Leftovers

• Dedoimedo ☛ Greatest sites on the Internet

  The title of this page is one of the most inaccurate statements in the world. This is because my view of the World Wide Web might not be your view of the World Wide Web. Over the year, there has been a small, select number of websites that have really impressed me with their overall feel, functionality and usefulness, the uniqueness of design and the quality of content that I felt I should spare them their own special corner on Dedoimedo.

  There is no particular order to the listed sites - you should really invest a little bit of time and check them all. Moreover, I assigned categories, which roughly denote the spirit and/or nature of these domains, e.g. humor, science, art, unique, games, etc. Since the Dedoimedo theme revamp in early 2018, new entries will be added to the top of the list. If you have website suggestions that you feel like might be worthy of inclusion, don't hesitate to contact me, but please make sure to clearly state your affiliation. Enjoy!

• Dhole Moments ☛ This Would Be More Professionally Useful If Not For the Furry Art

  Even some old school hackers conveniently forget that alt.fan.furry was a thing before the Internet.

  As frustratingly incompetent as these hot takes are, they pale in comparison to, by far, the biggest source of bad opinions about the furry fandom.

• Ruben Schade ☛ “That’s not how that works!”

  The challenge with such requests isn’t that they’re merely impossible (how inconvenient!), but that they’re often coming from a place of misunderstanding. This means that to grok why something can’t or shouldn’t be done, preconceived ideas and prior learning need to be unravelled. But people making such demands are generally not as receptive to this; they just want the damned feature added, and the boffins are standing in the way.

• Hardware

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Detroit: from Motor City to Drone City?

    The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) in partnership with a tech project called Michigan Central announced the launch of the “Advanced Aerial Innovation Region” (AAIR). The initiative was established to position Detroit and the broader state of Michigan as a leader in next-generation aerial mobility and drone technology. Its goal? To attract startups, to catalyze new high-skill jobs, to advance policy and ultimately to drive commercialization and adoption of drone technology.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NBC ☛ Global decline in male fertility linked to common pesticides

    The new analysis focuses on two groups of chemicals — organophosphates and some carbamates — that are commonly used in insecticides. The researchers looked at data collected from groups of people with exposures to pesticides and others who were not. Most, but not all, of the research centered on exposures in the workplace. The researchers controlled for outside factors that could contribute to lower sperm counts like smoking and age.

    “It was very well done, very carefully done, very comprehensive,” Meeker said.

  • Shot Dead: A particularly disgusting piece of antivax propaganda

    A couple of days ago, I wrote about how a new study published recently is yet another compelling piece of evidence arguing that the antivax “died suddenly” conspiracy theory in which COVID-19 vaccines are supposedly causing a wave of sudden death among younger people is not a real thing. Basically, the study showed that sudden cardiac deaths among college athletes, contrary to what antivaxxers claim about such deaths among young people in general and athletes in particular, are not skyrocketing. Quite the contrary. They’re slowly declining, most likely because of better protocols for resuscitation, required screening of student athletes for the gene mutations and congenital heart anomalies that most frequently lead to sudden cardiac death, as well as the increased availability of automated external defibrillators (AEDs). Ironically, almost at the same time, a group called We The Patriots USA released a movie very much in the “died suddenly” vein, but of an older type than, for instance, Died Suddenly, the movie that pulled together all the conspiracy mongering about COVID-19 vaccines supposedly causing mass death. Never mind that several of the deaths shown happened before the pandemic. After all, what’s stretching the truth a bit among conspiracy theorists?

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • India Times ☛ France's Macron warns against 'punitive' AI regulation

    The European Union must avoid overly restrictive regulation of artificial intelligence technologies, French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday. "Regulation must be controlled, not punitive, to preserve innovation," Macron said of the EU's efforts.

  • Rachel ☛ My rants about TP-Link Omada networking products

    But no, this isn't about that. This is about TP-Link. I was pointed at this ecosystem as a possible escape from the clowntown that is Ubiquiti, so that's what I bought this time around: one of their gateway boxes (calling it a router would be too kind), a switch, and a hardware controller for local control - none of that cloud crap here, thanks.

    It's been a new bit of stupid every week with this stuff. First of all, the switch is really best suited for a closet at a business, not anywhere in someone's home. It has dinky little fans that run pretty hard all the time, with all the noise that entails. People who replace them invariably get fan errors and then the thing eats itself within a year. (Maybe the switches fail by themselves either way - the jury is still out on that.)

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian journalists and activists were targeted by spy firm, Linkedin says

    Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm, orchestrated a video campaign using LinkedIn to target Hungarian activists and journalists in the lead-up to last year's election, according to the professional networking site. LinkedIn researcher, Mona Damian, revealed that Black Cube established a network of fake personas utilizing deceptive job postings to connect with targets on the platform. Subsequent off-platform video conversations were recorded, and clips from these interactions were employed in a campaign to discredit NGOs in Hungary. The LinkedIn researcher reported the removal of a network of fake Black Cube-run accounts and the deletion of Black Cube's LinkedIn company page due to a "high volume of abuse and a clear violation of our terms of service."

    LinkedIn did not disclose the party Black Cube may have been working for and did not provide details on the number of fake accounts removed. The Hungarian government spokesperson did not respond to inquiries.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ ‘Being deepfaked showed me how easy it is to hack a bank account’

    I’ve been deepfaked, a process that technology has made easy. A picture was taken of me on a smartphone and seconds later, anyone in the lab could become me – at least online.

    Deepfaking sees one person take on the face or even the voice of another digitally, meaning they can take pictures and videos as if they were the person they’ve copied. It’s essentially a filter.

  • India Times ☛ How Walmart is using AI and Gen AI

    Beginning this holiday season, the systems will also use predictive analytics to optimize catchments and connect with driver availability, so that drivers can complete more deliveries, with less driving, delivering multiple items in one trip. Today, the catchments are of equal size, but AI will now begin optimizing the size based on local demand and need.

  • IT Wire ☛ 77% of organisations are investing in artificial intelligence solutions to bolster their Quality Engineering: report

    According to Capgemini and OpenText, the use of AI is on the rise in quality engineering, but an incremental approach is key - and trends in the use of AI to deliver quality outcomes are moving fast - while organisations cite for the first time, higher productivity as the primary outcome driven by AI (65%), with Generative AI making it possible increased productivity and velocity, leading to more frequent deployments with a higher quality customer experience.

  • Computer World ☛ Dell cuddles up to Hugging Face to offer genAI to customers

    The service means Dell will consult with a client who uses Hugging Face to pick an open-source AI model that best fits its needs. Dell then takes the model, optimizes it for the Dell PowerEdge server, and provides it to the customer as a “container” it can run on its on-prem server — either a new one they buy from Dell or one they already have, according to Gold.

  • IEEE ☛ Just Calm Down About GPT-4 Already: And stop confusing performance with competence, says Rodney Brooks

    It’s a textbook example of the mixture of amazement and, especially, anxiety that often accompanies a tech triumph. And we’ve been here many times, says Rodney Brooks. Best known as a robotics researcher, academic, and entrepreneur, Brooks is also an authority on AI: he directed the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT until 2007, and held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford before that. Brooks, who is now working on his third robotics startup, Robust.AI, has written hundreds of articles and half a dozen books and was featured in the motion picture Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. He is a rare technical leader who has had a stellar career in business and in academia and has still found time to engage with the popular culture through books, popular articles, TED Talks, and other venues.

    IEEE Spectrum caught up with Brooks at the recent Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit, where he was being honored with the 2023 IEEE Founders Medal. He spoke about this moment in AI, which he doesn’t regard with as much apprehension as some of his peers, and about his latest startup, which is working on robots for medium-size warehouses.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Federal Trade Commission ☛ The FTC Voice Cloning Challenge

      Voice cloning technology is becoming increasing sophisticated due to improving text-to-speech AI. The technology offers promise, including medical assistance for people who may have lost their voices due to accident or illness. It also poses significant risk: families and small businesses can be targeted with fraudulent extortion scams; creative professionals, such as voice artists, can have their voices appropriated in ways that threaten their livelihoods and deceive the public.

      The FTC is running an exploratory challenge to encourage the development of multidisciplinary approaches—from products to policies to procedures—aimed at protecting consumers from AI-enabled voice cloning harms, such as fraud and the broader misuse of biometric data and creative content. The goal of the Challenge is to foster breakthrough ideas on preventing, monitoring, and evaluating malicious voice cloning.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Dozens of VPNs & Shadowsocks Named in Leaked Russian Blocking Document

      A document originating from Russia's Ministry of Transport shines more light on the government's plans to crack down on encryption tools that help people to evade monitoring and censorship. The leaked document lists dozens of VPN service targets and, for the first time, open source encryption protocol Shadowsocks, best known for its ability to evade firewalls, one in China especially.

    • [Old] Sundial Services International LLC ☛ Why Your Web Site Should Be "Advertisement Free"

      The trouble is that this very-identifiable information is sent, first to the broker, then to every advertiser who is bidding. This is a tremendous amount of personal information to be "spewing," and you have no idea where it goes. Neither does your unsuspecting site visitor. Many advertisers bid only enough to keep the advertising-broker interested: the data that they really want to "harvest" is the bid requests themselves.

    • Chris ☛ How Not To Collect Data

      Asking customer service representatives to record every single interaction might be a bit excessive on the bureaucracy.2 This is typical of what anthropologist Marilyn Strathern calls audit cultures. We don’t want to micro-manage, but we also don’t trust people to self-monitor, so we impose bureaucracy that ensure mechanised self-monitoring processes are followed – and in the end, this bureaucracy becomes micro-managing. Making matters worse, people start to rest against the bureaucracy instead of self-monitoring, which lowers quality further.3

    • Latvia ☛ Security service to publish job vacancies online

      One of Latvia's three security services, the Constitution Protection Bureau (Satversmes aizsardzības birojs, SAB), may necessarily rely upon a certain amount of secrecy in performing its tasks, but is becoming more open in at least one respect: recruitment.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Axios ☛ Where efforts to disqualify Trump from 2024 ballot stand

    The big picture: At least 31 cases filed across the U.S. that have argued the Republican presidential front-runner should be disqualified over his actions surrounding the U.S. Capitol riot through the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause.

    More than a dozen cases remain pending before the courts.

    Context: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no one should hold office in the U.S. if they "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [U.S.], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

  • Hindustan Times ☛ US house speaker to release over 40,000 hours of Capitol [insurrection] video

    The thousands of hours of surveillance footage have already been reviewed by a congressional committee that investigated the attack on Congress

    More than 40,000 hours of security video from the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol is to be released to the public, the new Republican speaker of the House of Representatives said Friday.

  • teleSUR ☛ Over 1,200 Migrants Reach Italy's Island in 26 Hours

    The Western African migration route to Europe has seen "the biggest rise in the number of irregular crossings, which nearly doubled so far this year to over 27,700," the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) said, adding that the number of arrivals registered in October -- some 13, 000 -- was the highest monthly figure on record.

  • The Economist ☛ Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024

    But knowing that America would abandon Europe, Mr Putin would have an incentive to fight on in Ukraine and to pick off former Soviet countries such as Moldova or the Baltic states. Without American pressure, Israel is unlikely to generate an internal consensus for peace talks with the Palestinians. Calculating that Mr Trump does not stand by his allies, Japan and South Korea could acquire nuclear weapons. By asserting that America has no global responsibility to help deal with climate change, Mr Trump would crush efforts to slow it. And he is surrounded by China hawks who believe confrontation is the only way to preserve American dominance. Caught between a dealmaking president and his warmongering officials, China could easily miscalculate over Taiwan, with catastrophic consequences.

  • Media Matters ☛ Elon Musk praises antisemitic replacement theory that motivated a mass shooting as “the actual truth”

    Musk’s platform, ostensibly run by CEO Linda Yaccarino, has said that posts claiming “Hitler was right” and that there needs to be a “final solution” regarding Jewish people don’t violate the platform’s “safety policies”; run ads for major brands on Holocaust denial accounts; and apparently paid a pro-Hitler Holocaust denial a share of its ad revenue.

    Indeed, Musk and Yaccarino have reinstated known white nationalists and antisemites on the platform. Musk has directly engaged with some of the reinstated antisemitic accounts and amplified conspiracy theories that were used to push antisemitism. Musk’s posts earlier this year earned the praise of a leading neo-Nazi.

  • NBC ☛ Antisemites are saying Elon Musk is on their side after his latest tweets about Jews

    “At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories,” he wrote on X, with a screenshot of Musk’s six-word tweet.

  • The Hill ☛ Haley cites viral bin Laden letter in call for social media reform

    “[W]hen you look at social media, I have long said that we have to ban TikTok,” Haley, a 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate, said on Fox News Radio’s “The Guy Benson Show.” “And if you didn’t know why, there’s another example today.”

    “They are posting letters of Osama bin Laden’s letter, the week after the 9/11 attack, and it is the justification for why he did it,” Haley continued. “And so you have a lot of our kids sitting there siding with that, that ‘Oh, America deserved it at that time.’”

  • Computer World ☛ Meta and ByteDance dispute gatekeeper status of platforms under EU’s DMA

    Meta and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have launched a challenge against the gatekeeper status designated to them by the European Commission under the EU's Digital Markets Act.

    The DMA came into force in September 2023 and is designed to rein in the power of large tech corporations, requiring them to change how they integrate digital services and handle customer data while also addressing issues including the right to uninstall software on devices, greater personal data access controls, enhanced advertising transparency, an end to vendors self-preferencing their own services, and a stop to certain restrictive app store requirements for developers.

  • NPR ☛ The election interference case against Trump is taking shape

    The case set for trial in Washington, D.C., in March accuses Trump of leading a conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election and deprive millions of voters from having their ballots count. More than 140 law enforcement officers suffered injuries after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Colorado judge rejects attempt to bar Trump from 2024 ballot under ‘insurrection’ clause

    In a 102-page ruling, Wallace accepted many of the plaintiffs’ core claims about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, and rejected arguments from Trump’s legal team that his messages to his supporters, including incendiary social media posts and a speech at the White House Ellipse just prior to the violence at the Capitol, was protected speech under the First Amendment.

    “The Court concludes … that Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Wallace wrote.

  • RFERL ☛ Kyrgyzstan Mulls Banning Women's Islamic Niqab, Men's Bushy Beards Over 'Security Fears'

    The parliament of the former Soviet republic of some 7 million has unveiled a bill that would ban women from putting on the all-covering niqab and prohibit men from growing long beards to preserve “public security.”

    The bill, released for public discussion on November 14, says the measures are needed so that people’s faces can be seen and individuals identified.

  • TruthOut ☛ Sanders Doubles Down Against Gaza Ceasefire in the Face of Progressive Backlash

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Australian Whistleblower Who Exposed War Crimes In Afghanistan Forced To Plead Guilty

• Environment

  • Security Week ☛ 2 Environmentalists Who Were Targeted by a Hacking Network Say the Public Is the Real Victim

    Two environmentalists told a federal judge Thursday that the public was the real victim of a global computer hacking campaign that targeted those fighting big oil companies to get the truth out about global warming.

  • Teen Vogue ☛ The EPA Launches Youth Council of Gen Z and Millennials

    Sixteen young people will launch a new program with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael S. Regan, beginning November 16. In an exclusive report with Teen Vogue, the National Environmental Youth Advisory Council (NEYAC) has announced it will provide independent advice and recommendations on behalf of youth communities regarding EPA efforts.

  • NPR ☛ "It feels like I'm not crazy." Gardeners aren't surprised as USDA updates key map.

    This week the map got its first update in more than a decade, and the outlook for many gardens looks warmer. The 2023 map is about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 2012 map across the contiguous U.S., says Chris Daly, director of the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University that jointly developed the map with the USDA.

    Daly says the new map means about half the country has shifted into a new half zone and half hasn't. In some locations, people may find they can grow new types of flowers, fruits, vegetables and plants.

    Many of the nation's gardeners are not surprised by the change.

  • International Business Times ☛ Microplastics Found In Clouds Could Affect Weather Pattern: Study

    A study published in the journal "Environmental Science & Technology Letters" has claimed that these could affect cloud formation and, as a result, weather.

    The research found that microplastics are being carried along by clouds to different places.

  • DeSmog ☛ Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Took £135,000 from Climate Science Deniers and Fossil Fuel Interests

    Donors registered this year include: a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group; political donor Jeremy Hosking, who has millions invested in fossil fuels; and a property investment firm whose chairman has defended those who question whether “global warming is happening”.

    The revelations come after DeSmog reported that hedge fund founder Paul Marshall, co-owner of GB News – which has both Farage and Tice on its payroll – has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Who pays for climate damage and where does the money go?

    Fossil fuels powered the industrial revolution and the economic success of many countries. But burning oil, gas and coal produces greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere and warp the climate.

    Advanced industrialized nations have historically contributed most to the human-induced climate crisis because they've burned fossil fuels for so long to grow their economies.

    And many analysts, activists and heads of state in low-income countries argue big historical emitters like the United States and Europe should largely foot the bill for climate change.

  • LRT ☛ Protesters in Vilnius call for stop to deforestation

    Around 100 people gathered in the square by the Lithuanian parliament in Vilnius to protest against clear-cutting of forests in protected areas.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Red-teaming the SCOTUS code of conduct

    This string of scandals and outrages naturally prompted public curiosity about the Supreme Court's ethical standards, and that triggered fresh waves of incredulous outrage when we all found out that the Supreme Court doesn't have any: [...]

  • New York Times ☛ X Races to Contain Damage After Elon Musk Endorses Antisemitic Post

    X employees said on Thursday that they had gotten calls from advertisers wondering why Mr. Musk was making comments seen as antisemitic and why their ads were showing up next to white nationalist and Nazi content, according to internal messages that were viewed by The New York Times. IBM cut off about $1 million in advertising spending that it had committed to the platform for the last three months of the year, the messages said.

  • Futurism ☛ Apple Drops Ads on Twitter After Elon Musk’s Antisemitic Outburst

    Although Musk's hired punching bag CEO Linda Yaccarino issued a milquetoast statement saying the social network is against "discrimination by everyone," the X owner's latest unmasked act of bigotry has, along with the advertiser exodus, earned him condemnation from the White House as well.

  • Variety ☛ IBM Immediately Suspends Advertising From X/Twitter After Discovering Its Ads Appeared Next to Pro-Nazi Content

    IBM was among five major brands that progressive watchdog group Media Matters said it had found ads for adjacent to posts that “tout Hitler and his Nazi Party” on X. The others were Apple, NBCUniversal’s Bravo, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity.

  • BBC ☛ IBM suspends ads on X after they appeared next to Nazi posts

    The left-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America said it found ads bought by IBM and other companies next to posts including Hitler quotes, praise of Nazis and Holocaust denial.

    One pro-Nazi post that was shown next to an IBM ad was seen about 8,000 times, X said in a statement to the BBC.

    The other firms listed include Apple, Oracle, television network Bravo and telecoms company Xfinity. The BBC has approached the companies for comment.

  • BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Amazon To Cut Jobs In Alexa Unit

    While exact numbers remain undisclosed, the decision is said to align with Amazon's increased focus on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the optimisation of resources.

    The job cuts are not confined to the Alexa unit alone, as Amazon undertakes a broader restructuring across various divisions. Recent reductions have been witnessed in the music and gaming sectors, along with adjustments in specific human resources roles. The restructuring signals a company-wide realignment, showcasing Amazon's adaptability to evolving market dynamics.

  • India Times ☛ Amazon to cut 'several hundred' Alexa jobs

    The cuts affect "several hundred" employees working on Alexa, according to the email. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on exactly how many were affected.

  • The Nation ☛ Mike Johnson, Undoing the Constitution

  • TruthOut ☛ Advocates in Nebraska Want the Right to an Abortion on the 2024 Ballot

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Quillette ☛ Hamas Cheerleaders Are All Over Instagram

      Even mainstream media outlets trying to act in good faith have been caught repeating fake news that’s been fed to them, directly or indirectly, by Hamas. In other cases, online opportunists, some of them with purely financial motives, have exploited the 10/7 attacks for personal gain, using AI-generated imagery and pro-Hamas bots to flood the [Internet] with clickbait.

      [...]

      Israel may have the upper hand in the unfolding military conflict within Gaza. But it is evident that Hamas and its allies are winning over many youth by weaponizing the pre-existing idioms of social-justice advocacy. Since 2020, Instagram, like all social-media platforms, has been awash with dubious slideshows purporting to educate users about “systemic racism,” “decolonization,” and the need for non-white people to rise up and “disrupt” our supposedly white-supremacist western societies. The formula worked as a means to promote Black Lives Matter protests. And anti-Israel groups are now seeking to copy this formula in their campaign to support Hamas.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • TruthOut ☛ Pro-Palestine Student Group Sues Ron DeSantis for Violating Free Speech Rights

  • Meduza ☛ Russian government authorizes federal censor to block websites with instructions for bypassing website blocks

    The Russian government has granted the country’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, permission to restrict access to websites that contain information about circumventing Internet censorship.

  • [Repeat] teleSUR ☛ Censorship is Out of Control: Stella Assange

    During the Portugal Web Summit on Thursday, lawyer and human rights activist Stella Assange, the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, asserted that the European Union (EU) imposes Internet regulations under the pretext of controlling misinformation.

    "The EU loves this new era of misinformation because it allows them to regulate the Internet extensively," she said, adding that the institutes and programs created to combat misinformation are not genuinely effective.

    "If there were any truth to their eagerness to stop false information, then they would be the biggest supporters of WikiLeaks and would promote the WikiLeaks model as the best possible journalism. But usually, those involved in all of this are the staunchest critics of WikiLeaks because they see it as a real threat," Stella pointed out.

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Sentences Activist to Penal Colony for Antiwar Notes on Price Tags

    The artist, Aleksandra Y. Skochilenko, 33, was found guilty on Thursday of spreading false information about the Russian Army — a criminal offense introduced shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year — for placing the messages at her local supermarket in St. Petersburg.

  • RFA ☛ Protest book authors 'can't return' to Hong Kong amid crackdown

    The authors of a new book on the Hong Kong protest movement say they won't be able to return to the city now, for fear of reprisals under a draconian security law.

    Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, whose in-depth portrait of the 2019 protest movement "Among the Braves" was published recently in New York, said they had realized while researching the book that there would likely be a trade-off between ease of access to the city they once called home and their ability to write freely about the movement.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Russian journalists Aleksandr Dorogov and Yan Katelevskiy sentenced to lengthy prison terms

    The journalists repeatedly denied the charges and claimed that their persecution stems from their investigative work, in particular their joint investigation into alleged corruption between funeral businesses and senior police officials, published on the YouTube account Dvizhenie, which investigates corruption and irregularities by the road police and has about 613,000 subscribers.

  • Variety ☛ Gawker Sold to Founder of Singapore’s Caldecott Music Group: ‘It Has the Opportunity for Reinvention’ (EXCLUSIVE)

    Meng Ru Kuok, CEO and founder of Singapore-based Caldecott Music Group, acquired the assets of Gawker from Bustle Digital Group. In an email to Variety, Kuok confirmed that he has closed the deal buying the Gawker trademarks and domain name but not its article archives. He said the deal for Gawker is unrelated to his existing operating businesses.

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ On Rupert Murdoch’s Last Day as News Corp Chair, Mogul Says He Hopes to Keep “Active Role” at Company

    Wednesday marks Rupert Murdoch‘s last day as chairman of News Corp., the publishing company that formed his initial entry into the U.S. market nearly 50 years ago. His son Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp., will assume the role of chairman in his place.

    But he told shareholders of the company that he does not intend to ride off into the sunset.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ How Bad Is Antisemitism Online? It’s Increasingly Hard to Know.

    Where the truth lies, however, is hard to glean, according to academic researchers and advocacy groups. They said the debates over content related to the Israel-Hamas war have highlighted the roadblocks complicating independent analysis of what appears on the major online services. Instead of being able to conduct methodical studies of online discourse, they must try to grasp its scope and effects using inefficient and incomplete methods.

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Actors’ AI Protections Are a Step Forward, But There’s Reason to Worry

    But SAG-AFTRA members may still have plenty to worry about on AI restrictions — especially on the issue of the creation and deployment of digital replicas in performances that could allow studios to circumvent what were intended to be enhanced protections for actors. Though the deal requires advance notice and a specific description for the intended use, it allows members of the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (the studios) to negotiate directly with performers for approval instead of requiring them to go through the union, which sought a veto on certain uses of AI. In practice, this could result in studios strongarming actors into accepting terms that enable them to utilize digital doubles as a condition of employment, according to agents and lawyers consulted by The Hollywood Reporter.

    [...]

    But consider Schedule F performers who fall short of making the A-list and are presented with offers that are tied with blanket licenses to use digital clones over the duration of a franchise. Over time, if enough studios arrange deals in this manner, the term will become normalized in contravention of the tentative deal’s aim to empower performers with the ability to control future uses of their AI doubles.

  • Variety ☛ End of the Strikes Is Just the Beginning for a New Era in Hollywood

    Meanwhile, more and more disgruntled workers, particularly in the visual effects and animation sectors, have been voting to unionize with IATSE this year, bringing their own concerns to an already crowded table.

  • RTL ☛ Fear mounts for Saudi's youngest death-row detainees

    Because Saudi Arabia does not typically notify lawyers and relatives before carrying out executions, "we will receive news of his (death) at any moment", said one relative who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

    Saudi authorities did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ After Kansas school district forces Native American boy to cut his hair, ACLU sends warning

    “The present-day harms of school policies that restrict Native American boys from wearing long hair must be understood in the historical context of multifaceted efforts to separate Native American children from their families and tribes and to deny them their rights of cultural and religious expression,” the ACLU letter reads. “Haderlein’s policy impacts Native American students disproportionately and perpetuates a legacy of cultural, psychological, and spiritual trauma and discrimination.”

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call

    The celebrities and creators described, sometimes with fiery rhetoric, how TikTok’s tools did not prevent a flood of comments like “Hitler was right” or “I hope you end up like Anne Frank” under videos posted by them and other Jewish users.

    “What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Mr. Cohen, who does not appear to have an official TikTok account, said early in the call. He criticized violent imagery and disinformation on the platform, telling Mr. Presser, “Shame on you,” and claiming that TikTok could “flip a switch” to fix antisemitism on its platform.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Min of ICT says Starlink still has not applied for licence in Zim, what could be the hold up?

    Here is the latest in the Starlink saga. The Minister of ICT, Mavetera, gave a statement on where we are with the satellite internet service provider. Spoiler: she repeated herself, we are where we were a few months ago.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Greece ☛ Greeks fall into the subscription trap

    Greek consumers appear trapped in online subscriptions, as subscribing via mobile phone to various services, from TV content to video game platforms, but also marketplaces for purchasing goods or ordering food at the push of a button can be easy. However, at the end of the month the bills come, emptying bank accounts.

    According to claims management company Intrum’s annual report on consumer payments, Kathimerini reveals 67% of consumers in Greece – the highest among the 20 European countries examined – are affected by the phenomenon of so-called “subscription creep,” the difficulty of managing their many subscriptions in terms of financial costs.

• Monopolies

  • Patents

    • India Times ☛ Finnish wearables startup Oura sues Indian rival Ultrahuman for patent violations

      In the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, the Finnish company has sought the award of damages for the alleged infringements, including no less than all the profits realised by Ultrahuman as a result of the alleged infringements.

    • The Next Web ☛ The two rings: Finland’s Oura sues Ultrahuman over rival wearable

      In the filing, Oura sets out several details and features in Ultrahuman’s ring that it claims the rival company has copied.

      This includes the titanium used in the device, skin sensors and PPG sensors, which measure various health metrics for the wearer, and the fact that the device uses similar batteries from the same suppliers.

  • Copyrights

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ ‘South Park’ Streaming Rights Standoff: Judge Rules Against Warners on Some Claims in Licensing Battle

      The agreement provided for two types of content: longform episodes over 20 minutes that first appear on a non-streaming platform, and episodes from seasons 24 to 26 that do not fall into the first category. Among of the long list of disputes is the number of episodes WBD was entitled to for those seasons. WBD insisted it’s owed 10 for each season, but Paramount countered there was no minimum commitment and that it’s delivered 16 episodes over those three seasons.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ MPA & IPR Center Tackle 'Holiday' Piracy With New PSA Campaign

      The U.S. Government's Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRCenter) has teamed up with the MPA to launch a new anti-piracy campaign. Through public service announcements, they hope to deter the seasonal holiday piracy spike by highlighting malware threats and other harms.

    • Digital Music News ☛ WIPO & Music Rights Awareness Foundation Launches New Online Platform to Raise Creators’ Awareness of Their IP [sic] Rights

      CLIP — Creators Learn Intellectual [sic] Property [sic] — is an innovative, user-friendly, and free-to-use online learning platform that will be filled with curated content from experienced musicians and mentors to help creators make better business decisions.

      Though the creator industry is soaring at record levels, creators often lack crucial information for managing their intellectual property rights, and miss out on receiving proper credit and reward for their work — especially when it comes to online consumption. CLIP aims to improve this situation with a wealth of free resources, supporting creators with the knowledge and skills needed to transform their passion into a viable profession.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Vacation!

    I have no plans, except for not traveling. I have been screwing around with my Gemini PDA and my phone all day. Wrote scripts to put battery percentage in the tmux status line, with a battery or plug emoji depending on whether or not the device is plugged in.

  • An Affront to Queenie

    I just found myself typing this story out, and kept going. It is anything but serious :) This story is a mashup of characters from a couple of different D&D campaigns. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty!

  • Still here

    The capsule still lives and is still relevant. it's not abandoned. I know there haven't been any postings as of late. I am personally disappointed that I've discoverd how much self-discipline I lack to be able to write consistently as I have desired to or imagined in my mind that I would write. Much has happened since my last update. There have been many periods of mental struggle and feeling disconnected from the projects that I want to complete. I struggle to get into the mindset of writing because I end up feeling mentally exhausted most days. If Cal Newport and other profilic authors have anything to say about this, it's due to the fact that I'm doing things that don't benefit me mentally and I'm doing too much context switching between tasks or taking on too much at one time causing fractured focus.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: DEFXSUI Wordo: CROAK

  • The Fair-Weather Friend

    A fair-weather friend is someone who's there for you when things are going well in your life, when it's convenient for them, or when they benefit, but whenever you need a favor or you're not doing well, this 'friend' is nowhere to be found. Needless to say, fair-weather friends aren't really your friends. Real friends care about your well being.

• Politics and World Events

  • F04 LiveFromFrance S1E04

    This new month in France was very dark, between the war in Palestine/Israel, the Ciaran Tempest (far from the dramatic Otis Hurricane in Mexico) and french politics.

  • Peace is a choice.

    Peace is a choice.

    This is something that I've been reflecting on over the course of the last few months.

    Years ago, I was generally very angry. Ready to argue, ready to fight to solve problems.

    Life has a way of smoothing those rough edges. It's hard to burn at both ends all the time, as a candle, per se, if the time is more common than not that you just want to take a nap. I've watched those pieces of me chip and fall off bit by bit. I'm not quite there, and unsure if I'll ever be, but I do have a point to make.

• Misc

  • Re: Atomic Habits

    I recently finished reading Atomic Habits¹. It's a decent self-help book about forming good habits and quitting bad habits. It touches on some of the same concepts in my journal entry "The Power of Convenience²", just in more depth. I've learned quite a bit from it and I've even started implementing some of the strategies in the book with success. I'm glad I read it and I would recommend it to anybody.

    One big idea that was mentioned in the book but not expanded on is that we need our leaders to organize society such that it's easier to form good habits and quit bad ones. To a limited extent, we can build a controlled environment inside our homes which promotes good habits, but we can't individually control the environment outside of our homes.

  • Nation Books

    I was reading a book which invited me to visit the publisher: Nation Books. Searching online, I did not immediately find what I was looking for. However, if you visit the web address directly, you are redirected to Type Media Center's Bold Type Books imprint. My book is listed there. And Bold Type Books appears to be the successor to Nation Books. I'm leaving this breadcrumb to help others find the current publisher.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Hole-y Tao bells!

    Maybe it's just lack of participants. But I've occasionally wondered if there's a bit of a fear of "Gemini becoming too much like The Web" or "Bubble becoming too much like a corporate social network" subconsciously driving activity down, as though suspecting activity itself might have played a significant role in the arguable downfall of those: "Maybe it'll stay more pristine if I don't add to - or otherwise sully - it" kind of thing.

  • Setup Dropbear to unlock Debian on the Libre Computer "Renegade" over your Local Network

    In a previous gemlog I illustrated how to installed Debian over an encrypted file-system, perhaps you want to connect to this board remotely and therefore you need to unlock it from your terminal otherwise you need at least a keyboard plugged into, and this is not very handy.

  • Postgres Quick Notes, take two

    What follows is some quick notes to remind me of the things I do when I setup a new instance of PostgreSQL on the various machines I work with.

  • Re: I gave emacs a serious look back in the day

    But I also remember concluding the vi[m] command to pipe some or all lines to a script's stdin and receive its stdout in its stead (:%!<command>) was plenty sufficient to accomplish mass editing things I was enamored of at the time, and it's definitely served me well in that capacity over the years.

  • Setup Dropbear to unlock Debian on the Libre Computer "Renegade" over your Local Network

    In a previous gemlog I illustrated how to installed Debian over an encrypted file-system, perhaps you want to connect to this board remotely and therefore you need to unlock it from your terminal otherwise you need at least a keyboard plugged into, and this is not very handy.

  • Emacs Basics

    Emacs is a Lisp machine. Lisp is a programming language from the 1950s but it’s good. It looks different from C or JavaScript or shell scripts but just like them, you can make functions, and functions can be marked as interactive so they can be called as commands. Don’t worry, it comes with a huge amount of ready-made commands.

  • AGE for email

    I’ve had a couple of different people ask to use AGE for email, and Emacs can handle that just fine, so I’ve acquiesced

  • Internet/Gemini

    • I read Gemini and I care

      I do. I cannot say I read everything it's posted on Gemini; I'm not that dedicated, but I do read most that's posted on Antenna or Cosmos, and some of what's available on the BBS. And I read because I often like what I find there, even if I don't always agree with what said.

  • Programming

    • show-trailing-whitespace is my friend

      When I am writing prose in Emacs and I have sprawlbrain, I usually type one or more spaces at the end of all the places I know I need to continue writing or editing, and they’ll show up because of how show-trailing-whitespace is on.

      So I can write a few words about things I need to remember to address without losing my place. It helps me “bookmark” what I’m doing.

      Sprawlbraininess can differ from day to day because sometimes I have zero and other times I have like five or six such bookmarks in a given post, even a super short one.