So thank you Molly. For pushing for web standards and the open web and a better web. For writing your books and sharing what you know. For facing off against anybody who needed a push (even when that person was Bill Gates). For being the loudest in the room when no one was listening to what everyday people needed.
Associate Professor HÃÂ¥kon Reiersen with the University of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology, which received the gold, described the gold pendants as bracteates which are thin, flat, single-sided gold medals, saying in the press release that the gold pearls and pendants were part of “a very showy necklace.” The necklace, he said, was worn by powerful individuals in society, adding that “in Norway, no similar discovery has been made since the 19th century, and it is also a very unusual discovery in a Scandinavian context.”
This post is dedicated to the lovely Paul Traylor, whom I amuse when I dive into retrocomputing topics :).
This discovery has shaken me up in ways I didn’t expect. While we all remember what colour the Apple II+ was, and the IBM 5150, and the Atari ST, I’m not not sure all C64 fans do… myself included.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The legendary machine came in so many permutations over its long production run, and even machines within the same generation had cosmetic and technical differences. It was Commodore’s way!
While hackers can deftly navigate their way through circuit diagrams or technical documentation, for many of us, simple social interactions can be challenge. [Simone Giertz] decided to help us all out here by making a device to help us share our feelings.
We like [Thomas Sanladerer], so when we say his channel has gone in the toilet, we mean that quite literally. He had a broken toilet and wanted to compare options for effecting a 3D printed repair. The mechanism is a wall-mounted flush mechanism with a small broken plastic part. Luckily, he had another identical unit that provided a part that wasn’t broken.
The humble transistor radio is one of those consumer devices that stubbornly refuses to go away, but it’s fair to say that it’s not the mover and shaker in the world of electronics it might once have been. Thus it’s also not a staple of the repair bench anymore, where fixing a pocket radio might have been all in a day’s work decades ago now they’re a rare sight. [David Tipton] has a Philips radio from we’re guessing the later half of the 1960s which didn’t work, and we’re along for the ride as he takes us through its repair.
It was an easy decision to run a Cyberdeck Challenge in 2023 — after all, it was far and away one of our most popular contests from last year. But what was much harder was sorting out the incredible array of bespoke computers that readers have been sending in for the last few months.
New data last week from University of Chicago researchers showed that across South Asia, air pollution—mostly from burning fossil fuels—is robbing people of five years of life on average. Five years! If you live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, that number is an unimaginable 11.9 years. If you would have lived to 70, you died at 58. Thank about that. Across the region, “particulate pollution levels are currently more than 50% higher than at the start of the century and now overshadow” other health risks. Every breath that people take is killing them, every hour of every day.
A lesson in tolerance.
NHS autumn vaccinations moved forward due to rise of new Covid variant. Here's who's eligible
Hong Kong’s top court said it refused to allow four democrats to launch a final appeal against convictions for breaching social distancing regulations during a Labour Day protest three years ago, because the now-scrapped Covid curbs were no longer an issue “of any general importance.”
The Covid-19 virus was never gone and there is a slight increase in the number of cases at the moment, Jurijs PerevošÃÂikovs,€ director of the Department of Risk Analysis and Prevention at the Disease Prevention and Control Center (SPKC),€ told the agency LETA on September 8.
Danny Cortes was at a low — divorced, unemployed, on parole — when Covid hit. Then a craft hobby to stay sane during lockdown blew up on social media — and in auction houses.
Cruise and Waymo currently have a combined fleet of 500 autonomous vehicles in the San Francisco area. The firms plan to expand significantly to cater to the growing demand for such services after the CPUC approval. Currently, Cruise services are restricted to 35 miles per hour (56 kph) and not allowed to operate when the weather conditions are not ideal, while Waymo can operate up to speeds of 65 miles per hour (104 kph).
But even though it’s not new or impacting the majority of flights, Nelson does believe we’re seeing more cases of gross. She credits the uptick to more people flying, as travel volume this summer exceeded 2019 levels.
Nelson also believes the pandemic kept more sick people at home, and that sick people may be more inclined to travel these days.
It doesn’t help that airlines have struggled with cleanliness with labor shortages and pandemic-cleaning procedures dropping. “Planes are not getting any kind of deep clean in the day unless there is a specific action to pull the plane out of service — and we frankly rarely see that.”
Maker Lorraine wanted to motivate her family to up that step count, so she set them the goal of running the distance to the Moon. Totally do-able. She created a Raspberry Pi Pico W-powered motivational tool to let them see their progress and drag them through those last tough hundred thousand miles.
A few weeks ago, we had director Alex Winter on the podcast to talk about his latest documentary, The YouTube Effect. In that film he spoke with a young man who talked about getting “radicalized” on YouTube and going down the “alt-right rabbit hole.” One thing that Alex talked about in the podcast, but was not in the documentary, was that, at one point, he asked the guy to go to YouTube and see if it would take him down that path again, and he couldn’t even get it to recommend sketchy videos no matter how hard he tried.
When St. John the Baptist Parish residents woke up on Friday, August 25, they saw a plume of black smoke above the Marathon Petroleum refinery between Reserve and Garyville, Louisiana. Marathon told residents and parish officials that the fire started that morning around two tanks storing naphtha — a type of partially refined petroleum used as an ingredient in gasoline.
But the naphtha leak actually began at 6:50 p.m. Thursday, August 24, 15 hours before residents in the area were evacuated, according to a report to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting all oil and chemical spills. The Louisiana State Police were notified about half an hour later.€
Elon Musk-run X has formerly renamed tweets as "post" and retweets as "reposts" in its new term of service that will go into effect on September 29.
The exploit involved PassKit attachments containing malicious images sent from an attacker iMessage account to the victim.
We expect to publish a more detailed discussion of the exploit chain in the future.
The obvious problem with this, though, is that humans aren’t special in this way. Non-human animals share many of our capacities for intelligence and perception, yet we’ve refused to extend the generosity we might expect from AI. We rationalize unmitigated cruelty toward animals — caging, commodifying, mutilating, and killing them to suit our whims — on the basis of our purportedly superior intellect. “If there were gods, they would surely be laughing their heads off at the inconsistency of our logic,” O’Gieblyn continues. “We spent centuries denying consciousness in animals precisely because [we thought] they lacked reason or higher thought.”
Why should we hope that AI, particularly if it’s built on our own values, treats us any differently? We might struggle to justify to a future artificial “superintelligence,” if such a thing could ever exist, why we’re deserving of mercy when we’ve failed spectacularly at offering our fellow animals the same. And, worse still, the dehumanizing philosophy of AI’s prophets is among the worst possible starting points to defend the value of our fleshy, living selves.
In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit": [...]
As I mentioned on Mastodon, I know we are in a hype cycle, and I’m trying to report these findings in a quiet and matter-of-fact way. But when Greg Lloyd played this quote back to me, I got excited all over again.
" This is the kind of tacit knowledge transfer that can happen when you work with another person, you don’t explicitly ask a question, and your partner doesn’t explicitly answer it. The knowledge just surfaces organically, and transfers by osmosis. "
The previously undocumented group that Group-IB identified as “W3LL” has been active since 2017 and has “created their own private ecosystem of highly effective phishing tools for compromising corporate email accounts,” the researchers said in a sprawling report.
It appears that [crackers] successfully compromised roughly 8,000 of the corporate Microsoft email accounts using the phishing kits, the researchers found. Group-IB notified all relevant law enforcement agencies of its findings, the company said.
Vladislav Klyushin was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100M stock market cheating scheme that relied on information stolen by hacking.
The DOJ also unsealed indictments against some of the sanctioned individuals for alleged roles in ransomware and other cybercrime activity.
The United States and Britain have expanded sanctions on members of a Russian hacking gang known as Trickbot, targeting people involved in management and procurement for the group.
North Korea's state-sponsored hackers have executed another major online theft as Kim Jong-un is expected to discuss supplying weapons to Russia.
At the eleventh hour of the Online Safety Bill’s passage through Parliament, the Government has found itself claiming to have both conceded that it won’t do anything stupid and that it may well press ahead if it wants to.
On Wednesday, the Oslo District Court sided with Datatilsynet, the country's data protection authority, affirming the legality of a daily fine imposed on Meta Platforms for invasive behavior-based marketing on Facebook and Instagram.
The court fully endorsed Datatilsynet's action, dismissing Meta's plea for a temporary injunction to halt the fine and stating that there was no cause to undermine the regulator's judgment.
The statements have been widely interpreted as a victory for technology firms, many of which had threatened to exit the UK over the requirement that it must be possible for even strongly end-to-end encrypted messages to be scanned for illegal content.
However, it could also be argued that the changes only represent the bare minimum needed to get the bill across the line. The controversial clauses remain largely in place, with the buck passed to future administrations, or to when reading the messages becomes "technically feasible."
The organization reviewed 25 car brands and their data collection policies and found that all of these brands are collecting more personal information about whoever sits in the car than is required. Moreover, 84 percent of these brands say they can share your personal data with service providers, data brokers, and other businesses. But shockingly, 19 of these brands (76 percent) say they can also sell your personal data.
The case revolves around a request for a provisional injunction against Datatilsynet’s directive to prohibit Meta Ireland and Facebook Norway from processing personal data for behavioral marketing based on GDPR Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) in connection with their services Facebook and Instagram. Behavioral marketing is ads and marketing targeted to an audience based on actions taken on a website, rather than demographic information.
The European Court of Justice today issued important clarifications on the transparency of EU-funded development of surveillance technology in response to a transparency lawsuit by MEP Dr Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) (Case T-158/19). Under the iBorderCtrl project, the EU had tested the use of controversial AI-based “video lie detector” technology on travelers. Breyer’s lawsuit had already forced the EU in the first instance to release a large number of documents about the project in full or partially redacted, which Breyer published today on his homepage.
On the messaging app Telegram, I entered a tiny amount of information about my target into the dark blue text box—their name and the state I believed they lived in—and pressed enter. A short while later, the bot spat out a file containing every address that person had ever lived at in the U.S., all the way back to their college dorm more than a decade earlier. The file included the names and birth years of their relatives. It listed the target’s mobile phone numbers and provider, as well as personal email addresses. Finally, the file contained information from their drivers’ license, including its unique identification number. All of that data cost $15 in Bitcoin. The bot sometimes offers the Social Security number too for $20.
This is the result of a secret weapon criminals are selling access to online that appears to tap into an especially powerful set of data: the target’s credit header. This is personal information that the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion have on most adults in America via their credit cards. Through a complex web of agreements and purchases, that data trickles down from the credit bureaus to other companies who offer it to debt collectors, insurance companies, and law enforcement.
The new site 404 Media has a good article on how hackers are cheaply getting personal information from credit bureaus:
This is the result of a secret weapon criminals are selling access to online that appears to tap into an especially powerful set of data: the target’s credit header. This is personal information that the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion have on most adults in America via their credit cards. Through a complex web of agreements and purchases, that data trickles down from the credit bureaus to other companies who offer it to debt collectors, insurance companies, and law enforcement...
Do not go gentle into that mass surveillance night, as the phrase goes. The EU Commission is sure something needs to be done about the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). And it’s not wrong! Things need to be done.
Mozilla’s latest *Privacy Not Included report isn’t subtle when it comes to calling out the shortcomings of modern, internet-connected vehicles:
A man who had his phone seized after driving a small boat that carried 50 migrants to the UK has been jailed under the Adapted Illegal Migration Act.
[...]
"Putting lives at risk by steering men, women and children across the Channel in flimsy dinghies will not be tolerated and we will continue to work relentlessly to stop these completely unnecessary crossings and ensure those responsible are put behind bars," noted Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick.
In an attached affidavit, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum wrote that the grand jurors were subject to harassment and threats after their home addresses, phone numbers and vehicle information were posted on a website operated by a Russian company.
Wait, what’s the difference between a grand jury and a special grand jury?
Last year, Willis asked the Fulton County Superior Court to empanel a special grand jury to investigate attempts to interfere with the 2020 election result. The special grand jury is an investigative tool where the jurors look into one case for up to a year.
The special grand jury heard from 75 witnesses, some under subpoena, over eight months and compiled a final report. The special grand jury recommended multiple indictments.
The 100-page complaint alleges that the former president led a “broad-based effort to pressure, coerce, and intimidate state and local officials to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election results.” In support of this claim, the complaint details the events of January 6, 2021, saying Trump called more than 10,000 protesters to Washington D.C. to “stop the steal” of the 2020 presidential election.
Islamist militants staged separate attacks on a passenger ferry and a military camp in northern Mali on Thursday, the government said, killing dozens of civilians and soldiers in a region of the West African nation that is increasingly controlled by armed groups.
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.
Here are eight takeaways from ProPublica’s report on the Navy’s littoral combat ship program, which has cost taxpayers billions but failed to deliver on its promise.
1. Navy officials vastly underestimated the costs to build the ship in estimates provided to Congress. The original price tag more than doubled.
On the same day U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv to announce $1 billion in new U.S. aid to Ukraine, 17 Ukrainians were killed in a Russian missile attack on a Donetsk market. “It’s very painful for me to see all the streets and cities that I spent my childhood in to be completely destroyed by the ongoing war,” says Hanna Perekhoda, Ukrainian historian from the Donetsk region on a speaking tour of the U.S. calling for an end to the war by driving out Putin’s occupation. “If we let Russian authoritarians win, it will mean that the authoritarian forces also in our countries, in the U.S., for example, will grow stronger.” Perekhoda is joined on the speaking tour by Russian historian Ilya Budraitskis, who agrees that this war is about Putin’s regime maintaining its power. “This criminal war is not just a war against Ukraine. It’s a war of the Russian regime against its own society,” says Budraitskis.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is seeing a dramatic deterioration of infrastructure and displacement of citizens as a result of armed violence, flooding and the world’s largest hunger crisis. In recent months, rampant violence of armed groups has forced more than half a million people to flee their homes, while the United Nations says some 3,000 families also lost their homes after recent intense flooding and mudslides in the eastern part of the country. Twenty-five million people are facing starvation as displaced citizens are unable to access their land to grow their own food, and the humanitarian response has so far failed to address the crisis. “The crisis is beyond belief,” says Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland, who just visited the DRC and reports that the international community still looks for the country’s resources while ignoring its plight. “The Congo is not ignored by those who want to extract the riches of that place. It’s ignored by the rest of the world who would want to come to the relief of the children and families of the Congo.”
One of three men accused of assisting a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is testifying in his own defense. Eric Molitor told jurors that he was scared when he joined a daytime ride to see Whitmer's vacation home in northern Michigan in 2020. He says he didn't initially know it was Whitmer's property. Molitor and two other men are charged with providing material support for terrorist acts. They’re accused of aiding the leaders of a kidnapping scheme. Social media posts and text messages show the group was outraged over COVID-19 restrictions. Evidence has also revealed strident anti-government views and calls for a civil war. Nine men have been convicted.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday revealed that he did not budge to an emergency request from the government authorities to switch on space internet service Starlink up to Sevastopol in Crimea, which is a major port on the Black Sea, to target Russian ships.
Until last week, it was up to individual principals to decide whether the 2004 rules applied. The government said that the nationwide ban was merely an update to the existing rules that was needed to stop a ballooning number of disputes in its secular school system.
The paper put the bans in the context of geopolitical tensions, China's desire for technological independence, and hinted the ban is perhaps therefore Beijing's latest move in the game of 4D diplomatic chess. The Journal noted that Apple shares tumbled 3.6 percent on the day of its story.
The country’s shift to ban iPhones comes only one week before an Apple event where the company will announce the launch of its next line of iPhones. The ban also comes after Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the country in March to meet with China’s Minister of Commerce, Wang Wentao, where they reportedly discussed stabilizing Apple’s local industrial and supply chain.
An excerpt from the forthcoming tome by Walter Isaacson, titled Elon Musk and shared with CNN, revealed that in 2022 Ukraine planned an attack against Russian naval ships near Crimea. But as Ukraine’s explosive-laden submarine drones approached Russia's warships, they "lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly," the book claimed.
SpaceX CEO Musk was the reason for the lost signal: he cut off the Starlink connectivity the drones were relying upon because he feared a "mini-Pearl Harbor" would take place, according to Isaacson in his book.
[...] "We laid out a condition that the age limit and the adaptation of social network rules to Kyrgyz legislation should be done. They said that it is technically difficult. Talks are ongoing, [...]
The report, compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), reveals that the Sahel has witnessed a steady rise in conflict-related fatalities since 2011, with a pronounced spike from 2017 onwards. This troubling trend can be attributed to the emergence and intensification of conflicts in countries such as Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. The Sahel has witnessed 22 074 fatalities in 6 408 terror attacks between 2007 and 2022.
Latvian Radio's investigative broadcast 'Atvērtie Faili' ('Open Files') reported September 7 on why some Latvian companies are choosing to continue their exports to Russia despite that country's brutal attack on Ukraine.
September marks one year since Latvian nurse Sarmīte Cīrule has been helping the wounded on the Ukrainian front day and night. She has received several awards recently,€ including the Order of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, after she herself was wounded in an attack, Latvian Television reported September 7.
Foreign Ministers of the so-called 'Nordic-Baltic Eight' (NB8) countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland) have been meeting in Latvia September 6 and 7.
On September 7€ in Chernihiv, Ukraine the Ambassador of Latvia to Ukraine, Ilgvars Kļava, acting on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Deputy Resident Representative the United Nations Development Program€ (UNDP)€ in Ukraine, Christophoros Politis, signed an agreement on the reconstruction of infrastructure facilities in the Chernihiv Oblast.
The Russian National Guard and a private Hungarian foreign legion have launched campaigns to recruit soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
Ukraine on Friday condemned the “sham” elections Russia is currently holding in four occupied Ukrainian territories, and called on international partners to denounce them and not recognise the results. Several people were also killed, and dozens injured, in multiple Russian air strikes on eastern Ukrainian towns and villages, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian forces have been able to break through Russian defences and are “gradually” making progress in their counteroffensive against Moscow's troops despite “heavy, difficult fighting”, NATO€ chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday. Russia earlier on Thursday described the US decision to supply depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine to aid its counteroffensive as “a criminal act”. Read our live blog to see how all the day's events unfolded.€ All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
On Thursday, September 7, the Saeima supported amendments to the Immigration Law in the first reading, which provides for the possibility for Russian citizens living in Latvia to extend the time period for the Latvian language exam for€ the receipt of a permanent residence permit by two years. This would apply to those Russian citizens who have already tried to pass the test.
Oksana Bidnenko is a staff correspondent for JURIST. She is a Ukrainian law student at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Riga, Latvia. On Tuesday, September 5, the situation in Latvia regarding the new Latvian Immigration Law took a significant turn.
The Vilnius City Municipality Administration has decided not to issue a permit for the fireworks festival Vilnius Fejerija, citing air and noise pollution, as well as the emotional health of Ukrainian refugees.
European Council President Charles Michel said Russia “must stop” its blockade of Ukrainian seaports.
Leaders of the Group of 20 began arriving in New Delhi on September 8 for their annual gathering as negotiators struggled to bridge differences over the war in Ukraine, seeking to build consensus for a successful summit.
NATO has no information that the drone debris found on the territory of alliance member Romania was caused by a deliberate Russian attack, NATO's secretary-general has said.
Romania's government will approve on September 8 a plan to upgrade road infrastructure in the Black Sea port of Constanta, part of wider investments in the port that could help more Ukrainian grain to transit.
Russian forces launched fresh attacks on several Ukrainian regions early on September 8, killing at least one person, local authorities said, as Kyiv claimed “partial success” near Bakhmut.
Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack last year on the Russian fleet, according to a new biography of Musk due out next week.
Newly appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is well-known and respected in the United States, former U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker said on September 7 in Kyiv.
Ukraine's anti-corruption agency is treating tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskiy as a suspect in a criminal investigation into the embezzlement of funds from Privatbank.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's wife, Tamara, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on September 7 in Kyiv, where she was participating in a summit organized by the Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska.
Washington also provided a US$203-million funding for support to transparency and accountability of institutions.
Leaders of the Group of 20 major economies began arriving in New Delhi on Friday for their annual gathering as negotiators struggled to bridge differences over the war in Ukraine, seeking to build consensus for a successful summit host India wants.
Ukraine needs battlefield success to give it dominance in any negotiations with Moscow that Kyiv’s allies might propose to avoid a “forever war.”
A deadly strike in Kryvyi Rih, about 45 miles from the front lines, is the latest in a city that has been pummeled repeatedly by Russian attacks.
Cuba’s government says it is taking action against a “human trafficking network” that was trying to bring Cuban citizens into the Russian military.
Ukraine never acknowledges strikes on Russian soil, but the incursions are happening with increasing frequency.
Lithuania’s authorities took too much time to process Belarusian activist Olga Karach’s asylum request, thus violating her rights, the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court ruled on Wednesday.
The United States and European Union have condemned a decree signed by authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka prohibiting the renewal of passports by Belarusians living abroad.
The ultrasecure facility, which was last upgraded in 2006, is returning to use after officials closed it for a year to modernize it in an era of high-tech sparring with China and Russia.
As long as Vladimir Putin is in power, Russia will remain a rogue state. Western policies that legitimize him through fear of a potential post-Putin Russia are perverse, writes Richard Cashman.
The EU’s top court Wednesday refused an appeal by Russian billionaire and staunch Putin ally Gennady Timchenko. The oligarch was placed on the EU sanction list following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
With the Russian and Chinese leaders absent, the president hopes to get others to align with him on a variety of matters, including Ukraine and curbing Beijing’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.
The second, in a twist of extreme I-told-you-so irony, was caused by attendees trying to escape the pop-up city after an unrelenting bout of intense rainfall that experts say is increasingly typical in warming climate.
One could argue that the protesters, whose efforts ahead of the festival were met with ridicule and ire by their fellow partiers, were right. And Patrick Donnelly, does.
The EPA's report concluded banning coal and oil was the most effective way to prevent the oncoming disasters, which also remains true. If we'd successfully weaned ourselves off fossil fuels by the year 2000, warming by 2100 would have halved from 5 €°C to 2.5 €°C, they estimated. The report accurately predicted why this would not be politically or economically feasible, including corporate greed and lack of cooperation between nations.
Despite this missed opportunity it's still not too late to reduce future impacts, as every fraction of a degree will save lives.
Who are we talking about? The dozens of athletes competing in the U.S. Open in New York City, who are suffering through muggy temps that are cracking the 90s.
The quarter-final clash between the two Russian stars was played under a partially closed roof at the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Both players looked miserable in the stifling heat, and Medvedev admitted that at one point his vision was so blurred that he could hardly see the ball. Meanwhile, he also noticed that Rublev was already struggling to run and return his shots.
Even though Medvedev won in straight sets, the match still stretched over a span of two hours and 48 minutes. After the match, Medvedev said that the only consolation he felt was that at least both players have to endure the same conditions.
A non-mandatory three-tier warning system designed to help protect Hong Kong workers from heatstroke went into effect on May 15. The system consists of amber, red and black warnings, indicating three levels of heat stress, and suggests different rest arrangements for people working outdoors or in indoor environments without air conditioning. However, employers have no obligation to offer the recommended rest periods as the guidelines are not legally binding.
With Russia and China skipping the talks, chances of the group delivering robust climate pledges are slim.
The German firm, which specializes in making automotive components, has achieved this by integrating its inductive transmitter into the rotor itself. The design promises to offer performance on par with permanent-magnet synchronous machines (PSMs).
According to ZF, its I2SM's (In-Rotor Inductive-Excited Synchronous Motor) magnet-free design also requires fewer rare earth elements, increasing supply security and sustainability.
Bitcoin mining outfit Riot Platforms earned $31.7 million from Texas power authorities last month for curtailing operations – far more than the value of the Bitcoin it mined in the same period.
In a press release yesterday, Riot said it produced 333 Bitcoin at its mining operations in Rockdale, Texas, which would have been worth just shy of $9 million on August 31. All the cash earned from those energy credits, on the other hand, equates to around 1,136 Bitcoin, Riot CEO Jason Les said in the company's monthly update.
Bangor University scientists think that the way to go big with nuclear power is to, in fact, go small. Their tiny nuclear fuel pellets called triso fuel are said to be the size of poppy seeds and are meant to power a reactor by Rolls Royce the size of a “small car.” We aren’t sure if that’s a small Rolls Royce or a small normal car.
For a century Joliet and its Will County neighbors mined their sandstone aquifer. In less than a decade the easy water will be gone for these communities in Chicago’s southwest suburbs. They can’t drill their way out; deeper layers of the aquifer are too salty and shallower units are vulnerable to contamination from road salts.
Illinois’s third largest city and five neighboring communities instead are banding together to secure an alternate source of supply. Their plan: tap Lake Michigan.
Under a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to forfeit up to $1.55 billion in assets. He could also be called as a witness to testify at the trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was arrested last year in the Bahamas and extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he committed a host of crimes while running the popular digital currency trading platform.
Salame, 30, entered his plea before a judge in Manhattan, admitting to the court that he illegally used millions of dollars from a hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried to make political contributions in 2020 and 2021 to both Democrats and Republicans.
Mr. Salame said he had made millions in political contributions at the direction of Mr. Bankman-Fried. The contributions were labeled loans from FTX’s sister company, the [cryptocurrency] hedge fund Alameda Research.
President Joe Biden recently appointed Victoria Nuland, Dick Cheney’s point person on Iraq, acting deputy secretary of state, the department’s number-two official. He named Eliot Abrams, convicted perjurer and grim apologist for Central American torturers under Ronald Reagan, to his Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Bill Kristol, perfervid lobbyist for the Iraq War, cadged $2 million to pay for TV ads urging Republicans to stay the course in Ukraine. War may or may not be the health of the state, but it surely is a tonic for neoconservative armchair warriors. An adapted version of this column was posted at the Responsible Statecraft website.
The Summer of Joe Biden Panic is almost behind us. It was worse than Shark Panic, Wildfire Panic, Burning Man Panic, and I-can’t-get-TSwift-tickets panic. I have here in my hand, well, my laptop, some very good intel, and very good advice. The fact that many of you will dismiss the one of the bearers of this good news—Jim Messina, Obama 2012 campaign manager—as a former Barack Obama/Harry Reid shill is fine. So did I when I read it.1
If you no longer have the fortitude to follow the vagaries, felonies and idiocies daily dispatched by the awful former guy, we have good news: The bad news keeps coming in his manifold legal battles, because courts evidently deal in facts, not lies, feints, boasts or fantastical bunkum. Just this week, the losingest loser lost against Jean Carroll and Letitia James, in Georgia and D.C., even against t-shirts declaring, "TRUMP TOO SMALL," which couldn't have happened to a smaller guy.
The legislative stances of the G.O.P. leader and his usual opponents are aligned on Ukraine, spending and impeachment as he faces mounting health scrutiny.
Indonesia's president issued a stark warning Thursday after wrapping up a summit of Southeast Asian countries that was joined by China, the United States and Russia, saying “we will be destroyed” unless conflicts are resolved.
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted Wednesday that "the Russian flag cannot be at the Paris Olympic Games... at a time when Russia is committing war crimes".
A shadowy fight is playing out on three continents for control of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s sprawling interests as head of the Wagner mercenary group. The biggest prize: His lucrative operations in Africa.
The German government said on September 8 it will keep two subsidiaries of Russian oil giant Rosneft under the control of German authorities for another six months.
A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin was sentenced on September 7 to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100 million stock-market cheating scheme.
The upcoming school year is expected to bring a surge of propaganda in Russia’s educational institutions, surpassing any previous period in modern history. Events, lectures, and ceremonies in support of the war are set to be combined with new, state-approved curricula, including a new “unified” history textbook for high schoolers that has a chapter on the invasion of Ukraine. Meduza reached out to readers in Russia who sent their kids back to school on September 1 and asked them to share their strategies for safeguarding their children against propaganda. We’re publishing some of the most interesting responses below.
That is false.
There is no evidence Ukraine has ever launched strikes from the grain corridor or used the designated humanitarian sea route for any military purpose. Russia’s Black Sea fleet, on the other hand, has systematically fired cruise missiles at civilian targets in Ukraine.
The grain corridor charted a very specific path and cannot be conflated with the entire Black Sea.
Recently Todd Sherman took the time to speak with Creator Insider about the impact of YouTube Shorts and how the short-form video feed differs compared to traditional long-form content on YouTube. Creators may not realize that a different approach entirely is needed to effectively engage with an audience on YouTube Shorts.
It’s a stock phrase frequently used by Chinese officials and state media to criticize speech or actions by outsiders that Beijing disapproves of.
But now it could be turned against the Chinese people themselves.
Under a proposed amendment to the Public Security Administration Law, wearing the wrong T-shirt or complaining about China online could lead to a fine of up to 5,000 yuan (US$680) or 15 days in jail.
“We’re in a very strange time where everyone holds the nuclear codes,” Ed Robertson says in the clip, adding: “I just want to play music and entertain people and not live in fear of one joke I made 25 years ago bringing our career to a halt.”
And then he talked about it from the perspective of being an on-stage performer: “It’s a difficult time to be creative, to try to be funny. And I try to do that every night we’re on stage, and it feels like there’s more and more land mines placed around you every day.”
This is the kind of complaint usually heard from comedians that make a habit of performing blue—the Dave Chappelles of the world—not bands that dabble in clean comedy in their shows. (Page, on the other hand, has gotten more explicitly political in his solo work.)
In September 2022, Winter became a criminal suspect once again, this time for a social-media comment about the Russian army’s atrocities in Ukraine. After some time in custody, Winter was put under house arrest. He is certain, however, that this will only last for a couple of months — until the next court hearing, to be precise. His lawyers think his chance of getting a prison sentence very high.
Faruk Eren, the head of legal affairs at the Gerçek Gündem news portal and the president of the DðSK Basñn-Ã°à Ÿ Union, and editor Furkan Karabay, were indicted on charge of "targeting counterterrorism officials for terrorist organizations" due to the report in question.
The Ankara 22nd Heavy Penal Court, imposed a travel ban on the two journalists due to "strong suspicion of a crime" as per article 109/3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
All are invited to attend the EFF Awards! Whether you are an activist, an EFF supporter, a student interested in cyberlaw or public interest technology, or someone who wants to eat good food and drink with other cool individuals, anyone can have a fun time at the ceremony.
The celebration will begin at 6:30 pm. PT, Thursday, September 14 at The Regency Lodge, 1290 Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco. Register today to attend the event! We even have discounted tickets for EFF members and students.
Accompanied by a solidarity rally, environmental and climbing activist Cécile Lecomte won two lawsuits against the German Federal Police on Wednesday. Lecomte had challenged two surveillance measures before the Hanover Administrative Court: a covert observation lasting several weeks on the occasion of the transport of nuclear waste to Biblis in 2020 and a two-year tender for police surveillance that began the same year. Both measures were unlawful, the court ruled.
A joint report by the Iranian rights groups Kurdistan Human Rights Network and the Human Rights Campaign, released on September 6 to mark the upcoming anniversary of the nationwide "Woman, life, freedom," protests sparked by Amini's death on September 16, showed the families of those killed, injured, and arrested have been pressured by the authorities to keep silent over what took place.
The protestors, in contrast, claim to be expressing the authentic will and voice of the Iranian people, who are tired of the unfair repression of women, the intrusive and petty “morality police,” and the strained, warped economy driven by hostility to the West, with only the military, clerical leaders, and their cronies benefiting.
The question is whether a new round of protests could, this time, prove a real threat to the regime, leading to a revolution and regime change, as happened in Tunisia in 2010 and Egypt in 2011. It’s unlikely, given the asymmetry in organization and clear leadership between the government and the protestors. However, events and actions by both sides could still lead to a revolutionary outcome.
The United States and United Kingdom have strongly condemned the "politically motivated" case against Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza as he spent a second birthday in detention after being moved to a new prison that has not been disclosed.
Today, we are witnessing the nudging (manipulation) of the population to accept a ‘new normal’ based on a climate emergency narrative, restrictions on movement and travel, programmable digital money, ‘pandemic preparedness’ courtesy of the World Health Organization’s tyrannical pandemic treaty, unaccountable AI and synthetic ‘food’.
Many readers of this blog will already be subscribed to the SIG-policy mailing list on Orbit or have participated in the APNIC Open Policy Meeting (APNIC OPM). However, how many are aware that an organization with similar activities exists in Japan? This article will explain the origins, structure, activities, achievements, and challenges of this organization known as the Japan Open Policy Forum (JPOPF).
You might recall that Biden’s first nominee to the FCC, Gigi Sohn, found her nomination torn apart after an industry-funded smear campaign successfully derailed the nomination. Sohn is an extremely competent and popular reformer, but a homophobic lobbying campaign by media and telecom giants (Comcast, News Corp.) falsely framed Sohn as a radical extremist, eroding her support in a corrupt Senate.
The two big EU attempts to overly regulate the internet are starting to go into effect. The Digital Services Act (DSA), along with all its associated problems, is about six months ahead of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and all of its associated problems. Six months ago, the EU designated 17 sites as “Very Large Online Platforms” under the DSA (though a few of those sites are protesting the designation, including Zalando, which is the only company on the list mainly targeting EU users).
Of all the things in the gaming industry that annoy me, exclusivity deals have to rank near the very top. The idea that any title, but in particular third-party titles, could be exclusive to certain platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation, is anathema to how art and culture distribution is meant to work. I understand why they’re a thing, I just think they shouldn’t be. And exclusivity deals tend to taint many other aspects of the industry. You need only look at the all of the convoluted fights Microsoft engaged in with regulators after gobbling up a bunch of large game studios to see the vascular reach exclusivity has in the industry.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship people are certainly no strangers to readers here at Techdirt. The league that puts on both mixed martial arts events and, incredibly, events where participants take turns slapping the shit out of each other has been one of the most aggressive pushers of greater and greater IP enforcement programs in professional sports. From the desire for instant takedown enforcement foisted on ISPs to pushing for reforming the DMCA to “notice and stay down” practices, the UFC makes no apologies for wanting as much control and enforcement of its IP as possible.
The July-August 2023 (Vol. 113 No. 4) issue of The Trademark Reporter (TMR) has hit the newsstands. [pdf here]. Willard Knox, Editor-in-Chief, summarizes the contents as follows (and below): This issue offers our readers a comprehensive article examining the impact of delay in seeking preliminary injunctive relief in trademark infringement actions in the United States federal courts, a commentary by J. Thomas McCarthy inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his treatise McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition, and a review of a book exploring the both complementary and conflicting relationship between artificial intelligence and intellectual property law.
As sports rightsholders scramble to launch their new site-blocking system in Italy, after missing the start of the local football season, telecoms regulator AGCOM has announced the successful blocking of 45 pirate sports streaming sites following requests filed by DAZN. Two of the sites may be survivors of a U.S. law enforcement domain seizure campaign carried out last year.
The Delhi High Court in India has approved a new type of pirate site-blocking order, requested by Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros, and other Hollywood studios. The novel ‘Dynamic+ injunction’ requires Internet providers to block access to 'hydra-headed' pirate sites, and covers copyrighted content that doesn't yet exist.
The details of the lawsuit hinge on a slightly obscure aspect of US copyright law. Over on Techdirt, Mike Masnick provides a good explanation of the recording companies’ argument. The key point is that the Great 78 Project is preserving culture that is at risk of being lost because of the fragile nature of 78 rpm records. It is not trying to produce perfect copies for casual listening – the digital versions include all the pops and hisses that are typical of old shellac records. As Brewster Kahle, who set up the Internet Archive (and whose Kahle/Austin Foundation supports this blog) is quoted as saying: [...]
Microsoft promised to shield customers, and pay the costs of damages or settlements from such lawsuits, but only if plaintiffs "used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products," and only if they are using the paid versions of the company's tools. Those that are only using the free version of Bing or GitHub Copilot will not be protected, for instance.
Microsoft will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks arising out of any claims raised by third parties so long as the company's customers use "the guardrails and content filters" built into its products, the company said. It offers funcionality meant to reduce the likelihood that the AI returns infringing content.
Today, we’re publishing an open letter from over 70 artists who use generative AI. It grew from conversations with an initial cohort of the full signatory list, and we hope it can help foster inclusive, informed discussions.
Although ChatGPT generated a huge amount of hype around replacing white collar workers completely when it was first released to the public, the general consensus now is that it won’t outright replace anyone yet, but rather people who know how to use it as a tool will replace those who don’t. Getting started with it is not too hard, either, but you’ll of course need a project to work on to familiarize yourself with the tool. [Volos Projects] gave himself the challenge of writing a poker game using ChatGPT not as the opposing player, but as a co-designer in order to learn more about it as an assistant.
A federal judge has officially dismissed with prejudice a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Sam Smith, Normani, and others over “Dancing with a Stranger.” Judge Wesley L. Hsu just recently ordered the copyright complaint “dismissed on the merits with prejudice,” after Sam Smith, Normani, and their legal team took initial steps last summer...
5:00 AM Awake in bed
5:05 AM Let's get up
5:06 AM Noticing the clear night sky
5:07 AM Getting my telescope out!
~bartender, a whiskey please. Maybe some Red Breast?
Today, I called my girlfriend at work, as she was running late.
Not because she was late for dinner, or because our daughter was asking about her. We're goofballs both of us; distracted, forgetful, always drawn by the things we love. I knew I'd be cooking and bringing the baby home, probably beginning the meal without her. In fact, this is why I usually cook; I can't stand the hunger, and neither can our girl.
Usenet was sorta like Reddit or other threaded forum sites but decentralized.
The word for “sub”, “forum”, “community” on Usenet was called a “newsgroup” or just a “group”.
Each server decided which group it should carry. News servers were mostly ran by ISPs. Back then, ISPs would have email service, you might get a home page on the web, and you’d get Usenet access via one server.
You could only post to groups that your own server carried.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.