Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Fail Of The Week: The SMD Crystal Radio That Wasn’t

  The crystal radio is a time-honored build that sadly doesn’t get much traction anymore. Once a rite of passage for electronics hobbyists, the classic coil-on-an-oatmeal-carton and cat’s whisker design just isn’t that easy to pull off anymore, mainly because the BOM isn’t really something that you can just whistle up from DigiKey or Mouser.

• Hackaday ☛ Fluke Meter Fails With A Simple Problem

  [TheHWcave] found a Fluke 27 multimeter that looked like it had had quite a rough life. At first, the display flashed an overload indicator until he gave it a good smack—or, as he likes to call it, percussive maintenance. Even then, it would not give good readings, so it was time to open it up.

• James G ☛ Things I have been reading lately

  I was thinking to myself that I have read many fascinating things over the last while, but haven’t shared them. I thought I would write a post to share some of the things I have been reading. As web weavers, perhaps one of the most magical things we can do aside from share our own creations is to boost those of others. I find great joy in sharing what others have made.

• Kev Quirk ☛ On Substack & Blogging

  Manu isn’t a fan of Substack, and he’s got two big reasons why: it takes control away from creators, and it pushes a “monetise everything” culture. He makes a solid case for owning your own domain and keeping blogging authentic and independent.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ On blogging, substacking (?), and owning digital real estate

  Let me rant for a second. I’m fucking tired of living in a society where everything is monetised, where nothing is safe from speculation, where every passion has to be turned into a business. “But why shouldn’t you turn your passion into a business?” you might ask. Because this endless pursuit of money is fucking up society. The incentives you set up, when you run a platform like Substack, matter a lot. It’s not an accident that, like Kevin said, after a while people on Substack start writing about Substack. Substack has no interest in promoting the people who write candidly about their inner struggles, their dreams and hopes, and their everyday lives. They have nothing to earn from that. They would, in fact, lose money if all of you out there started using the platform simply to share what you think, and what you’re going through, with no intention of ever turning it into a side hustle.

• Justin Vollmer ☛ You Should Have a Website

  I’ve championed owning your own website for a while now, and have been posting more heavily about it over the past year or so. My own journey to running my own website was born out of a combination of desiring the challenge of maintaining my own site, wanting a place where I could control what I post and how it looks, and wanting some longevity and permanence for my web presence. And over time, I’ve begun to believe that it would be beneficial both for the individual and for society at large if more people followed suit.

• Justin Vollmer ☛ Seconding the Call to Blog More Often | Justin Vollmer

  Personally, I’ve attempted to write more often, but consistency is still a struggle. Much of my recent work on this site has been with the express purpose of making my interactions with the site and its content more engaging for me, to increase my desire to post more consistently.

• MJ Fransen ☛ Org-journal with prompts

  Last summier I concluded the #100daystooffload challenge (on Gopher). Writing daily in one's journal is not that different and I think the time has come to start building the habit of journaling.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Three is a pattern

  Finding a balance between prepping for future or doing repeated work is not easy. Whether it is about sharing advice one-on-one vs. writing it down into a blog or refactoring code into reusable blocks or setting up extra tooling for personal notes’ system, the decision time comes up at some point.

  Over the years, I’ve found the rule of “three is a pattern” to be quite useful in balancing this.

  Here’s how it works: [...]

• Standards/Consortia

  • Joost de Valk ☛ Can I safely use AVIF or WebP share images? [Ed: So they say, use AVIF or WebP on the Web (in spite of software patents and lots of SOFTWARE NOT SUPPORTING THEM; partly due to patents!), then they throw megabytes of JavaScript at you. Marketed based on lies. It also takes more bloated and probably less secure code to render these.]

    You should use both AVIF and WebP on your website. They’re smaller, they’re better. All browsers support them. As of December 2024, you can use WebP share images, but you can not use AVIF on social platforms yet. We still have to get quite a few more platforms to support AVIF before it’s safe to use them as share images. However, changed from June 2024, you can now safely use WebP everywhere.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Shifted People's Day by Just 5 Hours – Here's What Happened

    Your body's weakest link has been identified.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Secret of Orange Cats Finally Uncovered After 60-Year Search

    Barsh and his colleagues discovered cat skin cells from which orange fur sprouts express 13 times as much RNA from a gene called Arhgap36, compared with skin cells from cats with no orange hair.

• Career/Education

  • The Nation ☛ In Defense of Teachers and Public Education

    The Department of Education covers an estimated 9 percent of K-12 school funding, with states and local governments covering most funding to our K-12 schools. Critically, it administers our student loan program, which enables millions of students to afford college. It also funds important post-secondary support, like TRIO. TRIO programs provide targeted resources to students, including tutoring, academic assistance, financial counseling, and mentorship programs. These services reach low-income students, first-generation students, and our veterans, and improve educational attainment and academic preparedness. The Department of Education’s impact is felt in so-called red and blue states across the country.

  • New York Times ☛ University of Michigan Weighs Changes to Its Diversity Program

    The school is one of higher education’s biggest supporters of D.E.I. Now it’s considering a new approach as critics question the program’s success and impact on campus life.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ The right has made the truth political. Teachers are nonetheless obligated to speak it.

    There are more, but my point is not to prove to Christians that they have a moral obligation to the foreigner and the immigrant. My point is that telling this truth to a group of Christians in a Catholic school resulted in a teacher’s firing because it made people acting immorally uncomfortable with their immoral choice. Jimbo Gillcrist wasn’t fired for being political. He was fired for disrupting the damning silence of the status quo, a silence that is designed to let untruth flourish.

  • Kodsnack ☛ Kodsnack 616 - Computers outside of computers, with Violet Whitney and William Martin

    Recorded on-stage at Øredev 2024, Fredrik talks to Violet Whitney and William Martin about the research they do into how we can interact with computers outside of the bounds of … well, a regular computer or phone.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Holograms: The Art Of Recording Wavefronts

    The difference between holography and photography can be summarized perhaps most succinctly as the difference between recording the effect photons have on a surface, versus recording the wavefront which is responsible for allowing photographs to be created in the first place. Since the whole idea of ‘visible light’ pertains to a small fragment of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, and thus what we are perceiving with our eyes is simply the result of this EM radiation interacting with objects in the scene and interfering with each other, it logically follows that if we can freeze this EM pattern (i.e. the wavefront) in time, we can then repeat this particular pattern ad infinitum.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD Radeon RX 8800 XT has a 220W TDP according to Seasonic's online PSU calculator — two 8-pin power plugs required, it says

    The RDNA 4 based Radeon RX 8800 XT has appeared in Seasonic's wattage calculator listed with a 220W TDP.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: They don’t make them like that any more: Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer

    Well, because they actually worked. And they went on working, day after day, year after year. Modern printers are notorious for letting us down when we most need them. Need that report tomorrow? Tough. Printer manufacturers have responded to the declining sales of their products, not by making them better, but by finding ways to scalp their owners for the cost of consumables. And then, because consumers naturally look for cheaper, 3rd-party suppliers of consumables, the printer manufacturers retaliate by using encryption technologies to prevent the printer accepting any consumables but OEM ones.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: They don’t make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

    What made the DX7 special was its novel approach to sound generation. Although electronic keyboards were not new when the DX7 was released in 1983, they nearly all used an analog method of sound production. Typically an electronic oscillator would generate a tone whose pitch was set by the key pressed, and then a variety of filters and amplitude modifiers would work on the sound to change its properties.

    This is a completely logical way to approach simulating real musical instruments electronically. Real instruments have something that generates a tone – reed, string, whatever – and something that modifies the characteristics of the tone – pipe, soundbox, and so on. Each instrument has a characteristic amplitude envelope. For example, a note on a piano has an initial louder, percussive peak in volume, followed by a gradual decay. Analog synthesizers tried to simulate these acoustic properties using electronics.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Antidoping Agency Froze Out Investigators Who Warned About China

    The World Anti-Doping Agency’s investigative unit highlighted intelligence about Chinese athletes possibly using a banned medication, but were kept out of the loop when 23 swimmers tested positive for it.

  • Science Alert ☛ Common Disinfectant in US Drinking Water Has Scientists Concerned

    Its toxicity is currently unknown.

  • Science Alert ☛ Parkinson's Link to Gut Bacteria Suggests an Unexpected, Simple Treatment

    Inching closer to the full picture.

  • NYPost ☛ I’m an oncology dietitian — the best pizza toppings to reduce your risk of cancer

    "There are so many amazing options," said Nichole Andrews, a Washington oncology dietitian and author.

  • NYPost ☛ House Democrats slam Cuomo over COVID nursing home order, saying he ‘interfered’ with death toll stats

    The Dem report said Cuomo and top aides' meddling with the data misled the public about the number of nursing home residents who died from COVID.

  • CS Monitor ☛ After the pandemic, more Native American students don’t want to return to school

    While the pandemic caused lasting absenteeism among all schoolchildren, the problem has been most pronounced among Native American and Alaska Native students. Of 34 states, half had absenteeism rates for Indigenous children at least 9% higher than average.

  • New Statesman ☛ Quitting social media gave me a new creed: only disconnect

    I had justified my social media habit as a necessary function of my job, but I’ve always been seduced by the idea of a complex web of human connections. Perhaps it derives from a love of big polyphonic novels or growing up in a family riddled with divorce – this fantasy about knitting together broken threads. But the instinct for connectedness is with us from an early age. The other day, my four-year-old son was introduced to his new child­minder, who revealed we had at least three sets of ­family friends in common. “Does that mean everybody who knows me knows everyone else?” he asked, thrilled by the possibility.

    There are obvious dangers in this ­proximity to new, or potentially better, connections. I’m reminded of Margaret Schlegel’s concern that the more people she gets to know in an ever-crowded London, the easier it becomes to replace them: “It’s no good, I think, unless you really mean to know people.” In another Forster novel, A Passage to India, Adela asks: “What is the use of personal relationships when everyone brings less and less to them?”

  • CBC ☛ 4th case of deadly deer disease confirmed in B.C. Hunters required to help monitor spread

    Hunters across British Columbia are being asked to be aware of chronic wasting disease (CWD) after a fourth confirmed case of the fatal disease was found in a white-tailed deer in the Kootenay region, B.C.'s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship said Tuesday.

    Nicknamed zombie deer disease, CWD is an incurable illness that affects cervid or deer family members, such as moose, caribou and elk.

  • USMC ☛ Marines take steps to hack human performance with data

    A 2021 collaboration with Army Combat Capabilities Development Command resulted in an “Optimizing the Human Weapons System (OHWS)” roadmap to a Marine Corps program that would use wearables and smart devices to create a sophisticated dashboard showing troops’ “wellness inputs,” such as alcohol consumption and physical exercise, training load, sleep data and recovery stats.

    A presentation of the plan, reviewed by Marine Corps Times, shows a timeline of milestones leading up to a needs analysis to be completed by Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in 2023.

  • Wired ☛ A Parasite That Eats Cattle Alive Is Creeping North Toward the US

    Prior to the closure of its border with the US, Mexico’s National Confederation of Livestock Organizations had called on the government to clamp down on cattle smuggling across Mexico’s southern border. The risk from the parasite is great, and if it becomes established again, the cost of eliminating it in Mexico would be high. Disruption of trade with the US was also be highly costly. In 2023 alone, Mexico’s exports of live cattle and beef to the US were worth $3 billion.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Edelman lays off 330 people amid expected 8% drop in US revenue [Ed: The Microsoft operatives that bribe the media to lay off 8% of staff]

    CEO Richard Edelman is refocusing the agency around five key areas and shuttering most of its operational sub brands — he said the cuts would have happened ‘months ago’ if Edelman were a public company."

  • Ubisoft Confirms Rumored Layoffs Because Of XDefiant’s Shutdown

    But first, we will go straight to Ubisoft and what they have officially confirmed Ubisoft shared a private email to employees, confirming some of these planned layoffs.

  • Windows Central ☛ Ubisoft continues freefall as publisher shutters free-to-play shooter XDefiant, reportedly closing studios

    Ubisoft launched free-to-play first-person shooter XDefiant on May 21, 2024, after years of open and closed testing.

  • Head Topics ☛ XDefiant servers are closing in June as Ubisoft announces more layoffs

    Another live-service game is shutting down due to a lack of players: Ubisoft ’s XDefiant, a first-person shooter that’s the illegitimate lovechild of Overwatch and Counter-Strike. The game launched on May 21 of this year, so it didn’t even last a full seven months before the shutdown announcement.

  • Channel Brief: Ingram Micro Cuts 850 in Latest Layoffs

    1. Ingram Micro lays off 850: In a restructuring move, technology distributor Ingram Micro announced it will cut nearly 850 employees by the end of the first quarter of 2025. CEO Paul Bay announced the cuts in a letter to employees, as CRN reported. CRN said the restructuring includes integrating Ingram Micro’s digital and information technology teams to reduce costs and eliminate redundancies, transforming the company’s historical shared services model into an exception-based model, and streamlining selected country, business, and functional organizations.

  • Chris Coyier ☛ Attempting a Safari Move

    Safari isn’t any better with battery life. I feel like that needs to be shared more as it’s very strong folk tech wisdom that Chrome eats battery and Safari does not, which is apparently not true at all, and might be the opposite.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ UK local papers go weird as Reach pivots to AI from journalism

    Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror, owns UK tabloids the Daily Mirror and Daily Express and many local newspapers around the country.

    Reach’s coverage of local matters in its local papers has gone noticeably … weird.

  • Security Week ☛ CISA Warns of Zyxel Firewall Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks

    The US cybersecurity agency CISA on Tuesday warned that a path traversal vulnerability in multiple Zyxel firewall appliances has been exploited in the wild.

    The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-11667 (CVSS score of 7.5), is a high-severity flaw affecting the web management interface of Zyxel ATP, USG FLEX, and USG20(W)-VPN series devices.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Doctor Who showrunners warn AI scripts will ‘eat their own tail’

    One of the masterminds behind Doctor Who has warned that the more AI content is used for creative purposes the worse its output will be because it “eats its own tail”.

    Ahead of the Doctor Who Christmas special, eagerly awaited by fans as a centrepiece of BBC1’s festive schedule, Steven Moffat made the comments in discussion with fellow showrunner Russell T Davies.

  • India Times ☛ AI-driven, deepfake-enabled cyberattacks to rise in 2025; healthcare, finance sectors at risk: report

    AI-driven and deepfake-enabled cyberattacks are anticipated to become increasingly prevalent in 2025 with sectors like healthcare and finance most prone targets, according to a recent report. The India Cyber Threat Report 2025 by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and Seqrite, spotlighted the evolving tactics of cybercriminals and the rise of AI-driven attacks as a major concern.

  • Futurism ☛ AI Safety Researcher Quits OpenAI, Saying Its Trajectory Alarms Her

    Though she didn't get into it too much, the former OpenAI-er said that she decided to leave because she was troubled by changes at the company over the past year or so. It's unclear what changes she's referencing exactly, but that timeframe matches the failed coup against CEO and cofounder Sam Altman late last November, which was reportedly undertaken by board members with concerns about the firm's lack of focus on safety under his leadership.

  • La Quadature Du Net ☛ It’s not AI, it’s state-of-the-art exploitation

    In recent months, following the sudden hype of generative artificial intelligence and products such as ChatGPT, and under the aegis of big business and complicit states, we have witnessed a further acceleration of the computerization process. This acceleration is the direct consequence of everything that is already problematic about the dominant trajectory of digital technologies. First of all, the huge accumulation of data over many years by major tech multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, who monitor us to better predict our behavior, and who are now capable of indexing gigantic corpora of text, sound and images by appropriating the common good that is the Web.

    Collecting, storing and processing all this data requires a prodigious accumulation of resources. This is reflected first and foremost in capital: the rise of tech, boosted by surveillance capitalism, has attracted the favor of financial markets and benefited from accommodating public policies. Thanks to this capital, these companies can finance near-exponential growth in the data storage and computing capacity needed to drive and run their AI models, by investing in graphics chips (GPUs), undersea cables and data centers. These components and infrastructures in turn require immense quantities of rare earths and metals, water and electricity.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Misinformation expert used AI to draft testimony containing misinformation about AI

    A Stanford misinformation expert has admitted he used artificial intelligence to draft a court document that contained multiple fake citations about AI.

    Stanford’s Jeff Hancock submitted the document as an expert declaration in a case involving a new Minnesota law that makes it illegal to use AI to mislead voters prior to an election. Lawyers from the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Upper Midwest Law Center, which are challenging the law on First Amendment grounds, noticed the fake citations several weeks ago and petitioned the judge to throw out the declaration.

  • Dan Q ☛ A Friend Used AI to Wish me Happy Birthday

    Robert shares his experience of receiving a birthday greeting from a friend, that had clearly been written by an AI. The friend’s justification was because they’d wanted to make the message longer, more easily. But the end result was a sour taste in the recipient’s mouth.

  • The Register UK ☛ Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

    Despite Microsoft's push to get customers onto Windows 11, growth in the market share of the software giant's latest operating system has stalled, while Windows 10 has made modest gains, according to fresh figures from Statcounter.

    This is not the news Microsoft wanted to hear. After half a year of growth, the line for Windows 11 global desktop market share has taken a slight downturn, according to the website usage monitor, going from 35.6 percent in October to 34.9 percent in November. Windows 10, on the other hand, managed to grow its share of that market by just under a percentage point to 61.8 percent.

  • The Register UK ☛ Support for Windows Mail, Calendar, People ends December 31

    In November, Microsoft confirmed there would be no reprieve for the apps. It will be possible to export local emails, calendar events, and contacts that users have stored in Mail, Calendar, and People into the new Outlook up until December 31, 2024. After that, however, the ability to send or receive mail will be revoked.

  • Macworld ☛ Why I'm done with desktop Macs

    Ten years as a desktop Mac user was a lot of fun. I had an iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Studio, and I enjoyed them all. But like almost everyone else, I’ve found the pull of the laptop too strong to avoid. Even when sitting at a desk staring at a big monitor, the MacBook Pro seems like the right choice.

  • Six Colors ☛ KVM 2024: One switch to rule them all

    I live a multi-Mac lifestyle. It’s a luxury, but mighty close to a necessity if I want to keep my work life and personal life (which includes freelance projects) separate. But how do you organize your life and desk so that both Macs can do their best for you? My solution is a modern spin on an old option: a KVM switch.

  • Futurism ☛ Teens Are Forming Intense Relationships With AI Entities, and Parents Have No Idea

    The youth are addicted to generative AI models — but their parents have no idea what their kids actually use them for.

    As part of a new study set to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, a team of researchers interviewed seven teenagers and thirteen parents about their AI usage and perceptions of the tech, and also analyzed thousands of Reddit posts and comments from other teens.

  • Techdirt ☛ Why Generative AI’s Lack Of Modularity Means It Can’t Be Meaningfully Open, Is Unreliable, And Is A Technological Dead End

    One of the most important shifts in computing over the last few decades has been the increasing use of open source software on nearly every platform, from cloud computing to smartphones (well, I would say that). For the distributed development methodology pioneered by Linus Torvalds with Linux to work, modularity is key. It allows coders anywhere in the world, connected by the Internet, to work independently on self-contained elements that can be easily upgraded or even replaced, without a major redesign of the overall architecture. Modularity brings with it many other important benefits, including these noted by Eerke Boiten, Professor of Cyber Security at De Montfort University Leicester, in an article published on the British Computer Society Web site: [...]

  • The Washington Post ☛ Sorry, Oxford dictionary nerds. This is the real word of the year.

    First off, that’s two words. But the real miss was overlooking the rightful winner, “slop,” which was on the dictionary publisher’s short list for word of the year. That’s like Beyoncé losing the top Grammy award to Harry Styles.

    “Slop” is the perfect word for 2024. It describes this year’s explosion of artificial intelligence-generated oddball social media images like “shrimp Jesus.” But slop is also a perfect encapsulation of a decades-old phenomenon that explains why the [Internet] is like this.

  • BoingBoing ☛ AI-enabled price collusion ensures the rent is too damn high

    AI-powered RealPage pools data to enable landlords to raise rental prices. While the company seems to push those increases aggressively, some cities are legislating solutions.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ CBP facial recognition is a service for the airline industry

      After five years of foot-dragging in responding to our Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has finally released the pitch it made to the Future Travel Experience airline industry conference in 2019 on why airlines and airport operators should “partner” with CBP on automated facial recognition of airline passengers.

      CBP claims in its presentation that “THIS IS *NOT* A SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM”. Its vision, however, is for CBP’s Traveler Verification Service (TVS) facial recognition system to provide automated identification of travelers at every stage of their journeys.

    • EFF ☛ Location Tracking Tools Endanger Abortion Access. Lawmakers Must Act Now.

      Locate X–and other similar services–are able to do this by taking advantage of our largely unregulated location data market.

      Unfettered location tracking puts us all at risk. Law enforcement agencies can purchase their way around warrant requirements and bad actors can pay for services that make it easier to engage in stalking and harassment. Location tracking tools particularly threaten groups especially vulnerable to targeting, such as immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and even U.S. intelligence personnel abroad. Crucially, in a post-Dobbs United States, location surveillance also poses a serious danger to abortion-seekers across the country.

      EFF has warned before about how the location data market threatens reproductive rights. The recent reports on Locate X illustrate even more starkly how the collection and sale of location data endangers patients in states with abortion bans and restrictions.

    • Sean Conner ☛ Why list a phone number if no one at your company even knows how to deal with the notification?

      The only thing I want to say is to corporations who have a similiar message—if you are going to bother putting a phone number to inform of email delivery errors, you may want to make an option that is obvious who handles such situations. Or just don't bother with a phone number at all. Or just say something like “just delete this and move on with your life. We don't care enough to handle this properly,” unlike the other email I received today from another medical company which had an email address I could send a notification to.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Many Americans’ cellphone data being [breached] by China, official says

      A large number of Americans’ metadata has been stolen in the sweeping cyber-espionage campaign carried out by a Chinese [intrusion] group dubbed “Salt Typhoon”, a senior US official told journalists on Wednesday.

      The official declined to provide specific figures but noted that China’s access to America’s telecommunications infrastructure was broad and that the hacking was ongoing.

    • EPIC ☛ Testimony on Michigan Personal Data Privacy Act – EPIC – Electronic Privacy Information Center

      EPIC writes in support of SB 659, the Michigan Personal Data Privacy Act. We commend Senator Bayer for crafting a bill that provides meaningful privacy protections for Michiganders. For more than two decades, powerful tech companies have been allowed to set the terms of our online interactions. Without any meaningful restrictions on their business practices, they have built systems that invade our private lives, spy on our families, and gather the most intimate details about us for profit. But it does not have to be this way – Michigan can have a strong technology sector while protecting personal privacy.

      The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research organization in Washington, DC, established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age.[1] EPIC has long advocated for comprehensive privacy laws at both the state and federal level.[2]

    • Walled Culture ☛ Why Italy’s Piracy Shield risks moving from tiresome digital farce to serious national tragedy

      In other words, by placing the sanctity of copyright above all else, the Piracy Shield system could be turned against any aspect of Italian society with just a few keyboard commands. A malicious actor that managed to gain access to a system that has twice demonstrated a complete lack of even the most basic controls and checks could wreak havoc on computers and networks throughout Italy in a few seconds. Moreover, the damage could easily go well beyond the inconvenience of millions of people being blocked from accessing their files on Google Drive. A skilled intruder could carry out widespread sabotage of vital services and infrastructure that would cost billions of euros to rectify, and could even lead to the loss of lives.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft says patch installation stops Recall snapshots

      KB5046740, which emerged on November 21, represents the final non-security preview release for 2024 (although there will be a monthly security release in December).

      The problem came when users installed this preview update, saw the Recall announcement, joined the Windows Insider Dev channel to get their hands on the code, and then... nothing.

    • Wired ☛ A New Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware Has Already Found 7 Pegasus Infections

      Seven out of 2,500 scans may sound like a small group, especially in the somewhat self-selecting customer base of iVerify users, whether paying or free, who want to be monitoring their mobile device security at all, much less checking specifically for niche spyware infections. But the fact that the tool has already found a handful of infections at all speaks to how widely the use of spyware has proliferated around the world. It seems that having an easy tool for diagnosing spyware compromises may expand the picture of just how often such malware is being used.

    • Wired ☛ Tim Cook Wants Apple to Literally Save Your Life

      Much as the CEO seems awestruck by AI and his just-released Apple Intelligence, he’s more convinced that the tech giant’s health apps will define the company’s legacy.

• Defence/Aggression

  • ADF ☛ Reports Detail Forced Youth Conscription in Ethiopia

    Tedla Hirigo, 17, worked as a street vendor in Adama city in Ethiopia’s Oromia region on November 11 when police detained him.

  • ADF ☛ Al-Shabaab Could Capitalize on Somalia-Ethiopia Tensions

    Somali President Hassan Sheik Mohamud has been so focused on his rift with Ethiopia over its port deal with Somaliland that he might be leaving an opening for al-Shabaab, according to Selam Tadesse Demissie, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

  • ADF ☛ U.N. Honors 25 Years of Protecting African Civilians

    The United Nations recently marked an important anniversary on the continent — 25 years of actively protecting civilians with its peacekeeping missions. On October 22, 1999, the U.N. Security Council ended its observer mission in Sierra Leone and established a new mission, UNAMSIL, with a new mandate permitting its troops to use force. >

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan watching Chinese carrier movements as sources say war games may start this weekend

    Three security sources said chances of Chinese military exercises starting this weekend were high.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Homicides decline as crackdown on high-impact crime intensifies: Tuesday’s mañanera recapped

    After sharing positive security figures in the first half of Tuesday's presser, Sheinbaum made an "inside joke" regarding Trump's latest threat to invade Mexico.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Marcos disavows Philippine impeachment case against Vice-President Duterte

    Lawmakers have little appetite for such a spectacle before midterm elections in May, observers say.

  • JURIST ☛ South Korea president declares martial law amidst political turmoil, with Parliament rejecting the move

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday, accusing the opposition of paralyzing the government with pro-North Korean sympathies. This proclamation adds to an already intense political climate, sparking controversy and eliciting a swift reaction from domestic political actors and international observers.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Air force for hire

    Host Alia Brahimi chats with mercenaries expert Alessandro Arduino, a top China analyst.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-26 [Older] How Often Should You Post on TikTok Per Day to Become TikTok Famous? [Ed: Loaded question; it does not make you famous but merely a tool of the owners of the platform, in this case the Chinese Communist Party]

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Romanian Telecoms Regulator Calls for TikTok Suspension Pending Election Probe

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] TikTok’s Role in Political Campaigns: Georgescu’s Strategy and Romania’s Push for Suspension

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] TikTok, Meta slam Australia's social media ban for under-16s [Ed: Xi and the guy who wines and dines with Trump are upset that a country does something about meddling]

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] The Power of Social Media in Elections: Lessons from Romania’s TikTok Case Study [Ed: Social control media subverts democracies]

  • The Age AU ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Too young for TikTok, old enough for jail: How a meaner Australia treats its kids [Ed: Lobbyists of social control media oligarchs use false equivalences; jail is for people who did something wrong]

  • The Register UK ☛ NATO tests aquatic drones to protect cables, coasts

    The war in Ukraine has highlighted the usefulness of aquatic drones for reconnaissance and offensive missions. Ukrainian forces have been using remote-controlled drone boats to attack the Russian navy – when Elon Musk allows them to.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ New Army-funded tech creates realistic terrain, avatars in simulations

    In recent years, the Army has prioritized modernizing its modeling and simulations, primarily through its Program Executive Office-Simulation, Training and Instrumentation and its Cross Functional Team-Synthetic Training Environment.

    Each of the services are seeking to upgrade and expand use of simulation technology for more cost-effective and safer supplements to live training.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Trump’s transition running into a litany of early problems

    Yet the consistent chaos and confusion that defined Trump’s first administration are already descending on Washington.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Trump’s Project 2025 May Not Be What It Seemed. It’s Worse.

    Musk’s tweet, which was viewed by 33.2 million people, described Ashley Thomas, a 37-year-old who, The Journal reported, holds “engineering, business and water science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Oxford” and works as the “little-known director of climate diversification” at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which advises “private companies to fund ways to improve living standards in developing countries.” A Finance Corporation official told The Journal that Thomas’s work “is highly technical and is focused on identifying innovations that serve U.S. strategic interests, including bolstering agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather events.”

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Space Force racing to meet training, testing demands

    Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has made readiness a top priority for the service and has called on the organizations that write requirements, train guardians and develop test and training infrastructure to move quickly to prepare the force to operate in a more contested space environment.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ OpenAI's new defense contract completes its military pivot

    Today, OpenAI is announcing that its technology will be deployed directly on the battlefield.

    The company says it will partner with the defense-tech company Anduril, a maker of AI-powered drones, radar systems, and missiles, to help US and allied forces defend against drone attacks. OpenAI will help build AI models that “rapidly synthesize time-sensitive data, reduce the burden on human operators, and improve situational awareness” to take down enemy drones, according to the announcement. Specifics have not been released, but the program will be narrowly focused on defending US personnel and facilities from unmanned aerial threats, according to Liz Bourgeois, an OpenAI spokesperson. “This partnership is consistent with our policies and does not involve leveraging our technology to develop systems designed to harm others,” she said. An Anduril spokesperson did not provide specifics on the bases around the world where the models will be deployed but said the technology will help spot and track drones and reduce the time service members spend on dull tasks.

  • Wired ☛ OpenAI Is Working With Anduril to Supply the US Military With AI

    OpenAI’s technology will be used to “assess drone threats more quickly and accurately, giving operators the information they need to make better decisions while staying out of harm’s way,” says a former OpenAI employee who left the company earlier this year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their professional relationships.

  • El País ☛ Texas raises alarm over rising number of unaccompanied children at the border

    “I want the American people to see the impacts of this current border situation that we’ve been in for the last three-plus years and how it impacts unaccompanied children coming across that border,” said Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesperson for TxDPS, who shared the footage of the two-year-old on social media on November 24. The video shows the young girl holding a yellow post-it note with a name and phone number scribbled on it. The child, originally from El Salvador, was part of a group of over 200 migrants encountered by authorities in Eagle Pass, Texas. Among them were 60 unaccompanied children — the highest number Texas officials have seen in a single day.

  • El País ☛ Jihadists, rebel groups, Kurds... Who’s who in the offensive against the Syrian regime

    An operation led by HTS, with roots in Al Qaeda, and rebels allied to Turkey have made their move on the Syrian chessboard in the face of the ineffectiveness of the regime and its allies

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson killed outside investor conference in New York City

    UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, was shot and killed Wednesday morning outside the Hilton in midtown Manhattan, where he was set to address investors.

  • New York Times ☛ CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson Is Shot Outside Midtown Hotel

    At 6:44 a.m., he saw his man. Brian Thompson, 50, chief executive of UnitedHealthcare — the leader of one of the country’s largest companies — walking past in a blue suit toward the entrance to the Hilton.

  • CBC ☛ UnitedHealthcare CEO shot dead in New York by attacker who waited for him, police say

    Security footage obtained by CBC News showed the gun malfunctioned, but the shooter cleared the jam. The gunman also ignored a witness in the video, who escaped from just a metre or two away.

    "Based on the evidence we have so far, it does appear that the victim was specifically targeted, but at this point, we do not know why," Kenny said.

  • LRT ☛ Driving tests in Lithuania to take place only in EU languages

    Under the new order, the theory part of the driving test will be available in Lithuanian or another official EU language. During the practical test, people who do not speak Lithuanian will be allowed to be accompanied by an interpreter who can translate into the official EU language of their choice.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ U.S. Charges Russian Woman Over FSB Contacts – Reports - The Moscow Times

    The United States has charged a Russian woman who engaged with anti-war opposition activists over false statements about her ties with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), a U.S.-based non-profit of pro-democracy Russians said Monday.

    New York resident Nomma Zarubina last month was accused of concealing her 2020 recruitment by an FSB agent under the code name “Alyssa,” according to the Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR).

  • VOA News ☛ From VOA Russian: Russian woman in New York accused of working for FSB: What is known about her?

    The FBI has charged Nomma Zarubina, a Russian national living in New York, with two counts of making false statements to FBI agents regarding her ties to Russian intelligence services.

  • VOA News ☛ Ukraine demands Russia return 'kidnapped' children

    "Ukraine is searching for nearly 20,000 children who were subjected to illegal deportation and forced transfer," said Daria Zarivna, an adviser to Ukraine's president and a senior official at his Bring Kids Back Ukraine initiative.

    "Yet the actual figure could be much higher, but we can't find it out — Russian officials systematically refuse to provide information," Zarivna added.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Trends Drive Top Tracks on the Platform

    In the US, the Top 10 Songs on TikTok inspired 140 million creations on the platform globally, with hits like Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby (VHS),” Lay Bankz’s “Tell Ur Girlfriend,” and Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me.” Sabrina Carpenter also secured the number one spot on the Top Artists list with her viral hits “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” which altogether generated over 15 million TikTok video creations.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ A Better Resistance to Trump Is Possible

    But we also need a broad coalition that includes but is not limited to socialists and can blunt or derail the worst of the crazy right-wing experiment that is about to unfold. Over 48 percent of American voters voted against Trump. The country has plenty of likely recruits for a mainstream resistance movement against Trumpism. Such a movement should organize around issues with a broad popular appeal.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Woman Arrested In U.S. For Alleged Ties To Russian Intelligence

    A Russian national, Nomma Zarubina, has been arrested on possible charges of providing false information to U.S. law enforcement and maintaining connections with Russian intelligence services, linking her to another suspected spy who fled the United States while being pursued by authorities.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ How the Nordic-Baltic states are leading the way on European security

    If you want to know what’s next for security in Europe, then watch the Nordic-Baltic nations. They may not have a reputation as the heaviest hitters in the transatlantic alliance, but the eight countries—Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden—are becoming increasingly significant players in European security. On November 28, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson hosted his Nordic-Baltic colleagues together with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at Harpsund, Sweden, where they pledged to step up military support to Ukraine and continue to invest in their own deterrence and resilience. Underscoring the increasing importance of the Nordic-Baltic states in European security, French President Emmanuel Macron even called in and joined the conversation.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ How NATO learns and adapts to modern warfare

    Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have had strategic consequences far beyond the region, showcasing the complexities of modern conflicts, where conventional battles are intertwined with cyber warfare, information operations, and hybrid tactics.

  • RFERL ☛ Declassified Documents Show Romanian Elections Targeted By 'Aggressive Hybrid Russian Action'

    Documents declassified by Romania's security council on December 4 said the country was the target of an "aggressive hybrid Russian action" during recent election campaigns, including last month's surprise victory of a pro-Russian far-right candidate.

    The Supreme Council of National Defense declassified the documents, saying they showed that Romania was the target of various coordinated actions leading up to the presidential election's November 24 first round, won by Calin Georgescu.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Will TikTok decide the presidential election in Romania?

    Georgescu's polarizing election campaign videos on TikTok have been viewed millions of times. In them, he not only criticizes Romania's political establishment — often making false claims against politicians — but is also seen doing judo or riding horses, just like the man he so admires, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    When Georgescu won the first round of the election, the surprise and the dismay were huge. Now, the extreme right-wing conspiracy theorist, NATO critic and Putin admirer has a chance of being elected president of Romania on Sunday.

    Many observers are convinced that social media platforms — and above all TikTok — played a major role in Georgescu's success.

  • EDRI ☛ TikTok breaches electoral legislation in Romania

    Analyses have examined many social causes for the surprise win, such as social and political turmoil and economic problems. However, the Romanian NGOs highlight a clear and important role that TikTok has played in the surprising results, given the platform is one of the most important online forums for national debates.

    The platform has catalysed the electoral content of an extremist candidate, allowing posting from coordinated fake accounts and failing to flag its content as election advertising. The winning candidate claimed that he has spent no financial resources during this campaign.

  • Wired ☛ Lasers Are Making It Easier to Find Buried Land Mines

    In response, US researchers developed a technology to detect land mines indirectly, and which could detect both metal and plastic mines. Lambdis works by sending a vibration into the ground while at the same time scanning the area with a laser beam. Materials in the ground will vibrate at different frequencies, as will the soil itself, and these differences are picked up by the laser when it is reflected back to its emitter. The Lambdis system then generates an image that visualizes these vibrations and their locations in different colors—creating a map of things buried in the soil.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Share of Russians’ savings kept in cash reaches historic low — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian Central Bank head says December key interest rate hike possible but ‘not predetermined’ — Meduza

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-03 [Older] Ukraine pushes for NATO membership, but it's complicated

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Ukraine updates: Olaf Scholz makes surprise visit to Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Blinken Heads to Final NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting of Biden Administration With Ukraine in Focus

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Is in Ukraine for His First Visit in 2 1/2 Years

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Ukraine Must Find Diplomatic Solutions to Retake Occupied Territory, Zelenskiy Tells Kyodo News

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy says Kyiv needs NATO for survival

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Top EU Officials Visit Ukraine in Show of Solidarity

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] US Will Not Return Nuclear Weapons to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Ukraine Says War Has Damaged Most of Its Civilian Airports

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy hints at ending 'hot war'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] France's Macron Reaffirms Support for Ukraine in Call With Zelenskiy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Germany's Scholz Holds First Official Call With Ukraine's Zelenskiy Since Putin Talk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ukraine Asks NATO for Membership Invite Next Week, Letter Shows

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ukraine's Top Commander Vows to Boost Troops on Eastern Front After Visiting Units There

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Names New Land Forces Chief, Says Changes Needed

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Ukraine updates: Putin threatens Kyiv with new missile

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Presidential Aide Says Ukraine Ready to Host Second Peace Summit Soon

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Ukraine Says Faster Military Aid More Important Than Drafting More Men

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Exclusive-Biden Readies $725 Million Arms Aid Package for Ukraine, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Trump Picks Retired Lt. General Kellogg for Ukraine Envoy

    • The Local DK ☛ 2024-11-26 [Older] Denmark extends work and residence permits for Ukrainian refugees until 2026

    • The Local DK ☛ 2024-12-03 [Older] Danish brewing giant Carlsberg to sell off Russian business

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-03 [Older] Falling Asteroid Lights up Sky in Russia's Remote Yakutia

    • Vox ☛ 2024-12-03 [Older] Why protests in the country of Georgia matter

    • IP Kat ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] General Court: ‘Russian Warship, GO F**K YOURSELF’ non-distinctive

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Germany's Baerbock warns China over Russia support

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Exclusive-Russia's VTB CEO Says BRICS Summit Was a Slap in the Face for the West

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Exclusive-Top Russian Banker Says Easing of Tensions With West Uncertain Under Trump

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Suspected Russian Spies Targeted Journalist With Facebook 'Honey Trap', UK Court Hears

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-02 [Older] Chief of International Criminal Court Lashes Out at US and Russia Over Threats and Accusations

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] The Impact of Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine Revision on the Defense Policies of Western Countries

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Romanians vote as far right and Russia loom large

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Putin Signs off Record Russian Defense Spending as Top EU Officials Visit Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Russian Drones Target Kyiv in Overnight Strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Russian, Syrian Jets Intensify Bombing of Syria's Rebel-Held Northwest

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Russia Says Its Forces Capture Two Settlements in Ukraine's East

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Russia's Putin Approves Military Focused 2025-2027 Budget

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Three Killed in Russian Drone Attack on Ukraine's Kherson, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-01 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Attack in Russia's Bryansk Region Killed Child, Governor Says

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Russia – Ukraine War: A Threat to Nuclear Security

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Russian police raid Moscow nightclubs over 'LGBT propaganda'

    • The Age AU ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Zelensky says for first time he would give up Ukrainian territory to Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] North Korea's Kim Vows Steadfast Support for Russia’s War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Senior Russian Diplomat Says Possibility of New Nuclear Tests Remains Open Question

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Iran, Russia Foreign Ministers Say They Support Syria in Confronting Rebels, Iran State Media Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Russian and Chinese Bombers Conduct Joint Air Patrol

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Russian Police Raid Moscow Nightclubs in LGBTQ+ Crackdown

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-30 [Older] Russia Says Air Force Strikes Rebels in Support of Syrian Army, Agencies Report

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ironic Dependency: Russian Uranium and the US Energy Market

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Ukraine updates: North Korea vows support for Russia's war

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] Drone Drops Paint Over Russian Embassy in Sweden

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] North Korea Leader Kim: Russia Has Right to Exercise Self Defence Against Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] UK Spy Chief Says Russia Behind 'Staggeringly Reckless' Sabotage in Europe

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-29 [Older] UK Intelligence Chief Accuses Russia of 'Staggeringly Reckless' Sabotage Campaign

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Russia in panic as US sanctions trigger ruble collapse

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Russian ruble plunges amid fresh US sanctions

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Ukraine war: Yemen's Houthis to fight for Russia?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Russian Defence Ministry Says Moscow's Forces Take Another East Ukrainian Settlement

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Putin Says Russia Could Hit 'Decision-Making Centres' in Kyiv With New Missile

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Putin Says Russia Would Use All Weapons at Its Disposal if Ukraine Got Nuclear Weapons

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Putin Says Ukrainian Infrastructure Attack Was Revenge for Kyiv's Strikes on Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Return Children to Families After Mediation by Qatar

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Russian Drones Strike Buildings in Kyiv, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Bulgarians Spied on US Base and Dissidents for Russia, UK Court Told

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-28 [Older] Ukraine Imposes First Wartime Tax Hikes to Fight Russian Invasion

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Russia: Kremlin orders 2 German ARD journalists to leave

    • The Local SE ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Nordics, Baltic states and Poland ready to expand Russia sanctions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Trump Selects Longtime Adviser Keith Kellogg as Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] White House Pressing Ukraine to Draft 18-Year-Olds So It Has Enough Troops to Battle Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Russian Acts of Sabotage May Lead to NATO Invoking Article 5, Says German Intel Chief

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] Russia Says Trump Ukraine Aid Cut Would Be 'Death Sentence' for Kyiv's Military

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-27 [Older] US Urges Ukraine to Lower Fighting Age to 18 to Bolster Ranks Against Russia

    • CPJ ☛ 2024-11-26 [Older] Russia detains Crimean journalist Ediye Muslimova for 36 hours

    • CPJ ☛ 2024-11-26 [Older] Russian journalist Nika Novak sentenced to 4 years in prison

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-26 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia attacks with record number of drones

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Verge ☛ Suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting reportedly didn’t use a Citi Bike to escape

    CNN is reporting that according to an unnamed source in law enforcement, the person who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan fled on an e-bike, but not a Citi Bike, as NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenney previously said during a press conference.

  • TMZ ☛ Internet Super-Sleuth May Have Tracked Location of Healthcare CEO Assassin

    A man’s stepping forward with a jaw-dropping claim -- he says he may have figured out the whereabouts of the assassin who shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson ... all thanks to Citi Bike's tracking data.

    A data scientist named Riley, who goes by @rtwlz on X, dropped a bombshell post, revealing how he's been scraping Citi Bike data every minute ... and he could see exactly where individual bikes go.

• Environment

  • France24 ☛ Valencia floods: Human tragedy and environmental disaster

    With at least 222 people dead, the torrential rain and floods in Valencia – on the eastern coast of Spain – have devastated many families and the cleanup of the region continues, more than a month after the disaster struck. But until now, there has been little focus on the devastating effect of the floods on the environment. The water carried kilograms of fragments of plastic, medicines and other toxic materials into the protected nature reserve of Albufera. The regional government has announced a cleanup operation. Sarah Morris and Armelle Exposito report.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Conditions in abandoned mine are too dangerous for crew searching for Pennsylvania woman

    Sinkholes occur in the area because of subsidence from coal mining activity. Rescuers had been using water to break down and remove clay and dirt from the mine, which has been closed since the 1950s, but that increased the risk "for potential other mine subsidence to take place," Pennsylvania State Police spokesman trooper Steve Limani said.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ UN Plastics Treaty Hits Stalemate as Petrostates Russia, Saudi Arabia Block Deal

    “We are circling, and I would say that the only good thing is that there’s momentum from a growing number of countries who do support the measures that are needed.”

    The negotiations highlighted a divide between two camps: over 100 nations, including Canada, called for a cap on plastic production, while oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia advocated focusing on plastic waste management rather than production limits.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU agrees to delay deforestation law but won't water it down

    Forests are being cut and degraded at an alarming rate, especially in the tropics, with the expansion of agricultural land causing almost 90% of forest reduction, according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

    A first-of-its-kind law called the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) aims to take steps to counter this. The idea is that EU importers have to prove their supply chains for products such as coffee, chocolate, leather, paper, tires and furniture do not contribute to logging anywhere in the world. Failure to do so would mean facing fines of up to 4% of their turnover.

  • VOA News ☛ UNESCO says education about climate change is essential in southern Africa

    The United Nations environmental agency UNESCO is calling for more studies and closer working relations between journalists and scientists to ensure the effects of climate change are understood and can be mitigated, especially in poorer African countries, which more acutely feel the pinch of extreme weather events.

    On Tuesday, scientists gathered in Pretoria, South Africa, to discuss climate change with journalists from the Southern Africa Development Community region.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ EQT’s ‘bulldog’ has D.C. in his grip, with profits — and maybe higher gas bills — on the horizon

    • DeSmog ☛ CAPP President Abandons ‘Net Zero’ Message at Exclusive Industry Event

    • Sunday Times ☛ VW recalls more than 4,600 vehicles over battery overheating concerns

      Volkswagen is recalling 4,616 vehicles in the US over concerns that their high-voltage batteries may overheat and increase the risk of a fire, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Wednesday.

      The recall affects plug-in hybrids such as the 2022-2023 model year Audi Q5 SUVs and 2022 Audi A7 vehicles.

    • Wired ☛ She Was a Russian Socialite and Influencer. Cops Say She’s a Crypto Laundering Kingpin

      International authorities believe she was much more than that. At the end of 2023, the United States government hit Zhdanova with economic sanctions for her alleged role in a crypto money-laundering operation used by Russian oligarchs, ransomware gangs, and other criminals. Today, Western law enforcement officials have gone even further, claiming that Zhdanova has acted as the head of a sophisticated money-laundering network that swaps cash for cryptocurrency, the likes of which law enforcement has never seen.

    • US News And World Report ☛ Bitcoin Tops $100,000 on Optimism Over Trump [Cryptocurrency] Plans

      Bitcoin rose above $100,000 for the first time on Thursday as the election of Republican Donald Trump as president of the United States spurred expectations that his administration will create a friendly regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies.

    • India Times ☛ Bitcoin surpasses $100,000 after Trump picks [cryptocurrency] advocate Paul Atkins to lead SEC

      The cryptocurrency's value has doubled this year, showing a 45% increase in the four weeks since Trump's electoral victory, which also resulted in several cryptocurrency-supporting legislators entering Congress.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Experts Shrug off Tremor Fears for Data Centres in Hyderabad

      Hyderabad, a key hub for data centres in India, remains unfazed by mild tremors felt in the city on Wednesday, reaffirming its position as one of the most preferred destinations for establishing data centres in the country.

    • CBC ☛ Millions without power after Cuba's electrical grid collapses

      Cuba says it has begun restoring power after the island's electrical grid collapsed Wednesday morning, the latest in a string of countrywide blackouts that underscore the increasingly frail state of its power generation system.

    • The Scotsman ☛ All-electric bike hire scheme to be launched in Edinburgh by next summer - here's how it would work

      An all-electric bike hire scheme is due to be launched in Edinburgh by next summer to replace one that collapsed three years ago.

      The City of Edinburgh Council is talking to four potential operators, which The Scotsman understands include Voi, Lime and Dott.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Saving Living Jewels: One Woman’s Mission to Shine a Light on the Ornamental Fish Trade

    • Science Alert ☛ Orcas Are Wearing Dead Salmon as Hats, And Scientists Are Stumped

      The bizarre phenomenon is back.

    • Science Alert ☛ Genes Older Than Animal Life Itself Were Inserted Into Mice. Here's What Happened.

      Amazing.

    • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious 'Snake Person' Head From 7,500 Years Ago Raises Questions

      What does it mean?

    • Science Alert ☛ This Massive Underwater Mountain Range Was Made by a 'Moving' Hotspot

      The first found in the Indian Ocean.

    • New York Times ☛ Researchers Release Hawaiian Crows Back Into the Wild

      There, the thinking goes, they’ll be safe from hawks, which killed a number of crows during earlier reintroduction efforts on the Big Island. If the crows can thrive on Maui, scientists and wildlife officials say, it will be a major step toward one day restoring them to their home island.

    • Scientific American ☛ Hawaiian Crows Return to the Wild, Where They Are ‘Guides to Souls’

      The Hawaiian crow, or ‘alalā, has been extinct in the wild since 2002. A new effort to reintroduce birds of this species—considered important guides to the souls of the dead in Hawaiian tradition—is underway

    • LabX Media Group ☛ Researchers Discover How Starfish Cut Ties with Their Limbs

      Deep in the underwater world, animals like starfish use unusual ways to escape predators. In an act called autotomy, starfish shed one or more of their limbs to flee their hunters. The severed, writhing body part distracts the attacker, allowing the starfish to glide away. Over time, the starfish can even regenerate the lost limb, returning to their usual life after a brush with death.

• Finance

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey’s inflation drops slightly to 47.09% in November

    The decline fell short of expectations considering the Central Bank’s year-end forecast of 44%.

  • Science Alert ☛ Experiment Reveals How Pressure to Tip Can Unexpectedly Backfire

    Has this happened to you?

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s deficit to double to HK$100 billion, finance chief Paul Chan warns

    Hong Kong’s budget deficit is expected to double to HK$100 billion this financial year, finance chief Paul Chan has said, citing a property market slump that weighed on government coffers.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ It’s the Corruption, Stupid

    The politician discusses what lessons he thinks Democrats have forgotten.

  • Meduza ☛ Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson returns to Moscow to interview Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — Meduza

  • Krebs On Security ☛ U.S. Offered $10M for [Cracker] Just Arrested by Russia

    In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity identified a Russian man named Mikhail Matveev as “Wazawaka,” a cybercriminal who was deeply involved in the formation and operation of multiple ransomware groups. The U.S. government indicted Matveev as a top ransomware purveyor a year later, offering $10 million for information leading to his arrest. Last week, the Russian government reportedly arrested Matveev and charged him with creating malware used to extort companies.

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI chief 'believes' Musk will not abuse government power

    Speaking at the New York Times DealBook conference, Altman addressed concerns about Musk's announced role heading a new Department [sic] of Government Efficiency in the incoming Donald Trump administration, and whether he might use it to favor his own companies.

  • India Times ☛ Meta to build $10 billion AI data center in Louisiana as Elon Musk expands his Tennessee AI facility

    The largest artificial intelligence data center ever built by Facebook's parent company Meta is coming to northeast Louisiana, the company said Wednesday, bringing hopes that the $10 billion facility will transform an economically neglected corner of the state.

  • The Record ☛ Cyber incident board’s Salt Typhoon review to begin within days, CISA leader says

    An independent review board will launch its investigation of an unprecedented Chinese [breach] of global telecommunications systems later this week, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Wednesday.

    Speaking to reporters after a classified briefing for all senators on Wednesday about the breach by the state-sponsored group known as Salt Typhoon, CISA Director Jen Easterly said the first meeting of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) focused on the ongoing breach will take place on Friday.

  • The Record ☛ At least 8 US telcos, dozens of countries impacted by Salt Typhoon breaches, White House says

    The scope of the Chinese government [intrusion] campaign came into further focus on Wednesday, as senior White House officials revealed that eight telecommunications giants in the U.S. were breached and that companies in multiple other countries were also [breached].

    The breaches are part of the Salt Typhoon campaign, which first came to light after threat actors intercepted the correspondence of senior officials within both presidential campaigns, including from President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ US urges use of encrypted messaging apps following Salt Typhoon [breach]

    The guidance follows the discovery of a large-scale cyberattack campaign against U.S. telecommunications companies. Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed [intrusion] group, has compromised the networks of AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Lumen Technologies Inc. T-Mobile US Inc. said that the [intruders] didn’t access its infrastructure, but did compromise a connection which linked its systems to a different provider’s network.

  • The Register UK ☛ T-Mobile CSO: Cyber spies' initial access method 'is novel'

    Simon spoke with El Reg a day after FBI and CISA officials briefed reporters on the massive cyber-espionage campaign, during which China-affiliated snoops successfully broke into US telecom companies' networks, compromised wiretapping systems used by law enforcement, and used that access to steal customers' call records and metadata.

    A Chinese government-linked group dubbed Salt Typhoon is believed to be behind the attacks. It's understood Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies, at least, were hit by the crew.

  • VOA News ☛ US senators vow action after briefing on Chinese Salt Typhoon telecom [breach]

    The FBI, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the National Security Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were among the participants in the closed-door briefing, officials told Reuters.

    Democratic Senator Ron Wyden told reporters after the briefing he was working to draft legislation on this issue, while Senator Bob Casey said he had "great concern" about the breach and added it may not be until next year before Congress can address the issue.

  • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Andy Grove Was Right

    Grove retired as CEO in 1998 and as chairman in 2005. It’s as though no one at Intel after him had listened to a word he said. Grove’s words don’t read merely as advice — they read today as a postmortem synopsis for Intel’s own precipitous decline over the last 20 years.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI and the 2024 Elections

    It’s been the biggest year for elections in human history: 2024 is a “super-cycle” year in which 3.7 billion eligible voters in 72 countries had the chance to go the polls. These are also the first AI elections, where many feared that deepfakes and artificial intelligence-generated misinformation would overwhelm the democratic processes. As 2024 draws to a close, it’s instructive to take stock of how democracy did.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ AI fact checks can increase belief in false headlines, study finds

      Although many tech companies and start-ups have touted the potential of automated fact-checking services powered by artificial intelligence to stem the rising tide of online misinformation, a new study led by researchers at Indiana University has found that AI-fact checking can, in some cases, actually increase belief in false headlines whose veracity the AI was unsure about, as well as decrease belief in true headlines mislabeled as false.

    • Meduza ☛ Putin adds infamous propagandist to Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council

      Vladimir Putin has appointed an infamous propagandist from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s old media empire to serve on Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council.

      As the head of organizations like USA Really and the Foundation for National Values Protection, Alexander Malkevich has led Russian efforts to interfere in foreign elections around the globe. Through its Rewards for Justice program, the U.S. State Department currently offers up to $10 million for information about Malkevich.

    • RFERL ☛ How Russia Prepares Children In Occupied Ukraine For War Against Their Own Country

      Ukrainian law enforcement has charged Yunarmia leadership in occupied Crimea with violating the protection of civilians guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, citing an article that prohibits "propaganda aimed at ensuring the voluntary enlistment of civilians."

      Iryna Sedova, an expert of the Crimean Human Rights Group, supports the official indictment.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Digital Music News ☛ Knocked Loose Says ‘Sorry, Not Sorry’ After Jimmy Kimmel Performance

    Knocked Loose and Poppy teamed up for a heavy metal performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which put off a certain demographic of viewers. Hardcore punk outfit Knocked Loose enjoyed a performance with Poppy on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, but the band’s extreme style put off certain viewers who aren’t accustomed to such music.

  • EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Aji Fama Jobe

    *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Aji Fama Jobe is a digital creator, IT consultant, blogger, and tech community leader from The Gambia. She helps run Women TechMakers Banjul, an organization that provides visibility, mentorship, and resources to women and girls in tech. She also serves as an Information Technology Assistant with the World Bank Group where she focuses on resolving IT issues and enhancing digital infrastructure. Aji Fama is a dedicated advocate working to leverage technology to enhance the lives and opportunities of women and girls in Gambia and across Africa.

    Greene: Why don’t you start off by introducing yourself? 

  • New York Times ☛ Writers Silenced by Stalin Get New Life Amid War in Ukraine

    The Soviet regime killed a generation of literary artists in the 1930s. Their legacy is being reclaimed as Ukraine fights to preserve its cultural heritage.

  • International Business Times ☛ Irish Man 'Faces Years In Dubai Prison' Under UAE Cybercrime Laws For Sending 'Threatening' Emojis

    "He has been advised that he could face several years in prison under strict laws that prohibit rude, offensive or threatening text messages, even if expressed sarcastically, jokingly between close friends or loved ones," Detained in Dubai said in a statement.

    "Stuart's mother has been in touch with the accuser, and they have both apologised, but he has said he won't withdraw the case," said Stirling. She claimed that Dubai's strict laws are often misused by complainants who file police reports as a tactic to extort victims.

  • VOA News ☛ Analysts troubled by trend of [Internet], social media shutdowns in Africa

    Amid widespread protests in Kenya this summer over a controversial finance bill, the country's Communications Authority announced it did not intend to shut down [Internet] access. The next day, however, Kenya experienced a countrywide loss in [Internet] connectivity.

    The main [Internet] service providers said the outage on June 25 was caused by an issue with undersea cables. But the incident caught the attention of digital rights groups, who said the timing of the outage "strongly suggests" an intentional action. Various governments have used such shutdowns to maintain control, these groups say.

  • Techdirt ☛ Elon Musk Should Be Shouting About The Florida And Texas Social Media Laws (But Are You Surprised That He’s Not?)

    Florida’s SB 7072 Texas’s HB 20 were enacted in 2021, and they’ve already been the subject of extensive litigation. They’ve already been to the Supreme Court, in fact, where, last summer, the justices addressed lawsuits challenging the two laws in Moody v. NetChoice. That decision does some very good things. It confirms that the First Amendment protects curated collections of third-party speech. It finds that social media newsfeeds are exactly that sort of protected expressive compilation. And it concludes that “a state may not interfere” with such feeds “to advance its own vision of ideological balance.”

    But Moody is not the final word. The justices were reviewing a pair of interlocutory appeals; they were explaining only what was “likely” to happen, in the two cases, on the merits. What’s more, the decision addresses only what social media platforms do “on their main feeds.” Texas and Florida are “not likely to succeed in enforcing” their laws, the Court declared, “against the platforms’ application of their content-moderation policies to the feeds that were the focus of the proceedings below” (emphasis mine). The Court offered no opinion on whether SB 7072 and HB 20 are constitutional as applied to user profiles, direct messaging, group chats, or event functions. Instead, it sent the cases back to their respective trial courts for further fact-finding through discovery.

    In a nutshell, SB 7072 and HB 20 require large social media platforms (1) to carry and promote content against their will and (2) to fulfill onerous transparency requirements. Even if the conclusion that they do not govern content moderation on newsfeeds holds (no sure bet—a point to which I shall return), these two laws could cause huge headaches for Musk and X.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Mohammadi Released From Jail for Medical Treatment

    Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi was released from Evin prison after the suspension of her jail term to undergo medical treatment, her husband Taqi Rahmani told Reuters on Wednesday.

    Mohammadi is serving multiple sentences in Tehran's notorious Evin prison on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Caught in Riots, Georgia’s Protesters Say They Must Choose Between Europe and Russia - The Moscow Times

    Fears of wider political unrest have intensified since the passage of the so-called transparency of foreign influence law and Georgia’s Oct. 26 parliamentary elections, which were dubbed as crucial by both Georgian Dream and the opposition and were widely viewed as “a referendum” between Europe and Russia.

  • ANF News ☛ Police confiscate four books at 8th Amed Book Fair

    The 8th Amed Book Fair has begun in cooperation with the Amed Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DTSO) and TÜYAP Fair Organization.

    A total of 216 publishing houses, 26 of which are Kurdish publishing houses, participated in the fair, which will be open until 8 December.

    The fair, which takes place at the Mesopotamia International Fair and Congress Center, hosts many talks, panels and book signing sessions, and will see the participation of many authors.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Barriers still exist for disabled people in journalism

    Claire Harris says disability is not a barrier, but not considering the environment is.

  • DeSmog ☛ DeSmog Announces Geoff Dembicki as Global Managing Editor

  • New Statesman ☛ How to spot an excellent editor

    Like a coach in sport, it’s hard to pin down what an editor does, let alone how they do it. A good coach has a positive effect; that’s about all we know for sure. But people who are good at helping us to do things better often guard their methods – especially from themselves. Like any form of creativity, drawing out potential in others needs to be protected from prying over-analysis.

    So what follows – my individual take on writing for Jason – is both unusually personal and also impertinent. Because I might easily be mistaken. But that’s all part of it. Because, even though it’s hard to define a good editor (or coach), a measure of benign ambiguity is always in the mix.

  • VOA News ☛ Journalists in Bolivia face attacks, verbal assaults

    The reporter was working for TV station Unitel, covering widespread protests by supporters of Bolivia’s former president as they blocked roads across the country.

    Choque said he received multiple hits to his body and face after being ambushed while covering confrontations between the police and protesters in the town of Mairana.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Offers Pentagon Job to Billionaire Whose Firm Trained Journalist’s Killers

    Stephen Feinberg is co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity behemoth Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a firm that provided paramilitary training to members of the elite team that murdered Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

    Trump drew global outrage for publicly defending the Saudi regime in the wake of the assassination, even after U.S. intelligence agencies established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized Khashoggi’s murder.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Stanford University ☛ Modern masculinity and the quest for good

    Sebastian Strawser explores society's notions of masculinity and how we measure male success in an increasingly polarized world.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the DEA, withdraws name from consideration

    Chronister is the second person selected by the president-elect to bow out quickly after being nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia proposes laws to arrest, obtain private data, in clampdown on harmful online content

    Social media and messaging app operators will be subject to stiffer rules and penalties from Jan 1.

  • EFF ☛ Top Ten EFF Digital Security Resources for People Concerned About the Incoming Trump Administration

    EFF has decades of experience in providing digital privacy and security resources, particularly for vulnerable people. We’ve written a lot of resources over the years and here are the top ten that we think are most useful right now:

    https://ssd.eff.org/

    Our Surveillance Self-Defense guides are a great place to start your journey of securing yourself against digital threats. We know that it can be a bit overwhelming, so we recommend starting with our guide on making a security plan so you can familiarize yourself with the basics and decide on your specific needs. Or, if you’re planning to head out to a protest soon and want to know the most important ways to protect yourself, check out our guide to Attending a Protest. Many people in the groups most likely to be targeted in the upcoming months will need advice tailored to their specific threat models, and for that we recommend the Security Scenarios module as a quick way to find the right information for your particular situation. 

  • Meduza ☛ Russian officials want to ban lawyers from visiting clients at police stations — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Russia declares The Satanic Temple undesirable — Meduza

  • JURIST ☛ Egypt urged to reject new refugee law for violating international refugee rights

    Amnesty International urged the Egyptian government on Tuesday to reject the new refugee law, citing violations of international human rights and refugee laws.

  • Defence Web ☛ What is happening at South Africa’s borders?

    The South African National Defence Force (SANDF), through its Defence Corporate Communications division, last week organised a visit to the Musina border area to show the media how the military is patrolling the country’s borders under Operation Corona.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Justice Department announces sweeping reforms to curb suicides in federal prisons and jails

    The 14-page report said the measures “will strengthen the Department’s capacity to reduce the risk of suicide by adults in federal custody and advance a culture of safety in its institutions.”

  • NYPost ☛ Lady Gabriella breaks silence on husband’s ‘impulsive’ suicide at 45, blames ‘adverse reaction’ to his medication

    "The fact that he took his life at the home of his beloved parents suggests the decision was the result of a sudden impulse."

  • The Nation ☛ In the US, Tenants Are Usually on Their Own. Can a New National Tenant Union Change That?

    As TUF is finding its national footing, many of its leaders are tenants like Echo Maker, fighting to directly improve their own living conditions. Many are low-income and disabled, unable to work traditional jobs and therefore living off meager Social Security payments. They often live in run-down, neglected buildings often explicitly reserved for elderly and disabled tenants, who are typically the most vulnerable to exploitation from their landlords. And each of them—from Echo Maker to Lori-Lynn Ross in Connecticut to Donna Goldsmith in Louisville—considered themselves completely alienated from not just the political process but their own communities as well, before TUF organizers knocked on their doors.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Memphis police discriminate against Black people, Justice Department finds

    The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people, according to the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched after the beating death of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.

    A report released Wednesday marked the conclusion of the investigation that began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched and hit with a police baton as five officers tried to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ What Passes for Justice

    During the next few days, the survivors began to tell the story of the rapidly spreading fire that was fueled by an ad hoc repair to a hydraulic line that burst right next to a sizzling hot fryer for cooking chicken. Few people knew that although the plant had two previous fires within the last decade, it had never had a state safety inspection. As the workers fled, they encountered locked and chained fire exits, closed at the order of the company's owner, who was worried about people stealing food from his company. Only one group of employees managed to kick open a door. That door, covered in sooty boot prints, is on display today at the museum of American History in Washington, DC. It bears testament to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in state history. Of the 90 people inside Imperial Foods when the fire broke out, 25 died and 54 were injured, many of them suffering lifelong ill effects from smoke and chemical inhalation.

  • Techdirt ☛ Texas Legislators Think Drones Armed With Tasers And Pepper Spray Will Stop School Shootings

    In reality, most Second Amendment enthusiasts aren’t arming themselves to prevent the government from being overtaken by authoritarians. After all, they voted for Trump at least twice, and he’s the kind of autocrat their window decals have warned against. Most exercises of the Second Amendment are purely performative — “rolling coal” but it’s dudes in camo walking through Walmarts strapped with AR-15s.

  • Techdirt ☛ Federal Court Says Dismantling A Phone To Install Firmware Isn’t A ‘Search,’ Even If Was Done To Facilitate A Search

    As is often the case when Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns are raised during evidence suppression efforts, this one involves alleged possession of child sexual abuse material. That doesn’t mean the defendant doesn’t raise good points. That just means the public is less likely to sympathize with the defendant. It also means — given the hefty sentences often handed to child sexual abusers — they have more reason than most to try to get the evidence suppressed.

    It doesn’t work here, though. The court notes in the opening of its decision [PDF] that the final search occurred months after devices were seized. And the search that produced the evidence used here wasn’t possible until after the government had done a lot of other stuff to the suspect’s phone.

  • Vox ☛ Harassment against women on X has never been worse

    In late November, a woman posted a photo of herself proudly holding her PhD thesis along with the announcement that she had successfully defended her dissertation. “Thrilled to say I passed my viva with no corrections and am officially PhDone,” she wrote. What followed was a case study in how the online right targets and harasses those who don’t fit into the narrow — and often conflicting — standards they’ve formulated for women.

  • Digital Music News ☛ British Band Robbed at Gunpoint During Their First US Tour Stop

    The group said the thief smashed the van’s passenger window, and took cameras and laptops used on stage, the band’s passports and documents, in addition to suitcases full of clothing. “So we’re going to be wearing the same things for the next two weeks,” they added.

    The silver lining was that the group’s instruments were housed in a separate, locked compartment in the back of the van, and weren’t taken. The band remains hopeful they can play the tour as scheduled.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Rich Are Hoarding Their Wealth Using Charity Funds

    Wall Street–backed charity funds provide ultrawealthy donors with massive charitable tax breaks — yet operate without any requirement to ever distribute the money to working charities.

  • The Register UK ☛ Eurocops red pill the Matrix 'secure' criminal chat systems

    Cops in the Netherlands discovered the existence of Matrix while investigating the 2021 murder of crime reporter Peter de Vries, who was looking into the Moroccan mafia at the time. When the app's central servers were found to be in France, the Dutch and French plod formed a joint task force and together they managed to compromise the messaging system and read crooks' conversations. How that infiltration was achieved has not yet been publicly explained or divulged.

  • The Register UK ☛ D.C. alleges Amazon is cheating some Prime users

    The lawsuit [PDF] was filed by D.C. attorney general Brian Schwalb's office today in the District of Columbia Superior Court. It alleges that Amazon implemented a delivery "exclusion" for two east-D.C. areas, zip codes 20019 and 20020 in June 2022. Instead of using its own in-house delivery fleet to ensure expedited shipping, it began relying on third-party delivery services like UPS and the US Postal Service, resulting in slower delivery times, according to the lawsuit.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ EFF breathes fire over Vodacom's Maziv deal

    The Economic Freedom Fighters and the Democratic Alliance, respectively, have lambasted and heaped praise on the decision by trade, industry & competition minister, the ANC’s Parks Tau, to appeal the tribunal’s decision to block the deal. The Competition Commission had earlier recommended to the tribunal that the deal be blocked on competition grounds.

    Tau participated in the tribunal proceedings related to the merger and signalled his support for the transaction on public interest grounds. In his notice of appeal to the competition appeal court last week, Tau said he wants the deal approved. Vodacom and Maziv – which is effectively controlled by Remgro – are also appealing against the tribunal’s decision.

  • Alex Haydock ☛ No NAT November: My Month Without IPv4

    I know this is quite a long and technical post, so I figured it makes sense to put a conclusion about my experience near the beginning.

    So, after a month, what do I think? Do I recommend that you go and disable IPv4 in your home network and go IPv6-only?

    Well no. Not quite yet.

    But you absolutely should go IPv6-mostly. Which is something we’ll get into in quite some depth as this post goes on. It’s really a win-win, and I’ll be deploying all my networks as IPv6-mostly from now onwards.

  • Techdirt ☛ Senator Ernst Wants To Kill Billions In Broadband Infrastructure Grants For No Coherent Reason

    The 2021 infrastructure bill is poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies to the states under a program called Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD). This program has been slow sledding, because America’s broadband maps were absolute garbage, requiring that states work overtime to fix our broadband maps and ensure the money is spent semi-wisely.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft confirms zero chance Win11 supports older hardware

    Microsoft is not backing down on the hardware requirements for Windows 11, stating that the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is essential for the operating system, even if it is not part of the minimum requirements for Windows Server 2025.

    Microsoft Senior Product Manager Steven Hosking called TPM 2.0 "a necessity for a secure and future-proof Windows 11."

  • PC World ☛ Microsoft doubles down, still won't let older PCs run Windows 11

    The TPM hardware requirement for Windows 11 was one of the biggest barriers to initial upgraders three years ago. And while that’s become less of an issue, it’s still a point of contention for many users. If you were hoping for a reprieve as Windows 10 approaches its end of life, Microsoft just dashed those hopes in a new blog post.

  • Netflix denies plans to exit Nigerian market amidst rumours

    Netflix has dismissed recent speculations about exiting the Nigerian market, affirming its commitment to serving its audience in the country.

    In a statement to TechCabal, Netflix clarified that the rumours were unfounded. The platform reiterated its dedication to the Nigerian creative industry, highlighting its collaborations with local filmmakers and investments in original content to entertain and captivate Nigerian viewers.

    This response follows a series of social media posts suggesting that Netflix might discontinue its services in Nigeria due to economic challenges and regulatory pressures. However, the company’s statement reassures its subscribers that it remains firmly committed to its operations in Nigeria.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • 404 Media ☛ Deepfake YouTube Ads of Celebrities Promise to Get You ‘Rock Hard’

      Video ads of Stallone, Tyson, and Crews repeating the exact same script indicate that whoever wrote the ads copy/pasted it into an AI voice generator.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Is Online Piracy Flattening? New EU Study Reveals 2023 Data — Including Country-Specific Stats [Ed: Piracy? Or sharing misframed as murder?]

    Amid continued streaming growth and actions targeting illegal platforms, music piracy appears to be flattening, according to a new report out of the European Union. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) just recently published that multifaceted breakdown, which spans north of 100 pages and charts unapproved media consumption across music, film, television, and more.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ MP3.to Successfully Challenges Music Industry's 'False' DMCA Circumvention Takedown

    MP3.to is a nifty online tool that allows users to convert MP3s to dozens of other file formats. While these conversions don't knowingly violate any law, Spanish music industry group Promusicae reportedly labeled the service an audio download tool. In response, Google removed the URL from its search engine and banned the associated AdSense account. However, after the MP3 site involved its lawyer, Google reversed its decision.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Japan Plans AI Pilot Program to Fight Manga & Anime Piracy

    The scale of the problem is well understood, but with an estimated 1,000 sites offering culturally significant manga and anime content for free, monitoring for the availability of pirated content online is a resource intensive task. Human moderators can now “barely keep up” due to the proliferation of illicit content online.

    “Copyright holders spend a significant amount of human resources trying to manually detect pirated content online,” said Momii Keiko, a director at the Cultural Affairs Agency’s Copyright Division.

    To level the playing field, Japan is looking towards a future where detection of illicit content will be less reliant on human intervention.

  • DNA Lounge ☛ DNA Lounge: 3-Dec-2024 (Tue): Wherein we negotiate with the mob

    Remember March 2020? Yeah, good times. As the unending pandemic began, we suddenly found ourselves closed for 18 months with no customers and no income except donations, and we did some triage. Our landlord agreed to reduce our rent, and some of our vendors gave us reduced rates. The PROs' answer was "LOL no". So we just stopped paying them.

    You can probably guess where this is going.