Distributions and Operating Systems

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Harisfazillah Jamel: Call For Speaker For Mini UbuCon Malaysia 2024

    Call For Speaker for Mini UbuCon Malaysia 2024

  • Faizul "Piju" 9M2PJU: The Story Behind Canonical’s Choice of “Ubuntu” for Their GNU/Linux Distribution

    When Canonical Ltd. launched its GNU/Linux distribution in 2004, they made a choice that would shape the identity and ethos of their software: they named it “Ubuntu.” The name, rooted in African philosophy, reflects values of humanity, community, and generosity, aligning perfectly with the principles of open-source software.

Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ Boring text

  Now that I think about it and write about it, I realize that even the therapeutic part of writing is largely absent when I write in English. The posts are more like essays than unfiltered manifestations of thoughts and feelings. The exact opposite of what I see as the main benefit and joy of writing.

• Elliot C Smith ☛ Avoiding antipatterns in product discovery

  Broadly speaking, if you have an hour with customers, spend the first half moving quickly between ideas and the second half digging more into those that sparked some interest. This will give you a chance to see patterns and bigger themes in what customers find valuable.

• Connor Tumbleson ☛ the non-stop hustle

  Is it still possible to contribute to the Internet without an ulterior motive? I think about myself blogging a lot about that. I've gotten countless requests to just hyperlink words to specific websites or one single guest post and I say no every-time. I don't want my hobby of blogging to turn into something that forces my hand in any other direction.

• RTL ☛ Colossal four-year project: Sweden splashes out to save its unluckiest warship

  Its main hall is kept at a temperature of between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius (between 64 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit) with a humidity level of 55 percent to slow the deterioration.

• Science

  • Tedium ☛ The Barleycorn Measurement Scheme

    How the Brannock Device—a measuring tool you’ve definitely seen but didn’t know the name of—made it a lot easier to figure out our shoe size.

  • Science Alert ☛ These Mysterious Objects Still Puzzle Scientists Thousands of Years Later

    Even experts are stumped.

  • Science Alert ☛ Daycares in Finland Grew Forests, And It Changed Kids' Immune Systems

    It only took one month.

  • Science Alert ☛ Lost Age of Monotremes Revealed by Fossils From 100 Million Years Ago

    “It's like discovering a whole new civilization.”

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Discovered a New Way to Look Inside Crystals

    A beautiful mystery unravels.

• Education

  • The Hindu ☛ Newspapers in all classrooms to promote reading

    An awareness programme with public participation will be launched so as to ensure this, a draft of a report prepared by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) for promoting reading with the help of newspapers in schools has proposed.

    The draft proposes integrating newspaper reading with academic activities. Academic activities in connection with newspaper reading will be considered for continuous evaluation. The action plan for this should be included in the assessment guidelines prepared by the SCERT assessment cell.

  • Locus Magazine ☛ LuxCon 2024

    2024LuxCon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year, is a large comicon-like festival in Luxembourg, Europe’s ‘‘seventh smallest country.’’ It did make me wish to visit a convention in Liechtenstein next, just for comparison! While the main attraction of the festival is its truly impressive cosplay display, it is also home to numerous roleplay­ing and board game en­thusiasts, with a large dealers’ room. Some of the merchandise, such as those related to the hugely successful German SF franchise Perry Rhodan, may be less familiar to Anglo­phone readers, but the atmosphere is friendly and inviting regardless of what language you speak. People in Lux­embourg move fluently between Luxembourgish, German, and French–or English, for those of us who are more linguistically challenged!

  • David Smith ☛ Defensive and Skeptical

    When you are early in your career the best path forward is typically to hungrily strive forward. Embracing every possible opportunity, maybe not with foolish abandon but with consistent, unrelenting determination. You have everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

    That works well enough until you achieve some level of success. Success is wonderful and lovely, but it also brings with it obligation. Once you have achieved something worth holding on to, you now need to do the work to maintain it. Once you have had some success now you suddenly have less to gain, and something to lose.

  • Adolfo Ochagavía ☛ Curiosity and sense of wonder

    Roughly two months ago I posted a fragment of Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month, which I find particularly inspiring. And guess what… I’m not the only one who feels touched by that passage! Upon reading it, a friend sent me the following message, which I include here with his permission: WOWWWWWW, THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. It’s exactly what I felt last weeks but could not put into words!1

    Motivated by his reaction, I thought about other texts I’ve come across that inspire me as a programmer and as a human being. Today I want to share fragments of two poems that, in my eyes, embody the curiosity and sense of wonder that pervade my work and, to some extent, my life.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Kat James: how this drone data analyst is using #dronesforgood

    Kat James is a drone and data specialist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has worked in global health for over a decade — but recently, her work has brought her into the drone world.

    Kat is the founder of Four Hundred Feet, a drone and data consultancy that helps researchers, NGOs, and social good organizations design and implement drone programs to address pressing needs in global health, the environment, and humanitarian efforts.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ This AIO cooler is designed to cool two CPUs at once — SilverStone’s new XE360-Dual

    SilverStone introduced the XE360-Dual, which has two water blocks connected in serial, to cool two AMD or defective chip maker Intel server processors using a single radiator.

  • Hackaday ☛ Fixing Issues With Knockoff Altera USB Blasters

    Using an external MCU as a crude clock source for the Altera CPLD. (Credit: [Doug Brown])One exciting feature of hardware development involving MCUs and FPGAs is that you all too often need specific tools to program them, with [Doug Brown] suffering a price tag aneurysm after checking the cost of an official Altera/Intel USB Blaster (yours for $300) to program a MAX 10 FPGA device with. This led him naturally down the path of exploring alternatives, with the $69 Terasic version rejected for ‘being too expensive’ and opting instead for the Waveshare USB Blaster V2, at a regretful $34. The amazing feature of this USB Blaster clone is that while it works perfectly fine under Windows, it works at most intermittently under Linux.

  • Hackaday ☛ Making Intel Mad, Retrocomputing Edition

    Intel has had a deathgrip on the PC world since the standardization around the software and hardware available on IBM boxes in the 90s. And if you think you’re free of them because you have an AMD chip, that’s just Intel’s instruction set with a different badge on the silicon. At least AMD licenses it, though — in the 80s there was another game in town that didn’t exactly ask for permission before implementing, and improving upon, the Intel chips available at the time.

  • Jason Becker ☛ Dr. Z Maz Jr MKII Joins the Crew

    I had a bit of an agenda– I thought I’d try out the Marshall SV20C and Vox AC15. I’ve owned an AC30 in the past and liked it, and thought either amp could stay at my house while the Valvetech hung out in the practice space. Both seemed like they’d blend nice with the VAC22 as well– back 15 years ago I always thought I’d pair the VAC with a Hayseed one day.

  • The Newsprint ☛ The Best Keyboard for an Accountant

    Keychron’s Q5 Pro and Q5 Max are likely going to be the best keyboard for any accountant. The Pro is great if you want to save a few bucks. The Max has all the bells and whistles. Neither keyboard will be as good as $500+ keyboards made with the best material options. But both get the job done in a way no other keyboard does.

  • Robin Schroer ☛ Logitech MX Master 3S Review

    Recently my Magic Trackpad's battery started bulging enough to stop the feet in the corners from reliably contacting the desk underneath, resulting in the whole trackpad sliding around. In my ongoing quest to standardize as many connectors as possible on USB-C, I bought a Logitech MX Master instead of replacing the trackpad. What follows is a review after a couple of weeks using it. Overall I think it is a competent mouse, but I will specifically highlight parts I do not like, so this might come off as more negative than I actually feel.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Compact Electrohydrodynamic Pump Using Copper And TPU

    Electrohydrodynamics (EHD) involves the dynamics of electrically charged fluids, which effectively means making fluids move using nothing but electric fields, making it an attractive idea for creating a pump out of. This is the topic of a 2023 paper by [Michael Smith] and colleagues in Science, titled “Fiber pumps for wearable fluidic systems”. The ‘fiber pumps’ as they call the EHD pumps in this study are manufactured by twisting two helical, 80 µm thick copper electrodes around a central mandrel, along with TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) before applying heat. This creates a tube where the two continuous electrodes are in contact with any fluids inside the tube.

  • Hackaday ☛ A Wireless Monitor Without Breaking The Bank

    The quality of available video production equipment has increased hugely as digital video and then high-definition equipment have entered the market. But there are still some components which are expensive, one of which is a decent quality HD wireless monitor. Along comes [FuzzyLogic] with a solution, in the form of an external monitor for a laptop, driven by a wireless HDMI extender.

  • Hackaday ☛ A LEGO Orrery

    We aren’t sure how accurate you can get with LEGO, but a building block orrery looks cool, if nothing else. [Marian42] saw one done a few years ago and decided to build a version with a different mechanism. At first, the plan was to use some 3D printed fixtures, but the final product is made entirely from LEGO bricks. Very impressive. The video below shows that it has been complete for awhile, but the write-up that goes into great detail has only just arrived and it was worth the wait.

  • Hackaday ☛ Can A Toy Printer Be Made Great?

    Now that the bottom end of the 3D printer market has been largely cleared of those garbage “Prusa i3 clone” models which used to infest it a few years ago, a new breed of ultra-cheap printer has taken their place. EasyThreed make a range of very small printers pitched as toys, and while they’re no great shakes by the standards of most Hackaday readers, they do at least work out of the box. For their roughly $75 price tag they deliver what you’d expect, but can such a basic machine be improved with a few upgrades? [Made with Layers] has taken a look.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • El País ☛ Existential doubts? Go see a philosopher instead of a psychologist

    In December 2023, The New Yorker ran a piece on a profession that’s been in the shadows for years: philosophical counseling. It’s straightforward: a client goes to a philosopher’s office and shares their existential concerns. The session’s direction varies based on the chosen counselor. This service doesn’t address mental health issues; instead, it guides clients to ponder deep philosophical topics like the meaning of life, ethics and freedom. Proponents claim that this practice revives the practical essence of ancient philosophy, echoing Epicurus’ famous quote: “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Building a Home Gym

    I've put myself (mostly) back on the wagon, but since I'm now lighter and fitter, my weight is starting to plateau, so I've had to up my game.

  • NYPost ☛ Here are the questions ex- NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo could face at hands of House COVID-19 panel

    The House panel investigating America's response COVID-19 pandemic has recently met or consulted with relatives of New York nursing home residents killed by the virus.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Zach Wigal on helping hospitals through gaming

    On April 5, 2024, Gamers Outreach gathered hundreds of gamers at Eastern Michigan University with one goal: to raise money for children’s hospitals around the world.

  • Science Alert ☛ Can a Healthy Lifestyle 'Beat' Alzheimer's Like Documentary Claims?

    An expert explains, it's complicated.

  • Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: The Fight for Health Freedom Continues – #SolutionsWatch

    After years of build-up and anticipation, the 77th World Health Assembly has come and gone. So, what did the would-be lords of global health gavel down on? And what does it mean for the future of the fight for health freedom?

  • Science Alert ☛ Chronic Insomnia Linked to Ultra-Processed Foods, Study Finds

    How much is your diet a factor?

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Don Marti: Block Hey Hi (AI) training on a web site

    I’m going to start with a warning. You can’t completely block “AI” training from a web site. Underground AI will always get through, and it might turn out that the future of AI-based infringement is bot accounts so that the sites that profit from it can just be shocked at what one of their users was doing—kind of like how big companies monetize copyright monopoly infringement.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ HP bricks ProBook laptops with bad BIOS delivered via automatic updates — many users face black screen after backdoored Windows pushes new firmware

    HP and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft prove the danger of automatic firmware updates.

  • Futurism ☛ Google Has Drastically Slashed Its AI Results After Disastrously Embarrassing Launch

    Ever since Google's new feature AI Overviews was caught spitting out nonsensical and boldly wrong answers to search queries after its launch, the tech company has been trying to course correct its AI-generated search summaries with a slate of fixes and guard rails.

    It also appears to be serving the AI results to far fewer users, signaling at least a temporary retreat from the tech. Before the change, according to a new study from SEO company BrightEdge, AI Overviews summaries were showing up in response to around 84 percent of queries. Now that figure has fallen drastically, to around 15 percent of queries.

  • Wired ☛ How Game Theory Can Make AI More Reliable

    Imagine you had a friend who gave different answers to the same question, depending on how you asked it. “What’s the capital of Peru?” would get one answer, and “Is Lima the capital of Peru?” would get another. You’d probably be a little worried about your friend’s mental faculties, and you’d almost certainly find it hard to trust any answer they gave.

    That’s exactly what’s happening with many large language models (LLMs), the ultra-powerful machine learning tools that power ChatGPT and other marvels of artificial intelligence. A generative question, which is open-ended, yields one answer, and a discriminative question, which involves having to choose between options, often yields a different one. “There is a disconnect when the same question is phrased differently,” said Athul Paul Jacob, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ How I use YouTube (without the stress it apparently causes other folks)

    YouTube might be my favorite website in the world, and apparently that’s at odds with the opinion of many people I see online. People complain about ads, about the UI, and about THE ALGORITHM, but I just don’t have these issues. Today I wanted to quickly give an overview for how I interact with YouTube so that I can explain myself.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Propagandists are using AI too

    We are two such researchers, and we have studied online influence operations for years. We have published investigations of coordinated activity—sometimes in collaboration with platforms—and analyzed how AI tools could affect the way propaganda campaigns are waged. Our teams’ peer-reviewed research has found that language models can produce text that is nearly as persuasive as propaganda from human-written campaigns. We have seen influence operations continue to proliferate, on every social platform and focused on every region of the world; they are table stakes in the propaganda game at this point. State adversaries and mercenary public relations firms are drawn to social media platforms and the reach they offer. For authoritarian regimes in particular, there is little downside to running such a campaign, particularly in a critical global election year. And now, adversaries are demonstrably using AI technologies that may make this activity harder to detect. Media is writing about the “AI election,” and many regulators are panicked.

  • International Business Times ☛ ChatGPT Falsely Accused Me Of Sexually Harassing A Student': Law Professor Says Accusations Were 'Chilling'

    "Five professors came up, three of those stories were clearly false, including my own," Turley told "The Story" on Fox News Monday. The AI's fabrication was the most disturbing aspect of this incident. ChatGPT invented a Washington Post story, complete with a fabricated quote, alleging harassment on a student trip to Alaska.

    "That trip never occurred. I've never gone on any trip with law students of any kind. It had me teaching at the wrong school, and I've never been accused of sexual harassment," Turley clarified.

    On April 6, 2023, the 61-year-old legal scholar took to X (formerly Twitter) to expose ChatGPT's defamation. The AI fabricated a 2018 sexual harassment allegation, claiming a female student accused him on an Alaska trip – a trip that never occurred.

  • Game World Observer ☛ Phil Spencer on studio closures: “I have to make hard decisions” to run sustainable business and grow [Ed: I lay off thousands of people while my boss pretends the company is worth 3,000 billion dollars; also I'm laying off thousands of workers for "company’s long-term growth." Because this makes so much sense.]

    After hosting a new Xbox Showcase, Phil Spencer finally addressed the recent studio closures. The Microsoft Gaming CEO detailed the decision making behind this process, also commenting on other things related to the Xbox business.

  • Paytm Layoffs 2024: Parent Company One97 Communications Limited Cuts Undisclosed Numbers of People Amid Restructuring, Facilitates Outplacement

    One97 Communications Limited (OCL), which owns the Paytm brand, has begun to lay off an undisclosed number of employees amid a restructuring exercise, along with facilitating outplacement assistance to those affected.

    The company said in a statement that it is also disbursing bonuses which were due to employees, “ensuring fairness and transparency in the process.” “One97 Communications Limited (OCL) is providing outplacement support to employees which have resigned as a part of the restructuring efforts by the company,” it said. Tech Layoffs: Indian IT Sector Hit by Silent Layoffs With Employee Asked To Choose Voluntary Resignation or Termination, Affects Over 20,000 People, Says Report.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Wired ☛ The EU Is Taking on Big Tech. It May Be Outmatched

      The latest in a series of duels announced by the European Commission is with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Brussels suspects that the giant based in Redmond, Washington, has failed to properly moderate content produced by the generative AI systems on Bing, Copilot, and Image Creator, and that as a result, it may have violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), one of Europe’s latest digital regulations.

      On May 17, the EU summit requested company documents to understand how Microsoft handled the spread of hallucinations (inaccurate or nonsensical answers produced by AI), deepfakes, and attempts to improperly influence the upcoming European Parliament elections. At the beginning of June, voters in the 27 states of the European Union will choose their representatives to the European Parliament, in a campaign over which looms the ominous shadow of technology with its potential to manipulate the outcome. The commission has given Microsoft until May 27 to respond, only days before voters go to the polls. If there is a need to correct course, it may likely be too late.

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ South Korea plays loudspeaker broadcasts after receiving North Korea trash balloons

    South Korea started playing loudspeaker broadcasts towards North Korea on Saturday after trash balloons from North Korea entered South Korea. The trash balloons were sent around a week after North Korea already made an agreement with South Korea to stop sending the balloons.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea leader's sister warns of new response against S. Korean loudspeakers, leaflets

    "This is a prelude to a very dangerous situation," she said.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea leader’s sister warns of new response against S. Korean loudspeakers, leaflets

    "This is a prelude to a very dangerous situation," she said.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea resumes loudspeaker propaganda, Pyongyang vows 'response'

    Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Increasing investment in African mining should be a higher priority for the United States

    The US elections are quickly approaching. But while there may be a shift in administrations, critical minerals are poised to remain a central theme in US policy: Deep bipartisan support for remaking global supply chains and reducing dependence on China’s current dominance in processing have virtually election-proofed focus on the issue.

    Rich in minerals and with a strategic location, African countries should be benefiting from this growing US interest. But currently—due to the investment-intensive nature of greenfield projects, the United States’ and Europe’s increased focus on self-reliance, and competition from other countries with more established mining industries—African countries risk largely losing out on this historic opportunity to attract more investment in the minerals that will fuel future industries,

  • The Hill ☛ Congress should just ban children from social media

    Social media is horrendously broken. Bad actors are exploiting it while the platforms turn a blind eye. Our children are suffering — and our leaders won’t do anything serious about it.

    The House recently cooked up a legally dubious bill to force TikTok’s owners to sell the company or face its delisting from app stores if it isn’t quickly sold. It’s a bad bill with good intentions that it aims to fulfill by crushing free-speech rights and putting the government’s thumb on the scale of free enterprise. Nonetheless, the bill passed with bipartisan support, President Biden signed it — and, naturally, it immediately went to court, where it will languish for years.

  • France24 ☛ Benny Gantz announces his resignation from the Israeli government

    Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, announced his resignation Sunday, accusing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of mismanaging the war effort and putting his own “political survival” over the country’s security needs. Earlier Sunday, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza announced that at least 274 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli raid that rescued four hostages a day earlier. Read our liveblog to see how all the day's events unfolded.

  • JURIST ☛ Jammu and Kashmir government dismisses four government officials citing alleged terror links

    The General Administration Department (GAD) in Jammu and Kashmir, India issued termination orders for four employees on Saturday on allegations of posing a threat to the security of the Indian state.

  • RFERL ☛ Six Pakistani Soldiers Killed In Clash With Militants

    Six Pakistani security troops were killed in an explosion and exchange of gunfire with militants on June 9 at a security post near Sultan Khel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, an official said.

  • JURIST ☛ Australia New South Wales expands police search powers to combat knife crime surge

    The New South Wales government passed new laws which enable police extra powers to target knife crimes. The government stated that almost 4000 knives were seized in public places last year. The Premier Chris Minns contended that the laws sent a clear message that knife crimes are unacceptable. 

  • JURIST ☛ UN rights office denounces ‘horrendous’ attack on Tanzania transgender activist

    The United Nations Human Rights Office condemned an attack against transgender woman and activist Mauzinde in Tanzania on Friday, calling it “horrendous.” Mauzinde, a resident of Rahaleo, was found abandoned in the forest, beaten and with her ears cut.

  • New York Times ☛ The Other War: How Israel Scours Gaza for Clues About the Hostages

    The rescue of four Israelis in Gaza in a ferocious assault over the weekend offered a glimpse into an ambitious intelligence operation aimed at bringing home those held by Hamas.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Biden, France's Macron Reach Agreement On Using Russian Assets For Ukraine

      U.S. President Joe Biden on June 9 said he had reached an agreement with French President Emmanuel Macron on the use of profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.

    • New York Times ☛ British TV Doctor Michael Mosley Found Dead in Greece

      Dr. Mosley, a British medical journalist and documentary maker, disappeared last week while on a trip on the Greek island of Symi.

  • JURIST ☛ Russia court detains French citizen for allegedly collecting military information

    The Zamoskvoretsky court in Moscow ordered the detention of French citizen Laurent Vinatier on Friday, accusing him of collecting information on military issues in Russia. Specifically, Vinatier has been charged with violating the rules of foreign agents’ activity under Part 3 of Article 330.1 of the Russian Criminal Code.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukrainian Activist Traces Roots of War in ‘Centuries of Russian Colonization’

    One Ukrainian researcher and podcaster is a leading voice in efforts to rethink Ukrainian-Russian relations through the prism of colonialism.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Futurism ☛ Hiker Alarmed to Find Pipe Feeding China's Tallest Waterfall

  A video making the rounds on Douyin, China's version of TikTok, unmasks a hidden pipe feeding what's claimed to be the country's tallest uninterrupted waterfall — an engineering trick seemingly designed to put on a show for visitors.

  The clip, shared by a local hiker, shows a concrete-clad pipe pumping out copious amounts of water at the top of a tall cliff face.

• BBC ☛ Yuntai: Hiker finds pipe feeding China's tallest waterfall

  "The one about how I went through all the hardship to the source of Yuntai Waterfall only to see a pipe," the caption of the video posted by user "Farisvov" reads.

  The topic "the origin of Yuntai Waterfall is just some pipes" began trending all over social media.

Environment

• Martin Hähne ☛ #100DaysToOffload End of the myth of rational public discourse - The example of climate change // Martin Hähnel

  In short: The changing world-political landscape makes it highly unlikely that rational arguments or strategic protests will persuade humans to change their ways (I think I’m allowed to generalize here).

• Science Alert ☛ There's a Hidden Water Cycle in The Amazon We Barely Know Anything About

  This multidirectional water cycle not only supplies the rain but shifts soils too – from the Andes mountains, through the rivers, into the forests, and eventually into the ocean. These waves of nutrients washing through with the water help support the densely packed and highly diverse terrestrial and aquatic habitats.

  The AAA pathway provides about 40 percent of the Atlantic's sediment input, contributing to many ocean nutrient cycles.

• New York Times ☛ How Governor Hochul Decided to Kill Congestion Pricing in New York

  Ms. Hochul’s announcement was particularly jarring given her past championing of the plan. Indeed, as recently as this year, the governor stressed the need to get vehicles off the road — a dissonance that has fed a sense of duplicity and a feeling of betrayal among those who considered her an ally.

  On Friday, Jon Orcutt, a longtime congestion pricing proponent and a consultant for Reinvent Albany, described Ms. Hochul’s about-face as “a fundamental sense of betrayal, like, inner-core rock bottom.”

• Energy/Transportation

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's Yoon heads to Central Asia for talks on energy, minerals

    SEOUL - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol embarked on a trip to Central Asia on Monday to hold talks on strengthening diplomatic ties and cooperating in areas such as energy and minerals, Yoon's office said.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ VW warns load shedding hinders South African expansion

    The uncertainty over electricity supply, caused by the poor maintenance of the state power utility’s coal-fired plants, increases the cost of running the facility compared with VW’s more than 100 sites across the world, making it hard to argue for additional investment, she said.

• Overpopulation

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Major crisis in Delhi imminent if 'adequate' water not released in Munak: Atishi to Haryana CM

    New Delhi, Delhi Water Minister Atishi Sunday wrote to Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, requesting him to ensure 1,050 cusecs water is released from the Munak Canal for the national capital, otherwise "Delhi will have a major crisis in next 1-2 days".

Finance

• New York Times ☛ Mexico’s Leftists Won Big. Investors Are Worried.

  The peso had its worst week since the pandemic as markets reacted to fears that the government would pass constitutional changes seen as dismantling democratic checks and balances.

• JURIST ☛ Mali financial union extends strike until detained members released

  The National Union of Banks, Insurance Companies, Financial Institutions, and Businesses of Mali (SYNABEF) announced Saturday that it would prolong the work stoppage from June 9, 2024, until authorities release their secretary general, Hamadoun Bah, and all their detained colleagues.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• New York Times ☛ In Las Vegas, Trump Appeals to Local Workers and Avoids Talk of Conviction

  At a rally on Sunday, former President Donald J. Trump promised to end taxes on tips for hospitality workers in a speech otherwise filled with familiar refrains.

• RTL ☛ Final voting day: EU voters head to polls on last day of marathon elections

  Voters across Europe cast their ballots Sunday on the final -- and biggest -- day of elections for the EU's parliament, with far-right parties expected to make gains at a pivotal time for the bloc.

  Polling stations opened in 21 member countries, including heavy hitters France and Germany, for the vote that helps shape the European Union's direction over the next five years.

• Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

  • RFERL ☛ Taliban's Name-Changing Campaign In Afghanistan An 'Ultimate Act Of Victory'

    During the last four decades of war, ruling political groups have often renamed landmarks and other prominent sites, including the communist regime in the 1980s, the mujahedin in the 1990s, and the Western-backed government that came to power after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the first Taliban regime in 2001.

    Changing the names of public sites has long proved highly contentious, a byproduct of conflict among rival and even warring ethnic, religious, and political groups.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: Was China's Tiananmen massacre a US-led myth?

    Claim: The Tiananmen massacre was a myth. ''This probably won't shock you, but the idea of the 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' is a US-led myth,'' reads one of Boreham's posts

    .

    He does not deny that there were casualties in the 1989 uprising, but his tweets focus on the alleged "Tiananmen Square massacre," which he said did not occur, claiming Western officials and media fabricated the event.

    DW Fact Check: Misleading.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Hugging Face, Inc ☛ An Analysis of Chinese LLM Censorship and Bias with Qwen 2 Instruct

  For those that don't know (living under a rock ... or in China), China has one of the strictest/most extensive censorship regimes in the world. The linked Wikipedia article and sub-articles like Internet censorship in China or the Great Firewall do a good job summarizing things. If you're interested in technical details, articles from the Great Firewall Report are fascinating, but to me, it's the more sociological aspects, like this report on self-censorship, "They Don’t Understand the Fear We Have": How China’s Long Reach of Repression Undermines Academic Freedom at Australia’s Universities, or this one on the effectiveness of Xi's Patriotic Education Campaign that are the most mind-boggling.

• [Repeat] RFERL ☛ Iranian Protester's Death Sentence Struck Down By Supreme Court

  Iran’s Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence handed to Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani, arrested over his alleged involvement in the 2019 antiestablishment protests.

  Babak Paknia, Vafaei Sani’s lawyer, said on June 8 that the Supreme Court had struck down his client’s death sentence “for a second time.” He did not say when the first death sentence had been overturned.

  Paknia said the case would now go to a lower court.

• US News And World Report ☛ Thai Ex-PM Thaksin Says Ready to Face Royal Insult Charges

  Thaksin, 74, denies wrongdoing and has repeatedly pledged loyalty to the crown, criticism of which is forbidden under Thailand's controversial lese-majeste law, one of the strictest of its kind around the world.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• JURIST ☛ Vietnam police arrest journalist for violating national security law over critical Facebook (Farcebook) post

  Vietnamese authorities announced on Friday that they arrested and charged Truong Huy San, a prominent journalist, with violating the national security law by posting on Facebook (Farcebook) criticizing the country’s government.

• CPJ ☛ Journalist says Kenyan official threatened to kill him over report on ambulance shortages

  Kenyan authorities should credibly investigate reports that a government official threatened to kill reporter Douglas Dindi, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

Civil Rights/Policing

• New York Times ☛ Reality TV or Court TV? Lawsuits Test Limits of Outrageous Behavior

  Popular shows including “Love Is Blind,” the “Real Housewives” universe and “Vanderpump Rules” are being challenged in court amid a changing legal landscape.

• LRT ☛ Growth of private school sector in Lithuania points at increasing inequality

  Some 15 years ago, less than 1 percent of the country’s pupils were privately educated, and now the number stands at over 8 percent.

  “The last four or five years have been a huge turning point,” Eglė Sidorova, headmistress of Northern Lyceum in Vilnius, told LRT TV.

• The Register UK ☛ Study finds 1/4 of bosses hoped RTO would make staff quit

  HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.

  While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Axios ☛ Streaming is becoming cable TV

  The big picture: Media giants are under more pressure than ever to turn their streaming businesses profitable as the cable bundle — which was funding the streaming investment — rapidly declines.