sales of its advanced chips, and said demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips would continue to outpace supply next year.

  • Macworld ☛ Revealed: The true cost of the iPhone 16

    This is despite the fact that production costs have risen again, albeit only marginally. For example, from $395 for the standard iPhone 15 to $416 for the iPhone 16: an increase of $21 or 5 percent.

    The single largest expense in the BOM is the display at $65. But the largest relative cost increase is the RAM, which to support Apple Intelligence has been bumped from 6GB to 8GB–and this means a whopping 89 percent price rise, from $9 to $17. The jump from the A16 to the A18 chip, meanwhile costs an extra $10, and the new controls (Camera Control and the Action button) only $3 in total. And several components have actually gone down in price, including the display, which cost $3 more in the previous generation.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Antivax cancer quacks go “orthomolecular”

    Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a definite progression among purveyors of misinformation and disinformation about public health and COVID-19 itself. Early on, there was the contingent that minimized the disease, brushing it aside as “just a cold,” promoting the social Darwinist message that it was only a significant danger to the elderly and those with chronic diseases, who were at higher risk for severe disease, hospitalization, and death. Among this contingent, ironically enough, were quacks who promoted unproven repurposed medications (like the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, or FLCCC), such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, often coupled with a number of supplements (such as zinc) as cures and preventatives for the disease long after actual clinical trial evidence had determined that they do not work. When COVID-19 vaccines rolled around, these quacks predictably became antivax, given that a safe and effective vaccine endangered their grift promoting supplements to treat COVID-19, although the vaccine did open up lucrative new grift treating “vaccine injury” due to the spike protein. This background brings us to a particularly odious Substack quack who deems himself “The 2nd Smartest Guy in the World,” or, as I like to call him, 2ndSGitW, with an emphasis on the “git” in the middle, who is now touting a paper that combines new COVID-age cancer quackery involving ivermectin and fenbendazole with very old quackery, namely orthomolecular medicine.

  • La Prensa Latina ☛ PAHO celebrates 30 years without wild polio in the Americas

    The last polio case was detected in Peru, in September 1991.

    In 1994, the region of the Americas certified polio free of the highly infectious disease affecting the central nervous system and causing acute flaccid paralysis.

  • BBC ☛ Tim Burton: Beetlejuice director says the [Internet] makes him feel depressed

    Director Tim Burton has revealed that being on the [Internet] makes him feel "quite depressed".

  • Variety ☛ Tim Burton Hates the Internet: 'I Got Depressed' and It 'Scared Me'

    “Anybody who knows me knows I’m a bit of a technophobe,” Burton said. “If I look at the [Internet], I found that I got quite depressed. It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. So I try to avoid it, because it doesn’t make me feel good.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Predatory Gambling Industry Is Misleading Voters

    Bernal at Stop Predatory Gambling says iGaming has always been the industry’s ultimate goal. “They used sports gambling to get young people, particularly young men, to sign up for these gambling apps,” Bernal said. “But at the end of the day, this isn’t about sports gambling in Missouri. At their core, these companies are online casinos. They will spend whatever it takes and pursue whatever avenue that will allow their money to prevail.”

  • Ness Labs ☛ How to Make Friends with Fear: The F.E.A.R. Framework

    Yet, we suppress it, leading to its worst effects—overthinking, poor communication, and missed opportunities because we shy away from risks. As a result, we often get all of its drawbacks without any of its benefits: work is slower because of analysis paralysis, communication is unproductive because we hold back information, innovation is scarce because we avoid taking any risks.

    What if instead we embraced fear as a natural part of life, one that’s full of curiosity, experimentation, and creativity? Making friends with fear means recognizing that it’s not something to avoid or ignore, but rather something to treat as helpful information.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ The Best Pharmacist in the World

    I went home, went to the pharmacy's Facebook page, and left a scathing review, where I said they had good service but bad politics, and they weren't getting any more of my money as a result. I resigned myself to living in Big Box Hell. Some period after that, I got a message through Facebook from a name I didn't recognize. The writer, first name LeRoy, told me that he'd been a partner in the pharmacy but that he was leaving to go out on his own. He let me know that there would be no giant TVs playing Fox News in his new business and asked me to give him a chance, so I did.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Stevie Nicks on Kamala Harris, Fleetwood Mac, and Making New Music

    Well, thank goodness we’re done [touring] for a while, so I can go home and not have a mask on all the time. As a singer with asthma, I fucking hate the masks, but I wear them. People give you dirty looks. I dare anybody to give me a dirty look. I would just say, “Hey, you know what? I’m Stevie Nicks. And if I get sick, my entire thing goes down. Forty families are out of work. So that’s why I have a mask on, asshole.”

    I can’t get [Covid] again. I mean, I’m old, so I’ll only be around for another 15 years. But you guys have another 30 or 40 years, so you should think about it.

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ The Most Important Sentence

    Many are working in crushing 9-5 jobs that destroy the soul, make them dread Mondays, and that don’t fill in this sentence in a satisfactory way.

  • Harvard University ☛ Your side might lose. But you don’t have to lose your mind.

    John Della Volpe, director of polling at the IOP, which conducts the biannual Harvard Youth Poll, noted stress among 18– to 29-year-olds about the state of the world, along with persistent doubt that current political and economic systems will help them.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Hindu ☛ [While Microsoft Lays Off Tens of Thousands] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's 2024 pay rose 63% to $79 million on stock awards

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's fiscal 2024 compensation surged 63% to $79.1 million, according to a filing on Thursday, helped by his stock awards in a year when the tech behemoth's market value breached $3 trillion. [sic]

  • Semafor Inc ☛ AI deepfakes should be a top concern for global intelligence agencies, Hive CEO Kevin Guosays

    A single piece of AI-generated content can cause market crashes or other harmful consequences, Guo said, referring to an AI-made image falsely showing an explosion at the Pentagon posted in 2023 that caused a stock market blip.

  • The Conversation ☛ The Terminator at 40: this sci-fi ‘B-movie’ still shapes how we view the threat of AI

    The Terminator was not the first film to tackle AI’s potential dangers. There are parallels between Skynet and the HAL 9000 supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    It also draws from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, and Karel Čapek’s 1921 play, R.U.R.. Both stories concern inventors losing control over their creations.

  • VOA News ☛ US military, intelligence agencies ordered to embrace AI

    The memo, which calls AI “an era-defining technology,” also lays out guidelines that the White House says are designed to prevent the use of AI to harm civil liberties or human rights.

    The new rules will “ensure that our national security agencies are adopting these technologies in ways that align with our values,” a senior administration official told reporters, speaking about the memo on the condition of anonymity before its official release.

  • VOA News ☛ AI decodes oinks and grunts to keep pigs happy in Danish study

    European scientists have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of interpreting pig sounds, aiming to create a tool that can help farmers improve animal welfare.

    The algorithm could potentially alert farmers to negative emotions in pigs, thereby improving their well-being, according to Elodie Mandel-Briefer, a behavioral biologist at University of Copenhagen who is co-leading the study.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Mother sues AI chatbot maker over son's suicide

    A US mother has sued artificial intelligence chatbot start-up Character.AI accusing it of causing her 14-year-old son’s suicide in February, saying he became addicted to the company’s service and deeply attached to a chatbot it created.

    In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Orlando, Florida federal court, Megan Garcia said Character.AI targeted her son, Sewell Setzer, with “anthropomorphic, hypersexualised and frighteningly realistic experiences”.

  • India Times ☛ Mother sues AI chatbot company Character. AI, Google sued over son's suicide

    In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Orlando, Florida federal court, Megan Garcia said Character. AI targeted her son, Sewell Setzer, with "anthropomorphic, hypersexualised, and frighteningly realistic experiences". She said the company programmed its chatbot to "misrepresent itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell's desire to no longer live outside" of the world created by the service.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Florida mom sues Character.ai, blaming chatbot for teenager’s suicide

    Megan Garcia, Setzer’s mother, said Character.AI — the start-up behind the personalized chatbot — is responsible for his suicide. Garcia alleged that Character.AI recklessly developed its chatbots without proper guardrails or precautions, instead hooking vulnerable children like Setzer with an addictive product that blurred the lines between reality and fiction, and whose interactions grew to contain “abusive and sexual interactions,” according to a 93-page wrongful-death lawsuit filed this week in a U.S. District Court in Orlando.

  • Wired ☛ Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity Are Promoting Scientific Racism in Search Results

    Hermansson logged in to Google and began looking up results for the IQs of different nations. When he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI-powered Overviews tool, which, confusingly to him, was on by default. It gave him a definitive answer of 80.

    When he typed in “Sierra Leone IQ,” Google’s AI tool was even more specific: 45.07. The result for “Kenya IQ” was equally exact: 75.2.

    Hermansson immediately recognized the numbers being fed back to him. They were being taken directly from the very study he was trying to debunk, published by one of the leaders of the movement that he was working to expose.

  • Tripwire ☛ NotLockBit: Ransomware Discovery Serves As Wake-Up Call For Mac Users

    But that doesn't mean that Mac users should be complacent. And the recent discovery of a new malware strain emphasises that the threat - even if much smaller than on Windows - remains real.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ US unveils national security plan to step up use of AI | National | reformer.com

    The new National Security Memorandum, which comes a year after President Joe Biden issued an executive order on regulating AI, seeks to thread the needle between using the technology to counter its military applications by adversaries and building safeguards to uphold civil rights, officials said.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • India Times ☛ Hugging Face: Startup Hugging Face aims to cut AI costs with open source [sic] offering

      New York-based startup Hugging Face has become a central place where AI software developers share code with one another and is valued at $4.5 billion. It is a key distribution point for open-source AI technologies such as Meta Platforms' Llama.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Nation ☛ Texas Is Fighting to Access Out-of-State Abortion Medical Records

      In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Melanie Fontes Rainer has heard similar stories from many providers like Thaxton. As head of the Office for Civil Rights at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Fontes Rainer traveled all over the country to meet with healthcare providers in both banned and legal states. They share anxiety over the threat of their patients’ medical information being disclosed without permission, and used to potentially punish them down the line. Providers in legal states tell her they are already seeing requests for patient records from out-of-state officials.

    • New York Times ☛ Two Students Created Face Recognition Glasses. It Wasn’t Hard.

      A Boston man had a strange encounter at a subway station. A month later, he discovered he was the star of the students’ viral video.

    • Nick Heer ☛ The Global Surveillance Free-for-All in Mobile Ad Data

      This industry is still massive and thriving. It is still embedded in applications on many of our phones, by way of third-party SDKs for analytics, advertising, location services, and more. And it is deranged that the one government that can actually do something about this — the United States — is doing so one company and one case at a time. Every country should be making it illegal to do what Babel Street is capable of. But perhaps it is too rich a source.

    • NPR ☛ Apple and Goldman Sachs ordered to pay $89 million over Apple Card failures

      When it launched, Apple Card represented a new push into consumer lending for both the tech behemoth and the Wall Street giant. But the CFPB describes a rush to launch the card despite an array of problems that ultimately hurt users.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ When Donald Trump cites history, we need to watch out

    Perhaps nothing, however, says historical ignorance so much as Trump’s recent comment on Fox News — not his first such remark — that Abraham Lincoln should have cut a deal with the South to prevent the Civil War. “Why wasn’t that settled?” he said on Fox & Friends, prompting a rare pushback from a host, who noted that Southern states had seceded before Lincoln took office.

  • Defence Web ☛ As Somali troops expand control, al-Shabaab increases IED attacks

    Since 2014, IEDs planted by al-Shabaab have killed or injured more than 14 000 people, 61% of them civilians, according to Action on Armed Violence. Based in the United Kingdom, the group tracks armed violence against civilians around the world.

    Over the last year alone, IEDs have killed or injured 1 500 Somalis, most of them civilians.

  • El País ☛ Frank Luntz: ‘Trump is saying stuff that is absolutely extreme and it’s not hurting him at all’

    In the final stretch to the elections, Luntz warns that the situation is alarming: “We don’t trust our electoral system, our institutions, or our leaders. As a result, “our entire process, everything we’ve known about politics, is not true anymore.” A candidate like Republican Donald Trump, who lies systematically, is not only unscathed by his behavior but could also emerge victorious on November 5. Luntz cites a poll indicating that 25% of Republicans believe Trump “should do everything he can to assume his rightful position as president.”

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Hostile skies: the Russian army deliberately targets civilian targets with FPV drones

    The use of drones has become a widely recognized part of the war in Ukraine. This is especially true regarding those with first-person view (FPV), which have been responsible for numerous Russian attacks across the front line in recent weeks.

  • YLE ☛ Finland permanently shuts 2 border crossings with Russia

    These temporary border points in southeast Finland have not been used for several years. Traffic was halted at the Inari post in the municipality of Lieksa in November 2021 and at Parikkala in April 2022, due to restrictions on exports of wood to Russia.

  • India Times ☛ Govt asks Meta, X to share data on hoax bomb-threat calls: sources

    Taking hoax bomb-threat messages and calls seriously, the government has started identifying those behind the menace and asked social media platforms like Meta and X to share data on such messages, sources said.

    The government has also asked top multinational technology conglomerates to cooperate with it in helping identifying those behind such hoax calls, saying this involves public good.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Planet Will Warm as Much as 3.1°C Under Current Policies: UN Report

    The report found that failing to increase the ambition of new NDCs and immediately starting to deliver on them would place the planet on a course for an increase in temperature from 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius this century, bringing debilitating impacts to people, the environment and economies.

    “The 2.6°C scenario is based on the full implementation of current unconditional and conditional NDCs. Implementing only current unconditional NDCs would lead to 2.8°C of warming. Continuing with current policies only would lead to 3.1°C of warming,” UNEP said in the press release. “Adding additional net-zero pledges to full implementation of unconditional and conditional NDCs could limit global warming to 1.9°C, but there is currently low confidence in the implementation of these net-zero pledges.”

  • Michigan Advance ☛ We’ve lost our shared reality. That can have deadly consequences.

    When I was growing up in the ‘80s, I recall hearing about soap opera fans so invested in their “stories” that they believed characters were real people — so much so that they’d accost actors on the street about the affairs or betrayals they committed on air.

    It seemed utterly absurd to me as a kid that people could have such a tenuous grip on reality. But now as a journalist covering my seventh presidential election, that scenario seems rather quaint.

    Social media, deepfakes and artificial intelligence make it easier than ever for us to construct our own reality — or at least wallow in someone else’s version of it. It’s also never been easier to connect with others who have fringe views — and even though many of those accounts are bots, they inject these ideas into the mainstream.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] ‘Kindness’ Influencers on TikTok Give Money to Strangers. Why Is That Controversial? [Ed: TikTok itself is the real problem]

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] 8 TikTok Privacy Features Everyone Should Enable [Ed: Privacy in TikTok is not possible, so this is misleading nonsense]

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Westland greenhouse grower fined for breaking labor law with Ukrainian migrant workers

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Ukraine updates: Seoul considers sending weapons to Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Evangelicals Emerge as a Potent Lobby for US Support of Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Putin Warns of Middle East Conflagration and Debates Ukraine at BRICS

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] UN Chief Calls for Peace in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan

    • TruthOut ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] As Ukraine War Reaches Violent New Heights, US Boosts Weapons Production

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Germany summons North Korea diplomat over Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] US Govt Wants Half of Its $20 Billion Loan to Ukraine to Be Military Aid

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Ukraine Needs More Than Rival Elite Projects

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Ukraine's Prosecutor General Resigns Amid Draft-Dodging Scandal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] US, G7 Allies 'Very Close' to Finalizing $50 Billion Ukraine Loan, Yellen Says

    • CBC ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] U.S. says North Korea sending troops to Ukraine would be 'dangerous'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Ukraine updates: Pentagon head in Kyiv ahead of US election

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Britain to Pay $2.9 Billion Into G7 Loan for Ukraine to Buy Weapons

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] US Consults Allies About North Korea Troops in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Zelenskiy Says US Preparing Aid Package to Finance Production of Ukrainian Drones

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] France Warns That North Korean Troops Fighting in Ukraine Would Be an Escalation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] G7 Defence Ministers Back Ukraine's 'Irreversible Path' to NATO Membership

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Ukraine Says North Korean Troop Involvement Is 'Huge' Escalation Risk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Ukraine’s ‘Victory Plan’ Receives Mixed Reactions From Western Allies

    • CPJ ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Bomb threats target institutions across Ukraine, blame 3 RFE/RL journalists

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Germany: Biden in Berlin for Ukraine, Middle East talks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] South Korea says North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Biden Says Western Allies Must Keep Aiding Ukraine as He Meets European Partners Before Election

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Biden Urges West to Sustain Ukraine Support as U.S. Election Looms

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Canada to Give C$65 Million in Military Aid to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Ukraine Not Considering Nuclear Arms, Top Official Yermak Says

    • Meduza ☛ Russia makes key gains on seven fronts as Ukraine suffers its hardest week on the battlefield this year — Meduza

    • CBC ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Staffing at Canada's embassy in Moscow falls to 'bare bones' level

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Russia Amplified Hurricane Disinformation to Drive Americans Apart, Researchers Find

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Moldovan Police Say Pro-Russian Tycoon Shor Channelled $39 Million to Bribe Voters

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Putin Presides Over BRICS Summit Seeking to Expand Russia's Clout

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Russia Detains Former, Current Deputy Energy Ministers in Fraud Probe, Media Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Russia Making Swift Advance Into East Ukrainian Town of Selydove, Russian Media Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Russian Lawmakers Ratify Pact With North Korea as US Confirms That Pyongyang Sent Troops to Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill Four in Ukraine's East

    • Slashdot ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Germany: Russian charged over killing of Ukrainian soldiers

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Ukraine updates: Seoul says 3,000 N. Korean troops in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Bad Actors: Russia, Iran Want to Influence U.S. Election

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Efforts by Russia, Iran and China to Sway US Voters May Escalate, New Microsoft Report Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Exclusive-Plane Downed in Darfur With Suspected Russian Crew Was Supplying Army, Rivals Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Finland Warns of Hostile Activities by Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Officials Say North Korea Has Sent Troops to Russia. What Would That Mean for the War With Ukraine?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] US Assesses at Least 3,000 North Korean Soldiers Being Trained in Russia, US Official Says

    • LWN ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Moscow’s African Gambit: How Russia is Challenging Western Powers on the Continent

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Russia's Putin hosts leaders of India, China at BRICS summit

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russian attacks kill 3, including child

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny's Posthumous Memoir Is a Testament to Resilience

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Russia Is Behind Viral Disinformation Targeting Walz, Intelligence Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Ukraine Blasts U.N.'s Guterres Over Invitation to BRICS Summit in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Ukraine Drone Attack Damages Distilleries in Russia's Tula Region, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Biden Heaps Praise on Slovenia PM for Aiding Release of Americans in Major US-Russia Prisoner Swap

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Finland's President: North Korean Troops in Ukraine Would Signal Russian Despair

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Poland to Close Russian Consulate in Poznan, Citing Alleged Sabotage Attempts

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] South Africa Sees Russia as a Valued Ally, Ramaphosa Tells Putin

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Xi Tells Putin the World Is in Chaos but Friendship With Russia Will Endure

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Yellen Says US to Unveil New Sanctions on Russian

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Ray McGovern Takes USC Class to School on Russia/Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Russia Investigates the Claimed Shoot-Down of a Cargo Jet in Sudan's Darfur Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill Three in Zaporizhzhia, Three in Donetsk Region, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Shadow of Ukraine War Hangs Over Putin's BRICS Summit in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Ukraine Foreign Minister Calls for Support to Stop Russian Strikes on Its Black Sea Ports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] US Unveils New Rules to Block China, Russia and Iran From Accessing Bulk US Data

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Ukraine updates: Drone downed over Moscow, Russia says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Moldova Votes in Election, EU Referendum in Shadow of Alleged Russian Meddling

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Ukraine Strikes Key Russian Explosives Manufacturer

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Kyiv Launches More Than 100 Drones Over Russia as a Missile Strike on Ukraine Injures 17

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Russian Forces Storming Town in Eastern Ukraine, Bloggers Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Russian Missile Strikes Injure 17 in Central Ukrainian City

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Ukraine Says It Struck Russian Military Airfield, Explosives Factory

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Moldova's EU referendum beset by alleged Russian meddling

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Russia's war in Ukraine: What is extent of North Korea's involvement?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Pentagon Chief Says Cannot Confirm Reports North Korean Troops in Russia for Possible Ukraine Deployment

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] France Vows Support for Ukraine's Plan to End Russian Invasion

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Iran Hosts Joint Naval Drills With Russia and Oman in Indian Ocean, State Media Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Video Published by Ukraine Allegedly Shows North Korean Soldiers in Russia

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Amid Russian interference, Moldova referendum paves the way towards the EU

    • CBC ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] North Korea is sending troops to Russia, South Korea's intelligence agencies believe

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Ukraine updates: Dozens freed in prisoner swap with Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Risky Russian and Ukrainian Business Dealings Dwindle With Cypriot Banks That Adhere to Sanctions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Togo Suspends Russia's Ride-Hailing App Yango

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Right-Wing Influencers Hyped Anti-Ukraine Videos Made by a TV Producer Also Funded by Russian Media

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] China's President Xi to Attend BRICS Summit in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Residents Flee Ukraine's Kupiansk as Russia Presses Down on Northeast Hub

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Russia Flaunts Its Many Doomsday Weapons to Keep the West From Ramping up Support for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Russia Returns 500 Dead Soldiers to Ukraine as World Leaders Mull Next Steps

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Missiles Roll Across Northwest Russia in Test of Nuclear Unit

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] South Korean Intelligence Says North Has Sent Troops to Aid Russia's War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] North Korean Troops in Russia Readying for Combat in Ukraine War, S.Korea Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Switzerland Defends Decision to Omit Subsidiaries From Russian Sanctions

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-17 [Older] Kurov documentary traces Russian crackdown on free speech

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Amateur Historian Discovers Lost Story by 'Dracula' Author Bram Stoker Hiding in Plain Sight at a Dublin Library | Smithsonian

    Brian Cleary, a longtime fan of Stoker, was browsing the library’s archives last year when he noticed an 1891 advertisement in the Dublin Daily Express. The ad referenced a previously published story by Stoker, leading Cleary to an issue that had been printed a few weeks earlier, on December 17, 1890, which contained “Gibbet Hill” in full.

    “I was just gobsmacked,” Cleary tells the New York Times’ Sarah Lyall. “I went and checked all the bibliographies, and it was nowhere. I wanted to turn around and shout, ‘Guess what I found?’ but there were proper researchers and academics there, and I was just an amateur.”

  • New York Times ☛ A Fan Discovers a New Story by Bram Stoker, the Author of ‘Dracula’

    Indeed, the story wasn’t included in Stoker’s archival papers, and was unknown to scholars, said Audrey Whitty, the director of the national library. While it isn’t unusual for something unexpected to turn up in the library’s archives — a collection of 12 million items — Cleary’s discovery stands out for the way he made it, she said.

  • Manton Reece ☛ Contrasting headlines on AI

    Interesting contrast today in how two newspapers have covered the same story. I cancelled my NYT subscription this year, but I happen to see the news item pop up in my timeline.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic: What the fast-warming region tells us about the future

    Researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been crisscrossing the Alaskan tundra for the past 12 years, collecting data as part of the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments in the Arctic project, or NGEE Arctic. They're tracking rapid changes across the treeless tundra landscape as the climate warms.

    NGEE Arctic field observations are fed into a massive computer model of the Earth created by DOE scientists to predict the future climate. These predictions can help inform decisionmakers as they make choices for their communities.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Algorithm uses satellite data for mapping fire-affected areas on a global scale

    Aitor Bastarrika of the UPV/EHU's Built Heritage Research Group, is proposing an algorithm to achieve the global mapping of burnt areas with a higher resolution. The study is published in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

    Obtaining accurate, up-to-date information from fire-affected areas is essential not only to better understand air quality, biogeochemical cycles or climate, but also to contribute toward fire management.

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Global warming worsening deadly flooding in Africa, warn scientists – The Zambian Observer

    The World Weather Attribution (WWA) network said on Wednesday that human-driven climate change, caused by the use of fossil fuels, had made seasonal downpours across the Niger and Lake Chad basins 5-20 percent worse this year, unleashing a humanitarian catastrophe.

    “These results are incredibly concerning,” said Izidine Pinto, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and one of the study’s authors.

  • DeSmog ☛ Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink, Experts Warn

    A new study suggests that industrial fishing is also threatening the sea’s capacity to absorb carbon, by disrupting a process known as the ‘biological carbon pump’, which sees carbon sequestered as dead marine animals drop to the bottom of the ocean.

    Estimates suggest humans catch between one and two trillion fish every year. This is adding stress to habitats already endangered by warming oceans, which are estimated to help feed over three billion people, and to be home to more than 700,000 different species.

  • The Register UK ☛ Boffins slam FCC for dodging satellite environmental reviews

    The letter [PDF] notes that the FCC was advised in November 2022 by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to rethink its environmental review process for satellite swarms. The comms watchdog has been approving applications to launch satellite mega-constellations without considering requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, the GAO found.

    "The environmental harms of launching and burning up so many satellites aren’t clear," the astronomy researchers argue. "That’s because the federal government hasn’t conducted an environmental review to understand the impacts."

  • PIRG ☛ Letter to: Dear FCC Space Bureau Chief Julie Kearney,

    The environmental harms of launching and burning up so many satellites aren’t clear. That’s because the federal government hasn’t conducted an environmental review to understand the impacts. What we do know is that more satellites and more launches lead to more damaging gasses and metals in our atmosphere. We shouldn’t rush forward with launching satellites at this scale without making sure the benefits justify the potential consequences of these new mega-constellations being launched, and then re-entering our atmosphere to burn up and or create debris This is a new frontier, and we should save ourselves a lot of trouble by makingsure we move forward in a way that doesn’t cause major problems for our future.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Aviation24.be ☛ SAS announces direct flights to Greenland's capital Nuuk for Summer 2025, expanding Arctic travel options

      The route is pending final governmental approval.

    • The Register UK ☛ Ford CEO admits to driving a Chinese EV

      Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, has made a surprising confession - he has been driving a Chinese-made electric vehicle, and he loves it.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Bluesky now owned by crypto-grifters

      If you are hitching your wagon to Blew Sky, you are a god damned idiot who has learned nothing. Nothing.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Vox ☛ COP16 UN Biodiversity negotiations: Why the US won’t join this key treaty to save nature

      That’s what makes this so surprising: The US is the only nation in the world, other than the Vatican, that hasn’t joined the most important global treaty to conserve nature. The treaty, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), isn’t just some inconsequential agreement. The Convention is designed to safeguard Earth’s life support systems, its animals and ecosystems — a mission that requires global cooperation.

    • EcoWatch ☛ Salmon Spotted Far Upstream After Historic Klamath River Dam Removal

      Since the dams were dismantled, scientists from Tribes, conservation organizations and state and federal governments have been watching for fish swimming by the former dam sites using video stations, sonar cameras and ground crews.

      California state biologists have seen salmon swimming in creeks that had been blocked by the dams decades earlier, preventing the fish from accessing their ancestral spawning grounds, the Los Angeles Times reported.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • US News And World Report ☛ Missouri to Probe Google Over Allegations of Censoring Conservative Speech

    Republicans have long claimed an anti-conservative bias on social media platforms. Tech firms have denied their platforms censor conservative voices.

    Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Alabama given high marks for computer science education

    In a 2023 report from the Code.org Advocacy Coalition — a group that includes Meta, Amazon and Microsoft — and the Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance and the Computer Science Teachers Association, Alabama had achieved nine of the 10 policies, lacking only the graduation requirement. The policies aim to improve access to computer science courses.

    Hannah Weissman, Senior Director of Policy at Code.org, in response to emailed questions, wrote that the Coalition advocates for and develops networks across states.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia rolls out Hindi-language AI model in India as CEO Huang visits

    Nvidia is rolling out its new small language model, dubbed Nemotron-4-Mini-Hindi-4B, with 4 billion parameters, for firms to use in developing their own AI models, the company said. "The model was pruned, distilled and trained with a combination of real-world Hindi data, synthetic Hindi data and an equal amount of English data," it said in a statement.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gets rock star treatment from India's tech enthusiasts

    The reception Huang received in India's commercial capital Mumbai was reminiscent of the "Jensanity" seen in other parts of the world, especially Taiwan, as his popularity climbs with Nvidia's soaring earnings and multi-trillion dollar market valuation.

    The event, where the U.S. company unveiled plans to supply Reliance Industries and other Indian firms with its AI chips, had to be delayed for more than half an hour due to the crowd that one Nvidia employee said was "easily a few thousand".

  • India Times ☛ How Intel got left behind in the AI chip boom

    Some Intel executives believed that the underlying design of graphics chips could eventually take on important new jobs in data centers, an approach that would eventually dominate AI systems. But the board resisted, according to two people familiar with the boardroom discussion who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was confidential. Intel had a poor record of absorbing companies. And the deal would have been by far Intel's most expensive acquisition.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Zambia Marks 60th Independence Anniversary with Unity and Patriotism

    In the capital, Lusaka, the commemoration began with the laying of wreaths at the Freedom Statue, a powerful symbol of the sacrifices made to achieve Zambia’s independence. A similar ceremony took place at Embassy Park, where wreaths were laid to honor the memory of the country’s late Presidents.

    The Lusaka Showgrounds hosted another significant part of the celebrations, where distinguished citizens from across Zambia were recognized for their gallantry, patriotism, and contributions to the nation’s progress.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Zambia celebrates 60th independence anniversary with enhanced ties to Korea

    The Embassy of Zambia in Seoul celebrated the country’s 60th Independence Anniversary at an event in Seoul, Wednesday, highlighting the African country's rich history, enduring partnerships, and promising future.

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Data Use and Access Bill will fail to protect public from AI harms

    The Data Use and Access Bill will fail to protect the public from harmful uses of artificial intelligence, say digital rights campaigners, Open Rights Group. The Bill, published today, rehashes many of the provisions in the previous government’s controversial Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which was ditched in wash-up prior to the General Election.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ AI national security memo aims to avoid U.S. ‘squandering’ its lead

    Specifically, the memo details more responsibilities for the Department of Commerce’s AI Safety Institute, directs agencies to evaluate models for risks and identify areas in which the AI supply chain could be disrupted, outlines actions to streamline acquisition of AI used for national security, and defines new governance practices for federal agencies through a new framework.

    In remarks on the memo delivered Thursday at National Defense University, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan highlighted the potential AI has for the country’s national security advantage but spoke in dire terms about taking action.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New Yorker ☛ Can We Spot Foreign Meddling in Our Elections?

      A group of intelligence officials confers about when to alert the public to foreign meddling.

    • Meduza ☛ Kremlin tells propagandists to promote anti-dollar BRICS payment system and push U.S. election conspiracy theories in latest media guidelines

      As leaders from member states of the BRICS bloc convened for a summit in the Russian city of Kazan this week, Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to paint Russia as the leader of an emerging new world order. Meduza has obtained a copy of the Kremlin’s instructions for how the country’s state-funded and pro-government media should cover the event. In addition to its talking points on the BRICS forum, the guidelines tell propagandists to frame Russians’ purchasing patterns as a sign that Western sanctions are failing. It also calls for the media to promote the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government plans to engage in widespread election fraud to ensure Kamala Harris is elected in November.

    • VOA News ☛ Fewer Americans trust the news; the question is why

      The same polls show that only one-third of Americans believes the country’s media report the news objectively. And a September Gallup poll reveals that Americans’ overall trust in mass media has declined to an all-time low of 32%.

      Much of the narrative around declining faith in media has been shaped by political partisanship. The last time that America saw such low levels of media confidence was in 2016, when Donald Trump amplified longstanding conservative complaints about liberal media bias by attacking critical coverage of his presidential campaign as “fake news.”

    • New York Times ☛ As Election Looms, Disinformation ‘Has Never Been Worse’

      A torrent of falsehoods, from home and abroad, have undermined what was once a shared faith in the honesty of America’s democracy.

    • Jacky Alciné ☛ An Erosion of my trust in the Web

      I've deactivated my accounts on more platforms today. I looked at the amount of time I spend on all of these platforms and it doesn't seem to matter if they're open or closed; I still burn so much time that doesn't allow me to justify it. When I was looking for work, it filled up the space that I might have spent wondering how I might have wasted the last four years of my life[1]. That means I've been doing a lot of journaling and thinking — including developing thoughts about the "open social Web".

      This choice was indirectly prompted as I was watching a talk from XOXO 2024 about the need to heal the networks we exist on. I appreciate the forms of optimism that came up during this talk — the excerpt from the letter really got to me. I'd love to see these networks flourish, these spaces grow.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ A woman, blogging: this is a political act

    In Women and Power, Mary Beard traces back the long Western tradition of silencing women to ancient Greece. Our voices are deemed suitable for service — used for AI systems and customer service recordings — not for ideas. When I was younger, I used to half-joke, half-complain that my voice seemed to be a frequency that’s easy to ignore; now I suspect most women have noticed their contributions going unheard. Like Cassandra, we are unpeopled when we can assert no influence in the world.

  • Michigan News ☛ University of Michigan grad hopes ads on porn sites will deter Trump voters

    Nowinski has formed a political action group aimed at those men. His political advertisements found on adult websites warn of Project 2025’s call to ban pornography and connect Trump to the effort.

    The 10-second advertisement reads: “Trump’s Project 2025 will ban porn. Enjoy while you can.” Nowinski hopes this reaches a certain type of Trump voter willing to break off over certain policies.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Cambodian journalist thanks supporters after release on bail

    The reporter, who is known for coverage that exposes corruption and human rights trafficking, had been in pretrial detention since September 30.

  • Press Gazette ☛ British Journalism Awards shortlist 2024: All the finalists

    Press Gazette is honoured to announce the winners for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

    This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

    The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

  • CPJ ☛ Apple removes US-funded news app from its Russia store

    Apple informed RFE/RL in a letter that it had removed the app of Current Time TV, a Russian-language digital network operated by RFE/RL, because it contained content deemed illegal in Russia and included materials from an organization classified as “undesirable” by Russian authorities, RFE/RL reported on October 18.

    In an October 22 post on X, RFE/RL said Apple’s compliance with the Russian government’s request was “part of a trend to deny people in authoritarian countries access to uncensored information.”

  • NPR ☛ 'Los Angeles Times' editor resigns after newspaper withholds presidential endorsement

    The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a journalism trade publication reported Wednesday.

  • CJR ☛ Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after owner blocks presidential endorsement - Columbia Journalism Review

    “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

    On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper’s editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper’s editor.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EFF ☛ Disability Rights Are Technology Rights

    Assistive technologies are a crucial aspect of living a full and fulfilling life, which gives people with disabilities motivation to be some of the most skilled, ardent, and consequential technology users in the world. There’s a whole world of high-tech assistive tools and devices out there, with disabled technologists and users intimately involved in the design process. 

    The accessibility movement’s slogan, “Nothing about us without us,” has its origins in the first stirrings of European democratic sentiment in sixteenth (!) century and it expresses a critical truth: no one can ever know your needs as well you do. Unless you get a say in how things work, they’ll never work right.

    So it’s great to see people with disabilities involved in the design of assistive tech, but that’s where self-determination should start, not end. Every person is different, and the needs of people with disabilities are especially idiosyncratic and fine-grained. Everyone deserves and needs the ability to modify, improve, and reconfigure the assistive technologies they rely on.

  • The Nation ☛ Women Are Leading the Resistance Against Executions in Iran

    Iran’s executions not only constitute outrageous human rights violations but also function as a form of collective punishment, systematically targeting generations of Iranians who have transgressed authoritarianism by fighting for social change. The repression is so lethal that it is now common knowledge among diverse marginalized communities within Iran, as well as abolitionists around the world, that Iran weaponizes the death penalty to suppress speech. This growing awareness presents an opening for the international community to demand that Iran abolish the death penalty, and that countries throughout the world cease all forms of dehumanization, whether manifested in the United States’ own grim record of executions or the US foreign policy of aiding the genocide of Palestinians.

  • The Local SE ☛ Man sues Swedish state after he was falsely declared dead

    At first, Ravelin thought his son had accidentally locked his BankID app on his phone, but in reality, it was much worse. He was dead, at least in the eyes of the Swedish authorities.

    "I was trying to Swish a payment, but my BankID wasn't working, it said it was blocked," he told the TT newswire. "When I tried to log into my bank it said I was dead."

    Ravelin was only officially dead for a week, but it took six weeks for him to regain access to his own finances again after the incident.

  • The Walrus ☛ Your Doctor Won’t See You Now—or Ever Again | The Walrus

    Fox thinks she might be able to find a doctor in Sylvan Lake or Olds, both about an hour away. But that’s not so simple either. “That’s a long drive, and being a single mom on a low income, it’s a struggle,” she says. “Sometimes we’ve got to move our appointments because I don’t have gas money.”

    Fox has tried virtual options but doesn’t feel they offer the same quality of interaction as in-person visits do, especially for her neurodiverse kids. Instead, she relies on pharmacists. (She paid one $45 recently to test her kid for strep throat.) Or the hospital. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” she says, “if it’s the littlest thing, I take them to emerg.” Wait times are long, but what else can she do?

    “We,” she says, “are not getting the care we need.”

  • International Business Times ☛ 'Why Are You Driving For Uber?': 43-Year-Old With 5 Degrees And MBA Can't Get Job Despite Over 2000 Applications

    According to Business Insider, Cash has meticulously tracked his efforts since the start of his job hunt. His spreadsheet reveals that in January alone, he applied for 254 jobs, with another 129 applications submitted in May, and 41 more in August. Despite his qualifications and years of experience, rejection has been a constant. His passengers on Uber rides often express shock when they learn about his situation, with many struggling to understand how someone with his credentials remains unemployed. "I never thought I'd still be looking for full-time employment a year later," Cash admits. His clients are often baffled at the idea that someone so well-educated and experienced is stuck in such a predicament.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

    A paradox: in 1970, everyday Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average American house cost 5.9x the average American income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs…5.9x the average American income.

    Feels like a puzzler, right? Can it really be true that the average American house is as affordable to the average American earner as it was in 1970? It is true, as you can see from Blair Fix's latest open access research report, "The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage": [...]

  • JURIST ☛ EU Parliament awards Sakharov Prize to Venezuelan opposition leaders

    The European Parliament awarded the 2024 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Venezuelan opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia on Thursday. The award was given in recognition of their efforts to restore democracy and freedom in Venezuela amidst ongoing political repression under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.

  • VOA News ☛ Venezuelan opposition figures win EU's top rights Sakharov prize

    Machado, 57, played a key role in Venezuela's presidential election in July. Although the authorities proclaimed Maduro the winner, the opposition believes its candidate Gonzalez Urrutia won.

    Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain in September.

    European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola said the two figures represented "all Venezuelans inside and outside the country fighting to restore freedom and democracy", as she announced the award in the parliament in Strasbourg, France.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Indonesia's Cross-Border Submarine Cable Dilemma: Should it be Landed or Not?

    Discrepancy of views regarding cross-border submarine cables are still a long and unresolved discussion. Take for example the Australia-Asia Powerlink (AAPowerLink) project initiated by SunCable, which was once in the spotlight because of its great ambition to build a large-scale solar power plant in Northern Australia and send the electricity generated to Singapore via submarine cables. This project promises a significant supply of clean energy for both countries and the Southeast Asian region.

    One of the most interesting aspects of this project is the planned submarine cable route. This cable will cross the Timor Sea and pass through Indonesian waters. This requires Indonesia to make further considerations, especially regarding the opportunities and strategic implications of this project.

  • RIPE ☛ Defining the RIPE Compact

    Now that we have begun the process of reviewing the RIPE Compact, it’s time for the community to share its thoughts on the nature of the challenges facing the RIPE NCC and what its mission should be.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Here’s How a GOP Senate Win Could Impact Broadband Regulation

    If Republicans gain a majority in the Senate without winning the White House, however, they may not be able to roll back actions taken by agencies, said Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In such a scenario, Senate Republicans are more likely to increase scrutiny over regulatory agencies, notes Roll Call.

    Cruz has opposed a measure to restore spectrum auction authority to the FCC. Cruz said Senate Democrats have sought to use auction proceeds to fund the Biden Administration’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which subsidized broadband deployment to low-income households.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Inks Deal with UnitedMasters — Bypassing Merlin

    After stating it would not renew its current agreement with independent collective Merlin, TikTok has forged forward with a direct deal with UnitedMasters—a Merlin member.

    The multi-year agreement will provide TikTok with UnitedMasters’ full, expansive catalog of music while providing additional commercial opportunities for UnitedMasters artists through TikTok’s Commercial Music Library.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ UK watchdog probes Alphabet's deal with Anthropic

  Britain's antitrust watchdog launched a probe on Thursday into Google parent Alphabet's partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.

• Open Web Advocacy ☛ It's time for a fairer, more competitive app ecosystem - Open Web Advocacy

  The Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to restore contestability, interoperability, choice, and fairness to digital markets within the EU. These fundamental principles of a well-functioning digital market have been compromised by the excessive power gatekeepers exert through their control of "core platform services."

  The lack of competition in mobile ecosystems is fundamentally structural. Gatekeepers wield immense power due to the security model upon which these devices are built. Traditionally, on operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux, users can install any application they choose without interaction from the operating system gatekeeper, either by the business or the end user. Users can then grant these programs the necessary permissions to perform their desired functions.

• The Register UK ☛ Top EU court overturns Intel's billion-dollar antitrust fine

  Intel has a spot of good news for a change. The EU Court of Justice has upheld an earlier ruling that canceled a €1.06 billion ($1.1 billion) fine against the chipmaker imposed in 2009 for anti-competitive practices.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ nHentai Fights Back in Piracy Lawsuit: 'Rightsholder Gave Permission'

    A copyright lawsuit between popular adult site nHentai and the Californian company PCR Distributing has taken an interesting turn. Nhentai requested a protective order, in which it argues that PCR granted written permission to use its content. The rightsholder also contemplated running ads on the site, nHentai says.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ CreativeFuture Celebrates Kim Dotcom's Extradition Via Interactive Quiz

    Authorities in New Zealand recently confirmed that Kim Dotcom will be extradited to the United States to face a criminal prosecution in connection with Megaupload, the file-hosting site he founded. In the United States, the 500 companies and 300,000 members of anti-piracy coalition CreativeFuture, are celebrating already. The extradition "of one of the internet era’s leading jackasses" takes place through the medium of an interactive quiz.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Showdown over copyright bill at constitutional court

    In a further affidavit, Zeenat Sujee, attorney at Section27, which is representing Blind SA, said the blind and visually impaired provisions in the bill do not form part of the president’s referral. “And yet their coming into force is held hostage by the referral process,” Sujee said.

    She said it was no longer open for Blind SA to pursue an order directing the president to sign the bill within 10 days of the court’s order and that had been abandoned.

  • India Times ☛ openai: Former OpenAI researcher says the company broke copyright law

    Suchir Balaji spent nearly four years as an artificial intelligence researcher at OpenAI. Among other projects, he helped gather and organize the enormous amounts of [Internet] data the company used to build its online chatbot, ChatGPT.

    At the time, he did not carefully consider whether the company had a legal right to build its products in this way. He assumed the San Francisco startup was free to use any [Internet] data, whether it was copyrighted or not.