Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ #SciArtSeptember: Tessellation

  Happy Sunday! This #SciArtSeptember art prompt (that I’m using shamelessly as a writing cue instead) is about tessellation, which I’m once again drawing inspiration from retrocomputers to discuss.

  Clara and I managed to get an apartment that had enough space for a couple of PAX wardrobes, which we proceeded to pair with glass doors and use as hobby cabinets. This keeps the dust out, makes the room look cleaner, and helps us to organise the chaos while pretending that our anime figs, art supplies, and old computers were deliberately curated for it instead of tessellated with a decade’s worth of accumulated adventures.

  This leads to the reasonable question: why not a regular BILLY bookcase, or another set of shelves from some other retailer? Or even one you made yourself, if you don’t live in an apartment and have access to power tools?

• The Nation ☛ We’re Being Ruled Over by the World’s Biggest Losers

  We’re living through a golden age for losers who don’t seem to realize how much they keep telegraphing their loserdom to the rest of us. They preen and pose as world-conquering superheroes while continually exposing just how sniveling and pathetic they really are.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ NASA boss says US should have ‘village’ on Moon in a decade

    Zhigang also said China is working to make space sustainable with new measures to track orbiting debris, manage traffic in space, and provide alerts to warn if spacecraft are at risk. He said China believes those measures are necessary because the growing mega-constellations of broadband satellites increases risks for all users of space.

    “China is currently researching active removal of space debris,” he said.

  • Science Alert ☛ Earth Just Received Final NASA Laser Message From 218 Million Miles Away

    It's a triumph for NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology test, which has been underway since the asteroid-bound spacecraft launched in 2023. Now, Earth has received Psyche's 65th and final laser downlink signal from a distance of 350 million kilometers (218 million miles).

    From this point, Psyche will focus on its mission to the asteroid belt, using more standard radio communications to downlink data back to Earth.

  • Troy Hunt ☛ Welcoming CERN to Have I Been Pwned

    In relation to HIBP and our ongoing support of governments, CERN is similar yet different. It's an intergovernmental organisation operating outside the jurisdiction of any one nation. However, they face the same online threats, and just like sovereign government states, their people sign up to services that get breached and end up in HIBP. And, like the governments we support, services that can be provided to help them tackle that threat are always appreciated. I was surprised to hear on our last visit that the sum total of contributions from their member states amounts to the price of a cup of coffee per person per year! For the work they do and the contribution they make to society, onboarding CERN as the 41st (inter)government was a no-brainer. They now have full and free access to query all CERN domains across the breadth of HIBP data. Welcome aboard CERN!

  • Ken Koon Wong ☛ Learning And Exploring The Workflow of RNA-Seq Analysis - A Note To Myself

    To be honest, I don’t really know what RNA-seq was until I learnt more about it and its potential! On our previous learning processes, we’ve looked at Learning Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) genes with Bioconductor, Phylogenetic Analysis, Building DNA sequence Alignment, Assemblying DNA Sequence, Learning BLAST and MLST, Exploring Long Sequence ONT Workflow. Notice that all these are DNA related. This article, we’ll explore the world of RNA! In my simplistic view, RNA-seq enables us to explore and discover transcriptomes of certain conditions, whether it can tell us a bit more of the gene expression based on certain conditions. The potential is huge! Imagine if you can tell the difference between colonization vs a true infection in a clinical setting, I wonder if differential expression analysis of transcriptome can provide us a bit more information! Differentiating infection vs contamination (?more accurate HAI definition 🤷‍♂️). Let’s dive into the shallow pool of the unknown world of RNA-Seq and at least learn the basics! Let’s go!

  • [Old] Fabian Beuke ☛ Compactification

    Our everyday experience is confined to a world with three spatial dimensions - length, width, and height - and one dimension of time. However, some of the most compelling and mathematically elegant theories in modern physics propose that the universe might possess more dimensions than we can directly perceive.[1] To reconcile these theoretical frameworks with the observed four-dimensional reality, physicists have developed the concept of compactification. Compactification, in this context, refers to a theoretical process where extra spatial dimensions are effectively “shrunk” or “rolled up” to incredibly small sizes, rendering them undetectable with our current observational capabilities.[2] This idea serves as a crucial link between the mathematical requirements of certain theories and the physical universe we experience.[3] If a theory posits the existence of additional dimensions, but our observations are limited to four, then a mechanism like compactification becomes necessary to explain the discrepancy.

  • Science Alert ☛ Can You Guess Which Star Wars Character This Coral Is Named After?

    Love this!

  • Science Alert ☛ This Popular Diet Seems to Reduce Gum Disease, Scientists Say

    Is there anything it can't do?

  • Science Alert ☛ Largest Study of Its Kind Reveals The Genes Behind Dyslexia

    Here's what we know.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Signature in Greenland's Ice Might Not Be From Space After All

    It has sparked intense scientific debate.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Sound of Earth's Flipping Magnetic Field Is an Unnerving Horror

    Just listen to it.

• Career/Education

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ A Lesson in Patience | Yordi - A Lifelong Journey of Growth

    Sometimes, complex problems sort themselves out, if you just give them a little time.

  • Harvard University ☛ Marking 100 years of Norton Lectures

    In November 1926, Oxford classics scholar Gilbert Murray stood before an audience in Harvard’s Lowell Lecture Hall to deliver the first-ever talk in the newly endowed Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry. His lectures on the classical tradition drew such crowds that according to a Crimson story published at the time, the final one had to be moved to Boston’s Symphony Hall to accommodate the demand.

    “We’re now in the 100th year, and this distinguished lecture series has witnessed a century of individuals delivering lectures on literature, music and the visual arts,” director Suzannah Clark told an audience at Farkas Hall at a recent event marking the milestone anniversary.

  • Derek Kędziora ☛ Literalism and the decline of literacy

    The latest study I’ve seen, College English majors can’t read, shows this all rather empirically. These are English majors and they struggle with reading a few pages of dense prose, answering indirect questions, and are flat out are unable to understand non-literal text.

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's Lee calls for improving security at national data centre after fire

    South Korea President Lee Jae Myung pledged a "significant improvement" in the security of government administrative systems after a major fire at the national data centre crippled online services around the country.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea data centre fire started during safety work; President Lee calls for improved security

    The outage froze the mobile ID system, disrupting essential services that require identification.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. gov't mulls tariffing devices based on the number of chips used and their estimated value — policy would impact nearly every type of electronic device

    The U.S. government is considering aggressive new semiconductor-related tariffs that aim to force more chip manufacturing onto American soil, but risk triggering inflation, disrupting supply chains, and posing serious implementation challenges.

  • Hackaday ☛ Decorate Your Neck With The First Z80 Badge

    Over the years, we’ve brought you many stories of the creative artwork behind electronic event badges, but today we may have a first for you. [Spencer] thinks nobody before him has made a badge powered by a Z80, and we believe he may be right. He’s the originator of the RC2014 Z80-based retrocomputer, and the badge in question comes from the recent RC2014 Assembly.

  • Hackaday ☛ WALL-E’s Forgotten Sibling Rebuilt

    Do you remember the movie WALL-E? Apparently, [Leviathan engineering] did, and he wasn’t as struck by the title character, or Eva, or even the Captain. He was captivated by BURN-E. His working model shows up in the video below.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Why I wear the Casio F-91W

    It’s got an easy to read display and stop watch, which is all I need really when I sit and think about it. I can wear and not worry.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Not all OCuLink eGPU docks are created equal

    I recently tried using the Minisforum DEG1 GPU Dock with a Raspberry Pi 500+, using an M.2 to OCuLink adapter, and this chenyang SFF-8611 Cable.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Understanding the Coming Premium Apocalypse

    The way the ACA works is that insurance companies are prohibited from discriminating based on medical history — they have to offer the same plans, at the same prices, to healthy people and less healthy people. They can’t charge you more if you have a preexisting condition. The goal of that prohibition is to make sure that health care is available and affordable to those who need it most.

    However, just prohibiting discrimination based on medical history works very badly unless backed by additional measures — states that have tried it know this from bitter experience. If everyone pays the same premiums, people who are currently healthy tend not to buy policies, so that insurers face a bad risk pool. This means high premiums, which leads to even more healthy people dropping out, which makes the risk pool even worse. So you end up with a “death spiral” in which very few people buy insurance unless they get it through their employer.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Nayara loses bid to force SAP support as sanctions bite

    The EU sanctioned Russia-backed Indian refiner Nayara Energy in July for trading Russian oil – already restricted following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

    Nayara Energy filed its lawsuit against SAP India after the company withdrew software support following the new sanctions.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Project Zero Exposes ASLR Bypass In Apple Serialization Flaw

    Google Project Zero has revealed a new technique capable of bypassing Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) protections on Apple devices. The finding, published by security researcher Jann Horn, stresses a novel way attackers could exploit deterministic behaviors in Apple’s serialization framework, specifically within NSKeyedArchiver and NSKeyedUnarchiver, to leak pointer values without triggering conventional memory safety flaws or using timing side channels.

  • The Register UK ☛ 430k customers affected in Harrods’ latest breach

    It began notifying affected customers on September 26 that their data was taken during a break-in at one of its suppliers. Harrods said the "third party" supplier has reassured it that the incident was isolated and had been contained.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Harrods Data Breach Affects 430,000 Customer Records

    Additional data related to marketing preferences, loyalty cards, and partnerships with other companies, including Harrods’ co-branded cards, was also taken. However, the company emphasized that this information is unlikely to be correctly interpreted by unauthorized parties.

  • BBC ☛ Harrods says customers' data stolen in IT breach

    A spokesman for the store said that its own system had not been compromised, and that the breach is not connected to a cyber attack in May, when it restricted [Internet] access across its sites as a precautionary measure following an attempt to gain unauthorised access to its systems.

    A loosely linked group of hackers who claimed to be behind that cyber attack also claimed responsibility for high profile attacks on Marks & Spencer and the Co-op earlier this year.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Ruben Schade ☛ John Walker summarises gen-“AI”, and some feedback

      A has-been social network didn’t have a great tech demo involving generative “AI”, but we did get this great analaysis:

      The Hey Hi (AI) being hyped right now is not Hey Hi (AI) at all. It’s really important that we all acknowledge this, that the world is selling itself a multi-billion-dollar lemon: predictive text engines that have nothing intelligent about them. They’re giant sorting machines, which is why they’re so good at identifying patterns in scientific research, and could genuinely advance medicine in wonderful ways. But what they cannot do is think, and as such, it’s a collective mass-delusion that these systems have any use in our day-to-day lives beyond plagiarism.

    • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube Gets Into the AI DJ Game to Rival Spotify

      Spotify’s AI DJ has been active since 2023 and leans heavily into the platform’s personalization features. That DJ uses personal listening history to craft an evolving, radio-like listening journey, supplying facts and trivia about the songs after they play. The Spotify AI DJ even supports interactive voice requests in both English and Spanish for certain moods, genres, or activities, making it resemble an adaptable radio host for listeners.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Arab News taps AI for global reach

      Saudi Arabia’s oldest English-language daily will translate its coverage into 50 languages using tech from Dubai-based CAMB.AI. The project echoes the founding of Arab News in 1975, when Prince Turki Al-Faisal — son of the king at the time, who went on to be Saudi’s intelligence chief and ambassador to the UK and the US — helped establish the newspaper as a tool to explain Saudi views to the West.

    • New York Times ☛ California’s Gavin Newsom Signs Major AI Safety Law

      The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, or S.B. 53, requires the most advanced A.I. companies to report safety protocols used in building their technologies and forces the companies to report the greatest risks posed by their technologies. The bill also strengthens whistle blower protections for employees who warn the public about potential dangers the technology poses.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ AI actor Tilly Norwood could be destined for Hollywood. But when AI loses the human element, I think it ceases to be art!

      But I don't consider 100% AI generation a tool; it's a fully-formed entity. Animation, puppetry, and CGI didn’t take away from live acting because they never lost the human element. Animation requires a huge workforce, including concept artists, animators, colorists, and inkers. And puppetry and CGI are no different. And of course, all three disciplines require real, human voice actors.

    • Deadline ☛ Talent Agents Circle AI Actress Tilly Norwood

      If the talent agency signing comes to pass, Norwood will be one of the first AI generated actresses to get representation with a talent agency, traditionally working with real-life stars.

      Former AI artist Puhm, whose appointment as head of startup Luma AI’s new Studio Dream Lab LA was announced in July, concurred with Van der Velden on the mood changing at the studios.

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ The AI Emperor Has No Clothes

      If the size of the current AI bubble can be estimated by how many

      • AI job offers
      • AI product review offers
      • AI service paid sponsorship offers
      • AI creator representation offers

      I receive per day... then I'd say we're nearing the pop.

      There is no way the trillions of dollars of valuation placed on AI companies can be backed by any amount of future profit.

    • Arjen Wiersma ☛ AI Can Write Code, But Can It Secure It?

      The central problem is a paradox we’re all starting to notice. AI tools are getting incredibly good at generating code, but they’re also incredibly good at generating vulnerable code. The Semgrep post points to one study that found 62% of C programs churned out by LLMs had at least one security bug (sidenote: For those of us in the security field, this is what we call job security.) .

      What’s really interesting, though, is the human element. The research shows that developers using AI assistants are not only more likely to submit insecure code, but they also report feeling more confident about their flawed work. This brings us to the million-dollar question: if AI is helping write all this insecure code, can we trust it to clean up its own mess?

    • Futurism ☛ Trump's Grip on Reality Questioned After He Shares and Then Deletes Bizarre AI-Generated Video

      Perhaps even more bafflingly, a phony version of Trump proudly announces the venture from behind his desk in the Oval Office in the video, meaning the president is now sharing deepfakes of himself with no disclaimer that they’re not real.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Abusing Notion's AI Agent for Data Theft

      Notion just released version 3.0, complete with AI agents. Because the system contains Simon Willson’s lethal trifecta, it’s vulnerable to data theft though prompt injection.

  • Social Control Media

    • Futurism ☛ Huge Proportion of Young Americans Report Serious Cognitive Issues

      People from the ages of 18 to 39 have experienced a significant increase in cognitive issues such as “serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions” in the span of about a decade, according to a startling new study published in the journal Neurology.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK minister suggests government could leave Elon Musk's X

      Speaking at the Labour Party conference, energy minister and former Labour leader Ed Miliband took aim at Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter). According to The Guardian, Miliband painted Musk as part of a far-right cabal "who want to take away people's rights, take away people's freedoms."

    • Neritam ☛ Tel-Aviv-Based Political Marketing Firm Reportedly Created Fake Social Media Accounts

      The New York Times reported that, in October 2023, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs paid $2 million to Stoic, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based political marketing firm, to push pro-Israel content on social media at a time when many Americans were concerned for Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza.

    • Mike Brock ☛ A Culture of Digital Junkies - by Mike Brock

      Our political culture has become a sewer. And it’s not accidental—it’s the inevitable result of conducting democratic discourse through technological infrastructure designed to reward the worst human impulses while punishing democratic virtues.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ UK government to be guarantor for Jaguar Land Rover loan as it recovers from cyberattack

      JLR — one of Britain’s most significant industrial producers, accounting for roughly 4% of all goods exports last year — shut down all manufacturing at the beginning of this month due to the cyber incident.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK offers JLR landmark £1.5B loan to safeguard suppliers

      A government-backed loan to the tune of £1.5 billion ($2 billion) will be made available to the carmaker to support its recovery and the companies in its extensive supply chain struggling as JLR brings its invoicing systems back online.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK may already be at war with Russia, ex-MI5 head suggests

      Russian action in cyberspace has long been causing problems for Britain and its allies. This summer, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) issued a warning after uncovering a malware campaign targeting Microsoft login credentials and passwords as part of an espionage effort. The agency attributed the attacks to APT28 (also known as Fancy Bear and Foreign Blizzard) an offensive cyber group linked to Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Senator ‘alarmed’ about barracks privatization, seeks answers from DOD

    Warren, who is ranking member of the military personnel panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted a unique consideration regarding barracks privatization. She asked questions about whether commanders would continue to have the authority to conduct health and welfare inspections, and whether commanders would have legal authority to conduct probable-cause searches under military law.

    “If DOD moves to privatize barracks, it must ensure that commanders remain equipped to fulfill their duty to oversee and protect their troops,” Warren wrote.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Chat Control Is Back on the Menu in the EU. It Still Must Be Stopped

      Chat Control, which EFF has strongly opposed since it was first introduced in 2022, keeps being mildly tweaked and pushed by one Council presidency after another.

      Chat Control is a dangerous legislative proposal that would make it mandatory for service providers, including end-to-end encrypted communication and storage services, to scan all communications and files to detect “abusive material.” This would happen through a method called client-side scanning, which scans for specific content on a device before it’s sent. In practice, Chat Control is chat surveillance and functions by having access to everything on a device with indiscriminate monitoring of everything. In a memo, the Danish Presidency claimed this does not break end-to-end encryption.

    • 404 Media ☛ Reddit Mods Sued by YouTuber Ethan Klein Fight Efforts to Unmask Them

      Klein has attempted to subpoena Discord and Reddit for information that would reveal the identity of moderators of a subreddit critical of him. The moderators' lawyers fear their clients will be physically attacked if the subpoenas go through.

    • EFF ☛ EFF Urges Virgina Court of Appeals to Require Search Warrants to Access ALPR Databases

      All of this personal activity can be tracked and identified through Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data—a popular surveillance tool used by law enforcement agencies across the country. That’s why, in an amicus brief filed with the Virginia Court of Appeals, EFF, the ACLU of Virginia, and NACDL urged the court to require police to seek a warrant before searching ALPR data.

    • Jim Mitchell ☛ LinkedIn will use your data to train AI – how to opt out | Proton | Jim Mitchell

      A setting like this should never be opt-in by default…

    • Proton A G ☛ LinkedIn will use your data to train AI – how to opt out

      On November 3, LinkedIn will begin sharing your data with Microsoft and its affiliates for AI training. You’re opted in by default, but there’s still time to do something about it.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Race to Save America's Democracy

    Trump’s administration may seem chaotic, but Americans should not take the integrity of next year’s elections for granted.

  • CNN ☛ YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle Trump lawsuit

    YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump after he was suspended by social media platforms following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

    This makes Alphabet-owned YouTube the last of the three Big Tech social media companies sued by Trump — which included Meta and then Twitter, now called X — to settle over his removal from their platforms.

  • Reuters ☛ YouTube to pay $24.5 million to settle Trump account suspension suit

    YouTube did not admit wrongdoing and will not make product or policy changes under the settlement. Trump did not lose his YouTube account in 2021 but was suspended from uploading new videos; it was restored in 2023.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24.5m to settle lawsuit over account suspension

    Platform suspended the US president’s YouTube channel in 2021 after the January 6 Capitol [insurrection]

  • New York Times ☛ YouTube Settles Trump Lawsuit Over Account Suspension for $24.5 Million

    YouTube agreed to pay a $24.5 million settlement to President Trump and others who were suspended by the video streaming platform in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, [insurrection] at the U.S. Capitol, according to a legal document filed on Monday.

  • NBC ☛ YouTube to pay $24 million to settle Trump lawsuit

    Monday's settlement makes YouTube the last major tech platform to settle a lawsuit with Trump, who similarly sued Meta and Twitter for banning his accounts in the aftermath of Jan. 6. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, settled for $25 million, while Twitter, since renamed X, settled for about $10 million.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ France, Sweden send anti-drone units to Denmark to secure EU summit

    The French military has deployed a team of 35 personnel with a Fennec light helicopter and “active anti-drone capabilities,” the country’s Armed Forces Ministry said in a statement Monday. Meanwhile, Sweden will send a military unit with anti-drone capabilities following a Danish request, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a briefing in Stockholm.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Air Force revives WWII-era squadron in South Korea as drone force

    The 7th Air Force announced the activation of the 431st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, based out of Kunsan Air Base in South Korea. The new squadron will provide aerial reconnaissance of the border with North Korea, but also conduct surveillance missions around the Indo-Pacific theater, the Air Force said.

  • The Conversation ☛ How can Europe fight back against incursions by drone aircraft?

    Given the widespread disruption that has been caused, questions are now being raised about what can be done to either suppress or destroy drones and prevent future attacks. There is also a risk to civilian aircraft from mid-air collisions with the drones and the potential for civilian deaths and injuries.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Swedish PM Says Russia Likely Behind Airport Drones - The Moscow Times

    Speaking to broadcaster TV4, Kristersson said "the likelihood of this being about Russia wanting to send a message to countries supporting Ukraine is quite high" but stressed that "nobody really, really knows."

    He added that "we have confirmation" that drones that entered Polish airspace earlier in September were Russian.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ WiFi Sniffer Leads To Russian Spying Charges For Dutch Teens

    The Dutch teens were allegedly contacted by pro-Russian [crackers] on Telegram. The father of one of the boys told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that police had arrested his son while he was doing his homework. The teenager was said to be computer savvy and fascinated by hacking, and he held a part-time job at a supermarket.

  • BBC ☛ Netherlands: Two teenagers arrested in spying case linked to Russia

    The National Office of the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service confirmed court appearance, but told the BBC it could not provide details on the case due to the suspects' age and in "the interest of the investigation", which is ongoing.

  • Futurism ☛ 4Chan-Obsessed ICE Shooter Was Gaming on Steam Right Up Until the End

    Scary Stuff

  • The Strategist ☛ Central Asia’s complex water-security diplomacy with the Taliban

    International security discussions often focus on traditional hard threats such as military aggression, nuclear weapons and economic coercion.

  • France24 ☛ Protesters gather again in Madagascar after chronic blackouts and water cuts

    Hundreds of mostly young protesters faced off against security forces in Madagascar's capital Saturday days after an anti-government demonstration erupted into clashes and looting. Story by Rachel Griffiths.

  • JURIST ☛ UN Security Council revives Iran sanctions after breaches of nuclear non-proliferation treaty

    The United Nations Security Council on Saturday evening reimposed broad sanctions and restrictions on Iran, after determining that Tehran had engaged in “significant non-performance” of its nuclear obligations. The sanctions were restored under the snapback provision of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

  • JURIST ☛ HRW warns Convicted Felon memo on political violence poses risk to democracy

    President The Insurrectionist’s September 25 memorandum directing federal agencies to investigate what it describes as a nationwide conspiracy to foment political violence constitutes a serious threat to human rights and democratic institutions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Friday.

  • The Straits Times ☛ How China’s secretive spy agency became a cyber powerhouse

    President Pooh-tin Jinping elevated the Ministry of State Security as China's primary cyberespionage agency.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ NATO defence chiefs wind up Rīga meeting

      NATO’s highest Military Authority, the NATO Military Committee, met in Riga, Latvia, on 26-27 September 2025. The 32 NATO Chiefs of Defence, together with the Strategic Commanders, discussed military developments within the Alliance, particularly in face of increasingly worrying threats to the Euro-Atlantic security, and in light of the decisions taken at the historic NATO Summit in The Hague, in June 2025.

    • France24 ☛ False bomb threats, security incidents cloud Moldova’s parliamentary vote

      Reporting from the Moldovan capital Chisinau, FRANCE 24’s Maria Gerth-Niculescu says there have been several security incidents on election day. False bomb threats briefly halted overseas voting in several EU cities on Sunday, according to Moldova’s foreign ministry, and cyberattacks targeted some official sites as the country voted in a tense parliamentary election.

    • France24 ☛ Disinformation efforts intensified ahead of Sunday’s vote: Moldova’s cybersecurity agency chief

      Ahead of Sunday’s vote, there was an “unprecedented” effort to destabilise the situation in Moldova, Mihai Lupascu, director of Moldova’s cybersecurity agency, tells France 24. But Moldova’s law enforcement “did a very good job in countering and limiting this supply of resources” and the illegal money flows, he notes.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union struggles to keep up with surge in membership requests

      A woman who twice applied to join the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union says she never received a response, highlighting strains within the volunteer paramilitary group that has seen a surge of interest amid regional security concerns.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Techdirt ☛ Donald Trump Declares War On Portland Because Of A Few Anti-ICE Protests

    Here’s what Matthew (sorry, that’s all the information I have) pointed out on Bluesky in regards to press coverage of Trump’s latest revenge invasion of a US city:

    # of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there’s no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Experts Alarmed as Jellyfish Spawn in Freshwater Lakes

    Unlike their sea-bound brethren, the freshwater jellyfish don’t pose a threat to humans. They do, however, pose a threat to American freshwater ecosystems. Native to the shallow pools which dot the sides of the Yangtze River in China, peach blossom jellyfish were first recorded in the Great Lakes region as early as 1933, assumed to have migrated as a byproduct of the global fish trade.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ What this photographer saw at Utah's Great Salt Lake will break your heart, as he scoops $126,000 prize | Digital Camera World

    ‘My objective in this series is to show the tragic fate of the lake and simultaneously reveal its extraordinary beauty and potential," says Jaar. 'In spite of the dire situation we are in, I wanted to create images of great beauty and sadness. In the face of the magnitude of this tragedy, I decided to print these images in a small, unspectacular format, as a kind of visual whisper, a lament for our dying planet.’

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Kobold Metals to construct Mingomba Mine on the Copperbelt

    Kobold Metals, a leading American Mining Technology Firm, has announced plans to construct Mingomba Mine, which is expected to be Zambia’s largest copper mine.

  • Columbus Ohio ☛ Jerome and Norwich township officials concerned with data center surge

    Ohio townships are concerned that the rapid growth of data centers is straining local emergency services. Firefighters report frequent emergency calls and delays in accessing high-security Amazon data center sites.

  • Futurism ☛ First Responders Are Being Overwhelmed by Data Center Fires

    For one thing, the facilities are incredibly noisy, their cooling systems likened to a “distant jet that never leaves.” Their collective energy demand is so high that they’re driving up utility prices throughout the country, in some cases prompting insufferable CEOs to resort to methane gas generators, choking local communities with noxious fumes. Their water intake is so enormous that taps in nearby homes can stop running, while their excessive pollution has been linked to a growing cancer risk.

    That’s before we even get into the massive financial problem with the AI data center gold rush, which in many ways is now holding up the stagnant US economy.

    As if all that weren’t enough, one community is now learning about another obnoxious data center trait: their tendency to burst into flames.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • LRT ☛ Vilnius electric boats draw 12,000 passengers in debut season, will run until late October

      Two vessels – Rytas and Lašiša – entered service this summer, with average daily ridership reaching around 244 on weekdays and more than 300 at weekends, when occupancy reached about 80%.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A.I. Is on the Rise, and So Is the Environmental Impact of the Data Centers That Drive It

      To power the digital world—from day-to-day digital communications, websites and data storage—data centers require energy to power the hundreds of servers within them. With the advent of more hyperscale data centers being built to support A.I., data center energy use has increased.

      Benjamin Lee, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, breaks the high energy consumption of A.I. into two categories.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Data centers to account for 9% of electricity demand in the U.S by 2035 — Nuclear power could help sate AI demand

      But with individual graphics cards requiring upwards of 500W of power, there are frank discussions taking place over where all the extra electricity for these projects is going to come from. In June this year, EpochAI published a study which showed that the most capable AI supercomputing systems were pulling more power with each iteration, and doubling those needs every couple of years. Elon Musk's xAI Colossus supercomputer requires over 280 Megawatts - 20 times the power needed for the top AI data center in 2019, according to the study.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Nvidia Is Quaking in Its Boots

    Nvidia isn’t the only Western company trembling about the increasingly independent PRC, but it is a powerful bellwether. In fact, Huang’s lust for economic superiority and geopolitical dominance over China follows over 125 years of US meddling in the country’s affairs.

  • Numeric Citizen ☛ AI Unsuspected Collaterals

  • The Register UK ☛ 'Don't even consider' Microsoft? Gosh

    Probably the single most common argument against switching to Linux is the absolute non-negotiable requirement of many organizations to have Microsoft Exchange. Here's a fascinating glimpse of the view from the other side.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ EU pushes for Chips Act 2.0 investment as it looks set to miss global silicon production targets by a wide margin — seeks quadrupling of semiconductor investment as $50 billion initiative flounders

    The EU's Chips Act budgeted 43 billion euros ($50.4 billion) in semiconductor manufacturing, chip design, and better supply chain monitoring that could allow state intervention in key areas. The idea was to counterbalance the USA's investment in encouraging chip manufacturing in the United States with the Chips Act and Inflation Reduction Act efforts, investing tens of billions in American semiconductor manufacturing. The EU Chips Act hoped to regain some market share from Taiwanese TSMC, too, targeting control of some 20% of the supply chain by 2030.

  • The Register UK ☛ EU member states back calls for Chips Act changes

    The Semicon Coalition, a group now composed of all 27 EU member states, has signed a declaration [PDF] setting out its goal for a stronger Chips Act to bolster Europe's position in the global semiconductor industry.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ EA acquired by Saudi Arabian investment fund and others for $55 billion — largest ever buyout of a public company

    In a press release, the company stated it has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by a consortium. The group, which includes Saudi Arabia's PIF, will acquire 100% of EA, with the PIF rolling over its existing 9.9% stake in the company. Shareholders will receive $210 a share as a result of the sale. Notably, that's a 25% premium on the $168.32 the share price closed at on September 25, the stock's last fully unaffected trading day.

  • New York Times ☛ $55 Billion Deal for Electronic Arts Is Biggest Buyout Ever

    Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund are some of the investors teaming up to take the video game giant private.

  • The Record ☛ Ukraine’s digital chief pushes for AI-first state amid war and cyber threats | The Record from Recorded Future News

    For Ukraine’s tech-savvy Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the idea of a “digital state” is no longer enough. He is now betting big on artificial intelligence — not just as a tool, but as what he calls an “autonomous agent” shaping governance, education and even the battlefield.

  • Security Week ☛ The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act Faces Expiration

    A sunset clause built into the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act 2015 (PDF) means it will expire at the end of September 2025 unless reauthorized by the US Congress. At the time of writing, it has not been reauthorized.

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA kills agreement with nonprofit that runs MS-ISAC

    "CISA's cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security (CIS) will reach its planned end on September 30, 2025," America's lead cyber-defense agency said in a Monday announcement. "This transition reflects CISA's mission to strengthen accountability, maximize impact, and empower SLTT [state, local, tribal, and territorial] partners to defend today and secure tomorrow."

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Expired protections, exposed networks: The stakes of CISA's sunset

    On Tuesday, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) expires — and with it, the legal protections that enable countless organizations to share threat intelligence with the federal government. Without swift congressional action, we risk dismantling years of progress in collaborative cyber defense at the precise moment we need it most.

    As we approach CISA’s 10-year anniversary, we’re confronted with the reality that today’s threat landscape is virtually unrecognizable from a decade ago. In 2015, we worried about data breaches and website defacements.

  • Wired ☛ Marissa Mayer Is Dissolving Her Sunshine Startup Lab

    The small startup is shutting down, and its assets are being sold to a new entity incorporated by Mayer called Dazzle, according to an email viewed by WIRED. Mayer sent the email to Sunshine shareholders on September 17, informing them that Dazzle has officially incorporated and is ready to acquire Sunshine’s holdings.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Plenty of room at the bottom (of the tech stack)

    Freedom or safety: choose one. This is the false bargain we were offered after 9/11, the ideology underpinning the PATRIOT Act and the (permanent) suspension of human rights. This ideology has metastasized out of the realm of airport security theater and mass surveillance, ossifying into a bedrock axiom about technology design itself.

    Ironically, it's not just conservative bed-wetters who've rejected the idea that freedom isn't free, and we all have to trade away our autonomy for a safe and secure online experience. There were plenty of techno-progressives who insisted that the problems with Twitter and Facebook could be solved by forcing their zuckermuskian overlords to invest sufficient resources in their Trust and Safety teams.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ This libertarian manifesto, loved by Peter Thiel, urges a 'cognitive elite' to see selfishness as a virtue

    The "libertarian manifesto" offers a radical vision of economic transformation—while justifying a solipsistic retreat from the obligations of shared society. Published in 1997, it was co-written by former Times editor William Rees-Mogg (who died in 2012) and private investigator and financial advisor James Dale Davidson.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • France24 ☛ Afghanistan faces communications blackout after Taliban shut down [Internet]

    "It may turn out that disconnecting [Internet] access while keeping phone service available will take some trial and error."

    On September 16, Balkh provincial spokesman Attaullah Zaid said fibre optic [Internet] was completely banned in northern province on the leader's orders.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Afghanistan: Taliban shuts down internet indefinitely

    The Internet Outage Detection and Analysis, a project by the Georgia Institute of Technology that monitors and provides data on global internet connectivity, also reported on the outage, showing nearly all [Internet] connectivity going down by Monday afternoon.

    The move represents the first nationwide shutdown of the internet in Afghanistan and will result in a "comprehensive, total blackout," according to London-based internet and cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks.

  • New York Times ☛ A Global Crackdown on Free Speech

    It reminds me of all the other countries where leaders have tried to silence speech, whether it’s taking over newspapers or shutting down TV stations or going after comedians. For the past decade, the trend line has been moving away from freedom of expression, whether it’s in hard-core authoritarian countries like Russia or China, or backsliding democracies like Turkey and Hungary. The degree of crackdown differs, but the number of countries cracking down is rising. What’s shocking is that the U.S. — specifically its government — is now among them.

  • TruthOut ☛ National Security Directive Declares War on Those Who Don’t Support Trump Agenda

    It’s hard to overstate how much different NSPM-7 is from the over 200 executive orders Trump has frantically signed since coming back into office.

    An executive order publicly lays out the course of day-to-day federal government operations; whereas a national security directive is a sweeping policy decree for the defense, foreign policy, intelligence, and law enforcement apparatus. National security directives are often secret, but in this case the Trump administration chose to publish NSPM-7 — only the seventh since he’s come into office.)

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Trump administration brands critics of Christian nationalism as security threats — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    “FFRF is deeply concerned that the president is misusing the power of his civil, secular office to brand dissent from Christian nationalism as terrorism,” warns FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “By naming ‘anti-Christianity’ alongside violence and insurrection, and invoking ‘family, religion and morality,’ this administration is telling millions of nonreligious Americans and religious minorities that their views are not only unpatriotic, but could be considered a national security threat.”

  • The Nation ☛ Trump Is Lying About Antifa to Justify His Authoritarian Crackdown

    This is very obviously true. One problem is that antifa is not really an organization but, as the Times accurately notes, “a label for a political subculture or protest style. The phenomenon does not have a leader, an initiation process, membership rolls, a headquarters, a bank account or a centralized structure.” And even if Antifa were an actual institution, there are no legal provisions for designating a domestic group as a terrorist organization. Legally, the “terrorist” designation applies only to foreign groups.

    But while these factual and legal observations are a good starting point for criticizing Trump’s actions, they hardly capture the true nature of his project.

  • Techdirt ☛ Nexstar, Sinclair Fold On Kimmel Ban, Showing Once Again That If You Fight Trumpism, You Usually Win

    And while local [sic] right wing broadcast affiliates Nexstar and Sinclair tried to impose their will and extend the ban, that didn’t work out well either. Both companies continued to “pre-empt” Kimmel last week with reruns and game shows, but announced on Friday they’d be returning his program to the air after annoyed locals had some success convincing advertisers to pull their funding.

    Both companies were hoping to curry favor with the Trump administration, which is planning to eliminate the country’s remaining media consolidation limits and rubber stamp another round of mergers that will make U.S. local broadcast journalism worse than ever. And while both companies may have convinced Donald they’re very obedient poodles, their efforts clearly came with a public cost.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Michigan News ☛ Ann Arbor District Library announces plans to acquire Observer publication - mlive.com

    The Ann Arbor District Library plans to acquire the Ann Arbor Observer, a local monthly news publication serving the community since 1976.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Chicago Journalist Detained By ICE For Several Hours

    Unraveled Press posted, “Per witness, Steve was filming an arrest when [federal agents] knocked a group of people backwards and grabbed him. She says it appeared targeted to her since he had been filming [a] CBP [Customs and Border Protection] interaction with the protester from start to finish.”

  • CPJ ☛ ‘They want to break her’: A Q&A with jailed Tunisian commentator Sonia Dahmani’s sister

    Her prosecution comes amid a broader assault on free expression in Tunisia. Since Saied’s 2021 power grab — when he dissolved parliament, took control of the judiciary, and gave himself powers to rule by decree — opposition leaders, journalists, and other government critics have increasingly faced arrest and harassment. At least four journalists, including Dahmani, Mourad Zghidi, Borhen Bsaies, and Chadha Hadj Mbarek, are currently imprisoned, the second highest number CPJ has recorded in the country since 1992.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ I Was a Prisoner of Al Qaeda In Syria. My Captor Is Now President

    Before all this, I was his prisoner. In October of 2012, I slipped into Syria in order to carry out some freelance reporting. I was arrested almost right away. After about a week of being shuttled around in the trunk of a car, my captors brought me to the Aleppo eye hospital, which al-Shara was using as a prison. His men installed me in Cell One, formerly a toilet, in a line of basement cells. Somewhere above me, a civil war was laying Aleppo to waste

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Walrus ☛ How Media Can Help Bring Indigenous Traditions Back to Life | The Walrus

    A decade into this era of truth and reconciliation, I still find myself asking the same questions about what it will take to get our stories right and make our truths known. In the wake of near total cultural annihilation, Indigenous peoples are now bringing back what was taken. Not only because our ways, like the Coyote stories, were nearly wiped off the face of the earth. But because our traditions have always gotten the stories of this land right.

  • The Record ☛ Law enforcement is using AI to synthesize evidence. Is the justice system ready for it?

    The sheriff, whose department is located in largely rural Chester County, says he counts on TimePilot to summarize key elements of the conspiracy case and quickly surface relevant evidence. Dorsey can type in a phrase, and the AI spits back information pulled from the body of data his team has put into the system.

    Dorsey said that while he can’t guarantee TimePilot is accurate 100% of the time, he does not rely on the AI’s information without going back to the source evidence and verifying it.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Operation Contender: 260 Arrested In Pan-African Cybercrime Raid

    The operation, dubbed Operation Contender 3.0, focused on disrupting networks that exploited social media platforms and digital communication tools to manipulate victims and extract illicit funds. Romance scams, which rely on building fake online relationships to swindle victims financially, and sextortion, where offenders blackmail victims using explicit content, formed the core of the crackdown.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Hackaday ☛ InfinityTerminal Brings Infinite Horizontal Scrolling

    The creator of infinite vertical scrolling in social media, [Aza Raskin], infamously regrets his creation that has helped to waste a tremendous amount of human attention and time on the Internet. But that’s vertical scrolling. [bujna94] has created infinityTerminal, a program with infinite scrolling, but in the horizontal direction instead. This tool has had the opposite effect to go along with its opposite orientation: increased productivity and improved workflow.

  • [Old] Scientific American ☛ Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

    The isolation occurs because each piece of information does not have a URI. Connections among data exist only within a site. So the more you enter, the more you become locked in. Your social-networking site becomes a central platform—a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it. The more this kind of architecture gains widespread use, the more the Web becomes fragmented, and the less we enjoy a single, universal information space.

    A related danger is that one social-networking site—or one search engine or one browser—gets so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation. As has been the case since the Web began, continued grassroots innovation may be the best check and balance against any one company or government that tries to undermine universality. GnuSocial and Diaspora are projects on the Web that allow anyone to create their own social network from their own server, connecting to anyone on any other site. The Status.net project, which runs sites such as identi.ca, allows you to operate your own Twitter-like network without the Twitter-like centralization.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • YLE ☛ Finland plans video streaming fees to benefit domestic productions

    According to the EU Commission's Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), streaming media is also subject to the EU's single market rules — just like traditional television programming.

  • Techdirt ☛ Samsung Pilots Making Its Smart Fridges Billboards After People Bought Them

    Once again, we have products that many people purchased when they operated one way, only to have the manufacturer update them remotely such that they operate a different way. And, while you’ll have to forgive my presuming so, I’m confident that any poll of these customers asking them if they want their refrigerators to suddenly start annoying them with advertisements, they’d say no.

    So who owns these damned things? Are we really in a place where we’re “licensing” a fridge? If not, why the hell is the seller now messing with and changing the thing I already bought? In what other walk of life, other than digital and IoT products, is this accepted by the public?

  • Digital Music News ☛ 75+ Chicago Musicians Remove Their Music from Spotify

    These Chicago musicians’ decision comes just weeks after Seattle musicians took similar action. A collective known as Seattle Artists Against Spotify published an open pledge to remove their music to say that “music is forever and will last beyond this particularly toxic corporate platform.” The Seattle musicians’ open letter highlights many of the same concerns, including platforming and promoting fake AI music on Spotify Artists’ pages.

  • [Old] FSF ☛ Anti-DRM activists go to W3C meeting to protest Digital Restrictions Management in Web standards

    DRM in Web standards would make it cheaper and more politically acceptable to impose restrictions on users, opening the floodgates to a new wave of DRM throughout the Web, with all the vulnerabilities, surveillance and curtailed freedom that DRM entails.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Jérôme Marin ☛ Apple demands EU scrap landmark tech law

  The move is unusual, but it fits the combative strategy Apple has adopted since the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into force last year. Last week, the Cupertino-based group formally asked for the legislation, designed to boost competition in digital markets, to be scrapped, as part of a public consultation launched by the European Commission.

  Brussels quickly shot down the request, insisting it doesn’t intend to roll back the law. “We are not surprised: Apple has contested everything in the DMA since its entry into application,” a spokesperson said. The latest clash underscores a breakdown in dialogue between the two sides, coming at a pivotal moment as several key rulings loom — and with the risk of further fueling already tense transatlantic relations with Washington.

• Patents

  • New Yorker ☛ Tim Berners-Lee Invented the World Wide Web. Now He Wants to Save It

    The Founding Fathers idolized Cincinnatus, who was appointed dictator to save the Roman Republic, then peacefully returned to his fields. Berners-Lee is admired in a similar spirit—not only for inventing the web but for refusing to patent it. Others wrung riches from the network; Berners-Lee assumed the mantle of moral authority, fighting to safeguard the web’s openness and promote equitable access. He’s been honored accordingly: a knighthood, in 2004; the million-dollar Turing Award, in 2016.

    Now Sir Tim has written a memoir, “This Is for Everyone,” with the journalist Stephen Witt. It might have been a victory lap, but for the web’s dire situation—viral misinformation, addictive algorithms, the escalating disruptions of A.I. In such times, Berners-Lee can no longer be Cincinnatus. He has taken up the role of Paul Revere.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD's memory patent outlining a 'new, improved RAM' made from DDR5 memory isn't a new development — HB-DIMMs already superseded, probably won't come to market

    A recent AMD patent, US19/201,497 titled "High-bandwidth memory module architecture," is making the rounds again, with posts like this one on Reddit prompting all kinds of speculation about the "new" HB-DIMM memory technology that AMD is preparing. However, AMD is probably not preparing anything new; Instead, the new patent is actually a continuation of an older one that dates to 2022. The technology the company outlines has already been superseded by the new MRDIMM tech that's already shipping and supported by AMD.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • India Times ☛ Oh! It is a real identity crisis, thanks to AI

      Imagine a cricketer or a film star endorsing a product without their knowledge, or a CEO seeking to persuade you to put your hard-earned money into a fraudulent scheme through a bogus phone call. Deepfakes produced with the use of AI are increasingly fuelling fraud worldwide. With celebrities, including politicians and business leaders, enjoying a cult following in India, the country faces heightened risk in this regard, according to experts.

• Copyrights

  • Peter 'CzP' Czanik ☛ Asztropapucs debut single

    The Hungarian band Asztropapucs has a special place in my heart. I have known these musicians for a long time, some of them even before they formed the band. Like almost everyone else, they started out playing cover songs years ago. Recently, however, they started writing their own songs. I have seen them perform at various concerts. They practiced regularly, and their hard work has led to continuous improvement.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Men Who Uploaded Movies to Extract Cash From Pirates Have Been Acquitted

    Six men have been acquitted for their part in a highly organized 'copyright-trolling' operation. After two movie companies were offered 20% of the spoils from the scheme, their movies were downloaded from BitTorrent and then seeded to downloaders who were subsequently sued. The acquittals overturn guilty verdicts handed down by a lower court.

  • RIPE ☛ Live-Event Blocking at Scale: Effectiveness vs. Collateral Damage in Italy’s Piracy Shield

    Italy’s Piracy Shield blocks IPs and domains within minutes, but measurements performed by researchers at the University of Twente and colleagues show broad collateral damage to legitimate services. We share the results of those measurements in the hopes of sparking a community discussion around the Piracy Shield initiative