Links 20/12/2023: Clown Computing Perishing (More Layoffs), Software Patents Ban Apple Products
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Linux Foundation
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
-
Leftovers
-
James G ☛ Is writing customer-facing documentation technical writing?
"Is writing customer-facing documentation technical writing?"
I wanted to share more thoughts on this question. What better place to do so than my blog?
-
The Register UK ☛ Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come
Just as Doom redefined video games in 1993, Windows NT redefined PC operating systems. The first version came out just a few months before Doom, and it was even more influential. '93 also saw the release of NCSA Mosaic, the OG web browser. Mosaic's spin-off, Netscape, started under the name Mosaic Communications Corporation, and somehow, that company homepage is still there. Later, Mosaic Corp evolved into Netscape, and that begat today's Mozilla. Also going online in '93 was the Trojan Room coffee pot camera, the first ever webcam.
-
Axios ☛ Judge orders documents naming Jeffrey Epstein associates to be unsealed
Driving the news: Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York set a Jan. 1 release date for more than 150 names associated with the lawsuit, per the order.
-
Science
-
Omicron Limited ☛ Mapping the relations between Manhattan Project scientists using network science
To map the relationships between different scientists involved in the Manhattan project, Janosov firstly collected every Nobel laureate's Wikipedia page and compiled these pages into a dataset. Subsequently, he used language processing techniques to analyze the texts included in these pages.
-
Omicron Limited ☛ Bolivia's hypergravity blood cell test for astronaut health
Based at ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands, the LDC is an 8 m-diameter four-arm centrifuge that gives researchers access to a range of hypergravity up to 20 times Earth gravity for weeks or months at a time.
-
Science Alert ☛ Secret Message Hidden in a Victorian-Era Silk Dress Is Actually a Long-Lost Code
As it turns out, the messages are a form of telegraphic code once used by the United States Army and Weather Bureau in the nineteenth century to share city forecasts as cheaply as possible. At this time in North America, each word on a telegram could cost several dollars, which, when you consider the currency's value before more than a century of inflation, translates to a big chunk of change.
-
-
Education
-
The Atlantic ☛ It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber
First, PISA finds that students who spend less than one hour of “leisure” time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their screens more than five hours a day. This gap held even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. For comparison, a 50-point decline in math scores is about four times larger than America’s pandemic-era learning loss in that subject.
Second, screens seem to create a general distraction throughout school, even for students who aren’t always looking at them. Andreas Schleicher, the director of the PISA survey, wrote that students who reported feeling distracted by their classmates’ digital habits scored lower in math. Finally, nearly half of students across the OECD said that they felt “nervous” or “anxious” when they didn’t have their digital devices near them. (On average, these students also said they were less satisfied with life.) This phone anxiety was negatively correlated with math scores.
In sum, students who spend more time staring at their phone do worse in school, distract other students around them, and feel worse about their life.
-
The Guardian UK ☛ Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text, say researchers
The study, published in the Review of Educational Research, also found that while there is a negative relationship between digital reading and comprehension for primary school students, the relationship turns positive for secondary school and undergraduate students.
-
The Conversation ☛ Fraud is a problem so big we need to start teaching children how to spot it in schools
So we need a new approach that holds financial institutions and businesses responsible for identifying or facilitating fraud and that harnesses AI to spot suspicious transactions. It’s not reasonable to expect consumers to know when they’re being scammed if banks and social media platforms can’t.
-
The Atlantic ☛ The Humanities Have Sown the Seeds of Their Own Destruction
If we have any hope of resuscitating fields like English and history, we must rescue the humanities from the utilitarian appraisals that both their champions and their critics subject them to. We need to recognize that the conservatives are right, albeit not in the way they think: The humanities are useless in many senses of the term. But that doesn’t mean they’re without value.
-
Buttondown ☛ Advice for new software devs who've read all those other advice essays
Someone recently asked me if I had advice for early-career programmers. At first I thought this was a silly question. I only entered the workforce ten years ago; many of my newsletter subscribers have been programming for longer than I've been alive!
Then I went and read some "advice for starting programmer" essays and thought of some things they missed. So here's thirteen bits of advice for early-career programmers. Some of it is contradictory.
-
-
Hardware
-
Martijn Braam ☛ The MNT keyboard reviewed
This being a more niche product sadly does make it a bit on the expensive side. But I must say this is by far the most solid keyboard I've owned. My main keyboard on my desktop is an Das Keyboard 4 ultimate. It's a nice keyboard but it doesn't compare to the full machined aluminium frame on the MNT keyboard.
-
-
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
-
Quartz ☛ How this privacy expert is ensuring women's most intimate data stays secure
After the US Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion, and reproductive privacy gained global attention, Flo rolled out a first-of-its-kind feature: Anonymous Mode, which allows users to access the app without using their name, email address, or other digital identifiers. Flo’s Anonymous Mode also functions in such a way that no single data source has complete user information, helping to protect against hacking. Under Khan, Flo has taken the feature one step further, open-sourcing the technology so that other femtech companies can use it, too.
-
US Dept Of Health and Human Services ☛ Social Media and Youth Mental Health The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory [PDF]
A Surgeon General’s Advisory is a public statement that calls the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue and provides recommendations for how it should be addressed. Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that require the nation’s immediate awareness and action.
This Advisory calls attention to the growing concerns about the effects of social media on youth mental health. It explores and describes the current evidence on the positive and negative impacts of social media on children and adolescents, some of the primary areas for mental health and well-being concerns, and opportunities for additional research to help understand the full scope and scale of social media’s impact. This document is not an exhaustive review of the literature. Rather, it was developed through a substantial review of the available evidence, primarily found via electronic searches of research articles published in English and resources suggested by a wide range of subject matter experts, with priority given to, but not limited to, meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews. It also offers actionable recommendations for the institutions that can shape online environments—policymakers and technology companies—as well as for what parents and caregivers, young people, and researchers can do.
-
Quartz ☛ Why the future of farming is taking lessons from commercial real estate
Demand for organic food is growing exponentially in North America. But even when grocers offer US farmers bigger organic contracts, they can’t always say yes. To maintain soil health without pesticides, farmers typically rotate many crops among their fields. Rotating crops improves soil, but makes scaling difficult.
“To get another 200 acres of tomatoes, they need to buy another 1000 acres worth of farmland,” says Craig Wichner, founder of Farmland LP. In order to say yes to a bigger contract for one crop, organic farmers may have to find extra buyers for other crops as well. There are also barriers to going organic to begin with: Federal crop insurance incentivizes farmers to stick with one crop, and it takes three years to certify a field as USDA organic.
-
DeSmog ☛ At COP28, Family Farmers Who Feed the World Went Unheard
Our food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet fails to feed the world, with a tenth of humanity experiencing hunger.
-
Pro Publica ☛ ProPublica Documentary: The Human Toll of Philips CPAP Recall
-
Pro Publica ☛ A Train Took His Legs. KCS Railway Put the Blame on Him.
Chris Cole lay on his back in the gravel beside the railroad tracks, staring up at the overcast sky above Godfrey, Illinois. He could not see below his waist — a co-worker had thrown himself over Cole’s body to spare him the sight, although the man couldn’t keep himself from repeating: “Oh my god, Chris. Oh my god.” So, instead of looking down where his legs and feet should have been, Cole looked up. What’s going to happen to my family? he remembered thinking.
Moments earlier, Cole — a 45-year-old brakeman, engineer and conductor with over two decades of experience working on the railroads — had attempted a maneuver he’d done many times: hoisting himself onto a locomotive as it moved past him. Although dangerous, Cole’s employer, Kansas City Southern Railway Company, did not prohibit workers from climbing on and off equipment that was moving at a “walking speed.” In fact, the company went from banning the practice in the mid-’90s to steadily increasing the permissible speed at which workers could attempt to climb onboard, a change other freight companies would also adopt in keeping with the spirit of a modern strategy to move cargo as quickly as possible.
-
-
Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
-
Silicon Angle ☛ Report: AWS to reorganize sales teams amid slowing cloud revenue growth [Ed: Clown computing is one heck of a bubble (Azure and AWS layoffs). Now they hop on to "Hey Hi" (AI). Facebook et al still issue media "SPAM" about "Metaverse".]
Amazon Web Services Inc. is planning a major overhaul of its 60,000-strong sales team, in order to address problems that have loosened its grip on the global cloud computing market at a time when rivals such as Google Cloud and Microsoft Corp. continue to go from strength to strength. [FALSE!]
That’s according to a report today in The Information, which said the Amazon.com Inc. cloud unit’s sales chief Matt Garman is planning to consolidate various sales teams that have developed “conflicting sales strategies” within the company. The plan also calls for changes in how AWS assigns its technical staff to help customers, the report said. It comes after a growing number of AWS clients expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s existing practices.
-
The Register UK ☛ Pakistani politician deepfakes himself to deliver a speech from behind bars
Staged by the party he represents, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the almost five-hour event [VIDEO] that culminated in a four-minute speech by an AI version of Khan.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the video was based on notes the former PM sent to his lawyers. Those notes were recorded and fed into a tool from AI firm ElevenLabs that clones voices from existing speech samples.
-
The Guardian UK ☛ Imran Khan deploys AI clone to campaign from behind bars in Pakistan
His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party used artificial intelligence to make a four-minute message from the 71-year-old, headlining a “virtual rally” hosted on social media overnight on Sunday into Monday despite internet disruptions that monitor NetBlocks said were consistent with previous attempts to censor Khan.
PTI said Khan sent a shorthand script through lawyers that was fleshed out into his rhetorical style. The text was then dubbed into audio using a tool from the AI firm ElevenLabs, which boasts the ability to create a “voice clone” from existing speech samples.
-
Futurism ☛ Elon Musk’s Grok AI Accuses Him of Going to Court for Pedophilia
Perhaps most glaring of the bizarre statements made by the billionaire's bespoke AI is that he "went to court" over accusations of pedophilia, which is likely the chatbot conflating Musk's defamation trial back in 2019 that stemmed from the man himself referring to a British diver who attempted to save a bunch of Thai kids trapped in a cave collapse the year prior as a "pedo guy." Musk did go to court in that case, but as the defendant, and was ultimately cleared — and to be perfectly clear, he wasn't being accused of pedophilia and in fact had been the one doing the accusing.
-
Modern Diplomacy ☛ Managing Cybersecurity Risks Related to AI in Developing Countries: Challenges and Strategies Part I
A significant barrier in the utilization of AI in developing countries is the unpreparedness of technological infrastructure. This immature infrastructure condition not only potentially hinders the effective implementation of AI technology but also creates vulnerabilities to various types of cyberattacks. Less developed infrastructure often means a lack of sophisticated security systems, both in terms of hardware and software, which are essential elements in protecting AI data and operations.
Consequently, AI systems in these countries may be more vulnerable to phishing, malware, ransomware, and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, where attackers can easily exploit security weaknesses to gain unauthorized access, steal sensitive data, or even disrupt normal system operations. The inability to identify and respond to these threats promptly and accurately not only endangers data security but can also negatively impact public trust and acceptance of AI technology.
-
Quartz ☛ Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue wants an AI democracy
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue doesn’t like the tendency of big tech companies to hold on to machine learning codes like business patents. Instead, he’s working to build a world where every developer or startup can freely access artificial intelligence models—and helping AI, effectively, go open-source.
-
-
Linux Foundation
-
ONF prepares to wind down operations, transfers projects to Linux Foundation - Telecompaper EN [Ed: LF: where you shelve dead things]
-
-
Security
-
Privacy/Surveillance
-
NPR ☛ Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy experts
The project, known as Predicting Image Geolocations (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stanford graduate students in order to identify locations on Google Street View.
But when presented with a few personal photos it had never seen before, the program was, in the majority of cases, able to make accurate guesses about where the photos were taken.
-
-
-
Defence/Aggression
-
teleSUR ☛ Over 52,000 Illegal Migrants Reach Spain in 2023
The latest "Irregular Immigration" report covering the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 15 shows that 52,945 illegal immigrants reached Spain in the period, up 76.2 percent from the same period in 2022.
-
New York Times ☛ Migrants Crossing the Darién Gap Find Success on Social Media
TikTok, Facebook (Farcebook) and YouTube are transforming global migration, becoming tools of migrants and smugglers alike.
-
Site36 ☛ Blocked because of a lie: Civil rescue organisations take legal action against penalties in Italy
-
Site36 ☛ Frontex drone flies again, but the cause of crash off Crete in August remains unknown
-
The Atlantic ☛ Courts Are Choosing TikTok Over Children
Social media presents an undoubted public-health crisis for the country’s preteens and teens. A surgeon-general report released earlier this year noted that, per a recent study, “adolescents who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety,” compared with their peers who spent less time on such platforms. A particular concern are algorithms that serve content that promotes eating disorders, suicide, and substance abuse, based on close surveillance of a given teenager.
-
Atlantic Council ☛ What to know about China’s meddling in Taiwan’s upcoming election
It is never a question of if the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will try to influence Taiwan’s elections, but how the PRC will try to influence Taiwan’s elections. For decades, China has tried to sway Taiwanese voters through local institutions, such as temples and online campaigns. Messaging from the PRC in the past has sought to portray Beijing in a positive light, appeal to Taiwanese voters to vote for pro-PRC candidates, and even push Taiwanese voters to not vote at all.
-
[Old] Medium ☛ Full Report Launch: Deafening Whispers: China’s Information Operation and Taiwan’s 2020 Election
China’s boycott campaign against Swedish retailer H&M last month has put the spotlight on Chinese information operations, and how it can easily shut down the operations of even one of the largest fashion retailers in the world. While the operations against H&M were shocking in terms of scale and success, the influence tactics used are not new.
In our latest report, “Deafening Whispers”, we introduce a framework our chairperson Dr. Puma Shen developed to analyze these information operations and the modes of operations used to spread Chinese propaganda.
Methods to study information operations need to evolve with their increasing sophistication, and at the end of this article, we propose a “3I” model to appraise information operations, as an alternative to the covert, coercive and corrupting means used to study China’s influence operations.
-
Omicron Limited ☛ Will gutted safeguards doom social media—and the election—in 2024?
There are major elections taking place in more than 40 countries, including the U.S., in 2024, and where social media is headed has never been more important. Experts say there's reason to be worried going into election season.
"One of the things that I'm concerned about is the fact that platforms have descoped their trust and safety teams and their election integrity efforts," says Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University.
-
YLE ☛ Finland's population tops 5.6m
For the past several years, immigration has been the main contributor to population growth in Finland. This year has so far seen 54,151 more immigrants than emigrants.
-
The Hill ☛ Gerrymandering is an enemy to democracy — we need constitutional reform now
As long as members of the House of Representatives are elected in the current manner, gerrymandering will continue to be a problem. The solution is a constitutional change that eliminates, or at the very least, reduces the impact of gerrymandering.
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan detects another Chinese balloon crossing sensitive median line, marking third sighting this month
Another balloon was spotted at 9:09 am local time (0109 GMT) on Monday, around 124 kilometres (77 miles) northwest of the coastal city of Keelung, Taiwan’s defence ministry said Tuesday.
-
Defence Web ☛ SA infantry battalions and intelligence units rotate in DR Congo
Elections and the impending closure of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) do not appear to have affected planning by troop contributing countries (TCCs), with South Africa’s commitment seeing a rotation of its Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) contribution this month (December).
-
India Times ☛ One year in and ChatGPT already has us doing its bidding
After that, I got in this habit of inquiring about myself often. Once, it told me Vauhini Vara was the author of a nonfiction book called "Kinsmen and Strangers: Making Peace in the Northern Territory of Australia." That, too, was false, but I went with it, responding that I had found the reporting to be "fraught and difficult."
-
-
Environment
-
NL Times ☛ Zuid-Holland demands answers about health risks of PFAS found in sea foam
A large part of the Provincial Council in Zuid-Holland has asked the provincial government about the risks of PFAS found in sea foam along the Dutch coast. They want the province to find out as quickly as possible the limit to the amount of PFAS which beachgoers may encounter. The RIVM reported last week that the measurements along the coast of Zeeland, Noord- and Zuid-Holland found much higher PFAS concentrations in the sea foam than in the seawater.
This foam forms when algae die in the sea, but according to the RIVM, it can also be caused by pollution in the water, and by strong winds wind. PFAS accumulates in the sea foam.
-
Energy/Transportation
-
uni Emory ☛ The Legitimacy Of Cryptocurrencies: An Ethical Debate
One of the most essential controversies is its association with illegal activities such as money laundering and drug trafficking. Another is the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining, which requires a significant amount of energy and contributes to climate change.
-
Herman Õunapuu ☛ My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
7.5V over USB type A is probably not safe with other devices, especially since a normal person only sees a USB port on the adapter and thinks that it is perfectly safe to use it to charge their phone or other devices. Yes, properly implemented USB type C ports can negotiate all sorts of voltages, but this is not one of them.
Probably explains why my power banks are acting odd now and glitching out.
-
-
Overpopulation
-
The Register UK ☛ California approves lavatory-to-faucet water recycling
Taking a cue from water-starved environments like Arrakis in Frank Herbert's Dune books and the International Space Station, arid California is shortening the distance between wastewater and drinking water.
On Tuesday the US state, which experienced some drought relief in 2023, approved rules that allow treated wastewater to be added directly into the public water system, rather than requiring it to pass through an intermediary aquifer, reservoir, or groundwater source.
-
-
-
Finance
-
Quartz ☛ This entrepreneur is helping more Nigerians access loans—using social media
The unbanked population in Nigeria totaled 64 million in 2021, and though rising mobile money adoption reduced that to 40 million in 2022, the number is still huge as it is higher than the population of entire countries. This is largely because more than 40% of the country’s population lives in remote zones that lack access to legacy banks and mobile money networks, and the fact that many Nigerians lack official identification documents needed for banking registration.
-
-
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
-
India Times ☛ Toshiba to be delisted after 74 years, faces future with new owners
The conglomerate is being taken private by a group of investors led by private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners(JIP) which also includes financial services firm Orix, utility Chubu Electric Power and chipmaker Rohm.
-
Silicon Angle ☛ Patronus AI rolls out SimpleSafetyTests to identify harmful AI models
Artificial intelligence model evaluation and security startup Patronus AI Inc. is rolling out a suite of tests developers can use to ensure their AI applications are safe to release in the wild.
-
International Business Times ☛ OpenAI Says It Will Pay Researchers To Make Superintelligent AI Systems Safe
According to OpenAI, fully understanding superhuman AI systems will be an arduous task. Notably, humans will not be able to reliably evaluate whether a million lines of complicated codes generated by an AI model are safe to run.
-
Scoop News Group ☛ Homeland Security employees expressing ‘good interest’ in using public generative AI tools, agency official says
Employees who want to use generative AI must first seek permission from a manager and then attend an agency generative AI training, which is currently being held weekly. Hysen said the department is not specifically tracking the extent to which employees are using each tool, though he suggested that summarizing events and producing visuals might be potential use cases for this technology.
-
Axios ☛ How Europe is dominating tech regulation
Why it matters: For all U.S. regulators' bluster on the subject of regulating AI and Big Tech, a lot more is getting done in Europe and the U.K. It's likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
-
Truthdig ☛ Lawmakers Who Voted ‘Yes’ on NDAA Received Big Campaign Cash
Campaign cash in particular is associated with “buying influence,” a practice top recipients in Congress typically deny exists, insisting the corporate checks stuffed in their suit pocket have no impact on how they vote. The data suggest otherwise. I compared the recent House and Senate NDAA votes with the political donations each representative and senator received from the arms industry so far this election cycle.
On average, House members who voted to authorize $886 billion in military spending took four times more money from military contractors than members who voted against the bill. Senators who supported the NDAA took five times more arms industry cash than the senators who opposed it.
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Now for Musk vs Europe: EU takes direct aim at X
The EU is investigating social media company X over suspected breaches of obligations, partly relating to posts following Hamas’s attacks on Israel, its first probe under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA came into force in November 2022 and requires very large online platforms and search engines to do more to tackle illegal content and risks to public security.
The probe will focus on countering the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, and the effectiveness of measures taken to combat information manipulation, including the “community notes” system, the commission said.
-
Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
-
[Repeat] RFA ☛ Blasted by “little pinks,” Tokyo restaurant hits back with Winnie-the-Pooh
According to Wuyue Sanren, the Chinese government is adept at using patriotic bloggers to stir up nationalistic sentiment to divert public attention from other social issues.
But they may not want another flame war with Japan ahead of the Taiwanese presidential elections on Jan. 13, he said.
-
The Hill ☛ We cannot ignore China’s information warfare any longer
Chinese leaders intend to achieve their objective not simply through economic entanglement and military coercion but by destroying the West’s will to resist. “The crumbling of a regime always starts in the realm of ideas.”
-
International Business Times ☛ European Union Launches In-Depth Investigation into Elon Musk's X Under Digital Services Act
The EU's decision to open a formal DSA investigation on X comes in the wake of a complaint filed against X's advertising technology by the privacy rights group, noyb. While these events may seem connected, the Commission has been actively probing the platform for several months, primarily focusing on concerns related to the spread of illegal content and disinformation during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
-
-
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
Jamie Zawinski ☛ Rajat Khare doesn't like people writing about him
An Indian venture capitalist is mounting an international legal campaign to pressure major media outlets to remove his name from articles or take down the stories altogether: [...]
-
The Daily Beast ☛ Who Is Killing All These Stories About a Controversial Tech Mogul?
An Indian venture capitalist is mounting an international legal campaign to pressure major media outlets to remove his name from articles or take down the stories altogether, Confider has learned.
In a move that has press freedom campaigners troubled, Rajat Khare, co-founder of Appin, an India-based tech company, has used a variety of law firms in a number of different jurisdictions to threaten these U.S., British, Swiss, Indian, and French-language media organizations.
-
Reuters ☛ Editor’s note
Reuters has temporarily removed the article “How an Indian startup hacked the world” to comply with a preliminary court order issued on Dec. 4, 2023, in a district court in New Delhi, India.
Reuters stands by its reporting and plans to appeal the decision.
-
[Old] Internet Archive ☛ How an Indian startup hacked the world
Appin was a leading Indian cyberespionage firm that few people even knew existed. A Reuters investigation found that the company grew from an educational startup to a hack-for-hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe. Appin alumni went on to form other firms that are still active.
-
JURIST ☛ UN human rights expert concerned over disappearance of Russia opposition figure Alexei Navalny
Further to the Special Rapporteur’s call and in response to Navalny’s supporters’ request for urgent interim measures, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a communication to Russian representatives to provide information about Navalny’s “status, whereabouts and the state of health…and to urgently give him access to his lawyers.”
-
RFERL ☛ Belarusian Rights Activist Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison Over 2020 Election Protest
Alyaksandra Kasko, a Belarusian rights activist who was arrested in early February right after she returned from Poland, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges related to her protesting the official results of a widely disputed presidential election in 2020 that handed strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka victory. [...]
-
New York Times ☛ ‘Where Is Navalny?’ A Search Is On for the Missing Russian Dissident.
Mr. Navalny was scheduled to appear for various court hearings on Monday, she added. One of the courts at which he was supposed to appear suspended his case because it could not locate him, Vyacheslav Gimadi, a member of Mr. Navalny’s legal team, posted on social media.
-
Greece ☛ Opposition slams foreign minister for removing art piece from consulate exhibition
Nasos Iliopoulos, a lawmaker from the New Left, accused the government of legitimizing the far-right. “Fascists do not put up with anything and Mr Gerapetritis had to humor them. He ordered the work to be taken down. The government constantly succumbs to the pressures of the far right,” he said. “It would be good for the government to do something substantial to combat gender-based violence, instead of targeting a work of art.”
-
RFERL ☛ Iranian Nobel Laureate Boycotts Latest Trial
The accusations for which Mohammadi was summoned to court were not immediately known. Even from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, she has continued her political activism against Iran's strict dress code for women and against its ruling theocracy.
-
India Times ☛ YouTuber booked after video on guv-CM tussle goes viral
The video also said the chief minister's direction to downplay the case against the SFI members, who protested against the governor, was neglected by the top police officers. They chargedIPC section 124 (attacking the governor or president). While considering the SFI members' bail application, the prosecution softened the stance stating that it was just a protest and not an attack on the governor.
-
Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ was mistaken as national anthem over 800 times, gov’t says in appeal to ban protest song
In June, Hong Kong authorities asked the court to grant an order to bar anyone from distributing Glory to Hong Kong with the intention to incite secession, sedition, or to violate the national anthem law, and anyone from assisting with those acts.
The legal bid came after multiple blunders at international sports events, when the protest song was mistakenly played as the city’s national anthem, instead of China’s March of the Volunteers.
-
-
Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
-
The Dissenter ☛ Judge Rules Assange Visitors May Sue CIA For Allegedly Violating Privacy
-
The Dissenter ☛ 'Day X Is Here': Assange Granted Hearing That May Be Last Opportunity To Stop Extradition
-
teleSUR ☛ Assange to Present Final Appeal to Avoid Extradition on Feb 20
During the two-day hearing, two judges will review the decision made on June 6 by Judge Jonathan Swift, who had denied Assange permission to submit any further appeals, a decision questioned by the defense team of WikiLeaks' founder.
In this final stage of this battle, Assange faces two possible outcomes: either the judges grant him permission to appeal aspects of his case that his defense had not addressed so far, or they agree with Swift to prohibit further appeals, triggering the extradition process to the United States. The journalist could also appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
-
Scheerpost ☛ Assange Appeal Hearing Set for February
Assange’s wife Stella Assange confirmed that the hearing will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice. Assange had had an earlier request to appeal rejected by High Court Judge Jonathan Swift on June 6.
Assange then filed an application to appeal that decision and the dates have now been set. Assange is seeking to challenge both the home secretary’s decision to extradite him as well as to cross appeal the decision by the lower court judge, Vanessa Baraitser.
-
RFERL ☛ Afghan Journalist Released Amid Criticism Over Increasing Taliban Intimidation
AFJC has documented an alarming rise in the harassment of journalists in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan since March. It has documented 75 incidents of journalists being detained or threatened. Some 33 journalists were arrested during this period, while various branches of the Taliban government threatened another 42.
“The majority of these arrests were carried out by the intelligence department,” the organization said.
-
[Old] Faine Greenwood ☛ Facebook Destroys Everything: Part 2
But the evidence that Facebook lied came out too late. The lumbering executive minds of great lumbering companies had already been made up. Print reporters were laid off en masse, and many of those who survived were pressured to spend less time messing around with icky, unprofitable words, and more time on making fun little videos.
And like many millennials who had once dreamed of reporting careers, I watched the bloodbath and regretfully decided that I wasn’t going to bother with pursuing another full-time journalism job either.
-
[Old] The Atlantic ☛ How Facebook’s Chaotic Push Into Video Cost Hundreds of Journalists Their Jobs
Facebook egregiously overstated the success of videos posted to its social network for years, exaggerating the time spent watching them by as much as 900 percent, a new legal filing claims. Citing 80,000 pages of internal Facebook documents, aggrieved advertisers further allege that the company knew about the problem for at least a year and did nothing.
-
[Old] Nieman Lab ☛ Facebook’s pivot to video didn’t just burn publishers. It didn’t even work for Facebook
The layoffs were preceded, just a month earlier, by an announcement from Vice that it would “reduce the number of old-fashioned text articles on Vice.com, Refinery29 and another Vice-owned site, i-D, by 40 to 50 percent,” while increasing videos and visual stories on Instagram and YouTube “by the same amount.”
It all feels very five years ago. As we’ve documented, starting around 2016, Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg began pushing the notion that news video on Facebook was publishers’ bright future, a “new golden age.”
It turns out that the metrics that Facebook was using to measure engagement with news video were wrong, massively overestimating the amount of time that users spent consuming video ads. In 2019, Facebook settled a lawsuit with those advertisers, paying them $40 million (while admitting no wrongdoing). But it was too late for the publishers who’d already pivoted to Facebook video and then either made big cuts or shut down completely when it turned out people weren’t actually watching.
-
[Old] New York Times ☛ Vice Media plans to go deeper into video and other visuals as it targets a younger audience.
Van Scott, a Vice Media spokesman, said the company will reduce the number of old-fashioned text articles on Vice.com, Refinery29 and another Vice-owned site, i-D, by 40 to 50 percent.
The number of visual stories, including videos suited to mobile-friendly formats like Instagram’s Stories feature, is likely to increase by the same amount, Mr. Scott said.
-
[Old] Vanity Fair ☛ Was the Media’s Big “Pivot to Video” All Based on a Lie?
If the company did hide its mistake, as advertisers have alleged, it may also be responsible for the upheaval in the media industry that followed—including a huge number of layoffs. The infamous “pivot to video,” as it was known, began around 2015, and primarily swept the ranks of millennial-focused media companies. That was the year NowThis announced it wouldn’t have a homepage, and would solely publish clips to social-media platforms. Business Insider took the same tack when it launched Insider that same year (the site now has its own homepage). Moreover, in accordance with Zuckerberg’s 2016 declaration that the future of Facebook was video, many companies began to reshuffle their editorial strategies: MTV News, Vice, Vocativ, Mic, and Mashable all had layoffs in 2016 and 2017 as they announced plans to cut staff and pivot to video. (At one point, Facebook paid media companies to produce video for its site, though it eventually killed the initiative.)
-
[Old] Wired ☛ A New Facebook Lawsuit Makes 'Pivot to Video' Seem Even More Shortsighted
"A lot of friends lost their jobs over this bullshit," tweeted Benjamin Bailey, a writer for Nerdist. "Facebook outright lied and pushed this whole 'pivot to video' narrative. It's all a big house of cards."
-
Fortune ☛ Facebook Admitted That It Was Inflating Video Metrics. Now a Lawsuit Says the Problem Started Much Earlier—and Was Way Worse
Now, those claimants have filed an amended complaint. The earlier court proceedings allowed them to review around 80,000 pages of internal Facebook records, and the plaintiffs said Tuesday that they had uncovered evidence showing Facebook knew about the miscalculated metrics all the way back in January 2015.
The plaintiffs also said the inflation of the metrics ran to 150-900%, not 60-80%.
-
[Old] The HubSpot Inc ☛ Facebook was caught lying to advertisers (again)
Antitrust expert Matt Stoller notes that Facebook has already been busted on 2 separate occasions for lying to advertisers:
“Pivot to video”: In 2016, Zucky McClaims told the world that Facebook was going all in on video, and it misled advertisers about video metrics to boost the program.
Measurement tool: At the end of 2020, Facebook told advertisers that its “conversion lift tool” (which measures ad performance) overestimated campaign results.
-
The Verge ☛ Facebook employee warned it used ‘deeply wrong’ ad metrics to boost revenue
It’s not the first time Facebook has been accused of hurting businesses by inflating its numbers. The company previously faced a suit that claimed it greatly and knowingly overestimated how much video users were watching — an error critics say pushed online media publications toward a doomed “pivot to video” strategy, resulting in layoffs and enervated newsrooms. Facebook settled that suit in 2019.
-
New Zealand ☛ The data does lie: how Facebook’s fake video stats smashed NZ journalism
A lawsuit has revealed Facebook inflated its video statistics for years, inspiring the ‘pivot to video’ which made thousands of journalists redundant. Duncan Greive looks at its impact on New Zealand.
-
-
Civil Rights/Policing
-
The Club of Rome and the Rise of the “Predictive Modelling” Mafia
While many are now familiar with the manipulation of predictive modelling during the COVID-19 crisis, a network of powerful Malthusians have used the same tactics for the better part of the last century in order to sell and impose their agenda.
-
Hindustan Times ☛ Taliban jailing Afghan women abuse survivors ‘for their protection’?
Taliban has banned girls and women from attending schools, colleges, universities and workplaces. Women are also prohibited from travelling without a male guardian. Women are also no longer working in the judiciary or law enforcement or allowed to deal with crimes of gender-based violence, according to the UN report.
-
New York Times ☛ 7 Months Inside an Online Scam Labor Camp
A man was abducted by a Chinese gang and forced to work in a scam operation. He gathered financial information, photos and videos and shared the material with The New York Times.
-
RFA ☛ New rules targeting illegal organ trade unenforceable: experts
China has issued rules targeting the illegal trade in transplant organs, but analysts told Radio Free Asia that members of the political and financial elite procure replacement organs in secret via military hospitals, making the crackdown hard to enforce in practice.
-
-
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
-
Mark Nottingham ☛ RFC 9518 - What Can Internet Standards Do About Centralisation?
It’s no secret that most people have been increasingly concerned about Internet centralization over the last decade or so. Having one party (or a small number of them) with a choke hold over any important part of the Internet is counter to its nature: as a ‘network of networks’, the Internet is about fostering relationships between peers, not allowing power to accrue to a few.
-
-
Digital Restrictions (DRM)
-
[Old] Free Software Foundation ☛ International Day Against DRM (IDAD) - Save the Libraries! - December 8, 2023
There once was a time when you could donate a book to the library to give others in your community access to it. There once was a time when libraries owned the works that they provide to the public, rather than finding themselves trapped by unethical technology and predatory licensing fees. If we want to ensure that our cultural legacy lasts, we need to focus our attention on corporations like OverDrive, who make a living out of leeching on libraries, which are already underfunded. In this year's IDAD, we'll do our best to remedy this.
-
-
The Register UK ☛ Google coughs up $700M in Play Store antitrust suit
It must also continue to allow sideloading [sic] of apps and third-party app stores for at least seven years and maintain Android OS support for those third-party app stores. It must also not enter into exclusivity deals with OEMs for at least five years.
-
Silicon Angle ☛ Google to pay $700M to settle Play Store antitrust case with US states and consumers
The lawsuit grew out of a group of 37 states, representing over 21 million customers, and focused on the business practices of Google’s mobile app market within the Google Play Store. When the suit was filed, developers using the Play Store were forced to use Google’s own payment system, which would charge them a commission of between 15% and 30% of each transaction.
-
Patents
-
Software Patents
-
NPR ☛ Apple stops selling latest Apple Watch after losing patent case
In May, the patent fight stumped a jury, which could not reach a unanimous verdict on the question of whether Apple stole the idea for its blood oxygen feature from Masimo.
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Apple forced to halt US sales of latest watches
The decision is under review by President Joe Biden until 25 December, but Apple said it is taking steps to comply should the ruling stand. The Office of the US Trade Representative, the part of the Biden administration handling the case, said that ambassador Katherine Tai “is carefully considering all factors in this case”.
If not vetoed, the ban would go into effect on 26 December.
-
-
-
Copyrights
-
Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Library Licensing Strategies
Unsurprisingly, the impact of the OSTP Nelson Memo is prominent in library strategies for evolving their licensing strategies. Librarians are both excited to support faculty in open access publishing and also very aware that the breadth of the Memo’s mandates means that many faculty, who have previously been unaffected by the federal public access program as it developed under the OSTP Holdren Memo, will now be facing new and complicated zero-embargo public access demands. Faculty in the humanities and education are particular populations of concern; however, it is anticipated that some potential worries will be abated by the OSTP not requiring any CC license, only reading public access.
-
Techdirt ☛ The UK Government Should Not Let Copyright Stifle AI Innovation
In an attempt to undo some of the damage caused by the UK government’s retrograde move, a broad range of organizations, including Knowledge Rights 21, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia UK, have issued a public statement calling on the UK government to safeguard AI innovation as it draws up its new code of practice on copyright and AI. The statement points out that copyright is a serious threat to the development of AI in the UK, and that: [...]
-
New Statesman ☛ Authors and artificial intelligence: what next?
Although no plans for comprehensive regulation have yet been announced, the UK government is developing a code of practice to govern the use of copyrighted works by AI companies. AI capabilities are developing at a rapid pace and this constantly shifting landscape risks making any code of conduct redundant unless it is underpinned by high-level principles that are clear and stable. At ALCS we have published a set of principles that policymakers must consider when developing legislation in this area: [...]
-
Torrent Freak ☛ PornHub Sister Company Seeks Piracy Blocking Order & $21m Damages
Pornhub sister company MG Premium hopes to shut down the copyright-infringing tube site Goodporn. Following a bizarre court battle, the company is requesting a default judgment of more than $21 million. MG Premium also seeks an injunction that would require hosting companies, search engines, and other intermediaries to block the site's domain names.
-
Torrent Freak ☛ Judge Hits Pirate IPTV Defendant With $71.1k Contempt of Court Order
In July 2022, Canada-based IPTV provider SmoothStreams was shut down by a coalition of companies including Bell Media, Rogers, and the Hollywood-based studios of MPA-Canada. After two defendants failed to comply with the strict terms of a search and seizure order, both faced contempt proceedings. The first has just concluded with a judge ordering the defendant to immediately pay the plaintiffs over US$71,100, before the main copyright case has even started.
-
-
Gemini* and Gopher
-
Personal/Opinions
-
Technology and Free Software
-
Whole lotta nothing
Rough day paring down and then organizing some accumulated mail/paperwork, especially separating the likely/unlikely to ever be looked at again stuff.
Did something similar with login/password info. Got that down to 19 mostly bill-payment related entries.
I organized the latter in a way that a simple script can map relate keywords to single entries, e.g. 'health', 'market', 'healthcare', and 'marketplace' all map to the same healthcare.gov info. Or 'electric' and 'power' map to the electricity provider. And so on.
-
Oh, That's Nice
Woken up at 5:15 this morning by a PayPal notification: someone has ordered a copy of everything my little micropress has produced. My partner isn't feeling well this morning, so after getting up and moving around quietly downstairs, I went and checked, just to make sure I still had at least one copy of everything, which I did, though a few of the items are down to the last couple of copies.
-
Gaming
So I updated my primary "gaming" machine the other day. It's basically a 2017-era HP laptop that is just fast enough to play Factorio (the best game ever made.)
My primary machine that I use is just a bit too old to play Factorio comfortably (not surprising since it's an HP Elitebook from 2011.)
Anyways, the gaming machine was running an Ubuntu Bionic LTS from 2018. Being away from Ubuntu land for awhile, I didn't realize that Ubuntu was advertising their paid Ubuntu Pro service for out of date installations. I was constantly running apt update and seeing a big list of packages but nothing ever installed.
-
Firefox
I feel that Firefox will soon have a revival of sorts. The recent youtube anti-adblock shenanigans have shined a light on the usefulness and ubiquity of adblockers but also has reminded people that google plans to arbitrarily set limits on the next generation of chrome extensions that are really only there to halt adblockers.
-
Internet/Gemini
-
openid in geminispace
i was saying that there is no need in social networks since internet is a social network.
we have sites, the updates is possibre to fetch anonymously via rss.
but if we wanted to comment with our identity, then openid was the way.
so rss+openid solves almost all what we use activity pub for (i was gonna write except private messages, but even private can be done).
-
The Gopher Situation, part III, The Search For Uptime
It's been over two weeks [1] and the gopher server [2] has been up and running for all that time. Yup, it was Unicode [3]. Or rather, my inability to wrap Unicode properly.
-
Death of the Internet (or not?)
I’m sure many of us here come to midnight.pub for whatever reason - to disconnect from social media, live out our nostalgia over internet message boards, or some form of genuine, slow connection.
[...]
So I’m wondering if it’s the Internet that’s dead or the people / the users that are “dead?” (aka unreceptive) Apologies if this feels rambly but it’s difficult for me to describe this issue properly even now.
-
A New Beginning
I've always appreciated older technology, especially when it's something accessible; that's the reason why I started carrying around a 'dumb phone' and everything connected to it.
That's why I decided to start a blog on the smol pub. There's something liberating about writing on a simple site without the propaganda or distractions many modern websites have.
-
-
Programming
-
A bit of background on compilers exploiting signed overflow
Via Comment on ”Bug in my code from compiler optimization [video] | Hacker News” [1], “A bit of background on compilers exploiting signed overflow [2]”
A cautionary tale about compiler writers exploiting undefined behavior. I don't have much to add here, other than to spread a bit of awareness of why this happens.
-
Timing code from inside an assembler
Back in March, I wrote about some 6809 optimizations [1] where I counted CPU (Central Processing Unit) cycles by hand. I came across that code the other day and thought to myself, _my 6809 emulator [2] counts cycles, and I've embedded it into my 6809 assembler [3]—how hard could it be to time code in addition to testing it?_
Turns out—not terribly hard. I added an option to the `.TRON` directive to count cycles instead of printing code execution and have the `.TROFF` directive print the cycle count (indirectly, since the code isn't run until the end of the second pass of the assembler).
-
-
-
Monopolies/Monopsonies
-
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.