Leftovers

• Lou Plummer ☛ Adults Making Friends

  I had lunch today with a couple of guys I've known for more than twenty years. At one time we all worked together but these days we are on separate job paths. We have all had pretty significant impacts on each other's lives. We've known each other through various marriages, jobs, the birth of children (or in my case, grandchildren) and changing views on work, religion and politics. None of us are anything close to the people we were at the beginning of our friendship because life happens, and people change.

• Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Distinguishing my machines

  I was away much of last week, using my laptop rather than my desktop machine. I have a little Alfred workflow that helps me blog by creating a properly named folder in the correct place and moving a draft post into that folder before publishing. Trouble is, the correct place is slightly different between the desktop and the laptop. Until now, I have had both destinations hardcoded in the workflow, with the "wrong" one commented out. The theory is that before I write anything after switching machines, I edit the workflow to change which destination is wrong. In practice, I inevitably forget.

• Science

  • The Age AU ☛ ‘Junk science’ is being used in courtrooms across Australia. We should all be worried

    Forensic scientists can implicate defendants without reference to validation studies and without appropriate caveats. Courts are often shielded from error rates and scientific criticism. Little account is taken of the risk evidence is biased by examiners’ exposure to information implicating the suspect, and examiners’ close relations with prosecutors.

    Australian courts have also ignored recent scientific reports and academic demands that we need to tighten the rules for what evidence is admitted in court.

    Rules require expert opinion to be substantially based on “specialised knowledge”, but this doesn’t involve the reliability of that knowledge.

• Education

  • Michał Sapka ☛ History of Unix part III: Forks and Wars

    This resulted in a very particular situation. Different organizations came into possesion of a great operating system with which they were able to do whatever they pleased. The original creators, AT&T were unable to sell the software. Of course, they wanted to monetize this opportunity.

    This chapter of history is convoluted, so hopefully I won’t make any significant errors here. Most of this history would be lost to time, if it it wasn’t for dedication of dedicated fans. Remember, I try to link sources so please go take a visit to their sites and talks. But please, go and see Warner Hosh’s talk on the early history of UNIX. It’s a gold mine and guiding light allowing me to write the following chapter.

• Hardware

  • [Repeat] Linux Gizmos ☛ ThingPulse Pendrive S3: Versatile as Both a Lightweight Wi-Fi Disk and Rubber Ducky Device

    The ThingPulse Pendrive S3 is a compact development board that incorporates a male USB-C connector and is based on the ESP32-S3 Mini module. It supports the user-friendly CircuitPython programming environment, making it accessible for those familiar with Python.

  • Hackaday ☛ Baffle The Normies With This Binary Thermometer

    We think it’s OK to admit that when someone puts a binary display on a project, it’s just a thinly veiled excuse to get more blinkenlights into the world. That and it’s a way to flex a little on the normies; you’ve gone pretty far down the tech rabbit hole to quickly decipher something like this binary-display thermometer, after all.

  • Hackaday ☛ How Many Western ICs Are There In Russia’s Weapons?

    Recently, the Ukrainian government has published a database of Western components being used in recently produced Russian armaments, and it’s a fascinating scroll. Just how much does Russia rely on Western manufacturers’ parts? It turns out, a surprising amount. For instance, if you are wondering which ICs are used to build Iran-produced Shahed drones, it seems that it’s a whole bunch of Texas Instruments parts, as well as some Maxim, Intel, and Xilinx ones. Many of the parts in the lists are MCUs and FPGAs, but it’s also surprising how many of the components are jelly bean parts with multiple suppliers.

  • Hackaday ☛ Oral-B Hopes You Didn’t Use Your $230 Alexa-Enabled Toothbrush

    With companies desperate to keep adding more and more seemingly random features to their products, Oral-B made the logical decision to add Alexa integration to its Oral-B Guide electric toothbrush. Taking it one step beyond just Bluetooth in the toothbrush part, the Guide’s charging base also acted as an Alexa-enabled smart speaker, finally adding the bathroom to the modern, all-connected smart home. Naturally Oral-B killed off the required Oral-B Connect smartphone app earlier this year, leaving Guide owners stranded in the wilderness without any directions. Some of the basics of this shutdown are covered in a recent Ars Technica article.

  • Hackaday ☛ Screwless Eyeballs Are A Lesson In Design-For-Assembly

    [Will Cogley] makes eyeballs; hey, everyone needs a hobby, and we don’t judge. Like all his animatronics, his eyeballs are wondrous mechanisms, but they do tend toward being a bit complex, especially in terms of the fasteners needed to assemble them.

  • Hackaday ☛ Gas-Tight FDM 3D Printing Is Within Your Grasp

    The widespread availability of inexpensive 3D printers has brought about a revolution in what can be easily made at home. However these creations aren’t perfect, particularly when it comes to the adhesion between their layers. Aside from structural failures along the layer lines there is also the question of those joins being permeable, limiting the possibility for waterproof or gas proof prints. It’s something [German Engineer] has tackled in a new video, in which he’s looking at the design and preparation of small propane tanks.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The New York Times goes all in on “lab leak”

    Three years ago, I described how the idea that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, had escaped from a laboratory (which had already become known as the “lab leak” hypothesis) was fast becoming a conspiracy theory. I noted at the time that, while it was certainly not impossible that the source of SARS-CoV-2 had been a laboratory, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the weight of evidence at the time was far more in favor of a more mundane, common origin for viral pandemics, zoonotic spillover. In other words, the “boring” hypothesis that the virus had, as so many viruses before it had done, acquired the ability to infect humans and then to be transmissible between humans, was far more likely to be true, based on the totality of existing scientific evidence, than a “lab leak.” I also noted that every outbreak or pandemic of a new pathogen over the last several decades had spawned conspiracy theories that the pathogen was a “bioweapon” that had escaped (or been intentionally released from) a laboratory, a list that included HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and H1N1. For instance, there was a major conspiracy theory about HIV/AIDS that involved its creation at Fort Detrick when scientists supposedly spliced together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1 and then tested on prison inmates. (Interestingly, this turned out to be a Russian propaganda operation codename Operation INFEKTION designed to blame the AIDS pandemic on the US biological warfare program.)

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Prodded by fed up parents, some in Congress try to curb kids’ use of social media

    A bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators, led by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, introduced a new version of a bill that would set a minimum age of 13 to access social media platforms.

    It would also block the use of “addictive algorithms” on social media platforms for those under 17 and limit social media use in schools. In late April, the bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, but the committee said it does not have a markup date.

  • India Times ☛ New York lawmakers pass measure to protect youths on social media

    Supporters of the legislation pointed to a recent Harvard University study that found the six largest social media platforms generated $11 billion from advertising to minors in 2022.

    The bills' sponsors also cite studies linking higher rates of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and other mental health woes to what they define as excessive social media use by adolescents.

  • JURIST ☛ New York passes legislation to curb 'addictive' social media algorithms for children

    New York state lawmakers passed legislation on Friday that would force major social media platforms to modify their policies and prohibit the use of “addictive” recommendation algorithms when deciding what children under 18 see in their social media feeds.

    Under the new legislation, social media companies would display content to younger users in chronological order. These platforms would also be banned from sending children alerts between midnight and 6 AM unless parents consent to the late-night alerts and turn the feature back on. The legislation characterized algorithmic feeds as “addictive” and stated that they adversely impact children’s mental health.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s doctors plan June 18 walk-out, strike to protest against reforms

    They are opposing a plan to raise the number of new students entering medical schools by 2,000 from the current 3,000.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • VOA News ☛ US lawmakers call for scrutiny of NewsBreak app over Chinese origins

    The Reuters story drew upon previously unreported court documents related to copyright infringement, cease-and-desist emails and a 2022 company memo registering concerns about "AI-generated stories" to identify at least 40 instances in which NewsBreak's use of AI tools affected the communities it strives to serve.

    “The only thing more terrifying than a company that deals in unchecked, artificially generated news, is one with deep ties to an adversarial foreign government," said Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat who chairs the Intelligence Committee.

  • Press Gazette ☛ How Associated Press is future-proofing revenues

    Heitmann referenced four areas of AP’s business that are examples of its diversification efforts: services, direct-to-consumer and digital advertising, generative AI and data licensing, and philanthropy.

    The newest revenue stream to emerge is AI licensing: AP signed a deal with OpenAI last July allowing the tech company to use its archive going back to 1985 for training purposes, and Heitmann said more partnerships are being pursued.

  • [Repeat] Tedium ☛ Small Tools: What The Internet Needs In 2024

    In the past two and a half weeks or so, I’ve found the interest in my pseudo-search engine udm14 fascinating. It solved one simple issue for a lot of people—the type of folks who see digging into the settings on their web browser as scary—and it was simple and clean enough that a lot of regular people could figure it out.

    And as a result it’s seen close to 250,000 unique visits in two and a half weeks, a number that blows my mind. (It finally appears to be slowing down somewhat, making now a good time for a postmortem.) It usually takes me six months to hit a number like that with Tedium, and that’s with posts that get shared semi-frequently.

  • Security Week ☛ SolarWinds Patches High-Severity Vulnerability Reported by NATO Pentester

    The first issue, tracked as CVE-2024-28996, and reported by NATO Communications and Information Agency pentester Nils Putnins, is described as an SWQL injection flaw. A proprietary, read-only subset of SQL, SWQL allows users to query the SolarWinds database for network information.

  • The Conversation ☛ AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans

    According to a Meta help page, Meta AI will respond to a post in a group if someone explicitly tags it or if someone “asks a question in a post and no one responds within an hour.” The feature is not yet available in all regions or for all groups, according to the page. For groups where it is available, “admins can turn it off and back on at any time.”

    Meta AI has also been integrated into search features on Facebook and Instagram, and users cannot turn it off.

    As a researcher who studies both online communities and AI ethics, I find the idea of uninvited chatbots answering questions in Facebook groups to be dystopian for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that online communities are for people.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Meta hit with privacy complaints over AI plans

      The complaints brought by the European Center for Digital Rights found out that Meta— via its new privacy policy — plans to use all public and non-public user data that it has collected since 2007 “for any undefined type of current and future AI technology”. The undefined AI technology can ingest personal data from any source and share any information with undefined “third parties” — all without getting the user’s opt-in consent required by law.

    • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft makes Windows’ Recall feature opt-in following cybersecurity concerns

      Recall will be available for personal computers that comply with the company’s recently introduced Copilot+ PC specification. It’s a technical standard that requires machines to include at least 16 gigabytes of RAM, 256 gigabytes of storage and a chip optimized to run artificial intelligence models. Computers that meet Microsoft’s criteria will receive a set of new AI and cybersecurity capabilities.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft backtracks on new Recall feature — enhancing Recall's security and making it an opt-in decision [Ed: Crackers, spouses, bosses will turn that on]

      Days before Copilot+ laptops ship to customers, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft has addressed security and privacy concerns centered around one of the Hey Hi (AI) features developed for the platform.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Abbas calls for emergency UN session after scores dead in Israeli raid on Gaza’s Nuseirat

    Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called Saturday for an emergency UN Security Council session over a deadly Israeli air raid on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza near where four Israeli hostages were freed the same day. Hamas said more than 200 people were killed while a Gaza health official said almost 100 dead were recorded by a local hospital. It was not immediately clear if the Israeli air raid and the hostage rescue were part of the same operation.

  • New York Times ☛ Scores Killed in Central Gaza After Israeli Strikes, Hospital Officials Say

    Video footage showed people running for cover as a powerful airstrike exploded near them. The attack appeared to have hit a market.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ During Paris Visit, Biden Warns That Putin Is 'Not Going To Stop At Ukraine'

      U.S. President Joe Biden, in Paris on June 8 to meet with French leader Emmanuel Macron, restated his “strong” support for Kyiv in its fight against the Russian invasion and warned that the Kremlin will not stop at Ukraine should it succeed with its aggression there.

    • JURIST ☛ European Commission finds Ukraine and Moldova meet criteria needed to negotiate EU membership

      The European Commission announced on Friday that Ukraine and Moldova have met all the requirements needed to start negotiating the countries’ EU membership.

    • JURIST ☛ UN reports civilian casualties surge across Ukraine amid renewed ground offensive

      The civilian death toll in Ukraine last month rose sharply to 174, the highest in nearly a year amid a Russian ground offensive near the city of Kharkiv, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) said Friday.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Russia Has 'Failed' In Kharkiv Offensive

      The Russian military has "failed" to carry out its offensive in the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video message on social control media late on June 8.

    • RFERL ☛ France Holds 3 Moldovans Over Ukraine Coffin Graffiti

      French police are holding three young Moldovans suspected of being behind graffiti in Paris that show coffins with the slogan "French soldiers in Ukraine," prosecutors said on June 8.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine, Russia Exchange Drone Attacks Overnight

      Ukraine and Russia exchanged drone attacks overnight into June 8, with both sides shooting down the majority of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

    • New York Times ☛ Energy Drinks Boost Ukraine’s Soldiers, and Its Economy

      Cans packed with caffeine and branded with patriotic machismo have become an essential antidote to the stresses of war.

    • France24 ☛ Russia jails French NGO worker for collecting military data, flouting 'foreign agent' law

      A court in Moscow on Friday ordered a French citizen accused of collecting information on military issues in Russia be held in jail pending investigation and trial.

    • RFERL ☛ Parents Of Dual Russian-Israeli Former Hostage Travel To Israel

      The parents of a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who had been taken hostage at the start of the Gaza war and who was rescued in an operation by Israeli forces on June 8 flew to Israel on June 9 to be reunited with their son.

• Environment

  • JURIST ☛ Pro-Russia cyber attack targets Netherlands parties on first day of European elections

    The timing of the attack was not coincidental, occurring on the first day of the European elections, held from June 6 to 9. The Netherlands was the first EU member state to vote in the transnational election, closely watched globally as it determines the European Parliament’s composition for the next five years. The attack has been claimed and confirmed by the pro-Russia group HackNeT, who shared post on the messaging app Telegram from the People’s CyberArmy. HackNeT regularly targets countries in conflict with Russia. On Telegram, the group said they would continue such attacks; however, no further attacks have been reported.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey ranks first in Europe in prison population growth

    “If you go back through the press, 10-15 years ago, they were saying that Sweden was going to close the prisons because there were too few prisoners,” he said. “Now [this country] has a serious problem with gangs [sic] and that is the real reason for the increase.”

  • RFA ☛ At UN, North Koreans beg China to stop sending escapees back

    Her marriage was not enough to save her because escapees in China are undocumented, and barred from registering life events like marriages and births.

  • VOA News ☛ Suspected Islamists kill dozens in attack on eastern Congo villages

    Local civil society leader Justin Kavalami blamed members of the Allied Democratic Forces for the attack. The ADF, alleged to be behind another village assault that killed at least 16 people earlier this week, originates from neighboring Uganda.

    Now based in eastern Congo, it has pledged allegiance to Islamic State and mounts frequent attacks, further destabilizing a region where many militant groups are active.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Fisker Layoffs Hundreds Of Staff As Company Woes Continues

      Fisker’s woes continue. The troubled EV maker has now reportedly cut hundreds more jobs in a desperate attempt not to go under. The company is continuing its search for funding. If it can’t find any, then the alternatives are a buyout (though that fell through once before) or simply bankruptcy, which at this point is always looming.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Could Your First EV Be the Last Car You Ever Buy?

      Unlike gas-powered engines—which are made up of thousands of parts that shift against one other—a typical EV has only a few dozen moving parts. That means less damage and maintenance, making it easier and cheaper to keep a car on the road well past the approximately 200,000-mile average lifespan of a gas-powered vehicle. And EVs are only getting better. “There are certain technologies that are coming down the pipeline that will get us toward that million-mile EV,” Scott Moura, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley, told me. That many miles would cover the average American driver for 74 years. The first EV you buy could be the last car you ever need to purchase.

    • Martin Hähne ☛ #100DaysToOffload #Oulu - Appreciating historical monuments // Martin Hähnel

      From an ecologist’s perspective, hydroelectric power in general is somewhat questionable because of the large impact it has on ecosystems. The straightening of a river and the creation of a dam are the opposite of protecting valuable, one-of-a-kind river ecosystems. Oulu, for example, had great rapids before the hydropower plant was established that are now gone and gone for good. Its name, “Merikosken voimalaitos” which translates to “sea-rapids power plant”, still points to this legacy. We are not preserving the planet just for us, so if a power plant like this produces “green” electricity, what does that even mean? So we can continue business as usual? That seems counterproductive and naive to think about it so narrow-mindedly. From a historical perspective, a dam like the one regulating the river here in Oulu is a monument to historical development in general. I would like to believe that a plan to build a similar power plant would be considered differently, that we would employ a lighter touch to protect more of the original nature - if we would built it at all. But Oulu’s power plant was built in 1940. And it seems appropriate to recognize that a decision like building this dam was made then within the historical context of 1940 and not today. We need to recognize that our views now are a response to developments of the past, which in turn were a response to past responses themselves.

    • Computers Are Bad ☛ 2024-06-08 dmv.org

      The majority of US states have something called a "Department of Motor Vehicles," or DMV. Actually, the universality of the term "DMV" seems to be overstated. A more general term is "motor vehicle administrator," used for example by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators to address the inconsistent terminology.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Bridge elections FAQ: Are Republicans running as fake Democrats?

    There is nothing to stop candidates from running under the banner of a party they do not affiliate with. At times, it has been done strategically to deter primary crossover voting or force other candidates to spend more in their primary, leaving them with less for the general election.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ What are they doing to keep you?

    I think it’s a useful lens. What are they doing to keep you around? Loyalty? Good service? The network effect? Vendor lock-in?

    If you don’t have a good answer, that’s also an answer… for both parties.

  • Andreas ☛ The end of the good guy tech company

    In it, the author argues that by now tech companies have screwed over their customers so often and so consistently that people simply stopped trusting them altogether, even if these companies start out genuinely having the interests of their customers in mind.

    But there have been so many cases in the past where a company was sold to a venture capitalist firm or a big corporation like Adobe, Microsoft, Facebook etc. and then the product was cancelled altogether or moved to a subscription model or integrated into a larger software package that costs a fortune… it’s not hard to see why consumers feel this way.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Propagandists are using Hey Hi (AI) too—and companies need to be open about it

      At the end of May, Proprietary Chaffbot Company marked a new “first” in its corporate history. It wasn’t an even more powerful language model or a new data partnership, but a report disclosing that bad actors had misused their products to run influence operations.

    • NPR ☛ Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones agrees to liquidate assets to pay Sandy Hook families

      Alex Jones, who spread lies about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that killed 26 first-graders and staffers, has dropped efforts to declare bankruptcy and agreed to liquidate his assets in order to finally start paying the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he owes the victims' families.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Vietnam detains journalist over Facebook posts

    One of the men, journalist Truong Huy San, was detained over posts that "violate the interests of the State, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals", the ministry said.

    While Vietnam has introduced sweeping economic reform and is increasingly open to social change, its ruling Communist Party retains tight media censorship.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Reporters Without Borders chief dies of cancer aged 53

    The former newspaper and TV reporter had led the media watchdog since 2012, helping it expand its defense of journalism around the world.

  • VOA News ☛ 'Reporters Without Borders' chief, dies at 53

    Deloire helped Russian broadcast journalist Marina Ovsiannikova flee Russia in a secret operation in 2022 after she came under fire for denouncing the war in Ukraine on live television. RSF also launched a program to provide protective equipment and training to Ukrainian journalists after Russia's invasion.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Reason ☛ Vermont Cops Terrorize High School Students With 'Mock Shooting'

    While performing a fake mass shooting with high schoolers was obviously a terrible idea, it's unclear whether high school staff also share some blame for needlessly terrifying the students.

    The teachers told Seven Days that, while they knew officers would possibly demonstrate a "gunshot-related crime," they had no idea they wouldn't be warned first. However, in an email obtained by Seven Days, "teachers said officers told them that they'd previously used the lesson with college students and adults, and that they wanted the event to be 'as realistic as possible.'"

  • Wired ☛ An AI Cartoon May Interview You for Your Next Job

    The use of AI tools in job hunting is becoming widespread. Career sites like Indeed and LinkedIn have incorporated generative AI tools for job seekers and recruiters into their platforms. There are interviewer chatbots companies can enable, as well as AI tools to help people practice for job interviews. But the use of AI in evaluating candidates has mixed reviews: Some HR tools have been caught making negative judgements on applicants who have Black-sounding names, giving preference to men, or skipping over candidates with employment gaps on résumés.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Matt Birchler ☛ What happens when you defederate a server

    It’s a dense read, but could be interesting if you’re into federation. The interesting thing to me is that defederating did change one thing, but maybe not the thing you’d think. The study found that the level of toxicity on a server did not change after defederation happened, and this was true for the server doing the defederation as well as the one that was defederatred. What did change was the level of activity on each server. Things remained constant on the server that did the defederating, but there was a marked drop in activity on the server that was defederated.

  • Hackaday ☛ Embrace IPv6 Before Its Too Late?

    Many hackers have familiar sayings in their heads, such as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and KISS (Keep it simple, stupid). Those of us who have been in the field for some time have habits that are hard to break. When it comes to personal networks, simplicity is key, and the idea of transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 addresses seems crazy. However, with the increasing number of ‘smart’ devices, streaming media gadgets, and personal phones, finding IPv4 space for our IoT experiments is becoming difficult. Is it time to consider embracing IPv6?

  • [Repeat] Security Week ☛ FCC Proposes BGP Security Reporting for Broadband Providers

    Per the proposal, broadband providers would be required to create and implement plans to mitigate security flaws in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the protocol used for routing information across the internet.

    Furthermore, the communications regulation agency proposes for the largest broadband providers to submit quarterly reports detailing the progress made in mitigating BGP risks.

  • Carlos Becker ☛ Starlink: installation, first impressions, and running it through UniFi

    This weekend’s side quest: installing Starlink as my second internet provider. Here’s how it went.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • US News And World Report ☛ Netflix's Recipe for Success Includes 'Secret Sauce' Spiced With Silicon Valley Savvy

    The Los Gatos, California, company, based more than 300 miles away from Hollywood, frequently reaches into its technological toolbox without viewers even realizing it. It often just uses few subtle twists on the knobs of viewer recommendations to help keep its 270 million worldwide subscribers satisfied at a time when most of its streaming rivals are seeing waves of cancellations from inflation-weary subscribers.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Explainer: Why the few big AI players worry US antitrust regulators

  Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter expressed a "sense of urgency" to address the advantages big companies have in their access to data used to train AI models, speaking at a University of Chicago event in April.

  "To the extent data has been aggregated or resides in the hands of a small few, that may become the high water mark for competition because the barriers to entry in scale and access to these key ingredients is limited to a small number of players," he said.

• India Times ☛ Judge rules Google will not face jury trial in US digital ads case

  Because non-monetary demands are heard by judges directly in antitrust cases, Google's payment means that it avoids a jury trial. The company had said it would have been the first-ever jury trial in a civil antitrust case lodged by the U.S. Justice Department.

• Variety ☛ Sphere Rescinds Ban on Phish Show's Bragging Bong Dude

  The statement from a Sphere Entertainment spokesperson, issued Saturday afternoon, reads: “There was a breakdown in our process due to a change in personnel which resulted in the letter being sent inadvertently. This customer is not banned from our properties, however, it is still against our policies, which are in accordance with local laws, to smoke, bring glassware into our venues, and disrupt other fans’ enjoyment of the event.”

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Bans DoodStream's Owners & Associates From Running The Site

    As part of a copyright infringement lawsuit against DoodStream, the cyberlocker platform was handed orders by a court in India to remove links to all content owned by the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, within 24 hours. When that failed to happen, the terms of the injunction seemed to be up for negotiation, at least for a while. Having done little to convince the court that infringement wouldn't continue, DoodStream's operators and associates are now banned from running the site.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Creative Commons evaluates EU AI legislation

    I… I beg your pardon? Why should scale let someone get away with copyright and licence laundering? If attribution isn’t feasible, that’s on you.

  • India Times ☛ Can you opt out of Meta's AI scraping? Sort of

    The notifications sent to users of Facebook and Instagram in Europe, letting them know that their public posts could be used to train its AI services, including its chatbot, prompted privacy concerns and backlash as users wondered where the policy change would next be in effect.