Leftovers

• Eric McClure ☛ Dumb People Will Shoot Me All The Same

  Either way, this will probably be my last blog post, unless something changes. I may be forced to delete the blog entirely, given how everything on this website will inevitably be weaponized against me. Besides, I no longer have any desire to talk to other people. I’d rather buy a gun.

• Bertrand Meyer ☛ Blog Archive The path wrongly taken

  There is in the world a general category of decent people, who as one of their characteristics seek out the company of other decent people. (“Elective affinities” .) These people were massively and perhaps decisively defeated yesterday.

• Science

  • Bjoern Brembs ☛ Research assessment: new panels, new luck?

    In the so-called “normal application procedure” of the DFG, research grant proposals are evaluated by a study section panel after formal peer-review. This panel then recommends the proposed projects to the main funding committee either unchanged or with a reduced budget or not at all. In times like these, when the number of eligible applications always exceeds the budget, it is not uncommon to find budget cuts even for approved applications. So when one of my own grant proposals (an extension of a previously funded grant) was evaluated recently, I wasn’t surprised to find that one of the two doctoral positions I had requested had been cut, rendering the proposed project unfeasible. This wasn’t the first time that such cuts had forced us to use the approved funds for a different project.

• Career/Education

  • Robert Birming ☛ Learning from Everyone

    Surprised that I had never thought of that, I shared the information with my colleagues. Some had worked there for over twenty years, and none had ever thought of something so obvious and helpful.

  • Martin Hähne ☛ Don't Take Advice From Bad People, Even If It Is (Seemingly) Good

    Life is incomprehensibly contextual. Still all of us find ourselves reaching for advice from time to time. It is important in those moments to recognize who you’re taking advice from.

    Why is this important: Because advice is never only advice. Listening and following or even considering advice can be a way to lend credibility and power. It allows bad people to use that gained credibility to maybe say or do some other stuff with more authority than they are due otherwise.

• Hardware

  • PC World ☛ Buying a laptop? Wait! This alternative could actually be better for you

    That’s because the mini PC can forego the costs of other elements that aren’t included: display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, battery, etc. If you already have all that stuff, or if you plan to equip your laptop with lots of external peripherals, then you’re wasting money with a laptop.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Adam Fortuna ☛ My Second Term Plan | Adam Fortuna

    For me, this means Reddit and TikTok. Both are platforms I can scroll on for hours. It’s unhealthy even in the best times. Now, in the time after the election, I know it’s going to be rough.

  • SBS ☛ Social media ban for children under 16: Government

    "Social media is doing harm to our kids, and I'm calling time on it," he said in Canberra on Thursday.

    "This would be the number one discussion outside the school gate, on the sideline of tennis, cricket, football, netball, swimming, as parents gather.

    "It's something that is of enormous concern, and we know the social harm that can be caused, and we know the consequences here."

  • The Verge ☛ Roblox is banning kids from ‘social hangout’ spaces

    One new measure will stop kids under 13 from accessing experiences with “certain types of interactive features,” Roblox says in a post on its developer forum. Those include “social hangouts,” where the primary purpose is to communicate with others over text or voice chat, and “free-form 2D user creation” experiences, where players can do things like draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard. This change goes into effect beginning November 18th.

  • Sean Conner ☛ A death on Hallowe'en

    I'm coming to the horrible realization that I'm not as young as I once was. When did that happen?

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: How to have cancer

    The title of this piece is "how to have cancer," but what it really boils down to is, "things I learned from my own cancer." As I've noted, I'm playing this one on the easiest setting: I have no symptoms, I speak and write English fluently, I am computer literate and reasonably capable of parsing medical/technical jargon. I have excellent insurance.

    If any of these advantages hadn't been there, things would have been a lot harder. I'd have needed these lessons even more.

  • The Oregonian ☛ Ambulance hits Oregon cyclist, rushes him to hospital, then sticks him with $1,800 bill, lawsuit says

    An Oregon cyclist who was struck by an ambulance that made a right turn into him — fracturing his nose and leaving him with scrapes and other injuries across his body — has filed a $997,000 lawsuit against the ambulance provider after it scooped him up, drove him to the hospital and then billed him for the service, according to the suit.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Security Week ☛ DocuSign Abused to Deliver Fake Invoices

    Unlike traditional phishing, which involves spoofed email messages mimicking known brands aimed at harvesting credentials or installing malware, this campaign relies on the trusted e-signing service to deliver malicious content.

    Specifically, threat actors have been creating legitimate, paid DocuSign accounts enabling them to change templates and access the service’s APIs directly.

  • The Verge ☛ Did OpenAI just spend more than $10 million on a URL?

    Previously, the domain was owned by Dharmesh Shah, the founder and CTO of HubSpot. In early 2023, Shah purchased chat.com for $15.5 million. However, just a few months later, he announced that he had sold the domain, though he wouldn’t disclose the details of the sale or the buyer. Notably, he did confirm that he sold the domain for more than he had originally paid for it.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Outlook users beware — Classic Outlook is currently crashing when you open more than 60 emails at once

    Fortunately it's just when you open them — not when you have 60+ emails in your inbox

  • Futurism ☛ Radio Station's Attempt to Replace Hosts With AI Ends in Absolute Disaster

    But was it worth the ensuing backlash that has turned into a nationwide controversy and launched a broader conversation about widespread job destruction that AI could cause? The station's editor — who's been accused of "sacrificing humans on the altar of technology," as the NYT puts it — sounds ambivalent.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ UK government chatbot goes into beta — with only a few bizarre hallucinations

    The fundamental problem is that when the details matter, an LLM is a poor search engine. But as long as the bot is in “trials,” the Gov.UK team can just keep making the prompt even longer.

  • Chris Ferris ☛ Effective Techniques for AWS Ransomware

    In order to profit effectively from a ransomware attack, a threat actor needs to have something to offer in return for payment. This blog posts outlines a process, along with some python scripts to encrypt AWS resources and then revoke access to the secret material until the ransom is paid.

    Typical ransomware attacks involving AWS have involved deleting data with a “promise to give it back” or outright extortion—we’ll release sensitive data on the dark web if you don’t pay us. Both are difficult for a threat actor to do at scale with large AWS Datasets. Downloading data means you need a storage location as big as the source.

    But what if there was a way to conduct a more traditional encrypt-everything-and-hold-the-key ransom attack?

  • Semafor Inc ☛ AI startup Aaru defends using artificial intelligence for polling

    “If you’re going to pay for polling data that gets the wrong result, you might as well use AI and save money,” Albergotti wrote. ’“While surveying real people seems to be getting less accurate over time, the question is whether AI polling will improve.”

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Verge ☛ The FTC orders Sitejabber to stop faking product reviews

      The Federal Trade Commission has charged Sitejabber, an online review platform, with violating its new fake reviews rules by using point-of-sale reviews to misrepresent what customers think about products. In one of its first enforcement actions under new rules banning companies from making or selling fake reviews, the FTC is ordering the company to stop.

    • Digital Music News ☛ The Biggest Source of Ticket Scams? — Facebook Marketplace

      Ticket reseller scams are a tale as old as time. Now a new report suggests social media is used to facilitate 90% of these ticket scams.

      A Lloyds report focusing on analysis of scam reports made by its own customers discovered the Oasis Live ‘25 tickets are a favorite for scammers. Ticket fraud claims in the first month since the reunion tour was announced accounted for around 70% of all reported concert ticket scams since August 27. Lloyds reports that victims taken in by these scams on average lose £346 ($450)—though some victims report losses as high as £1,000 ($1,303).

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Palantir stock: Data analytics firm Palantir jumps as AI boom powers robust software adoption

      Palantir shares jumped over 12% on Tuesday after the data analytics firm raised its annual revenue forecast for the third time, bolstering investor confidence that the artificial intelligence boom was fueling demand for its services.

    • The Record ☛ Major Ukrainian university bans Telegram to reduce cyberthreats

      Ukraine’s defense intelligence officials have previously said that Russian special services could have access to Telegram users' personal data, including their correspondence and deleted messages. In a statement to Recorded Future News, a Telegram spokesperson said the company "has never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia," and that instances of leaked messages have been the result of compromised devices, either through confiscation or malware.

    • Security Week ☛ Google Cloud Rolling Out Mandatory MFA for All Users

      Currently, 70% of Google users have their accounts protected by the additional authentication layer, but Google Cloud is pushing all accounts to take advantage of the extra protection and will begin a phased implementation this month.

    • 404 Media ☛ Voted in America? This Site Doxed You

      Voting rolls are technically public records but can be laborious to get hold of. A right-wing site weaponizes that information by allowing anyone, anywhere, to search for a voter’s physical address and party affiliation.

    • Security Week ☛ South Korea Fines Meta $15 Million for Illegally Collecting Information on Facebook Users

      It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.

      Following a four-year investigation, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.

      It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.

• Defence/Aggression

  • YLE ☛ Court upholds fine against illegal Saudi-funded mosque in Helsinki

    The Helsinki Administrative Court has rejected appeals related to a fine imposed last year on a mosque operating in a Helsinki apartment building.

    The owner of the property, the Ormuspuisto housing company, and the Pohjoismaiden Säätiö ("Nordic Foundation"), which operates on the premises in the Malmi district, had appealed against the decision by the permits department of the Helsinki Urban Environment Division.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Has Won, but Democracy Is Not Over

    Americans who care about democracy have every right to feel appalled and frightened. But then they have work to do.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Is A TikTok Ban Still On The Table In A Trump Administration?

    On the other hand, now president-elect Donald Trump publicly backtracked on his stance from 2020, when he called for a complete ban of the app. That move comes after being lobbied by billionaire ByteDance investor Jeff Yass. In a campaign video released in September, Trump told his supporters “for all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.” While he casually mentioned saving TikTok, the fate of the platform was not discussed heavily while on the campaign trail.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Canadian Government Bans TikTok’s Canadian Operations, but Not Its App

    But laws drawn up in 2022 which would restrict these practices have been stuck in committee since May. So there is an ostensibly dangerous app posing a risk to Canadians, and the government’s response is to let people keep using it while shutting down the company’s offices? The Standing Committee on Industry and Technology had better get moving.

  • CBC ☛ Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada — but Canadians can still use it

    Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the decision to wind down TikTok's two Canadian offices — in Toronto and Vancouver — was based on information and evidence that surfaced during a national security review, and the advice of Canada's security and intelligence community.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ TikTok told to close its business in Canada amid national security concerns

    About a year ago, TikTok had planned an expansion of its business in Canada, a move that could only happen with a thorough government review. It seems the company didn’t pass muster. “The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners,” said Champagne.

  • Michael Geist ☛ Canadian Government to Ban TikTok (the Company not the App)

    The decision would also seem to undercut the government’s digital policies, including the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) and the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63). TikTok appeared before the Ethics Committee late last month on disinformation, intervened at the CRTC on the implementation of the Online Streaming Act, and would presumably have played a role in hearings on online harms (if those occur). Nothing stops the company from submitting to these processes from outside of the country, but it is hard to envision it prioritizing (or perhaps even complying) with Canadian regulatory processes if it is banned from formally operating in the jurisdiction. Moreover, TikTok will likely promote that it has spent significant money on Canadian cultural policy initiatives, with a particular focus on music and indigenous creators. Much like the Meta withdrawal from news and its associated agreements, it is similarly unlikely it will continue to provide that support in light of the corporate ban.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Ottawa to shut TikTok's Canada operations, says app can still be used

    Ottawa said Wednesday it is shutting TikTok's operations in Canada following a security review, but Canadians will still be allowed to use the popular video sharing app.

    "The government is taking action to address the specific national security risks related to ByteDance Ltd.'s operations in Canada," Francois-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, said in a statement.

  • Vox ☛ Trump wins the 2024 election. Can democracy survive this?

    In nearly every conceivable way, a second Trump administration will likely be more dangerous than the first, a term that ended in over 1 million deaths from Covid-19 and a riot at the Capitol. A predictable crisis — a president consolidating power in his own hands and using it to punish his enemies — looms on the horizon, with many unpredictable crises likely waiting in the wings.

  • The Atlantic ☛ X Is a White-Supremacist Site

    has always had a Nazi problem. I’ve covered the site, formerly known as Twitter, for more than a decade and reported extensively on its harassment problems, its verification (and then de-verification) of a white nationalist, and the glut of anti-Semitic hatred that roiled the platform in 2016.

    But something is different today. Heaps of unfiltered posts that plainly celebrate racism, anti-Semitism, and outright Nazism are easily accessible and possibly even promoted by the site’s algorithms. All the while, Elon Musk—a far-right activist and the site’s owner, who is campaigning for and giving away millions to help elect Donald Trump—amplifies horrendous conspiracy theories about voter fraud, migrants run amok, and the idea that Jewish people hate white people. Twitter was always bad if you knew where to look, but because of Musk, X is far worse. (X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

  • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk is being sued over his $1 million giveaway to voters — again

    The complaint, filed in a federal court in Austin, alleges that Musk falsely claimed the PAC would choose sweepstakes winners randomly when the selections were, in fact, predetermined. The complaint cites comments made yesterday by Chris Gober, a Republican lawyer CNBC identified as America PAC’s former treasurer.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Moscow Behind Incendiary Packages Sent Across Europe, Lithuanian Official Says - The Moscow Times

    “We are telling our allies that it’s not random, it’s part of military operations,” Kestutis Budrys, an adviser to Nauseda, told Ziniu radio on Tuesday.

    “We need to neutralize and stop it at the source, and the source is Russia's military intelligence,” he was quoted as saying in a translation by Reuters.

  • NDTV ☛ "Lost Faith": Michigan Muslims Shun Harris Over Mideast Turmoil

    Trump's outreach to Michigan's Muslim community secured endorsements from the Muslim mayors of Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights, while his newfound connection to the community -- through Lebanese-American son-in-law Michael Boulos, husband of Tiffany Trump -- has further endeared him.

  • TMZ ☛ Donald Trump Vanity Fair Cover Notes Felonies, Impeachments, Bankruptcies

    As you can see, the left side of the cover rattles off all of Trump's biggest problems ... listing his 34 felony counts, 1 conviction, 2 pending cases, 2 impeachments and 6 bankruptcies.

    Donald Trump has won the 2024 election.

    Four years after launching an unprecedented attack on democracy and leaving the White House in disgrace, the convicted felon will return to Washington, DC, as the 47th president of the United States.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk is about to find out what $130 million for Trump gets him

    Musk spent more than $130 million on Trump and down-ballot Republicans in competitive House races, vaulting him to the highest echelons of donors this election cycle. On Election Day, Musk voted in Texas and then flew on his private jet to Florida to watch returns with Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago. His PAC posted a photo of him sitting shoulder to shoulder with Trump and Dana White, the chief executive officer of UFC, at the festivities.

  • The Scotsman ☛ Elon Musk unleashed Donald Trump back on Twitter - could X mogul join him in the White House?

    The SpaceX boss has become Trump’s most vocal fan and one of his biggest financial backers during the US election, which has seen X become an unofficial Republican Party campaign tool.

  • Defence Web ☛ The Houthis are winning in the Red Sea – rest of the world on the back foot

    Who are these Houthis? The Houthi movement is a Zaydi Shia Islamist militant organisation enjoying the backing of Iran, which by force of arms has wrested control over a large part of Yemen, including the capital of Sanaa and most of the coast facing the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • New York Times ☛ After Trump Took the Lead, Election Deniers Went Suddenly Silent

    Then the results arrived, showing Mr. Trump with considerable strength. Voices that had spent years shouting about election integrity suddenly faded to a whisper.

    “As soon as it started to look like Trump was going to win, the election denialism went very, very quiet,” said Welton Chang, a co-founder and the chief executive of Pyrra Technologies, a company that monitors fringe social networks.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Mysterious Band Behind the Internet's Most Mysterious Song ID'd

    Though not confirmed, it’s generally believed that the radio station the song was recorded from was NDR1, on the program Musik Für Junge Leute — “Music for Young People.” But other details remained scarce, despite several people stumbling onto Lydia’s posts over the years and trying to help.

  • 404 Media ☛ 'The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet' Has Finally Been Identified

    The story of The Most Mysterious Song On the Internet begins in the 1980s. Sometime around 1984, people in Germany recorded a song off of a radio station. Though unconfirmed, it’s generally accepted that NDR1 was the radio station and the program was Musik Für Junge Leute or “Music for Young People.”

• Environment

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Record drought in Amazon impacts 420,000 children: UNICEF

    More than 420,000 children in the Amazon basin are being badly affected by a drought parching much of South America that is impacting water supplies and river transport, UNICEF said Wednesday.

  • Science News ☛ ‘The Power of Prions’ explores misfolded proteins’ role in brain diseases

    These malevolent molecules, first identified in 1982, are the subject of neurovirologist Michel Brahic’s pint-size new book, The Power of Prions. Brahic, a consulting professor at Stanford University, took to writing after his wife convinced him to turn his lectures into a book. The process, he writes, “transformed a dreaded retirement into an exciting adventure.”

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Energy Transition, Climate Emergency Won’t Stop for Trump, Global Leaders Say

    “The result from this election will be seen as a major blow to global climate action, but it cannot and will not halt the changes under way to decarbonize the economy and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres, one of the architects of the 2015 Paris deal. “Standing with oil and gas is the same as falling behind in a fast moving world. Clean energy technologies will continue to outcompete fossil fuels, not just because they are healthier, faster, cleaner, and more abundant, but because they undercut fossil fuels where they are at their weakest: their unsolvable volatility and inefficiency.”

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Trump’s win is a tragic loss for climate progress

    It comes at a moment when the world can’t afford to waste time, with nations far off track from any emissions trajectories that would keep our ecosystems stable and our communities safe. Under the policies in place today, the planet is already set to warm by more than 3 °C over preindustrial levels in the coming decades.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The US is about to make a sharp turn on climate policy

    A Trump presidency could add 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 2030 over what was expected from a second Biden term, according to an analysis published in April by the website Carbon Brief (this was before Biden dropped out of the race). That projection sees emissions under Trump dropping by 28% below the peak by the end of the decade—nowhere near the 50% target set by Biden at the beginning of his term.

  • Overpopulation ☛ No sustainable paradigm is attainable without gradual population reduction

    The Jus Semper Global Alliance is dedicated to building a better world based on democracy, sustainability and fairly sharing the world’s wealth. Its website gathers valuable material on a full range of issues regarding economic, social and ecological justice. As its founder and executive director reminds us here, “no matter how efficient and fair the new paradigm is, the notion of unlimited billions of people consuming the earth’s resources frugally is not sustainable.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ A Tiny Petrostate Is Running the World's Climate Talks

    When delegates of the world gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, next week for the most important yearly meeting on climate change, their meetings will overlook a reeking lake, polluted by the oil fields on the other side. This city’s first oil reservoir was built on the lake’s shores in the 19th century; now nearly half of Azerbaijan’s GDP and more than 90 percent of its export revenue come from oil and gas. It is, in no uncertain terms, a petrostate.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ The Case for Kamala Harris in a Burning World

    What happens on Nov. 5 will go a long way toward determining whether Phoenix will be a habitable city in the years to come, whether wildfires will consume the West, whether the ocean will become a dead pool of jellyfish and coastal cities like Miami and Charleston become underwater theme parks. Do you, my friend, want to spend the rest of your days spun around by climate chaos in all its forms? Water shortages, blackouts, crop failures, skyrocketing insurance rates, new pandemics, flooded cities and towns, heat deaths, Category Six hurricanes that turn million-dollar condos into wreckage in a few hours. That’s the choice we have in this election. As Beyoncé said at a recent rally for Kamala Harris in Houston, “Our past, our present, our future merge to meet us here.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • NDTV ☛ Trump's 'Day 1' Promise To Shut Clean Energy Projects Send Stocks Tumbling

      At a recent rally, Trump admitted that his change of heart was largely due to Musk's endorsement. "I'm for electric cars - I have to be, because Elon endorsed me," Trump said. "I have no choice". This shift is quite surprising, considering Trump's history of criticising electric vehicles, even calling them a "hoax".

    • Futurism ☛ Study Finds Self-Driving Waymos Are More Expensive Than Taxis, Take Twice as Long to Get to Destination

      Over 50 rides, not only were Waymo rides more expensive, but they also took twice as long compared to a ridehailing service like Uber.

      "The current status of [autonomous vehicles] means that cost and time sensitive customers still choose rideshare," reads the Forbes report. "For the time being, AVs will not be the low cost solution to transportation companies initially promised."

    • H2 View ☛ Norway’s coastal hydrogen projects secure over $70m for shipping supply

      Aimed at developing a hydrogen fuel supply chain for the shipping industry, the projects span from Slagentangen in the southeast to Bodø in the north.

    • Michigan News ☛ On Navajo Nation, a push to electrify more homes on the vast reservation

      Many Navajo families still live without running water and electricity, a product of historic neglect and the struggle to get services to far-flung homes on the 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) Native American reservation that lies in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Some rely on solar panels or generators, which can be patchy, and others have no electricity whatsoever.

    • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ On Navajo Nation, a push to electrify more homes on the vast reservation - lonestarlive.com

      This year, Light Up Navajo connected 170 more families to the grid. Since the program started in 2019, 882 Navajo families have had their homes electrified. If the program stays funded, Becenti said it could take another 26 years to connect every home on the reservation.

• Finance

  • The Register UK ☛ Nvidia to take Intel's place on the Dow after 25 years

    Intel's removal has been anticipated for some time. The Dow is a price-weighted index and Chipzilla's stock has dropped by more than half since the start of the year. It has grappled with enormous losses, which totaled $16.6 billion in the third quarter alone. At the time of writing, Intel's share price sits at $23.33.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ H-1B visa changes: IT company upbeat despite fears over revamp of immigration laws

    The Trump 2.0 administration may relook at the annual allotment of H-1B work visas from the current quota of 85,000. H1B applications would attract tougher examination as denial rates for H-1B under Trump 1.0 administration were at an all-time high of 24%. The duration and eligibility for Optional Practical Training (OPT) for international students may also come under fresh scrutiny.

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Helped Elect Trump. What Does He Expect in Return?

    The outreach regarding the SpaceX employees, which hasn’t been reported, shows the extent to which Mr. Musk wants to fill a potential Trump administration with his closest confidants even as his billions of dollars in government contracts pose a conflict to any government role.

  • Teleport ☛ Why Secure Infrastructure Access Must Evolve: Insights from Teleport’s

    Organizations are more aware than ever that securing access to computing infrastructure is essential. In fact, respondents to our survey ranked infrastructure access security as the top technology initiative — on par with digital transformation and improving customer experience. However, awareness doesn’t make the challenge any easier to overcome.

    Three out of four respondents say that securing access to infrastructure is getting harder each year. Why? Because the modern environment is a perfect storm of complexity: [...]

  • TechSpot ☛ Is Intel too big to fail? US officials are considering government intervention

    While Intel has resisted some efforts at a merger, it might not have a choice as lawmakers wish to avoid another government (read: taxpayer) bailout like the ones in the auto industry in 2008. Leadership would rather see Intel bail itself out and are sure to apply pressure in that direction. However, Congress has not entirely taken a government subsidy plan off the table.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia surpasses Apple as world's biggest company, valued at $3.43 trillion

    Chip-making giant Nvidia surpassed Apple on Tuesday to become the highest valued company in the world as the artificial intelligence boom continues to excite Wall Street. Nvidia previously became the largest traded company in June, although it only held the record for a day.

  • IT Wire ☛ Nokia signs deal to boost Taiwan Mobile 5G network

    Finnish telecoms equipment vendor Nokia has signed a one-year 5G contract extension with operator Taiwan Mobile to boost the performance and capacity of Taiwan Mobile’s 5G network and upgrade its 4G network.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Iran uses open and covert methods to sway US voters

      The societal division in the U.S. and predictions of "post-election unrest," as well as depictions of the United States’ support for Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as Americans’ historic "support for genocide," dominated the Iranian state-controlled media coverage of the U.S. elections.

      An Iran-operated network of social media accounts and fake news sites targeted U.S. voters on opposite ends of the political spectrum with polarizing messaging.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Telegram Chatter, Deepfakes, Threats Grow As Election Ends

      Russia in particular is focused on spreading claims of election fraud to stoke division in the coming days, despite repeated assurances by government security officials and independent observers that it would be nearly impossible for malicious actors, even insiders, to alter election results due to the isolation of voting machines from the internet and paper backups in all but Louisiana and parts of Texas. Russian efforts to disrupt election day voting included bomb threats targeting polling places and a text campaign aiming to divide Democratic voters over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

    • Jason Becker ☛ Campaigns and tactics are not the story

      If she loses outright, it will be about how we failed to convey the danger of Trump. It will be about how we have lost a shared notion of truth. It will be about how we’ve lost a common information architecture and with it, our common reality.

    • NPR ☛ FBI reports new hoax videos, after warnings that Russia is trying to undermine election

      On Tuesday evening, the FBI called out three fake videos and press releases, which it says are the latest in a series “designed to mislead the American public” about the 2024 election.

      The hoaxes include a fabricated statement from the FBI to journalists and bloggers “against publishing information about violence at polling stations,” claiming that doing so could provoke more such incidents.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Every internet fight is a speech fight

    This happens all the time. Indeed, the precipitating incident for my writing this column was someone commenting on the short-lived Brazilian court order blocking Twitter, opining that this was purely a matter of national sovereignty, with no speech dimension.

    This is just profoundly wrong. Of course any rules about blocking a communications medium will have a free-speech dimension – how could it not? And of course any dispute relating to globe-spanning medium will have a national sovereignty dimension.

  • The Nation ☛ Anti-Protest Laws Won’t Silence Climate Activists

    Such situations are symptomatic of a grim trend in both the United States and Europe. Nonviolent, nondestructive climate protest is increasingly being subjected to criminal prosecution, while punishments are being ratcheted up to levels befitting violent and far more serious crimes.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Trump's Return Poses Threat To Whistleblowers & The Press

    To facilitate this crackdown on whistleblowers or media sources, Project 2025 additionally urges the DOJ to repeal guidelines that were adopted under Attorney General Merrick Garland to limit “law enforcement” access to journalists’ communications. It also demands the hiring of “additional counterintelligence and security personnel” to help the FBI and other agencies prosecute those who communicate with reporters.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia orders arrest of journalist in first felony prosecution of an ‘undesirable’ media outlet’s editor-in-chief

    According to BBC Russia, the charges against Martynov appear to be Russia’s first felony prosecution of the head of an “undesirable” media outlet.

  • Futurism ☛ The Dead Husk of Gawker Is Being Used to Promote Joe Rogan's Interview With Donald Trump

    To be clear, we have no idea why Gawker is directing readers to a rambling interview that couldn't be further from being the "defining moment" of the election. According to a CNN fact check, Trump made at least 32 false claims during the almost three-hour-long chat, including lies about the 2020 election, vice president Kamala Harris' crowd sizes, and so on.

  • YLE ☛ Yle begins restructuring talks with 375 jobs on the line

    Yle's need to restructure its operations follows a decision on its funding model made by a parliamentary working group in September.

    The group recommended freezing the broadcaster's budget until 2027 — a cut of some 47 million euros — as well as increasing the VAT rates levied on the company from 10 percent to 14 percent from 2026, hitting the company's budget by an estimated 19 million euros.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EFF ☛ The 2024 U.S. Election is Over. EFF is Ready for What's Next.

    No matter what, EFF will take every opportunity to stand with users. We’ll continue to advance our mission of user privacy, free expression, and innovation, regardless of the obstacles. We will hit the ground running. 

    During the previous Trump administration, EFF didn’t just hold the line. We pushed digital rights forward in significant ways, both nationally and locally.  We supported those protesting in the streets, with expanded Surveillance Self-Defense guides and our Security Education Companion. The first offers information for how to protect yourself while you exercise your First Amendment rights, and the second gives tips on how to help your friends and colleagues be more safe.

    Along with our allies, we fought government use of face surveillance, passing municipal bans on the dangerous technology. We urged the Supreme Court to expand protections for your cell phone data, and in Carpenter v United States, they did so—recognizing that location information collected by cell providers creates a “detailed chronicle of a person’s physical presence compiled every day, every moment over years.” Now, police must get a warrant before obtaining a significant amount of this data. 

  • Pro Publica ☛ What We’ll Be Covering in a Second Trump Administration

  • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Festival - The Cloud Was Beneath Our Feet [Ed: They speak of the "CLOWN" Festival]

    Data centers, these concrete mega-computers that process and store our digital data are proliferating all over the world. They are monopolising water and electricity, generating environmental pollution and soil artificialisation, multiplying land grabbing and the concreting of cities, hoarding public funds, and accelerating the ongoing socio-ecological crisis.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF: Leading a Secular Resistance for freedom and the First Amendment — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    If the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 prevails, we already know its proposals would unite church and state by: [...]

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Problem With AI Is About Power, Not Technology

    Employers invoke the term AI to tell a story in which technological progress, union busting, and labor degradation are synonymous. However, this degradation is not a quality of the technology itself but rather of the relationship between capital and labor. The current discussion around AI and the future of work is the latest development in a longer history of employers seeking to undermine worker power by claiming that human labor is losing its value and that technological progress, rather than human agents, is responsible.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ AT&T pays $2.3M to settle claims it fiddled subsidies

    AT&T settled with the FCC over claims it submitted false information to obtain funding from US broadband subsidy programs for low-income customers.

    In a consent decree published late last month – but which mostly flew under the news radar – AT&T agreed to fork over $2.3 million to resolve claims that it violated the rules of the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program designed to subsidize internet costs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that replaced it, to provide discount service and devices to low-income households.

    For those curious, AT&T reported a net income of $145 million in the third quarter of 2024.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC to Begin Review of Undersea Cables

    The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would undertake what the agency says is the first major review of the Commission’s submarine cable rules since 2001. By this proceeding, the FCC seeks comment on how best to improve and streamline its submarine cable rules to facilitate their efficient deployment while at the same time ensuring their security, resilience, and protection.

  • South Africa ☛ Cape fibre operator comes out on top in the latest industry survey

    The latest fibre network operator survey from the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) casts a dim view on South Africa’s fibre industry, suggesting that many private-sector operators have grown as sluggish as the former monopoly, Telkom. Yet one company remains an outlier: Octotel, a Western Cape-based provider, has not only kept its standing but continues to surpass national peers.

  • APNIC ☛ Comparing Carrier Ethernet transport technologies

    In September last year, I delivered a brief presentation on ‘Carrier Ethernet OAM’ during APNIC 56. Later, in October 2023, I followed up with a blog post on the same topic for the APNIC Blog. This time, I am exploring another aspect of Carrier Ethernet, which is about its variety of offered ‘transport technologies’ with a brief comparison summary.

    Let me first briefly describe what Carrier Ethernet is for those who are not familiar with it before starting my actual topic.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • India Times ☛ Netflix tax fraud probe: Dutch, French authorities raid Netflix offices in tax probe

    This financial investigation, part of a probe opened in November 2022, is based on suspicions of "covering up serious tax fraud and off-the-books work". Netflix's Amsterdam headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa searched as well by officials from both France and the Netherlands.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ Corning facing EU antitrust suit over Gorilla Glass seals

  The EC announced a formal antitrust investigation into Corning yesterday, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position as a maker of glass screens for mobile electronics, claiming the end result was the exclusion of rival glass manufacturers from the market.

  The strategy ultimately caused consumers to pay higher prices, has made repairs tougher and reduced manufacturer innovation, the EC argued.

• Silicon Angle ☛ EU launches antitrust probe into Apple glass supplier Corning

  The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, announced the move today. It detailed that the probe focuses on a set of exclusive supply agreements Corning has inked with handset makers and glass processing providers. Officials are concerned that those contracts may harm competition.

  NYSE-listed Corning ended its most recent fiscal year with $11.3 billion in revenue. The company makes glass for a wide variety of products ranging from fiber optic cables to car windows. Its best-known offering is Gorilla Glass, a brand of electronic display glass that has shipped with billions of mobile devices since its introduction in 2008.

• The Verge ☛ Corning’s Gorilla Glass under EU antitrust investigation

  The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Corning to determine whether it has broken antitrust rules with its dominant Gorilla Glass product. Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass is used to protect most of the top phones and tablets, with both Samsung and Apple using it extensively across their range of devices. The EU is concerned that Corning has used a variety of exclusivity contracts to exclude rival glass makers from the phone market.

• Scheerpost ☛ Apple’s Cash Grab From Patreon Harms Journalism, Advocacy and Art

  Now comes Apple’s App Store, rolling out 30% fees for new subscriptions. This affects each new Patreon subscription started on Apple’s iOS, from this month on.

  Subscribers want to contribute to independent journalism, art and advocacy. They get no tax breaks for supporting independent creators on Patreon. They’re not signing up to fund a billionaire’s company.

• Rolling Stone ☛ Inside Live Nation-DOJ's Blockbuster Monopoly Lawsuit

  The complaint comes at what feels like a peak moment of fan frustration over the concert-going experience. While seeing the biggest artists live has been something of a splurge for decades (see the viral clip of Kurt Cobain reacting with disgust to learn Madonna was charging $50 a ticket in 1993), today it can cost as much as a month’s rent for the priciest tickets — and that’s if you even get through the byzantine purchase process.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ IPTV Piracy Blocking at the Internet's Core Routers Undergoes Testing

    After 15+ years of blackholing IP addresses and making the Domain Name System tell more lies than Pinocchio, some may wonder whether site-blocking is harming prospects of a future open internet. Confirmation that piracy blocking tests are now being conducted at the internet's core routers isn't a surprise. It's only the internet's spinal column, so what could possibly go wrong?

  • Techdirt ☛ Japan Arrests Operators Of Three Sites For ‘Anime Spoilers’ Under Copyright Law

    Here we go again. We’ve been discussing the iterative changes in Japanese copyright law for some time now. Those changes have been largely targeted rather than sweeping, though those targeted changes are arguably extreme in nature. First and foremost was moving copyright infringement largely out of the realm of civil law and into a criminal offense. While that is bad enough on its own, the Japanese government also demonstrated plainly that at least part of the impetus for these changes to copyright law were designed specifically to bend the knee to the country’s manga and anime industry. Those changes were especially worrisome, given they went beyond criminalizing direct infringement to also make it illegal to “infringe” in all kinds of indirect ways, such as sites that merely link to potentially infringing content, or individuals or sites that share “spoilers” for anime and manga content. That last bit is what led to one man being sentenced to 2 years in prison for engaging in “let’s play” and spoiler content in uploads to YouTube.

  • Walled Culture ☛ How an “absolutist position” seeks to block even minor copyright exemptions, and usually succeeds

    As a sop to those who warned about the problems this would cause, the law requires the US Copyright Office to review exemption requests, and grant those it deems appropriate. This is known as the Section 1201 exemption process, and takes place every three years. The latest batch of exemptions has been handed down, and two of them are particularly interesting for what they tell us about copyright and its fans. One of the applications concerns providing remote digital access to out-of-print video games. As the Video Game History Foundation explains: [...]