Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-16 [Older] Surrealism movement turns 100

• Robert Birming ☛ The Importance of Practical Experience

  Don't overthink it. Just get it out there!

• Matthew Rocklin ☛ Venting and Constructive Communication

  Constructive conversation and venting are mostly distinguished by asking ourselves

  “Will these words help me achieve my goal?”

  If the answer is “no” then we’re probably venting. This post explores and tries to name this universal experience.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] The Terminator at 40: this sci-fi ‘B-movie’ still shapes how we view the threat of AI [Ed: And once again this 'AI' canard - a generic new brand for 'tech']

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] ‘Cosmic inflation’: did the early cosmos balloon in size? A mirror universe going backwards in time may be a simpler explanation

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Scholarly Publishing: The Elephant (And Other Wildlife) In The Room

    When we think of accessing a piece of new research, how should we treat it: a commodity, a good, or a service to the world?

    When a resource is available in an infinite amount, enough for all, we don’t see any restrictions on accessing it unless it is packaged as a good or a service. And to access it, we pay a price to the entity who owns it, maintains it, or packages it. It is estimated that more than five million pieces of research are published in different forms every year—this is roughly 1 piece every 6 seconds. Despite such a staggering production rate and sheer volume, we often need to pay to access research results, both old and new.

  • New York Times ☛ That 800-Year-Old Corpse in the Well? Early Biological Warfare.

    This early biological warfare is recorded in “Sverris Saga,” a contemporaneous biography of the king, who reigned over much of Norway from 1184 to 1202. Scholars have long debated the chronicle’s reliability as a historical document, but a study published Friday in the journal iScience recounts how researchers unearthed the body of the “Well Man” and, with the help of ancient DNA, have provided fresh details about who he was.

    “This is the first time that the remains of a person or character described in a Norse saga has been positively identified,” said Michael D. Martin, an evolutionary genomicist at the museum of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “It is also the oldest case in which we have retrieved the complete genome sequence from a specific person mentioned in a medieval text.”

  • Cell Press ☛ Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: The case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga: iScience

    The potential of ancient DNA analyses to provide independent sources of information about events in the historical record remains to be demonstrated. Here we apply palaeogenomic analysis to human remains excavated from a medieval well at the ruins of Sverresborg Castle in central Norway. In Sverris Saga, the Old Norse saga of King Sverre Sigurdsson, one passage details a 1197-CE raid on the castle and mentions a dead man thrown into the well. Radiocarbon dating supports that these are that individual’s remains. We sequenced the Well-man’s nuclear genome to 3.4× and compared it to Scandinavian populations, revealing he was closely related to inhabitants of southern Norway. This was surprising because King Sverre’s defeated army was assumed to be recruited from parts of central Norway, whereas the raiders were from the south. The findings also indicate that the unique genetic drift seen in present-day southern Norwegians already existed 800 years ago.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Ion engines could take us to the solar gravitational lens in less than 13 years, suggests paper

    Sending an object to another star is still the stuff of science fiction. But some concrete missions could get us at least part way there. These "interstellar precursor missions" include a trip to the solar gravitational lens point at 550 AU from the sun—farther than any artificial object has ever been, including Voyager.

• Education

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] A new ‘race science’ network is linked to a history of eugenics that never fully left academia

  • Crooked Timber ☛ On the The Teach-In and its role in Academic Freedom. From Arnold Kaufman to Meena Krishnamurthy

    Now, as the quoted note suggests, and Sahlins himself also emphasizes in his essay,+ the teach-in originates with then young faculty at the University of Michigan. In some ways this feature makes it easier to show that teach-ins at student protests fall under academic freedom because it is faculty doing what they are paid to do in virtue of their expertise. This makes it easier to suggest that some student protests fall under the mission of the university to advance and educate the truth.

  • Air Force Times ☛ First-ever children’s museum on a military base gets top service award

    The Children’s Museum at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, is “a bright spot of color in a sea of khaki,” said Tanya Durand, executive director of Greentrike, the parent organization in Tacoma, at the Oct. 23 award ceremony in Arlington, Va. The museum offers far more than creative play and learning for military children and their adults, she said, providing a way for children to reconnect with their parents after deployments, and a gathering space for families.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Wayne State’s Levin Center offers Michigan high schools free civics and US history resources

    The institution is named after the late Carl Levin, a Democratic U.S. senator from Detroit who served on Capitol Hill from 1979 to 2015. He died in 2021.

    Developed with support from the state of Michigan and Michigan Department of Education, the resources bring “high-quality, inquiry-driven educational materials to high school civics and U.S. history classrooms,” according to Jim Townsend, a former state lawmaker who is currently the Carl Levin Center’s director. The free package includes six inquiry-based lessons, four video resources and four stand-alone snapshots.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Schools Without ChatGPT Plagiarism

    Both Haverford and Bryn Mawr are relatively wealthy and small, meaning students have access to office hours, therapists, a writing center, and other resources when they struggle with writing—not the case for, say, students at many state universities or parents squeezing in online classes between work shifts. Even so, money can’t substitute for culture: A spike in cheating recently led Stanford to end a century of unproctored exams, for instance. “The decisive factor” for schools in the age of ChatGPT “seems to be whether a university’s honor code is deeply woven into the fabric of campus life,” Harper writes, “or is little more than a policy slapped on a website.”

• Hardware

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Robot developers keep making it seem like housebots are imminent when they’re decades away

  • Doug Brown ☛ Hardware repair of an Elgato HD60 S that only worked on Mac

    Here’s a weird problem that I’ve never seen before, along with my eventual hardware fix. After my previous Elgato Game Capture HD60 S HDMI capture card LED repair escapades, I recently ended up trying to find another modern revision of the same device so I could dump its SPI flash chip in order to be 100% certain that the data I put into the flash for the animations was correct for the newer model. I took a chance and bought one for cheap on eBay that was sold as not working at all, but looked like it was newer based on the case style and arrangement of the back panel: [...]

  • The Hill ☛ 20 minutes to fix a broken microphone: Trump is still hiring incompetents

    But a competent presidential campaign has multiple backups for eventualities — not just for major rallies like this one, but even for minor or small gatherings.

    This is not the bush league — this is a presidential campaign in its final weeks! Why does it matter that it took almost 20 minutes to fix the broken sound system? Because it indicates that Trump’s campaign, like his four years in the White House, is amateur central.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Existential uncertainty: how it affects your mind – and what you can do about it

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] How to fix Germany's ailing health care system

  • The Local SE ☛ Whatever happened to the EU's plan to stop changing the clocks?

    This weekend sees the changing of the clocks to winter time - but the EU had actually come up with a plan to end this practice back in 2019. So what happened?

  • Wired ☛ A Neuralink Rival Says Its Eye Implant Restored Vision in Blind People

    One of these, called the Argus II, was approved for commercial use in Europe in 2011 and in the US in 2013. That implant involved larger electrodes that were placed on top of the retina. Its manufacturer, Second Sight, stopped producing the device in 2020 due to financial difficulties. Neuralink and some others, meanwhile, are aiming to bypass the eye completely and stimulate the brain’s visual cortex instead.

    Hodak says the Prima differs from other retinal implants in its ability to provide “form vision,” or the perception of shapes, patterns, and other visual elements of objects. What users see isn’t “normal” vision though. For one, they don’t see in color. Rather, they see a processed image with a yellowish tint.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Deeply-held religious infections.

    BART has around 4,000 employees, so that means that around 4.5% of their staff are absolute whackadoo religious nutjobs who should under no circumstances be allowed to interact with the public. How that ratio relates to the population as a whole, I do not know.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Scurvy return in North America and Australia blamed on rising cost of living

    But a July study found that reported cases in children in the US more than tripled between 2016 and 2020, and scurvy was also detected in Canada and Australia. Scurvy remains rare, but a new medical report attributed its comeback to a rise in weight loss surgeries and diets lacking in fruit and vegetables owing to the cost-of-living crisis.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • RTL ☛ Led by Google-parent Alphabet: Waymo ramps up robotaxi push with $5.6 bn in funding

    Waymo on Friday said it raised $5.6 billion from investors to expand a robotaxi program now operating in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.

    The investment round was led by Google-parent Alphabet, which spun the company off from a research unit and retains controlling interest, according to Waymo.

  • The Register UK ☛ Radio station in Poland courts controversy with AI hosts

    OFF Radio Krakow, an online and DAB+ subsidiary of the larger Radio Krakow station, announced this week that it was going all-in on AI, with new shows hosted by a trio of Gen Z AI talking heads, "Emi," "Kuba," and "Alex," all with their own biographies and personalities "created by journalists," according to the station.

  • Six Colors ☛ You can use Clean Up with a clear conscience

    The photographs you take are not courtroom evidence. They’re not historical documents. Well, they could be, but mostly they’re images to remember a moment or share that moment with other people. If someone rear-ended your car and you’re taking photos for the insurance company, then that is not the time to use Clean Up to get rid of people in the background, of course. Use common sense.

  • Doc Searls ☛ Personal Agentic AI

    Most of the concern here is for Gartner’s corporate clients. But also note the bottom-line noun phrase: users’ intentions. Keep that in mind when reading more Gartner jive here, here, and in other places linked to from those. One sample: [...]

  • Time ☛ Why Surgeons Are Wearing The Apple Vision Pro

    Over the last month, Horgan and other surgeons at the University of California, San Diego have performed more than 20 minimally invasive operations while wearing Apple’s mixed-reality headsets. Apple released the headsets to the public in February, and they’ve largely been a commercial flop. But practitioners in some industries, including architecture and medicine, have been testing how they might serve particular needs.

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ Marine Weather Forecasts Are Getting an AI Upgrade

    As artificial intelligence becomes more mainstream, Beatty’s company is building a new machine learning–based weather forecasting system to make shipping safer. Beatty says that most users don’t realize that existing weather apps, such as Windy and Windfinder, almost all depict the same government forecasts. But since 2017, MarineLabs has deployed more than 60 new weather buoys and sensor arrays to collect additional data about the conditions along crucial shipping routes near Vancouver and Prince Rupert, Canada’s largest West Coast ports, around major East Coast harbors, and in one test location in the United States.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Don't be duped: Here's how to spot deepfakes

    Subrahmanian, who focuses on the intersection of AI and security issues, develops machine learning-based models to analyze data, learn behavioral models from the data, forecast actions and influence outcomes. In mid-2024 he launched the Global Online Deepfake Detection System (GODDS), a new platform for detecting deepfakes, which is now available to a limited number of verified journalists.

    For those without access to GODDS, Northwestern Now has collected five pieces of advice from Subrahmanian to help you avoid getting duped by deepfakes.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NL Times ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Dutch regulator fines Vodafone €2.25 mil. for poor security in wiretapped conversations

    • The Register UK ☛ Apple opens Private Cloud Compute to public scrutiny

      Apple has revealed that the platform (PCC) runs on custom-built server hardware and runs a specially hardened operating system derived from the same code base as iOS and macOS. It's also issued a security guide to the system, and pentesters can set up a Virtual Research Environment that investigators can use to examine the platform's strengths and weaknesses.

    • Federal News Network ☛ REAL ID rule paves way for agencies to accept mobile drivers licenses

      The Transportation Security Administration is ensuring mobile drivers licenses can continue to be used at federal buildings and security checkpoints when REAL ID enforcement begins next year.

      Under a final rule published in the Federal Register today, TSA will allow individual states to apply for a temporary waiver of some REAL ID ACT requirements. Once approved, a waiver will allow state-issued mobile drivers licenses (mDLs) to continue to be accepted at TSA airport security checkpoints and federal facilities when REAL ID enforcement begins next May.

    • uni Case Western Reserve ☛ Just because you can doesn’t mean you should: Stop posting 20-picture photo dumps

      With the sheer volume of new 20-picture dumps, I feel as if the whimsiness has been sucked out of them. A 20-picture post doesn’t curate a vibe; it beats it to a pulp. I think it’s fun to be constrained just a little bit. Having to work around a set limit is challenging, and a 10-picture limit is generous enough to be constraining but not frustrating. The whole debacle reminds me of when X—then known as Twitter—doubled its character limit from 140 to 280 back in 2017; sure, you could now post longer tweets, but all of the funny ones were, and still are, going to be short. Aesthetic considerations aside, I’m sick of the longer posts clogging up my feed. To quote The New Yorker again, “I don’t have time to flip through monthly recaps of the lives of everyone I follow at once!”

• Defence/Aggression

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] With Brain Injuries a Growing Problem, the US Military Tests How to Protect Troops From Blasts

  • BIA Net ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Extra security measures at İstanbul airports following Ankara attack

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Four ways countries are strengthening women’s participation in security efforts

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] More police than border guards and soldiers protect SA borders

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] DA calls for body cameras to monitor KZN police after 107 suspects killed in one year

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] US Has Made Progress Identifying Foreign Interference in Its Elections, US Security Adviser Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] Somalia Security Cameras Aim to Cut Al Shabaab Attacks but Militants Fight Back

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Germany, UK plan closer security and defense coordination

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Perception of insecurity in Mexican cities is at its lowest in over 10 years

  • NL Times ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Dutch gov't cannot go back on promise to help Afghan security guards, Ombudsman says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] Italy Warns G7 Defence Ministers of 'Incompatible' World Visions

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-19 [Older] UK Foreign Minister Looks to Deepen Security Ties With Indonesia, South Korea

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Indonesia Ramps up Security Ahead of Prabowo's Inauguration

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] SA an “ardent voice” for the urgent reform of the UN Security Council

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] Kenya's Impeached Deputy President Says His Security Withdrawn, Safety at Risk

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-10-16 [Older] Calls for African solutions to African maritime security challenges

  • Axios ☛ Why the GOP is challenging overseas and military voting

    Why it matters: The challenges are the latest in a spate of efforts to sow doubt about the election results if former President Trump loses.

  • RTL ☛ World's richest man: Elon Musk all-in for Trump as Moscow denies secret Putin talks

    Federal law prohibits paying people to register to vote and the department's public integrity unit reportedly warned Musk's America PAC in a letter this week that the sweepstakes may be illegal.

  • Spiegel ☛ "It Already Is War!": A Vast Wave of Drugs and Violence Is Catching Germany Off Guard

    All that has shaken Europe out of its slumber and made clear that while cocaine might be in the foreground, this battle is for something much bigger: the rise of the dark power of organized criminality, referred to by German investigators by its initials. OC.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Appears to Have Realized How Badly He Screwed Up With the "Paying Voters" Thing

    Unsurprisingly, the brazen attempt to buy votes didn't sit well with officials. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro called out Musk's lottery "deeply concerning" in a tweet.

    Then the DoJ got involved, sending America PAC a stern warning on Wednesday — and judging by the lottery's abrupt ending, Musk appears to be spooked.

  • New Republic ☛ Elon Musk Sure Seems Scared After That DOJ Warning on His Dumb Lottery | The New Republic

    However, the move immediately raised legal questions, as it’s a federal crime to pay someone to register to vote, punishable by a fine of $10,000, five years in prison, or both. Experts were divided, with Musk’s plan falling into a legal gray area at best. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro called the move “deeply concerning,” and author Stephen King accused Musk of “paying to register Republicans.”

    Then the DOJ sent a warning letter to America PAC Wednesday, and there hasn’t been a giveaway since. Musk has also been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject. It would appear that the tech mogul has been scared straight by the federal government.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Reportedly Taking Orders From Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

    A former Russian intelligence official told the newspaper that during one of those chats, Putin told the billionaire not to activate his Starlink internet satellites over Taiwan as a purported "favor" to China and its president, Xi Jinping.

    Though the ask came during a period of cooperation between Russia and China, it's otherwise unclear what its motivation might have been. Given that Beijing considers the sovereign state to be part of its territory — and Xi's apparent urge to "reunify" the two countries — it certainly sounds political.

    While there's no official confirmation as to whether or not Musk acquiesced, the fact that Taiwan still does not have Starlink access seems proof enough that at very least, he hasn't turned on his satellites over the island nation for some reason.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Elon Musk has reportedly been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin

    The Journal reported that the calls covered personal topics, business and geopolitics. During the talks, Musk is believed to spoken with multiple high-ranking Russian officials. On one occasion, Putin reportedly asked Musk to avoid activating Starlink over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ US Presidential Election Faces Threat From Iranian [Attackers]

    As the US presidential election approaches, an Iranian [cracking] group known as Cotton Sandstorm is actively targeting election-related websites and media outlets in the United States, according to a recent report by Microsoft. Linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), this group has been performing reconnaissance and probing key election systems in multiple states, raising concerns of potential foreign interference.

    The report, released on Wednesday, highlights Cotton Sandstorm’s activities in several battleground states, where the group has been assessing vulnerabilities in election infrastructure.

    Additionally, in May of this year, the group scanned an unidentified U.S. media outlet, possibly aiming to uncover weaknesses that could be exploited for more direct influence operations.

  • The Washington Post ☛ China sought to [breach] Trump, Vance and campaign phones, officials say

    The Chinese effort is seen as “bipartisan” for now, two officials said, noting that there have been attempts to target the communications of President Joe Biden, too. Targeting candidates as well as leaders for espionage is standard practice by world powers, and officials said they do not consider the latest attempts to be election interference.

  • Michael Geist ☛ When Antisemitism No Longer Shocks

    As events like these attract diminishing attention, it has become increasingly clear that discrimination, safety fears, and failed leadership on university campuses no longer has the capacity to surprise. The summer encampments may be gone, but the fears of the Jewish community remains with some students concealing their identity, faculty facing security risks on campus, and events held in secret or virtually to avoid harassment. Indeed, a University of Toronto anthropology syllabus this fall stated that the class was a space free of Zionism without anyone seemingly batting an eye.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ A 'Trump economy' robs from the American people to enrich the elite

    When Trump slashed the corporate tax rate, his Council of Economic Advisers promised American workers would see at least $4,000 added to their bottom line — the old “trickle-down economics” sales pitch again.

    It didn’t work under Ronald Reagan, and it obviously didn’t happen under Trump.

    In 2018 alone, one analysis of S&P 500 companies found more than 80% of the money corporations received in tax breaks was paid out to owners of the companies, and only 20% was reinvested into the business. Surprise — the tax savings didn’t trickle down to workers or encourage economic growth.

  • Vox ☛ A pro-Donald Trump coup is less likely to succeed in 2024 than it was in 2020

    Yet, while more shenanigans are almost certainly inevitable if Trump comes up short in November, the legal landscape in 2024 is less favorable to these kinds of dirty tricks than it was in 2020. The biggest reason for that is that lawyers thrive on novelty, while courts are supposed to follow previous precedents when deciding new cases.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Norway to impose minimum age of 15 for social media

    Accusing social media companies of exploiting and manipulating young people, the government of Norway announced it is to prohibit the use of their platforms by children under 15 years old. The minimum age is currently set at 13 years old.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Norway to increase minimum age limit on social media to 15 to protect children

    The Scandinavian country already has a minimum age limit of 13 in place. Despite this, more than half of nine-year-olds, 58% of 10-year-olds and 72% of 11-year-olds are on social media, according to research by the Norwegian media authority.

    The government has pledged to introduce more safeguards to prevent children from getting around the age restrictions – including amending the Personal Data Act so that social media users must be 15 years old to agree that the platform can handle their personal data, and developing an age verification barrier for social media.

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian government-linked organization spends millions to sway US public opinion

    A recent investigation by Atlatszo, an independent Hungarian news outlet, demonstrates the level of investment Orban’s government has made in spending on its tank-tank network to build connections with conservative politicians. According to the report, Danube Institute, an Orban adjacent think tank in Budapest has paid more than $1.64 million to its foreign partners over the past three years. Danube’s payments to visiting scholars, influencers, and speakers have increased over the past three years. One 2024 contract seen by the Hungarian outlet shows a visiting lecturer Melissa Ford Maldonado, policy director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s (TPPF) task: writing a 10-page paper for $8400 “on Hungarian migration policy and lessons learned for the state of Texas”. Before joining TPPF, Maldonado worked for the White House under the Trump administration, as a fellow at the Office of American Innovation and then at the Domestic Policy Council. Currently, none of the Danube Institute fellows are registered as FARA lobbyists.

    The Institute receives most of its funding through the publicly funded Batthyány Foundation (BLA). A major part of the funding of BLA is being spent on organizations that promote Orban’s narrative such as the Center for Fundamental Rights. The investigation claims that the cooperation between the Heritage Foundation and the Hungarian government’s proxies became more active after the 2020 elections.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Will Germany's far-right AfD party be banned?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-17 [Older] Rutte, Zelenskyy stress unity among partners at NATO meeting

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-17 [Older] Will Joe Biden be the last transatlantic US president?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-17 [Older] Fact check: No, NATO presence does not breach German law

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Finland's president says NATO key to EU security, US power

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ Walmart, LCBO are the latest retailers to embrace single-use paper bags. Environmentalists are concerned

    Steve Calarco, a Walmart delivery customer in Edmonton, says he has already collected hundreds of the bags, which he puts out for recycling. Still, Calarco suggests that switching to paper bags isn't the best move for the environment.

    "Probably 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the bags that I get have got some sort of rip in them, so they're not going to be reusable," he said. "That does absolutely nothing to reduce waste."

  • The Revelator ☛ This Month in Conservation Science: ‘The Earth Is Dying, Bro’

    I started writing about conservation 20 years ago because I kept seeing so many interesting scientific papers that never seemed to make a splash beyond their initial publication.

    Little has changed. In just the past month, I’ve seen dozens of new papers that I thought deserved exposure but didn’t appear to reach a wide audience.

    That’s why I launched “This Month in Conservation Science” — to get people talking.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Tesla out here "disrupting" your groundwater with literal AI sludge.

    A stream of bright green chemicals leaked from Tesla's Palo Alto campus and flowed into a storm drain and creek, prompting a hazardous cleanup response.

  • Palo Alto, California ☛ 1501 Page Mill Road Incident Update – City of Palo Alto, CA

    In addition to cleanup, an investigation of the cause is under way. Storage of sodium hydroxide requires a City permit, which Tesla had not obtained. Staff will complete its investigation upon completion of this incident and appropriate regulatory actions will follow, including reimbursement for remediation and clean-up costs as well as potential fines.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Researchers warn against weakening Clean Air Act regulations

    A new commentary published in the American Journal of Public Health has found that power plants' use of air pollution control devices saved up to 9,100 lives and up to $100 billion in health costs in 2023. These estimates reveal the substantial health benefits that could be at stake if the next presidential administration implements policies that aim to weaken the Clean Air Act and limit the regulatory authority of the EPA.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] National security cited as B.C. drone engineer's devices seized

    • DeSmog ☛ WisdomTree Hit with $4 Million Penalty for Misleading Investors on Fossil Fuel Holdings

    • DeSmog ☛ Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025

    • DeSmog ☛ ‘Money in Exchange for Silence’: Behind Neom’s Green Image, Western Firms Cash in on Saudi Commitment to Oil

    • The Register UK ☛ EU datacenter energy consumption set to triple by 2030

      At the current rate of adoption, the consultancy estimates that European datacenter power consumption will reach 150 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2030 – up from about 62TWh today. If this actually pans out, bit barns could suck back up to five percent of the continent's electrical energy supply.

    • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ ‘I hope he gets stuck on I-35′: Traffic delays from Trump visit for podcast rile Austin residents

      So when the Associated Press reported that former President Donald Trump would be in Austin on Friday to appear on Joe Rogan‘s podcast, residents weren’t exactly thrilled about the congestion it would undoubtedly cause on the city’s streets.

      The dreaded lane closures announcement from the city of Austin came Thursday evening and warned locals of delays stretching from Southeast to West Austin from noon to 4 p.m.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] Researchers in a Lab Near Lake Erie Study How Toxic Algae Can Damage Health

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Biden Expected to Visit Amazon Rainforest in November, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] In Colombia, Amazon River's Extreme Drought Falls Hard on Indigenous Communities

• Finance

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Apple and Goldman Sachs Must Pay $89 Million for Mishandling Apple Card Transactions, CFPB Orders

  • HRW ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Oman: New Social Security Law Step in the Right Direction

  • HRW ☛ 2024-10-17 [Older] World Bank, IMF are Missing the Mark on Social Security

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-10-23 [Older] Tories Demand Answers: Why Was US Pop Singer Taylor Swift Given Taxpayer-Funded Security Reserved For British Royalty?

  • With Hasbro layoffs on horizon, R.I. leaders pitch I-195 land for toymaker’s new home

    Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks in an email Wednesday to employees promised an update on the Rhode Island-based toy and game company’s “location strategy” in the first three months of 2025, per reporting by toybook.com. The update (or lack of update) comes amid planned layoffs of fewer than 100 workers amid efforts to “resize our cost base,” according to Cocks’ email.

    It’s no secret that Rhode Island is at risk of losing its century-old fixture and one of the state’s top employers. Hasbro executives have been in talks with Massachusetts officials since at least April over a potential move across state lines into Boston, as first reported by the Boston Business Journal on Sept. 16.

    Rhode Island officials and business leaders scrambled to come up with a plan to keep Hasbro in the Ocean State, even if not in Pawtucket. And with an official countdown revealed in Cocks’ email, the pressure is mounting.

  • America Online ☛ Meta layoffs are the latest sign that constant job cuts are the new Big Tech normal

    The hashtag affixed to Andy Welfle's LinkedIn photo says it all: #sickofthisshit.

    Welfle wrote earlier this month that he was laid off from Microsoft after only nine months. He'd previously spent nine months at Cruise before being laid off.

    His dual layoffs might have been worse than what many others experienced, but Welfle is hardly alone in getting hit by what appears to be some employers' penchant for regular layoffs, particularly in Silicon Valley.

  • Intel Layoffs: An Economic Crisis in the Semiconductor Industry

    Intel plans to fire 1,300 workers in Oregon as part of cost-cutting measures. The layoffs will start on 15 November and run for two weeks, affecting four workplaces. Impacted workers would not be able to change positions inside the company. Prospects for Intel may be affected by shifts in the semiconductor business, such as new technology or more demand. Intel's capacity to bounce back from these layoffs will depend on the state of the economy. It's possible that Intel had trouble creating and producing new goods to satisfy consumer demand. Intel layoffs in Oregon demonstrate the difficulties the semiconductor industry is facing.

  • Siemens and Microsoft Focus on AI ‘Efficiency’ — Sign of Impending Layoffs? [Ed: Buzzwords as excuse for mass layoffs amid financial problems]

    Siemens and Microsoft are expanding the availability of their AI assistant for industrial applications: Siemens Industrial Copilot.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Satya Nadella’s jaw-dropping pay jump despite Microsoft's huge layoffs revealed

  • IGN ☛ Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Gets $30 Million Pay Raise Amid Year of Massive Gaming Layoffs

  • The Gamer ☛ Microsoft CEO Pay Rises 63 Percent Despite Mass Layoffs

  • EuroGamer ☛ Microsoft CEO's pay rises 63% to $79m, despite devastating year for layoffs

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-16 [Older] Why The Rock beats politicians for trust and leadership – and what would-be rulers can learn

  • FAIR ☛ Shawn Musgrave, Orion Danjuma on Vote Fraud Hoax as Voter Suppression

  • FAIR ☛ LA Times Non-Endorsement Another Sign of Our Billionaire-Dominated Politics

    The Los Angeles Times will not be making a presidential endorsement in this election, the first time the paper has stayed silent on a presidential race since 2004. But the decision not to endorse a candidate was not made by an editor. The paper’s billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, stepped in to forbid the paper from doing so.

  • Pro Publica ☛ The Business Lobby Once Fought for Immigration Reform. What Happened?

  • India Times ☛ Twitter barred them, what happened when Elon Musk brought them back?

    Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly posted on X erroneous claims about hurricanes Helene and Milton, including that the Pentagon had somehow engineered the storms. "Treason Alert," Jones wrote in one post. "America is the target," he warned in another. Greene and Jones are among a large set of users who were barred from the site for spreading misinformation, inciting violence or otherwise violating its rules -- and were reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform, then known as Twitter, two years ago.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia overtakes Apple as world's most valuable company

    Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, while that of Apple was $3.52 trillion, according to data from LSEG.

  • Futurism ☛ Boeing Is Losing a Staggering Amount of Money on Its Dismal Starliner Failure

    That's in addition to a $125 million write-off related to Starliner in the company's second fiscal quarter this year.

    The total cost of the failed commercial crew program has ballooned to around $1.85 billion, a stunning sum considering the company has been working on the spacecraft for over a decade and has yet to successfully deliver and then return astronauts to the space station.

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenAI loses another senior figure

    The departing exec is Miles Brundage who on Friday will cease working as senior advisor for AGI readiness. AGI – artificial general intelligence – is the term used to describe AI that appears to have the same cognitive abilities as a human. Like people, AGIs could theoretically learn almost anything. Preparing for the arrival of AGI is regarded as an important and responsible action, given the possibility AGIs could do better than humans in some fields.

  • The Washington Post ☛ White House national security memo asks military to increase use of AI

    The White House is directing the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to increase their adoption of artificial intelligence, expanding the Biden administration’s efforts to curb technological competition from China and other adversaries.

    The edict is part of a landmark national security memorandum published Thursday. It aims to make government agencies step up experiments and deployments of AI.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ US needs more AI investment, not just guardrails, defense experts say

    New White House AI guidance offers a solid framework for safely using the technology, but there needs to be more investment in the enabling infrastructure to better harness AI’s national security potential, Defense Department and industry leaders said this week.

    President Biden issued a first-of-its kind memorandum Thursday meant to provide guidance for national security and intelligence agencies on how to effectively and responsibly use AI to further American interests.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Moscow blames Ukraine for damage to Mariupol theater Russia bombed

      That is false.

      Ukraine used the Mariupol Theater as a bomb shelter, with the word “Children” painted in large white letters on a pavement space outdoors. Russia bombed and destroyed it on March 16, 2022, killing up to 600 Ukrainians.

      The Associated Press investigated the bombing and recreated the events of that day from the testimonies of 23 survivors.

    • Michigan News ☛ Fake Trump ads are latest twist in debate over Ann Arbor ballot proposals

      The debate over Props C and D in Ann Arbor has taken another twist as city voters have received fake Donald Trump ads in favor of the proposals.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ ‘Firehose’ of election conspiracy theories floods final days of the campaign

      Fanned by former President Donald Trump and notable allies such as tech tycoon Elon Musk, election disinformation is warping voters’ faith in the integrity of the democratic process, polls show, and setting the stage once again for potential public unrest if the Republican nominee fails to win the presidency. At the same time, federal officials are investigating ongoing Russian interference through social media and shadow disinformation campaigns.

      The “firehose” of disinformation is working as intended, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that advocates for responsible use of technology in elections.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Hill ☛ Redacted Army report reveals little about Trump campaign Arlington incident

    But the entire statement about what took place from the cemetery employee is redacted.

  • VOA News ☛ Iran's imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate sentenced to another 6 months in prison

    According to the statement, the charge was brought after Mohammadi staged a protest against the execution of another political prisoner in the women's ward of Evin Prison on Aug.6.

  • NPR ☛ Did the 'L.A. Times' and other news outlets pull punches to appease Trump?

    “One of the central media stories in the U.S. right now is the people who run big media companies making accommodations for a second Trump presidency and thinking about how to avoid antagonizing him,” Ben Smith, editor-in-chief and co-founder of the news site Semafor, tells NPR.

  • CNN ☛ CBS News rebuffs Trump’s legal threat over ‘60 Minutes’ interview

    In a blunt letter to Trump’s legal counsel, the network on Wednesday said the First Amendment “fiercely protects” the editorial judgments made by “60 Minutes,” the network’s flagship newsmagazine.

    “For that reason,” CBS said, Trump has no legal basis to sue, “and I note that you do not identify one,” the letter from CBS News senior Vice President for legal affairs Gayle C. Sproul stated. “Nor is there any legal basis for your demand that we provide you with the unedited transcript of the interview, which we decline to do.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Meduza ☛ Meduza’s wishlist We’ve told the truth about Russia for 10 years. Help us ensure that’s just the beginning.

    This month marks 10 years since Meduza’s launch. We know a decade may not seem like a long time for a media outlet — after all, some of you still read the same newspapers your grandparents did. These publications are a part of your identity and something you can always count on. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury in Russia (though we hope we will one day). For us, 10 years — all while in exile and under relentless pressure from the Kremlin — is an enormous milestone.

  • CPJ ☛ Cameroonian journalist Thierry Patrick Ondoua detained on insult charges

    “Journalist Thierry Patrick Ondoua’s troubling detention, as well as the continued imprisonment of five other journalists for their work, underscores the urgent need to reform the country’s laws to ensure journalism is not criminalized,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa Program, in New York. “Government officials should be able to respond to journalistic coverage and criticism without resorting to censorious legal proceedings. Ondoua and the other jailed journalists should be released immediately and not punished for doing their jobs.”

  • CPJ ☛ Burkina Faso confirms conscription of 3 journalists, 1 still missing

    A fourth journalist, Alain Traoré, was seized by men in masks in July and his whereabouts remain unknown.

    Thursday’s confirmation of the three journalists’ conscription came from Marcel Zongo, Director General for Human Rights at Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Justice, speaking at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the Gambian capital Banjul.

  • Jason Becker ☛ The End of Norms

    What’s really troubling is rich ownership injecting themselves into editorial decisions, demonstrating the erosion of norms extends well beyond our government and into the fourth estate.

  • CS Monitor ☛ New editor at The Christian Science Monitor

    The Christian Science Board of Directors on Thursday announced the election of Christa Case Bryant as the next editor of The Christian Science Monitor.

    The current editor, Mark Sappenfield, is stepping back from the position, having decided to extend his stay in Berlin, where he and his family have been living since August 2023. He will continue to work for the Monitor in a senior role.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Amazon Exec Says 9 Out Of 10 Workers Happy With RTO Policy, Tells Critics To Quit Since 'There Are Other Companies Around' [Ed: So about 100,000 Amazon works are unhappy? How many will quit?]

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] New Film Documents the Struggle and Triumph of Amazon Labor Union

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Walmart And Home Depot Join Amazon In Selling Tiny Homes Amidst America's High Rental Prices

  • Universal Hub ☛ Concord homeowners lose bid to keep people off a path that has been a public way since before the Revolution | Universal Hub

    The decision on the status of the northern end of Estabrook Road relies on history dating to at least 1763, when a body that no longer even exists - the Middlesex County Court of General Sessions of the Peace - first established the road. That history then continues through the 1800s, when Thoreau, naturally, helped survey the road, after which he and Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter both put to writing descriptions of trips along the classic New England country lane.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ ‘We have persevered’: Biden will apologize for Native American boarding school history

    The apology, which Biden will deliver Friday when he speaks at the Gila River Crossing School on the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, comes three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first-ever investigation into Native American Boarding Schools.

    The final boarding school report provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs for the federal government that would support a path to healing for tribal communities.

  • BBC ☛ 'We are in danger' - Spanish anti-tourism spills into winter season

    It’s well past the August holiday peak, but anger against over-tourism in Spain is spilling into the off-season, as holiday-makers continue to seek winter sun.

    On Sunday locals in the Basque city of San Sebastian plan to take to the streets under the banner: “We are in danger; degrow tourism!”

    And in November anti-tourism protesters will gather in Seville.

    Thousands turned out last Sunday in the Canary Islands, so the problem is clearly not going away.

    This year appears to have marked a watershed for attitudes to tourism in Spain and many other parts of Europe, as the post-Covid travel boom has seen the industry equal and often surpass records set before the pandemic.

    Spain is expected to receive more than 90 million foreign visitors by the end of the year. The consultancy firm Braintrust estimates that the number of arrivals will rise to 115 million by 2040, well ahead of the current world leader, France.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Hackaday ☛ Ham Radio In The Internet Age

    Even if you are relatively young, you can probably think back on what TV was like when you were a kid and then realize that TV today is completely different. Most people watch on-demand. Saturday morning cartoons are gone, and high-definition digital signals are the norm. Many of those changes are a direct result of the Internet, which, of course, changed just about everything. Ham radio is no different. The ham radio of today has only a hazy resemblance to the ham radio of the past. I should know. I’ve been a ham for 47 years.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Starlink Shuts Down Roam Customers in Zimbabwe... Harare Forced To Use Resellers Charging Much More

    Yesterday, Starlink started shutting its customers in Zimbabwe who are on the Roam Service. These are subscribers who were using Starlink kits registered in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Eswatini before Starlink got its license in Zimbabwe.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Starlink Removes Roam Service From African Countries

    Techzim is reliably told that Starlink has removed the Roam Service from African countries where its operational. Starlink has not made any announcements about the move, so it’s not yet clear why.

    Currently, attempting to sign up for the Roam service plan on the Starlink website from an African country gives off the error: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • BoingBoing ☛ DRM company Denuvo admits it can hurt game performance

    So it front-loads sales numbers with gamers in the venn diagram of "will pay", "but would rather pirate" and "day 1 acquisition"—but it evens out in three months. The financial benefit evaporates by the end of the quarter. It sounds like it's all about optimizing curves and "box office" marketing cycles at the largest publishers. If you don't have that type of meeting in your office, there seems to be no point.

  • Future US Inc ☛ Anti-piracy company Denuvo is tired of gamers saying its DRM is bad for games: "It's super hard to see, as a gamer, what is the immediate benefit"

    The biggest part of Denuvo's new PR campaign is a Discord channel for players to reach out and talk to the people behind the DRM. It's, uh, gone about as well as you might expect. The task of moderating a bunch of DRM-hating folks is too much for the server to run 24/7, so the admins are regularly closing and reopening discussion day by day.

  • Gamer Network Limited ☛ Denuvo respond to their rep for tanking games - "I'm a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I'm talking about" | Rock Paper Shotgun

    Over the past week or so, you may have caught wind of Denuvo - the makers of anti-cheat and anti-piracy software - embarking on a PR campaign of sorts, intended to combat negative public perception of their software. In case you're unfamiliar, Denuvo's wares have become infamous for allegedly sabotaging the performance of all sorts of video games, from Resident Evil: Village to Tekken 7, though accounts of the severity vary, and there is an on-going shortage of independently supplied raw data.

    Denuvo's attempts to clear the air include opening a Discord, which they say “ is a key step in fostering closer relationships with game developers, publishers, and players, offering a dynamic, real-time platform for meaningful interaction”. On Monday, Denuvo’s media team reached out to me to offer an interview with Denuvo’s product manager, Andreas Ullmann. Here’s that interview, edited for brevity.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] How your online world could change if big tech companies like Google are forced to break up

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-10-21 [Older] Monster Mash

• Threema GmbH ☛ It’s Time to Enforce the DMA

  Together with Epic Games, Proton, and various other companies, we urge the European Parliament to not let Apple’s and Google’s circumvention of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) slide.

  The European Union’s DMA, which came into force on March 7, 2024, aims to facilitate access to the online market for smaller companies and thereby foster innovation.

• Open Web Advocacy ☛ Apple implements six of OWA's DMA compliance requests - Open Web Advocacy

  TLDR: Apple has fixed 6 important issues with allowing browsers and Web Apps to compete on iOS (including allowing browser vendors to test their own browsers outside the EU) but a massive list of issues remain to be fixed in order to be in compliance with the DMA.

  Most importantly, there is no indication that Apple will allow Web Apps to run in a browser's own engine despite the news reports OR that browsers will be able to use their own engine without being forced to lose their existing customers.

  Share and join the conversation: X/Twitter, Mastodon and LinkedIn.

  Readers Note: When you see the term "EU Only" in this article it's important to recognize this as a reflection of Apple's anti-competitive practices. Such measures should ideally be implemented on a global scale, promoting fair competition for all their users in all jurisdictions.

• South Africa ☛ Fibre providers are gradually forming local monopolies

  South African internet consumers are presented with a hard time when it comes to fibre connections. In 80% of cases your neighbourhood will be run as a monopoly by one of the main Fibre Network Operators (FNOs).

  South Africa’s fibre internet market, once lauded for its progressive adoption of an Open Access model, now faces a growing issue: the increasing prevalence of localised monopolies in estates, complexes and business parks.

• Patents

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-10-18 [Older] Board of Appeal back-pedals on referral in view of "unequivocal" lack of legal basis for the description amendment requirement (T 56/21)

  • Software Patents

    • The Verge ☛ Apple wins a battle (and $250) in its smartwatch patent fight with Masimo

      Apple got a mixed victory in a patent infringement lawsuit against medical device maker Masimo. On Friday, a federal jury determined that Masimo had infringed on some Apple patents, and as part of the verdict, Apple was awarded $250 — yes, just $250 — as a statutory remedy for Masimo’s infringement.

      $250 is the statutory minimum damages for the alleged infringement and Apple had sought that figure, Bloomberg Law reports. “We’re not here for the money,” Apple attorney John Desmarais said to jurors in closing arguments, according to the publication.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-10-20 [Older] [Book Review] The Protection of Geographical Indications: Law and Practice (3rd edition)

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-10-24 [Older] [Guest post] Thou shalt not discriminate the Lego block over any other kind of product – GRUR speaks out on C-211/24

• Copyrights

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-10-22 [Older] AI could transform film visual effects. But first, the technology needs to address copyright debate [Ed: There are copyright issues because it is plagiarism disguised by buzzwords]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Warning For Russian Cinemas as Legal Streaming Revenues Skyrocket

    With almost no legal access to popular Western movies, Russian cinemas have been selling tickets to short local movies to disguise the unlicensed screening of major Hollywood movies shown during the same sitting. Depending on the direction of the wind, Moscow turns a blind eye or warns of a crackdown on pre-screening piracy, including one expected anytime now. In parallel, legal streaming platforms are enjoying huge growth as business booms.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Whistleblower Disgusted That His Job Was to Vacuum Up Copyrighted Data to Train Its Models

    The ex-staffer, a 25-year-old named Suchir Balaji, worked at OpenAI for four years before deciding to leave the AI firm due to ethical concerns. As Balaji sees it, because ChatGPT and other OpenAI products have become so heavily commercialized, OpenAI's practice of scraping online material en masse to feed its data-hungry AI models no longer satisfies the criteria of the fair use doctrine. OpenAI — which is currently facing several copyright lawsuits, including a high-profile case brought last year by the NYT — has argued the opposite.

    "If you believe what I believe," Balaji told the NYT, "you have to just leave the company."

  • Suchir Balaji ☛ When does generative AI qualify for fair use?

    While generative models rarely produce outputs that are substantially similar to any of their training inputs, the process of training a generative model involves making copies of copyrighted data. If these copies are unauthorized, this could potentially be considered copyright infringement, depending on whether or not the specific use of the model qualifies as “fair use”. Because fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, no broad statement can be made about when generative AI qualifies for fair use. Instead, I’ll provide a specific analysis for ChatGPT’s use of its training data, but the same basic template will also apply for many other generative AI products.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta inks multiyear AI content licensing deal with Reuters

    Under the contract, Meta will make Reuters content accessible to its Meta AI chatbot for consumers. The chatbot will draw on the licensed articles to provide information about news and current events. Every prompt response generated in this manner is expected to include a link to the Reuters story on which it’s based.

    The feature began rolling out in the U.S. today. According to Axios, Meta’s licensing agreement with Reuters is set to run for several years.