Leftovers

• Michael Burkhardt ☛ Why I Weeknote

  Inspired by Marco and others who were taking up the weeknotes practice, I started posting weekly updates under the #weeknotes hashtag last year. Since then, I’ve published 85 posts. According to my analytics service, the most popular of these posts gets maybe a few dozen hits. So if hardly anyone is reading them, what’s the point of writing them?

• SBS ☛ An OnlyFans content creator planned to go to Schoolies. Now her visa has been axed

  A British adult content creator has had her Australian visa cancelled after advertising plans to make OnlyFans content on the Gold Coast.

  Every year, graduates from across the country flock to 'Schoolies', a week-long celebration to mark the end of their high school years.

• The Hill ☛ Tesla's stock surges past $1 trillion mark following Trump's election win

  Musk also posted frequently about Trump and the election on his social platform X, amplifying the Republican candidate’s message to his 200 million followers.

  The billionaire appeared alongside the president-elect at several rallies in the final weeks of the election and joined him at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on election night to watch the results come in.

• Caleb Hearth ☛ I Use /uses

  Back in 2023 I quietly published my /uses slashpage. Today I gave it a pass to update things that had fallen out of date.

• Alexandra Wolfe ☛ What's In My NOW?

  Following in Gabz footsteps and, like him, having never heard of, What’s In My NOW, I had to go check it out and, of course, write up my own, What’s In MY NOW post.

• EAPL.mx ☛ [EN] Reply to lyse about twtxt

  To give more context, these ideas started with, "How would I create a twtxt spec from scratch without worrying about retro-compatibility with current clients?"

  Sorry for not following all the discussions around twtxt 2.0; perhaps you've already suggested something similar, or even something entirely different. No hard feelings from my side if that's the case :)

• Flamed Fury ☛ How Do I IndieWeb?

  What’s going on, Internet? I came across the question “How do you (personally) IndieWeb?” from Open Mentions while surfing the net this morning and wanted to take a moment to answer it, as I had been thinking about the IndieWeb again recently.

  Remember, the IndieWeb is a set of principles, experiements and suggestions, not prescriptions. You can pick and choose as many or as little of the IndieWeb building blocks to participate in the IndieWeb. Some are easier than the others.

  These are the ways I’ve chosen to participate in the IndieWeb.

• ARRL ☛ Rare California Island to be Activated for Armed Forces Day, First Time in 53 Years

  Now, weather permitting, Will Costello, WC6DX, has been authorized to be active from San Nicolas Island November 8 - 12, 2024. He is taking a Buddihex antenna for 6 - 20 meters and a 100 watt rig.

• TMZ ☛ John Hinckley Jr. Tells X Users To Stop Asking Him to Harm Donald Trump

  As TMZ reported ... the would-be Ronald Reagan assassin posted a harmless post to the social media platform on Wednesday, telling followers to check out his website of music and art ... the post was quickly inundated with users asking John to harm Trump.

• The Verge ☛ AOL’s ‘You’ve Got Mail’ voice, Elwood Edwards, dies at age 74

  In 1989, Edwards recorded the once-ubiquitous phrase, along with “Welcome,” “Files done,” and “Goodbye” on a cassette tape for just $200. “It started off as a test just to see if it would catch on, and lo and behold, in the mid-90s, it had really caught on.”

• Career/Education

  • El País ☛ Ruha Benjamin, sociologist: ‘We need to demystify technology and listen to the people buried under the rubble of progress’

    Technology is not a magical force beyond our control, no matter how difficult certain aspects may be to grasp. It is shaped by specific people, and, more importantly, by distinct worldviews. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin, 46, a professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, has authored four books examining the intersections of technology, diversity, inequality, and justice. A leading figure in her field, Benjamin challenges the narratives of major tech companies and advocates for the causes of the Global South on her social media platforms, with a particular focus on Palestine.

    Benjamin was in Barcelona to participate in the Smart City Expo on the same day Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. While she feels it is too early to comment on the election results, she does warn about the growing impact of the reactionary wave sweeping across the world.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ It's a New World? Revisiting What Universities - and Researchers, Libraries, and Publishers - Owe Democracy

    I wrote this piece in 2022, in the wake of culminating threats to democratic governance in the US and around the world. We were, I wrote, in “a world seemingly on the edge of a dramatic and perhaps final break with the implicit promise of the post-World War II era: that we had seen horror, and there would be a collective commitment to a better, more democratic future.” Universities, per a book I profile by Ron Daniels, but more broadly all of the interconnected institutions that advance and support research and scholarship, were situated to respond in ways that affirm our collective commitment to research and teaching as a public good. And to democracy as a historically distinctive incubator for knowledge.

• Hardware

  • The Hill ☛ Secret Service deploys robotic dogs at Mar-a-Lago

    Anthony Guglielmi, the chief communications officer for the Secret Service, did not say how long the robots had been in use at Mar-a-Lago, but told Nexstar that they boast technology that can aid the service’s security goals.

  • PC World ☛ Intel slapped with class action lawsuit over crashing CPU fiasco

    Intel’s issues with 13th- and 14th-gen CPU crashes are well-documented at this point. To make a long story short: High-end chips have been crashing and failing with apparently irreversible damage, and Intel blames overzealous performance settings in the motherboard BIOS.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Why % CPU in Activity Monitor isn’t what you think – The Eclectic Light Company

    Apple defines % CPU as “the percentage of CPU capability that’s being used”, a phrase that doesn’t appear to have any definition either in Apple’s documentation or elsewhere. So like everyone else, you assume that 100% for a core represents its maximum processing capacity. Only you couldn’t be more incorrect: in truth, the number given as % CPU is nothing like that.

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ Two years with my new laptop 💻 - Jan-Lukas Else

    It’s now about two years since I got my new laptop and replaced my Surface Go and my desktop computer with it to be more flexible when commuting. Here’s a small recap on why I’m so happy about my companion.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NYPost ☛ Under-16 social-media ban — a great idea from Down Under

    An ever-growing body of research shows this stuff to be toxic to children’s mental health, yet it’s near-impossible for parents to police when it’s grown central to any socializing.

    The Aussie approach isn’t to penalize kids or parents, by the way, but to hold platforms responsible for genuine screening.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Meta's Zuckerberg Not Liable in Lawsuits Over Social Media Harm to Children

    But the judge found a lack of specifics about what Zuckerberg did wrong, and said "control of corporate activity alone is insufficient" to establish liability. Her decision does not affect related claims against Meta itself.

    The plaintiffs brought claims under the laws of 13 U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

  • Jason Heppler ☛ Becoming News-Resilient

    While there remains a lot of uncertainty and questions in the wake of the 2024 elections, one thing that seems clear to me is about myself: I’m more terminally online than I realized, and I don’t love that. As I’ve written before, the urge for up-to-the-moment news doesn’t actually make me a more informed person but only works to drive emotions that aren’t particularly healthy. Plus, I feel as though I really misjudged this election. I’m a historian, not someone who predicts the future; but I really feel as though social media skewed the way I was thinking about things.

  • The Conversation ☛ Leeches are making a medical comeback – here’s why we should celebrate it

    However, in 1884 leech saliva was identified as an anticoagulant, called hirodine.

    Surgeons still use leeches to improve the success rates of surgery, such as when reattaching severed fingers as their saliva prevents post-surgery blood clotting inside veins.

  • Jeroen Sangers ☛ Creative tasks are best done while low on energy

    When you have less energy, it can change your way of thinking and promote creativity. You are less likely to stick to usual thought patterns and more open to unexpected ideas. Research shows that people are often better at solving problems when they are less alert, such as at times of the day when they don’t feel at their best.

  • VOA News ☛ Can honeybees and dogs detect cancer earlier than technology? 

    “There is quite a bit of research that shows that when some cancer grows inside our body, our breath actually changes. Our research does show that honeybees can detect lung cancer and possibly other diseases based on the smell of those cells.”

    Saha and his team harnessed the bees and attached electrodes to their brains. The insects were then exposed to synthetic compounds that mimicked the breath of a lung cancer patient. Ninety-three percent of the time, the bees could tell the difference between the cancer breath and the artificial breath of a healthy person. The bees could also distinguish between different types of lung cancer.

  • RTL ☛ Seven times world average: Boxing club helps fight Greenland's suicide scourge

    Fight Club Nanoq is one of several initiatives to help young Greenlanders give structure to their lives and improve their mental and physical health.

    Suicide, alcohol and drug abuse are major concerns in the giant Arctic land which struggles with social woes and a painful colonial history.

  • [Repeat] LRT ☛ Lithuanian company joins NASA programme to develop drugs adapted for space

    Delta Biosciences, a Lithuanian life sciences company, has been selected for NASA’s Space Healthcare Programme. The company will contribute to solutions in space healthcare.

    The company’s spokesman talks about the benefits of its research on Earth and in space in LRT KLASIKA’s programme Bright Future.

  • The Walrus ☛ How Much Porn Are We Watching? A Lot

    In her discussion of [Internet] porn, professor India Thusi writes: “Technology . . . allows the audience to become a community and a forum for associating around various forms of speech.” [Internet] viewers, she observes, can discuss content with each other, unlike the passivity demanded of viewers in a movie theatre, for example. Thusi concludes that “technology allows audiences around the world to connect with each other as fellow audience members and with content providers as part of their community and viewership”; not only that, she continues, “it generates movements and mobilizations around different forms of [pornographic] content.” As professor Susanna Paasonen observes in Carnal Resonance, “the sense of connectedness, interactivity, and presence facilitated by networked technologies renders online porn specific in the resonance it entails between the bodies displayed on the screen and those located at the keyboard.”

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The great gaming layoffs and what is behind it

    Sumo Group closed Timbre Games studio, while Microsoft’s Xbox division, PlayStation Studios, and EA all downsized their teams following restructurings and acquisitions. Riot Games, Sega, and Bungie also announced cuts, affecting both development and support staff globally.

  • India Times ☛ Understand layoffs when struggling but this naked greed: Zoho CEO lashes out at company for reducing workforce by 13%

    Amid rising cases of reduction in workforces globally, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu recently lashed out at Freshworks, thought he didn't share the name, for being a company with ‘$1 billion cash’ for laying off 12-13% of its workforce.

  • The Hill ☛ ChatGPT blocked over 250,000 image generation requests related to presidential election

    Users tried to generate photos of President-elect Trump, Vice President Harris, Vice President-elect Vance, President Biden and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.)

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Death of Search

    Months of prophesying about generative AI have now culminated, almost all at once, in what may be the clearest glimpse yet into the [Internet]’s future. After a series of limited releases and product demos, mired with various setbacks and embarrassing errors, tech companies are debuting AI-powered search engines as fully realized, all-inclusive products. Last Monday, Google announced that it would launch its AI Overviews in more than 100 new countries; that feature will now reach more than 1 billion users a month. Days later, OpenAI announced a new search function in ChatGPT, available to paid users for now and soon opening to the public. The same afternoon, the AI-search start-up Perplexity shared instructions for making its “answer engine” the default search tool in your web browser.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Tony Blair Institute reports on AI in the labor market — using numbers they made up with GPT-4. Again. – Pivot to AI

  • Crooked Timber ☛ For-Profit Academic Publishers Love LLM Garbage

    Obviously, we all want more scientific progress, better evidence, broader scope — but I don’t think that this is best accomplished by churning out more of these fancy peer-reviewed pdfs. Indeed, our systems of peer review and knowledge evaluation are breaking down under the strain. Everyone is under pressure to produce more and more papers earlier and earlier in their careers.

    The situation is accelerating with LLMs. The cost of producing these pdfs continues to decline, and as long as the demand for the pdfs stays strong, we should expect the supply to increase. Everyone agrees that this is a problem.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Buys Porn Domain for Huge Sum

    We already knew that OpenAI had a lot of money to throw around. But even for the Sam Altman-led outfit, the money it spent on a — how shall we put this? — spicy domain is staggering.

    And hilariously, the purchase makes OpenAI the proud new owner of a domain — Chat.com — that once belonged to an adult video cam and chat room website, as first spotted by PC Gamer.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ FAA seeks artificial intelligence-powered safety tool

    Earlier this week, the agency posted a request for information focused on tools that might use machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify safety risks. That tool or platform would also be used to study data to generate potential actionable insights for the aviation agency —- and assist with rapid response capabilities.

  • 404 Media ☛ Apple Quietly Introduced iPhone Reboot Code Which is Locking Out Cops

    On Thursday 404 Media reported that police were freaking out about mysteriously rebooting iPhones. Now multiple experts have found that Apple introduced code that reboots locked phones after a period of time.

  • Wired ☛ Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent

    And the fact that I can Google the answer to those above questions—that we have given humanity endless knowledge at the tap of a touchpad—will ultimately be recognized as more important than the identity of whoever sits in the White House, even if he has no attention span and boasts of sexual assaults. As horrible as 9/11 was, the fact that one single corporation might connect almost all of the world’s population on a single service is, in the long run, actually bigger news.

  • The Verge ☛ The Beatles’ final song, restored using AI, is up for a Grammy

    However, “Now and Then” was never released, as technology at the time couldn’t separate John’s vocals and piano to get a clear sound. But in 2021, filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team were able to separate the instrumentals and vocals with machine learning technology, allowing Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to finally complete the song.

    Though “Now and Then” was finished using machine learning, it still falls within the bounds of The Grammy’s rules surrounding AI. The guidelines currently state that “only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration for, nominated for, or win a GRAMMY Award,” but work that contains “elements” of AI material is “eligible in applicable categories.”

  • Macworld ☛ The new Mac mini has a removable SSD but DIY upgrades won't be easy

    This SSD setup is similar to that of the Mac Studio, which also has separate SSD modules. Ars Technica points out that Apple’s implementation isn’t like that of Windows PCs where the SSD controller is contained with the SSD hardware. Apple’s SSD controller is built into the M-series chip. Because of that, you can’t simply swap out the Mac Studio’s or Mac mini’s SSD with a part bought from Amazon or some computer store. There are other reasons why off-the-shelf parts won’t work, like the possibility that the Mac’s SSD slots have restrictions on the types of modules that can be used.

  • YLE ☛ Yle launches team to combat deepfakes

    The need for verifying information is constantly growing, as scams, disinformation, and even content threatening national security increasingly spread online, Yle said in a statement on Friday.

    Much of this growth is due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence.

    The number of deepfakes online is increasing rapidly, driven in part by advancements in artificial intelligence and generative AI tools that make their creation quick and inexpensive.

  • OS News ☛ QNX becomes free for non-commercial use, releases Raspberry Pi 4 image

    A long, long time ago, back when running BeOS as my main operating system had finally become impossible, I had a short stint running QNX as my one and only operating system. In 2004, before I joined OSNews and became its managing editor, I also wrote and published an article about QNX on OSNews, which is cringe-inducing to read over two decades later (although I was only 20 when I wrote that – I should be kind to my young self). Sadly, the included screenshots have not survived the several transitions OSNews has gone through since 2004.

    Anyway, back in those days, it was entirely possible to use QNX as a general purpose desktop operating system, mostly because of two things. First, the incredible Photon MicroGUI, an excellent and unique graphical environment that was a joy to use, and two, because of a small but dedicated community of enthousiasts, some of which QNX employees, who ported a ton of open source applications, from basic open source tools to behemoths like Thunderbird, the Mozilla Suite, and Firefox, to QNX. It even came with an easy-to-use package manager and associated GUI to install all of these applications without much hassle.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ EFF to Second Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant

      The case, U.S. v. Kamaldoss, involves the criminal prosecution of a man whose cell phone and laptop were forensically searched after he landed at JFK airport in New York City. While a manual search involves a border officer tapping or mousing around a device, a forensic search involves connecting another device to the traveler’s device and using software to extract and analyze the data to create a detailed report the device owner’s activities and communications. In part based on evidence obtained during the forensic device searches, Mr. Kamaldoss was subsequently charged with prescription drug trafficking.

      The district court upheld the forensic searches of his devices because the government had reasonable suspicion that the defendant “was engaged in efforts to illegally import scheduled drugs from abroad, an offense directly tied to at least one of the historic rationales for the border exception—the disruption of efforts to import contraband.”

      The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted 41,767 device searches.

    • Molly White ☛ Wind the clock

      First things first, protect yourself. Even if you think the threat of authoritarianism is overblown, take steps to defend against it. If you’re a journalist, maybe read this section twice.

    • Lee Peterson ☛ CASIO get hacked

      Another day another hack. I’ve just had an email from CASIO letting me know my information is gone in a breach.

    • India Times ☛ social media safety for children: Need child tracking data for their safety: Meta’s Antigone Davis

      The upcoming rules of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act should allow basic tracking of children on social media platforms beyond what is needed to ensure their safety and parental observation, global head of safety at Meta Antigone Davis said.

    • Futurism ☛ If You Voted, Now Your Address and Party Registration Are Publicly Available Online

      While some states are exempt from the site's panopticon, including California and Pennsylvania, most everyone else's addresses and party affiliations are but a few clicks away.

      Like 404, we tested how easy VoteRef is to use — and were appalled to discover that not only does it immediately spit out a person's registration address, recent elections they voted in, and their party affiliation, but also links to other people who live at the same address as well.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Analyzing Uber's real-time data application approach

      Founded in 2009, Uber Technologies Inc. started as a small tech disruptor and subsequently revolutionized urban transportation, popularizing concepts such as ride-sharing.

      In the decades since, the company has recognized the intrinsic importance of data as a driver for business outcomes: differentiation and diversification. Harnessing its vast data resources, Uber has built an expansive architecture that powers real-time capabilities such as logistics services and ticket bookings.

    • The Conversation ☛ Fitness apps can reveal your location – updated laws would help plug this hole in our personal security

      This situation spotlights the gaps in legislative measures that fail to evolve at pace with technological advancements. But it also underscores a critical need for users themselves to adopt a more vigilant approach when engaging with such platforms.

      While legal frameworks lay the foundation for protecting user privacy, they are not foolproof against breaches. This necessitates a dual responsibility. Both regulatory bodies and users must collaborate to ensure robust data security.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Tackling the energy-water challenge at COP29

      Understanding the energy and water nexus is vital to combating climate change. Global demand for both continues to grow as populations, cities, and incomes expand. Climate change increases rainfall variability, causing more destructive droughts and floods, and affecting hydropower’s ability to supply low-emission electricity and stabilize the grid. Climate impacts will boost energy demand for irrigation and desalination, and stress electricity transmission and utility water systems.

      At this month’s COP29 in Baku, greater attention must be given to the complex relationship between energy and water. The meeting should promote long-term policies, strategies, and investments to meet this challenge.

    • The Register UK ☛ NHS turns to DNA sequencing to prevent future pandemic

      A public-private partnership in the UK is constructing what the government said is "the world's first real-time surveillance system" to track and prevent future pandemics.

      The program, which will involve the government and NHS working with technology from genome sequencing firm Oxford Nanopore, aims to identify respiratory infections and propose treatments for patients within six hours. The hope is that faster treatment times will aid patient outcomes, and that fast sequencing of pathogens will enable the UK to head off a repeat of the COVID-19 pandemic that rocked the world in 2020.

    • The Record ☛ Russia’s [Internet] watchdog blocks thousands of websites that use Cloudflare's privacy service

      According to local media reports, the websites were blocked overnight on Oct. 6. All of them use Cloudflare’s security feature called Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), which protects user information during the initial stages of a secure connection. ECH makes it more difficult for third parties to track which sites users are visiting.

      In a statement on Thursday, Roskomnadzor urged Russian website owners to stop using Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, as the company recently enabled the default use of the ECH extension.

    • YLE ☛ Finnish Parliament's constitutional committee opposes Hungary's CSAM scanning proposal

      The suggestion has been widely criticised by tech messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal, data protection experts and other groups — as well as a majority of MEPs, according to technology news outlet TechCrunch.

      FiCom, an ICT industry lobbying group, said that Hungary's proposal calls for users to "consent to checks on all the content they add".

• Defence/Aggression

  • Chris O'Donnnell ☛ What now?

    Billionaires are a policy failure.

    [...]

    Posting on Facebook is not activism.

  • Digital Music News ☛ 'Share to TikTok' Hits Spotify & Apple Music for Music, Audiobooks

    Furthermore, the video-sharing app has abandoned its music-streaming ambitions by shutting down the standalone TikTok Music service. Needless to say, the move certainly didn’t hurt TikTok’s relationship with Apple Music and Spotify, which have one less competitor in emerging markets. Building on those pertinent background details, Spotify users on iOS and Android can plug tracks, playlists, whole albums, podcasts, and audiobooks to TikTok via the music service’s “share” option.

  • Security Week ☛ US Gov Agency Urges Employees to Limit Phone Use After China ‘Salt Typhoon’ Hack

    According to a Wall Street Journal report, the agency sent an email to all employees and contractors with a simple directive: “Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages.”

  • Armin Ronacher ☛ What if My Tribe Is Wrong?

    I think not wishing others well is a coping mechanism of sorts. For sure it was for me. As you become more successful in life, it becomes easier to be supportive, because you have established yourself in one way or another and you feel more secure about yourself.

  • NDTV ☛ Elon Musk Replies To 'We Need Your Help Removing Trudeau' Post

    i:

    Billionaire Elon Musk has predicted the downfall of Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the upcoming Canadian federal election, scheduled to take place on or before October 2025. “He will be gone in the upcoming election,” posted Musk on X, while responding to a user's request to help Canada get rid of Trudeau.

  • Nick Heer ☛ The Fight

    As the world’s sole superpower, however, the effects of U.S. lawmaking will be felt everywhere. The incoming administration’s actions will, at best, disregard consequence. Again: at best. The rest of the world will attempt to govern itself around the whims of an unstable sex abuser, his dangerously feckless cabinet, and a host of grovelling billionaires whispering in his ear.

  • Axios ☛ How Project 2025 would change American life

    Why it matters: The Heritage Foundation-backed plan would do far more than that. Its 900-page wishlist could reshape daily life for millions of Americans if some of its less publicized recommendations are adopted.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Fox News hosts joke that Trump prosecutors should ‘face death penalty’

    Fox News hosts Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld joked that prosecutors in Donald Trump’s criminal cases should get the death penalty.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Surviving the Holocaust: 'There is no God'

    Mother and daughters were initially spared deportation. Helga and Elisabeth were the results of a so-called "mixed marriage": their father was Jewish, their mother a Protestant who had converted to Judaism in 1931. As "half Jews," the sisters had more rights under the Nazi race laws than "full-blooded Jews." But their daily reality did not reflect that. Helga was expelled from school and forced to wear a yellow star. The sisters were repeatedly picked up by authorities, and their mother and grandfather were repeatedly able to save them from deportation, "because of this special clause for 'Jewish half-breeds.'"

    But in 1943, their luck ran out. When Helga reached the age of 14, the final deportation order arrived. Her mother went along voluntarily, taking six-year-old Elisabeth with her. "My mother," says Helga, "was a strong woman. She didn't think she ought to be better off than her husband or her children."

  • The Age AU ☛ Premier says social media driving youth suicides as Qld backs ban

    Legislation due to come before federal parliament this month would prevent under-16s from using platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube.

    New LNP Premier David Crisafulli confirmed his support for the proposal at a virtual national cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday morning.

  • The Record ☛ Canada to force TikTok to dissolve its business in the country

    While the Canadian government ordered TikTok to close its offices in the country, it is not banning Canadians’ from using the popular app. U.S. Congress passed a controversial law that will do just that in April.

    TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, a fact which many Western governments have said makes the app a vehicle for disinformation and a tool for spying on Americans.

  • India Times ☛ Canada shuts TikTok's offices over national security risks

    The Canadian government on Wednesday directed the video app TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese tech giant, to close its offices in the country because of national security risks.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Canada Shuts Down TikTok Canada Over Security Fears

    The Canadian government has ordered TikTok Technology Canada, Inc., the Canadian arm of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd., to wind up operations in Canada. This order follows an extensive national security review conducted under the Investment Canada Act.

    This decision comes as countries worldwide, including Australia, the UK, and the US, are increasing scrutiny on social media platforms for concerns ranging from data privacy and national security to children’s safety.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Australia to ban children under 16 from social media

    Children in Australia under the age of 16 will be banned from social media as part of a push to protect young people’s mental health, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, with firms involved required to enforce the new regulations or face potential fines.

    “Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Thursday, pledging to introduce legislation later this month.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Age AU ☛ Newcastle: Sailor who fell from cargo ship found safe after almost 24 hours at sea

    Initial reports suggested the man had swum eight kilometres to shore, but this was later clarified as him being found floating off Blacksmiths Beach.

  • The Nation ☛ Western States Are Still Counting Ballots. Here’s Why That Matters.

    Like so much else that emanates from Trump world, this doesn’t pass the smell test. Yes, Trump has an Electoral College win, but of a smaller magnitude than that of the vast majority of presidents over the past century. The ill-fated Warren Harding, for example, whose corruption at the time seemed unparalleled, but who would probably blush with shame at Trump’s grift-and-grab operation, won 404 Electoral College votes. Herbert Hoover, one of America’s greatest presidential failures, won 444.

    More significantly, Trump world is claiming public support for their mandate because he supposedly won the popular vote in a landslide. To be clear, he didn’t. The numbers that the media has been so carelessly broadcasting and printing to back up Trump’s claims are based on an incomplete vote count.

  • The Hill ☛ The mainstream media needs to change when it comes to covering Donald Trump

    For those keeping score, anti-Trump journalists have now lost two out of three. The journalistic establishment should ponder what all that might mean.

  • Security Week ☛ Nokia Says Impact of Recent Source Code Leak Is Very Limited

    Nokia says the impact of the recent data leak is very limited, and there is no indication that the cybersecurity incident could have a significant impact on the company or its customers.

• Environment

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Cod quotas lowered for the fourth year in a row

    The cod stock is under severe pressure. This year’s 453,000 tons was down 20% from 2023 quotas which again was down 20% from the agreed catch in 2022. The peak was in 2013 when fishermen were allowed to catch a million tons of cod in the Barents- and Norwegian Seas.

  • Futurism ☛ As Trump Prepares to Slash Environmental Protections, 48 of the 50 States Are Facing Droughts

    President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back environmental protections while doubling down on fossil fuel production, pointing the United States in a terrifying direction given the growing climate crisis.

  • Truthdig ☛ After Trump Win, World Says ‘We’ve Been Here Before’ - Truthdig

    By some estimates, Trump’s plans to promote fossil fuels could add about 4 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2030, about equal to the amount produced annually by the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries.

    Hare said those emissions would make it harder, but not impossible, to limit long-term global warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level as targeted by the Paris Agreement, a goal that was already in doubt before the election. The outcome will “ultimately hinge on the level of action taken by all other countries in the next few years and also on what the U.S. does following the Trump presidency’s conclusion,” he said.

  • Science Alert ☛ Forever Chemicals May Damage Kidney Function, Evidence Shows

    In rodents, when some forever chemicals accumulate in the kidneys, the high concentrations lead to injury via oxidative stress.

    The new research on humans is the first longitudinal study to explore how forever chemicals might impact kidney function in a multi-ethnic cohort of young adults at high risk of metabolic diseases.

  • YLE ☛ Finnish Lapland sees highest November temperature in nearly 50 years

    The exceptionally mild temperature for November was recorded in the village of Nellim, on the shore of Lake Inari in the municipality of Inari.

    Before Friday's temperature reading, the last time Lapland was that warm in November was in 1975, when the mercury rose to 11 degrees.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Meet Teneo: The Global PR Firm Promoting COP29 Host Azerbaijan as a Climate Champion

    • DeSmog ☛ Climate Deniers Waiting in the Wings as Trump Reclaims Presidency

    • Semafor Inc ☛ China is poised to dominate the global electric two-wheeler industry

      Electric two-wheeler mopeds first appeared on China’s roads about 20 years ago, but thanks to a confluence of factors, they are now ubiquitous. And with their domestic market increasingly saturated, the companies that make them are casting their ambitions abroad.

    • NL Times ☛ Homeowners associations warn of misleading advertising of home batteries

      The advertising brochures often promise a very short payback period. Independent experts have their doubts about this. They warn that there is a real chance that a home battery will only yield money after many years.

      VEH advises consumers who are interested in a home battery to do their research first and obtain information from independent organizations.

    • Michigan News ☛ Ann Arbor bicyclist yells at driver after nearly being hit. Driver responds with a gun - mlive.com

      The bicyclist said after yelling at the driver, the van caught up with him and the driver pulled out a handgun, pointed it at him and made threats before fleeing the area, police said.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Music Streaming? Why Bother When You Can Mine Bitcoin

      “We are scaling back our investment in TIDAL and winding down TBD,” Block told shareholders in the letter. TBD is a Bitcoin-focused arm of the company that focused on building out a new, decentralized [Internet]. “This gives us more room to invest in our bitcoin mining initiative, which has strong product market fit and a healthy pipeline of demand, and Bitkey, our self-custody wallet for bitcoin.”

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Opinion: I thought I had my L.A. cycling commute down. I'd missed the obvious

      So that afternoon, I did it. At Colorado and Main, I continued straight, and there it was: the Pacific Ocean bathed in pinks and oranges. I pedaled by three bros holding hands and singing and city workers cleaning public toilets. I saw people doing calisthenics on the rings and ropes and the volleyball fields buzzing with competition. A lifeguard tower shutting down for the day. A woman in a leather pantsuit walking a dog dyed bright pink. A grizzled man singing into a microphone, his feet sandy and splayed.

      I arrived home within minutes of when I usually would. And despite my frustration at the years I missed, I was delighted that I could go this way from now on.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ 20 Books to Help Prepare for Trump 2.0

    • The Hindu ☛ Post Bandhavgarh elephant deaths, Madhya Pradesh to use satellite collars to track elephants

      “In light of the recent deaths of 10 elephants in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR), the Madhya Pradesh forest department plans to use satellite collars to track the movements of tuskers,” an official said on Friday (November 8, 2024).

    • The Hindu ☛ Tiger population triples in Assam’s Manas National Park: Study

      The report published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Conservation attributed this turnaround in a park that suffered because of prolonged armed conflict to increased funding, improved protection infrastructure, and a larger staff.

      The study said the growth in the 500 sq. km Manas was supported by tourism revenue, which bolstered management budgets. The findings indicated that collaborative efforts from local communities, government, and conservation agencies can lead to successful species recovery in post-conflict scenarios.

    • Deseret Media ☛ Timed entry to return to Arches National Park in 2025 but with big change

      Arches National Park officials turned to a seasonal timed-entry program in 2022 after record-breaking visitation during the prior year brought park entry to a halt many times.

      The program requires visitors to purchase entry tickets in advance, helping guarantee when people will arrive so traffic isn't backed up by everyone arriving at the same time — a recurring problem that reached a boiling point in 2021. Before timed entry, it wasn't uncommon for the park's main entrance to be closed for hours just to combat traffic congestion.

    • University of Michigan ☛ Strategies for safe, responsible engagement with wildlife

      Some animals may become more active as colder weather approaches and they prepare for winter. While interactions with wildlife can be appealing, people are asked to follow several guidelines to help ensure the safety of both humans and wildlife.

    • Futurism ☛ Cloned Endangered Ferret Gives Birth to Healthy Offspring

      The cloned ferret, called Antonia, gave birth to two healthy offspring at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Virginia after mating with a 3-year-old male that was born naturally.

      Earlier this year, Antonia was cloned from tissue samples preserved at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance's Frozen Zoo back in 1988, an astonishing 35 years ago.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Modern dating is broken – and that’s a hidden factor in England’s fertility crisis

      That crisis is threefold. First, there are the apps, which many now depend on to find a partner. About 4.4 million people in the UK use them, up from 3.1 million users in 2017. Tinder, the world’s highest-grossing dating app, boasts of having created 55bn “matches” – but as I have reported, there’s mounting evidence that these apps are designed to be addictive – to retain users in order to create revenue and sell services to desperate daters. If they worked as they claim to, they would lose two customers every time a lasting relationship was formed. Instead, dating apps in 2024 have the same powerful siren call as any other endless feed of scrollable smartphone content.

    • SBS ☛ Splitting superannuation tops up a partner's balance

      According to Browne's calculations, a woman who takes a seven-year break from working to raise a child or children would lose almost $700,000 from their final super balance as a result of their time out of the workforce .

      "It's not just the super during that time, it's the compounding nature of that super where it's not there working for you," she said.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pro Publica ☛ New York Bolsters Oversight of Court-Appointed Guardians

  • FAIR ☛ Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas on Placing Blame for Trump

  • Derek Kędziora ☛ The myths of causality amidst democracy

    Stepping back from the partisan arguments, it’s amazing how simplistically both sides painted the world. Every single problem has a single, simple cause, and voting for a particular candidate will fix everything. Both sides agree on this sort of mythical, cartoonish model of causality.

    In reality, causality is a nastily complex thing. Doing something now might bear fruit in 100 years, or not. In the case of climate change, much of what’s been done has been done, and it’s frustrating to admit that we simply don’t know what, if any, effect radical actions today will have.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Prime

    Incidentally, if you cancel your Prime membership today, they might not actually cancel it for another year, since they do not do refunds, but they will let you fill out a nice little survey asking why you are cancelling. Just in case you wanted to let them know.

  • The Register UK ☛ The US government wants devs to stop using C and C++

    The report on Product Security Bad Practices warns software manufacturers about developing "new product lines for use in service of critical infrastructure or [national critical functions] NCFs in a memory-unsafe language (eg, C or C++) where there are readily available alternative memory-safe languages that could be used is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety."

    In short, don't use C or C++. Yeah, that's going to happen.

  • The Register UK ☛ Intel restores free coffee taken away in cost-cutting drive

    Intel is on an spending-slashing crusade at the moment, with a plan to bin about 15,000 staff to help right its financials. Just last month, it laid off 2,000 staff (1,300 of them from its Hillsboro, Oregon site) and announced big cuts in staff perks earlier in the year.

  • The Oregonian ☛ Intel brings back workers’ free coffee, seeking to stem morale decline

    The chipmaker is eliminating 15,000 jobs this fall through layoffs, buyouts and early retirement offers. Intel laid off 1,300 Oregon workers last month and more than 1,000 others at sites in California, Arizona and Texas.

  • Security Week ☛ Malwarebytes Acquires VPN Provider AzireVPN

    Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes on Thursday announced the acquisition of AzireVPN, a Swedish company that sells privacy-focused VPN services.

  • India Times ☛ Canva is leveraging its Facebook India communities to build deeper inroads

    Design software company Canva's India business has more than doubled in growth over the last one year and contributed “significantly” to its $2.5-billion annualised revenue run rate, cofounder Cliff Obrecht told ET.

  • NVISO Labs ☛ Threat-Led Penetrations Testing (TLPT) in the TIBER world

    If you are familiar with TIBER, this should all still be familiar ground. The only difference you may have noticed so far, is the terminology to refer to the White Team. In TLPT language, this team is now referred to as the Control Team, immediately indicating the role they have to fulfill. In terms of stakeholders, there is not much change either compared to TIBER participants: [...]

  • The Independent UK ☛ Madonna has two-word message for Trump after he wins election

    However, days after Trump beat Harris, Madonna responded to the news on Instagram. She shared a photo of a cake she baked, which she had emblazoned with the words: “F*** Trump.”

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Rogan, Musk and an emboldened manosphere salute Trump’s win: ‘Let that sink in’

    Joe Rogan reacted to Trump’s win on Tuesday night by yelling a reverential “holy shit” in a video he posted to X that showed him watching Trump’s election party on Fox News. Rogan, whose chart-topping podcast has an estimated 81% male audience, considers himself more of a conversationalist than a pundit but nevertheless endorsed Trump hours before the election, after hosting Trump and JD Vance on The Joe Rogan Experience. (He invited Kamala Harris, but they could not agree on interview terms.)

  • The Walrus ☛ We’re Addicted to the Feeling of Being Right

    The results of this great tallying of political desire are, naturally, beyond any single person’s assessment. The many millions of votes being cast might also take years to show their genuine effect in public policy, cultural attitudes, and geopolitical shifting. But despite the obvious display of popular will, or maybe simply because of it, this is not a moment to feel much reassurance about the future of liberal democracy or transnational justice—what we might call the cosmopolitan dream. There are dark signs of rising right-wing authoritarianism everywhere, mobilization in rich nations against the flow of migrants, and entrenchment of economic disparity. Existential threats, meanwhile—from climate disaster, artificial intelligence, and old bogeys like nuclear war and fundamentalist rage—are the background noise of news feeds, doomscrolls, and the incessant demands of everyday life.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Anthropic and Meta open the way for military use of artificial intelligence

    Social network giant Meta and leading artificial intelligence startup Anthropic are making it easier for U.S. military and intelligence to tap their algorithms.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How tech leaders tied to Elon Musk plan to steer Trump’s government

    After a night of partying and euphoria in West Palm Beach, Florida, the name-shuffling began.

    A coterie of business leaders surrounded a blissed-out Donald Trump early Wednesday at his Mar-a-Lago residence, passing the names of executives and donors who could shape the future administration’s approach to the economy and regulated industries, from Big Oil to tech, according to three people familiar with the efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Vox ☛ Election conspiracy theories about Trump’s win, debunked

      Another claim that’s emerged centers on how Harris lost key swing states including Michigan and Wisconsin — but Democrats won other seats, including Senate seats in those places. Because some voters in these states appear to have split their tickets, that’s prompted some online observers to push theories that there’s something amiss with voting machines or other parts of the election process.

    • The Hill ☛ Disinformation from adversaries and Americans swamped 2024 election

      The swirl of disinformation surrounding the 2024 election marked a new high for foreign influence efforts and the elevation of false claims by people within the U.S., raising questions about the impact on the electorate.

      Russia, Iran, and China continued to promote content that sows division among Americans, perfecting techniques and reaching new audiences.

    • Futurism ☛ News Outlets Are Falsely Reporting That a NASA Astronaut Is Still in the Hospital

      The problem? NASA itself announced just a day after those initial reports that the astronaut returned home to Houston after just one day, with a clean bill of health and the ability to "resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members."

      Soon after, outlets like The Guardian, Space.com, and Ars Technica all picked up the stories in a timely manner — but for whatever reason, those headlines came up much lower on Google News than this wave of far sketchier ones.

    • Variety ☛ Jimmy Kimmel Responds to Elon Musk Calling Him a 'Propaganda Puppet'

      He then scrolled through X posts Musk made in the run-up to this year’s election, calling news outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the Associated Press propaganda.

      “Good one, Broseph,” Kimmel said. “Everything is propaganda to Elon Musk.”

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Jimmy Kimmel Responds to Elon Musk Calling Him a 'Propaganda Puppet'

      During his monologue, Kimmel recounted how he had shared his thoughts on the election on his show and how he was “going to miss democracy.” “I heard from a lot of people about it, but none more prominent than the richest man in the world,” he told the audience. He then shared Musk’s tweet and responded, “At least my children like me.”

      “I take issue with that,” Kimmel said of Musk’s claim. “The guy who paid people a million dollars a day to vote for Donald Trump is calling me a propaganda puppet. Listen Kermit, you bought Twitter. You bought a social media platform that is literally a propaganda machine. Let me tell you something: If I spent two weeks trying to come up with a four-word description of Elon Musk I don’t think I could do better than ‘insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet.'”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Tajik Activist Reportedly Taken Into Custody Upon Arrival After German Deportation

    Tajik opposition activist Dilmurod Ergashev was reportedly taken into custody by authorities as he disembarked a plane in Dushanbe after being deported by Germany hours earlier.

    Sharofiddin Gadoev, leader of the opposition Movement for Reform and Development of Tajikistan, told RFE/RL that Ergashev was met by Tajik security officials, who declined to comment on the situation.

  • Techdirt ☛ Meta’s ‘Facebook Supreme Court’ Touted As Success By Conservative Member And His Confirmation Bias

    The narrative for years has been that social media companies — most of them headquartered in California — have it in for conservatives. While the real problem tends to be actual Nazis, conservatives who feel their bigoted views have been “censored” continue to pretend West Coast liberals and the Biden Administration are to blame for private companies showing them the exit.

    In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg decided the people talking out of their asses must be right. Meta formed an oversight board of sorts that would backstop moderation decisions, allowing an even smaller group of people to decide whether the algorithms or hundreds of other human moderators made the right call when taking down content.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ What Trump's win means to struggling mainstream media organizations

    Trump largely bypassed traditional media outlets, granting lengthy interviews to comedians such as Theo Von and Joe Rogan. Harris went on podcasts such as Alex Cooper’s popular “Call Her Daddy.” Anchors and correspondents are having frank conversations with their agents about how they will navigate another four years covering a president who has a hostile view of journalists.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian police open two more cases against current and former Meduza journalists

    The Russian authorities continue to prosecute current and former Meduza personnel for their work with an “undesirable” media organization. The two latest misdemeanor cases are against podcaster Vladislav Gorin, who hosts Meduza’s daily news analysis show, and Dmitry Kartsev, who worked at Meduza for five years before becoming the editor of Dekoder.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Media’s Identity Crisis

    All of this contributes to a well-documented, slow-moving crisis of legacy media—a cocktail whose ingredients also include declining trust, bad economics, political pressure, vulture capitalists, the rise of the internet, and no shortage of coverage decisions from mainstream institutions that have alienated or infuriated some portion of their audiences. Each and every one of these things affected how Americans experienced this election, though it is impossible to say what the impact is in aggregate. If “you are the media,” then there is no longer a consensus reality informed by what audiences see and hear: Everyone chooses their own adventure.

  • CPJ ☛ Masked protesters attack N1 TV, Euronews camera operators, damage camera in Serbia

    SafeJournalists, a regional press freedom group, said that the incidents were reported to the authorities, but that police at the scene did not respond and instead “observe[d] the events silently”.

  • CPJ ☛ Journalist stabbed 21 times in Iraqi Kurdistan after reporting on corruption

    The attack took place on November 4, hours after Abdulkhaliq, a reporter for the online outlet Bwar Media, published a report on allegations that an official had blocked the implementation of a local electricity and water project, according to multiple news outlets and the journalist, who spoke with CPJ. The report said the unnamed official was part of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, which is the defense ministry in Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.

  • VOA News ☛ Mongolian appeals court upholds sentence against critical journalist

    Lawyers for Unurtsetseg later spoke with reporters outside the court. They said the legal process might have affected her rights.

    The hearings were held in secret because of an alleged connection to state secrets. Bulgamaa Rinzaan, who is representing Unurtsetseg, said that because the hearings were closed, defense attorneys had restricted access to case files and evidence, which severely limited their ability to defend their client effectively.

  • Techdirt ☛ Warner Bros CEO Zaslav Sees Big Opportunity For More Pointless Media Consolidation Under Trump 2.0

    Zaslav, like most media execs in streaming, is all out of any sort of original ideas. And the kind of stuff that truly pleases customers (low prices, higher quality, improved customer support, better feature sets) costs money and erodes quarterly earnings.

    The streaming market has also hit a subscriber growth ceiling, so they’ve shifted to more “creative” ways to please Wall Street, like more and more ads, endless price hikes, weird new restrictions, and a crackdown on password sharing; you know, all the annoying stuff traditional cable did that ultimately resulted in a collapse of the industry at the hands of streaming and piracy.

  • CPJ ☛ Togolese regulator suspends Tampa Express for 3 months for criticizing minister

    The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Togolese authorities to reverse their three-month suspension of Tampa Express after the bi-monthly newspaper criticized a government minister.

    “Togolese authorities must allow Tampa Express to resume publication without delay,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in Durban. “Media regulations should be used to encourage good practice, not to deploy disproportionate punishments or censorship.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • NDTV ☛ No Dating, Babies: South Korea's '4B' Movement Enters US After Trump's Win

    Amid the rising fear, South Korea's '4B' movement has entered the US, with some women on social media saying that they are tired of awaiting what the future holds for their own bodily autonomy.

  • CBC ☛ What is the 4B movement? Why some women are boycotting men after Trump's election victory

    They say Trump — who has been found liable for sexual abuse of magazine writer E. Jean Carroll and bragged about how he was able to "kill" Roe v. Wade during his last presidency — and the government he represents could lead to a systemic attack on their bodily autonomy.

    Now, many women say they're turning to 4B, a South Korean radical feminist movement that boycotts men, as a way to reclaim agency over their bodies.

  • RFA ☛ Jailed Tibetan community leader denied retrial

    Chinese authorities in Tibet have denied to retry an envirnomental activist who is serving a seven-year sentence for campaigning against government corruption, his lawyer said on social media.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ To Unfuck Politics, Create More Union Members

    We can diagnose this voter shift as being a result of the Democrats being a hollow corporate shell that doesn’t fight for leftist policies, and we can point out that Kamala Harris’s brother in law is Uber’s top lawyer, which is a job that surely destines you for hell. I am not going to get into this sort of diagnosis today, though. It’s important to recognize the difference between “The Democrats should do leftist policy because it is good for humanity” and “The Democrats should do leftist policy because that is a winning electoral strategy.” These two separate arguments get conflated on both ends, and mixed together, and it makes the discussion hard to parse because even the honest people start talking past each other, and the majority of people are just arguing for their own personal policy preferences rather than being honest anyhow. This is why these arguments generally break down into either “I am a centrist and the Democrats lost because voters hate their leftist policies” or “I am a leftist and the Democrats lost because voters hate their centrist policies.”

  • Futurism ☛ Researchers Confirm That Conservative Christian Women Are Having Horrible Sex

    In a new study published in the Sociology of Religion, researchers from multiple Canadian universities found that the conservative religious ideals of sexual purity are connected to both an increase in sexual pain disorders and a decrease in marital satisfaction.

  • International Business Times ☛ 'You've Been Selected To Be A Slave' Texts Target Black Americans: FBI Launches Investigation

    The Indiana University Police Department (IUPD) promptly initiated an investigation and alerted federal authorities. The FBI responded swiftly, confirming they were aware of the messages and had begun a coordinated investigation with the Department of Justice. In a public statement, the FBI encouraged recipients of the texts to report them immediately to law enforcement, as threats of violence and racial intimidation are treated as serious offences under federal law.

  • The Record ☛ Following Trump win, FBI warns of ‘slave plantation’ texts targeting African Americans

    The messages say the recipient has been "selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation" and to look out for vans that will take them to a plantation. Some are explicitly signed as from the "Trump & Vance Administration."

    At least one person received a voicemail that used the voice of Trump to relay a similar message. Some messages caused alarm because they used victims’ real names.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ When White Supremacists Staged the Only Successful Coup in U.S. History

    On November 10, 1898, white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, massacred upwards of 60 Black people and overthrew the city’s democratically elected government, instigating the only successful coup d’état in United States history. No one was brought to justice for the horrific violence, and over the next century, the event was largely ignored, whitewashed as a “race riot” if it was mentioned at all.

  • The Korea Times ☛ YouTuber Johnny Somali apologizes for kissing 'comfort women' statue, viewers question sincerity

    Johnny Somali, a 24-year-old American YouTuber who stirred controversy in Korea by kissing a girl statue symbolizing Korean victims of wartime sexual slavery, has apologized.

    However, despite his apology, viewers are skeptical, noting that Somali has left various controversial photos and videos on his social media accounts.

  • New Statesman ☛ Sara Sharif died alone. We need to strengthen our communities

    Neighbours told me they thought it was “a bit odd” that they hadn’t seen Khyra for a few months, but didn’t think too much of it and didn’t want to pry. Another told the press that Khyra had been so hungry she had taken stale bread left out for the birds. Khyra’s mother reportedly admonished the neighbour for leaving the food out, and from then on the neighbour “looked away” because they “didn’t want another row”. As I got into the car to drive back to the station, I couldn’t believe what I had heard. I was deeply upset, angry and confused. How could the people I spoke to have noticed a little girl go “missing” and not ask questions?

  • YLE ☛ Finland marks Finnish Swedish Heritage Day

    There are close to 300,000 people in Finland who speak Swedish as their mother tongue. Swedish is enshrined in the constitution as a national language with equal status to Finnish, officially making the country bilingual.

    First celebrated by the Swedish People's Party in 1908, Svenska Dagen, as it is known in Swedish, is annually observed on 6 November. According to the Finnish National Agency for Education, the original intention was to increase the sense of belonging among Swedish-speaking Finns.

  • The Local SE ☛ New law lets Swedish police seize luxury items without formal suspicion

    An example would be an expensive sports car driven by an unemployed person with no legal income and who cannot explain how they paid for it.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ 16 U.S. States Still Ban Community-Owned Broadband Networks Because AT&T and Comcast Told Them To

    Currently sixteen states have laws — usually ghost written by regional telecom monopolies — restrict or outright ban community broadband. Some of these laws are outright bans on community broadband, basically letting Comcast or AT&T veto your local infrastructure voting rights. Others erect elaborate, cumbersome restrictions on the financing and expansion of such networks and pretend that’s not a ban.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Army makes more IT organization changes in pursuit of unified network

    For one, the Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM), is pivoting from being the organization that focuses mainly on operating and maintaining its network infrastructure to more of an all-in-one provider for critical services like cybersecurity and identity management.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Stock Hits $400 Ahead of Critical Q3 Earnings Report

    However, for reasons including profitability woes and broader market trends, SPOT not only failed to jump past $400 at the time, but proceeded to embark on a downward spiral that ultimately brought it to the low-$70s the following year. Shares then rode gradual momentum through the $100s during 2023, amid the beginning of an aggressive focus on operational efficiency.

  • Macworld ☛ How small is the M4 Mac mini really? This small

    The new Mac mini is…mini. It’s way more mini than the old mini, which wasn’t a very big desktop computer at all. At just 5×5 inches square and 2 inches tall, it’s less than a quarter the volume of the Mac Studio, which is also a small desktop computer, and only 1.33 inches bigger than the Apple TV 4K in length and width and not even an inch taller.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ "Your personal information is very important to us.", part three

  Since I enjoy wasting the time and money of multinational superpredators, here's how that discourse went. They have not yet closed the ticket, but since it has now been nearly a month since they last replied, I think we know how this is going to go.

• Patents

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge’s Investigation Into Patent Troll Results In Criminal Referrals

    In 2022, three companies with strange names and no clear business purpose beyond patent litigation filed dozens of lawsuits in Delaware federal court, accusing businesses of all sizes of patent infringement. Some of these complaints claimed patent rights over basic aspects of modern life; one, for example, involved a patent that pertains to the process of clocking in to work through an app.

    These companies – named Mellaconic IP, Backertop Licensing, and Nimitz Technologies – seemed to be typical examples of “patent trolls,” companies whose primary business is suing others over patents or demanding licensing fees rather than providing actual products or services.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirating "The Pirate Bay" TV Series is Ironically Difficult

    The Pirate Bay made its debut as a TV series on the Swedish streaming platform SVT Play earlier today. International viewers are left waiting until other services pick it up. In the meantime, some may be tempted to explore unofficial channels for pirated copies of the show. But finding a pirated copy is proving surprisingly difficult.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Nintendo Sues Emulator Gamer Who Streamed Pirated Games Before Release

    Nintendo has filed a devastating lawsuit against a gamer who not only live-streamed games before their commercial release, but used emulators and pirated ROMs to do so. Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, faces claims of unauthorized public performance and reproduction, contributory infringement and inducement for sharing links to emulators and pirated ROMs, plus violations of the anti-circumvention and circumvention device trafficking components of the DMCA.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Mariah Carey Christmas Song Lawsuit Dismissal Likely, Per Report

    Unsurprisingly, one of these lyrical phrases is “all I want for Christmas is you,” according to the appropriate track and the action, which explores the Carey release’s commercial prominence, the works’ purported technical overlap (“the songs share a similar syncopated chord pattern”), and a whole lot else.

  • The Register UK ☛ SK hynix chip engineer gets 1.5 years in prison on IP [sic] theft

    "There are reasonable grounds to suspect that she removed these documents in batches of about 300 pages daily, concealing them in her backpack and shopping bags," the court reportedly alleged.