Leftovers

• France24 ☛ Sean Baker’s sex-worker romance ‘Anora’ wins Palme d’Or in Cannes

  Sean Baker’s “Anora”, a whirlwind Brooklyn odyssey about an erotic dancer who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, won the Palme d’Or on Saturday as female-focused stories dominated the awards at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

• Off Guardian ☛ Maybe better than we did

  Now, Godot the raccoon, now aptly named Myrtle-Godot arrived plump and tired and fuzzy at dawn for what would be her morning feed. She laid her cool fingers on my hand and touched me with her cold nose and then she sprawled on her side to eat which I had not seen her do before. …

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Personal Website Aesthetics

  How do personal websites reflect social and aesthetic movements like lowbrow / outsider art, anti-capitalism/corporatism, minimalism?

  Getting some quick thoughts on “paper”: [...]

• Elliot C Smith ☛ The Minimum Marketable Difference

  As a consumer of products, this messaging is exhausting. Paragraph after paragraph of prose which never quite seems to talk about anything concrete. An exhaustive list of new hype filled technologies that power whatever it is you do.

  Instead I am going to pose something much smaller. Something simple, to the point and intentionally restrictive. Because I like three letter acronyms, I am also going to give it one.

  The Minimum Marketable Difference, the MMD. That’s what you need to focus on. You can have page after page of detailed specifications but you’re front and centre should be your MMD. Why did I pick these three words?

• Brandon ☛ The Loss of Watercooler TV

  I love streaming, but it can be a hassle to talk about shows. Some folks binge watch everything, others get up at 4 AM to watch it once it's added. There is no consistency in watch times, so conversations are often delayed and disjointed as you try to get on the same page with someone. I cannot tell you how often I want to discuss a great show, but because I didn't cram it the first weekend, everyone has moved on. No one wants to chat about it because they are cramming whatever else is new.

• Barry Sampson ☛ Actionable Analytics

  I look at that list and while I think it might be interesting, for me it's not actionable. I wouldn't change anything about what I'm doing based on that data. And if the data isn’t actionable, what would be the point in collecting it?

• Lee Peterson ☛ The tactile nature of a notebook

  I am having some thoughts on writing up how I’m using the notebook but this is about how it feels to use it.

• Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Service level pitfalls

  I’ve been working with Service Levels (SLI/SLO) across several businesses now. I’ve run tens of service level workshops, built a tool with lots of examples, and talked to hundreds of engineers and leaders to get them onboard with service levels. I’ve had podcast episodes, talked to other companies, and even drafted a book about it.

  It is safe to say that I am invested in service levels 😄If I could sum up my experience with service levels in one sentence, that would be:

  "Service levels are the best tool to measure and optimize reliability of complex software systems, but they are heavily underrated."

  But why?

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Mutation Has Led to a New Type of Cat, Scientists Say

    They then performed a whole genome sequencing for two of the cats, and this step turned up a deletion in what's called the KIT gene, which can encode whether white will turn up in a feline's coat (scientists have also connected variations in the KIT gene to piebald patterns in various animals like horses and mice.)

  • Newsweek ☛ New Cat Pattern Is 'Salty Licorice' Mutation

    Feral cats in the Scandinavian country started appearing with the mutation in 2007. These cats had a coat similar to a "tuxedo" pattern, but their hair started black and grew whiter towards the tip.

    Due to the coat being distinctive and striking, many people adopted these cats and they became household pets.

  • New Scientist ☛ Genetic mutation gives cats a 'salty liquorice' coat colour

    The researchers then created a specific test for the newly discovered variant to confirm that it was responsible for the fur pattern. Out of the 181 additional Finnish house cats they tested, only three had salmiak coats – and each of these had inherited the variant from both of its parents. Another three cats had inherited the variant from a single parent, and the remaining 175 didn’t have the variant at all.

  • [Old] Nathan Brixius ☛ Don Knuth’s MIP, 64 years later

    I grabbed the problem formulation from Knuth’s writeup and translated it into Python code (copilot was helpful for this purpose). An MPS file with the model can be found here.

    I found that the open source solver SCIP was able to find an optimal solution in two tenths of a second, and that Gurobi was able to solve it in less than 0.1s.

• Education

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ A lot of advice is a product of survivorship bias

    For years, I’ve been prefacing all my advice with something along the same lines than Wendig does. I can only share my experiences and what I’ve seen and there are so many ways to succeed* and I can’t speak for any of those other ones.

  • Barry Hess ☛ It Was a Different Time

    Two inappropriate actions, but at the end of this story only one person was punished. I missed recess that day; detention was my reward. 😆

• Hardware

  • AnandTech ☛ MSI Teases Z790 Project Zero Plus Motherboard With CAMM2 Memory Support

    MSI's Z790 Project Zero Plus motherboard, which supports Intel's latest 14th Generation Core processors, is to a large degree a proof-of-concept product that is showcasing several new technologies and atypical configuration options. Key among these, of course, is the CAMM2 connector. The single connector supports a 128-bit DDR5 memory bus, allowing for a system to be fully populated with RAM with just a single, horizontally-mounted CAMM2 module. And in terms of design, the Zero Plus also features backside power connectors for improved cable management.

  • AnandTech ☛ Rapidus Adds Chip Packaging Services to Plans for $32 Billion 2nm Fab

    In addition to advanced process technologies, high-end chip designers (such as those used for AI and HPC applications) also need advanced packaging technologies (e.g., for HBM integration) and Rapidus is ready to offer them as well. What sets the company apart from its industry peers is that it plans to build and package chips in the same fab.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ AI dominates every tech event, but Nvidia remains the biggest winner

    Artificial intelligence bubble or boom, there’s no company riding it better than Nvidia, whose earnings report this week managed to outpace sky-high forecasts thanks to its providing the most popular chips in the known universe.

  • The Register UK ☛ Nvidia facing local competition for 'China special' GPUs

    The company's China-focused kit includes the H20, L20, and L2 GPUs, and it is understood that the H20 in particular is being sold at a greater than 10 percent discount in comparison with Huawei's Ascend 910B.

    The Ascend 910B is claimed to have performance on a par with that of Nvidia's A100 GPU, and is believed to be an in-house design manufactured by Chinese chipmaker SMIC using a 7nm process technology, unlike the older Ascend 910 product.

  • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: Nvidia cuts China prices in Huawei chip fight

    The flattening prices underscore the challenges Nvidia's China business faces amid U.S. sanctions on AI chip exports and heightened competition, casting a cloud over its future in a market that contributed 17% to its revenue for fiscal 2024. The growing competitive pressure in China also adds a cautionary note to investors in the U.S. semiconductor designer as its shares extended a stunning rally following Wednesday's bumper revenue forecast.

  • Computers Are Bad ☛ grc spinrite

    I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect hard drives. I mean, like, back in high school. These days I almost never do, or on the occasion that I have storage trouble, it's a drive that has completely stopped responding at all and there's little to do besides replacing it. One time I had two NVMe drives in two different machines do this to me the same week. Bad luck or quantum phenomenon, who knows.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Red tape: farmer concerns eerily similar to Debian suicide cluster deaths

    When companies insist on having our mobile phone numbers, when their online forms refuse to accept the phone number of our reception desk for example, they are telling us that they want to be able to come into our work day, barge past the reception, ignore the sign that says "staff only beyond this point", take the shortest route into the office of the director, ignore anybody else we may be meeting with and put their concerns in front of us at a moment that is convenient for them and not for us.

    Yet if we can no longer manage our own time and the order in which we respond to different demands, are we still business owners or have we been reduced to the status of employees or even slaves?

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Farm bill advances from U.S. House panel but faces a tough row to hoe

    The committee’s bill would increase farm “safety net” payments for some commodity crops, expand eligibility for disaster assistance and increase funding for speciality crops, organic farmers and dairy farmers.

    It is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A title-by-title summary of the 942-page bill can be found here.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Morgan Spurlock, 'Super Size Me' filmmaker, dies at 53

    Morgan Spurlock, through his documentaries, put a microscope on parts of the modern human experience that were often overlooked in media — from men’s struggles with masculinity and self-image in “Mansome” to the complex but centuries-long relationships people and rodents have shared in “Rats.” He also took big swings with more mainstream topics in documentaries including “Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden” and “One Direction: This Is Us.”

    Spurlock first gained noteriety for “Super Size Me” in 2004. He threw himself into his filmmaking process, consuming only McDonald’s meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30 days in his own take on obesity and over-consumption in the United States. During filming, he gained 25 pounds and suffered ill effects.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ COVID rises in California as new FLiRT strains dominate

    The FLiRT subvariants — officially known as KP.2, KP.3 and KP.1.1 — have overtaken the dominant winter strain, JN.1. For the two-week period that ended Saturday, they were estimated to account for a combined 50.4% of the nation’s coronavirus infections, up from 20% a month earlier.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Hindustan Times ☛ AI-morphed naked pics of class 9 Bengaluru girl surface on Instagram: Report

    According to a report in The Times of India, the girl was alerted by her friends after AI-generated naked pictures of her got surfaced on the Instagram. The fake pictures were made using her photos that she posted on her Instagram handle which is a private account. The parents of the girl suspected it as an insider job and filed a complaint with the police.

  • The Verge ☛ Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza

    Look, Google didn’t promise this would be perfect, and it even slaps a “Generative AI is experimental” label at the bottom of the AI answers. But it’s clear these tools aren’t ready to accurately provide information at scale.

  • The Onion ☛ Jerky, 7-Fingered Scarlett Johansson Appears In Video To Express Full-Fledged Approval Of OpenAI

    In response to allegations that the artificial intelligence research organization used the actress’s voice without consent, a jerky, seven-fingered Scarlett Johansson appeared in a video Thursday to express her full-fledged approval of OpenAI. [...]

  • Futurism ☛ The Onion's Take on OpenAI's Scarlett Johansson Disaster Is Pretty Much Perfect

    We'll avoid spoiling the joke by over-explaining it. But here's some of the circumstances surrounding the accusations.

  • The Verge ☛ YouTube Music will let you search by humming into your Android phone

    I can’t fault it too much for the misses. I was throwing songs at it that I’d guess most people wouldn’t pick out from a few seconds of humming. Overall, it works quickly, perhaps faster than the same feature that Google Assistant has had for years. Humming to search has reportedly been spotted in YouTube Music for iOS in recent months, too, though it doesn’t appear to have gone out widely there, yet.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Surprising No One, Google’s AI Overviews are Ludicrous

    I think anyone paying attention to LLMs would have seen this coming, yet Google shipped it, on some of the most valuable real estate on the web. I wonder how folks there are feeling now that the company is scrambling to manually remove some results.

  • India Times ☛ EU data protection board says ChatGPT still not meeting data accuracy standards

    The various investigations launched by national privacy watchdogs in some member states are still ongoing, the report said, adding it was therefore not yet possible to provide a full description of the results. The findings were to be understood as a 'common denominator' among national authorities.

    Data accuracy is one of the guiding principles of the EU's set of data protection rules.

  • VOA News ☛ Google's AI tool producing misleading responses that have experts worried

    None of this is true. Similar errors — some funny, others harmful falsehoods — have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results.

    The new feature has alarmed experts who warn it could perpetuate bias and misinformation and endanger people looking for help in an emergency.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ 17 cringe-worthy Google AI answers demonstrate the problem with training on the entire web

    These awful answers highlight problems inherent with Google’s decision to train its LLMs on the entirety of the Internet, but not to prioritize reputable sources over untrustworthy ones. When telling its users what to think or do, the bot gives advice from anonymous Reddit users the same weight as information pages from governmental organizations, expert publications, or doctors, historians, cooks, technicians, etc.

    Google’s AI also presents offensive or off-color views as being on par with mainstream ones. So a journalist who thinks nuclear war is good for society will be platformed and a doctor who advocates eating your own mucus will have his medical opinion amplified.

  • Security Week ☛ Attempts to Regulate AI’s Hidden Hand in Americans’ Lives Flounder in US Statehouses

    The first attempts to regulate artificial intelligence programs that play a hidden role in hiring, housing and medical decisions for millions of Americans are facing pressure from all sides and floundering in statehouses nationwide.

  • 404 Media ☛ Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue

    The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Google Is Playing a Dangerous Game With AI Search

    If these AI overviews are seemingly inconsistent for health advice, a space that Google is committed to going above and beyond in, what about all the rest of our searches?

  • New York Times ☛ Google AI Overviews Search Errors Cause Furor Online

    The new technology has since generated a litany of untruths and errors — including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and the ingesting of rocks for nutrients — giving a black eye to Google and causing a furor online.

    The incorrect answers in the feature, called AI Overview, have undermined trust in a search engine that more than two billion people turn to for authoritative information. And while other A.I. chatbots tell lies and act weird, the backlash demonstrated that Google is under more pressure to safely incorporate A.I. into its search engine.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Meta submits changes to UK privacy compliance proposals, CMA says

      The CMA had accepted commitments from Meta in November that would prevent the social media giant from "exploiting" its advertising customers' data.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Data Bill threatening to centralise cookies dropped

      A data bill threatening to centralise cookie consent, potentially affecting publishers’ digital advertising yields, has been dropped ahead of the general election.

      The PPA, which represents specialist and magazine media organisations in the UK, had warned that the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill could have “exaggerated the issues around data unfairness in the digital market”.

    • Data Swamp ☛ OpenBSD mirror over Tor / I2P

      For an upcoming privacy related article about OpenBSD I needed to setup an access to an OpenBSD mirror both from a Tor hidden service and I2P.

      The server does not contain any data, it only act as a proxy fetch files from a random existing OpenBSD mirror, so it does not waste bandwidth mirroring everything, the server does not have the storage required anyway. There is a little cache to keep most requested files locally.

    • 404 Media ☛ Samsung Requires Independent Repair Shops to Share Customer Data, Snitch on People Who Use Aftermarket Parts, Leaked Contract Shows

      In exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to “immediately disassemble” any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to “immediately notify” Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts.

    • BBC ☛ Microsoft Copilot+ Recall feature 'privacy nightmare'

      Recall has the ability to search through all users' past activity including files, photos, emails and browsing history.

      Many devices can already do this - but Recall also takes screenshots every few seconds and searches these too.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ There is a new deadline to get the Real ID.

      The goal of the Real ID Act, approved by Congress in 2005, is to improve security and minimize fraud in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Real ID was designed to create a nationwide standard for identification because some state driver’s licenses were not acceptable to board commercial aircraft or cross borders in other states.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Register UK ☛ UK cabinet minister calls shoulder surfer ‘little weirdo’

      On May 22, less than 24 hours before PM Sunak said July 4 would be the day UK citizens decide on their next leader, The Times published a gem sourced from photos taken of veterans' affairs minister Johnny Mercer's laptop on a public train.

      It's an example of shoulder surfing – a type of social engineering technique that involves peering at other people's devices to discover secrets like passwords, PINs, sensitive emails, and the like.

• Defence/Aggression

  • VOA News ☛ Allies prepare to mark D-Day’s 80th anniversary in shadow of Ukraine war  

    Roughly 20,000 French civilians died during the nearly three-month Battle of Normandy — along with about 73,000 Allied forces and up to 9,000 or so Germans. Overall, Normandy lost many more of its citizens during its liberation than during the entire German occupation.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. continues to investigate Applied Materials for doing business with Chinese entities — company receives another subpoena, one of many over the past couple of years

    According to Bloomberg, Applied Materials said that it had received one more subpoena from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security regarding its dealings with Chinese customers. This is by far not the first subpoena the company has received in the last couple of years, so the U.S. government seems to want more details from Applied.

  • CBS ☛ Nebraska sues TikTok for allegedly targeting minors with "addictive design" and "fueling a youth mental health crisis"

    Nebraska is suing social media giant TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, claiming the platform targets minors with "addictive design" and is "fueling a youth mental health crisis."

    "TikTok has shown no regard for the wreckage its exploitative algorithm is leaving behind," Attorney General Mike Hilgers said in a statement.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Nebraska sues TikTok, alleging teens are deceptively targeted • Nebraska Examiner

    The Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Lancaster County District Court alleging that the popular social media app built its business on hooking teens and children on the feedback loop of social media engagement.

    Hilgers on Wednesday said it’s no accident that what social media companies have been doing in recent years to grow and keep their audiences sounds similar to what tobacco companies did in trying to lure young smokers into becoming lifelong users.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ There are Heroes, and Then There are Heroes

    For their actions in 1968, Thompson. Andreotta, and Colburn received the Soldier’s Medal, given to “any person of the Armed Forces of the United States or of a friendly foreign nation who, while serving in any capacity with the Army of the United States, including Reserve Component soldiers not serving in a duty status at the time of the heroic act, distinguished himself or herself by heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.”

    That last phrase — not involving conflict with an enemy — is central to why these three received the Soldier’s Medal and not the Medal of Honor.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ The 'Butcher of Tehran' is dead. It won’t change a thing.

    A horrible public speaker with a Persian-language Wikipedia page dedicated to his spoonerisms, sixty-three-year-old Raisi never received a proper academic education beyond the sixth grade and was a low-ranking cleric with no charisma. However, after winning the engineered 2021 presidential race that recorded the lowest participation rate in the Islamic Republic’s history, Raisi was promoted overnight to an “ayatollah doctor” by the state media.

    His star began rising in 1979. Soon after the Islamic Revolution, when he was nineteen, Raisi was appointed prosecutor of two major cities, Karaj and Hamedan. He was later transferred to Tehran and assigned to the “death commission” that in 1988 extrajudicially executed thousands of political prisoners and dumped their bodies in unmarked mass graves. His role in the mass executions earned him the nickname “the Butcher of Tehran.”

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft's UAE deal could transfer key US chips and AI technology abroad

    Microsoft President Brad Smith revealed details of a deal with UAE-backed AI firm G42, potentially transferring AI technology components like model weights, prompting national security concerns.

  • VOA News ☛ France’s secularism increasingly struggling with schools, integration

    Minane also lives with the collective trauma that has scarred much of France in the aftermath of Islamist attacks, which have targeted schools and are seen by many as evidence that laïcité (pronounced lah-eee-see-tay) needs to be strictly enforced to prevent radicalization. [sic]

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ It Really, Really Looks Like Saudi Arabia Did 9/11

    It’s never a bad time to reflect on the copious evidence for the Saudi government’s role in facilitating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, it’s arguably more important than ever right now, with the Biden administration seemingly dead set on signing a mutual defense pact with that same government — a pact that would legally oblige the United States to get dragged into another Middle Eastern war by fighting alongside Saudi Arabia if and when it comes under attack. As this terrible idea limps closer to reality, even more evidence for Saudi government complicity in the attacks has come to light.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ The Greensboro Massacre

    As it turns out, on that day in Greensboro, there was no shootout. Instead there was a massacre planned with the aid of an active police informant that involved carloads of Klansmen and Nazis, who the police knew were on the way to what turned into a killing ground in a public housing project. With television cameras rolling but no law enforcement present, the forefathers of today's alt-right movement gunned down the labor organizers from the Workers Viewpoint Organization, who were graduates from Duke and Harvard and in a couple of cases, medical doctors. Having previously faced down the Klan at a China Grove, NC rally. The left-wing activists underestimated the willingness of the fascists to engage in violence and paid for it with their lives. Aside from the five who were killed, 10 more were wounded.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: What to know about the latest G7 ‘progress’ on using blocked Russian assets to aid Ukraine

      Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers just met in Stresa, Italy, to discuss what to do with blocked Russian assets. Atlantic Council experts follow the money.

    • France24 ☛ Several killed in deadly Russian strike on Ukraine's Kharkiv DIY store

      Russia bombed a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding 40, Ukraine officials said, in an attack condemned as "vile" by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    • RFERL ☛ Report: Zelenskiy To Travel To Portugal After Visit To Spain

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to travel to Portugal on May 28, after his planned visit to Spain, CNN Portugal reported on May 25.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Forces Hit Hypermarket In Deadly Assault On Kharkiv, Surrounding Villages

      Russian forces continued their intensified offensive against Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, where officials said a shell struck a building-materials store on May 25, killing at least six people, while surrounding villages reported damage and injuries under a hail of drone and missile attacks.

    • RFERL ☛ Satellite Photos Show Ukrainian Drone Strike Damaged Russian Radar Station

      Satellite images taken shortly after a May 23 Ukrainian drone strike in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region show significant damage to a key radar installation.

    • RFERL ☛ G7 Ministers Cite 'Progress' But No Done Deal On Russian Assets For Ukraine

      G7 finance ministers cited "progress" in finding ways to use profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine, envisioning a concrete proposal to present to a leaders' summit next month.

    • RFERL ☛ NATO Head Urges Lifting Restrictions On Kyiv Striking Targets In Russia

      NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said Ukraine should be allowed to use Western-supplied weapons in strikes against targets inside Russia.

    • CS Monitor ☛ G7 officials make progress on plan to fund Ukraine from frozen Russian assets

      Finance officials from the Group of Seven rich democracies left a final agreement to squeeze more money for Ukraine from Russian assets frozen in their countries to be worked out ahead of a June summit.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Bombs Hardware Superstore in Kharkiv, Killing 6, Ukraine Says

      It was the latest attack in a sustained bombing campaign that has made life increasingly dangerous for civilians in the northeastern Ukrainian city.

    • New York Times ☛ Some U.S. Weapons Stymied by Russian Jamming in Ukraine

      Two classified Ukrainian reports show that some U.S. precision-guided weapons are vulnerable to electronic warfare, an element in Ukraine’s recent battlefield setbacks.

    • New York Times ☛ For This Ukrainian Town, Drones Have Offered Last Line of Defense Against Russia

      Short of troops and artillery, soldiers increasingly have been relying on pilotless drones to drop explosives and supplies to hold Chasiv Yar. But how long can they slow the Russian advance?

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Steps Up Attacks With U.S. Long-Range Missiles

      The assaults have hit military targets in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. Pressure is now mounting on Washington to let Kyiv fire the missiles into Russia itself.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian airstrike hits home improvement store in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, over 200 people reportedly inside — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Russia, Iran Reaffirm 'Firm Commitment' To Strategic Partnership, Ministers Say

      The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers reaffirmed their ties and “strategic partnership” in a phone call on May 25, less than a week after Iran’s president, foreign minister, and others died in a helicopter crash in northern Iran.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Florida Bulldog ☛ It's make or break time for 9/11 families' lawsuit against Saudis

    The plaintiffs say they have assembled “overwhelming evidence” that, in fact, “Saudi government officials and agents” comprised an “essential support network for pro-jihadist extremists, including the first-arriving 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.” That evidence is sufficient under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) – the 2016 federal law that allowed Americans to sue foreign countries that provide direct or indirect support for terrorists – to overcome Saudi Arabia’s claim of sovereign immunity, they say.

    Hazmi and Mihdhar, who entered the U.S. through Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 15, 2000, were two of the “muscle” hijackers who were later aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.

    The record about them was developed, court papers say, through the court process of legal discovery and documents obtained about the FBI’s once-secret investigation of possible Saudi involvement in 9/11, code-named Operation Encore. The existence of Encore was first discovered by Florida Bulldog during Freedom of Information (FOI) litigation against the Department of Justice in 2016. Several thousand pages of Encore documents were later declassified and released pursuant to an executive order by President Biden in 2021.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ The Incredible Story Behind the First Photograph of an Electric Chair Execution in 1928

    One month before Ruth Snyder’s execution, editors in New York enlisted the help of Chicago Tribune photographer Thomas Howard to prepare for their news coverage. Howard, who would not be recognized by New York prison officials, was brought to New York a month before the execution. He stayed in a hotel practicing making exposures with this modified miniature plate camera. He strapped the camera to his ankle with a long cable release run up his trouser leg into his pants pocket. He lifted the pant leg to take a photograph.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Financial disclosure is a deserving target for the government’s digital transformation

    The investigation concluded that senior civil servants teamed up to steer two “lucrative” MMS contracts to a company founded by one of them. It also revealed a significant number of staffers “socialized with and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies” with whom the office “was conducting official business.”

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ Only the Hardiest Trees Can Survive Today’s Urban Inferno

    It’s not that I’m a thoughtless gardener. Some studies suggest that the Seattle area’s climate will more closely resemble Northern California’s by 2050, so I’m planting that region’s trees, too.

    Climate change is scrambling the seasons, wreaking havoc on trees. Some temperate and high-altitude regions will grow more humid, which can lead to lethal rot. In other temperate zones, drier springs and hotter summers are disrupting annual cycles of growth, damaging root systems, and rendering any survivors more vulnerable to pests.

  • Gizmodo ☛ Congress Just Made It Basically Impossible to Track Taylor Swift’s Private Jet

    Celebrities and billionaires have long complained that it’s just way too easy for random people on the internet to monitor how much fuel exhaust they waste as they flit through the skies via their private jets. Well, it appears that our government’s legislators have heard these complaints and, unlike when the rest of us whine about stuff, actually done something.

    An amendment in the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill that was passed last week will allow private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information. President Joe Biden signed the FAA bill into law on May 16th, after it passed in the Senate 88-4 and the House 387 to 26.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Cleanup of Southern California 'brownfields' gets $3-million boost

    The Orange County Transportation Authority received a $1-million grant to conduct environmental site assessments and clean up its 18.78-acre OC Connect site in Garden Grove and Santa Ana, which is thought to be contaminated by an old railway and industrial waste. Part of the site is being considered for a future biking and hiking trail that would run along the former Pacific Electric right-of-way corridor, connecting the two cities’ downtowns and linking to the Santa Ana River Trail and the countywide OC Loop bikeway.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Biden Underestimates How Much Black Americans Care About This Issue

    An April poll from CBS News showed that 88 percent of Black adults said it was “somewhat” or “very important.” That makes sense: The most severe harms from climate change, from heat waves to extreme flooding, are already falling disproportionately on their communities. And it’s starting to be reflected in their political priorities. A poll conducted by the Brookings Institution last September showed that climate change is now a greater political concern for Black Americans than abortion or the state of democracy.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Reveal Why You Should Never Take Pebbles From The Beach

    The volume of the beach is critical to how effective it is at reducing both risks. In effect, the more pebbles and sediment on the beach, the more able the beach is to absorb wave energy. Removing lots of pebbles, sand or other sediment makes the beach less able to act as a natural barrier to flooding and erosion.

    This volume changes naturally over the year, as the beach adjusts to changes in waves over the seasons. Pebbles are transported on and off the beach by waves, sorting different sediment sizes into distinct regions of the beach. More energetic waves during winter storms can transport larger sediment to the upper beach and form a steep ridge of pebbles known as a berm.

    The berm at the top of the beach is often the first form of natural defence from storms, absorbing and dissipating wave energy and reducing the risk of waves carrying beyond the beach or undercutting and eroding sea walls or cliffs at their rear.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Norfolk Southern fined $15 million for Palestine Ohio train derailment

    The federal government agreed to a $15 million fine for Norfolk Southern over last year’s disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The railroad also promised to pay more than $500 million to complete the efforts to improve safety that it announced after the crash and address community health concerns.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hindustan Times ☛ How tech is transforming commercial EVs

      Most modern vehicles, including electric vehicles (EVs), use multiple (sometimes 100s) electronic control units (ECUs) to manage their various sub-systems. Leading EV manufacturers are now integrating these disparate ECUs into a centralised computing architecture, where a powerful GPU-driven central processing unit takes on the load of most control, AI, and telematics requirements. This zonal approach consolidates the vehicle's electronics, reducing complexity and improving efficiency.

    • India Times ☛ Electric-vehicle startup Fisker kicked off fresh round of layoffs

      Fisker, the electric vehicle startup, is facing continued challenges as it reportedly initiated another round of layoffs this week.

      According to a report by Business Insider, the ev startup has laid off employess in a fresh round of layoffs. This latest round of layoffs follows previous workforce reductions in February and April, marking a significant downsizing for the company.

    • Futurism ☛ Germany Now Has So Much Solar Power That Its Electric Prices Are Going Negative

      But the biggest implication is the lack of efficiency. Consumers tend to use the most energy when the Sun isn't shining, such as in the evening when they get home from work, meaning that a lot of power is being wasted.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The uncertain future of the yellow school bus

      The bus is a tool that touches millions of kids’ lives every day, but on the whole, these vehicles have hardly improved over decades—even as the education system flocks to other, new technologies. Its stagnation has come about in part because administrators tend to focus on interventions that improve test scores “rather than a dusty old bus,” Garcia said. He also noted that “there’s an assumption that school buses are for working-class kids, largely kids of color.” (According to the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, 70 percent of students from low-income families ride the school bus, whereas a majority of students from non-low-income families are driven to school in a personal vehicle.)

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • India Times ☛ Cats on the moon? Google's AI tool is producing misleading responses that have experts worried

      None of this is true. Similar errors - some funny, others harmful falsehoods - have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results.

      The new feature has alarmed experts who warn it could perpetuate bias and misinformation and endanger people looking for help in an emergency.

    • The Age AU ☛ Cats on the moon: Google’s AI search tool produces misleading responses

      None of this is true. Similar errors — some funny, others harmful falsehoods — have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results.

    • India Times ☛ Fake US election-related accounts proliferating on X, study says

      Analysts from Israeli tech company Cyabra, which uses a subset of artificial intelligence called machine learning to identify fake accounts, found that 15% of X accounts praising former President Donald Trump and criticizing President Joe Biden are fake. The report also found that 7% of accounts praising Biden, a Democrat, and criticizing Trump, a Republican, are fake.

    • Futurism ☛ Google’s AI Is Churning Out a Deluge of Completely Inaccurate, Totally Confident Garbage

      Many of the responses weren't quite so funny. Take this AI Overview, flagged by Nieman Lab's Sarah Scire. When asked how many Muslim presidents have led the US, Google's AI told Scire, falsely, that "Barack Obama is the first Muslim President." The AI also went on to say that current President Joe Biden has "no formal religious affiliation." Neither of these statements are true. Obama is a self-described Christian and attended Protestant churches; Biden is Catholic.

      The AI's bungling of Obama's religion goes beyond incorrect, though. The statement reflects the beliefs of the "Birtherism" movement, or the baseless and racism-driven conspiracy theory that Obama wasn't born in the US (he was) and that he's secretly a Muslim (he isn't.) Google's AI, then, is not only spitting out wrong information, but feeding damaging fringe conspiracy beliefs at the same time.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Fact Check: Viral New Logo of TGSRTC is Fake

      Upon investigation, it has been confirmed that the purported new logo, bearing the name TGSRTC, is indeed fake. In a statement posted by TGSRTC Managing Director VC Sajjanar, it was clarified that no official release of a new logo has taken place. The logo circulating on social media is unauthorized and has no affiliation with the organization. The post emphasized that a new logo is currently in development, but no finalized design has been approved or released.

    • The Register UK ☛ Man behind deepfake Biden robocall indicted, faces $6M fine

      The political consultant who admitted paying $150 to create a deepfake anti-Biden robocall has been indicted on charges of felony voter suppression and misdemeanor impersonation of a candidate.

      Steven Kramer, 54, of New Orleans, also faces a $6 million fine from the FCC for the bogus call, which used AI-generated voice cloning technology to impersonate President Joe Biden and caller ID spoofing to hide the source.

      Kramer previously said he wrote the script for the call, which urged people not to vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, paid a magician to use some form of artificial intelligence to record that script using the US president's cloned voice, and hired a telemarketing firm to play the recording to more than 5,000 voters over the phone.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ Taiwan's people must never forget Tiananmen massacre, artists warn

    These and many more works of art are on display in Taipei through June 13 in a bid to warn the democratic island's residents of the dangers of forgetting -- specifically the threat to human rights and freedoms posed by authoritarian rule.

    As the island is encircled by People’s Liberation Army forces on military exercises, artists are marking the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre with an exhibit that includes key moments in the pro-democracy movement in recent years as well as commemoration of those who died in the 1989 bloodshed.

  • VOA News ☛ Iranian court jails father of executed protester

    Mashallah Karami was arrested on August 22, 2023, in his home in Karaj, Iran, and was taken to a detention center. Authorities seized all his electronic devices and froze his family's bank accounts. There are reports that government forces also destroyed memorabilia, plaques and medals commemorating his son, Mohammad Mehdi Karami.

    Mohammad Mehdi Karami was executed on January 7, 2023. He was accused of killing a member of the paramilitary Basij force named Ruhollah Ajamian during the nationwide "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests. Those protests erupted in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police.

  • RFERL ☛ At Cannes, Director Rasoulof Discusses Decision To Flee Iran

    Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof recalled how he had to decide within hours whether to go into exile or serve a prison sentence, saying it was still difficult to talk about it during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25. [...]

  • New York Times ☛ Mohammad Rasoulof, Director Who Fled Iran, Brings a Message of Hope to Cannes

    While shooting his new film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” the director Mohammad Rasoulof learned that he was facing eight years in prison for making movies that criticize Iran’s hard-line government.

  • Variety ☛ Mohammad Rasoulof Made the Decision to Flee Iran in 'Just a Few Hours'

    He said he “counted on the slow pace of the legal administration” in order to wrap the project, and contacted his colleagues abroad to make sure they could bring the film to the finish line in the event of his arrest. Then, he was made aware that the secret services in Iran were looking to arrest other members of the “Seed of the Sacred Fig” team, not just him.

    “I therefore had to make a decision in just a few hours. I had to say to myself, ‘Well do I want to be in prison, or should I leave geographic Iran and join the cultural Iran that exists beyond it’s borders?’ And I opted for the second possibility,” he said. “It took me two hours to make the decision. I walked around, I paced around my house, I said goodbye to the plants that I loved. It’s not an easy decision to make. It still isn’t easy even to talk about it with you.”

  • New York Times ☛ One of the Deadliest Jobs in Mexico: Running for Office

    The candidate killings point to a threat at the core of Mexico’s democracy. Voters are preparing to cast ballots next month in a spirited election that could produce the country’s first female president, a milestone in the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country.

    But analysts and law enforcement officials say that emboldened cartels are spreading fear in races at the local level as they expand their reach into extortion rackets, migrant trafficking and food production.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ The do-or-die moment for California newspapers is here

    The work of journalism is more important than ever in a world where democracy is under threat, corruption bubbles in local government and society faces sharp divisions. Yet there are fewer boots on the ground seemingly every week.

    This summer is shaping up to be a pivotal moment for what remains of the newspaper industry — and it would not be an exaggeration to call it do-or-die as publishers are pitted against the mighty forces that technology giants have been building for decades.

    Here is what is at stake: [...]

  • VOA News ☛ Niger’s journalists wary of red lines, arrests after military coup

    "Sometimes the menace is not coming from the junta directly but the supporters of the junta. That's why we are afraid,” he said. “Someone can attack you anywhere. That is why we're so careful. It's not easy.”

    Some journalists left Niger because they couldn't work, Abdou said, adding, “After three or four months, they returned to the country, but they can't critique the junta directly."

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Scheerpost ☛ Navigating the Deadly Maze of the Prison Industrial Complex

    It was daunting for a 140-pound 19-year-old, who had not yet had to shave, to be entering an American prison with a life sentence, especially when the system has no interest in rehabilitating you or helping you reintegrate into society. The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned.

  • TMZ ☛ Blind & Deaf Dog Killed By Officer for No Reason, Sparks Outrage

    Teddy -- a five-year-old, 13-pound shih tzu mix was killed in Sturgeon, Missouri after escaping his yard. The owner gave the dog some water and called the police ... who The Washington Post reports shot the dog twice within minutes of arriving.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Red Lobster Had to Close So That Rich People Could Get Paid

    The endless shrimp line is a convenient and easily digestible reason for Red Lobster’s sinking fate, and it’s sort of true. Behind it, however, lies a much more insidious story. As Cory Doctorow notes, the actual reason for the seafood chain’s woes is private equity and “another hedge-fund, bust-out scam.”

    Doctorow argues that “ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster.” He makes a good case for why private equity and deep cynicism are to blame — a plan to tear down an affordable, beloved restaurant to make some cash for wealthy investors.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Pakistani Christian Community Attacked After Blasphemy Accusation

    Blasphemy is a sensitive subject in conservative Muslim- majority Pakistan, where just an accusation can lead to a street lynching.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Pakistani Christian community attacked after blasphemy accusation

    At least five members of a minority Christian community were rescued on Saturday after a Muslim crowd attacked their settlement in eastern Pakistan, police and a community leader said.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Christians attacked in Pakistan's Sargodha for ‘blasphemy’

    Human rights groups say Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal scores.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Futurism ☛ Spotify Says the Hardware Player It Sold You Two Years Ago Will Stop Working and the Only Thing You Can Do Is Throw It in the Trash

    "As of December 9th, 2024, Car Thing will be discontinued, and will stop operating," Spotify said in an email to customers.

    After that date, the Car Thing won’t be able to play music and link up with Spotify — thus rendering it a glorified dashboard ornament. In fact, the only thing owners can and should do, Spotify said in its announcement, is to reset the thing and throw it away.

    To rub salt in the wound, no refunds or trade-ins are being offered — nor are there plans to release a replacement or a new version of Car Thing, Spotify said. Ouch.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Verge ☛ Judge orders Google to calculate the costs of Epic’s biggest Play Store demand

  MDL Dkt. No. 952 is Epic’s 16-page list of asks, and 7 is the page that would force Google to give other app stores access to the entire Google Play catalog of apps, should Epic get its way. Take a peek: [...]

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ AI Models Reveal Pro-Copyright Bias By Shutting Down Piracy Research

    The seemingly endless possibilities of generative AI are not on an unavoidable collision course with copyright law; the collision happened way back and sooner or later, someone will have to pick up the bill. In the meantime, popular LLMs seem to be developing a stubborn, pro-copyright streak, partly due to all the industry propaganda they've been consuming. But don't fight back, it's time to team up.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Internet/Gemini

      • Bobby Drop Connections

        One could use awk or something to hopefully extract out the bits you are interested in, or maybe add some XML or JSON libraries so there can be --with-output=json and --filter=ipv4,ipv6 and so forth flags, or maybe instead with a trip through jq(1). Another method is to write a new tool that emits only what you are interested in (and maybe to put that code into a library, if both CLI and daemon code would be using it). So, a tool that prints just the IP and ports of any active TCP connections.