Leftovers

• Tracy Durnell ☛ It’s just a blog

  Where curiosity calls, I’ll do extra research beyond fact-checking, because for me blogging is a tool of thinking and it’s good to pay attention to the intellectual fuel we desire. But I’m not going to force myself to research things I don’t want to. My blog is for play, not obligation.

• Noel Rappin ☛ Conway’s Law

  If your organization has coders continually getting in each other’s way, or if you make a change to part of your code base and don’t know who needs to review it, or if you have code that nobody maintains because everybody owns it… you may be violating Conway’s Law.

• Analog Office ☛ Analog Office - Reader Question 8: How do I handle a plethora of post-it notes?

  “I take a lot of notes - to dos, things I’d like to remember or reference for later, etc. Some are in a small pocket sized notebook as they come to me (easy to carry, easy to write in, hard to organize, hard to review). Sometimes I put a post it note on the outside of the notebook for daily tasks but really it’s just an even quicker place to write notes down. I have more post it notes all over my desk. So many that I’m running out of room. The post it notes contain all kinds of things like a quote I’m trying to internalize in my work (drawing and art), questions for people, process notes regarding my art that I want to be reminded of daily as I work, goals for my art, things to try in my art, even a random financial note, and more. I love the quick access to them just being out but this is untenable. How do I organize this cacophony while still having constant visual reminders for the things that I’m practicing daily?”

• Science

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Boson predictor Peter Higgs: A fundamentally modest physicist

  • Science Alert ☛ Shocking Study Reveals Many Fast-Tracked Cancer Drugs Offer No Clinical Benefit

    Promising cancer drugs that are fast-tracked through approvals don't always work as hoped. A new study has found around 40 percent of anti-cancer therapies ushered through the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) accelerated approvals pathway between 2013 and 2017 didn't show clinical benefit in follow-up trials more than five years on.

• Education

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Most educated, least productive: Why Canada's falling behind | About That

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Canada is finally getting a national school food program. Here's how it could work

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Principal Engineer

    What about the level that comes after it? Different companies have different names, but in this article, we refer to it as Principal Engineer.

    Just as going from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer required a new skill (soft skills), the Principal Engineer requires a new skill: business skills.

    But what exactly is business skill? How can you master it? And why is it important for an engineer to think about business?

• Hardware

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Tech war: China could face US, EU curbs over legacy chips

  • [Repeat] APNIC ☛ Coherent optical transceivers

    The first generation of optical transmission systems used simple on/off keying (OOK) of the digital signal into light on the wire. A source of light was focused onto the end of the fibre cable, and a light sensor was placed at the other end. The overlay of digital signals onto such systems was rudimentary in the first instance — the detection of light was a ‘1’ and the absence of light was a ‘0’. Very early optical systems used light-emitting diodes at one end and photodiodes at the other.

    However, we wanted more from these optical systems. We wanted higher speed and longer reach. Both objectives can be addressed, at least initially, by changing the source of light to a laser, giving both longer reach by increasing the ability to inject larger amounts of optical power into the cable and permitting faster-switching properties. To achieve further improvements in both speed and distance for optical systems it’s necessary to include consideration of the cable itself.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • RTL ☛ Samsung returns to top of the smartphone market: industry tracker

      Samsung shipped 60.1 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, claiming nearly 21 percent of the market, according to IDC figures.

      Apple shipped 50.1 million iPhones, garnering just over 17 percent of the market in the same period, IDC reported.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] German Bundestag considers COVID-19 inquiry

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Their 8-year-old was given 5 doses of tuberculosis medication meant for another child

  • Scoop News Group ☛ How NIH’s National Library of Medicine is testing AI to match patients to clinical trials

    Few organizations in the world do more to turn biomedical and behavioral research into better health than the National Institutes of Health, its 27 institutes and centers and more than 18,000 employees.

  • The Sunday Times UK ☛ UK could ban under-16s from social media in face-off with Meta

    Downing Street has drawn up proposals for tougher age restrictions on apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp. A consultation on protecting children online will seek parents’ views on when children should be allowed to “access” social media websites, with an age range provided between 13 and 16. Most platforms allow children as young as 13 to sign up as members.

  • Mirror UK ☛ Children under 16-years-old could be banned from social media and buying smartphones - Mirror Online

    Currently, under 18s cannot take out phone contracts but they can buy pay-as-you-go phones, something No10 is looking at outlawing for under-16s. However the proposals are not expected to prevent parents from buying phones for their children. It comes after a survey for the charity Parentkind last month found 58% of parents of school-aged kids think smartphones should be banned for under 16s.

    Ministers will also ask parents if they think safeguards that could let them monitor their child’s access to social media sites should be installed on phones until they reach a certain age, the Sunday Times reported. It follows calls from the mum of murdered transgender teenager Brianna Ghey after one of her daughter's killers was obsessed with the dark web. Esther Ghey is campaigning for children under 16 to be banned from social media and for them to have special phones that are suitable for kids.

  • Express ☛ Ministers considering social media and mobile phone sale ban for children under 16

    Most platforms allow children as young as 13 to sign up as members, including social media giant Meta which last week lowered the minimum age required to use WhatsApp in Europe to 13 from 16.

    Under-18s are not allowed to take out phone contracts without parental consent, but can buy pay-as-you-go phones.

    The proposed changes would prevent this for under-16s but not stop parents from buying their children phones.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Why EPA Efforts to Clean Up Kentucky Town Haven’t Worked

    Nearly 100 people crowded into the library in Calvert City, Kentucky, in February when the Environmental Protection Agency hosted a public meeting on air pollution. Many had discovered flyers in their mailboxes explaining how the agency had found “elevated levels” of chemicals that “can pose an increased risk of cancer.”

    The EPA aimed to deliver a simple message that evening: Local petrochemical plants were leaking toxic air pollutants and regulators were working to fix them. And what played out next was predictable to anyone who has been to one of these meetings. There were concerned questions (Would you hesitate to live here? What are you going to do today?), unsatisfying answers (We’re working with the plants on voluntary measures) and pleas for action that regulators said couldn’t happen “overnight.”

  • Quoth Dr. Prasad: “It would not be difficult” to do an impossible VAERS study

    The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is a database run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration for reporting vaccine injuries whose major strength is the same as its major weakness. The major strength of VAERS is that anybody—and I do mean anybody—can report a suspected vaccine injury to it. You don’t have to be a physician or other health care provider to report a suspected vaccine injury, and, given what VAERS was designed for, that’s a good thing. That’s because VAERS was designed as an early warning system, a “canary in the coal mine,” if you will, to detect potential adverse events (AEs) from new and existing vaccines. What that design means, though, is that VAERS inherently cannot be used to accurately estimate the incidence or prevalence of specific injuries due to specific vaccines, because it is a passive surveillance system that relies on voluntary reporting. The idea is that VAERS is a hypothesis-generating, not a hypothesis-testing, system, because, given that anyone can report anything to VAERS, factors other than incidence or prevalence can hugely impact reporting to VAERS. VAERS is thus subject to the base rate fallacy, which occurs when cases or raw numbers of a phenomenon are examined without statistically correct consideration of the base rate or prior probability of that phenomenon being observed. That’s why any hypothesis generated by VAERS must be tested against more rigorous systems like the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) project, or FDA’s Post-licensure Rapid Immunization Safety Monitoring System (PRISM), active reporting systems that actively monitor electronic health records for AEs after vaccination in order to identify potential signals. Usually the VSD is the database most commonly used to investigate safety signals found in VAERS.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • India Times ☛ Adobe explores OpenAI partnership as it adds AI video tools

    Both those features will rely on Firefly, an AI model that Adobe has already deployed in its Photoshop software for editing still images. Amid competition from OpenAI, Midjourney and other startups, Adobe has sought to set itself apart by training its Firefly system data it has full rights to and offering indemnity to users against copyright claims.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ AI is becoming more powerful and more expensive, and people are getting nervous

    The report finds that AI development is proceeding at breakneck speed as developers churn out increasingly powerful and sophisticated models every month. Yet despite this accelerated development, the industry has made little progress in addressing fears around AI explainability and the growing nervousness over its impact on people’s lives.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Record ☛ Researchers stop ‘credible takeover attempt’ similar to XZ Utils backdoor incident

      Security researchers have stopped a “credible” takeover attempt reminiscent of the recent XZ Utils backdoor incident — further highlighting the urgent need to address weaknesses in the management of open source software.

      Researchers at the OpenJS Foundation — which monitors JavaScript projects used by billions of websites worldwide — said Monday that they “received a suspicious series of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping GitHub-associated emails.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Gregory Hammond ☛ Why There Are Many Alternatives To Google Analytics

      Google Analytics not working for your needs? There are many reasons why you may want to switch to an alternative, and there are many alternatives to choose from. Some of these alternative's are free, while many are paid and have a good refund policy. There is no harm finding an alternative, and in fact, it may work better for you to use an alternative.

    • APNIC ☛ Criteria for the accreditation of Regional Internet Registries

      In 2001, a document was developed that stated the criteria for the recognition of new Regional Internet Registries. Back then there were only three Regional Internet Registries (RIRs): ARIN, APNIC and the RIPE NCC. This document, known as ‘ICP-2’, was based on the criteria that the three existing RIRs adhered to. The ambition was that any new RIR would follow the same requirements as the existing ones. After the development of ICP-2, two more RIRs were established: LACNIC and AFRINIC.

    • Fortune ☛ Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence | Fortune

      In January, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced an intense grilling by skeptical U.S. lawmakers about his company’s ties to Beijing and its alleged risk to national security. Calm under the barrage, he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and reiterated that the social media service had cut most of its connections to ByteDance, its Chinese parent.

      But with the House voting in March to force ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok, 11 former employees interviewed by Fortune tell a vastly different story. Many of those ex-workers, four of whom were employed as recently as last year, say at least some of TikTok’s operations were intertwined with its parent during their tenures, and that the company’s independence from China was largely cosmetic. A few of the former workers would only speak to Fortune on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by TikTok, including the company seizing restricted stock they were given while still employees.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Heists on Los Angeles freeway heists terrify high-end jewelers

      The jeweler believes he was followed for roughly 30 miles from Polacheck’s, which is located at the Commons at Calabasas, an outdoor shopping venue. He said he inspected the underside of his car a few days after the robbery and found a small plastic tracker attached to the inside of a wheel well.

      “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for years — I am streetwise, not an idiot.”

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Leak: EU interior ministers want to exempt themselves from chat control bulk scanning of private messages

      “The fact that the EU interior ministers want to exempt police officers, soldiers, intelligence officers and even themselves from chat control scanning proves that they know exactly just how unreliable and dangerous the snooping algorithms are that they want to unleash on us citizens,” commented Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer. “They seem to fear that even military secrets without any link to child sexual abuse could end up in the US at any time. The confidentiality of government communications is certainly important, but the same must apply to the protection of business and of course citizens communications, including the spaces that victims of abuse themselves need for secure exchanges and therapy. We know that most of the chats leaked by today’s voluntary snooping algorithms are of no relevance to the police, for example family photos or consensual sexting. It is outrageous that the EU interior ministers themselves do not want to suffer the consequences of the destruction of digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption that they are imposing on us.”

      “The promise that professional secrets should not be affected by chat control is a lie cast in paragraphs. No provider and no algorithm can know or determine whether a chat is being conducted with doctors, therapists, lawyers, defence lawyers, etc. so as to exempt it from chat control. Chat control inevitably threatens to leak intimate photos sent for medical purposes and trial documents sent for defending abuse victims.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • Democracy Now ☛ Trump in the Dock: First Criminal Trial of a Former U.S. President Begins Today in NYC

    Donald Trump is making history today in New York as the first former U.S. president to stand trial for criminal charges. Trump faces 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to hide hush money payments he made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels and others, just weeks before winning the 2016 election. He is accused of violating federal campaign finance laws for failing to disclose the payments and instead recording them as a “legal expense.” Each of the 34 counts carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. “What Donald Trump is accused of is the type of crime that’s prosecuted in New York every single day … [a] garden-variety, ordinary grift,” says Ron Kuby, a longtime New York criminal defense and civil rights lawyer who is following the trial closely. Kuby explains what we can expect from the trial — the first of four different criminal cases Trump is currently embroiled in, but likely the only one he will stand for ahead of the 2024 election — in the coming days.

  • The Dissenter ☛ US Military Contractor CACI Finally Goes On Trial For Abu Ghraib Torture

  • Air Force Times ☛ His father never spoke of WWII. His flight logs told the story for him

    He was in the 453 BG [bombardment group] and a couple of histories have been written on that, which I was able to use. From the Air Force Historical Research Agency I got miles and miles of microfilm. Once I decoded that sort of military way of categorizing things, I was able to see all the planning for the missions.

    It was primarily the miles and miles and microfiche that gave me a feeling for what it was like — it gave me a real feeling for all the losses of the airplanes. In the book there is a place where I list all the planes and how they were lost. I think it’s just chilling.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Trump’s repeated escapes from political damage to be tested in NYC trial

    “This case is being asked to bear more weight than it possibly should or could,” Levinson said. “It’s being asked to be a bellwether, a referendum on Trump. And it’s a state criminal case. It’s not more, it’s not less, but the amount of attention it’s getting is obviously outsized.

    “For people who feel like Trump should be held to account, now all eyes are on this one business records case,” she added. “When you think about the things that were most harmful to our democracy, arguably this isn’t the case that should have gone first.”

  • The Hill ☛ Raskin says Trump’s hush money trial is ‘a very serious case’

    “They’re all about electoral interference and manipulation. And we’re going to see that in the DC case,” he continued. “They tried it with fraud. We’re going to see that in the Georgia case. And here they tried it with payoffs and then cooking the books. Financial manipulation. That’s what it’s about.”

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Interventions Laid the Groundwork for the Crisis in Haiti Today’CounterSpin interview with Chris Bernadel on Haiti

    Janine Jackson interviewed Black Alliance for Peace’s Chris Bernadel about Haiti for the April 12, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Reopened Nigeria-Niger border promises trade growth

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Germany launches military reform with new command structure

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Rwanda genocide: A complex return home after doing time

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Rwanda to remember victims of the 1994 genocide of Tutsis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Sudan: Darfur receives first food aid deliveries in months

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Myanmar junta says drones shot down over capital

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] Vietnam-Slovakia ties to improve, thanks to new Slovak PM

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-05 [Older] What's behind China's gold-buying spree?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Denmark: Faulty missile launcher shuts down shipping lane

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] European Parliament agrees on stricter EU migration rules

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Germany arrests 'IS' suspects for enslaving Yazidi children

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Japan, US to increase defense ties after leaders' summit

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Myanmar: Rebel fighters pressure junta at border hub

  • New York Times ☛ With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught

    The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Organizing for victory

      In the escalating struggle against Putin's Russia, Iran, and China, The West needs a return to the clarity of Churchill and Roosevelt, who communicated clear strategic priorities to the public, industry, and the military, writes Ben Hodges.

    • Meduza ☛ The price is right: Why Russia’s economy appears to be booming in the face of sanctions — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian university students launch petition against new research center named after monarchist philosopher who defended Hitler — Meduza

    • European Commission ☛ Commission endorses Ukraine Plan, paving the way for regular payments under the Ukraine Facility

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 15 Apr 2024 Today, the Commission has adopted a proposal for a Council Implementing Decision that assesses positively the Ukraine Plan, Ukraine's comprehensive reform and investment strategy for the next four years.

    • Federal News Network ☛ With the FISA fight over, what’s next for Congress?

      Speaker of the House Mike Johnson continues the balancing act within his own party. One week it's all about FISA. Then, there's aid to Israel and Ukraine.

    • Security Week ☛ Destructive ICS Malware ‘Fuxnet’ Used by Ukraine Against Russian Infrastructure

      ICS malware Fuxnet allegedly used by Ukrainian Blackjack group to disrupt industrial sensors and other systems belonging to a Moscow infrastructure firm.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine's Zelensky calls for same 'unity' from allies as for Israel

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies on Monday to show the same "unity" toward Ukraine as Israel, which said it repelled an Iranian attack over the weekend with Western support.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant 'Getting Dangerously Close' To Accident, IAEA Chief Warns

      Recent drone attacks on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine have raised the risk of a nuclear accident to a new level, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency warned on April 15, calling on the UN Security Council to do everything in its power to minimize the risk.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Sanctions Belarus Entities Over Support For Russian War On Ukraine

      The United States on April 15 imposed sanctions on 12 Belarus entities and 10 individuals over their alleged support for Russia's war on Ukraine, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

    • RFERL ☛ 4 Civilians Killed As Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pleads For Patriot Systems

      Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on April 15 again called for Kyiv's Western allies to "urgently" deliver desperately needed additional air-defense systems, weapons, and ammunition as Russian artillery and missiles continued to wreak havoc among civilians and destroy critical infrastructure.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ IAEA warns that attacks on a nuclear plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine put the world at risk

      By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN (Associated Press) UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia and Ukraine on Monday traded blame before the United Nations Security Council for the attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said have put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident.”

    • New York Times ☛ Johnson Says House Will Vote on Stalled Aid to Israel and Ukraine

      The speaker, who has delayed for months amid G.O.P. opposition to funding for Kyiv, said he would bring up foreign aid legislation along with a bill aimed at appeasing Republican skeptics.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Sees ‘Hypocrisy’ After Western Allies Helped Intercept Iran’s Attack on Israel

      The U.S., British and French militaries helped intercept Iranian missiles and drones, but Ukrainians say they haven’t provided the same help against Russian air attacks.

    • RFA ☛ Pro-Russian hacking group paralyzes website of North Korea’s airline

      The ‘Server Killers’ said it targeted Air Koryo’s website last week ‘just for fun’ and to test the carrier’s ‘mediocre’ security.

    • RFERL ☛ Georgian MP Punches Lawmaker Over 'Foreign Agents' Bill

      A Georgian opposition lawmaker attacked a member of the ruling party as he tried to present a controversial "foreign agents" bill in parliament that has roiled the Caucasus nation because of its similarities to legislation in Russia.

    • RFERL ☛ Nearly 125,000 Evacuated Due To Floods In Kazakhstan, Russia

      Almost 125,000 people have been evacuated from areas hit by massive floods in parts of Russia and Kazakhstan where water levels continue to rise in several regions.

    • YLE ☛ EU Commission president to visit Finnish-Russian border

      Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo will travel to the city of Lappeenranta on Friday.

    • YLE ☛ Monday's papers: Following the money, Russian threats and cool Finns

      As budget talks kick off, Helsingin Sanomat asks why Finland needs to keep borrowing money.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: How to screw up a whistleblower law

    As the whistleblower lawyer Stephen Kohn points out to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, Monaco's whistleblower bounty program has a glaring defect: it excludes "individuals who were involved with the crime." That means that the long-suffering secretary who printed the boss's crime memo and put it in the mail is shit out of luck – as is the CFO who's finally had enough of the CEO's dirty poker.

    This is not how other whistleblower reward programs work: the SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs do not exclude people involved with the crime, and for good reason. They want to catch kingpins, not footsoldiers – and the best way to do that is to reward the whistleblower who turns on the boss.

• Environment

  • NL Times ☛ Environment groups shocked by aviation pollution figures

    It is “shocking” that the aviation sector has not managed to reduce carbon emissions, unlike every other sector in the Netherlands, a group of environmental activist organizations wrote on Monday. The statement by Natuur & Milieu, Milieudefensie, Greenpeace and the Milieufederatie Noord-Holland was written in response to figures released by the Dutch Emissions Authority (NEa) earlier in the day.

    The figures showed a record decline in carbon emissions from the large industrial companies in the country, the NEa stated. But the opposite was the case in aviation, where emissions increased by 11 percent to 2.6 million tons of CO2.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Salt level rising in Michigan groundwaters, endangering crops, homes

    The county secured state funding to study the situation, he said. It found that an aquifer of salty water sat high underground in the central parts of the county. Tests found that the water could be nine times saltier than the ocean.

    In the years since, the county has used state funding to closely monitor its water supply and attempts to drill wells in the right places, hopefully avoiding the wrong aquifers, Sachs said.

    The long-term solution, however, will involve a shift in how the public thinks about water, with a new emphasis on conservation, he said.

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Helicopter to airlift stranded orca out of B.C. lagoon

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] No water, no oil: How the parched western provinces could hamper the oilpatch

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ MPs Challenged to Cut Ties with Polluters

      A new campaign is calling on MPs to break the fossil fuel sector’s “chokehold” on politics in a critical election year.

      Lawmakers returning to work today (Monday) were greeted with smoke flares and a demand to “Stop Polluting Politics” from a banner hung off London’s Westminster Bridge.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] From solar to EVs: How China is overproducing green tech

    • Wired ☛ Crypto FOMO Is Back. So Are the Scams

      There are variations on the theme, explains Ben-Natan, but the scams tend to pull from the same playbook. Typically, the developers—who remain anonymous—invest in glossy social media marketing and paid-for placements in crypto media outlets, advertising their token as the next hit memecoin and promising a discount to presale investors. In some cases, the token never materializes and the scammers make off with the funds. In others, the scammers abandon the project after selling off their own token holdings, or fail to deliver on the promise of long-term support.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ City Surprise: Urban Areas Are Brimming With Biodiversity

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Lightspeed Commerce cutting 280 jobs, as it aims for profitable growth

  • CBC ☛ 2024-04-03 [Older] Police operation at Montreal port leads to recovery of nearly 600 stolen vehicles

  • Layoffs continue, possibly hundreds of AT&T jobs may be at risk

    After IBM, the American company AT&T is following suit and has started laying off employees, reports Index magazine. The latter's AT&T Global Network Services Slovakia division operates in Bratislava and Košice.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Verge ☛ UK mulling potential AI regulation

    After hosting the first global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023, which was attended by many world leaders, the UK established an AI Safety Institute the following November. The institute began evaluating AI models for safety this year, though some technology companies requested more clarity on the timelines and what would happen if AI models are found risky. The UK also agreed to do joint safety testing of models with the US.

    However, the UK does not officially have a policy preventing companies from releasing AI models that have not been evaluated for safety. Neither does it have the power to pull any existing model from the market if it violates safety standards or to fine a company over those violations. (In comparison, the European Union’s AI Act can impose fines if AI companies violate certain safety benchmarks.)

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Microsoft under fire over 'shambolic' security practices

    Citing Microsoft’s “shambolic cybersecurity”, US senator Ron Wyden introduced draft legislation on 8 April that would require the government to set mandatory cybersecurity standards for collaboration software. The Democrat said “vendor lock-in, bundling and other anticompetitive practices” result in the government spending “vast sums” on insecure software.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Tesla lays off 10% of its workforce amid demand slowdown

    The company had 140,473 employees last December, which suggests over 14,000 staffers may be leaving the company. Tesla didn’t disclose what business units are affected. However, it did divulge that the departing staffers include at least two senior executives.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Lebanon's billionaire PM Mikati denies corruption claims

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Los Angeles police investigate $30 million Easter heist

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Elon Musk feuds with Brazilian judiciary

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge Slams Ken Paxton’s Attack On Media Matters’ Free Speech Rights

    The First Amendment has won again, this time against another pretend “free speech absolutist” (Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton) in his attempt to punish someone for their free speech. Perhaps Ken Paxton will have to learn about the First Amendment in these remedial legal ethics education classes he’s required to take as part of closing out the criminal charges he was facing for years.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Congo: SADC soldier deaths underline concerns over mission

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-04 [Older] Fact check: A video purporting to show the Taiwan quake is almost three years old

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Fact check: Did Zelenskyy buy King Charles' Highgrove House?

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Sweden seen through the eyes of the US: Changing perceptions?

      "Over time, different values have affected the image of Sweden and, in exceptional cases, this has been due to a specific event. Examples include the recent disinformation campaigns about social services taking children from their parents and, similarly, the 1980s term 'barngulag' (children's gulag) that was coined in association with similar accusations.

    • Buttondown ☛ How a science fiction obsession led me to psychological war

      He was right. Psyops are an unsung speculative art. Some are brilliant, and others are duds. But they are all attempts to create compelling, emotional stories that offer audiences a new perspective – and inspire them to take action.

      Psyops are also, fundamentally, lies -- often with violent overtones. Still, the original 1948 version of Psychological Warfare concludes with a section about "psychological disarmament," where Linebarger imagined a world of psychological truths and peace. Border controls would be abolished, and the government would fund education and public parks, while also guaranteeing a free press.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Scotsman ☛ Sir Salman Rushdie says he had a dream about being attacked

    The Indian-born author, who said he had about “half a dozen serious assassination attempts” on his life, was due to speak about safe places for writers at the event in the small town of Chautauqua.

    “It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back into that distant past, in order to kill me,” he said.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Salman Rushdie recalls stabbing amid launch of memoir 'Knife'

    A New York judge ruled in January that Matar and his defense team are entitled by law to see Rushdie’s manuscript and related material before he stands trial.

    “It’s not just the book,” Matar’s attorney Nathaniel Barone said in January. “Every little note Rushdie wrote down, I get, I’m entitled to. Every discussion, every recording, anything he did in regard to this book.”

    As a result, the trial was delayed and is expected to begin in the fall, BBC reported. New Jersey resident Matar, 26, has been held without bail since his alleged attack on Rushdie. No motive for the attack has been disclosed.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Salman Rushdie: I may return to UK if Trump wins

    He has had extensive physiotherapy. His left hand is repaired ‘to an extent’, but he has no feeling in the middle two fingers, which makes the hand harder to use, and makes it harder to use a keyboard. ‘I never was a touch-typist anyway, so it doesn’t make it very much worse.’

  • Craig Murray ☛ Free at Last

    I have today the permission of the surgeon to use my right hand for typing for the first time in over three weeks, provided I am careful not to extend the arm. On Saturday I put my arm in a sleeve and managed to remove my sling while making a speech in Blackburn, which I hope to bring you shortly (it was filmed by Consortium News but there is a job to do on sound synchronisation). The ligaments in my shoulder need another three weeks to heal and may require an operation, but my spirits are lifted enormously by being able to use the hand, even though it hurts.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states

    The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

    Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

    It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Journalist Sentenced To 15 Days For Sending Links Court Says Were 'Extremist'

    Dzianis Nosav, a journalist for the Vecherny Babruysk newspaper, was sentenced to 15 days in jail by a court in Belarus for sending links to "extremist resources" to his friends.

  • VOA News ☛ India's journalists intimidated into silence, says veteran broadcaster

    “Journalism is dead,” declares Ravish Kumar as the veteran journalist discusses the crisis he says India’s media are confronting.

    “If you want to find journalism in India today, you need to pick up your magnifying glass,” he told VOA.

    Kumar quit his job as an evening news anchor in November 2022, after more than 25 years with NDTV, one of India’s biggest networks. At the time, he cited concerns about editorial independence after billionaire Gautam Adani, a close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, bought the network.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Daily Maverick flags 'crisis in journalism' with one-day shutdown

    The Daily Maverick, which has published online and via a weekly newspaper since 2009, took down its usual website on Monday (15 April) and left up only a message telling readers: “Without journalism, our democracy and economy will break down. Journalism helped save South Africa. Now we need your help.”

    It provided links to pages urging both businesses and individuals to become paying members.

    The Daily Maverick has had a membership programme for the past five years and 27,960 people support it – enabling it to keep its reporting free to access in a similar model to The Guardian.

  • Reason ☛ Biden Hints at Freedom for Julian Assange

    "We're considering it," President Biden said at the White House last week in response to a question about honoring Australia's request that Assange be released.

    "This is an encouraging statement from President Biden," responded Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. "I have said that we have raised, on behalf of Mr. Assange, Australia's national interests, that enough is enough, that this needs to be brought to a conclusion."

    Albanese has long made an issue of Assange's incarceration, commenting in February: "Our view is very clear. It is the same view I had in Opposition, it is the same view I have as Prime Minister, which is enough is enough. There is nothing to be served from the ongoing incarceration of Mr. Assange and he should be allowed to come home."

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ Chinese authorities arrest 4 Tibetans for protest over land grab

    On April 10, residents of Taktsa village in Luonixiang rural township in Markham county in Chamdo, or Changdu in Chinese, clashed with authorities after they appealed against the land grab and demanded compensation, said the sources, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Trampoline Unionism

    Here, quite briefly, is what the UAW did: The union’s leadership was fucked up and corrupt. An internal democratic reform movement succeeded in booting out the old leaders and installing Shawn Fain. Fain and Co. then immediately led the biggest and most aggressive strike against the Big Three automakers in the union’s history. They won the strike. Then they immediately announced plans to organize not just one, but every nonunion auto maker in the country. A hundred and fifty thousand workers total. Then they went right to work doing it. Now we are about to find out if they can pull it off. As a rule I do not make predictions but I think the smart money is on the side of Power to the People in this case.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites

    So that’s why I still often mistakenly equate a faster connection with a faster (and better) experience on the web. And I often need reminding that’s not necessarily true.

    That’s what Dan does well in his post. He points out how slow devices are becoming as big of an impediment to a good experience on the web as slow connections.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Apple denies violating US court order in Epic Games lawsuit

  IPhone maker Apple on Friday denied violating a court order governing its App Store and urged a California federal judge to reject a request by "Fortnite" developer Epic Games to hold it in contempt.

  Apple made the arguments in a filing to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, who presided over Epic's lawsuit in 2020 accusing Apple of violating antitrust law with its tight controls over how consumers download apps and pay for transactions within them.

• India Times ☛ Meta to temporarily shut down social media platform Threads in Turkey

  Meta Platforms will temporarily shut down Threads in Turkey from April 29 to comply with the Turkish competition authority's order, impacting only Threads with no effect on other Meta social media platforms in Turkey.

• Copyrights

  • India Times ☛ When Facebook blocks news, studies show the political risks that follow

    Canada has become ground zero for Facebook's battle with governments that have enacted or are considering laws that force internet giants - primarily the social media platform's owner Meta and Alphabet's Google - to pay media companies for links to news published on their platforms.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Anthropic CEO Doubles Down on Fair Use Defense

    In 2023, Concord, Universal, and ABKCO filed a lawsuit against Anthropic accusing it of copyright infringement for the training materials in its chatbot, Claude. The complaint was filed in Tennessee and alleges that Anthropic’s business profits from ‘unlawfully’ scraped song lyrics from the internet to train its AI models—which reproduce copyrighted lyrics for users in chatbot responses.

    Anthropic’s response to the lawsuit was to make the same argument that Amodei makes, that using the lyrics to train a chatbot is a ‘transformative use’ of the original material that adds a ‘further purpose or different character’ to the original works.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site FMovies Rivals Major Streaming Platforms in U.S. Web Traffic

    Every month, many millions of Americans visit pirate streaming site FMovies to bypass paid subscription services and watch movies and TV series for free. The platform is a thorn in the side of the movie industry and a prime exhibit in the quest for local site-blocking measures. According to SimilarWeb's Top 10 chart of U.S. 'Streaming & Online TV' sites, FMovies beats Disney+ and Crunchyroll.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Music Piracy Sites Targeted By Europol & Bulgarian Organized Crime Unit

    In coordination with Europol, the General Directorate Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP), a specialist unit within Bulgaria's Ministry of Interior, says it has shut down a dozen music piracy sites. Carried out under the supervision of the District Prosecutor's Office in Sofia, the operation was executed within the framework of EMPACT, the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • prefatory notes on washing and anointing of the feet

      to inform ritual, look to 1 Samuel 25:41, John 12:3, and Song of Songs 1:12-14, as well as Song of Songs 4:13. the first two relate to the intersection of women (Abigail and Mary of Bethany) performing footwashing as a form of service. look to the later two for how to inform anointment.