Leftovers

• The Record ☛ LinkedIn sues software company allegedly scraping data from millions of profiles | The Record from Recorded Future News

  Social media giant LinkedIn on Thursday filed a lawsuit against a company which it says operates a network of millions of fake accounts used to scrape data from LinkedIn members before selling the information to third parties without permission.

• SusamPal ☛ I Reinstated My Guestbook After 20 Years!

  I have reinstated the guestbook on this website after 20 years! As I have written in the About page, this website began its life as an intranet portal in my university network back in 2001–2005. When I left the university in 2005, the portal shut down and so did the guestbook. The original website first ran on Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) and later on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), with the guestbook data stored in a Microsoft Access database.

• [Old] Ursula K Le Guin ☛ Ursula K. Le Guin — Blog (2010–2017)

  In 2010, at the age of 81, Ursula started a blog, inspired in part by reading Jose Saramago’s. A subset of these writings were collected in No Time to Spare, released in December 2017 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

  You can browse the archive by year here.

• Science

  • Science News ☛ Nobel Prizes honor great discoveries — but leave much of science unseen

    The Nobel Prize is an honor known the world over, but one that spotlights only narrow slices of science and very few scientists within them. Many fields of science don’t fit into the prize categories at all. What’s more, since only three people can share a prize, the hundreds of others who may have worked on a discovery end up being unrecognized for their prize-winning work.

    Who gets celebrated — and who doesn’t — has much to do with the parameters of the prize, the history of science and how the two combine to create their own kind of bias.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Novel method for controlling Faraday rotation in conductive polymers

    The research group has previously synthesized various optically active conductive polymers in liquid crystals. Herein, the researchers synthesized optically inactive polythiophenes and modulated their polarons by electrochemically oxidizing and reducing (doping and dedoping) them in a magnetic field under a Faraday configuration at a constant low voltage of 1.5 V.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Beyond papers: rethinking science in the era of artificial intelligence

    Contrary to what many people believe, this system of peer review is recent. When Watson and Crick submitted their ‘double helix’ paper to Nature in 1953, it did not go to reviewers.Peer review became the dominant model in the 1970s. It emerged around the same time the West adopted aspects of the Soviet model of science. It also coincided with a decade-long stagnation in science. I believe it was a mistake.

• Career/Education

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Shutdown halts funding for military spouse tuition assistance program

    Through the Defense Department’s MyCAA, spouses of certain service members can receive tuition assistance of up to $4,000, with an annual cap of $2,000, to pursue licenses, certifications or associate degrees needed for employment in any career field or occupation. Spouses may also use their MyCAA scholarship to help cover the costs of national tests for course credits required for a degree approved under the MyCAA program.

  • [Old] Dissent Magazine ☛ Imagining a World with No Bullshit Jobs, with David Graeber

    According to Graeber, the same free-market policies that have made life and work more difficult for so many people over the past few decades have simultaneously produced more highly paid managers, telemarketers, insurance company bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists who do nothing useful all day. Labor journalist Chris Brooks interviewed David Graeber to learn how so many pointless jobs came to exist and what it means for labor activists.

  • [Old] David Graeber ☛ On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant - David Graeber

    In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been mar- shaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly be- lieve do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

  • [Old] Vox ☛ Why the world is full of bullshit jobs

    He argues that there are millions of people across the world — clerical workers, administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel, and many others — who are toiling away in meaningless, unnecessary jobs, and they know it.

    It didn’t have to be this way, Graeber says. Technology has advanced to the point where most of the difficult, labor-intensive jobs can be performed by machines. But instead of freeing ourselves from the suffocating 40-hour workweek, we’ve invented a whole universe of futile occupations that are professionally unsatisfying and spiritually empty.

  • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber review – the myth of capitalist efficiency

    In an age that supremely prizes capitalist efficiency, the proliferation of pointless jobs is a puzzle. Why are employers in the public and private sector alike behaving like the bureaucracies of the old Soviet Union, shelling out wages to workers they don’t seem to need? Since bullshit jobs make no economic sense, Graeber argues, their function must be political. A population kept busy with make-work is less likely to revolt.

  • [Old] Harpers Magazine ☛ Punching the Clock, by David Graeber

    Historically, human work patterns have taken the form of intense bursts of energy followed by rest. Farming, for instance, is generally an all-hands-on-deck mobilization around planting and harvest, with the off-seasons occupied by minor projects. Large projects such as building a house or preparing for a feast tend to take the same form. This is typical of how human beings have always worked. There is no reason to believe that acting otherwise would result in greater efficiency or productivity. Often it has precisely the opposite effect.

    One reason that work was historically irregular is because it was largely unsupervised. This is true of medieval feudalism and of most labor arrangements until relatively recent times, even if the relationship between worker and boss was strikingly unequal. If those at the bottom produced what was required of them, those at the top couldn’t be bothered to know how the time was spent.

  • [Old] ROAR Magazine ☛ Imagining a world with no bullshit jobs

    I like to talk about “the revolt of the caring classes.” The working classes have always been the caring classes — not just because they do almost all of the caring labor, but also because, perhaps partly as a result, they actually are more empathetic than the rich. Psychological studies show this, by the way. The richer you are, the less competent you are at even understanding other people’s feelings. So trying to reimagine work — not as a value or end in itself, but as the material extension of caring — is a good start.

    Actually I’d even propose we replace “production” and “consumption” with “caring” and “freedom” — caring is any action ultimately directed towards maintaining or increasing another person, or other people’s freedom, just as mothers take care of children not just so they are healthy and grow and thrive, but most immediately, so they can play, which is the ultimate expression of freedom.

    That’s all long-term stuff though. In the more immediate sense, I think we need to figure out how to oppose the dominance of the professional-managerial, not just in existing left organizations — though in many cases, like the US Democratic Party, I don’t even know if they should be called left — and thus, to effectively oppose bullshitization.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI data centers are swallowing the world's memory and storage supply, setting the stage for a pricing apocalypse that could last a decade

    Once-cheap SSDs, DRAM, and HDD prices are climbing fast as AI demand and constrained supply converge to create the tightest market in years.

  • Tedium ☛ Subminiature Vacuum Tube History: Letting The Better Tech Win

    For years, subminiature vacuum tubes were looking like the future of electronics—until a key figure in their rise heard about something better.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ When to replace hard drives

    Hard drives have long been famous for their bathtub curve of reliability, in which they’re: [...]

  • Dan Langille ☛ Leveling out the NVMe cards on the adaptors

    I recently obtained two 4TB NVMe cards and two PCIe adapters, each of which holds two NVMe cards. This is what they looked like fully loaded: [...]

  • Dan Langille ☛ Adding in new NVMe cards and sticks

    Today, I opened the chassis of r730-0) (that link needs to be updated now that there is new hardware in there; I’ll post that one soon and page will then have a link to the new page). I removed the two existing NVMe adaptors each with a single 1TB NVMe stick. These sticks were added to the 2x NVMe card and inserted back into the same slots (#2 and #3).

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Too hot to harvest: Rising heat threatens farm labor and food security

    "It's not just about dexterity," she explained. "It's the judgment—knowing which fruit to pick, which to leave, and how to avoid damaging either. So, we still need human labor."

    And let's not forget the question of the price tag on each piece of expensive tech, which could put it out of reach for many growers.

    The real question isn't whether robots can handle the harvest, Katie said. It's whether people can handle the heat.

  • Jim Mitchell ☛ Taking a Break

    I’ve removed all the apps from my phone and tablet that I tend to fall into when I get bored. The only place I intend to engage with online content is from my personal computer in the evenings. Sort of a daily digital catch up if you will.

  • Robert Birming ☛ Haunted by ambitions

    The keyword for me is ambitions. I’m haunted by it. Whatever I set out to do, the ambitions are always there — and not in a good way.

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ It’s impossible to evaluate your sleep with only one number

    The “gold standard” test is called polysomnography. I’m investigating the causes of my troubled sleep and mitigations for bruxism, and as part of that process I spent a night in a clinic hooked to a computer with wires and electrodes. You can’t compare a watch, however advanced, to this: [...]

• Proprietary

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Clop-linked hackers claim Oracle E-Business Suite data theft in high-stakes extortion push

    The campaign involving the allegedly stolen data first surfaced in late September, when executives at multiple companies began receiving emails alleging that attackers had exfiltrated financial and operational data from their Oracle EBS systems.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Here is the email Clop attackers sent to Oracle customers

    The emails, which are littered with broken English, aim to instill fear, apply pressure, threaten public exposure and seek negotiation for a ransom payment.

  • MJ Fransen ☛ Adventures with OS X Mavericks in 2025

    I decided not to upgrade to a newer version of OS X, or replace it with Linux or one of the BSDs. I like the look and feel of OS X Mavericks, it doesn't require an iCloud account to run, and it is completely different from my daily drivers: ThinkPads running FreeBSD with the ratpoison window manager, and FreeBSD with the Emacs X Window Manager "EXWM".

    Of course running an old system has it challenges.

  • Privacy International ☛ End of the Line for Windows 10?

    If you aren’t convinced by Microsoft’s offering, it’s normally possible to install an entirely new OS on your device. There are a number of different Linux distributions that have similar features to Windows (although not necessarily the same applications - for example, you’ll probably need to swap Microsoft Office for LibreOffice). The choices of Linux OS distributions can be overwhelming, and the best choice will depend on your hardware and needs, but something from the Ubuntu family is often a good place to start.

    There are lots of guides online on how to get started with Linux, and you may even be able to find a support group near you to help through the process.

  • The Register UK ☛ Oracle tells Clop-targeted EBS users to apply July patch

    That will be of little comfort to execs currently receiving emails threatening to leak payroll files and financial records unless they cough up a ransom.

  • The Verge ☛ Google is destroying independent websites, and one sees no choice but to defend it anyway

    WikiHow CEO Elizabeth Douglas described to a court how websites like hers are the middle of an “AI apocalypse.” WikiHow, a website that gives step-by-step practical advice, is suffering from a new paradigm shift in how people find information online. Thanks to new AI tools including AI chatbots and Google’s own AI Overviews in its search results pages, users across the web are clicking through to websites less and less — and as a result, seeing and clicking on the ads on their sites less, too.

  • Gannett ☛ Xbox Game Pass cancellation site overloaded after egregious price increase

    They went to cancel their Xbox Game Pass subscriptions en masse. There were so many cancellations in the early hours of Wednesday, in fact, that the website where you cancel the service actually got overloaded.

  • Game Rant ☛ So Many People Are Trying to Cancel Xbox Game Pass That It's Crashing the Website

    Just hours after new changes and price increases for Xbox Game Pass were announced, players began attempting to cancel their subscriptions en masse, causing the Game Pass subscription cancellation page to become overloaded and get stuck sending errors to users. Xbox Game Pass has been praised for its inclusion of numerous titles, including day-one launches that let players enjoy brand-new games without having to pay for each download, but massive backlash over the latest price hikes and other alterations has already crashed cancellation services.

  • TechRadar ☛ The Xbox Game Pass price hikes are so bad, it literally crashed the membership site due to widespread cancellations

    The membership page crashed due to mass cancellations

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Investors warn of global 'hype bubble' in AI

      “There’s a little bit of a hype bubble going on in the early-stage venture space,” said Bryan Yeo, group chief investment officer at Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, as part of a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2025 in Singapore.

    • Futurism ☛ Cory Doctorow Says the AI Industry Is About to Collapse

      "So, you're saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that's going to burst and take the whole economy with it?"

    • CNET ☛ OpenAI's Sora Social Media App Is an AI Deepfake Fever Dream

      This is the trap with Sora, and more generally with AI in social media: You get sucked in and receive no reward. What you almost certainly do is contribute to higher energy use and fill the [Internet] with more useless content that could easily be misconstrued as a real-life event or statement. Sora's cameo ability to "deepfake" anyone who allows their likeness to be used is on a whole new level -- you can't use Meta AI or Adobe Firefly to make a video of their CEOs saying nearly anything, for example.

    • TechCrunch ☛ OpenAI's new social app is filled with terrifying Sam Altman deepfakes

      People on Sora who generate videos of Altman are especially getting a kick out of how blatantly OpenAI appears to be violating copyright laws. (Sora will reportedly require copyright holders to opt out of their content’s use — reversing the typical approach where creators must explicitly agree to such use — the legality of which is debatable.)

    • The Verge ☛ OpenAI made a TikTok for deepfakes, and it’s getting hard to tell what’s real

      As for deepfakes of government figures, celebrities, and other public figures? “Public figures can’t be generated in Sora unless they’ve uploaded a cameo themselves and given consent for it to be used,” OpenAI wrote in a release. “The same applies to everyone: if you haven’t uploaded a cameo, your likeness can’t be used.” OpenAI employees also said during the briefing that it’s “impossible to generate” X-rated or “extreme” content via the platform, and that the company isn’t currently allowing free-form text prompting for AI-generated public figures. They also said that the company moderates video output for potential policy violations and copyright issues.

      But people have gotten around that type of rule in the past, time and time again. Last year, a Microsoft engineer warned that its AI image-generator ignored copyrights and generated sexual, violent imagery with simple workarounds. xAI’s Grok recently generated nude deepfake videos of Taylor Swift with minimal prompting. And even for OpenAI, employees told reporters that the company is being restrictive on public figures for “this rollout,” not seeming to rule out the ability to create such videos in the future.

    • [Repeat] CBC ☛ OpenAI launches Sora social media app for AI-generated videos, raising 'AI slop' and copyright worries

      But a scrolling flood of such videos taking over social media has some worried about "AI slop" that crowds out more authentic human creativity and degrades the information ecosystem.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ ‘AI Actor’ Tilly Norwood Stirs Outrage In Hollywood

      “Any talent agency that engages in this should be boycotted by all guilds,” wrote Natasha Lyonne on Instagram. The “Russian Doll” star is directing a feature titled “Uncanny Valley” that pledges to use “ethical” artificial intelligence in combination with traditional filmmaking techniques. “Deeply misguided & totally disturbed,” she added. “Not the way. Not the vibe. Not the use.”

    • Vox ☛ OpenAI’s new social video tool is an unholy abomination

      But with its latest product — the AI-generated video social network Sora 2 — OpenAI may have set the all-time record for greatest distance between mission statement and actual work.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ MAGA McCarthyism Comes to Texas State

      In Texas, a socialist professor is now in the fight of his life against MAGA’s New McCarthyism. Tom Alter, a labor historian and tenured professor of history at Texas State University, was fired from his job on September 10 after a far-right troll doctored a videotape of Alter speaking at a virtual Revolutionary Socialism conference. After viewing the video, university president Kelly Damphousse fired Alter on September 10 with what Alter and his supporters say was no due process.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Register UK ☛ ICE seeks contractors to scour social media for leads

      A contract opportunity published on Thursday by ICE states that the Homeland Security component is seeking about 30 contractors to perform investigations and analysis of open-source intelligence from the web, which solicitation documents suggest will largely focus on social media platforms.

    • The Verge ☛ Oregon’s National Guard lawsuit hinges on Trump’s Truth Social posts

      But somehow, the DOJ’s assertion that Portland was in danger of falling into an armed rebellion, wasn’t the most surreal part of the hearing. Most of the hearing was devoted to whether or not the preconditions for Prong 3 (the inability to execute US law using “regular forces”) had been met — or rather, whether the president’s determination that it had been met was valid.

      When Judge Immergut asked the DOJ what the primary source of authority for the president’s determination was, deputy assistant attorney general Eric Hamilton replied, without the slightest hint of shame, “The most important determination is reflected in posts that he made on Truth Social.”

    • [Old] Philosophy Now ☛ Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

      Another recent book bearing the word ‘bullshit’ in the title is B.J. Mendelson’s Social Media is Bullshit (2012). Social media and post-industrial society are closely linked. The post-industrial society is an information society, and the processing of information, useful or not, has become an occupation of almost everybody, from the multinational media company to the Facebook sharer.

      Social media thrives particularly well in post-industrial societies because post-industrial workers have time to spend chatting on the net in a way their Fordist (production-line-working) ancestors couldn’t have even dreamt of. In this way, bullshit jobs and bullshit media are connected through a vicious circle: there’s an attempt to compensate the loss of a meaningful working life through an increased use of social media. But the ‘meaning’ found in social media activities is just as unreal as the ‘meaning’ propagated by bullshit jobs. Both bullshit jobs and social media, with their illusions of recognition and gratification, speculate with an ‘as if’ – as if something is being made or changed – but they provide no meaningful purposes in work or in life.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Cyberattack On Shamir Medical Center Exposes Emails

      According to a joint statement from the Israeli Health Ministry and the National Cyber Directorate issued on Friday, the cyberattack on Shamir Medical Center resulted in the unauthorized access and leak of hospital emails dated September 25. Some of the compromised emails reportedly included confidential patient data.

    • India Times ☛ asahi: Cyberattack halts shipments from Japan's biggest brewer

      "No immediate recovery of our system is in sight at the moment. Ordinary shipments remain halted," a spokesperson, who declined to be named, told AFP on Friday.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Japan running dry: Ransomware attack leaves nation days away from Asahi beer shortage

      Japan is reportedly facing an unprecedented shortage of the nation's most popular beer, Asahi Super Dry, following an announcement earlier this week that malicious hackers had forced Asahi Group Holdings to suspend production across nearly all of its domestic facilities.

      The ransomware attack disabled the company's ordering and delivering systems, bringing production to a standstill at most of its 30 factories, and forced Asahi to announce the postponement of 12 new product launches.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • RFA ☛ Hong Kong plans big AI-powered surveillance boost

      Under the city’s new plan, the number of cameras will balloon to 60,000 by 2028, according to documents submitted to the legislature. And AI technology “will naturally be applied to people, such as tracking a criminal suspect,” Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang told lawmakers.

    • EFF ☛ Tile’s Lack of Encryption Is a Danger for Users Everywhere

      Tile trackers are small Bluetooth trackers, similar to Apple’s Airtags, but they work on their own network, not Apple’s. We’ve been raising concerns about these types of trackers since they were first introduced and provide guidance for finding them if you think someone is using them to track you without your knowledge.

    • The Record ☛ License plate reader company Flock launches new product that detects human voices

      Flock Safety operates a surveillance network of automated license plate reader cameras in more than 6,000 communities nationwide and has been mired in controversy as reports of police misuse have surfaced in recent months.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Amazon’s Ring plans to scan everyone’s face at the door

      For the first time, the company is adding facial recognition to its home security doorbells and video cameras.

    • EFF ☛ Flock’s Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for Human Voices

      In marketing materials, Flock has been touting new features to their Raven product—including the ability of the device to alert police based on sounds, including “distress.” The online ad for the product, which allows cities to apply for early access to the technology, shows the image of police getting an alert for “screaming.”

      It’s unclear how this technology works. For acoustic gunshot detection, generally the microphones are looking for sounds that would signify gunshots (though in practice they often mistake car backfires or fireworks for gunshots). Flock needs to come forward now with an explanation of exactly how their new technology functions. It is unclear how these devices will interact with state “eavesdropping” laws that limit listening to or recording the private conversations that often take place in public.

    • EFF ☛ Privacy Harm Is Harm

      That's why EFF is proud to join an amicus brief in Mata v. Digital Recognition Network, a lawsuit by drivers against a corporation that allegedly violated a California statute that regulates Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs). The state trial court erroneously dismissed the case, by misinterpreting this data privacy law to require proof of extra harm beyond privacy harm. The brief was written by the ACLU of Northern California, Stanford’s Juelsgaard Clinic, and UC Law SF’s Center for Constitutional Democracy.

    • Techdirt ☛ Ted Cruz Kills America’s Latest Attempt To Have Functional Privacy Laws

      S.2850, or Protecting Americans from Doxing and Political Violence Act, would have extended restrictions on the sale of government official location and behavior data to all Americans. Meanwhile, S.2851 would have extended privacy protections for federal officials and lawmakers to state officials and their staff, in addition to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

      “Members of Congress should not receive special treatment,” Wyden said of the effort. “Our constituents deserve protection from violence, stalking, and other criminal threats.”

    • Thomas Rigby ☛ Thank you for choosing us

      Fast forward a couple of days and I get an email from them; that's fair I checked the box in case I needed some medical information sending out or whatever.

      But it wasn't from the pharmacy, it was from the third party onboarding system asking for feedback.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Register UK ☛ Red Hat fesses up to GitLab breach after attackers brag

      Red Hat isn't saying what kind of data was taken, or whose it was. It has limited itself to stressing that the incident was confined to the consulting GitLab environment.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Truthdig ☛ A Lovely Day for a Loyalty Test

    If Hegseth’s message was to test the loyalty of Trump’s flag officers and to give them and their subordinates permission to commit crimes, Trump delivered the perfect counterargument. Leave aside his obvious contempt for the military and insults to its personnel going back decades, as well as his perpetually preteen conception of warfare. Leave aside the offense of subjecting people who have risen to the apex of detail-oriented careers managing risks to America at staggering expense to two hours of whining self-congratulation from two spendthrift airheads. No matter what Trump or Hegseth said, the message each officer heard was this: Do you want to risk your freedom, your legacy and your sworn code to commit crimes for a leader who is coming to you live from death’s door? Do you think his new order has the power to last as long as a greeting card that plays music?

  • Common Dreams ☛ New Complaint Filed Against Small Business Administration for Hatch Act Violation

    Today, Public Citizen filed a complaint against the Small Business Administration (SBA) for a message on its homepage blaming “Senate Democrats” for causing a government shutdown. The complaint alleges this is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of taxpayer money for partisan political purposes.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Authorities Arrest Teens for Alleged Russian Espionage

    The news illustrates what may be a rising trend of Russian threat actors utilizing the youth of foreign countries to do their dirty work.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause

    Much of our legacy media is still in denial about this reality, or is actively trying to cover it up. I still see news reports describing some offense by the Trump administration as potentially “worse than Watergate” – a description that is ludicrously quaint when applied to an administration that does things worse than Watergate several times a week. Two weeks ago I hosted a recorded interview with Karen Attiah, the former Global Opinions editor of the Washington Post, who was summarily fired for refusing to canonize Charlie Kirk, while the Times’s Ezra Klein has faced no consequences, despite widespread outrage, for declaring that Kirk did politics “the right way.” And I needn’t remind you about the Disney-Jimmy Kimmel saga.

    But how did we degenerate like this? Nixon, who was a piker by comparison to Donald Trump, was repudiated by his own party. Not only is Donald Trump a wannabe dictator, surely the worst person on multiple dimensions ever to occupy the White House, but he made his intentions clear in the January 6th insurrection and his promises of retribution if re-elected. But unlike Nixon, Trump is backed by a Republican party that has become so extreme, so unwilling to acknowledge that opposition is even legitimate that none of his actions matter. Today’s Republicans show no hesitation whatsoever in adopting the Führerprinzip, the “leader principle”, in which Trump’s diktats override all written law and democratic norms.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Labour indulges the Islamist grievance politics that forces Jews to live in fear in Britain

    I doubt the Home Secretary is right to identify him as one man alone. He tapped into discourse globalised by the [Internet] and especially strong in some Muslim immigrant communities. MI5 has estimated the number of those radicalised [sic] in this country at 40,000. Yes, a tiny minority – even of our immigrant population – but a vast number for the authorities to track. Very few would be here at all were it not for mass immigration.

  • ABC ☛ Woman claims Amazon delivery box came stuffed with hundreds of blank ballots

    Forget Prime perks, a woman in Maine says her latest Amazon order came with a surprise she didn't add to her cart: 250 blank election ballots.

  • The Independent UK ☛ A woman ordered coffee and paper plates on Amazon. She got a box full of hundreds of blank ballots

    Shenna Bellows, its secretary of state, has said she is investigating the incident and said in a statement: “Safe and secure elections are my top priority. As soon as we became aware of allegations of ballots being received outside of the appropriate chain of custody, I immediately initiated an investigation through my secretary of state’s law enforcement division.

  • Federal News Network ☛ ‘Those were not my words:’ Out-of-office message automatically updated for furloughed Education Dept employees

    These messages at the Education Department are the latest example where the Trump administration has blamed Democrats for the government shutdown using official government channels. The Hatch Act prevents federal employees from acting in their official capacity to make political statements.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The Chinese ‘super dinghies’ smuggling more migrants into Britain than ever before

    At 40 feet long and 10 feet wide, they are the people smugglers’ equivalent of an ocean liner – especially when heavily overloaded. Pictured in the Channel for the first time yesterday was a new Chinese-made “super dinghy”, capable of ferrying scores of migrants into Britain in a single crossing.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Finland Dismisses Case Over Baltic Cable Cuts

    A Helsinki court on Friday dismissed a case against three members of a ship from Russia's "shadow fleet" suspected of cutting Baltic Sea cables, saying it was beyond its jurisdiction.

    The captain and two senior officers of the Cook Islands-registered oil tanker Eagle S were accused of dragging the anchor on the seabed for around 90 kilometers (56 miles), damaging five undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland on Dec. 25, 2024.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Finland court drops case against Russian 'shadow fleet' crew accused of undersea cable damage

    The Eagle S is believed to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet," a network of tankers used to bypass sanctions and the oil price cap through obscure ownership structures and flags of convenience.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Walrus ☛ Forged KGB Documents Used to Smear Journalist in Parliament

    A few weeks ago, news broke of a forensic review by independent researcher Giuseppe Bianchin which found that the documents Alexander submitted last October were “crafted with deliberate intent to deceive.” According to Bianchin’s report, completed in July, Ukrainian archives could not verify the files, and the international typographers and graphologists enlisted by Bianchin—leading figures in their field—concluded they were a hoax.

    That these documents were paraded as fact—in a hearing devoted to disinformation, no less—was a bitter irony. Instead of unmasking a spy, Alexander may have ended up offering Parliament a case study in how falsehoods gain traction.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Data error causes already RIF’d State Department workers to get furlough info

    Former State Department employees whose roles were eliminated as part of a reduction-in-force still received information about whether they would be needed during the government shutdown — including some workers who were told their positions were “excepted.”

• Environment

  • Vox ☛ Rising temperatures are driving rising wildfire costs, new study finds

    Now, the pace of destruction from massive wildfires is accelerating. In a new study published today in the journal Science, researchers have pulled apart these drivers and found that rising average temperatures are contributing to the gargantuan price tags of these blazes, with a major spike in just the past decade.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Accelerated Gulf of Maine warming may pose a serious threat to American lobsters

    The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world's oceans, raising concerns for its $2 billion-a-year American lobster fishery. Scientists at William & Mary's Batten School & VIMS have been studying the impacts of ocean acidification and warming on lobster reproduction, and the results of their most recent research suggest the rising temperatures pose the greatest risk.

  • Truthdig ☛ Trump’s Purge of ‘Negative’ National Park Signs Includes Climate Change

    Consider Acadia National Park in Maine. More intense storms and rising seas are accelerating erosion and killing native plants along its iconic coastline. Warmer temperatures are assisting the spread of an invasive insect that totally wiped out the park’s red pines. And yet earlier this month, park employees removed multiple signs explaining how climate change was contributing to these changes.

    “Getting access to that information when you’re right there is a way to see with your own eyes what is going on,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. The removed signs didn’t just educate visitors about environmental problems — they also outlined steps visitors could take to reduce their carbon emissions, such as taking a shuttle bus instead of a personal vehicle to visit popular park sites.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Jane Goodall’s Second-Greatest Talent

    In 1986, Goodall shifted course dramatically after attending a conference of chimpanzee researchers at Lincoln Park Zoo, where she listened to report after report of deforestation at field sites and the subsequent collapse of chimpanzee populations. Goodall, whose own site was relatively protected, was shocked. “I arrived at the conference as a scientist,” she said during a visit to the zoo last month. “I left as an activist.” Once reluctant to leave Gombe, she began traveling 300 days a year to speak on behalf of chimps and their habitat, pausing only when the coronavirus pandemic grounded her in her childhood home. “The thing is,” she told Cooper, “this mission keeps me going because there is so much to do.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ China to launch commercial underwater data center — facility expected to consume 90% less power for cooling

      Chinese company Highlander is building a server pod near Shanghai, where it will be submerged underwater to reduce the power consumption used by the facility for cooling. According to the South China Morning Post, Highlander is expected to sink the underwater pods in October. The servers will operate commercially, with state-owned institutions like China Telecom being among the first customers.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ China to sink servers off Shanghai in underwater data center trial

      “Underwater facilities can save around 90 per cent of energy consumption for cooling,” said Yang, Highlander’s vice-president.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Paper reactors and paper tigers

      Pebble-bed reactor designs have a long and discouraging history dating back to the 1940s. The first demonstration reactor was built in Germany in the 1960s and ran for 21 years, but German engineering skills weren’t enough to produce a commercially viable design. South Africa started a project in 1994 and persevered until 2010, when the idea was abandoned..Some of the employees went on to join the fledgling X-energy, founded in 2009. As of 2025, the company is seeking regulatory approval for a couple of demonstrator projects in the US.

    • Fabian Beuke ☛ Tesla vs. Waymo

      Waymo and Tesla represent distinct approaches to autonomous driving technology. Waymo operates driverless robotaxi fleets in select metros using sensor fusion with HD maps and city-specific safety cases, providing commercial service without human drivers in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Tesla sells Full Self‑Driving (Supervised), a driver assistance system that operates nationwide with a vision‑only, end‑to‑end stack but requires constant human oversight. Waymo’s deployment model emphasizes geographically limited areas with full autonomy, while Tesla distributes supervised capabilities across hundreds of thousands of customer vehicles. The companies differ in their use of sensors, maps, validation methods, and strategies for scaling autonomous transportation.

• Finance

  • US Govt Asks TCS Why Locals Are Not Hired, Why They Need H1b Visa

    Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services company, is under the scanner of U.S. lawmakers as part of a sweeping Senate probe into how major tech firms use the H-1B visa programme while simultaneously cutting domestic jobs. The bipartisan investigation, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dick Durbin, aims to assess whether such practices disadvantage American workers.

    [...]

    Letters sent to CEOs of 10 major companies — including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and TCS — raised concerns over thousands of H-1B visa petitions being filed even as layoffs rise in the U.S. tech sector. Lawmakers argue that this trend may be hurting domestic job opportunities, especially for recent STEM graduates facing rising unemployment.

  • The New Stack ☛ Why FinOps Isn’t About Saving Money

    But focusing on cost savings, rather than cost optimization, is a mistake, said Patrick Brogan, a FinOps domain specialist at Harness, during Bridging the Gap: FinOps Strategies That Align Engineering and Finance, a September 30 webinar with The New Stack.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EA: What do Saudi Arabia and US get from video game deal?

    A consortium led by Saudi Arabia and a key figure in Donald Trump's circle have brokered a big money deal for video game publisher Electronic Arts. It looks to be something bigger than pure business.

  • Futurism ☛ Accenture CEO Says It's Sacking Employees Who Won't Embrace AI

    Yet when it comes to AI in the workplace, there are suspiciously few stories of companies successfully integrating the tech. There is, however, plenty of failure: the fintech firm Klarna took to forcing engineers to answer customer service calls after its AI deployment stalled out, law firms are being punished for AI’s embarrassing errors, while other companies have resorted to hiring freelancers to fix AI’s sloppy mistakes.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Streamlining digital government: Why web consolidation is the future

    When you have a hundred websites across different agencies, you have a hundred headaches. Each one needs its own budget, its own staff and its own contracts. These costs add up fast. An agency is paying for countless hosting plans and software licenses, which is like buying a brand-new kitchen for every type of food you want to cook.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Uber buys data labeling startup in move toward AI services: Report

    Uber’s data labeling efforts were originally a function of its core business, but it has recently been selling these services to companies developing self-driving technologies around the world, Bloomberg reported. Data labeling, traditionally outsourced to gig workers, could be a big business for Uber, turning it into an AI services provider beyond a ride-sharing and delivery company.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ OpenAI reportedly closes new $6.6B secondary sale at $500B valuation

    The ChatGPT developer’s newly closed secondary sale apparently also included contributions from SoftBank Group Corp. and Abu Dhabi’s MGX. Both companies are backing OpenAI’s Stargate initiative, a $500 billion push to build a network of artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S. The facilities’ combined compute capacity is expected to exceed 10 gigawatts.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ How OpenAI plans to accelerate monetization

    To monetize its free user base, OpenAI is turning first to online shopping. Chatbots are beginning to change consumer habits, gradually replacing searches once made on Google or Amazon. Their advantage lies in handling more specific queries while offering personalized recommendations.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft inks $33 billion in deals with 'neoclouds' like Nebius, CoreWeave — Nebius deal alone secures 100,000 Nvidia GB300 chips for internal use

    Microsoft is renting external GPU data centers for internal use so it can, in turn, rent out its own facilities to other customers.

  • The Register UK ☛ New Zealand’s Institute of IT Professionals collapses

    “These debts are historic. They go back over many years. While some of the issues were worked on in more recent times, the full scale of the problem only became visible during the leadership change in 2025,” the Update states. “Once the Board understood the full picture, it was clear that there was no responsible way forward other than liquidation.”

  • Wired ☛ China Rolls Out Its First Talent Visa as the US Retreats on H-1Bs

    The program was introduced just weeks after the Trump administration announced a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which Silicon Valley has long depended on to recruit top engineering talent from abroad. From the outside, it looks like China is seizing the moment, positioning itself to attract leading scientists and researchers who might now be shut out of the United States. While that narrative explains part of the story, the full picture is more complicated.

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Gradually, Then Suddenly: Compliance as a Vital Sign of Organizational Decay

    “How did you go bankrupt?” a character asks in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. “Two ways,” comes the reply. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

    That is how organizations fail.

    Decay builds quietly until, all at once, trust evaporates. The surprise is rarely the failure itself. The surprise is that the warning signs were ignored.

    One of the clearest of those warning signs is compliance.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ OpenAI’s Sora Makes Disinformation Extremely Easy and Extremely Real

      Sora — as well as Google’s Veo 3 and other tools like it — could become increasingly fertile breeding grounds for disinformation and abuse, experts said. While worries about A.I.’s ability to enable misleading content and outright fabrications have risen steadily in recent years, Sora’s advances underscore just how much easier such content is to produce, and how much more convincing it is.

    • El País ☛ Trump insists on a hoax about migrants to explain the government shutdown

      However, Democrats have not called for medical assistance for undocumented migrants, who are not eligible for federal programs. It’s “a flat-out lie,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Books Briefing: A Half Century of American Book Banning

    Several decades later, the fervor over Forever might feel quaint to some: “Now teen girls can get a crash course on sex with a few keystrokes,” Holmes notes. But book banning is, unfortunately, all the rage—fittingly, Banned Books Week starts on Monday. And even though we live in what Holmes called a “digital, sex-soaked era,” as she noted, Blume’s half-century-old novel remains a target; the Utah State Board of Education banned it for containing “pornographic” or “indecent” content only last year. In the 21st century, censorship of work like Blume’s—her books Deenie and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, which mention masturbation and menstruation, have also been the subjects of controversy—has evolved into a broader attack on books that discuss topics such as racism, sexism, or queerness. Anything with a whiff of “wokeness” is suspect.

  • FAIR ☛ Under Trump, Criticism Is Now Criminal

    The ability to use your freedom of expression to try to change what the government does is, in fact, why the First Amendment was put in the Constitution in the first place. But clearly we are in an era where the executive branch no longer sees the First Amendment as any kind of meaningful constraint.

  • India Times ☛ Apple, Google block apps that crowdsource ICE sightings; some warn of chilling effects

    Apple and Google blocked downloads of phone apps that flag sightings of US immigration agents, just hours after the Trump administration demanded that one particularly popular iPhone app be taken down.

  • India Times ☛ Apple removes ICE tracking apps after pressure by Trump administration

    Rights advocates have raised concerns that rights to free speech and due process are often being infringed as the government pushes ahead with its deportation drive.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Bending to U.S. Government Pressure, Apple, Google Remove ICE Reporting Apps

    The U.S. government does not have the authority to demand the removal of these lawful apps. But it does have the authority to make Apple and Google pay dearly if they do not comply. Perhaps Apple finds its products will be implicated in higher tariffs, or the antitrust cases against both companies will have stiffer penalties. Apple knows how to work with authoritarian states, which I do not mean as a compliment, and it is applying the same playbook here.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Bruce Springsteen Stands Against Government Censorship on 'Kimmel'

    “Fifty years, I’ve been kind of a musical ambassador for America around the world,” he said. “I have this song, ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ which is kind of a prayer to the country, and we play it every night. I know for a fact that that’s how many people around the world still see our country. Not as a land of fear, not as a divisiveness, not of government censorship, not of hatred. And I basically believe that that’s an America that’s worth fighting for.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Daughter of Late Russian Journalist Irina Slavina Detained While Laying Flowers in Her Memory

    The day before her death, local security forces raided Slavina's home in search of evidence of her alleged involvement with the opposition.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Publishes Enemies List To White House Website, And It’s Just Democrats Speaking The Truth

    If you want to read the full list of official White House enemies, go ahead and click through. But it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, even as recently as last week when the DHS did the same thing because people weren’t being deferential enough to the thuggery that makes up ICE’s daily activities.

    And, of course, everyone on the list is a member of the Democratic Party, which means this is also partisan bullshit and, sadly, another indictment of the complete cowardice of the GOP, which also includes supposed “libertarians” like Rand Paul who can’t be bothered to vehemently attack egregious government overreach when it’s Republicans wearing the jackboots.

  • New Yorker ☛ Can the Democrats Take Free Speech Back from the Right?

    Can liberals do something similar now? Free speech, for obvious reasons, has always been an opposition-party issue—it’s a lot harder to claim that the government is suppressing you when your preferred party is in power. Two weeks ago, Democratic Representative Jason Crow, of Colorado, talked about the No Political Enemies Act, which, in its own words, reaffirms “the constitutionally protected right to free speech and establishes clear and enforceable protections to deter abuse, empower individuals and organizations to defend themselves, and create meaningful accountability.” The bill is known by the rather unfortunate acronym NOPE. In practice, NOPE would “prohibit the use of federal funds for any investigations or regulatory action that would suppress protected speech” and provide “tools” for people who find themselves on the wrong side of censors. A companion measure was introduced in the Senate, by Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, with support from the Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. The chances that the Republican-controlled House or the Republican-controlled Senate bring the bill to the floor are basically zero. Still, NOPE allowed Democrats, in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension from the air, to do a little First Amendment sabre-rattling and to show that they, too, care about free speech.

  • The Verge ☛ Apple pulls ICEBlock from the App Store | The Verge

    Now, the Trump administration is restricting speech as part of a push against a vaguely defined threat of “antifa.”

    As Elizabeth Lopatto and Sarah Jeong wrote earlier today: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  "" ☛ https://cpj.org/2025/10/ohio-journalist-convicted-after-arrest-while-covering-kentucky-protest/ | Source: CPJ

  • CPJ ☛ Ohio journalist convicted after arrest while covering Kentucky protest

    “It is outrageous that journalists in the United States have faced trial in relation to their reporting activity,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “We are disappointed by the jury’s decision finding journalist Lucas Griffith guilty of failing to disperse while he was reporting. Griffith was covering a matter of public importance and should not be penalized for his work. We are saddened that local authorities saw fit to continue Griffith’s prosecution, using local tax dollars to send a chilling message about journalists’ First Amendment rights.”

  "" ☛ https://cpj.org/2025/10/journalist-mario-guevara-to-be-deported-from-us-in-unprecedented-case/ | Source: CPJ

  • CPJ ☛ Journalist Mario Guevara to be deported from US in unprecedented case

    Update: Mario Guevara was deported from the United States on a 4 a.m. flight on October 3, 2025.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • India Times ☛ Newsom signs bill giving 800,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in California the right to unionise

    California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors. Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Newsom Signs Bill Giving 800,000 Uber and Lyft Drivers in California the Right to Unionize

    Labor unions and tech companies have fought for years over drivers' rights. In July of last year, the California Supreme Court ruled that app-based ride-hailing and delivery services like Uber and Lyft can continue treating their drivers as independent contractors not entitled to benefits like overtime pay, paid sick leave and unemployment insurance. A 2019 law mandated that Uber and Lyft provide drivers with benefits, but voters reversed it at the ballot in 2020.

    The collective bargaining measure now allows rideshare workers in California to join a union while still being classified as independent contractors and requires gig companies to bargain in good faith. The new law doesn’t apply to drivers for delivery apps like DoorDash.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Federal shutdown hurts services for Native Americans and they worry worse is coming

    Many tribal leaders said they feared that the Trump administration would use the shutdown to lay off federal workers responsible for ensuring that trust and treaty responsibilities are honored. The U.S. agreed many decades ago to protect the security, health and education of tribal citizens in return for ceding their lands.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Private Prison Company Will Rake In $300 Million From New ICE Contracts - NOTUS — News of the United States

    CoreCivic, one of two prison giants that have cashed in from President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations, expects to rake in nearly $300 million more from new contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The acceleration is being fueled by the $45 billion Republican lawmakers gave the agency through Trump’s tax cut and spending package.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Government Shutdown: The Public vs. the Billionaires

    In the worst union busting in memory, the administration has claimed that union contracts for most federal workers are void and stopped agencies from collecting union dues. Administrators in many agencies are ignoring contracts and acting like their unions don’t exist.

    Lawsuits by the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union have had mixed results, but the courts have mostly declined to stop the administration’s actions.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Frozen out: Trump administration orders anti-ICE apps, including ICEBlock, removed from Apple's App Store

    ICE is the "Immigration and Customs Enforcement" department within the US Government that tracks and deports illegal immigrants, and because it has, according to the app's creators, "faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process", the ICEBlock app was born.

    The app's creators say ICEBlock was crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations", and that it was "modeled after Waze but for ICE sightings, the app ensures user privacy by storing no personal data, making it impossible to trace reports back to individual users."

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Sufferable Evil

    Blackhawk helicopters. Flash bangs. A chainsaw to cut through fencing. Doors blown off hinges. Holes in walls. An entire building’s worth of American citizens treated as enemy combatants in a war zone.

    This happened. In Chicago. In America. This week.

    And we’ve already moved on to the next story.

  • Techdirt ☛ Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.

    And what happened in Chicago this week? It’s sufferable. Barely. Just barely. But sufferable enough that most Americans will shrug and scroll past.

    The bitter irony is that what occurred in that South Shore apartment building represents precisely the kind of tyranny that provoked the American Revolution itself.

  • Dan Sinker ☛ The Fog of War

    All of that descended into chaos instantaneously, when an ICE agent—or some other masked motherfucker—after being momentarily blocked by a scooter, decides to uncork a can of teargas and casually toss it out of the window of his unmarked SUV. It makes a spiraling decent, and then it hits. Within seconds, everyone—who moments before had been going about their day—is scrambling, coughing, and screaming.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Film director from Brazil faces deportation after sly move by ICE

    Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ Bell Expands Wireless Coverage in Canada

    Since 2020, Bell has invested nearly $17 billion to expand its wireless and Pure Fibre networks across Canada. Its wireless network now reaches over 99 percent of Canadians, with 89 percent having access to 5G/5G+ services. As of Q2 2025, Bell reported 10.4 million wireless subscribers, ranking second to Rogers Communications’ (NYSE: RCI) 12.1 million, according to Inside Towers Intelligence.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: When your ISP pays you

    Holy shit I love my internet service provider said no one ever!

    Except, some people do love their ISPs. Across America more than 400 community-owned fiber networks, serving more than 700 communities, bring joy and satisfaction to their customers: [...]

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Proposes Rules to Enable State, Local Prisons to Jam Illegal Cell Phones

    Carr joined Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and State Attorney General Tim Griffin in Arkansas for a tour of the Varner Supermax facility in September, Inside Towers reported. Federal prisons have long been authorized to jam contraband cell phones, but state and local prisons cannot, according to Carr.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • New Statesman ☛ The man who sold the world: Spotify’s founder steps down

    As for what happens now, Ek is not really gone. He has just moved to a higher chair, while two of his deputies step up. From the outside it doesn’t look like much will change. There has been criticism in recent years, with artists pulling music in protest and complaints about how Spotify treats them, but the service itself seems as entrenched as ever. I doubt my daughter or her friends will notice the difference.

  • Linuxiac ☛ Steam's Oct Client Update Rolls Out With Exploit Mitigation

    Lastly, Windows users now get extra system information—the client can detect Secure Boot and TPM status, which will also be included in the Steam Hardware Survey going forward.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ Musicians Against Live Nation–Ticketmaster

  After months of organizing led by the Maine Music Alliance (MEMA) — a coalition of local independent venues, musicians, music workers, and arts organizations — the Portland City Council voted 6-3 to impose a moratorium blocking construction of a Live Nation venue. For now, Portland remains one of the few cities in the United States without a Live Nation foothold. The company is notorious among artists and fans for driving up ticket prices, suppressing wages, and destroying arts communities.

• Don Marti ☛ the duopoly crunch from the brand side

  And the pressure on the duopoly to keep growing is creating more and more pressure on everyone else’s ability to make a living. Andrew Tindall, writing for The Drum, points out the problem from the brand point of view. "We’ve never spent more on advertising. It’s never done less for us."

• Patents

  • Android Police ☛ Strava lawsuit demands Garmin ceases selling watches

    In a recent lawsuit filed Sept. 30, Strava claims Garmin infringed on patents related to its segments and heatmapping features. As part of the complaint, Strava requests that Garmin pause the sale of popular watches and other devices that support segments or heatmapping, per a recent report from The Verge. If successful, the lawsuit could have a significant impact on Garmin users, particularly those who rely on Garmin devices to track running and cycling events.

  • Software Patents

    • DC Rainmaker ☛ Strava Just Sued Garmin: Demands Garmin Stop Selling Devices

      The case essentially has two chief complaints, one focused on the Strava Segments piece, and the other focused on heatmaps and popularity routing. This second piece has one primary patent that Strava is saying Garmin violated (patent 9297651), with an ancillary patent 9778053. Both of these cover what Strava titles “Generating user preference activity maps”. In a nutshell, this means generating a map that shows where other users work out, based on other users’ ride/run/etc data. Here’s the exact wording, for funsies: [...]

    • The Verge ☛ Strava sues Garmin over alleged patent infringement

      Strava is seeking a permanent injunction to prohibit Garmin from selling or offering any products that provide segments or heat mapping features, arguing that “monetary relief alone is inadequate.” Those demands target Garmin’s Connect fitness tracking platform and the majority of Garmin’s devices, including Edge bike computers, and Forerunner, Fenix, and Epix watches.

    • Android Authority ☛ Strava sues Garmin over key fitness features you probably rely on

      Strava filed a patent for segments in 2011, which was awarded in 2015. As for heatmaps, it filed two related patents, one in 2014, granted two years later, and another in 2016, granted in 2017. Interestingly, Garmin’s first device offering its segment feature arrived in 2014, while it rolled out heatmap smarts to its products even earlier — in 2013.

    • India Times ☛ Hexaware slapped with $500 million patent lawsuit in US court

      Mid-tier IT services company Hexaware Technologies has been hit with a $500 million (approximately Rs 4,400 crore) lawsuit in the United States by American firm Natsoft Corporation and UK-based Updraft, accusing it of patent infringement and unauthorised technology licence usage.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Dark Reading ☛ Microsoft's Voice Clone Becomes Scary & Unsalvageable

      "Speak for Me" (S4M) was envisioned as a niche Windows accessibility feature for those on their way to losing their voice due to medical procedures like tracheotomies or progressive voice disorders. A noble idea to be sure, but in practice things turned out a little differently: Microsoft managed instead to create one of the world's best deepfake, vishing, and fraud vehicles, thanks to a raft of development bugs.

    • Simon Willison ☛ Sora 2 prompt injection

      It turns out Sora 2 is vulnerable to prompt injection!