Links 03/06/2024: Blogs' Comeback and YouTube's Crackdown on Adblockers
Contents
- GNU/Linux
- Leftovers
- Science
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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GNU/Linux
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Kernel Space
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Javier Martinez Canillas ☛ Some useful Linux kernel cmdline debug parameters to troubleshoot driver issues
I have written before on how to troubleshoot drivers’ deferred probe issues in Linux. And while having a /sys/kernel/debug/devices_deferred debugfs entry is quite useful to know the list of devices whose drivers failed to probe due being deferred [0], there are also some debug command line parameters that could help with the troubleshooting.
But first, an explanation of what these parameters do:
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Leftovers
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Dan Luu ☛ How (some) good corporate engineering blogs are written
Despite the seemingly obvious benefits of having a "good" corp eng blog, most corp eng blogs are full of stuff engineers don't want to read. Vague, high-level fluff about how amazing everything is, content marketing, handwave-y posts about the new hotness (today, that might be using deep learning for inappropriate applications; ten years ago, that might have been using "big data" for inappropriate applications), etc.
To try to understand what companies with good corporate engineering blog have in common, I interviewed folks at three different companies that have compelling corporate engineering blogs (Cloudflare, Heap, and Segment) as well as folks at three different companies that have lame corporate engineering blogs (which I'm not going to name).
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The Verge ☛ PewDiePie ‘avenged’ as MrBeast becomes YouTube’s most-subscribed channel
Bollywood music label T-Series had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for years after Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, conceded his protracted and problematic fight for the top spot to it. But now that honor belongs to YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, who posted yesterday that his MrBeast YouTube operation had ‘avenged’ PewDiePie by overtaking T-Series.
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Robert Birming ☛ Blogging is back
Now the trend of more personal blogs is getting a beautiful boost and new life. They are often simple, no-frills platforms. Bloggers writing about their lives and their views on everyday stuff.
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ IndieWeb Carnival May Round-up post: Creative Environments
The past month has been such a delight for me as a fan of personal web and reading blogs. During this month, Anne from anniegreens.lol hosted WeblogPoMo that had almost a hundred participants that I followed via their RSS feeds and found so many great new blogs. In turn, I hosted the IndieWeb Carnival with the theme of Creative environments that got 26 wonderful entries.
It’s time to look back at what our participants had to say about creativity.
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Science
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-05-28 [Older] How genes shape birdsong, even when birds grow up far from home
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-05-29 [Older] Theory of everything: how a fear of failure is hampering physicists’ quest for the ultimate answer
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Science Alert ☛ China Just Landed Its Lunar Probe on The Far Side of Moon
The Chang'e-6 set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration.
It marks the first time that samples will be collected from the rarely explored area of the Moon, according to the agency.
The Chang'e-6 is on a technically complex 53-day mission that began on May 3.
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Hardware
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Tim Bray ☛ Parable of the Sofa
From early in the piece: “Sofas made in the past 15 years or so are absolute garbage, constructed of sawdust compressed and bonded with cheap glue, simple brackets in place of proper joinery, substandard spring design, flimsy foam, and a lot of staples.” It’s excellent, well-written, and will take you some surprising places.
But the subtext is drearily familiar. Globalization: Check. Cheap-labor arbitrage: Check. Tax engineering: Check. High profits: Check. Flat-packing: Check. Late Capitalism: Check check fucking check.
But, quality furniture is expensive to make, and should be, but doesn’t wear out fast, thus deserves extended maintenance.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-05-29 [Older] Flow: people who are easily absorbed in an activity may have better mental and cardiovascular health
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-05-30 [Older] ‘Sleeping on it’ really does help and four other recent sleep research breakthroughs
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-05-31 [Older] An AI tool for predicting protein shapes could be transformative for medicine, but it challenges science’s need for proof
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Why does Los Angeles have so many yards full of fruit trees?
Southern California’s Indigenous peoples were more gatherers than farmers, but they did manage the native plants that fed them with controlled burns, careful pruning and scattering seeds to encourage future harvests. Early Spanish explorers immediately saw the potential for farming when they camped along the Los Angeles River in 1769. “After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rose bushes in full bloom,” wrote Father Juan Crespí, a member of the expedition. “All the soil is black and loamy and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit.”
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Hindustan Times ☛ What is ‘#Castoroil’ TikTok trend? Experts warn new craze can cause ‘explosive diarrhea’
"Once ingested, castor oil activates the prostaglandin receptors, leading to rapid contractions that push contents through your small intestine at speed without giving you time to fully digest content and form solid stools,” Clarke added. "Castor oil also inhibits fluid absorption in the gut, adding to accelerated bowel movements and increasing the risk of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance."
These side effects cause "explosive diarrhea," nausea and vomiting, Clarke said. "For this reason, despite what TikTok influencers would have you believe, it is advisable to avoid ingesting castor oil altogether," Clarke said.
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Thord D Hedengren ☛ Sleep tracking cycle
I’ve been tracking my sleep, on and off, for the last fifteen years. It started with a revelation: I thought I slept poorly but really didn’t, which changed my mood in the morning. It has felt useful ever since. To be fair, said revelation was probably enough, but my curiosity was piqued.
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Robert Birming ☛ Writing is unfiltered speech
Writing is a valve, a way to release the pressure of repetitive thoughts. Writing is a way to give words to the wordless. Writing is an unfiltered way of speaking.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-05-28 [Older] YouTube's Crackdown on Adblockers Makes Videos Unwatchable
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Mozilla ☛ Experimenting with local alt text generation in Firefox Nightly - Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog
But even for a simple static page there are certain types of information, like alternative text for images, that must be provided by the author to provide an understandable experience for people using assistive technology (as required by the spec). Unfortunately, many authors don’t do this: the Web Almanac reported in 2022 that nearly half of images were missing alt text.
Until recently it’s not been feasible for the browser to infer reasonably high quality alt text for images, without sending potentially sensitive data to a remote server. However, latest developments in AI have enabled this type of image analysis to happen efficiently, even on a CPU.
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India Times ☛ Google tests new AI scam call detection feature amid rising cyber crime
Google is testing a new AI-based scam call detection feature. However, its legality is in question, as profiling callers based on conversation content without their consent is not permitted in India. In 2021, one scammer in India was responsible for 202 mn scam calls, which is about 27,000 fraud attempts every hour.
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India Times ☛ Google rolls back AI search feature after flubs and flaws
The disappearance of AI Overviews for some of the searches appeared to be part of a broader rollback after the new technology produced a litany of untruths and errors -- including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and suggesting that people ingest rocks for nutrients. Users loudly complained on social media about the mistakes, in many cases outright making fun of Google.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Kansas Reflector ☛ States are already collecting more abortion data. And HIPAA won’t always keep it private.
“HIPAA is protective of what’s in your medical records, but it’s a little more like Swiss cheese than I think people understand. There are a lot of exceptions,” Shachar said.
Two of the big exceptions are for law enforcement, when it is conducting an investigation, and the other is for public health reporting, she said. Public health data reports can be positive in terms of understanding what’s happening in hospitals and clinics, but on the law enforcement end, the exception in the law could be used by state governments with anti-abortion laws to prosecute those seeking and facilitating care in other states. That’s the loophole that President Joe Biden’s administration sought to close with a recent rule that was enacted after the Dobbs decision to address patient privacy specifically around procedures related to reproductive care. It does not allow law enforcement to seek those records for that particular type of care if it was obtained in a state where it was legal.
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The Verge ☛ Nvidia and AMD are bringing Microsoft’s Copilot Plus AI features to gaming laptops
Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to launch gaming laptops that include the AI Copilot Plus features that Microsoft just announced for Qualcomm-powered laptops. At Computex today, Nvidia briefly teased that “RTX AI PC” laptops are on the way from Asus and MSI that will eventually include Copilot Plus PC features.
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Idiomdrottning ☛ Delayed disappointment
Seeing a concert poster of an artist I like? Nice, maybe I can get tix later.
Later: OK no, you need a smartphone with a specific app to get in. (Which is kind of a mismatch now that purses are illegal at events in Stockholm making it even harder to carry phones. Not that I have one.)
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Defence/Aggression
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Greece ☛ Police arrest man wanted in Sweden for threatening politicians on social media
“The Swedish authorities proceeded to revoke his firearms license because he was suspected of committing crimes, as he had shared videos on a popular social networking platform with threatening content aimed at the country’s political figures,” police said.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Schiff: Trump Is 'Inciting Violence' With Threat of Public 'Breaking Point'
“In terms of Donald Trump’s comments about whether the public reaches a breaking point if he is sentenced to jail time, this is clearly Donald Trump once again inciting violence, potential violence, when he is sentenced,” Schiff said Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
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The Atlantic ☛ Trump Stumped
Trump hasn’t given up on beckoning violence or using the threat of violence by his supporters as a campaign strategy. Certainly, right-wing social media was filled with threats against jurors and calls to violence in light of the verdict. But that reality, and the fact that Trump does not condemn them, is not new, however unforgivable.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Trump, Who Famously Tried to Ban TikTok, Joins TikTok
While he may be embracing TikTok now, as president, Trump signed an executive order in 2020 that said “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned” by Chinese companies presented a threat to national security. TikTok sued and successfully blocked the order.
In April, Congress passed a bill Biden later signed that could effectively bar the app in the U.S. unless its owner, ByteDance, sells TikTok to an American company. The bill came to fruition out of fears that ByteDance may be trying to influence U.S. elections and could expose Americans’ data to China’s government. TikTok has filed suit to combat the legislation, claiming it violates the First Amendment.
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The Hill ☛ Donald Trump joins TikTok, surpassing Joe Biden campaign's followers
Trump, while president, attempted to ban TikTok in an executive order that sought to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets. The order was later blocked in court.
In a drastic shift, Trump opposed the latest efforts to ban TikTok this year, claiming it would benefit Facebook, which banned him in January 2021 in the wake of the Capitol [insurrection]. He placed the blame on President Biden as legislation to potentially ban the app made its way through Congress and to the president’s desk amid growing national security concerns over the app’s ties to China.
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VOA News ☛ Donald Trump joins TikTok, rapidly wins a million followers
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the case set for oral arguments in September after TikTok, ByteDance and a group of TikTok content creators joined with the Justice Department earlier this month in asking the court for a quick schedule.
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France24 ☛ Juno Beach, where locals honour the memory of Canadian D-Day veterans
More than 14,000 volunteer soldiers from across Canada – fighting alongside British and US troops – seized the beaches of Normandy on D-Day to help liberate the region from German occupation. Eighty years since that fatal day in June 1944, a handful of local inhabitants have made it their mission to preserve and pass on the lesser-known stories of Canadian soldiers.
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Reuters ☛ D-Day: What to expect from 80th anniversary in Normandy
Veterans and world leaders will meet in Normandy, northwestern France, on June 6 to mark the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, when more than 150,000 Allied soldiers invaded France to drive out the forces of Nazi Germany.
Eighty years later, Normandy's beaches and fields still bear the scars of the fighting that erupted on D-Day, history's largest amphibious invasion.
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VOA News ☛ American veterans being honored in France at 80th anniversary of D-Day
“I know my brother and I never looked at it as we were any kind of heroes, nothing like that,” Margol said recently of himself and his twin brother Howard, who served with him. “It was just our time. That we were asked to serve. And we did.”
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US News And World Report ☛ A Mass Parachute Jump Over Normandy Kicks off Commemorations for the 80th Anniversary of D-Day
On Sunday, three C-47 transport planes, a workhorse of the war, dropped three long strings of jumpers, their round chutes mushrooming open in the blue skies with puffy white clouds, to whoops from the huge crowd that was regaled by tunes from Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf as they waited.
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Kansas Reflector ☛ This is not a garden flag: the treachery of Alito's vexing icons
Volumes have been written on the meaning of that painting, but my favored interpretation is in Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics.” First published in 1993, McCloud created a roadmap to understanding comics and provided a pictorial vocabulary to talk about them. Magritte’s pipe was an icon, not the thing itself, and the images we normally think of as symbols are a special category of icon — flags, religious symbols, company logos — used to represent “concepts, ideas and philosophies.” These non-pictorial icons, McCloud said, unlike Magritte’s pipe, represent invisible ideas.
With that preface we now turn to the Alito flag treachery.
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India Times ☛ Donald Trump joins the TikTok video platform he once sought to ban
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the short video social media platform that is owned by China-based tech giant ByteDance and that he tried to ban as president, ahead of the U.S. elections in November.
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Hindustan Times ☛ A mass parachute jump over Normandy kicks commemorations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day
Parachutists jumping from World War II-era planes hurled themselves Sunday into now peaceful Normandy skies where war once raged, heralding a week of ceremonies for the fast-disappearing generation of Allied troops who fought from D-Day beaches 80 years ago to Adolf Hitler’s fall, helping free Europe of his tyranny.
All along the Normandy coastline — where then-young soldiers from across the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied nations waded ashore through hails of fire on five beaches on June 6, 1944 — French officials, grateful Normandy survivors and other admirers are saying “merci” but also goodbye.
The ever-dwindling number of veterans in their late nineties and older who are coming back to remember fallen friends and their history-changing exploits are the last.
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Swedish Security Service ☛ Iran is using criminal networks in Sweden
The Swedish Security Service has established that the Iranian regime uses criminal networks in Sweden to carry out violent acts against other states, groups, or individuals in Sweden that Iran regards as threats.
Iran has been carrying out security-threatening activities in and against Sweden for several years. Iran's security-threatening activities have in the past mainly targeted dissident groups and certain individuals in the Iranian diaspora. The Swedish Security Service assesses that Iran, as well as Russia and China, pose the greatest security threats to Sweden.
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Reuters ☛ Swedish security service says Iran uses criminal networks in Sweden
"It is deeply worrying that a foreign power, in this case Iran, should have used criminal networks to commit or instigate crimes in Sweden," he said.
Sweden has been plagued by gang [sic] violence for years and in 2023, 55 people were shot dead and an additional 109 were injured in 363 different shootings. The rest of the Nordic countries had a combined total of six dead shot dead during that period.
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Foundation for Defense of Democracies ☛ Israel, Sweden: Iran Using Criminal Gangs for European Terror
Iran is using criminal networks as terrorist proxies in Europe, Israel and Sweden warned on May 30. Jerusalem disclosed that an investigation involving the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and their European intelligence counterparts into an attempted bombing of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm in January had linked a Swedish criminal gang, known as Foxtrot, to handlers in Tehran.
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Associated Press ☛ Stockholm accuses Iran of using criminals in Sweden to target Israel or Jewish interests
Sweden’s domestic security agency on Thursday accused Iran of using established criminal networks in Sweden as a proxy to target Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.
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RFERL ☛ Afghan Held After Knife Attack At German Event Against 'Political [sic] Islam'
A German court on June 1 ordered a 25-year-old man born in Afghanistan held on suspicion of attempted murder in connection with a knife attack at an event organized by a group opposing "political [sic] Islam" that left six people injured. [...]
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France24 ☛ Police officer dies after attack at anti-Islam rally in Germany
Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical [sic] Islam, were wounded in the attack.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ German police officer injured in Mannheim knife attack dies
A cross-party organization had called for a human chain to be formed through much of the city center against violence and hate, attracting between 800 and 1,000 people, according to the police.
At the same time, the youth wing of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party organized a demonstration of around 150 at the market square under the motto "remigration would have prevented this crime," in reference to the party's preferred term for forced repatriation of people with migrant backgrounds.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Germany knife attack: Police officer dies after getting stabbed at anti-Islam rally
The policeman was "stabbed several times in the area of the head" while trying to intervene, local police said in a statement.
Immediately following the attack, he underwent "emergency surgery and was put in an artificial coma", but "died of his injuries" on Sunday, police said.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Connor Tumbleson ☛ The Cicada 3301 Mystery (Puzzle 3 Solve) - Part 3
We ended the last part after successfully discovering another onion after a long process of a Vigenère cipher on Liber Primus book pages. So we went off to the URL and got an odd little HTML page.
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Environment
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Science Alert ☛ PFAS: How to Reduce Your Exposure to Potentially Toxic 'Forever Chemicals'
Unsurprisingly, it gets everywhere, from rainwater and snow through to soil and groundwater. As a result, PFAS has built up in the food chain and in humans.
It's impossible to avoid PFAS exposure entirely – they are pretty much everywhere. But you can substantially reduce your exposure by avoiding contact with items directly treated with non-essential PFAS and opting for PFAS-free alternatives wherever possible.
Here are four types of products to look out for.
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Tedium ☛ Bin Stores: The Final Frontier Of Junk Nobody Really Wants
Today in Tedium: If you want to know whether a society is truly advanced, look at how it manages its glut. Does that glut just hang there in piles? (Yes.) Does it get incinerated, destroyed, or hidden? (Also yes.) Does it get recycled? (Not really.) Or does it get sold back to us, as a product—or perhaps, even as an event? (It turns out … yes it does.) In an era when glut can be delivered to our doorsteps in creative ways and with beautiful packaging, it can feel like we’ve found our societal peak. But the thing is, waste takes many distinct forms. Today’s Tedium ponders the rise of the “bin store,” and what it says about us. — Ernie @ Tedium
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Wired ☛ Zombie Fire Season Is Here in the Arctic
The first is that those microbes can generate so much heat that underground peat can smolder at around 80 degrees Celsius (176° F) over the winter, ready to ignite in spring. And this can happen without there ever having been a fire in that spot aboveground and without the weather aboveground reaching the sorts of temperatures that would normally be needed for soil to burn.
We call this new state the hot metastable state of peat soils. In this context, “metastable” means a long burn—the hot state lasts for a long but finite time, up to 10 years, until the peat burns out.
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Energy/Transportation
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World Health Organization ☛ World Bicycle Day
WHO actively promotes cycling for its myriad benefits to health and the environment, including increasing physical activity, reducing noncommunicable diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and decreasing air and noise pollution. Like governments worldwide, it also recognizes cycling as a facilitator of achievement of many Sustainable Development Goals, including those on education, energy, employment, cities and inequalities. The underlying premise is that in order to unleash the potential of cycling, roads must be safe. In line with World Bicycle Day, WHO has released a range of resources and materials to promote cycling, improve road safety and enhance the health and well-being of people and the places they live, work and play.
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Hindustan Times ☛ World Bicycle Day 2024: Date, history, significance and all that you need to know
World Bicycle Day 2024: Bicycles are a sustainable mode of transportation. They are eco-friendly and great for exercise. Cycling every day can improve heart health and muscle strength. Cycling is also extremely liberating in nature – it helps us to feel happy and elevates the mood. It helps us to reach places without adding to air pollution. Cycling is a great means of transportation as well as a way of getting our lower-body exercise done simultaneously. Every year, World Bicycle Day is observed to raise awareness about the benefits of cycling and urge more people to take up this mode of transportation to enable a sustainable way of living. As we gear up to celebrate the special day, here are a few things we should keep in mind.
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UN ☛ World Bicycle Day
Regular physical activity of moderate intensity – such as walking, cycling, or doing sports – has significant benefits for health. At all ages, the benefits of being physically active outweigh potential harm, for example through accidents. Some physical activity is better than none. By becoming more active throughout the day in relatively simple ways, people can quite easily achieve the recommended activity levels.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), safe infrastructure for walking and cycling is also a pathway for achieving greater health equity. For the poorest urban sector, who often cannot afford private vehicles, walking and cycling can provide a form of transport while reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, and even death. Accordingly, improved active transport is not only healthy; it is also equitable and cost-effective.
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Wildlife/Nature
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-27 [Older] Exclusive-Operations to Destroy Illegal Roads in Colombia's Amazon Hit Standstill, Sources Say
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-26 [Older] Indigenous Community in the Heart of Peru's Amazon Hosts Film Festival Celebrating Tropical Forests
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Vox ☛ Climate change and extreme heat may rob some wild animals of sleep
For the study on wild boars, Mortlock’s colleagues captured a bunch of pigs in Europe and put collars around their necks fitted with devices called accelerometers. Accelerometers pick up subtle movements. Critically, some of those movements correspond precisely to an animal’s specific posture when it’s asleep. Every mammal species has a specific sleep posture, he said. Boars, for example, will either lie on their stomach with their chin resting on the dirt or on their sides with their heads touching the ground. Accelerometers can pick up these sleep signatures.
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Overpopulation
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Water decision by Los Angeles expected to help Mono Lake
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it plans to export 4,500 acre-feet of water from the Mono Basin during the current runoff year, the same amount that was diverted the previous year, and enough to supply about 18,000 households for a year.
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Finance
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-05-27 [Older] Gizmodo Monday Puzzle: The Amazon Interview Question Bezos Doesn’t Want You to See
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Major Companies Firing Employees: What You Need To Know
Tata Steel UK, a subsidiary of Tata Group, is firing around 2,500 employees. The CEO, T V Narendran, said, “The loss of the UK site, which is in a transition phase, is inevitable.” Meanwhile, the workers are constantly protesting against the company, as per a PTI (Press Trust of India) report.
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ For Creators, Ad-Blocking Focuses On The Wrong Problem
Instead of building ways to block ads, we need to make the case for the tech-minded to build creator-supporting ideas. Creators would help.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-05-30 [Older] Greens launch General Election campaign for real hope and real change
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-05-29 [Older] Labour offering fantasy plans for NHS
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-05-28 [Older] Greens respond to Labour's economic plans
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-05-26 [Older] Greens respond to Conservative plans for national conscription for 18 year olds
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University of Toronto ☛ Phish tests and (not) getting people to report successful phish attacks
So called "phish tests" in their current form are basically excuses to explicitly or implicitly blame people who 'fall for' the phish test. Explicit blame is generally obvious, but you might wonder about the implicit blame. If the phish test reports how many people in each unit 'fell for' the phish test message, or requires those people to take additional training, or things like that, it is implicitly blaming those people; they or their managers will be exhorted to 'do better' and maybe required to do extra work.
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Business Insider ☛ Ex-Googler Says Company's AI Work Is Driven by 'Stone Cold Panic'
Google might be one of the biggest players in the AI space, but an employee says the tech giant's work in the field has been motivated by "stone cold panic."
"The 'AI Projects' I was working on were poorly motivated and driven by this panic that as long as it had 'AI' in it, it would be great," Scott Jenson, a senior UX designer who left Google in March, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.
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India Times ☛ Eye on AI: Tech giants form industry group, Apple-OpenAI deal and other top developments
Smartphone major Apple reportedly inked a billion-dollar strategic partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to incorporate its technology into Apple’s iOS 18 operating system for iPhones. The aim is to make Apple’s digital assistant Siri more intelligent and human-like in its responses. This is expected to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in the second week of June. The deal has reportedly raised concerns at Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI.
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Futurism ☛ Tesla Competitor Lays Off Hundreds of Workers As Other EVs Lose People
Elon Musk's Tesla is not the only electric vehicle company laying off workers en masse; one of its rivals, Lucid, announced last week that it's laying off about 400 people, SFGate reports, more than a year after another round of layoffs that saw 1,300 people get the boot.
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Security Week ☛ Information of Hundreds of European Politicians Found on Dark Web
As part of a study conducted by Proton in collaboration with Constella Intelligence, the dark web was searched for nearly 2,300 official government email addresses belonging to members of the British, French and European Parliaments.
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Proton A G ☛ Cyber house of cards – Politicians’ personal details exposed online | Proton
The email addresses and other sensitive information of 918 British MPs, members of the European Parliament, and French deputies and senators have been leaked to dark web marketplaces where data is illegally bought and sold. As part of our investigation with Constella Intelligence(new window), we searched the dark web for 2,280 official government email addresses from the British Parliament, European Parliament, and French Parliament. We found that around 40% had been exposed, along with passwords, birth dates, and more.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Tom MacWright ☛ Recently
Algorithmically-delivered, context-free information scares me like nothing else. When I see a TikTok touting some wrong fact and referencing Google, there’s usually the Google UI featured, and 100% of the time, the “creator” is referencing a Google “quick answer” or “AI Overview.”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RFI ☛ Hong Kong newspaper runs blank front page ahead of Tiananmen anniversary
A Hong Kong Christian newspaper has left its front page mostly blank ahead of the 35th anniversary of China's 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square, as concerns mount about dwindling freedoms in the city.
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US News And World Report ☛ After Crackdown on Hong Kong, Overseas Communities Carry the Torch to Keep Tiananmen Memories Alive
The 1989 crackdown, in which government troops opened fire on student-led pro-democracy protesters, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, dead, remains a taboo subject in mainland China. In Hong Kong, once a beacon of commemorative freedom, the massive June 4 annual vigil that mourned the victims for decades has vanished, a casualty of the city’s clampdown on dissidents following huge anti-government protests in 2019.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Taiwan separatists will be 'crushed': China defense minister
Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said on Sunday that those trying to separate Taiwan from China would be "crushed and bring about their own downfall," according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
His remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore came just a week after China held military drills around the self-ruled island — which it claims as its own — that were widely seen as an intimidation attempt.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 8th arrest under HK's new security law linked to Chow Hang-tung
The arrests came ahead of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Tuesday will mark 35 years since the crackdown, when hundreds, if not thousands, died as China’s People’s Liberation Army dispersed student protesters in Beijing.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which Chow used to be vice-chair of, organised annual vigils to remember the victims of the crackdown in Victoria Park until 2020, when the gathering was banned on anti-epidemic grounds amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
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HRW ☛ China: Closing Off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre | Human Rights Watch
The Chinese government is further suppressing any discussion and commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Human Rights Watch said today. Leading up to the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4, 2024, Chinese authorities have again preempted commemorations.
The government has imprisoned those in China and Hong Kong who have sought to honor the memory of the victims, while refusing to acknowledge responsibility for the mass killings or provide redress for victims and their families.
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New Yorker ☛ The Shadow of Tiananmen Falls on Hong Kong
Today, that lyric sounds grimly like prophecy. On June 4, 1989, the Communist Party turned its tanks and soldiers on the protesters, killing, in the least, hundreds of people (a precise number remains unknown) and deflecting the democratic wave that toppled the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc. As China approaches the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the incident has been effaced from its official history to such an extent that young people scarcely know the details of the anniversary they are supposed to avoid. (In June, 2022, censors blocked a popular live streamer named Li Jiaqi after he displayed an ice cream in the shape of a tank; it is possible that Li, who was born in 1992, had no idea that it would be a sensitive image.) But, even as Tiananmen has been scrubbed from public memory, its shadow is more visible than ever in the resurgence of authoritarianism in China and abroad, in step with the nation’s expanding realm of influence.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Semafor Inc ☛ Transcript: Vivek Ramaswamy on BuzzFeed, politics and media | Semafor
Nayeema Raza: So first question: Explain what you’re trying to do with BuzzFeed. Is this a play to achieve what Elon did with Twitter, but with lower stakes and a lower price tag, or something else?
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Indigenous tribes cement water rights deal with Arizona
“I don’t know that people understand how hard of a life we have here,” said Yazzie, 71.
Help could be on the way if Congress approves a historic agreement reached between the Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribes and the state of Arizona that would settle all of their outstanding water rights claims to the Colorado River Basin.
The deal, which all three tribes have now approved, marks a historic milestone for Indigenous nations that have fought for decades for their fair share of the water coursing through their ancestral lands.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ How Fontana police got a man to admit to a murder that never happened
That simple call for help would leave Perez a broken man. By the end of the week, under intense pressure from police detectives, he had falsely confessed to killing his father and was locked inside a psychiatric ward — though Papa Tom was alive and unharmed.
The cause of his false confession, Perez claimed in a lawsuit that he recently settled with the city for $900,000, was a coercive interrogation by detectives that lasted more than 17 hours.
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The Atlantic ☛ The Dalai Lama Is Landing in the Middle of the 2024 Election
A visit by Biden to the Dalai Lama’s hospital—or an after-surgery invitation to the White House—would signal continuing American concern over the oppression of Tibet and Tibetans, as well as support for one of the most heroic and pacific humanitarian leaders of our age. Such a visit would also have the benefit of signaling to the Chinese government that a U.S. president makes decisions independent of Chinese Communist feelings. (American CEOs are particularly feeble at signaling such independence.) A call on the Dalai Lama couldn’t possibly hurt Biden’s standing among voters, especially considering the Dalai Lama’s previous lack of interest in meeting with Trump when he was president. Five years ago, when I visited the Dalai Lama at his monastery in Manali, he told me that he did not look favorably on Trump’s jingoistic “America First” rhetoric. “Everyone first,” he said, laughing. “A much better idea.”
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Futurism ☛ After Facing Major Backlash Over Bricking Music Player, Spotify Gives in and Will Refund Customers
Finally some good news for the owners of the Spotify Car Thing.
After receiving an avalanche of backlash for making its streaming car music player obsolete by the end of this year, Engadget reports that Spotify is now offering refunds to pissed-off customers.
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Wired ☛ The Ticketmaster Data Breach May Be Just the Beginning
While the specific circumstances of the breaches—including exactly what information was stolen and how it was accessed—remain unclear, the incidents may be linked to attacks against company accounts with cloud hosting provider Snowflake. The US-based cloud firm has thousands of customers, including Adobe, Canva, and Mastercard, which can store and analyze vast amounts of data in its systems.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ €5.3m Pirate IPTV Network 'Dismantled' By Spanish Police is Still Streaming
Spain's Ministry of the Interior says eight people have been arrested after police dismantled a €5.3m pirate IPTV network serving local expats. Authorities aren't naming the service but if the name TVMucho rings any bells, people are on the right track. That police identified the owner of the service is no surprise. The Dutchman has never hidden away and has continuously claimed his service operates legally. If only in part, it's still streaming channels right now.
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New York Times ☛ Google’s A.I. Search Leaves Publishers Scrambling
In May, Google announced that the A.I.-generated summaries, which compile content from news sites and blogs on the topic being searched, would be made available to everyone in the United States. And that change has Mr. Pine and many other publishing executives worried that the paragraphs pose a big danger to their brittle business model, by sharply reducing the amount of traffic to their sites from Google.
“It potentially chokes off the original creators of the content,” Mr. Pine said. The feature, AI Overviews, felt like another step toward generative A.I. replacing “the publications that they have cannibalized,” he added.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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