Leftovers

• Ali Reza Hayati ☛ Clickbait, clickbait everywhere

  The problem is that many of these web sites are monetized using advertisements and more clicks and traffic they get, more money they make. Authors are now forced by their employers to write articles that make visitors stay longer and surf more. That will get them money. More we visit their web sites, more personal data they collect from us. Our Internet behavior, our interests, how we use web sites, and many more identifying information about us can be collected when we surf a web site and spend enough time on them.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Answering James Savage on blogging

  Writing online is a solitary, personal activity, but the output is broadcast over the most public system on the planet. It’s surreal to think one can have reach now that eclipses what major newspapers had. That’s a lot of eyeballs interrogating something I wrote while huddled in the corner of a coffee shop before work. Traditional outlets had editors, proofreaders, researchers, and printers between our words and the public. You’d have to be a stoic made of granite to not feel any intimidation from that.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Made by Our Species

    Those found in South Africa by Berger, whose previous announcements have been controversial, and his fellow researchers, date back to at least 200,000 BC.

    ​Critically, they also belong to Homo naledi, a primitive species at the crossroads between apes and modern humans, which had brains about the size of oranges and stood about 1.5 meters (five feet) tall.

• Hardware

  • Colossal ☛ A Photo Preservationist Saved a Trove of 4,000 Glass Plate Negatives That Nearly Went Into the Trash

    In 2019, Terri Cappucci, a photographer and preservationist based in Massachusetts, stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove. A collection of 4,000 glass plates spanning the 1860s to the 1930s had been destined for the trash before Cappucci, who has experience shooting wet plates and tintypes, noticed the negatives’ high quality. She also recognized a few Massachusetts landmarks and knew she held an abundance of local history in her hands.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Light show drones: the most popular drones that entertainment companies are using

    Not long ago, the ability to put on a drone light show was largely limited to companies with robust hardware building capabilities, like Intel. In fact, technology giant Intel was one of the first major companies to put on drone light shows, thanks to its ability to make its own light show drones called the Intel Shooting Star. The other big player in the early years of drone light shows was Ehang, which has had its hands in all aspects of drone hardware, ranging from the consumer-focused GhostDrone to passenger-carrying drones. Ehang also has put on its own drone light shows, and it long went back and forth with Intel on who held the world record for largest drone light show.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Gizmodo ☛ YouTube Wants to Stop Sending Kids Down the Rabbit Hole of Eating Disorder Videos

    YouTube announced a new effort to curb its own recommendation algorithms to protect teenagers from the rabbit hole of videos that could inspire eating disorders, body image problems, violence, and other problems. The new initiative comes amidst a growing threat of legislation to address kids’ safety on the internet and may be an effort to stave off new regulations.

  • Le Monde ☛ Too fast, too soon? Sweden backs away from screens in schools

    The minister had previously expressed her doubts, in an article published in the newspaper Expressen on December 21. In the piece, she described the use of digital technology in Swedish schools as an "experiment" and expressed her annoyance at the "uncritical attitude that casually considers digitalization to be positive, regardless of content," leading to the "sidelining" of the textbook, which she said had "advantages that no tablet can replace."

  • [Old] Remedia Europe ☛ Sweden to cut use of screens in schools as reading standards suffer

    Research indicates that media multitasking, such as mixing tablet use with in-class physical lessons, interferes with attention and working memory, negatively affecting grade-point averages, test performance, recall, reading comprehension, note-taking and self-regulation. These effects have been demonstrated during in-class activities (largely lectures) and while students are studying.

  • SR ☛ 'No screen-time for kids under 2' according to new recommendation

    The Swedish Paediatric Society, Barnläkarföreningen, says in a new report that kids under the age of two shouldn't have any screen-time at all with phones, tablets and televisions, while kids under the age of five should only have limited access, the society says.

  • The Sunday Times UK ☛ No screen time before age of two, Swedish doctors advise

    The authorities in neighbouring Denmark have issued similar rules to public daycare facilities, which will only be allowed to put very small children in front of screens or tablets in “very special cases”, such as when they have learning difficulties.

  • Andre Franca ☛ Friendship

    We live in a time of friend scarcity. People are increasingly busy, struggling to survive, taking care of their lives and their families. With growing inequality, disinterest in knowledge, and social media, it’s hard to muster the courage to embrace a beautiful friendship.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Gizmodo ☛ Listen to AI-Assisted John Lennon in The Beatles ‘Final’ New Song

    Music icon John Lennon was assassinated 43 years ago, but his voice is still kicking around. Using the latest AI technology, surviving members of The Beatles, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, have the ability to extract Lennon’s voice from the most notorious track of his unreleased library.

  • New York Times ☛ Gen Z Beatles Fans Come Together on TikTok

    “Can’t believe it’s 2023 and I get the joy of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time ever,” a 23-year-old says in a video post.

  • India Times ☛ The Beatles to release AI-powered new song with Lennon's voice

    The last Beatles song featuring the voice of late member John Lennon and developed using artificial intelligence will be released on Thursday at 1400 GMT alongside the band's first track, record label Universal Music said.

    Called "Now and Then", the song - billed as the last Beatles song - will be released in a double A-side single which pairs the track with the band's 1962 debut UK single "Love Me Do", Universal Music Group said in a statement.

  • NBC ☛ Scarlett Johansson demands AI app stop using her likeness in an ad without her permission

    Johansson is the latest celebrity to take issue with the alleged misuse of her likeness in AI, as deepfakes — a type of artificial media in which people’s faces are replaced with those of other people — and the technology behind them becomes more sophisticated.

  • Variety ☛ Scarlett Johansson Takes Legal Action Against AI App That Ripped Off Her Likeness in Advertisement

    Scarlett Johansson has taken legal action against an AI app that used her name and likeness in an online advertisement without permission.

    Johansson appeared in a 22-second ad posted on X/Twitter by an artificial intelligence image-generating app called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar. Representatives for the actor confirmed to Variety that Johansson is not a spokesperson for the app, and her attorney, Kevin Yorn, handled the situation in a legal capacity. The advertisement was spotted on Oct. 28 and appears to have since vanished from the internet.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Why Google’s generative AI gamble is a game of chicken it could lose

    Or maybe it feels sure that legislators will smooth the path for it and adjust the law in its favour – all the company has to do is wait.

    But such levels of confidence would be shared by almost nobody: the law and precedents are not clear cut, and Google would need to prevail in multiple jurisdictions in order to avoid all legal jeopardy. The likelihood of this happening is close to zero.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Mozilla ☛ Last Chance to fix eIDAS: Secret EU law threatens Internet security

      These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU. Any EU member state has the ability to designate cryptographic keys for distribution in web browsers and browsers are forbidden from revoking trust in these keys without government permission.

      This enables the government of any EU member state to issue website certificates for interception and surveillance which can be used against every EU citizen, even those not resident in or connected to the issuing member state. There is no independent check or balance on the decisions made by member states with respect to the keys they authorize and the use they put them to. This is particularly troubling given that adherence to the rule of law has not been uniform across all member states, with documented instances of coercion by secret police for political purposes.

      The text goes on to ban browsers from applying security checks to these EU keys and certificates except those pre-approved by the EU’s IT standards body - ETSI. This rigid structure would be problematic with any entity, but government-controlled standard bodies are especially susceptible to misaligned incentives in cryptography. ETSI in particular has both a concerning track record of producing compromised cryptographic standards and a working group dedicated entirely to developing interception technology.

    • European Commission ☛ Commission services sign administrative arrangements with French and Irish media regulators to support enforcement of Digital Services Act [blocked by gratuitous javascript]

      The Commission services have signed administrative arrangements with the media regulators of France (Autorité de regulation de la communication audiovisuelle et numérique, Arcom) and Ireland (Coimisiún na Meán), to support its supervisory and enforcement powers under the Digital Services Act (DSA). These arrangements aim at developing expertise and capabilities and follow the Commission Recommendation to Member States for coordinating their response to the spread and amplification of illegal content on Very Large Online Platforms and Very Large Online Search Engines, ahead of the deadline for Member States to play their role in the enforcement of the DSA.

    • Mullvad VPN ☛ EU Digital Identity framework (eIDAS) another kind of chat control?

      2. Articles 45 and 45a stipulate that web browsers must recognise a new form of certificate issued by any EU state , potentially compromising the encryption and most of all trust and overall security of the web.

      3. This situation bears similarity to the controversy surrounding "chat control", as it implies that authorities could intermediate all traffic, decrypting communications sent over services using these certificates.

    • Mozilla ☛ Industry Joint Statement on Article 45 in the EU’s eIDAS Regulation

      Articles 45 and 45a of the proposed eIDAS provisions are likely to weaken the security of the Internet as a whole. These articles mandate that all Web browsers recognize a new form of certificate for the purposes of authenticating websites. The current language is imprecise, and this risks being interpreted as requiring that browsers recognize the certificate authorities that each EU member state appoints for the purposes of authenticating the domain name of websites.

      The root store programs operated by Web browsers and operating systems are the core of Internet security. The certificate authorities recognized by these programs are responsible for attesting to the authenticity of domain names for websites. However, this is not the only system that depends on these certificates. Certificates provided by certificate authorities also secure global commerce in many ways, including email, voice and video, messaging, software delivery, and many other proprietary forms of communication used by businesses.

    • Biometric Update ☛ Hold up: 300 say eIDAS rules could make surveillance easier for EU nations

      A similar statement issued by ten internet infrastructure and security companies says articles 45 and 45a “are likely to weaken the security of the Internet as a whole.” The articles require all web browsers to recognize new site-authentication certificates.

      But the passages in question are “imprecise,” they say.

      That imprecision could be interpreted as saying that all browsers must recognize the certificate authorities that are appointed by each state to authenticate domain names.

    • Computer Weekly ☛ EU digital ID reforms should be ‘actively resisted’, say experts

      The group’s concerns over the amendments largely centre on Article 45 of the reformed eIDAS, where it says the text “radically expands the ability of governments to surveil both their own citizens and residents across the EU by providing them with the technical means to intercept encrypted web traffic, as well as undermining the existing oversight mechanisms relied on by European citizens”.

      “This clause came as a surprise because it wasn’t about governing identities and legally binding contracts, it was about web browsers, and that was what triggered our concern,” explained Murdoch. “You can perhaps see why it might belong here, but once you go into the details, you can see why it doesn’t. It’s out of place; it should be actively resisted.”

    • [Old] ICOUK ☛ What is the eIDAS Regulation?

      The eIDAS Regulation is Regulation (EU) 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market. Following the UK withdrawal from the EU the eIDAS Regulation was adopted into UK law and amended by The Electronic Identification and Trust Services for Electronic Transactions (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019). In addition, the existing UK trust services legislation, The Electronic Identification and Trust Services for Electronic Transactions Regulation 2016 (2016 No.696)) was also amended. Taken together, these regulations are referred to in this guidance as the UK eIDAS Regulations

    • IDEMIA France SAS ☛ 9 facts about the EU Digital Identity Wallet

      The EU Digital Identity Wallet is an ambitious digital identity project launched by the European Commission with the aim of boosting the single market and creating EU champions by streamlining cross-border identity verification. Pilots have been launched both to test the infrastructure and work on the EUDI Wallet’s technical features alongside its legal aspects—a rather unusual process, but one that should speed things up. The regulation should be approved by the end of 2023, along with the implementation timeline—the EU Digital Identity Wallet should be available within the next 2 to 3 years.

    • Yubico AB ☛ The first working demo of a web based EU digital identity wallet leveraging FIDO open authentication standards

      As opposed to the widespread use of federated identities, where cloud-based digital identity providers are the central points for users to access any number of online services, the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet aims to offer a new approach where the user is in control of when and where their personal data is shared and with whom. User credentials and data will include things like driver’s licenses, insurance cards, work and student visa, travel documents, credit card data, educational credentials, digital medical prescriptions, etc.

      Yubico has been invited to join as associate partner in EWC, one of the four EUDI wallet large scale pilots, and will formalize the membership later this year. The EWC project was co-founded by Swedish government agencies including DIGG (Agency for Digital Government), Bolagsverket (Companies Registration Office) and Vetenskapsrådet (Research Council) and Sunet (University Computer Network). Bolagsverket is together with the Finnish Ministry of Finance the coordinator of EWC.

    • Biometric Update ☛ Yubico joins EWC’s large-scale pilot for EU digital ID wallets ahead of eIDAS 2.0

      Yubico will support ECW’s specific use case of a wallet for which multiple entities require shared control. “This is sometimes referred to as an ‘organizational wallet’ or a ‘legal person wallet’,” Ehrensvard writes. “The goal is to then develop more use cases across government and commercial services where users cannot or do not want to rely on a mobile platform.” It will draw on research conducted in collaboration with Greek Universities Network, around adding FIDO-based authentication and encryption to the latter’s open source web-based ID wallet.

    • IT Wire ☛ The first working demo of a web based EU digital identity wallet leveraging Fido open authentication standards

      By Yubico

      COMPANY NEWS: As part of the revision of the EU common identity framework regulation, also known as eIDAS 2.0, the EU Member States will all implement a new common structure for electronic credentials based on digital identity wallets. [...]

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ Embeds and Quotations in Writing

      I remember debating the use of social embeds on my blog because I quoted a lot of things on Twitter.

    • [Repeat] Bruce Schneier ☛ Spyware in India

      Apple has warned leaders of the opposition government in India that their phones are being spied on: [...]

    • AccessNow ☛ Democracy needs privacy: ban rights-violating spyware in India now

      The use of spyware erodes democratic processes and curtails human rights, and authorities in India must act today.

    • The Wire ☛ Apple Warns Top Indian Opposition Leaders, Journalists About ‘State-Sponsored’ Attack on Phone

      The others whom The Wire can confirm have received the warning from Apple are well-known people who are open critics of the Narendra Modi government.

      “The reports of threat notifications from Apple need to be taken very seriously and require investigation to determine the source and the extent of the malware attack. Given Indians – especially journalists, parliamentarians and constitutional functionaries – have also reportedly been targeted with Pegasus in the past it is a matter of deep concern for our democracy,” Prateek Waghre, policy director of the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) told The Wire.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Palantir shares jump on expectation-topping earnings and raised guidance

      The company credited the increased private sector sales partly to strong interest in its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, a software product that launched earlier this year. The platform promises to ease the task of deploying large language models on an organization’s internal infrastructure. AIP includes a code editor optimized for AI projects, a tool that can mitigate erroneous language model outputs and other specialized development tools.

    • International Business Times ☛ Elon Musk Wants To Bring Dating App-Like Features To X (Twitter)

      Details about what the purported everything app would encompass are still few and far between. However, Musk shed some light on his plan to transform X during a recently concluded video conference, which was held on the anniversary of Musk's takeover of Twitter.

• Defence/Aggression

  • BBC ☛ Migrants to Europe dying in gun battles and car crashes

    Lethal exchanges of gunfire between smugglers and fatal car crashes have made the migrant route through the Western Balkans into the EU even more treacherous in recent months. And yet the number of arrivals keeps rising.

• Environment

  • Science Alert ☛ The Southern Hemisphere Is Slowly Drying Out, Scientists Report

    A new study has shown that the Southern Hemisphere has been drying out more than the Northern Hemisphere over the past two decades (2001-2020). The authors suggest the principle cause is the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which occurs every few years when ocean water in the eastern Pacific is warmer than usual.

    The findings are based on data from satellites and measurements of river and stream flows, which enabled the authors to model and calculate changes in water availability. Water availability is the net difference between the amount of water supplied to the landscape, in the form of rainfall on land, and the water removed to the atmosphere by general evaporation or by plants through their leaves.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • YLE ☛ Record 89% of Finland’s electricity from fossil-free sources last year

      Renewable energy sources met 54 percent of the country’s needs, with the biggest growth in wind power. The amount of electricity produced by wind turbines soared by 41 percent to provide 17 percent of total consumption, Statistics Finland said on Thursday.

    • CBC ☛ FTX founder Sam-Bankman-Fried convicted of defrauding cryptocurrency customers

      After the month-long trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried's claim during three days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world's second-largest [cryptocurrency] exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago.

    • BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty In Multibillion-Dollar FTX Fraud Case

      The timing of the verdict was significant, coming almost a year after FTX filed for bankruptcy, causing shockwaves in financial markets and erasing Bankman-Fried's estimated USD 26 billion personal fortune. His corporate meltdown and subsequent conviction have drawn comparisons to infamous financial criminals like Bernie Madoff and Jordan Belfort.

    • [Old] Forbes ☛ Why Does Bitcoin Use So Much Energy?

      More than a decade on, it’s undeniable that Bitcoin has gone mainstream, but perhaps not in quite the way Nakamoto imagined. Instead of facilitating everyday transactions, cryptocurrencies have by and large become speculative assets, a sort of digital gold, attracting investors who believe they’ll be able to resell their holdings for big profits in the future.

      The digital gold rush has come with a catch: Massive electricity consumption.

    • CBC ☛ Province banning N.B. Power from selling electricity to [cryptocurrency] mines

      Energy Minister Mike Holland introduced legislation Tuesday that, once passed, would turn what has been a temporary freeze into a permanent legal ban.

      The Higgs government quietly issued a moratorium on the utility servicing new [cryptocurrency] facilities in March 2022, after it received several large-scale requests for electricity supply.

    • UN ☛ The Hidden Environmental Cost of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin Mining Impacts Climate, Water and Land

      The BTC network relies heavily on fossil energy sources, with coal constituting 45% of the energy mix. This has led to the emission of more than 85.89 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent (Mt CO2 eq) from 2020 to 2021. This is equal to the amount of greenhouse gases produced by burning 84 billion pounds of coal, the output of 190 natural gas-fired power plants, or the waste produced by over 25 million tons of landfilled materials. The water footprint of BTC mining is also significant, amounting to about 1.65 cubic kilometers (km3) from 2020 to 2021. This is comparable to the volume of water required to fill over 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, enough to satisfy more than 300 million people in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the land footprint of BTC mining is extensive, affecting more than 1,870 square kilometers of land, 1.4 times the area of Los Angeles.

    • UN ☛ The Hidden Environmental Cost of Cryptocurrency [PDF]

      This report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) offers the first multi-attribute estimation of the environmental footprint of the global BTC mining network, including its carbon, water, and land footprints. The primary objectives of this assessment include assessing the environmental impact of BTC mining, providing a global perspective by evaluating the mining activities of different nations, and emphasizing the need for immediate policy interventions to monitor, regulate, and mitigate the environmental consequences of digital currencies which play an undeniable and growing role in the global financial system. The global BTC mining network's electricity consumption is substantial. Price of BTC plays a crucial role in mining profitability, with higher prices driving increased mining activity and energy consumption at the global level. A 400% rise in the BTC price from 2020 to 2021, was followed by a 140% surge in the worldwide BTC network’s electricity use. In the 2020-2021 period, the global BTC mining network devoured 173 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, marking a 60% increase from the 2018-2019 period. Projections for 2023 suggest that electricity consumption can exceed 135 TWh. To provide context, if BTC were considered a country, its electricity consumption in July 2023 would rank it 27th globally, outpacing populous nations such as Pakistan.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • University of Michigan ☛ Elephants: Earth’s giant climate change canaries

      “Elephants, in a way, are the giant versions of canaries in a mine for the planet. If we cannot sustain animals as big and as capable and as versatile as elephants, then that means we have ripped a hole in the fabric of life on Earth in a way that could actually be very dangerous to ourselves,” Sanders said. “It could lead to our own demise.”

• Finance

  • Meduza ☛ Russian Defense Ministry official arrested on fraud charges for alleged involvement in lumber price inflation scheme — Meduza

  • DeSmog ☛ New Report Issues Damning Verdict on Food’s Fossil Fuel Addiction

    Food systems are responsible for at least 15 percent of all global fossil fuel consumption, according to a major report launched ahead of the COP28 climate summit.

    The analysis shows that the production, transport, and storage of food are driving greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of the EU and Russia combined. 

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans move to Miami from Seattle

    The post included a video of Bezos in Amazon's first office in Seattle, where he founded the e-commerce company out of his garage in 1994 and grew it into one of the biggest retailers in the world.

  • [Old] Zed A Shaw ☛ The Beggar Barons

    I believe we are in the era of the Beggar Barons. Just like the Robber Barons before, these are fabulously wealthy companies that built their empires by (directly or indirectly) begging for free labor from open source developers.

    The Beggar Barons aren't stealing this labor though, they're just using unscrupulous business practices and social manipulation to beg for free labor. Robbing would be more what Amazon does when it outright steals open source without crediting the author, or straight up just steals Elastic Search's trademark.

    No, this begging is particularly different because it capitalizes on the good will of open source developers. Microsoft, Apple, and Google are standing on the internet in their trillion dollar business suits with a sign that reads "Starving and homeless. Any free labor will help." They aren't holding people up at gun point. Rather they hold out their Rolex encrusted hand and beg, plead, and shame open source developers until they get free labor.

    Once they get this free labor they rarely give credit. They're ungrateful beggars that take their donated work hours, jump in their Teslas, and ride off to make more trillions proclaiming, "Haha! That open source idiot just gave me 10 hours of free labor. What a loser."

  • New York Times ☛ Jeff Bezos Says He Is Leaving Seattle for Miami

    Another factor, he said, was that operations for his rocket company, Blue Origin, are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral, Fla., just over 200 miles by road north of Miami along the state’s Atlantic coast.

  • David Rosenthal ☛ Limited Liability

    Regulation works by assigning liability for actions to specific actors. The whole idea of decentralization is that by diffusing responsibility among a large number of participants the system could evade regulation. Each participant would bear such a small part of the responsibility for the system's actions that enforcing liability for the actions to each of them would be infeasible. The problem with this is that, for economic reasons, the Gini coefficients of cryptocurrencies are extremely large. It is true that most of the participants have only a small part of the responsibility, but there are always some who have a large share and are thus worth enforcing liability against.

  • Unicorn Media ☛ Pebble’s Last Day — The Short Life of a Truly Social Site

    Yesterday, the social network that strived to be a Twitter replacement with a difference ended the party and shut down for good.

    It started life as T2, for “Town Square,” and launched in November of last year. The platform was intended to be an alternative to Twitter (now branded X), which was taken over by Elon Musk at about the same time as Pebble was launched.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Kansas Reflector ☛ A Kansas GOP senator blasts the Koch network and reveals the damage wrought by division

      “This behemoth of a business uses their unfathomable wealth to manipulate and control politicians worldwide,” the senator wrote. “They enjoy playing politics. In fact, their political ‘advocacy’, is what they claim ‘truly sets them apart’. They have created and funded countless think tanks, non-profit organizations, and lobbying groups, most notably, Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ Cloudflare Forecasts Weak Fourth-Quarter Revenue, Shares Fall

    Cloudflare, which offers a suite of website and application services products including content delivery network services, said it expects fourth-quarter revenue between $352 million and $353 million, compared with market estimates of $356.3 million, according to LSEG data.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • France24 ☛ Journalists face increasing threats as India's press freedom declines

    In India, journalists already face hurdles on several fronts: local media outlets are controlled by a small number of powerful owners, mafia groups are rampant and politicians are marred by corruption accusations.

    But a new threat is now emerging: through state agencies, Hindu nationalists directly target media outlets through tax audit raids, police reports and accusations of terrorism resulting in imprisonment. Journalists also face constant hate speech on social media.

  • CPJ ☛ At least 27 Bangladeshi journalists attacked, harassed while covering political rallies

    On Saturday, October 28, at least 27 journalists covering rallies in the capital of Dhaka were attacked by supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the ruling Awami League party, as well as police, according to a statement by local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, several journalists who spoke to CPJ, and various news reports.

  • CPJ ☛ In Turkey, 3 journalists detained for ‘disinformation,’ one jailed, 3 others under investigation

    The two journalists were detained under a 2022 disinformation law that introduced prison sentences of up to three years for spreading false information about security, public order, and the general health of the country that causes concern, fear, or panic.

    Police searched Şardan’s house and an Ankara court ordered the journalist be jailed pending trial over a column he published about a report prepared by the Turkish Intelligence Organization (MIT) on corruption in the Turkish judiciary, T24 and others reported.

  • Press Gazette ☛ At 1,500 stories per day, Mail Online is UK’s most prolific news website

    Press Gazette tracked the content published to the RSS feeds of eight major UK news sites over a week between 13 and 19 September. While the amount of content varies depending on the time of the year, the number of reporters available and the intensity of the news agenda, we wanted to get a snapshot of what the UK’s biggest newsrooms produce in a week.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Rohan Kumar ☛ Best practices for inclusive textual websites

    One of the core ideas behind the flavor of inclusive design I present is inclusivity by default. Web pages shouldn’t use accessible overlays, reduced-data modes, or other personalizations if these features can be available all the time. Personalization isn’t always possible: Tor users, students using school computers, and people with restrictive corporate policies can’t “make websites work for them”; that’s a webmaster’s responsibility.

  • Armin Ronacher ☛ Post Covid Remote Work Doesn't Work As Well

    This year I decided that I want to share my most important learnings about engineering, teams and quite frankly personal mental health. My hope is that those who want to learn from me find it useful.

    You can't make it 15 minutes on Twitter or elsewhere, without running into a post about a botched return to work implementation. You also can't make it for very long to hear about the San Francisco doom loop. These two topics relate in a quite deep way to me personally. This post is a reflection of working at Sentry for almost 10 years, a company primarily headquartered in San Francisco and how it is to work for it from a distance before and after Covid.

  • ANF News ☛ Jailed in Evin Prison, Narges Mohammadi is denied treatment for refusing to cover her head

    In a statement on Instagram on Wednesday evening, Mohammadi’s family said, citing the prison director, that their daughter is banned from being transferred to a cardiac clinic on orders of higher authorities. According to the family, this is the second time Mohammadi has been denied transfer to hospital.

    According to the family member, the prison administration even refused to take Nergis to the infirmary without a headscarf after a medical team went to the women’s ward in the notorious Evin Prison to treat Narges Mohammadi by echocardiogram.

  • BBC ☛ The dark side of touch-screen tipping

    Still, says Biswas some businesses may be able to keep their base wages low with the promise that boundless tips will boost overall take-home pay. This has the potential to keep base wages down across these industries, he says – and if tipping is inconsistent, workers stand to lose wages they may have expected, even budgeted for.

  • ABC ☛ Executions in Iran are up 30%, a new United Nations report says

    Iran is carrying out executions “at an alarming rate,” putting to death at least 419 people in the first seven months of the year, the United Nations chief said in a new report. That's a 30% increase from the same period in 2022.

    Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the report to the U.N. General Assembly on the human rights situation in Iran that seven men were executed in relation to or for participating in nationwide protests, sparked by the September 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was picked up by the morality police for her allegedly loose headscarf in violation of Iran’s Islamic dress code.

  • The Verge ☛ DoorDash now warns you that your food might get cold if you don’t tip

    The driver preference for pre-tipped orders may be linked to DoorDash’s somewhat convoluted courier payment method, which was reworked following revelations that DoorDash was not giving drivers the full amount of customer tips.

    In 2019, DoorDash restructured its payments to drop the controversial “tipped wage” method and pay a base rate with 100 percent of tips going to drivers. The knock-on effect of this, however, makes orders without tips less appealing to drivers.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • ABC ☛ Disney to acquire the remainder of Hulu from Comcast for roughly $8.6 billion

    Disney has treated Hulu as one of its own services for years — for instance, when it launched its own streaming service, Disney+, in 2019 and immediately offered a streaming bundle that included Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+.

• Monopolies

  • India Times ☛ Amazon made $1 billion through secret price raising algorithm: US FTC

    Amazon.com used a series of illegal strategies to boost profits at its online retail empire, including an algorithm that pushed up prices U.S. households paid by more than $1 billion, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission detailed in a new court filing on Thursday.

    The FTC lawsuit was filed in September but many details were withheld until Thursday when a version of the lawsuit with fewer redactions was made public in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

  • India Times ☛ Amazon punished its own sellers to limit Walmart's reach, FTC says

    To hamstring Jet.com, Amazon removed some third-party sellers' offers from its Buy Box. The complaint cites one Amazon seller who adopted a policy of making "absolutely sure that our products are not priced lower on Walmart than they are on Amazon" because of pressure from Amazon.

    Amazon also deployed what the FTC described as anti-competitive algorithms against Jet.com's most popular products leading to Jet revising its strategy to match the lowest prices elsewhere, the FTC said.

  • Copyrights

    • India Times ☛ Filmmakers need to understand that writers are the pillars of the movie: Maasthi Upparahalli

      We need to treat them on par with the music team or cinematography team, but that is not happening. A specific budget needs to be dedicated to the writers for all the research and work that they bring in to make a story.”

    • Walled Culture ☛ Lawrence Lessig on copyright, generative AI and the right to train

      Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and one of the biggest names in the world of digital copyright. Walled Culture’s 2021 interview with him runs through many of his key ideas and projects, although sadly he does not work directly in the field of copyright any more. However, he evidently takes a keen interest in the developments there, and The Verge has a fascinating interview with Lessig that explores one particularly interesting area: how copyright should apply to the currently-trendy area of generative AI. Here’s his view on whether it is permissible to train AI systems on copyright material: [...]

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Police Dismantle Pirate IPTV Operation, Bogus "€366m Losses" Claim Goes Viral

      Press releases published today by Spain's National Police and the Ministry of the Interior celebrated the dismantling of a pirate IPTV operation, the arrest of eight suspects, and alleged losses to rightsholders of €366.25 million. In dozens of local and international news reports, this 'official' figure is cited verbatim. We have zero faith in it, and we aren't alone. After a silent unreferenced edit, the police press release now reads €366,250, but the government's copy remains intact.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding — AWKOTUE Wordo: SEXED

• Politics and World Events

  • Moments of light

    So if I was in their shoes, I would also naturally side with the "good side", my family and friends. Not because I'm against the "bad side", but because the "good side" is closer to me, that's all.

• Science

  • why cellular automata fascinate me

    Cellular automata have been fascinating me for a while now. Time to talk about it.

    Cellular automata come in all sorts of varieties, in one to any number of dimensions. But to get to the bottom of they do fascinate me it is enough to look at simple one-dimensional cellular automata.