Leftovers

• Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Cyber battle of region's best young ethical hackers to take place in Tartu

  According to Kätlin Koemets, head of CTF Tech, the main organizer of the competition, interest in the cyber battle format, which was developed in Estonia four years ago, has been growing ever since

  [...]

• Zach Flower ☛ 100 Days to Offload: Part Deux

  It's been just shy of a year and a half since I started that job, and I think I'm finally in a place to start writing again—and what better way to do that than to give the 100 Days to Offload challenge another try. To recap, here are the rules: [...]

• 404 Media ☛ Omegle, the Site That Paired Strangers for Video Chats, Is Dead

  Leif K-Brooks, who launched the site in March 2009 when he was 18 years old, replaced the service with a lengthy message about free speech, the nature of the internet, and his vision for the now-dead site.

  Based on archives of the site, K-Brooks shut it down on Wednesday.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Omegle video chat platform shuts down after abuse claims

  But although it was meant as a tool to connect people worldwide, Omegle was marred by several cases of misuse.

  "Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil," Brooks wrote. "There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes."

• Futurism ☛ Omegle Shuts Down Amid Storm of Child Abuse Allegations

  The anarchic video chat service Omegle has officially shut down amid a storm of child abuse allegations.

  After 14 long years, the service has been taken offline, leaving those looking to be paired up with total strangers for an impromptu video chat out of luck — or at least switch to Chatroulette, which somehow still exists.

• Education

  • University of Michigan ☛ Should you trust Wikipedia?

    Just as political activism requires tedious door-knocking and canvassing to win elections, Wikipedia also requires a similar principle of collaboration. It takes a group of active global citizens, with contributions both big and small, to maintain and expand the largest source of gathered information ever. The beauty of a website like Wikipedia is that not only can everyone reap the benefits of an expansive, constantly-updating encyclopedia, but they can also contribute substantially as well.

• Hardware

  • Gizmodo ☛ CT Scans Show Why Fake Apple AirPods Sound So Awful

    The fakes look nothing like this on the inside. “The fakes have a lot less going on. Components are connected by wires, not flexible PCBs. You won’t find wires like this in any modern mobile Apple product”, he continues.

    These products use wires instead of PCBs, and even the wires are soldered very poorly. He also highlights “the lack of magnets, lower-quality plastic, and smaller batteries” in the fake ones and also mentions their significantly lighter weight. “To make up for the difference, their cases have weights,” he says.

  • Zach Flower ☛ Screen Time Is for Chumps

    Because the sound of my typewriter has become a common theme song around my household over the last few years, it should come as no surprise that my kids have started to express interest in this perfectly valid and not-at-all nerdy hobby. Turns out, children get the same rush of joy when they see the letters they type show up immediately on a piece of paper that they can then take out and hold.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Best microSD Cards for Raspberry Pi 2023

    MicroSD cards are a cost effective storage means. At the time of writing, high performance 32GB micro SD cards can be picked up for $10! But which microSD card should you buy for your Raspberry Pi? To help find the answer, we tested ten different 32GB cards on a Raspberry Pi 4, a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and a Raspberry Pi Zero W to see which offers the best performance for the money.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CNN ☛ Mark Zuckerberg personally rejected Meta’s proposals to improve teen mental health, court documents allege

    The newly unsealed communications in the lawsuit — filed originally by Massachusetts last month in a state court — allegedly show how Zuckerberg ignored or shut down top executives, including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States.

    The disclosures highlight Zuckerberg’s sway over decisions at Meta that can affect billions of users. And they also shed light on tensions that have occasionally arisen between Zuckerberg and other Meta officials who have pushed to enhance user well-being.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Ask the Community: How are you using Social Media in 2023?

    One year into Elon Musk’s acquisition of X (formerly known as Twitter), engagement metrics are down across the board, with app downloads down 38%, web traffic down 7% globally and down 11.6% in the U.S. “What is UP with Twitter?” “What about Threads?” “Is Academic Twitter disappearing?” “Could BlueSky be the replacement?” Are your metrics changing? These are questions we continue to hear in personal conversations, organizational meetings, industry articles, and in gatherings of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) MarComm committee. As we all reconsider our approaches and channels, we asked the community to weigh in with their response to the question, “How has your / your organization’s approach to social media changed in the last year?”

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals a vast and deadly rot

    But how did this happen? How did a giant company like Chamberlain come to this enshittening juncture, in which it felt empowered to sabotage the products it had already sold to its customers? How can this be legal? How can it be good for business? How can the people who made this decision even look themselves in the mirror?

    To answer these questions, we must first consider the forces that discipline companies, acting against the impulse to enshittify their products and services. There are four constraints on corporate conduct: [...]

  • ABC ☛ To help 2024 voters, Meta says it will begin labeling political ads that use AI-generated imagery

    The development of new AI programs has made it easier than ever to quickly generate lifelike audio, images and video. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to create fake videos of a candidate or frightening images of election fraud or polling place violence. When strapped to the powerful algorithms of social media, these fakes could mislead and confuse voters on a scale never seen.

    Meta Platforms Inc. and other tech companies have been criticized for not doing more to address this risk. Wednesday's announcement by Meta — which came on the same day House lawmakers held a hearing on deepfakes — isn't likely to assuage those concerns.

  • India Times ☛ Chatbots may 'hallucinate' more often than many realise

    When Google introduced a similar chatbot several weeks later, it spewed nonsense about the James Webb telescope. The next day, Microsoft's new Bing chatbot offered up all sorts of bogus information about the Gap, Mexican nightlife and singer Billie Eilish. Then, in March, ChatGPT cited a half dozen fake court cases while writing a 10-page legal brief that a lawyer submitted to a federal judge in Manhattan.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The AI Debate Is Happening in a Cocoon

    Our organization, the AI Now Institute, was among a small number of watchdog groups present at Sunak’s summit. We sat at tables where world leaders and technology executives pontificated over threats to hypothetical (disembodied, raceless, genderless) “humans” on the uncertain horizon. The event underscored how most debates about the direction of AI happen in a cocoon.

    The term artificial intelligence has meant different things over the past seven decades, but the current version of AI is a product of the enormous economic power that major tech firms have amassed in recent years. The resources needed to build AI at scale—massive data sets, access to computational power to process them, highly skilled labor—are profoundly concentrated among a small handful of firms. And the field’s incentive structures are shaped by the business needs of industry players, not by the public at large.

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ Why We'll Have AGI by 2025-2028

    I think this is a better definition because it’s more specific. Payscale did a study of 302 different knowledge worker salary profiles, and found the average salary to be $87,342.

    Cool, so let’s say that an AGI is a system that can replace an average knowledge worker in the US making an average salary.

    So how could that happen?

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ UK MPs Asleep at the Wheel as Facial Recognition Technology Spells The End of Privacy in Public

      The use of facial recognition technology (FRT) by law enforcement and private companies in public spaces throughout the UK is on the rise. In August 2023, the government announced that it is looking to expand its use of FRT, which it considers “an increasingly important capability for law enforcement and the Home Office”. The indiscriminate use of this dystopian biometric technology to identify individuals in public spaces is a form of mass surveillance that threatens human rights and is often carried out without the knowledge or consent of individuals whose sensitive biometric data is being harvested.

      Not only does FRT seriously infringe upon the right to privacy, but the use of this highly intrusive technology at protests undermines other fundamental rights such as the right to peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression. In the UK, this is taking place within a democratic vacuum without any specific law restricting its use in public spaces.

    • Privacy International ☛ Revealed: UK MPs “asleep at the wheel” as government ramps up facial recognition technology

      PI has recently conducted a survey of 114 UK MPs through YouGov. Published this morning, the results are seriously concerning and reveal that the majority of MPs are sorely ill-informed about FRT in the UK, despite new government plans to expand its use and the grave threat that the technology poses to human rights.

    • [Old] Portfolio Media Inc ☛ NJ Suit Shines Light On Police Use Of Infant Blood In Probes

      While there are documented cases of police trying to obtain infant blood samples from state health departments' labs, the one in New Jersey is among the first known criminal cases where the practice has led to the prosecution of a suspect.

      The public defender lawsuit and the underlying criminal investigation expose slippery slopes between health care and surveillance, genetic genealogy and privacy, and between the need to solve crimes and people's constitutional rights to due process.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ EU Digital Identity Regulation (eIDAS): Pirates don’t support blank cheque for surveillance of citizens online!

      The EU Parliament and EU Council yesterday struck a political deal on the reform of the EU Digital Identity Regulation (eIDAS 2). A new digital identity wallet app is to allow EU citizens to access public and private digital services such as Facebook or Google, and pay online. The deal was made even though more than 500 scientists and numerous NGOs in an open letter „strongly warn against the currently proposed trilogue agreement, as it fails to properly respect the right to privacy of citizens and secure online communications“ – criticism which the Pirate Party Members of the European Parliament underline.

      “This regulation is a blank cheque for surveillance of citizens online, endangering our privacy and security online”, comments Pirate Party lawmaker Patrick Breyer. “Browser security is being undermined, and overidentification will gradually erode our right to use digital services anonymously. Mark Zuckerberg should have no right to see our ID! Entrusting our digital lives to the government instead of Facebook and Google is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. This deal sacrifices essential requirements the European Parliament had put forward to make the eID app privacy-friendly and secure. The EU misses the opportunity to establish a trustworthy framework for modernization and digitization. We will watch the implementation very closely.”

    • epicenter.works ☛ EU Digital Identity Reform: The Good, Bad & Ugly in the eIDAS Regulation

      The idea of having the owner of a domain name being visible in the web browser was shelved by every browser in the world in 2009. In 2021 the Commission deemed it a good idea to force the whole world to reintroduce this mid 2000 idea of “extended validation” under the new name “Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs)”. While nobody will use this, the real damage done by this system is that every web browser in the world will be forced to trust the root certificates from all European Trust Service Providers, regardless of them being actually trustworthy or not.

      In response to the revelations of government mass surveillance by Edward Snowden, the share of encrypted web traffic jumped from less than half to 95%. The security of this encryption depends on lists of trusted certificates by browsers and governments around the world have repeatedly tried to attack this system. With the original proposal, the EU would have broken the complete trust architecture of the world wide web and even if a certificate would have been found to be used for surveillance, there would have been nothing in the law to allow the browser to kick it out.

      The final twist of this story is that only days before the final deal the negotiators agreed to a change in the text that ensures browsers’ freedom to protect domain authentication and the encryption of web traffic in a manner and with the technology they consider most appropriate. In practice, this means browsers will have a way to resist QWACs undermining encryption, by separating them from TLS. Thus, at least we can expect browsers like Mozilla to fight against the undermining of the trust architecture of the web. For others like Microsoft we have less hope.

    • European Parliament ☛ EU-wide digital wallet: MEPs reach deal with Council

      The legislation will now have to be endorsed by both Parliament and Council before it becomes law. The Industry, Research and Energy Committee will hold a vote on the file on 28 November.

    • India Times ☛ Wearable 'Ai Pin' launched by Humane, backed by ex-Apple execs and Microsoft

      Founded by ex-Apple veterans who worked on the iPhone, Humane is one of many companies in Silicon Valley angling to find the next wave of consumer devices. But the company has emphatically rejected the mixed-reality headsets in the works from companies such as Apple and Meta Platforms, with Humane co-founder and President Imran Chaudhri saying during a demonstration of the Ai Pin earlier this year that "the future is not on your face."

• Defence/Aggression

  • India Times ☛ EU opens probe into TikTok, YouTube over child protection

    The European Commission said it had sent formal requests for information to TikTok and YouTube respectively, the first step in procedures launched under the EU's new law on digital content.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ The Gaza war probably won’t change Iran’s nuclear strategy. It’ll make it difficult to reach a long-term agreement, though.

    As of today, Iran is enriching to 60 percent and has been careful not to cross the 90 percent military-grade enrichment threshold. In August, just weeks before the Gaza war, it also reached an understanding for broader talks with the United States—the result of which was Iran’s willingness to decrease enriched uranium in exchange for economic relief in the form of unfreezing Iranian funds around the world. Furthermore, these developments led to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly giving his blessing in September to the Iranian nuclear negotiation team to meet directly with their US counterparts in Oman.

  • [Repeat] Defence Web ☛ Terrorists target the Sahel’s gold mines as a source of financing

    Artisanal gold mines in the Sahel have become the targets of terrorist groups operating in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The groups smuggle gold out of the region to finance their activities.

  • Daniel Pipes ☛ Hamas vs. Gazans

    Then there is Hamas, the jihadi organization that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and which became the focus on global attention after massacring around 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7. For fifteen years, it has implemented an opposite and historically unique purpose in tormenting its subject population. Rather than sacrifice soldiers for battlefield gains, it sacrifices civilians for public relations purposes.

    The more misery endured by Gazans, the more convincingly Hamas can accuse Israel of aggression and the wider and more vehement the support it wins from antisemites of all persuasions – Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, far-leftists, and far-rightists.

  • India Times ☛ EU opens probe into TikTok, YouTube over child protection

    The EU's executive arm said it wanted to know what measures the video-sharing platforms have taken to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA), especially regarding the risks posed to children's mental and physical health.

    The DSA is part of the European Union's powerful armoury to bring big tech to heel, and demands that digital giants do more to counter the spread of illegal and harmful content as well as disinformation.

  • Axios ☛ TikTok ads blanket GOP debate during clash over the platform

    Driving the news: The Republican presidential candidates, except Ramaswamy, fiercely condemned the video app during the debate.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society ☛ The Wiltshire Thatcher – a Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex

    The origin of the central figure has remained a mystery for over half a century. It can now be revealed as a late Victorian coloured photograph of a Wiltshire thatcher. A grey beard underlining his weathered face, the figure stoops whilst apparently pausing for the photographer, his leathery hands grasp the pole supporting the bundle of hazel on his back.

    The original of the photograph made famous by the band was recently discovered in a late Victorian photograph album. The discovery was made by Brian Edwards, a Visiting Research Fellow with the Regional History Centre at the University of the West of England, and is in the Museum collections.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Led Zeppelin IV: The Identity of the Mysterious ‘Stick Man’ on the Album’s Cover Has Been Finally Been Revealed

    “The first thing you notice is that as a photograph, it’s a really, really good photograph and also that the area of the tour being documented was quite a tight area geographically,” Edwards explained. “We had those clues, plus the name Ernest and as a bit of a stroke of luck I happened to remember that a lot of early photographers were also chemists. I only knew of one chemist in Wiltshire operating in the mid-century called Farmer, so I looked him up and he left Wilshire to start up a photography business in Brighton. He had three sons, one of whom was called Ernest. This Ernest not only went on to become a photographer but also a teacher of photography and became quite well known. Fortunately, I found his marriage certificate online and there were handwriting matches with the words in the photo album.”

• Environment

  • Atlantic Council ☛ How digitalization can improve climate resilience in the Global South

    While digital technology is only one plank of the necessary energy transition, it presents multiple opportunities for countries in the Global South. First, in some cases it could allow them to “leapfrog” more developed economies by skipping dated infrastructure. Second, while energy infrastructure with digital capabilities may be more expensive up front, it is also an investment in those countries’ technical capabilities. Policymakers in the Global South may rightly be wary about adopting Western technologies in such a key sector. But if done correctly, investment in digital solutions may be able to simultaneously generate competitive industries while combating climate change.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Northern peatlands in Finland are still expanding, finds study

    The study conducted at the University of Helsinki was aimed at investigating how peatlands have expanded and what it means for carbon sinks and natural landscape. In addition, the researchers examined the effect of forest fires and local conditions, such as topography and the composition of the subsoil, on the expansion of peatlands.

  • Quartz ☛ Shell is giving Greenpeace a $6.6 million incentive to stop protesting

    Shell has now made an offer to reduce the monetary burden: The company and its contractor will settle for $1.4 million in damages, as long as “Greenpeace organisations would agree to never protest on its infrastructure again, at sea or in port anywhere in the world,” according to Greenpeace International.

    The environmental activist group and its UK affiliate said they “would agree to such a protest ban if Shell agreed to stop wrecking the climate—by complying with the Netherlands court order requiring the company to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019, across all activities.”

  • Vice Media Group ☛ What We Know About the Massive Chemical Fire in Shepherd, Texas

    It is not clear what chemicals caught fire. According to the Polk County Office of Emergency Management, the plant had recently reported to the state environmental protection agency that it had Wood Turpentine, Phosphoric Acid, Xylene, Diesel Fuel, IMP-IC-2012, Sulfuric Acid, CDA-121, NP 9, Isopropyl Alcohol, IMB-BAC-2, AZA-121 Dispersant, and Acetic Acid.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • RFERL ☛ [Crackers] Linked To Russian Intelligence Blamed For 2022 Ukraine Grid Disruption

      “This attack represents the latest evolution in Russia’s cyber physical attack capability, which has been increasingly visible since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the Mandiant report said.

      A GRU entity known as Unit 74455 has been blamed for some of the most damaging cyberattacks across the world over the past decade. Known widely by the nickname “Sandworm,” the unit gained notoriety when it penetrated Ukraine’s electricity grid in 2015, cutting off power to more than 200,000 people.

    • Positech Games ☛ Solar farm update: earthworks!

      After a LOT of email back and forth, which frankly drove me crazy, we seem to have finally agreed on everything. That means that we can build the base for the substations, which is the only bit of concrete involved on the farm (except maybe a tiny, tiny amount for CCTV tower bases). Because the substation base has to happen before we install switchgear, the substation itself, or move the overhead line which eventually allows the last few panels/frames…. its been holding up the entire project.

    • Idiomdrottning ☛ Steel without fossils

      If there is option A and option B, and option A means making slightly less money but the Earth won’t die, then option A is better. That perspective should’ve permeated the report, not be tucked into a corner of “well OK we can see they believe they must do this but they’re not gonna make as much money as those who kept on blasting until a not-yet-invented–pie-in-the-sky technology comes along like a machina ex machina and saves us all!”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Hindu ☛ Fishermen rescue whale shark at Muthalapozhi

      Sajan John, a marine specialist at WTI, said the whale shark was the eighth one to be rescued and released along the Kerala coast since the launch of the campaign. The fishermen of Muthalapozhi demonstrated their commitment to marine life conservation and showcased the positive impact of education and community-involvement in safeguarding oceans.

• Finance

  • EuroGamer ☛ Warframe studio confirms "a number of" layoffs as it shuts down publishing arm

    Warframe developer Digital Extremes has confirmed a "number of" layoffs at the studio resulting from the closure of its publishing division. It's also announced it'll no longer be publishing free-to-play online action-RPG Wayfinder following the closure, and that full control of the property will return to developer Airship Syndicate.

    In a statement provided to Eurogamer after news of layoffs at the studio was broken via PC Gamer, Digital Extremes wrote, "We can confirm we have made the difficult decision to cease operations of our external projects division."

  • Essel Group ☛ Sony's profits slide 29pc amid chip slump

    Sony Corporation faced a 29 per cent dip in operating profit during the July-September quarter, reporting 263 billion yen ($1.74 billion), Reuters reported on Tuesday. The downturn was attributed to weaker performances in its image sensor and financial divisions, with the chips division specifically noting a 37 per cent decline in profit due to elevated expenses and decreased sales of image sensors, commonly used in smartphones.

    In response to this, Sony President Hiroki Totoki told Reuters, "The North American market shows a significant year-on-year decline, and at this point, there's no change to our view that a recovery in the market will take place from next fiscal year."

  • BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Norway Uses AI To Invest $1.4 Tn Sovereign Wealth Fund

    Sovereign wealth fund CEO Nicolai Tangen said that Norway's USD 1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund is using artificial intelligence to help manage its investment at NEXT conference in New York.

    The fund invests the Norwegian state's revenues from oil and gas production in equities, bonds, property and renewable projects abroad.

  • India Times ☛ $1.4 trillion Norwegian sovereign wealth fund's CEO says it is using AI to deploy capital

    It is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, holding stakes in more than 9,200 companies globally and owning 1.5% of all listed stocks.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Will the EU get new members soon? Here’s what you need to know.

    It was never the intention to stay twenty-seven forever. On Wednesday, the European Commission recommended that the EU Council open talks with Ukraine to join the European Union, which is currently three shy of thirty members. Might Moldova and Georgia, which also saw their long-running bids to join the EU boosted by the Commission, join with Ukraine to make up the difference? And what about the several Western Balkans countries that now appear stalled in their decades-long efforts to join? Below, Atlantic Council experts answer important questions about where EU enlargement stands now.

  • India Times ☛ EU AI Act to serve as blueprint for global rules: lawmaker Brando Benifei

    While several countries have been looking at ways to regulate AI, European lawmakers have taken a lead by drafting AI rules aimed at setting a global standard for a technology key to almost every industry and business. The draft rules could get approved by next month.

  • India Times ☛ Apple agrees to $25 million settlement with US over hiring of immigrants

    The Justice Department in a statement said Apple did not recruit US citizens or permanent residents for jobs that were eligible for a federal program allowing employers to sponsor immigrant workers for green cards, in violation of a federal law that bars discrimination based on citizenship.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Rival powers agree that AI poses new risks. Can they work together to address them?

    The most notable outcome from the UK gathering was the Bletchley Declaration, which struck all the right chords. It emphasized the importance of involving multiple stakeholders and international cooperation, and it underscored the responsibilities of “actors developing frontier AI capabilities.” Headlines have largely focused on the remarkable feat of bringing China, the European Union, and the United States together to sign a declaration on AI governance, at a time when they seem to agree on very little else. The declaration reveals that countries across the ideological spectrum are worried about the potential for harms caused by AI systems and recognize that solutions cannot be built by one country alone. And thus, on the same stage, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo declared that “even as nations compete vigorously, we can and must search for global solutions to global problems,” while Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Wu Zhaohui called for collaboration to mitigate potential unintended harms of frontier AI models. Wu’s presence at the closed-door government leaders’ meetings on the second day of the summit—which was not publicly acknowledged at the time—was also notable, but necessary given China’s position of influence in AI development and global uptake of the technology outside of Western democracies.

  • Light Blue Touchpaper ☛ How hate sites evade the censor

    This case study is perhaps useful for the UK, where the recent Online Safety Bill empowers Ofcom to do just this – to use injunctions in the civil courts to take down unpleasant websites.

  • EDRI ☛ A coalition of 6 organisations takes EU’s dangerous terrorist content regulation to court

    Under this regulation, law enforcement authorities in an EU country can order a website, a social media platform or any online service provider which hosts user-generated content to block within one hour any content alleged to be of terrorist nature – across all Member States in the EU. These service providers can also be forced to implement “specific measures” to prevent the publication of terrorist content. These “specific measures” – the choice of which remains at the discretion of the service providers – may include, for example, automated upload filters which scan all content before publication. Such automated systems are unable to take account of the context of the publication and are notoriously prone to errors that result in the censorship of protected speech such as journalism, satire, art, or documentation of human rights abuses. Furthermore, the obligation to adopt “specific measures” may violate the prohibition of imposing a general monitoring obligation under the Digital Services Act.

  • The Register UK ☛ EU lawmakers scolded for concealing identities of privacy-busting content-scanning 'experts'

    Yet the European Commission still appears to believe there's a way to have bypassable strong end-to-end encryption while respecting privacy rights and maintaining operational security, flying in the face of mathematics. And it has evidently persisted in that belief based on consultations with so-called experts.

  • [Old] European Ombudsman ☛ Decision on the European Commission’s refusal to give public access to documents concerning its impact assessment related to a legislative proposal on preventing and combatting child sexual abuse (joint cases 2206/2022/SF and 2208/2022/SF)

    The complainant, an Irish civil liberties organisation, made two requests for public access to background documents and technical information, which fed into the Commission’s impact assessment accompanying its proposal for a regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. The Commission identified two documents as falling within the scope of the complainant’s requests and granted wide partial access.

    The complainant considered that the Commission had failed to identify all relevant documents falling within the scope of its requests.

    The Ombudsman found that the Commission had indeed failed to identify a document, namely a list of experts that clearly fell within the scope of the complainant’s requests. The Ombudsman considered that this constitutes maladministration.

    The Ombudsman suggested that the Commission register the complainant’s request for public access to the list of experts as a new request and handle it in accordance with Regulation 1049/2001.

  • India Times ☛ UK focuses on child safety at the start of new online regime

    Britain's communications regulator said tech companies must focus on protecting children from abuse, grooming and pro-suicide content, in its first steps as the enforcer of online safety.

    Ofcom, which gained new powers when the Online Safety Act came into law last month, said children were a key priority.

  • India Times ☛ Google, Meta win court fight against Austrian online content rule

    The Austrian law, enacted in 2021 and which obliges Big Tech to publish regular reports of illegal content, comes amid mounting concerns worldwide about hateful posts.

    The European Union recently adopted new rules called the Digital Services Act (DSA) which require large online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful online content or risk fines up to 6% of their annual turnover.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RFERL ☛ France Accuses Russia Of Part In Disinformation Campaign Over Star of David Graffiti In Paris

      France on November 9 blamed a Russian disinformation campaign for amplifying graffiti of Stars of David that appeared in Paris earlier this week. [...]

    • France24 ☛ Fake story about assassination attempt on Mahmoud Abbas goes viral

      People have claimed that this video shows an assassination attempt on Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. It has since gone viral on X (formerly Twitter). However, the footage actually shows a drug raid being carried out by Palestinian Authority police.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Cartooonists Rights Network International ☛ Report on the situation of threatened cartoonists around the world 2020-2022 [PDF]

    The report covers a three-year period, from 2020 until 2022 (with a very few exceptions that provide salient and illustrative examples). While this report is based on case studies within the period, it may be developed and expanded upon by further reports in the future.

    “Cartoonists on the line” is a joint product of Cartooning for Peace (France) and Cartoonists Rights (USA) with support from Freedom Cartoonists Foundation (Switzerland), Isocrates Foundation (Switzerland) and the UNESCO Global Media Defence Fund (UNESCO-GMDF).

    [...] These are not easy times for journalists and the free press, and that goes double for the courageous cartoonists with whom we work, speaking truth to power, many times under the heel of some the most despotic and humourless bullies imaginable. This report shines a much-needed spotlight on these brave individuals who are standing up for the right to free speech and the principle of free expression around the world.

  • La Quadature Du Net ☛ A coalition of 6 organisations takes EU’s dangerous terrorist content regulation to court

    The litigant civil society organisations – among many others – have denounced the potential of fundamental rights violations entailed by the TERREG since the legislative proposal was published by the European Commission in 2018. While fighting terrorism is an important objective, TERREG threatens freedom of expression and access to information on the internet by giving law enforcement the power to decide what can be said online, without prior independent judicial review. The danger of law enforcement overreach and abuse of content removals has been widely reported, and will inevitably increase with this Regulation. This legislation also reinforces the hegemony of the largest online platforms, as only very few platforms are currently able to meet the obligations under TERREG.

    “The question of online content moderation is a serious one, and the answer cannot be a simplistic but dangerous techno-solutionist police censorship,” says Bastien Le Querrec, legal officer at La Quadrature du Net, the leading NGO of the coalition.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Ministry Bans Ads Using Images Of Popular Actresses Over Hijab Opposition

    The film's director, Soheil Beiraghi, disclosed via an Instagram story on November 8 that actresses Fatemeh Motamed-Aria and Baran Kosari were barred from having their faces used in promotional materials after Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili, Iran's Islamic guidance minister, appeared to widen an existing ban on promotional materials featuring those who have spoken out publicly against the hijab.

  • VOA News ☛ Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Hospitalized

    The head of the Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, released a statement expressing deep concern for the well-being of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Furthermore, she issued a stern warning to the Iranian government to take immediate and essential measures to provide the necessary medical support to Mohammadi and other incarcerated women.

    The Olof Palme Foundation of Sweden, which honored Narges Mohammadi with its 2023 prize, sent an open letter strongly imploring the provision of vital medical care for Mohammadi.

    The American PEN Association had previously stressed the imperative need for her immediate and unconditional release.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Belarusian culture, language, and history is being destroyed – interview

    "But we have to look at it as a punishment system /.../ It forces people to come back to the country to renew their passports and then for the regime to have the opportunity to arrest, put extra pressure, and so on, on those persons."

    Koplimaa said European countries are working out how to resolve the issue but there are no quick solutions.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Journalist questioned by police because car crash reports were so ‘in depth’

    A freelance journalist found himself visited by police and asked for information about his source after reporting independently on two fatal car crashes.

    The journalists believes the visit followed a complaint from the force’s press office that the articles contained “in-depth information”.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Detained Under UK Terrorism Law, Whistleblower Says Police Questioned His Support for Assange

    Journalists, activists, and human rights workers are among the hundreds of thousands of everyday men, women, and children who have been subjected to Schedule 7 stops.

    Schedule 7, which was even more expansive a decade ago, allows police, customs agents, and immigration officers to stop any adult or child and subject them to questioning.

    No evidence or suspicion is required for a person to be subjected to a Schedule 7 stop.

  • VOA News ☛ Husband of Journalist Jailed in Russia Calls on US for Help

    The journalist had traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency. When she tried to return to Prague in June, her passports were confiscated. She was waiting for those documents to be returned when authorities detained her on October 18.

    Now, Kurmasheva is facing five years in prison for allegedly violating Russia’s “foreign agent” law.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Jezebel to close after owner G/O Media fails to find buyer

    In the last few years G/O Media seems to have been an exercise in how not to run a legacy web publishing enterprise. In that respect it's been a great help, but it's still disturbing just seeing the smoke, hearing the screams, the odor of burning hair, etc.

  • [Old] The Daily Beast ☛ Jezebel Boss Quits as G/O Media Dumpster Fire Burns On

    Spanfeller, who insiders claim is obsessed with the number of articles each site publishes in a day, grills editors at a weekly traffic meeting about their respective site’s performance. “He is too focused on small details of headlines and when an article went up to understand an online news site,” one G/O staffer told Confider.

    Making matters worse for morale: Spanfeller hired his daughter to a sales position and then promoted her within a year, according to two people familiar with the matter, all while continuing to block internal promotions.

  • [Old] New Yorker ☛ Jezebel and the Question of Women’s Anger

    When Jezebel launched, I was thirty-three, about to turn thirty-four. The events that led to the site’s creation have been written about many times before. So here’s the short version: disillusioned by the state of American women’s media, I was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create and oversee a women’s-media entity—in this case, a Web site. I imagined it as one with a lot of personality, with humor, with edge. I wanted it to combine wit, smarts, and anger, providing women—many of whom had been taught to believe that “feminism” was a bad word or one to be avoided—with a model of critical thinking around gender and race which felt accessible and entertaining. As one of my colleagues, Moe Tkacik, wrote, in an early post, “Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking [the more] serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women’s magazine we’d want to read.”

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ We’re Watching the End of a Digital Media Age. It All Started With Jezebel.

    The site was Jezebel, a blog started in 2007 by the founder of the sharp-edged media gossip site Gawker, Nick Denton. Jezebel wasn’t intended to be revolutionary. He started it in the hopes of attracting makeup advertisements. But the woman he hired to create the blog, Anna Holmes, had an agenda of her own. She had been an editor at Glamour quietly raging at the two-dimensional women Condé Nast’s magazines and their rivals portrayed, and the vapid content she churned out when the magazine’s hottest topics were “sex and angels.”

  • Tedium ☛ … And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Pink-Slipped

    On a particularly bad day for digital media, a thought about where we should go next. Hint: Let’s stop talking about scale.

  • [Repeat] The Guardian UK ☛ Jezebel to shut down after 16 years as parent company lays off staff

    Jezebel, a feminist US news site, was shut down by its owners on Thursday, with 23 people laid off and no plans for the outlet to resume publication.

    G/O Media, which owns Jezebel and other sites including Gizmodo and the Onion, announced the closure in a memo to staff, which was obtained by the Guardian.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 'Kristallnacht' not strong enough term for anti-Jewish riots

    Given the scope and gravity of the events, "broken glass" does not capture the extent of the brutality and suffering. By using more direct and explicit terminology, Germany aims to ensure that the historical record reflects the nature of the atrocities committed.

  • NL Times ☛ Kristallnacht remembered in Netherlands tonight; National commemoration in Amsterdam

    Kristallnacht, called the Night of Broken Glass in English, is considered the start of the mass persecution of the Jews in the Second World War. During the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, the Nazis attacked the Jewish community all over Germany, destroying hundreds of synagogues, shops, and homes. Many German Jews were arrested, assaulted, and murdered. The name Kristallnacht comes from the glass that littered the streets afterward.

  • Gizmodo ☛ SAG-AFTRA Has a Tentative Deal That Could Bring the Hollywood Strike to an End

    According to the Hollywood Reporter, the union revealed it and the AMPTP have come to an agreement after months of on-and-off (and often contentious) negotiating. During that time, SAG-AFTRA told its members to hold firm as the negotiating committee did its thing with the studios, which allegedly had been recently threatening to cancel shows as a way of readjusting 2024 schedules to make up for the lost airtime. Studios have also been rearranging movie release dates as the strike continued.

  • [Old] Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom

    By downplaying American marronage, and valorizing white involvement in the Underground Railroad, historians have shown a racial bias, in Sayers’ opinion, a reluctance to acknowledge the strength of black resistance and initiative. They’ve also revealed the shortcomings of their methods: “Historians are limited to source documents. When it comes to maroons, there isn’t that much on paper. But that doesn’t mean their story should be ignored or overlooked. As archaeologists, we can read it in the ground.”

    Sayers first heard about the Dismal Swamp maroons from one of his professors at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They were smoking cigarettes after class in late 2001. Sayers proposed to do his dissertation on the archaeology of 19th-century agriculture. Stifling a yawn, Prof. Marley Brown III asked him what he knew about the maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp and suggested this would make a more interesting dissertation project. “It sounded great,” says Sayers. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

  • [Old] Dismal Swamp Canal Welcome Center ☛ History of the Dismal Swamp

    The Dismal Swamp was a known route and destination for freedom seekers. This route was the most rugged and treacherous route where insects, snakes, and wild animals were abundant. It was to this inhospitable place many runaways came.

    While some runaways were able to blend in with free blacks, many chose to seek refuge among a colony of runaways (called maroons) in the Great Dismal Swamp. The nature of the swamp made it possible for large colonies to establish permanent refuge. It was difficult to capture a freedom seeker once they reached the swamp, although occasional trips were made to recapture runaways with specially trained dogs. Colonies were established on high ground in the swamp, where crude huts were constructed. Abundant animal life provided food and clothing. Some earned money by working for free black shingle makers, who hired maroons to cut logs.

  • ANF News ☛ Nine prisoners executed in Iran

    The statement added that more executions took place in the same prison, but no information could be obtained regarding the identities of those executed.

  • ANF News ☛ Former political prisoner has his torture complaint ignored

    After his arrest, Karakum was initially taken to the T-type prison in Samsun. That's where the attacks began. Prison guards repeatedly stormed his cell and physically and verbally abused him. Karakum said: “For the first 12 days of my 25-day stay there, they did nothing because of the pandemic, but then when I was taken to the cell, it was searched for five days in a row and I was systematically tortured. I was beaten by the guards and my head was repeatedly hit against the wall. In addition, the prison administration censored the letters I wrote to inform my family and lawyers about the torture.”

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Security Agents 'Violently' Arrested At Least 9 Baha'i Followers Amid Crackdown

    Earlier this month, the Baha'i International Community reported a rising wave of persecution against the group, with 36 attacks in cities including Isfahan and Yazd. Additionally, 26 Baha'is, including 16 women, have been sentenced to a total of 126 years in prison, mainly for "promoting" the Baha'i faith.

    The Islamic republic of Iran does not recognize the Baha'i faith, and judicial authorities have repeatedly labeled Baha'i followers as "spies and enemies," issuing death sentences, arrests, and imprisonments, while also denying them education and business opportunities.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Zimbabwe ☛ You’re missing out on free internet at CICs here in Zimbabwe

    Community Information Centres are “public places where people can access computers, the Internet and other digital technologies that enable them to gather information, create, learn and communicate with others while they develop essential digital skills”.

    Potraz is constructing 32 CICs at the moment and when those are completed, there will be 202 in total across the country. Not all of them were constructed from scratch. In some places, they used existing buildings, especially the underutilized Post Offices across Zimbabwe.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Google Doesn’t Want to Talk About Its Payment Deal with Spotify

    The move comes as Epic fights Google and Apple on the 30% tax both Big Tech companies charge for the use of their app stores. Both Epic and Spotify signed onto the Coalition for App Fairness lobbying group—but Spotify got some special perks in 2022 from Google.

    Google unveiled a limited pilot program it called ‘User Choice Billing,’ allowing certain apps to bypass the 30% fee Google collects on subscriptions in Android apps. At the time, Google said UCB developers would pay ‘4% less’ or 26% instead of 30%. Epic’s lawyers point out that this rate is not necessarily accurate.

  • Digital Music News ☛ More Layoffs Hit Amazon Music Following Amp Shutdown: ‘Some Roles Have Been Eliminated’

    Lastly, Amazon Music is hardly alone in making layoffs, which have to this point in 2023 likewise hit industry companies such as Spotify, SoundCloud (as one component of a profitability push), TikTok’s music unit, and Bandcamp (which now belongs to Songtradr), to name a few.

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Police Arrest Pirate Site Operators Following 3-Year Investigation

      Following a three-year investigation involving a prosecutor's office, a police economic crime unit, and a regional police force, three men linked to piracy portal Ogladaj (Watch) have been arrested in Poland. Police say they seized luxury cars, silver bars, cryptocurrency and cash. Other crimes that make the prosecution much more intriguing are mentioned in much less detail.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • The Day a Beatle Died

    Growing up, I heard the rumors that Paul McCartney died in the 60s and was replaced with a look-alike to keep the ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶r̶o̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n band together. But I did not realize that it was on this day [1] in 1966 that he died. Supposedly. Maybe. If you believe.

  • “A live, nine hundred foot what?”

    This is a something that I think only two or three of my readers may appreciate (if that many)—a recording of MC 900 Ft. Jesus [2] performing live at Good Records in Dallas, Texas [3]. The sound quality could be better, but for someone who quit the industry in 2001, it was surprising to see him perform in 2017. And it's a shame he stopped recording, because his music is very unique—something like a cross between rap and jazz. Jazzrap? Rapjazz? Something like that.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • A short tribute to Peergos and its maintainer

      If you haven't heard of Peergos yet, it can be described very briefly as a Google Drive/Dropbox/etc alternative: an online place to save your shit. Nowadays it already does a little bit more than that (e.g. file viewing/editing and a calendar). What sets it apart is that it's decentralized, offline-friendly, and you can self-host. Currently, the users' DB (called PKI) is the one component that is managed centrally. Not quite as bad as it may sound: actually, the only operation that necessarily goes through the main instance (as of now) is creating an account[^0], to ensure unique usernames (and possibly changing passwords). And the PKI is replicated to all instances, so after creating an account you're completely independent of the main instance (unless it's your "home instance", of course), as you can login through any instance (I don't know if there are plans to decentralize this). This also means that, when you self-host, you don't need to open your instance to the public internet.