Leftovers

• Raleigh News And Observer ☛ Former Red Hat director sues Raleigh company over alleged ‘anti-white’ agenda

  A former employee of the prominent open source software provider Red Hat filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday, claiming he was “a victim of Red Hat’s discriminatory employment policies.” Kingsley Wood, who is white, started at the Raleigh-based company in 2015 and most recently worked as a senior sales director. In the lawsuit, Wood alleges that Red Hat’s emphasis on achieving a more racial and gender diverse workforce contributed to his termination last September. According to the claim, Red Hat aims to have women make up 30% of its global staff and people of color comprise 30% of its U.S. workforce by 2028.

• Pratik ☛ Crushed by Creative Destruction | Nerve Endings Firing Away

  As we got exposed more and more to Western culture, thanks to India’s liberalization in the early 90s, I was also equally shocked by the wanton destruction of property as something to be entertained by. Be it monster trucks crushing other cars, pinata-smashing birthday parties, and even food fights. More recently, the “will it blend” and other “smashing things” trends on social media have further confounded me. I just chalked it up to a different consumerist culture that considers artifacts as mere means to an end rather than something that we revere1.

  Flash forward to this week. I admit watching Apple’s Crush ad made me cringe. I think the concept was solid (all these real-life things compressed into a thin device), but somewhere down the line, no one thought about the optics for the people who may consider these objects to be beloved.

• Leon Mika ☛ BASIC.HTM

  While poking through some old files this morning I came across probably the first bit of HTML I’ve ever written, way back on the 10th April 19961.

• Henrique Dias ☛ Mitigating Guestbook Spam

  Four years ago, I wrote a post about bringing back the web of the 90s, which is somewhat ironic since I don’t remember the web of the 90s. Therefore, I’m probably not the best to write that. Anyways, I introduced my guestbook on that same day. Today I want to talk a bit about avoiding all the inevitable spam that I get there.

• Andy Bell ☛ What the heck is an SVG sprite sheet?

  I love an article that presumes no prior knowledge and quickly gets everyone up to the same level with clear, concise content. I also love an article that is useful for me at a very specific time and guess what? Ryan’s article on SVG sprites is absolutely both.

• Brandon ☛ Cleaning Stuff Out and Learning from It

  The number of possessions I've owned over the years has often been tied to fear. I went through a few moments of homelessness and the more you own, the harder everything is to deal with. So, I kept my belongings light, that way if I needed to dump them on a whim, I could.

  But as my adult life became more stable, I found myself in a weird spot where I had more space, some extra money, and that led to more things. There were plenty of toys and gadgets, but where I most commonly struggle is in physical media. Between the issues with streaming networks and just wanting to unplug, I've put a lot of money into books and movies/tv series. Also, I don't really enjoy shopping of any sort, but as a kid I loved bookstores and video stores, so anytime I have a chance to browse books or movies, I almost always walk away with something.

• David Revoy ☛ 10th anniversary of the Pepper&Carrot webcomic series - David Revoy

  Ten years ago today, I posted the first episode of Pepper&Carrot on my blog. It was a simple gag, but your feedback made me realize that this little witch and her cat deserved a second episode. So I started working on it.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ From Ancient Charcoal, Hints of Wildfires to Come

    By digging into the geologic record, scientists are learning how wildfires shaped — and were shaped by — climate change long ago.

  • New York Times ☛ Solar Storm Could Light Up the Night Skies

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare warning, saying that solar activity could cause disruptions. But there is no need for concern.

  • New York Times ☛ Solar Storm Intensifies, Making Northern Lights Visible: What to Know

    Officials warned of potential blackouts or interference with navigation and communication systems this weekend, as well as auroras as far south as Southern California or Texas.

  • Eric Walker ☛ Portland Observatory

    It was a commercial venture to give ship owners a competitive edge if they paid Moody a subscription fee of $5.00 a year to alert them when their ships were arriving. With a telescope at the top he could see incoming ships from as far as 30 miles away and then could hoist signal flags identifying the vessels coming in.

    This signal tower also increased the efficiency of Portland Harbor and the Observatory remained a working marine signal tower run by the Moody family until 1923 when the invention of the two-way radio made it obsolete.

  • CPJ ☛ Iranian economic reporter begins 5-year prison sentence after lengthy pre-trial detention

    Saeedi attended an international journalism workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2022 and later traveled to Lebanon to participate in a similar program before returning to Tehran. Iranian authorities took issue with the nature of these workshops, according to the source.

  • James G ☛ What are effective ways to sift through new research?

    I have two problems when it comes to sifting through research papers, particularly on Arxiv.

• Education

  • Barry Hess ☛ Seeking Ikigai

    This is, of course, entirely idealistic. It’s a fortunate position to be in, getting this close to ikigai. I am pretty convinced, though, that this sense of purpose has a positive impact on one’s well-being, which is bound to have a knock-on effect on one’s health and longevity.

  • YLE ☛ Finland preparing law limiting use of mobile phones in schools

    The use of phones during lessons are proving to be a big distraction for both students and teachers, she further noted, especially in secondary schools.

    Other EU countries have brought in similar laws in recent years. In Spain, for example, smartphones are banned from primary schools and their use is heavily restricted in secondary schools.

  • Carl Barenbrug ☛ My Ikigai

    It's a strange thing, reading this book. As I made my way through the opening chapters and got a grasp of what ikigai means, I was unsure determining what mine was. Yet, the moment I turned the last page, it struck me. I have a lot diverse interests in life. Most of them simple pleasures that range between physical activities and technical craft. But none more so than rock climbing and understanding minimalism.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants free community college for all. Michigan House has other plans

    Whitmer is proposing a $30 million funding boost for the Michigan Achievement Scholarship, in part to ensure that all recent high school graduates can attend community college tuition-free.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Psychology Today ☛ Should You Tell Your Boss You're Unhappy?

    With recent layoffs making headlines, being unhappy at work is an extra burden. You may be pondering whether to approach your boss. The fear of being on the chopping block looms large. Is it worth the risk?

    In a recent Resume Builder survey, 40% of companies said they were planning layoffs in 2024. Many of the largest tech companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Tesla have announced job cuts, as have large financial firms, such as Goldman Sachs. It’s a stressful predicament.

  • Wired ☛ Elon Musk's Neuralink Had a Brain Implant Setback. It May Come Down to Design

    Neuralink’s unique design may have contributed to the device’s mechanical issues. The company’s implant consists of a coin-sized puck that sits in the skull. It holds a battery, processing chip, and other electronics needed to power the system. Attached to this puck are 64 flexible “threads” thinner than a human hair, each containing 16 electrodes. The threads are meant to extend into the brain tissue to collect signals from groups of neurons. But, according to Neuralink, some of those threads didn’t stay in place.

  • Futurism ☛ Neuralink Admits That Implant's Threads Have Retracted From First Patient's Brain, Possibly Due to Air in Skull

    "In the weeks following the surgery, a number of threads retracted from the brain, resulting in a net decrease in the number of effective electrodes," the startup wrote in the blog post. "This led to a reduction in bits-per-second (BPS)."

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • "Being acquired is a stepping stone to having your studio shut down" Gaming founders and CEOs speak out on the current state of the industry

    This week's news of Microsoft shutting down several studios - including Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin - has left an especially sour taste in the mouth of pretty much everybody. It's the latest entry into the acquisition fallout saga - which seems to be one of the biggest hits in the video game industry right now. Activision Blizzard's post-acquisition cuts, Embracer group ruthlessly gutting studios it's bought. It begs the question - why would CEOs even want to sell their studios to one of these massive companies right now?

  • France24 ☛ Apple apologizes for latest-edition iPad 'Crush' ad on X after backlash

    Apple apologized on Thursday after an ad for its latest-edition iPad caused an uproar for showing an industrial press crushing objects linked to human creativity, infuriating artists.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House panel leaders call on Abusive Monopolist Microsoft president to testify over security shortcomings [Ed: Lobbying by criminals, as if they're experts]

    The Homeland Security Committee plans a May 22 hearing.

  • Report: Xbox bracing for more cuts after studio-hoarder Abusive Monopolist Microsoft claims it’s spread too thin

    Microsoft, the $3 trillion tech company that recently spent $68.7 billion to acquire sprawling conglomerate Activision Blizzard and prior to that nabbed ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion [...]

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ AI systems are getting better at tricking us

    This issue highlights how difficult artificial intelligence is to control and the unpredictable ways in which these systems work, according to a review paper published in the journal Patterns today that summarizes previous research.

    Talk of deceiving humans might suggest that these models have intent. They don’t. But AI models will mindlessly find workarounds to obstacles to achieve the goals that have been given to them. Sometimes these workarounds will go against users’ expectations and feel deceitful.

  • Marty Day ☛ blast-o-rama.

    The video games journalism world is whirlwind dunking on Microsoft in a way I’ve not seen since…last weekend, when Kendrick absolutely wiped the floor with Drake.

  • EuroGamer ☛ What is the point of Xbox?

    The immediate response is, justifiably, anger. Closing studios always feels villainous, but closing award-winning ones, ones with eminent talent, creativity and expertise, feels genuinely absurd - just as it did with Take-Two and the wonderful people of Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program developer Squad, only last week. But with Microsoft and Xbox, the problem feels part of something bigger. Trace a line through the modern history of Xbox - from the end of the 360 era, through the lost years of the Xbox One, to the present day - and a scarlet thread becomes clear. This is a platform holder that has lost its purpose and direction, that fundamentally - and perhaps inevitably, given the sheer vastness of its parent company - misunderstands why it exists.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Attack Against Self-Driving Car AI

    This is another attack that convinces the AI to ignore road signs: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Attack makes autonomous vehicle tech ignore road signs

    The technique, dubbed GhostStripe [PDF] in a paper to be presented at the ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems next month, is undetectable to the human eye, but could be deadly to Tesla and Baidu Apollo drivers as it exploits the sensors employed by both brands – specifically CMOS camera sensors.

    It basically involves using LEDs to shine patterns of light on road signs so that the cars' self-driving software fails to understand the signs; it's a classic adversarial attack on machine-learning software.

  • Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0041 How I feel about AI

    Well, kinda. They call it ‘AI’ but there’s nothing intelligent about it. Setting that technicality aside, it’s pretty amazing.

  • Doc Searls ☛ Personal vs. Personalized AI – Doc Searls Weblog

    There is a war going on. Humanity and nature are on one side and Big Tech is on the other. The two sides are not opposed. They are orthogonal. The human side is horizontal and the Big Tech side is vertical.*

    The human side is personal, social, self-governed, heterarchical, open, and grounded in the physical world. Its model is nature, and the cooperative contexts in which competition, creation, and destruction happen in the natural world.

    The Big Tech side is corporate, industrial, hierarchical, competitive, mechanistic, extractive, and closed, even though it produces many positive-sum products and services that are good for people and good for nature. It is also, being competitive and rewarding toward winner-take-most outcomes, dominated by giants.

    This war has been fought over many other things in the past, especially in tech. But AI is the big one right now—and perhaps the biggest one of all time.

  • Science Alert ☛ AI Has Already Become a Master of Lies And Deception, Scientists Warn

    "AI developers do not have a confident understanding of what causes undesirable AI behaviors like deception," says mathematician and cognitive scientist Peter Park of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

    "But generally speaking, we think AI deception arises because a deception-based strategy turned out to be the best way to perform well at the given AI's training task. Deception helps them achieve their goals."

  • M G Siegler ☛ Give Me Back My Sunsets!

    Even now, with my accounts restored last night after calling in said favors, I have absolutely no idea what happened. I went to bed last night again with no access. I was told that a ticket was filed, but nothing more. Around 1am I got an email from Meta Quest, of all places, noting " You can start using your Meta account again."

  • [Old] Benjamin Esham ☛ You can’t spell “Gell-Mann amnesia” without LLM

    And yet I see people who should know better say things like, “I asked a conversational AI some questions that I knew the answers to, and its answers were well-written, but they had the kinds of subtle errors that could lead someone badly astray. But then I asked it some questions that I didn’t know the answers to, and it gave me really good, clear information! What a great learning tool!”

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ AI may be to blame for our failure to make contact with alien civilisations

    This research is not simply a cautionary tale of potential doom. It serves as a wake-up call for humanity to establish robust regulatory frameworks to guide the development of AI, including military systems.

    This is not just about preventing the malevolent use of AI on Earth; it’s also about ensuring the evolution of AI aligns with the long-term survival of our species. It suggests we need to put more resources into becoming a multiplanetary society as soon as possible – a goal that has lain dormant since the heady days of the Apollo project, but has lately been reignited by advances made by private companies.

  • NPR ☛ A flyer in her name told migrants to vote for Biden. But she says she didn't write it

    NPR's on-the-ground reporting with RCM officials, migrants and other aid workers, along with additional reporting, has found no evidence to support the narrative that there is an effort underway in Matamoros to encourage migrants to vote in U.S. elections. Nor did NPR find any evidence that Zavala has any connection to the flyer besides the obvious fact that someone put her name and logo on it.

    In an interview with NPR, both Howell and the social media influencer who collaborated on the thread acknowledged that they did not try to verify with Zavala whether she or anyone at RCM created the flyers before they posted on X. (You can read or watch NPR's interview with the Oversight Project here.)

  • Simon Willison ☛ Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content

    I saw this tweet yesterday from @deepfates, and I am very on board with this:

    "Watching in real time as “slop” becomes a term of art. the way that “spam” became the term for unwanted emails, “slop” is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content"

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Jony Ive's design group at Apple is (almost) no more

    With the departure, Ive’s team of about two dozen closely knit employees has been almost entirely dissolved. In the years following Ive’s own exit in 2019, top designers like Jody Akana, Joe Tan, Anthony Ashcroft, Andrea Williams, Jeremy Bataillou and Eugene Whang left. The outflow continued over the past year, with major players like Bart Andre, Colin Burns, Shota Aoyagi and Peter Russell-Clarke departing as well.

  • Futurism ☛ Tesla's Layoff Emails Seem Unnecessarily Mean

    This is all happening as Musk has indicated he’s moving Tesla towards robotaxis — a particularly thorny sector because they've met resistance from some local authorities and aren't quite as autonomous, at least yet, as billed by their boosters.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Site36 ☛ Italy wants to stop counter-surveillance across the Mediterranean, but Sea-Watch defies the ban

    • [Old] Gen Digital Inc ☛ Is my phone listening to me? Yes, here’s why and how to stop it

      If you have a smartphone, it's almost certainly listening to you to some extent. Popular virtual assistant apps like Siri work by serving up answers to your prompts, and any app with access to your microphone can listen if you give it permission. In this article, we’ll explore privacy issues related to how our phones listen to us. And we’ll learn how using a mobile security app can help protect our personal information online.

  • Confidentiality

    • Wired ☛ ‘TunnelVision’ Attack Leaves Nearly All VPNs Vulnerable to Spying

      TunnelVision, as the researchers have named their attack, largely negates the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user’s IP address. The researchers believe it affects all VPN applications when they’re connected to a hostile network and that there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user's VPN runs on Linux or Android. They also said their attack technique may have been possible since 2002 and may already have been discovered and used in the wild since then.

    • [Old] Filippo Valsorda ☛ The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen

      The current consensus seems to be that the latest version is not broken in known ways that are severe or relevant enough to affect end users, assuming the implementation is correct. That is about as safe as leaving exposed wires around your house because they are either not live or placed high enough that no one should touch them.

      The original version was, however, completely broken, in the most puzzling of ways.

• Defence/Aggression

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Tech workers should shine a light on the industry’s secretive work with the military

    It’s a hell of a time to have a conscience if you work in tech. The ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has brought the stakes of Silicon Valley’s military contracts into stark relief. Meanwhile, corporate leadership has embraced a no-politics-in-the-workplace policy enforced at the point of the knife.

  • Gannett ☛ I marched at Auschwitz this week. Here's what I say to campus protesters in America.

    University leaders know that Hamas does not seek a two-state solution but the final solution.

    Although they know this truth, many fail to say it. This is happening in part because universities have abandoned their core mission. Too many university leaders today see their roles as mere conveners of conversations. In their minds, the pursuit of truth requires them to be fully disengaged. Instead of educators, they have become hosts.

  • France24 ☛ Panama to deport US-bound migrants who cross Darien Gap jungle route

    In 2023, a record 520,000 people -- most of them Venezuelans -- crossed through the gap. About 120,000 of them were children.

  • Haaretz ☛ With a Little Help From Moscow and Beijing, Israel Lost the Social Media Battle - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    After October 7, dozens of volunteer and tech-backed initiatives organized to fill the vacuum left by the Israeli government. After six months of digital warring, it feels like a losing battle

  • American Oversight ☛ Nonpartisan ERIC System Is Still Under Threat — And So Are Voting Rights - American Oversight

    Election experts worry that these lawsuits could amplify unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, overwhelm election offices with data requests and voter challenges, and unfairly purge some voters from the rolls. Moreover, states that did withdraw from ERIC have failed to find anything that could match ERIC’s effectiveness. For example, despite a Texas law requiring the state to participate in an information-sharing program, Texas has yet to find a replacement since its departure in 2023; in fact, records produced to American Oversight indicated that lawmakers had instituted cost restrictions on potential new programs that they knew in advance would be unworkable.

    American Oversight has been investigating the campaign to dismantle ERIC, including how right-wing groups have pushed unproven alternatives that threaten voters’ privacy and access to the ballot by encouraging other citizens to challenge voter registrations. Records we have uncovered have provided key details on these dangerous and often ineffective replacements.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ Zelensky vows to quash new Russian offensive in Ukraine's Kharkiv region

      Ukraine vowed Friday to quash a surprise Russian ground offensive, after troops launched a major cross-border assault in the Kharkiv region, looking to chalk up fresh battlefield gains with Ukraine on the back foot.

    • France24 ☛ €2.3 billion of seized Russian assets, a headache for Italian authorities

      Yachts, private planes and luxury villas – all belonging to Russian oligarchs, whose assets in Italy have been frozen since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Brussels, those assets are worth some €2.3 billion. But they have been creating financial and legal headaches for the Italian government. Story by Natalia Mendoza, Pietro Barabino, Coline David and Charlotte Davan Wetton.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ By backing Russia during its war on Ukraine, China may risk involvement in ecocide

      The Ukraine war is inching closer to Hong Kong. On Mayday, while many people here were enjoying a well-deserved day off work, officials at the US Treasury Department were busy: they announced a package of sanctions on several Hong Kong companies accused of supplying electronic equipment for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    • JURIST ☛ Ukraine parliament passes bill allowing convicts to join army for parole

      The Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) passed a bill on Wednesday that allows some convicts to enlist in the army and be eligible for conditional release from serving their sentences, MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak said. The bill still needs to be signed by president Zelensky to become law.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Expresses Confidence Ukraine Will Repel Any Fresh Russian Offensive

      Russian troops have attempted to open a new front by breaking through Ukrainian lines in the Kharkiv region, a move Kyiv said its forces repelled, though fighting continues.

    • RFERL ☛ Romania Says 11,000 Ukrainian Men Have Illegally Entered To Evade Draft

      Some 11,000 Ukrainian men have illegally crossed the border into northern Romania to avoid being drafted since the February 24, 2022, Russian invasion, Romanian border police said.

    • RFERL ☛ Germany Says Allies Will Deliver 3 HIMARS Systems To Ukraine

      Three more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, will be delivered to Ukraine by its Western allies, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced on May  9.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Civilians Killed, Energy Infrastructure Hit In Russian Strikes

      Fresh Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian and infrastructure targets overnight killed two people and caused serious damage to Ukraine's already battered energy infrastructure, regional officials and the military said on May 9.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Mounting New Border Assaults in North, Ukraine Says

      Armored columns tried to punch through at several points, the military said, raising pressure on already stretched Ukrainian forces.

    • New York Times ☛ Kherson Residents Rebuild and Brace for New Russian Attack

      The people of the Kherson region have slowly rebuilt their homes and livelihoods since a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced out Russian troops. Now they are bracing for another Russian attack.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia launches new offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘War found me again’: A German aid network provides vital support for Ukraine’s elderly survivors of Nazi persecution — Meduza

    • France24 ☛ Suspected Russian sabotage: The great return of Kremlin agents to Europe?

      Amid fresh intelligence warnings that Russia is preparing “violent acts of sabotage” targeting Europe and NATO member states, security experts tell FRANCE 24 that they have already noted a significant uptick in what appear to be covert Russian sabotage operations.

    • LRT ☛ GPS jamming represents shift in Russian attacks on Baltics – Lithuanian FM

      Russia’s jamming of GPS signals marks a shift in its non-conventional attacks against the Baltic states, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Friday.

    • RFERL ☛ Woman Fined In Russia's Tatarstan For Calls To Learn The Local Language

      A court in Russia's autonomous republic of Tatarstan has fined a 63-year-old woman for violating the “territorial integrity” of Russia for appeals on social control media to learn the Tatar language.

    • teleSUR ☛ Duma Approves Mikhail Mishustin as Russian Prime Minister

      He will focus on strengthening the economy, ensuring technological sovereignty, and enhancing the well-being of citizens

    • YLE ☛ Monaco appeal court dismisses defamation case against Yle's Editor-in-Chief

      The case was brought to the Monaco court by a Russian businessman.

    • New York Times ☛ Satellite Images Reveal Where Russian Nuclear Weapons Could Be Stored in Belarus

      A New York Times analysis shows security upgrades unique to Russian nuclear storage facilities at a Cold War-era munitions depot.

• Environment

  • The Guardian UK ☛ UK farmers consider quitting after extreme wet weather and low profits

    The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and the Soil Association raised concerns over the perilous situations facing many in their industry, with profits being squeezed and extreme weather driven by the climate crisis putting financial and mental strain on farm owners.

    Helen Browning, the chief executive of the Soil Association, said: “A lot of farmers are really considering their options, and thinking about walking away from their farms, as they could make far more money doing something else.”

    Browning, who runs a livestock and arable farm in Wiltshire, added: “If you were economically rational, you wouldn’t farm.”

  • El País ☛ Vermont passes bill to make oil companies pay for climate change

    To account for what is owed, the regulatory text includes tools to calculate the extent to which climate change has contributed to extreme weather events in Vermont, and what those episodes — some as recent as last summer’s floods — cost the state. To do this, consideration will be given to the damage caused in areas such as the economy, public health and biodiversity. Once that amount is determined, it is distributed based on the tons of carbon dioxide that each company affected by the law emitted between 1995 and 2024. For this calculation, the international Carbon Majors database, which indicates the largest private polluters of the planet, will be used.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Mongolia’s Neoliberal Turn Has Been an Ecological Disaster

    Many reports have picked up on this year’s dzud and rightfully addressed the issue as one of climate cataclysm. While the impact of climate change on Mongolia is very real, there is another side of the story that is more important — namely, the introduction of market forces when Mongolia transitioned from state socialism to free-market capitalism in the 1990s.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Revelator ☛ The Silent Tragedy of Local Restrictions on Renewable Energy

    • Positech Games ☛ Solar farm update. Fencing. Trenching. Lawyers… – Cliffski's Blog

      Amazingly this is the first update of the year, and its May. This is absolutely ridiculous beyond words, but I might start getting really ranty and angry if I get drawn into it, but suffice to say that for absolutely zero justifiable reason, nothing dramatic has really happened on the site for months.

      Its all due to paperwork. basically the energy company (the people connecting the farm to the grid, at vast expense, all billed 100% to me) decided that they needed a sub-lease from me to put their substation on the freeholder (farmer’s) land. This is fine. I have a lease agreed over a year ago now with the farmer. They want their substation on my leased plot. Fine. Go for it. They tell me that they will write the lease, and they have proposed a signing agreement of £1.

      Yes £1.

    • The Strategist ☛ Australia and India should partner up to accelerate the clean energy transition

      Australia and India both have great potential for energy transition. Australia is blessed with natural resources and India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies; it can also reap the benefits of a demographic dividend. Both have ambitious greening plans, with India’s clean energy, mobility and green hydrogen targets for this decade alone providing an investment opportunity that we estimate is worth US$500–550 billion.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Hakai Magazine ☛ One Great Shot: Curious Creature in the Kelp

      When the surface finally calmed, I followed the other divers into the chilly water. We’d nailed the timing: the now-still underwater world was overflowing with life in vibrant colors. The slack period between tides doesn’t last long, though. Before we knew it, the current was increasing again. Our time was almost up.

• Finance

  • Barry Kauler ☛ The US economy and de-dollarization

    The last political post to this blog was in August 2023, and a little bit before that I puzzled over why the USA hasn't become bankrupt: [...]

  • Federal News Network ☛ Do whistleblowers get the bum’s rush at this finance agency?

    The Development Finance Corporation fired a whistleblower who refused to sign off on a road project in Africa. That is according to the Project on Government.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Site36 ☛ Further repression against Antifa in Budapest complex in Germany

  • International Business Times ☛ AI Skills Is Now A Must To Stay Competitive In Today's Job Market: Can You Keep Up?

    The study revealed that 95 percent of executives believe AI initiatives will only succeed with staff who can effectively utilise these tools. This concern is further amplified by Gallagher's State of the Sector report, where 71 percent of HR and Communication leaders admitted their organisations need guidance on when, where, or how to use this transformative technology.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House panel leaders call on Microsoft president to testify over security shortcomings

    The lawmakers continued: “However, the CSRB report revealed that Microsoft has repeatedly failed to prevent substantial cyber intrusions, causing grave implications for the security and integrity of U.S. government data, networks, and information, and putting Americans — including U.S. government officials — at risk.”

  • Pew Reseach Center ☛ Voters Broadly Critical of Biden, Trump as Election Heats Up

    About half of voters say that, if given the chance, they would replace both candidates on the ballot

  • Futurism ☛ Amid Crisis, Tesla Has Removed Almost Every Single US Job Listing

    As CEO Elon Musk carries out massive layoffs that continue to tear through Tesla's workforce, it appears that the EV automaker is not only showing thousands of workers out the door, but closing it to new ones.

    Gizmodo reports that Tesla — which once boasted over 140,000 employees — currently lists just three positions on its career page for North America, when just over a week ago there were over 3,400 positions.

  • Threat Source ☛ A new alert system from CISA seems to be effective — now we just need companies to sign up

    Under a pilot program that’s been running since January 2023, CISA has sent out more than 2,000 alerts to registered organizations regarding the existence of any unpatched vulnerabilities in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. For those that don’t know, the KEV catalog consists of any security issues that threat actors are known to actively exploit in the wild, and often include some of the most serious vulnerabilities disclosed on a regular basis, some of which have been around for years.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Hindustan Times ☛ False viral clip alleges BJP MP calls for scrapping reservations: Know the truth

      BJP leader Bandi Sanjay's words from a press interaction in Karimnagar have been clipped and strung together to share a fake audio clip. Bandi Sanjay never made the remarks we hear in the clip. Therefore, we mark this claim as fake.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Hillary Clinton accuses campus protestors of being ignorant of Mideast and US history: ‘Propaganda is not education’

      Clinton, who has faced wrath of pro-Palestine supporters in the past, stated that campus protestors may have fallen to pro-Hamas "propaganda" on social media or in their classrooms since they are receiving information that frequently contains a hidden "agenda" or without "any kind of context."

      Explaining that "propaganda is not education", she said that propaganda, whether on TikTok or in the classroom, is the exact antithesis of education. “Anybody who is teaching in a university, or anyone who is putting content on social media, should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude,” she stressed.

      The former first lady further said that what is being projected on TikTok about "what's going on in the Middle East is woefully false".

    • University of Michigan ☛ Feelings of misinformation lead to more news avoidance

      The researchers also find that people who identify as strong Democrats begin relying more on nonpartisan news media when feeling misinformed, while people who identify as strong Republicans report using less news media overall, including less conservative news media.

      The study’s results are published in Journalism Studies.

    • Gannett ☛ How conspiracy theories have thrown ERIC's election impact into peril

      When a far-right disinformation campaign targeted a little-known data tool that helps states update their voter files, people lit up election officials' phone lines and inboxes.

      The conspiracy theories accused the program, called Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, of trying to manipulate votes, and falsely painted a prominent Democratic donor as a shadowy financier pulling the organization’s strings.

    • US News And World Report ☛ FBI Warns That Foreign Adversaries Could Use AI to Spread Disinformation About US Elections

      The threat is more than theoretical given the prevalence of AI deepfakes and robocalls and the way such technology has already surfaced in politics.

      The official noted an episode in Slovakia early this year in which audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief — purportedly capturing him talking about hiking beer prices and rigging the vote — were shared widely on social media just days before parliamentary elections. The clips were deepfakes.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The book you’re reading might be wrong

      A simple fact-check could have prevented this particular embarrassment for Noem: A checker would have called others who were part of the delegation to verify whether the meeting had taken place. So why don’t publishers fact-check, to avoid this problem in the first place? From the publisher’s perspective, hiring a team of checkers is “a huge expense,” Friedman said—it would “destroy the profitability” of some books. And there are logistical challenges: Fact-checking memoirs, for example, can be difficult, because you’re dealing with people’s memories. But magazines do it all the time.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Glory to Hong Kong row: US urges [Internet] freedom

    The Chinese city, which was promised autonomy when Britain handed it back in 1997, on Wednesday demanded that online platforms take down an anthem of pro-democracy protesters after a court banned the song.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Nigeria investigative journalist released after spending more than a week in police custody

    The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) released a statement on Ojukwu’s release thanking both local and international media organizations, civil society organizations, activists, lawyers, and active citizens whose efforts helped secure the freedom of the reporter. It has also promised to “explore all legally permissible means to seek justice for Daniel Ojukwu and prevent a recurrence of such blatant abuse of power and attack on press freedom.”

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Government Addresses Key Issues in Media Engagement

    One of the key announcements made during the engagement was the forthcoming roadmap for the actualization of the Access to Information (ATI) law. The government aims to provide clarity and transparency regarding the implementation of this important legislation, which enhances citizens’ right to access information.

  • VOA News ☛ Taliban ban cooperation with diaspora broadcaster 

    “The Taliban must stop using the Media Complaints Commission as a tool to impose even harsher censorship on Afghan news outlets and diaspora media,” she added.

    The prohibition underscores the atrocious state of press freedom in Afghanistan, which Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, ranked 178th out of 180 countries in terms of media freedom.

  • VOA News ☛ Press freedom groups call for release of jailed Nigerian journalist

    Daniel Ojukwu went missing on May 1, according to his employer, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism. But the Nigerian news outlet was only informed about Ojukwu's arrest two days after police detained him.

    The privately owned Foundation for Investigative Journalism said the reporter's arrest was linked to a November story about government corruption.

  • CPJ ☛ The Taliban order journalists and citizens to boycott Afghanistan International TV and radio

    On Wednesday, the Taliban’s Media Complaints and Rights Violations Commission banned journalists, analysts, and experts from participating in discussions or cooperating with London-based Afghanistan International’s television and radio stations, according to a Taliban statement and multiple news reports.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Democracy Now ☛ “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors”: Play Tells Story of 2017 London Apartment Fire That Killed 72

    The play Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors, which is being staged this week in Brooklyn, tells the story of the 2017 apartment fire at Grenfell Tower in London that killed 72 people. It was the worst fire in Britain since World War II, and survivors blamed the government for mismanaging the public housing block and neglecting maintenance. The play tells the story of how the residents of Grenfell Tower, from the Caribbean, Portugal, Syria, Morocco, Ethiopia and Britain, created a thriving community even as their homes fell into disrepair in the years before the fire. Playwright Gillian Slovo says she was moved to create the play after watching “in absolute horror as that building burned,” wondering how such a tragedy could happen in one of the richest neighborhoods of London. We also hear from Grenfell survivor Ed Daffarn, who barely escaped the inferno with his life. “I’m here. It’s like a million-to-one chance,” Daffarn says.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Thai Facebook (Farcebook) page exposes group that invites bids for babies

    Some were seeking to pay a sum of money for Thai female babies from the northern part of Thailand.

  • Vox ☛ Roger Fortson shooting: What we know about the police killing of a Black Air Force service member

    Fortson then opens the door, holding a gun that is pointed at the ground. Almost immediately, the officer shoots Fortson multiple times and he falls down. At that point, the officer says, “Drop the gun,” and Fortson replies, “It’s over there. I don’t have it.” The officer calls for emergency medical services, and Fortson is taken to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries.

    According to Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Fortson’s family, Fortson’s girlfriend was on FaceTime with him during the entire encounter. Per Crump, she said he was by himself in the apartment. Crump added that Fortson heard the initial knock from the officer and retrieved his gun because he couldn’t see who the person was at the door. And Fortson’s family has said that the gun was legally owned.

  • Ben Crump Law ☛ Ben Crump: Press on Slain Airman Roger Fortson, U.S. Airman

    According to a witness who was on Facetime with Roger during the entire encounter, Roger was alone in his apartment when he heard a knock at the door. He asked, “Who is it?” but didn’t get a response. A few minutes later, there was a very aggressive knock on the door, but Roger didn’t see anyone when he looked out the peephole. Concerned, he did what any other law-abiding citizen would do and retrieved his legally-owned gun, but as he was walking back to the living room, police burst through the door. When they saw the gun, they shot Roger six times. The witness has said that she saw Roger on the ground stating, “I can’t breathe,” after he was shot. She has also said the police were in the wrong apartment as there was no disturbance in the apartment and he was alone.

  • Reason ☛ A SWAT Team Blew Up a Tennessee Couple's Home and Left Them With the Bill

    "Law enforcement is a public good. Through our taxes, we pay for the training, equipment, and salaries of police officers. We pay to incarcerate criminals. We pay for a court system and public defenders," reads her complaint. "When the police destroy private property in the course of enforcing the criminal laws, that is simply another cost of law enforcement. Forcing random, innocent individuals to shoulder that cost alone would be as fair as conducting a lottery to determine who has to pay the police chief's salary each year."

  • [Repeat] RFA ☛ Pro-China activists harass Tibetan protesters in Hungary during Xi’s visit

    Pro-China activists harassed Tibetan protesters in Budapest, Hungary, on Thursday during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit, ripping a big “Free Tibet” banner they had displayed, the protesters said.

  • New York Times ☛ After Her Sister Wed at 11, a Girl Began Fighting Child Marriage at 13

    Then, one afternoon in 2009, that close relationship shattered when Ms. Banda’s sister, at age 11, was forced to wed a man in his 30s who had impregnated her.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Progressive Running to End the Dominance of Coal in West Virginia

    By the start of the twentieth century, some eighty per cent of West Virginia’s coal miners lived in company towns where the coal companies owned their homes. Before a miner started working, he was already in debt to the company, which subtracted the cost of picks, shovels, and augers from his pay. Miners were usually not paid in U.S. currency but in company scrip, which could only be redeemed at the company store. The towns had no elected government. Instead, they were run by the superintendent of the mine. Giardina noted the irony of West Virginia’s state motto, “Montani semper liberi” (“Mountaineers are always free”). “When the state was founded, in 1863, it meant something,” she said. “That was before coal. Coal is the thing that enslaved everyone.”

    Rising anger enabled the United Mine Workers of America to organize across racial and ethnic lines. Many miners became Socialists, in part owing to the influence of immigrant miners from Southern and Eastern Europe, but also because both political parties in the state were effectively controlled by the coal companies. Periodic strikes were met with violent, sometimes deadly, retaliation.

    The most famous of these battles took place in the summer of 1921, after some ten thousand miners began marching to a National Guard camp where more than a hundred union members were being held without charges for their involvement in an ongoing organizing effort. Don Chafin, the sheriff of Logan County, whose salary was paid by the coal companies, set up concrete bunkers, trenches, and machine-gun nests to block the route of the march. Several days of pitched battle erupted on Blair Mountain, which left at least a hundred people dead on both sides. “What you had is basically a First World War battlefield in the middle of the West Virginia hills,” Lloyd Tomlinson, the education coördinator of the Mine Wars Museum, in Matewan, told me.

  • Futurism ☛ Whistleblower Says Saudi Arabia Told Operatives It's Okay to Kill Villagers to Build 105-Mile Skyscraper

    Unsurprisingly, The Line is already turning out to be a hot mess, with architects struggling to finalize designs, while the foundations are already being built.

    Besides getting a reality check, the project — led by the journalist-mulching Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — is also already mired in human rights abuses. Ex-intelligence officer Rabih Alenezi, who has been living in exile in the UK since last year, told the BBC that Saudi forces were given the green light to use lethal force to clear land for the sprawling construction site.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Stanford University ☛ Initial Analysis of the FCC’s 2024 Open Internet Order

    On Tuesday, the FCC released the final text of the 2024 Open Internet Order, which the commission voted to adopt on April 25.

    Here’s my statement and initial analysis of key points:

    “The FCC’s restoration of authority over the [Internet] service providers (ISPs) we pay to get online and its restoration of federal net neutrality protections that ensure an open [Internet] are big wins for the American people. The new order has brightline rules that prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, and it ensures that ISPs can’t use new tech capabilities to create unfair fast lanes that favor particular apps or kinds of apps. This is a win for competition, innovation, and free speech.”

  • The Register UK ☛ FCC slams banhammer on 5G fast lanes

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the final text of its net neutrality order, adding changes that appear to rule out so-called "fast lanes" for applications that some advocates feared would undermine it.

    America's telecoms regulator voted last month to adopt an order to reinstate net neutrality rules overturned by the Trump administration. These reclassify [Internet] access as a "common carrier" service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, requiring service providers to treat all traffic equally.

  • [Old] The Irregulators ☛ The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net [PDF]

    By the end of 2014, America will have been charged about $400 billion dollars by the local phone incumbents, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, for a fiber optic future that never showed up. And though it varies by state, counting the taxes, fees and surcharges that you pay every month (many of these fees are actually revenues to the company or taxes on the company that you paid), it comes to about $4000-$5000.00 per household, and that’s the low number.

    You were also charged about nine times to wire the schools and libraries via state and federal plans designed to help the phone and cable companies.

    And if that doesn’t bother you, by the year-end of 2010 and based on the commitments made by the phone companies in their press statements, filings on the state and federal level, and the state-based ‘alternative regulation’ plans that were put in place to charge you for broadband upgrades of your home, business, and the schools and libraries — America, should have been the world’s first fully fibered, leading edge country.

    In fact, in 1992, the speed of broadband, as detailed in state laws, was 45 Mbps in both directions — by 2014, we should have all had gigabit speeds (1000 Mbps).

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Future of Electric Cars Hinges on a Dongle

    Tesla isn’t opening up its Superchargers out of the goodness of Elon Musk’s heart. In 2021, Tesla’s charging port seemed doomed: To encourage standardization, the federal government had decided to subsidize charging stations with the Combined Charging System (CCS) connector used by other automakers. The company responded by open-sourcing its connector—which it renamed the North American Charging Standard, or NACS for short—and struck a deal with the government to make its chargers accessible to other automakers. Since then, nearly every major automaker has announced that they’ll build the NACS port into future vehicles, including Ford, Rivian, GM, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo, BMW, Nissan, and Jeep. (That’s not even the full list.) Tesla’s North American Charging Standard has functionally become exactly that: the new charging standard for America’s EVs. Tesla has received billions of dollars in federal funding to rapidly build more Superchargers—promising to double the number by the end of the year—and could bring in billions more from Supercharger fees.

• Copyrights

  • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court rules copyright monopoly owner may recover damages for historical infringement by timely claim

    The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in a 6-3 decision that copyright monopoly owners may recover damages for copyright monopoly infringement that occurred more than three years before the filing of a lawsuit.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Premier League Targets SportsHub, GiveMeRedditStream & FreeStreamsLive

    The Premier League has obtained a new blocking order in the UK, targeting three pirate sites receiving over 20 million visits per month. One of the targets is SportsHub, a site that's now generating enough traffic to make it one of the UK's top 1,000 most-visited sites, period. The surge in traffic coincides with a UK anti-piracy campaign that aims to deter consumption of pirated football streams.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Supreme Court: There's No 'Time Limit' on Copyright Infringement Claims

    Copyright holders can claim damages for copyright infringements that occurred years or even decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court has clarified. In a majority decision, the Court rejected the lower court's argument that there's a three-year time limit for damages. Older claims are fair game, as long as the lawsuit is filed within three years of 'discovering' an infringement.

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ Digital Media Outlets Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

    The media outlets Raw Story, Alternet and The Intercept sued OpenAI for copyright infringement on Wednesday, adding to a growing chorus pushing back against the company’s methods of scraping content off the [Internet] to train its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

    The online publications sued OpenAI in a New York federal court in two separate cases, saying that the ChatGPT creator trained its chatbot using copyrighted works by journalists without properly crediting or citing them. The companies are seeking damages in the amount of at least $2,500 per violation, as well as asking OpenAI to remove all copyrighted articles from data training sets.