Leftovers

• Michał Sapka ☛ Sir! We reinvent the wheel here!

  I’m currently angry at Data Dog, but it’s not only them. Our entire industry hates improving. It’s not enough to fix a problem, you should aim at changing the paradigm (and I have no idea what it even means!). A coworker once joked that Google created Kubernetes to ensure that spinning new product is complex enough, for them to never have a competition.

  This mindset results in us, not even being out of current tech bubble, looking for the next tech bubble. Just let me grep logs!

• The Atlantic ☛ What the Men of the Internet Are Trying to Prove

  As I took that story in, I thought not only about how old Tyson is, but about how old the [Internet] is—how far we are into the process of reality being hollowed-out by digital forces. The ropes advertised tech products: Meta Quest, the VR headset; DraftKings, the gambling network repopularizing one of humankind’s oldest addictions. Paul cut an imposing figure, his neck as thick as a ship’s mast, his tattooed legs swathed in diamond-draped shorts. It was breathtaking to remember that, a little more than decade ago, he became famous as a happy-go-lucky teen goofing around online with his brother, Logan. Now he’s an emblem of a generation of men—and a wider culture—starving for purpose while gorging on spectacle.

• El País ☛ The Andy Warhol painting that put him at odds with Donald Trump has a new owner

  In 1981, six years before his death, Andy Warhol devoted the spring to a limited series of paintings commissioned by Donald Trump. The American tycoon, then 34 years old, asked the artist for paintings inspired by Trump Tower, which was still under construction, to adorn the atrium of his first architectural project, located at 725 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. “New York Skyscrapers stands as a testament to Warhol’s ability to encapsulate the spirit of an era characterized by excess, and it remains a powerful commentary on the pursuit of the American Dream as seen through the lens of one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists,” says the Phillips auction house, which has now sold one of the paintings for $952,500. But Trump did not like it at all. “Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated,” Warhol wrote in his diary on August 5, 1981. So Trump rejected all eight of Warhol’s works and refused to pay him. “They’re going to come down with swatches of material so I can do the paintings to match the pinks and oranges. I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though, I get that feeling,” the artist wrote.

• Joel Chrono ☛ No finishing thoughts

  No matter how hard I try, I’ll probably still try to conclude this in some way, my previous two paragraphs already ended with unanswered questions, maybe this time it will be just a sudden break with no continuation.

• The Register UK ☛ BASIC co-creator Thomas Kurtz hits END at 96

  Kurtz is most famous as the co-inventor of the BASIC programming language, but almost as influential was the operating system on which BASIC first ran, which he also co-designed: the Dartmouth Timesharing System or DTSS.

• Yordi Verkroost ☛ Echoes from 802,701

  I wasn’t certain of the book’s broader message, though. Was it simply an adventure, or was it trying to say something more deep? Comparing it to today's world, the story could offer a tale about humanity’s choices—how we treat each other, and how we (fail to) care for the world we live in. Reading this novel today adds a layer to it, reminding us that these warnings are more important than ever. It’s a timeless message, and one that cannot be repeated often enough.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Eviden seals €60M deal for Finnish supercomputer

    The Atos subsidiary has inked a deal with the IT Center for Science (CSC), a company 70 percent owned by the Finnish state and 30 percent by higher education institutions, for a supercomputer called Roihu – which translates to "blaze" or "flare."

    According to Eviden, the new hardware will offer three times the compute capacity of CSC's existing systems, Mahti and Puhti, and will also significantly increase AI performance. Roihu will be located in CSC's datacenter in Kajaani, and is tipped to be ready for researchers by the end of 2025.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Notre Dame unveils first-ever hypersonic Mach 10 wind tunnel

    Through a partnership with the Navy, the university has spent the last three years building a Mach 10 wind tunnel. The facility, which can simulate flight conditions up to 10 times the speed of sound, will boost Notre Dame’s fundamental hypersonic research efforts and provide a more realistic environment in which to test high-speed technology.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious King Arthur Monument Found to Be Over 5,000 Years Old

    The new estimate suggests King Arthur's Hall, in Cornwall in England, is in fact 5,500 years old. That makes the rectangular bank of earth and stone five times older than an earlier assessment, which dated it back to around 1000 AD.

  • The Conversation ☛ Many physicists argue the universe is fine-tuned for life – our findings question this idea

    Physicists have long grappled with the question of why the universe was able to support the evolution of intelligent life. The values of the many forces and particles, represented by some 30 so-called fundamental constants, all seem to line up perfectly to enable it.

• Career/Education

  • Semafor Inc ☛ US schools, colleges brace for conflict with Trump administration

    US education officials have expressed growing concern that US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will try to exert control over campuses, with funding, diversity initiatives, campus life, and curriculums all seeming in the balance.

  • Pravesh Koirala ☛ The democratization of education.

    Finally, any prediction about the future is inherently uncertain. People do, after all, go to universities not just for the learning but also for the social experience, and it is highly unlikely that universities would be displaced any time soon. But, with the rising tuition costs, people are finding it less and less worth their money to pay for certain branches of education. Perhaps, these branches could be democratized first? That way, people could still learn about it and not pay exorbitant fees to an institution that has become unreasonably bloated in recent times.

  • The Scotsman ☛ I would have been left stranded on my walk without Scotland’s libraries - their closure is devastating

    Stripping rural areas of local libraries will be another blow to already underserved communities.

  • YLE ☛ Museums to get reprieve after government finds €1m to stave off closures

    The Finnish Heritage Agency has said it will cancel the closure of four museums, if it receives a promised one million euros in additional funding from the government.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Fasting-Style Diet Seems to Result in Dynamic Changes in Human Brain

    Not only did the participants in the study lose weight – 7.6 kilograms (16.8 pounds) or 7.8 percent of their body weight on average – there was also evidence of shifts in the activity of obesity-related regions of the brain, and in the make-up of gut bacteria.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Alcohol Sales in Russia Reach Record High in 2024

    Retail alcohol sales in Russia hit a record 184.2 million decaliters between January and October 2024, the RBC business news outlet reported Monday, citing data from market regulators.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • NYPost ☛ American Airlines expands 'gate lice' crackdown to over 100 airports

    American Airlines has announced it is expanding its new technology to end a process known as “gate lice,” which is when passengers cut lines in hopes of boarding a flight early.

    The system audibly flags when a passenger attempts to board the plane before their designated assignment is called and will automatically reject the ticket.

  • Tim Kellogg ☛ LRMs Are Interpretable

    A year ago I wrote a post called LLMs Are Interpretable. The gist is that LLMs were the closest thing to “interpretable machine learning” that we’ve seen from ML so far. Today, I think it’s fair to say that LRMs (Large Reasoning Models) are even more interpretable.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ AI voice manipulation new trend for money transfers

    In a disturbing new trend in cybercrime, scammers are using artificial intelligence (AI)-driven voice manipulation to deceive victims. In the latest case, a victim attempting to send money to a friend living in the US was duped into transferring a sum of ₹1.8 lakh by a scammer using an AI-generated voice.

    According to a police source, these cases usually fall under the category of impersonation since the accused pretends to be someone else. However, the use of AI to talk to victims by posing as their friend or relative adds a new dimension.

  • The Long Context ☛ You Exist In The Long Context

    Too often, when people talk about the AI progress of the past few years, they focus on metrics like size of the training data, or the number of parameters in the final model, which ultimately create the general cognitive ability and background knowledge that the model brings to each exchange you have with it. But I would argue that the Inspector Faurot game demonstrates a different leap forward, one that is not appreciated enough in the popular discussion of the AI revolution. The ability to host a factually-grounded and entertaining role-playing game based on a book is not primarily the result of larger training sets, or the so-called “parametric memory” of the model. What you are experiencing walking through the streets of Soho in that adaptation of The Infernal Machine is better understood as the byproduct of a different advance: the dramatic increase in the model’s context window that we have seen over the past 18 months.

  • The Register UK ☛ DARPA-backed voting system for soldiers abroad savaged

    According to an analysis paper from Andrew Appel, professor of computer science at Princeton University, and Philip Stark, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley, MERGE "contains interesting ideas that are not inherently unsound" but isn't realistic given the legal, institutional, and practical changes necessary to make it work.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Top senator calls Salt Typhoon “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history”

    The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Disinformation and deepfakes played a part in the US election. Australia should expect the same

    A slew of fake videos and images shared by Trump and his supporters purported to show his opponent, Kamala Harris, saying or doing things that did not happen in real life.

    Of particular concern are deepfake videos, which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence (AI) and depict events that didn't happen. They may appear to depict real people, but the scenarios are entirely fictitious.

  • New York Times ☛ How to Use Bluesky If You’re Leaving X

    Whether you’ve left X for a new home or simply want to understand one of the most downloaded free apps, here is what you need to know about Bluesky.

  • India Times ☛ reddit: Reddit down for thousands of users, Downdetector shows

    Reddit's status page confirmed the company was investigating a problem with its website. The social media company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Reddit down for thousands of users in US, second outage in 24 hours

    Social platform Reddit was reportedly down for thousands of users in the United States on Thursday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

    The outage comes a day after the platform rolled out an update to fix a software bug that prevented tens of thousands of people from accessing its platform.

  • New York Times ☛ Reddit Back After Tens of Thousands of Users Report a Second Outage

    There were more than 72,000 reports of problems from users on the website Downdetector at 10:16 a.m. on Thursday. Reddit acknowledged that there was a problem with its website and about an hour later said it was implementing repairs.

  • 404 Media ☛ Pokémon Go Players Have Unwittingly Trained AI to Navigate the World

    In a blog post published last week, first spotted by Garbage Day, Niantic says it is building a “Large Geospatial Model.” This name, the company explains, is a direct reference to Large Language Models (LLMs) Like OpenAI’s GPT, which are trained on vast quantities of text scraped from the [Internet] in order to process and produce natural language. Niantic explains that a Large Geospatial Model, or LGM, aims to do the same for the physical world, a technology it says “will enable computers not only to perceive and understand physical spaces, but also to interact with them in new ways, forming a critical component of AR glasses and fields beyond, including robotics, content creation and autonomous systems. As we move from phones to wearable technology linked to the real world, spatial intelligence will become the world’s future operating system.”

  • Wired ☛ Inside the Booming ‘AI Pimping’ Industry

    According to our review of more than 1,000 AI-generated Instagram accounts, Discord channels where the people who make this content share tips and discuss strategy, and several guides that explain how to make money by “AI pimping,” it is now trivially easy to make these accounts and monetize them using an assortment of off-the-shelf AI tools and apps. Some of these apps are hosted on the Apple App and Google Play Stores. Our investigation shows that what was once a niche problem on the platform has industrialized in scale, and it shows what social media may become in the near future: a space where AI-generated content eclipses that of humans.

  • 404 Media ☛ Inside the Booming 'AI Pimping' Industry

  • PC World ☛ Disposable addresses would make Gmail a privacy powerhouse

    But there’s a better way — and Google seems poised to bring it to the masses. As spotted by Android Authority, a new “Shielded Email” feature in the Gmail app for Android devices is seemingly on the way. It would let you create disposable email addresses, or temporary burner email addresses that forward email to your real account.

  • India Times ☛ Bluesky clocks 20 million users, but yet to catch up with X, Threads

    Bluesky, amicroblogging platform and X’s emerging nemesis, has gained 20 million followers within a span of just about one month - an impressivefeat for a relatively new app. Given the app’s growth, this has given rise to the speculation that it could soon become one of the top competitors of X alongside Instagram’s Threads.

  • Privacy International ☛ From chatbots to adbots: sharing your thoughts with advertisers

    AI chatbots are now in everyday use both across different industries and recreationally. In this blog, we consider the growing possibility that these AI tools are the next home of the multi-billion-dollar advertising industry. We look at examples from some AI companies that have already announced demos of sponsored ads in their AI chatbot tools, and discuss why this is dangerous territory for users.

  • Futurism ☛ Internal OpenAI Emails Show Employees Feared Elon Musk Would Control AGI

    During the discovery process in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman, email exchanges from early in the group's history show that even early on, tensions flared over who would control the company's powerful creations.

  • Futurism ☛ Parents Furious as School Accused of Covering Up AI-Generated Nudes of Students

    Days later, the Lancaster Country Day School Board of Directors announced that it had decided to "part ways" with its head of school Matt Micciche, as local outlet Lancaster Online reported last week. The board's president Angela Ang-Alhadeff also resigned.

    Earlier this month, law enforcement identified almost 50 victims after a fellow student used AI to generate nude images of his female classmates last year.

  • Beta News ☛ Red Hat Enterprise Linux is coming to Windows Subsystem for Linux [Ed: Slop artist Brian Fagioli and his latest EEE nonsense?]

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Scheerpost ☛ UK Sees Privatization ‘Opportunities’ in Ukraine War

    Recently-published Foreign Office documents on its flagship aid project in Ukraine, which supports privatisation, note that the war provides “opportunities” for Ukraine delivering on “some hugely important reforms”.

    The government in Kyiv has in recent months been responding positively to these calls. Last month, president Volodymyr Zelensky signed a new law expanding the privatisation of state-owned banks in the country.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Organizing for Digital Rights in the Pacific Northwest

      PDX Privacy’s mission is to bring about transparency and control in the acquisition and use of surveillance systems in the Portland Metro area, whether personal data is captured by the government or by commercial entities. Transparency is essential to ensure privacy protections, community control, fairness, and respect for civil rights.

    • Tripwire ☛ 750,000 Patients' Medical Records Exposed After Data Breach at French

      A French hospital has found itself in the unenviable position of learning that hackers have gained access to the medical records of over 750,000 patients following a cyber attack.

    • Bleeping Computer ☛ Cyberattack at French hospital exposes health data of 750,000 patients

      This access allegedly would let the buyer view the hospitals' sensitive healthcare and billing information, patient records, and the ability to schedule and modify appointments or medical records.

    • Dhole Moments ☛ Key Transparency and the Right to be Forgotten

      The goal of Key Transparency is to ensure everyone in a network sees the same view of who has which public key.

      How it accomplishes this is a little complicated: It involves Merkle trees, digital signatures, and a higher-level protocol of distinct actions that affect the state machine.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Secret Service Tracking People's Locations without Warrant - Schneier on Security

    • 404 Media ☛ 'FYI. A Warrant Isn’t Needed': Secret Service Says You Agreed To Be Tracked With Location Data

      The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn't need a warrant.

    • The Register UK ☛ Data is the new uranium – both powerful and dangerous

      A generation ago we had hardly any data at all. In 2003 I took a tour of a new all-digital 'library' – the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) – and marveled at its single petabyte of online storage. I'd never seen so much, and it pointed toward a future where we would all have all the storage capacity we ever needed.

      That day arrived not many years later when Amazon's S3 quickly made scale a non-issue. Today, plenty of enterprises manage multiple petabytes of storage and we think nothing about moving a terabyte across the network or generating a few gigabytes of new media during a working day. Data is so common it has become nearly invisible.

    • IT Wire ☛ Microsoft announces world-first secure cloud PC for Windows 365

      Microsoft has announced the diminutive little piece of hardware, which is available in select markets - including Australia - right now, in preview. It will be available more widely from April 2025. The unit costs only $US 349 and Microsoft says it will boot into cloud Windows 365 environments within seconds. Users can authenticate with a range of options including FIDO keys - think Yubikey, or FEITIAN for examples - as well as via Microsoft Authenticator and similar choices.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking U.S. Soldiers and Spies – Pixel Envy

      Yet another entry in the ongoing series of stories documenting how we have created a universal unregulated tracking system accessible to basically anyone so that, incidentally, it will make someone slightly more likely to buy a specific brand of cereal. This particular demonstration feels like a reversal of governments using this data to surveil people with less oversight and fewer roadblocks.

    • Wired ☛ Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking US Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany

      A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US companies legally collecting digital advertising data are also providing the world a cheap and reliable way to track the movements of American military and intelligence personnel overseas, from their homes and their children’s schools to hardened aircraft shelters within an airbase where US nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.

      A collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily routines of US service members. The findings also provide a vivid example of the significant risks the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas.

    • VOA News ☛ Islamic Council's VPN decree raises concerns about privacy in Pakistan

      Pakistan's top cleric has declared that virtual private networks, or VPNs, are unlawful, igniting a debate on privacy rights and access to information amid a government crackdown on the [Internet].

      Allama Raghib Naeemi, head of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), issued a decree saying it makes no difference whether a VPN is registered or unregistered.

    • NYOB ☛ German BGH: GDPR compensation for loss of control

      German courts and literature so far extremely hostile toward GDPR. In Germany, legal literature has a great influence on the courts. In the area of data protection, however, there are almost only specialist lawyers on the corporate side. Also, research in the field of digital rights is increasingly being commissioned and paid for by companies to an alarming extent – often without this being disclosed accordingly. Against this backdrop, an industry has emerged that continues to produce crude theories as to why GDPR claims should be rejected or why damages for data protection violations are virtually non-existent.

      For example, a ‘materiality threshold’ was invented in Germany, whereupon the courts dismissed many GDPR damages cases as ‘immaterial’. Austrian courts have also embraced this theory, although the GDPR offers no basis for it. It was only the CJEU that put a stop to this (C-300/21 Österreichische Post). Nevertheless, some German courts have repeatedly dismissed such cases, contrary to the CJEU ruling.

    • Privacy International ☛ Securitising Education | Privacy International

      Educational spaces are increasingly being subjected to intrusive monitoring, and the education technologies (EdTech) being deployed is being used as a form of surveillance that undermines students’ privacy and human rights.

      This intrusion into students’ privacy is mainly due to the inescapable presence of these technologies, which facilitate the creation of detailed records documenting students’ movements, interactions, and daily schedules. While those promoting EdTech may claim that these tools enhance safety, efficiency, and content delivery, the implications are far-reaching. They can expose intimate aspects of a student’s life, including their sexual orientation, health status, and religious preferences.

      In essence, they transform educational institutions into environments where students are under constant surveillance, much like individuals in “high security” settings, such as prisons. Their every move is meticulously recorded and categorized, producing a chilling effect on their natural reactions and behaviour.

    • The Scotsman ☛ Never mind Elon Musk, it’s Police Scotland reading our tweets that should worry us

      If Police Scotland devoted less time to hurtful opinions expressed on social media and more on tackling real crimes, this country would be a better place

  • Confidentiality

    • [Old] Let's Encrypt ☛ Let’s Encrypt: Delivering SSL/TLS Everywhere

      Vital personal and business information flows over the Internet more frequently than ever, and we don’t always know when it’s happening. It’s clear at this point that encrypting is something all of us should be doing. Then why don’t we use TLS (the successor to SSL) everywhere? Every browser in every device supports it. Every server in every data center supports it. Why don’t we just flip the switch?

      The challenge is server certificates. The anchor for any TLS-protected communication is a public-key certificate which demonstrates that the server you’re actually talking to is the server you intended to talk to. For many server operators, getting even a basic server certificate is just too much of a hassle. The application process can be confusing. It usually costs money. It’s tricky to install correctly. It’s a pain to update.

    • Simon Willison ☛ How some of the world's most brilliant computer scientists got password policies so wrong

      As Stuart describes it, their first mistake was inventing password policies (the ones about having at least one special character in a password) without testing that these would genuinely help the average user create a more secure password. Their second mistake was introducing one-way password hashing, which made the terrible password choices of users invisible to administrators of these systems!

    • Tor ☛ Solicitation for an IPv4 block - tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

      However, in order to do this, we need some company/university/nonprofit, or some kind person, to donate to us a /24 (or greater) IPv4 block. If said entity is in the USA, it's possible to make this a tax-deductible donation since we are a 501(c)(3). If you could connect me to anyone who might be able to do this for Tor, please feel free to connect me over Signal or email.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Staggering temperature rise predicted for the Middle East and North Africa

    The Middle East and North Africa, which already include some of the hottest and driest spots on Earth, are undergoing accelerated climate change and will reach warming thresholds two to three decades earlier than the rest of the world, a new study reports. By 2100, parts of the Arabian Peninsula could experience up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming.

  • Defence Web ☛ Nigeria strives to contain banditry problem

    “The once deadliest road on Earth, the Abuja-Kaduna highway, has made a 180-degree turn,” he said, as reported by The Nation newspaper. “There has not been a single incident reported on that road in 2024. Jihadi communes and ungoverned bandit spaces have disappeared, and the near warlords who ran them have been neutralised.”

  • YLE ☛ Repairs to damaged Baltic Sea cable to begin next week

    Cinia said repairs would start after the weekend, on Monday, depending on weather conditions. It said the cable would be mended by the end of the month. Fixing it involves the repair vessel lifting the damaged cable from the seabed.

    The Swedish Armed Forces have meanwhile submitted an initial report to the police regarding the Baltic Sea cable damage, according to Swedish public broadcaster SVT.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Swedish police focus on Chinese ship after suspected undersea cable sabotage

    The ship, identified by Denmark as the Yi Peng 3, passed the two cables on Sunday and Monday about the time it is believed they were severed in a suspected malicious attack. The ship has been shadowed by a Danish navy vessel since it was located in waters between Sweden and Denmark.

    The Danish defence command said: “The Danish Defence can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3. The Danish Defence currently has no further comments.”

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Project 2025 Contributors Make Up Trump Administration Picks

    At least five of Trump’s nominees and appointees have direct ties to Project 2025, and the president-elect is reported to be considering an author of the project, Russ Vought, to head the White House Budget Office.

  • VOA News ☛ X's former policy chief takes job with Elon Musk rival Sam Altman

    Pickles, who resigned from X in September, told Reuters on Wednesday that he will serve as chief policy officer for Altman's Tools for Humanity, the company building the technology to support World Network, formerly known as Worldcoin.

  • VOA News ☛ Iran defies international pressure, increasing its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium, UN says 

    Iran has defied international demands to rein in its nuclear program and has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog seen Tuesday by The Associated Press.

  • The Register UK ☛ Study suggests X turned right just in time for US election

    A pair of researchers say they've determined that July 13 was likely the day that X, formerly known as Twitter, made platform-level algorithm changes that increased the visibility of posts made by Elon Musk and Republican-leaning accounts in the run-up to the US election.

    That date may stick out in the memory as when Elon Musk, now the owner of X, formally endorsed Donald Trump in the recent US presidential election.

  • The Record ☛ UK says a new law banning social media for under-16s is 'on the table'

    The British government is considering banning children from using social media as part of the country’s efforts to address the impact of the online world on young people’s wellbeing.

    Setting out his priorities on Wednesday for the online safety regulator Ofcom, Peter Kyle, the government’s technology secretary, announced a new study on the effects social media has on under-16s.

  • BBC ☛ Australia plans social media ban for under-16s

    "This one is for the mums and dads... They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online. I want Australian families to know that the government has your back," he said.

    While many of the details are yet to be debated, the government said the ban would apply to young people already on social media.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Telecom Industry Bands Together to Fight Rising Theft and Vandalism of Communications Infrastructure - Inside Towers

    There are 44 incidents of vandalism and theft of broadband networks per day across the U.S., and the telecom industry is vowing to do something about it. Representatives from companies such as Verizon (NYSE: VZ), AT&T (NYSE: T), Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR), NTCA, USTelecom, and CTIA, held an inaugural Summit on Protecting Critical Communications Infrastructure at Verizon’s regional office in Irving, TX yesterday. Press was allowed to attend the first session on a white paper discussing the issue and offering potential solutions.

    “Driven by the rising market value of copper, bad actors are targeting utility poles, electric grids, EV charging stations, cellular towers, construction sites and more to steal and sell the metal. This can affect everything from emergency services to daily business operations and can cost millions of dollars to repair and replace,” say CTIA, NCTA-the Rural Broadband Association, USTelecom-the Broadband Association and NTCA-the Internet and Television Association in the document.

  • India Times ☛ Senator says Trump cannot ignore law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok by next year

    Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who is holding a hearing on Chinese hacking incidents, cited the law passed by Congress in April as a result of security concerns that China could access data on TikTok on Americans or spy on them with the app.

    Blumenthal on Tuesday also raised security concerns about Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's ties to China as well as other tech firms.

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Police to get more data powers despite Sarah Everard records breach

    Clause 81 of the Bill will remove safeguards that compel police to provide a reason for accessing and disclosing records, meaning that data abuses by police officers could go uncovered.

    On Friday, a Metropolitan police officer was sacked for inappropriately accessing files relating to Sarah Everard. In addition, the Met revealed that in total: “104 officers and staff (68 officers and 36 staff members) were initially identified as potentially accessing files relating to the investigation without a legitimate policing purpose.” Over two thirds of these cases required action by the police.

  • The Local DK ☛ Guns to umbrellas: Why Nordic countries have wildly different-looking crisis booklets

    Sweden's crisis preparedness brochure features a soldier with an assault rifle, Denmark's a power line, and Norway's a collection of supplies. Why the different approach to visual communication?

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Danish Navy boards Chinese ship suspected in European undersea cable sabotage — Sweden’s Defense Ministry put freighter at the time and place of the disruption

    According to reports in Eurasia Daily and Defence24, the Danish Navy has boarded and detained the Chinese Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3 in the Danish Straits, near the exit of the Great Belt. The detention took place on the evening of November 18. According to Financial Times sources, Sweden authorities are "carefully studying the Chinese vessel."

  • The Local DK ☛ Danish navy shadows Chinese ship after Baltic cables severed

    Denmark's navy said Wednesday it was shadowing a Chinese cargo vessel in the Baltic Sea, a day after Finland and Sweden opened investigations into suspected sabotage of two severed undersea telecoms cables.

  • YLE ☛ Finland suspends development cooperation with Somalia over refusal to accept repatriation of citizens

    According to Tavio, repatriation cooperation refers to Somali citizens who do not have Finnish residence permits.

  • New York Times ☛ Severing of Baltic Sea Cables Was ‘Sabotage,’ Germany Says

    Germany’s defense minister on Tuesday called the severing of two fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea an act of sabotage aimed at European countries that are supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

    One undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany was cut on Monday and the other, which runs between Lithuania and Sweden, was severed late Sunday. The damage disrupted some data transfers but did not endanger the [Internet] connection or security of any of the countries, authorities said.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ UN nuclear watchdog censures Iran for failing to cooperate

    The resolution, which was passed following a motion tabled by the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States at the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors, was dismissed by Iranian officials as "politically motivated."

    Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Mohsen Naziri Asl, claimed the motion had "low support," having passed with only 19 votes in favor. China, Russia and Burkina Faso voted against the text, while 12 abstained. Venezuela didn't participate at all.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Chabria: The Trump landslide that wasn't

    But as more of the popular vote is counted, it turns out that Trump’s victory came with the slimmest of margins — a few hundred thousand votes in key places slid him into office. The Cook Political Report, considered to be the expert on these things, has Kamala Harris earning 48.24% of the popular vote as of Wednesday, compared with 49.89% for Trump. That’s a difference of about 2.5 million votes out of about 155 million counted.

    “The idea that we are in a generation shift, a realignment, is a little bit of an over-read,” said data wizard Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data. “Some of it has been exaggerated.”

  • The Nation ☛ Donald Trump Has NOT Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President

    Trump’s popular-vote advantage has declined steadily since election night. As of Monday afternoon, Trump was at 49.94 percent, while Harris was at 48.26, according to the authoritative Cook Political Report’s tracking of results from official sources in states across the country. And we can expect that the Republican’s total will only continue to tick downward as heavily Democratic states on the West Coast finalize their vote tallies.

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ Why has Earth been so unusually hot for the past 2 years? Climate scientists are trying to figure that out

    We know that fossil fuels are primarily responsible for Earth's upward-trending temperature and our changing climate. But something else seems to be driving temperatures up, higher than scientists expected or would like.

    Last year was 1.48 C warmer globally than the pre-industrial average from 1850 to 1900, beating out 2020's record of 1.25 C, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ California bomb cyclone storm: When will rains hit L.A. area and how bad will it be?

    Northern California is being drenched by the first major atmospheric river storm of the season, with rain totals reaching well over 7 inches in many areas, and continued rain on Thursday stretching the threat for flooding and mudslides.

    The slow-moving storm was strengthened by a so-called bomb cyclone, which describes how rapidly the system intensified in the Pacific before it moved ashore. By Friday, the rain will begin moving southward, and while forecasters are saying some rain is likely to hit Southern California by the weekend, it will be dramatically less than than what’s been seen north of the Bay Area this week.

  • New York Times ☛ Phillips 66 Is Accused of Violating the Clean Water Act

    The oil company was indicted on charges of dumping nearly 800,000 gallons of contaminated wastewater into the Los Angeles County sewer system.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa to rework its strategic energy plan

    A reworked version of South Africa’s long-term power plan will soon be presented to cabinet, designed to help draw a line under the electricity blackouts that have crippled the country for a decade, officials said on Wednesday.

    The last plan, which mapped out potential power supply scenarios up to 2050, was only released in January. It made provision for a broad range of power sources including natural gas, nuclear and renewables alongside coal, currently the dominant power source.

  • Vox ☛ Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl is blazing a trail toward a more sustainable food system in Denmark | Vox

    The idea that we need to eat more, not less, meat is also baked into many nations’ cultural psyches, with both subtle and overt messages that meat equals masculinity and prosperity. Meat has been dragged into many countries’ culture wars, stifling civil discussions over how to make food systems sustainable.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Atmospheric river meets bomb cyclone: The result is like a fire hose flailing out of control

    When these two phenomena get together, the weather gets hard to predict, as meteorologist Chad Hecht of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego explains.

  • Common Dreams ☛ COP29 must deliver more than “threadbare promises”: Oxfam

    “COP29 must do more than simply repeat the same threadbare promises. Rich countries have spent decades now stalling and blocking genuine progress on climate finance. This has left the Global South suffering the most catastrophic consequences of a climate crisis they did not create. The draft text scandalously misses the crucial element of declaring a clear public commitment to a new climate finance goal.

  • YLE ☛ Helsinki considering emission-free vehicle zone

    The City of Helsinki is currently investigating ways to reduce traffic emissions. According to Anni Sinnemäki (Green), the deputy mayor responsible for the urban environment, the city is considering a limit on the use of combustion-engine cars in some areas of central Helsinki.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Is 'dirty power' costing you cash? Smart sensors detect damaging harmonics outside IEEE standards

      A lower THD value signifies cleaner power and less distortion, while a higher THD value indicates “dirty” or “noisy” power, which is less desirable in electrical systems for a variety of reasons.

      “If you have harmonics on the grid, then it causes everything to use more energy than it should because it’s wasted in heat,” Whisker Labs’ CEO explains.

    • New York Times ☛ Northvolt, Europe’s Hope for a Battery Champion, Files for Bankruptcy

      The Swedish battery maker Northvolt, once seen as Europe’s strongest competitor to Chinese battery manufacturers, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States on Thursday.

    • VOA News ☛ Zambia, Zimbabwe seek move to wind, solar to avert power shortages

      Zimbabwe and Zambia are holding a summit this week in Victoria Falls to identify ways to attract investors for energy projects and development.

      The talks come as the neighbors experience their worst recorded drought, which is drying up the Kariba Dam reservoir and causing hourslong power cuts.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Greece ☛ Slender-billed curlew goes extinct

      The Hellenic Ornithological Society on Wednesday announced the extinction of a migratory bird, the slender-billed curlew, that had found a safe haven in northern Greece’s wetlands on its treacherous annual journey from Europe to Africa.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Hill ☛ California's San Joaquin Valley sinking due to groundwater over-pumping: Study

      This agriculture-rich region, located within the state’s Central Valley, has been sinking at record-breaking rates over the past two decades, according to the study, published on Tuesday in Nature’s Communications Earth & Environment.

      While researchers have known that subsidence — the technical term for sinking — has been affecting the region in recent years, the total amount of collapse had not been quantified.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Washington Post ☛ OpenAI turmoil began soon after its founding, Musk emails show

    Musk’s latest suit, filed late last week, expands a complaint initially filed in February. The billionaire alleges that CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft conspired to overturn OpenAI’s original mission of creating AI that is beneficial to humanity and instead chase profits.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Stanford’s AI Center names US the top AI ecosystem, China follows

    Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has created a tool that measures the strength of AI ecosystems based on a country’s economy, infrastructure, education, and yes — governance. Those metrics led a panel of experts to designate the US as the world’s AI powerhouse by a landslide because of its high number of existing models, notable private investments, and research on responsible AI. China follows, with strengths in its number of patents granted, investment, and clear national strategy.

  • International Business Times ☛ Ford To Cut 4000 Jobs Across Europe By 2027: 800 UK Roles On The Chopping Block

    Ford Motor Company will implement a restructuring plan that will result in a 15 percent reduction of its 5,300-person UK workforce. The company has clarified that these changes will not affect its Dagenham and Halewood power unit plants and the Southampton logistics base.

    However, six other UK sites, including the crucial Dunton R&D centre and the massive Daventry parts distribution hub, may also face job cuts, according to a report by DailyMail.com. Ford admitted that its European passenger vehicle business has suffered substantial losses in recent years, exacerbated by the disruptive shift to electric vehicles and intensified competition.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Release the X Files

    One might point to Masnick’s seat on Bluesky’s board of directors as evidence of some kind of conflict of interest; indeed, that is the only complaint I have seen from anyone named in this article or associated with the “Twitter Files”. Sure, it would have been a good idea to disclose that in Masnick’s author bio or somewhere in the piece. But that is not a substantial explanation for the different response to two White House-connected social media platforms after the manufactured alarmism over internal Twitter moderation deliberations.

  • The Verge ☛ Comcast is spinning off its cable TV business

    The US media giant announced plans on Wednesday to spin off the bulk of its cable network channels — including CNBC, MSNBC, Universal Kids, USA Network, E!, Oxygen, Golf Channel, and Syfy — into a separate company. Comcast will retain its reality TV darling Bravo and the Peacock streaming service within its NBC TV business.

    The new, currently untitled venture (dubbed “SpinCo” as a placeholder) will be led by NBCUniversal chairman Mark Lazarus, with NBCUniversal’s CFO Anand Kini serving as both its financial and operating head. Non-cable services including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, and Sports Engine will also be moving to the new company. The separation is expected to take about a year.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Airtel to get new 4G and 5G equipment from Nokia in ‘multi-year, multi-billion’ deal

    Bharti Airtel Ltd will be getting 4G and 5G equipment from Finnish telecom, IT, and electronics giant Nokia Corporation, announced both the companies in a joint statement on Wednesday, November 20, 2024.

    The deal to to deploy the equipment across key Indian cities and states has been described as a ‘multi-year, multi-billion’ extension deal without its actual value disclosed yet.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Would you know what to do if your organisation was [breached]?

    Full of insights, you’ll find the key questions you need to ask such as “How secure are your employee’s credentials?”. It may surprise you that the accounts of CEOs and chief financial officers are more at risk than other staff members.

  • Nick Delehanty: Dog age my web site

    Nick Delehanty is a corporate lawyer who worked inside the state system, left to set up a dog day care business, Barkleys Doggie Daycare and wants to change the system that he formerly worked in.

    It looks like a dog ate Nick's web site and the domain name has been taken over by rival candidate Daniel Pocock. Coincidentally, Pocock worked at the other Barclays in Canary Wharf.

  • Jim O'Callaghan: Fine Gael & Fianna Fáil in power again

    At each election, the ESB sends a kind warning to all the candidates and political parties reminding them that risky behavior, like erecting signs on the power poles, is not safe for volunteers.

  • From Twitter trolling to SLAPP suits and RTE Objectivity

    The name Sinn Féin literally translates to "Ourselves", it is an unambiguous reference to sovereignty so it is disappointing to see that the party functions through social control media where they are giving up their autonomy to algorithms and artificial intelligence.

    When our political parties give up their autonomy to social control media, our nation also loses its autonomy.

    Chris is 60 years old and lived in Dublin his whole life. Some of his ancestors and cousins have also held public office. He is very well connected here, so why does he need social control media at all?

    Daniel Pocock is the only candidate running without social control media accounts.

  • Socialism with a touch of communism

    Brigid contested the by-election in 2021 and therefore she could have been more well prepared and registered her domain name long ago. She failed to take the key domain names BrigidPurcell.com and BrigidPurcell.ie and now Daniel Pocock, a rival candidate, has got them.

    Like other candidates, Brigid hopes to claim public funds to pay for the posters she is putting up all over Dublin Bay South. The posters promote social control media accounts, therefore, People Before Profit add to the net worth of Silicon Valley billionaires. That is a huge contradiction.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Vulture funds war-gaming Ireland loss of corporation tax revenue, Donald Trump

    Media reports have frequently mentioned that seventy percent of foreign investment in Ireland comes from the United States. The same reports are usually quick to note that the corporation tax associated with these companies is only paid in Ireland due to the very low tax rate of 12.5%

    Donald Trump made it clear that he expects these companies to pay their taxes in America and he will offer them a tax rate similar to Ireland.

    The Intel plant (Leixlip) and the data centers all around Dublin are not going to disappear. Infrastructure like that is a long term investment and the jobs associated with those projects are not at immediate risk. But jobs and corporation taxes are independent subjects for companies with a global footprint. They can't move a semiconductor plant at the press of a button but they can shift their profts to be taxed elsewhere.

    While those companies may not make any job cuts, the shift of tax revenues out of Ireland will be a big risk for the expenditures of the state. Expect cuts to expenditures in regional areas, cuts to libraries or cuts to mental health services. These are the things that always get cut, in any country, when government receives less taxes.

    It will take years for Ireland to replace those revenues because the previous governments have always been very complacent. They assumed a low Irish tax rate would be a gift that keeps giving.

    People know this and there is a perception that the state may be tempted to sell some assets to fill temporary gaps in the budget. It is inevitable that some investors already have shopping lists ready and will contact the new government with spontaneous proposals to sell off land and infrastructure.

  • Alan Shatter: Inheritance Tax Reform Campaign in Ireland

    On 17 September 2024, the Irish Times reported Alan Shatter hasn’t “given thought” to election bid as he seeks revolt over inheritance tax.

    There are many things that can be said for and against each type of tax.

    Four days later, on 21 September 2024, The Journal used a loaded question in a headline, asking FactCheck: Is it true that only about 3% of people pay tax on inheritance in Ireland?

    The Journal’s article does not mention the word inflation even once.

  • Barking up the wrong ESB pole

  • Dual citizens, Alan Shatter, Michael Danby & Israel

    Alan Shatter resigned from the party Fine Gael some years ago and is making a return as an independent candidate for Dublin Rathdown.

    Like candidates in neighboring Dublin Bay South, Mr Shatter wasn't fast enough to recover his old domain names. The domain name AlanShatter.ie has been taken by cybersquatters and they are trying to sell it to the highest bidder.

    Somehow the cybersquatters lost interest in Mr Shatter's original domain name AlanShatter.com and it has been secured by Daniel Pocock, independent candidate for Dublin Bay South. The original Alan Shatter web site can be viewed here.

  • Gloves are off in Dublin Bay South

    Kate O'Connell was a member of Fine Gael for many years. In 2016 she was the Fine Gael candidate and she won a seat. In the 2020 election Fine Gael fielded two candidates and O'Connell just missed out on winning one of the four seats. Kate subsequently fell out with Fine Gael and now she is running as an independent in 2024.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • US News And World Report ☛ A Former Staffer Exposes How Russia's Disinformation Machine Worked in Central African Republic

      When Ephrem Yalike-Ngonzo was first approached in 2019 by a Russian who suggested he help promote the activities of the Central African Republic's army and Russian forces in the country, the journalist believed that he was doing the right thing.

      But he soon realized that he was recruited by Kremlin-backed Wagner forces to spread Russian propaganda in the country, the crown jewel in Moscow's operations on the African continent.

    • New Statesman ☛ The Onion has bought InfoWars – but the left can’t win by trolling the right

      InfoWars, a misinformation juggernaut, was founded in 1999 by the far-right broadcaster Alex Jones. He quickly became notorious for airing conspiracy theories and fake stories – most notably, the unfounded claim that both 9/11 and the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting were false-flag operations executed by the US government. Jones rose to mainstream prominence in the mid-2010s as one of the most influential figures of the alt-right, famous for his red-faced tirades against the “mainstream media”, gaining popularity during the 2016 presidential election. He has since seen his cultural cachet plummet, having been successfully sued by the parents of the children murdered at the Sandy Hook school. Jones now owes them more than $1.5bn – a debt that has not begun to be paid and was the impetus for liquidating Jones’s assets, including InfoWars.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Microsoft launches imprint that aims to be faster than traditional book publishing

      Named after an Intel microprocessor, 8080 Books will publish titles focused on technology, science and business.

      The imprint aims to “accelerate the publishing process, shortening the lag between the final manuscript and the book’s arrival in the marketplace,” reads a company statement.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ How Iran Is Using Mental Illness As A Tool Of Repression

    In July 2023, for the first time, judges diagnosed three prominent actresses sentenced for not wearing the hijab as "mentally ill."

    The unprecedented move was condemned by top Iranian psychologists who said the judiciary was abusing its authority.

    Now, the authorities have announced the creation of a rehabilitation center in Tehran for women who do not wear the mandatory head scarf.

  • The Record ☛ Pakistan appears to block social media platform Bluesky amid user surge

    Data from the [Internet] watchdog NetBlocks confirmed reports earlier this week that users in Pakistan couldn’t access the service without using a virtual private network (VPN).

    Pakistan has increasingly restricted social media over the past year, sometimes publicly announcing the decisions. Government agencies, including the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), have not yet officially commented on Bluesky.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Using Executions To Suppress Ethnic Minorities, Rights Group Says

    Iranian authorities are using executions as "a tool of fear," particularly directed at ethnic minorities, dissidents, and foreign nationals, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on November 20.

    The rights watchdog highlighted a recent surge in capital punishment sentences against these groups, noting that the verdicts are handed down amid rampant violations of due process.

  • France24 ☛ Grief and anger after killing of blasphemy suspect in Pakistan - Focus

    In Pakistan, a blasphemy-related case turned tragic in September. A doctor accused of blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed was allegedly shot dead by police officers and his body set on fire by a mob of fundamentalists. In a historic first, members of civil society then mobilised to demand justice for him. [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Wired ☛ The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired

    After a two-month run, James and Rose have joined our ranks, as their broadcast has been discontinued, according to a representative for The Garden Island’s parent company, Oahu Publications (OPI). The pair were designed by Caledo, an Israeli firm that turns articles into videos where AI hosts discuss the news with one another. The Garden Island’s program was the first of its kind in the United States, and Caledo said at the time that it intended to expand it to hundreds of other local newspapers throughout the country—this is still the aim, according to a spokesperson.

    While OPI declined to comment further, and Caledo declared the program a success without elaborating on this particular scenario, it seems likely that a broadly negative public response played into the decision to end James and Rose’s tenure at The Garden Island.

  • CPJ ☛ Georgian police obstruct, detain journalists covering election protests

    “Georgian police officers’ detention of camera operator Sergi Baramidze and forceful obstruction of other journalists covering ongoing election protests is unacceptable and threatens the Georgian people’s access to information on important public events,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities in Georgia should swiftly investigate all instances of police violence against members of the press and ensure that perpetrators are held to account.”

  • VOA News ☛ Daughter of jailed Eritrean journalist continues to fight for his release

    Journalist Betlehem Isaak, the daughter of journalist Dawit Isaak — a dual Eritrean-Swedish citizen imprisoned without trial in Eritrea since 2001— accepted the 2024 Edelstam Prize on her father's behalf Tuesday during a ceremony at the House of Nobility in Stockholm.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, partners document Venezuela's intensified repression of journalists in new report

    The report details a heightened environment of fear, stigmatization, and criminalization of independent voices, creating “news deserts” where millions of Venezuelans lack access to reliable local news. From July 1 to August 28, 2024, six journalists have been detained, with four facing charges of terrorism and incitement to hatred under the 2017 Law Against Hate.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ Tibetan environmentalist released after serving nearly 15 years in prison

    Karma Samdrub, 56, was arrested by Chinese authorities in January 2010 and sentenced by the Yangi County Court in Xinjiang later that year on trumped up charges of excavating ancient tombs and robbing cultural artifacts, despite having been cleared of all charges in a 1998 investigation.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Finland’s Government Is Robin Hood in Reverse

    In Finland, a coalition of conservative and far-right parties is slashing social spending and squashing unions. It’s an authoritarian brand of neoliberalism that is undoing welfare while giving tax cuts to high earners.

  • The Register UK ☛ AI hiring test finds bias against men with Anglo-Saxon names

    In mock interviews for software engineering jobs, recent AI models that evaluated responses rated men less favorably – particularly those with Anglo-Saxon names, according to recent research.

    The goal of the study, conducted by Celeste De Nadai as an undergraduate thesis project at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, was to investigate whether current-generation LLMs demonstrate bias when presented with gender data and with names that allow cultural inferences to be made.

  • International Business Times ☛ 18-Year-Old UK Tourist Faces 20 Years In Dubai Prison After Holiday Romance With 17-Year-Old

    The case underscores the vast differences between Western norms and Dubai's legal system, which, despite recent reforms, remains heavily influenced by Islamic principles. According to the UK government's travel advice,

  • The Washington Post ☛ Amazon and SpaceX argue that the federal labor board is unconstitutional

    This week, Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, and rocket maker SpaceX, founded by Trump adviser Musk, argued in federal court that the structure of the NLRB is unconstitutional. They are among two dozen cases working their way through the courts that seek to drastically rein in the board’s power.

    Trump advisers have separately discussed taking the exceptional step of firing Democratic members of the five-person labor board, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Affordable water is vital to keeping Michiganders healthy • Michigan Advance

    As the Great Lakes State, we take water seriously. But despite our “fresh coast” reputation, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to access to clean water.

    It’s no secret that for decades, incomes in our state have lagged behind the rising costs of living for all but the wealthiest households. What’s less well-known is that, over the last 40 years, the cost of water service has risen faster than the cost of any other basic need except health care.

  • BIA Net ☛ Prisoner subjected to experiments by Muazzez İlmiye Çığ’s foundation: 'It was like Mengele's work'

    Allegations concerning the HZİ Neuropsychiatry Foundation were widely reported in outlets like Cumhuriyet newspaper and Nokta magazine in 1985, sparking significant public discourse and scientific scrutiny. During this period, the experiments were compared to the unethical medical experiments conducted in Nazi Germany. The foundation did not directly deny the allegations. Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, a member of the research team, denied involvement in the drug trials.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • IT Wire ☛ 3G shutdown in Australia: real consequences or overblown concerns?

    The Australian Government recently announced it is delaying the switch-off, primarily due to issues related to accessing emergency services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as personal medical alarms, connected cars and security systems. These concerns are valid as 3G still plays a vital role in supporting older devices, especially that the 2G GSM was shut down in Australia in 2017.

  • Techdirt ☛ Net Neutrality Is Dead As A Doornail Under Trump 2.0

    But the focus on net neutrality specifically has proven to be a bit of a distraction from the real fight: whether or not you think the government has a responsibility to protect the public and markets from massive, predatory telecom monopolies bone-grafted to our intelligence gathering systems.

    Time and time again, Republicans (and some Democrats), working hand in hand with telecom industry lobbyists, decided that the best approach is to let a company like Comcast or AT&T not only do whatever it wants, but dictate the entire contours of federal and state telecom policy. That means banning community broadband. That means ripping off the poor. That means no coherent consumer protection. No real merger review. Lots of tax cuts and subsidies in exchange for doing nothing.

  • Techdirt ☛ Press Glosses Over Fact Trump’s FCC Pick Will Decimate Consumer Protection, Media Consolidation Limits

    We noted earlier this week how Trump had unsurprisingly picked Brendan Carr to head the FCC. We also pointed out how Carr’s “policies” are utterly indistinguishable from the interests of unpopular telecom and media giants like Comcast and AT&T. He’s going to demolish whatever’s left of the FCC’s consumer protection standards and media consolidation limits, and he’s not going to be subtle about it.

    Carr is the dictionary definition of “regulatory capture.” He’s going to deliver the final killing blow to net neutrality (if the Trump-stacked courts don’t get to it first). He’s also going to take a hatchet to the FCC’s recent inquiry into shitty broadband usage caps, efforts to stop broadband “redlining” (read: racism in fiber deployment), good faith efforts to help the poor afford broadband, and efforts to stop your cable, phone, wireless, or broadband provider from ripping you off with shitty fees.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • India Times ☛ Spotify has 'pirated software, cheat codes and adult entertainment' problem

    Security researchers have uncovered a concerning trend on Spotify: Playlists and podcasts promoting malware and pirated software. According to a report in 404 Media, people are using Spotify playlist and podcast descriptions to distribute spam, malware, pirated software and cheat codes for video games.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Inside M4 chips: CPU core performance

    E cores are more complex, as they have at least two commonly used frequencies, that when running low Quality of Service (QoS) threads, and that when running high QoS threads that have spilt over from P cores. Low QoS threads are run at 77% of M1 frequency when on an M3, and 105% on an M4. High QoS threads are normally run at higher frequencies of 133% on the M3 E cores (relative to the M1 at 100%), but only 126% on the M4.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Why Doesn't Ticketmaster Offer 2FA On Ticket Transfers?

  Ignacio says he immediately reached out to Ticketmaster’s customer service to report the incident—both by calling and emailing. Ticketmaster’s customer service asked him for more information including his name, address, and the last four digits of the credit card used to purchase the tickets. “They told me that they would come back to me within three to give days. I have not heard back from them despite the multiple emails that I have sent them. I also asked them to block my tickets so that they cannot be sold again,” he shares.

• Wired ☛ New York Times Says OpenAI Erased Potential Lawsuit Evidence

  Lawsuits are never exactly a lovefest, but the copyright fight between The New York Times and both OpenAI and Microsoft is getting especially contentious. This week, the Times alleged that OpenAI’s engineers inadvertently erased data the paper’s team spent more than 150 hours extracting as potential evidence.

• Wired ☛ Microsoft at 50: An AI Giant. A Kinder Culture. And Still Hellbent on Domination

  It was an odd choice of anecdote, considering that Microsoft’s history has been plagued by its eagerness to use its size as a cudgel—and that today it’s under investigation by the European Union and the US Federal Trade Commission for those same tendencies. Nadella skates past that and brings up his greatest triumph, AI. He tells the tens of thousands of Softies around the world that the new goal was to put Copilot—that’s Microsoft’s name for its AI—in the hands of people and organizations everywhere.

  Nadella doesn’t say outright what everyone in the room knows: Just a decade ago, pundits had declared the company brain-dead.

• [Old] Newsweek ☛ The Microsoft Century - Newsweek

  If you think the world's biggest software company is powerful now, you haven't seen anything yet. Bill Gates and his legions of overachievers are headed for your house, your car and your wallet.

• [Repeat] New York Times ☛ How Google Spent 15 Years Concealing Its Internal Conversations

  Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible.

• CBC ☛ Google must sell Chrome to restore competition in online search, U.S. Justice Department says

  The measures presented by the Department of Justice are part of a landmark case in Washington which has the potential to reshape how users find information.

  They would be in place for up to a decade, enforced via a court-appointed committee to remedy what the judge overseeing the case deemed an illegal monopoly in search and related advertising in the U.S., where Google processes 90 per cent of searches.

• The Guardian UK ☛ Google must sell Chrome to end search monopoly, says US justice department

  The DoJ proposals follow a landmark court ruling in August in which a federal judge ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly over search services.

  The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the forced sale of the Chrome browser and a five-year ban from entering the browser market; a block on paying third parties such as Apple to make Google the default search engine on their products; and divestment of the Android mobile operating system if the initial proposals do not work.

• Wired ☛ Google Selling Chrome Won’t Be Enough to End Its Search Monopoly

  The recommendations are part of a detailed plan that government attorneys submitted Wednesday to US district judge Amit Mehta in Washington, DC, as part of a federal antitrust case against Google that started back in 2020. By next August, Mehta is expected to decide which of the possible remedies Google will be required to carry out to loosen its stranglehold on the search market.

• The Washington Post ☛ DOJ seeks to force Google to sell Chrome in search monopoly case

  The Justice Department is seeking to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser and make other major changes to remedy its illegal search monopoly, prosecutors told a Washington court Wednesday, setting a marker in the landmark case before the incoming Trump administration makes its own determinations about how to proceed.

  If the court adopts the prosecutors’ recommendation, Google could be the first big tech company broken up under federal antitrust law since AT&T in 1982.

• VOA News ☛ US regulators seek to break up Google, forcing Chrome sale

  The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google's industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.

  A sale of Chrome "will permanently stop Google's control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the [Internet]," Justice Department lawyers argued in their filing.

• India Times ☛ Google's antitrust case in the US: a timeline

  The US will urge a judge to order Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to sell its popular Chrome browser as part of an antitrust crackdown, according to some media reports. This will be a big move on the [Internet] giant if and when this happens.

• India Times ☛ UK clears Google parent and Anthropic partnership

  Britain's competition regulator on Tuesday cleared Google-parent Alphabet's investment in Anthropic, an American developer of artificial intelligence, following a probe.

  The Competition and Markets Authority concluded that the big tech giant had not acquired "material influence" over Anthropic as a result of the deal, which was reported to have cost $2 billion.

• New York Times ☛ US Proposes Forcing Google to Sell Chrome to Fix Search Monopoly

  The Justice Department and a group of states asked a federal court late Wednesday to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet.

  The request followed a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Judge Mehta asked the Justice Department and the states that brought the antitrust case to submit solutions by the end of Wednesday to correct the search monopoly.

• The Register UK ☛ US Justice Dept confirms it wants Google to sell Chrome

  The US Department of Justice last night finally filed court documents proposing Google divest itself of Chrome – the most popular browser in the world by a huge margin.

  The proposed judgment [PDF], which landed late on Wednesday, is aimed at ending Google's alleged monopoly on search. In addition to requiring the ad slinger to sell its Chrome browser, it prohibits Google from paying to make its search engine the default for third parties, causing pain not just for Alphabet but for others.

• Semafor Inc ☛ DOJ moves to force Google Chrome sale

  The sale could be worth up to $20 billion, marking Washington’s “most aggressive effort to rein in a technology company” since an unsuccessful attempt to break up Microsoft in 2004, Bloomberg said.

• Digital Music News ☛ Fatboy Slim Criticizes Dynamic Pricing Practice and ‘Sick’ Prices

  UK DJ Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Cook, took a jab at Oasis’ highly coveted reunion tour tickets, calling their steep pricing “sick.” He also posited the controversial practice of dynamic ticket pricing is a rip-off for the fans.

  “It’s like auctioning tickets because you know they are doing well,” he told The Sun. “It’s bad enough with the touts doing it, but the actual promoter and band doing it — it is sick.”

• Trademarks

  • [Repeat] Diziet ☛ diziet | The Rust Foundation's 2nd bad draft trademark policy

    tl;dr: The Rust Foundation’s new trademark policy still forbids unapproved modifications: this would forbid both the Rust Community’s own development work(!) and normal Free Software distribution practices.

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ David Attenborough Disgusted by AI Clone of His Voice

      According to host Kasia Madera, the first of the two segments was an AI clone that the broadcaster's researchers found online. The actual Attenborough is less than pleased.

      "Having spent a lifetime trying to speak what I believe to be the truth," Attenborough told the BBC in a statement, "I am profoundly disturbed to find that these days, my identity is being stolen by others and greatly object to them using it to say whatever they wish."

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Feds Shut Down Pirate Sports Streaming Service 247TVStream, Indict Operators

    247TVStream, a pirate IPTV streaming service boasting over 1,000 channels and catering to sports fans worldwide, has been shut down by U.S. authorities. The service, allegedly operated by two brothers, generated millions in revenue. One of the defendants was arrested in New York and the other remains at large. Both men face multi-year prison sentences.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Trump Quietly Settles Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘Electric Avenue’

    However, the judge saw things differently, calling the video “a wholesale copying of music to accompany a political campaign ad.” Trump’s team’s argument would hold water if the song had been a Weird Al-style parody of “Electric Avenue,” for example, but using the song itself in a political video wouldn’t count as fair use.

  • Techdirt ☛ Sports Psychologist Continues Bullshit Copyright Suits Over Retweets By School Officials

    Here we go again. Many years ago, we wrote about how one sports psychologist, Dr. Keith Bell, filed a copyright lawsuit against a college over a retweet. Specifically, the retweet included an image of a single page from Bell’s book, Winning Isn’t Normal. These suits are nonsense, of course, as a retweet is not the same as publishing infringing material, not to mention all kinds of fair use defenses that would be in play here. But that wasn’t the point of the suit. The point of it, instead, was almost certainly to extract money from Bell’s victim via a settlement to make him go away.

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenAI deleted NYT copyright case evidence, say lawyers

    The letter [PDF], filed yesterday in the Southern District of New York by lawyers for the Times, asserts that OpenAI engineers deleted "all of News Plaintiffs' programs and search result data" from one of two virtual machines set up for the purpose of allowing the plaintiffs to scour OpenAI training data for copyrighted material.

    The lawsuit in question was filed in late 2023, alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft used articles from the Times to train ChatGPT and other models and readily displayed the content of articles from the newspaper when asked - all without permission, the Times claimed.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Four ways to protect your art from AI

    Artists and writers have launched several lawsuits against AI companies, arguing that their work has been scraped into databases for training AI models without consent or compensation. Tech companies have responded that anything on the public [Internet] falls under fair use. But it will be years until we have a legal resolution to the problem.

    Unfortunately, there is little you can do if your work has been scraped into a data set and used in a model that is already out there. You can, however, take steps to prevent your work from being used in the future.

    Here are four ways to do that.

  • 404 Media ☛ AI Companies Are Trying to Get MIT Press Books

    As several major publishers sell their authors’ works to tech giants for large language model fodder, MIT Press is asking authors for their input before any training deals are made, and claims that it’s been approached by AI companies to do so.

  • Walled Culture ☛ Canada’s new right-to-repair exemptions to copyright law are as useful as a chocolate teapot

    A couple of weeks ago, Walled Culture wrote about the deeply unsatisfactory process for obtaining exemptions to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on the circumvention of copyright protection measures. As the post explained, meaningful and useful exemptions are blocked by the copyright industry as a matter of course, and only the tiniest and most trivial ones are graciously permitted.

    But that’s not the end of the problems with this kind of legislation, as a recent development in Canada underlines. Like the US and the EU, Canada passed legislation designed to prevent the circumvention of copyright protection systems, the so-called “technological protection measures” (TPMs, also known as Digital Rights Management or DRM). Over a decade later, a pair of new Canadian laws allow people to bypass those TPMs in certain circumstances, explained here by iFixit: [...]