Leftovers

• Max Sommer ☛ «Building a workflow around long form writing»

  Lately I've been reiterating on my workflows a bit. I'm building my workflow around long form writing. Long form writing can help you make this more clear in your head. By typing out your whole thought process, the problems you notice while doing it and reflecting on those things you gain a new perspective.

  Noting my thoughts allows me to perform "Six thinking hats" without even actively thinking about it. While writing thoughts I notice flaws in my previous assumptions, instincts or ideas. And immediately my brain jumps to the next thoughts and continues onwards. Keeping those also on record, I gain so much food for Sleeping on it that I can come back the next day and move on with renewed joy for the thing I was working on.

• Tim Bornholdt ☛ Some small tweaks to this site

  For starters, I haven't redesigned this site since I got COVID back in 2021. 13 year old Tim would have been mortified at how long we've gone without a big redesign.

• Idiomdrottning ☛ Image descriptions

  I used to be really bad at writing text descriptions for images. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

• Standards/Consortia

  • University of Michigan ☛ Electronic dust and museums: My crush on physical photos

    A photograph truly is so much more than just an image. It’s the thing the grief-stricken return to in moments of solitude and what family shares to remember the faces of far-away relatives. It’s how we connect with strangers in far-flung places and contextualize historical events. And yet, today, it’s also electronic dust. In 100 years, how many of these digitized photos will be accessible? How will our distant descendants look at this modern world through our eyes if all the data disappears? A few months ago, I saw a cautionary post on social media. A photographer, already racked with grief, opened up about the death of their close friend, another photographer. Although the friend had backed up all of their photos to hard drives and uploaded them to the cloud, everything was wiped after their death. A rich legacy of photography — hundreds, if not thousands of images — were gone in an instant.

• Science

  • Aeon Media Group Ltd ☛ Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer

    No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’.

    Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

• Education

  • DJ Bernstein ☛ 2024.06.12: Bibliography keys

    This blog post goes through various arguments that I've seen for non-numeric bibkeys, arguments that mostly sound good at first glance but that turn out to collapse upon closer investigation. This blog post then goes through various counterarguments.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ My (not so) brief thoughts on WWDC 2024, 24 hours later

    I’ve had a little time to let the WWDC keynote sink in, and wanted to share my overall feelings on Apple’s big announcements in one post. And yes, I’ve installed the developer betas on every single primary device in my life (Mac, iPad, iPhone, Watch, and Vision Pro), so these opinions also include some hands-on experience with the updates as well.

  • Dillon Mok ☛ Thoughts on WWDC24

    Here are my reactions and thoughts about Apple's announcements at WWDC24: [...]

  • Francesco ☛ Some thoughts on Apple’s WWDC 2024 - Fran's Realm

    I feel like the customisation possibilities unveiled at WWDC 2024 mark a significant shift for Apple.

    Previously, users had to follow Apple’s aesthetic best practices, which ensured a consistently polished look for all their devices. It was as if Apple was saying, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered; your iPhone will always look great”.

    This was really important for Apple, since it ensured that screenshots and online photos of Apple devices maintained a recognisable standard. Now, all of that is gone.

• Hardware

  • Alex Ellis ☛ You might need a portable monitor

    I'll cover why you might want a portable monitor instead, and at the end I'll list out the kit I use to record streams and video demos of products.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Chemical Makers Sue Over Rule to Rid Water of ‘Forever Chemicals’

    Chemical and manufacturing groups sued the federal government late Monday over a landmark drinking-water standard that would require cleanup of so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks.

    The industry groups said that the government was exceeding its authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act by requiring that municipal water systems all but remove six synthetic chemicals, known by the acronym PFAS, that are present in the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Journalism can be relentless: But overworking could be fatal

    Relentless pace and pressure are hallmarks of the media industry, both of which can make it all too easy to slip into an unhealthy cycle of overwork.

    Overwork takes many forms. As paid overtime becomes a distant memory for most workers, there is a tacit agreement in many workplaces that the work needs to get done, at any cost.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Mass Layoffs Across Tech And Beyond Signal Tough Economic Times

  • CWA Charges Microsoft Supplier Lionbridge With Unfair Layoffs Of Unionizing QA Testers

    The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the largest communications and media labor union in the U.S., has filed Unfair Labour Practice charges against Lionbridge Technologies, a supplier for Microsoft Corp.

  • CWA claims Microsoft partner Lionbridge has taken part in unfair labour practices

    The Communications Workers of America union has filed Unfair Labour Practice charges against Microsoft supplier Lionbridge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

  • EuroGamer ☛ Company that provided QA testing to Activision accused of unfair practices after 160 people laid off

    The Communications Workers of America (CWA), one of America's largest unions, has filed Unfair Labour Practice charges against Microsoft supplier Lionbridge Technologies.

    According to the CWA, Lionbridge laid off the entirety of an Idaho-based team, equating to 160 people, after they engaged in union-related activity. This team, the CWA said, provided QA testing for Activision.

  • Fandom Inc ☛ Gaming QA Workers Say They Were Laid Off For Trying To Unionize

    According to a CWA news post announcing the claim, the Idaho-based team included 160 workers that were all let go by the company, Lionbridge Technologies. The company allegedly told workers that their project had ended, necessitating the layoffs. The news post claims that teams assigned to the same project in Mexico and Poland continued to work on it after the Idaho team's dissolution. The project was specifically associated with Activision, which is owned by Microsoft.

  • Activision Contractor Allegedly Laid Off QA Workers for Trying to Unionize

    The Communications Workers of America announced it is filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against an Activision contractor. The union alleges that the contractor, Lionbridge Technologies, laid off 160 workers in retaliation for an attempt to unionize.

  • The Register UK ☛ UK CMA says public sector will be in cloud services probe after all

    Britain's competition watchdog says it is including the public sector in its investigation into the UK cloud services market, following earlier claims that this area could be overlooked.

    The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed to The Register that these stats will contribute to its final report.

    "The CMA is gathering evidence and data from the public sector as part of its Cloud Services Market Investigation, the findings of which will be published with our provisional decision in autumn 2024," a CMA spokesperson told us.

    Confusion arose over the situation when a document [PDF] outlining the CMA's research collation process, using a company called Jigsaw, appeared to indicate the opposite.

  • The Register UK ☛ Payoff from AI projects is 'dismal', biz leaders complain

    Businesses have become more cautious about investing in artificial intelligence tools due to concerns about cost, data security, and safety, according to a study conducted by Lucidworks, a provider of e-commerce search and customer service applications.

    "The honeymoon phase of generative AI is over," the company said in its 2024 Generative AI Global Benchmark Study, released on Tuesday. "While leaders remain enthusiastic about its potential to transform businesses, the initial euphoria has given way to a more measured approach."

  • New Yorker ☛ Is Google S.E.O. Gaslighting the Internet?

    In May, we got a glimpse into the inner workings of Google Search, from a leak of twenty-five hundred pages of the company’s internal documentation. The files seem to have been uploaded to GitHub by an unknown party, in March, but gained attention only when Erfan Azimi, a search-engine-optimization consultant, sent it to Rand Fishkin, a veteran S.E.O expert and a commentator on the industry. The leak is from Google Search’s A.P.I., or application programming interface, a kind of directory of labels that external developers can refer to in their code in order to call up information from Google’s internal infrastructure. It is a vast list of coding tags incomprehensible to the lay reader. But the documents identify many of the variables that Google’s search algorithm takes into account, without going so far as to specify how those variables are weighted or how a site’s ranking is ultimately determined.

  • CS Monitor ☛ These English PhDs helped train Google Gemini. How do they view AI now?

    “Just imagine grading the errors of a high schooler’s paper that he plagiarized from the internet. That’s kind of what we do,” says Dr. Harbin, who was a prompt engineer on Google’s Gemini. “The robot requires a lot of training. There’s a lot to correct.”

    Indeed, when Google released the latest version, it recommended gluing cheese to pizza and making sure you ate one rock a day.

    But half a dozen people who worked at Google contractor GlobalLogic, including Dr. Harbin, say the experience behind the scenes was even more disheartening. Rather than being treated as respected professionals, they say they were paid slightly above minimum wage. One described the experience as akin to a “digital sweatshop.”

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ ‘Deepfake’ pornography ban passes Michigan House with bipartisan support

    A bipartisan plan to criminalize non-consensual creation or dissemination of deepfakes or any media falsely showing a person engaging in sexual conduct passed the House Wednesday in a pair of 108-2 votes.

  • [Old] Organization for Social Media Safety ☛ Deepfake Technology - Organization for Social Media Safety

    With the technology improving and becoming more accessible, this disturbing trend has expanded outside of Hollywood and into lives of everyday Californians, with the most likely targets including the most vulnerable among us, such as survivors of abusive relationships and minors. Victims are left with emotional trauma, severe mental anguish, and reputational damage.

  • Futurism ☛ AI Is Being Trained on Images of Real Kids Without Consent

    The watchdog group says it discovered over 170 traceable photos of real Brazilian children in the LAION-5B image-text dataset, which is comprised of data gleaned from the web-scraped content depository Common Crawl and has been used to train AI models including Stability AI's Stable Diffusion image-generator.

    Per the report, some of the retrieved photos were accompanied by alarmingly revealing information. One image of a two-year-old and her baby sister, for example, included details about the children's names and the "precise location" of the baby's birth. The photos also span decades of content: as Wired notes, the images were scraped "from content posted as recently as 2023 and as far back as the mid-1990s."

  • 404 Media ☛ Instagram Experiments With Injecting Pop Up Ads Into Your Friends’ Stories

    Instagram has been experimenting with “unskippable” ads in recent days that do not let you scroll or tap past them until a timer has counted down. These Super Rumble ads appear to be another attempt to inject more invasive forms of advertising directly over actual content on the app. The way the ads pop into frame is similar to ads in many mobile games, where users end up accidentally clicking on them. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it planned on rolling out ads like this more widely.

  • The Register UK ☛ Survey finds payoff from AI projects is 'dismal'

    Businesses have become more cautious about investing in artificial intelligence tools due to concerns about cost, data security, and safety, according to a study conducted by Lucidworks, a provider of e-commerce search and customer service applications.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Apple is promising personalized AI in a private cloud. Here’s how that will work.

    The pitch offers an implicit contrast with the likes of Alphabet, Amazon, or Meta, which collect and store enormous amounts of personal data. Apple says any personal data passed on to the cloud will be used only for the AI task at hand and will not be retained or accessible to the company, even for debugging or quality control, after the model completes the request.

  • Techdirt ☛ Microsoft Tries To Address Privacy Backlash Over New Windows 11 ‘Recall’ Feature

    Microsoft of course has a larger problem in that a lot of people really don’t like Windows 11 that much; or at least don’t see a reason why they should migrate from Windows 10. Microsoft is hoping to end “free” support for Windows 10 next year, but it remains the most popular Microsoft operating system by a pretty wide margin, something probably not helped by new feature privacy kerfuffles like this.

    Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs with Recall are slated to launch June 18.

  • [Repeat] Tedium ☛ Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess

    The problem with Adobe is not any single decision it has made. It is the company’s longer track record, which suggests a genuine lack of respect for non-enterprise users. They’re allowing things to rot.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ WWDC24: Tim Cook, on AI and Apple’s Values

    When asked about his confidence that Apple Intelligence will avoid hallucinations, he said:

  • Lewis Dale ☛ Just turn it off already

    No, I’m not talking about all computers[1]. Specifically, I’m talking about Slack.

  • Greece ☛ Turkish student arrested for using AI to cheat in university exam

    A video released by police in the southwestern province of Isparta showed how the student used a camera disguised as a shirt button linked to artificial intelligence software via a router hidden in the sole of the person’s shoe.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Is Apple's new AI feature a privacy concern? as claimed by Musk

      However, for some tasks for which it needs to use servers over the internet, the company will send only the data that is relevant to the task to be processed on "Apple silicon servers". Apple said these servers are foundation to 'Private cloud compute' which offers "cloud security'. “Private Cloud Compute allows Apple Intelligence to process complex user requests with groundbreaking privacy,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Cofense warns of rising remote-access trojan infections as malware becomes more sophisticated

      STR RAT further uses geolocation services to fingerprint infected computers and sends this data, along with other system information, to command and control servers. The information is then used by attackers to tailor their malicious activities based on the location and system specifics of the infected device.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Microsoft’s Recall puts the Biden administration’s cyber credibility on the line

      This rush-to-market approach is in conflict with the Biden administration’s initiatives on secure by design and countering spyware but has been met by silence from the White House and key cyber officials. Anyone with access to a Recall-outfitted device — whether a foreign intelligence service or an abusive spouse — would have been able to access this “photographic memory” with ease, suggesting a serious failure to beta-test or independently validate program security prior to its release. This runs contrary to the Microsoft’s commitment in CISA’s secure-by-design pledge to build products that “are conceptualized with the security of customers as a core business goal, not just a technical feature.”

    • The Register UK ☛ Cylance clarifies breach, dodges questions about the source

      Saying very little about where the data came from, Cylance says it is related to company marketing between 2015 and 2018, before BlackBerry bought it, and it came from an undisclosed "third-party platform."

    • Bitdefender ☛ Battered and bruised 23andMe faces probe after hack that stole seven million users' data

      23andMe, the California-based company which sells DNA testing kits to help people learn about their ancestry and potential health risks, is facing scrutiny from British and Canadian data protection authorities following a security breach that saw hackers compromise the personal data of nearly seven million users.

  • Confidentiality

    • Idiomdrottning ☛ Finding PGP keys

      Here’s how I find PGP public keys. I have a zsh function that runs this, where “$1” means the email address I want to send to: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Overpopulation ☛ Religion affects birth rates

    This is supported by a study by the World Values ​​Survey in 57 countries which showed that Muslims give birth to more children than other religions. Immigrants to Europe from Muslim countries also appear to have higher birth rates than other immigrants and the host population.

  • The Record ☛ Dutch intelligence says Chinese hacking campaign ‘more extensive’ than previously known

    The Dutch military intelligence and security service (MIVD) is warning that a global Chinese cyber-espionage campaign is likely “much more extensive than previously known.”

    An alert published on Monday by the country’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says that the state-sponsored hackers behind the spying operation were exploiting a vulnerability in FortiGate devices for “at least two months before Fortinet announced the vulnerability.”

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ The Enemy in the Job Board

    But in recent years, as more sailors are finding themselves unwittingly involved in the so-called shadow fleet—smuggling oil for Iran, Russia, or other clients that have been hit by strict sanctions to restrict their sales of oil—the social media whisper network has evolved. As well as a place to find a reputable employer, it’s become something else: a way for seafarers to avoid helping the other side of a war.

  • CS Monitor ☛ In Lebanon, Hezbollah-Israel crossfire traps Christians

    As one travels south in Lebanon, one sees fewer cars on the road, and more and more freshly strung banners marking the “martyrdom” of Shiite Hezbollah fighters, who have been locked in intensifying fighting with Israel ever since the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its attack last October from Gaza.

    The escalating exchanges of fire have displaced some 90,000 Lebanese and 60,000 Israelis from border areas. On Wednesday, Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets at Israel, in apparent response to Israel killing a senior Hezbollah commander overnight.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Hiltzik: How the fast-food industry uses deceptive employment numbers

    Here’s something you might want to know about this claim. It’s baloney, sliced thick. In fact, from September through January, the period covered by the ad, fast-food employment in California has gone up, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The claim that it has fallen represents a flagrant misrepresentation of government employment figures.

    Something else the ad doesn’t tell you is that after January, fast-food employment continued to rise. As of April, employment in the limited-service restaurant sector that includes fast-food establishments was higher by nearly 7,000 jobs than it was in April 2023, months before Newsom signed the minimum wage bill.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Using AI for Political Polling

    First, nonresponse has skyrocketed. It’s radically harder to reach people than it used to be. Few people fill out surveys that come in the mail anymore. Few people answer their phone when a stranger calls. Pew Research reported that 36% of the people they called in 1997 would talk to them, but only 6% by 2018. Pollsters worldwide have faced similar challenges.

    Second, people don’t always tell pollsters what they really think. Some hide their true thoughts because they are embarrassed about them. Others behave as a partisan, telling the pollster what they think their party wants them to say—or what they know the other party doesn’t want to hear.

• Environment

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ ‘A new generation’: Peregrine falcon chicks return, hatch atop Nebraska State Capitol

    The May hatching is the first since a previous peregrine falcon duo raised 23 young over the course of their careers, Jorgensen said. The previous falcons perched at the Capitol between 2005 and 2020, though the last successful clutch of eggs came in 2016.

  • DeSmog ☛ Climate Pledges Haven’t Stopped These European Banks From Financing LNG

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ Maine will add more than 50 new high-speed EV chargers near busy highways, outdoor recreation areas

      With 52 new chargers across 17 different locations, the stations will be placed on heavily traveled highways and roads such as Interstate 95, U.S. Route 2, parts of Portland and Bangor, and near outdoor recreation areas, according to a news release from the governor’s office Wednesday morning.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Operators seek regulatory relief over load shedding

      Speaking at public hearings on the impact of rolling power cuts on the telecoms industry in Midrand on Wednesday, ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi cautioned that the combination of load shedding and stringent regulatory compliance measures is forcing operators to pull back on infrastructure investment, leading to the marginalisation of poor communities.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Trump says he wants all remaining Bitcoin to be ‘MADE IN THE USA’ in meeting with crypto miners

      Trump told attendees that he loves and understands cryptocurrency, adding that Bitcoin miners help to stabilize energy supply from the grid, according to Schultz. Trump said he’d be an advocate for miners in the White House, Schultz added.

    • Open Dialog Foundation ☛ Bitcoin Mining for EU Electricity Grids: An Energy Supply Management Tools

      The Regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 9 June 2023. Under MiCA, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has been tasked with developing draft regulatory technical standards for the crypto-asset sector. These standards aim to detail the content, methodologies, and presentation of information regarding sustainability indicators, particularly those focusing on adverse impacts on climate and other environment-related adverse impacts, while also outlining key energy use indicators. The mandate requires ESMA to ensure coherence in the disclosures provided by issuers of crypto-assets and crypto-asset service providers. Crucially, in developing these standards, ESMA must evaluate the various types of consensus mechanisms used to validate transactions in crypto-assets. This evaluation should consider their unique characteristics and their potential environmental impacts.

    • Cointelegraph ☛ Bitcoin network transaction fees temporarily soar to nearly $52

      Network fees at the time hit 514 sats for high-priority transactions and 513 sats for low-priority transactions, with prices climbing to around 520 sats per transaction earlier in the day. In United States dollars, this represents $50–$52 in fees per transaction. Priority fees have since dropped to around $46 per transaction.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Hindu ☛ Average live water stock in Maharashtra falls to 20%

      Although the monsoon has arrived early in Maharashtra this year, a drought situation continues to exist. Multiple reservoirs in Beed and Dharashiv have 0% live water storage left. Vidarbha and Konkan regions have the most water stock. State government officials say the ground situation remains concerning.

      Maharashtra has 138 major dams. There are also 260 medium and 2,599 minor ones, for a total of 2,997. As of June 12, the average live water stock across the State stood at 20.21%, 7.6% less than the corresponding day last year, according to data from the Maharashtra Water Resources Department. The average figure looks adequate to tide over the last few days of the summer, but the granular details are where the real picture is hidden.

      Live water stock is the quantity available between the full reservoir and the minimum drawable level. It is also called useful storage.

    • Newsweek ☛ California Water Warning as 'Critical' Tech Has 'Concerning Gaps' - Newsweek

      As the effects of climate change become more pronounced and the state's population grows, the demand for water resources will only increase, making studies like this important. The findings of this study highlight the urgent need for investment in better monitoring infrastructure to ensure the state's water resources are managed effectively and sustainably.

    • California ☛ Which CA beaches have the most bacteria? Is water safe?

      “Surfrider Foundation volunteers test beaches that are not covered by agencies, and also monitor potential sources of pollution, such as stormwater outlets, rivers and creeks that discharge onto the beach,” the nonprofit said.

      At Imperial Beach in San Diego, 100% of samples failed to meet the state health standard for recreational waters.

• Finance

  • TechStory Media ☛ Best Buy Lays Off More Employees to Combat Falling Sales

    Best Buy has recently undergone significant internal changes, affecting its workforce and payment structure. These transformations come as the company navigates through shifting market dynamics and a post-pandemic decline in sales, according to insights from current and former employees shared with The Verge.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ NYT Ramps Up Venezuela Propaganda Ahead of Elections

    Venezuelans will head to the polls on July 28 to choose their president for the 2025–30 term. Incumbent President Nicolás Maduro faces nine challengers as he runs for a third term.

  • India Times ☛ Apple: Apple to ‘pay’ OpenAI for ChatGPT through distribution, not cash

    When Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his top deputies this week unveiled a landmark arrangement with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad and Mac, they were mum on the financial terms.

    No place for losers: Modi sends a clear message with Cabinet 3.0 Left unanswered on Monday: which company is paying the other as part of a tight collaboration that has potentially lasting monetary benefits for both. But, according to people briefed on the matter, the partnership isn’t expected to generate meaningful revenue for either party — at least at the outset.

  • The Register UK ☛ No, an AI bot isn't running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming

    The Wyoming Tribune Eagle asks, "Can voters elect an AI for mayor?" And Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray on Monday wrote to the City Clerk of Cheyenne urging the rejection of the application, noting "Wyoming law does not permit an artificial intelligence bot to run for any office in the state, including municipal offices."

    But Victor Miller, a facilities technician and computer assistant with the Laramie County Library System in the US state, disputes the notion that he applied to have an AI bot run for mayor.

  • Wired ☛ The $50 Billion Musk Referendum

    The board agreed to the plan in 2018. However, a heavy-metal drummer named Richard Tornetta, who owned just nine Tesla shares, did not. In June of that year, he decided to sue, claiming the pay package was unfair to investors like him. By the time the case reached court in Delaware in 2022, Musk had just one milestone left before the big payout. But the judge agreed with Tornetta in January, voiding what she called an unfathomably large pay package and describing the directors who negotiated it as beholden to Musk.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Drops Lawsuit Against OpenAI After It Releases Emails Showing He Was Totally on Board With What He's Now Criticizing

    To recap, Musk was an original founder of the then nonprofit OpenAI, but left the company in 2018 after an alleged failed power grab. About a year after Musk's exit, OpenAI transitioned to a for-profit venture, naming Musk's former colleague and pal Sam Altman as chief executive. Eventually, in November 2022, OpenAI would step out of its Silicon Valley bubble and into the broader public eye upon the surprise release of the chatbot ChatGPT — and of course, the news of a multibillion-dollar cash infusion from Microsoft.

    After ChatGPT's release, Musk — who quickly started working on his new AI company, xAI — became one of OpenAI's biggest critics, arguing publicly that the company had abandoned its mission to safely develop humanity-saving artificial general intelligence (AGI) in favor of cashing in on its tech. And finally, in March, Musk put his grievances into a decidedly sanctimonious lawsuit, suing OpenAI for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices.

  • Axios ☛ OpenAI announces new top executive hires

    OpenAI's C-Suite will expand with the hires of Sarah Friar as its first chief financial officer and Kevin Weil as chief product officer, the company said Monday.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi IPO

    We’ve sold over sixty million low-cost, high-performance, general-purpose Raspberry Pi computers to the enthusiasts and educators who remain at the heart of the Raspberry Pi movement, and to the industrial and embedded customers who today account for over two-thirds of our sales.

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Digital Rights Manifesto

    After a sustained period of attacks on our rights to privacy and freedom of expression, we call on all candidates and political parties to protect digital rights.

    These rights underpin our freedoms as the use of AI and data profiling expands into more areas of life. From URL to IRL, digital rights keep us safe from intrusion by Government and Big-Tech surveillance, as well as threats posed by bad actors across the world.

  • [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ Musk wants to ban Apple for cosying up to OpenAI

    However, what stuck in Musk's craw was Apple's intention to support other models like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Craig Federighi, SVP of software engineering, explained that customers would be able to access ChatGPT for free across their devices without creating an account, "and for ChatGPT subscribers, you'll be able to connect your account and access paid features right within our experiences."

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Fact Check: Edited video shared as Rahul Gandhi watching PM Modi's oath-taking ceremony

      The viral video was manipulated to show Rahul Gandhi watching Narendra Modi take oath as prime minister. In the original footage, the screen is blank.

    • Press Gazette ☛ News now attracts more Americans to Tiktok than to Facebook

      Some 41% of Tiktok users in the US say news is a reason they use the platform, versus 37% of Facebook users and 33% on Instagram.

      However X, formerly Twitter, still comes out on top with 65% using the platform for news despite suggestions last year that news-heavy users like journalists might move away from the platform under changes made by new owner Elon Musk. News was the second most popular reason given for using X after entertainment (81%).

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Intentionally vague: How Saudi Arabia and Egypt abuse legal systems to suppress online speech

    Egypt and Saudi Arabia are weaponizing vaguely written domestic media, cybercrime, and counterterrorism laws to target and suppress dissent, opposition, and vulnerable groups. Political leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia often claim that their countries’ judicial systems enjoy independence and a lack of interference, a narrative intended to distance the states from the real and overzealous targeting and prosecution of critics. Such claims can be debunked and dismissed, as the Egyptian and Saudi governments have had direct involvement in establishing and implementing laws that are utilized to target journalists and human rights defenders.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Hong Kong invokes a new law to cancel passports of 6 overseas-based activists, including Nathan Law

    Among them were former pro-democracy lawmaker Nathan Law, unionist Mung Siu-tat and activists Simon Cheng, Finn Lau, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi - all accused of endangering national security by authorities in the southern Chinese city. The government said they have absconded to the UK.

  • CPJ ☛ Pakistan province enacts harsh defamation law, Supreme Court presses legal action against 34 media outlets 

    The law, which is being challenged by journalists and press bodies in the Lahore High Court, replaces Punjab’s Defamation Ordinance, 2002 and loosely defines “defamation” and “broadcasting” to include social media platforms.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Slovakia public media employees strike decrying government censorship

    Employees of Slovakia’s public radio and television broadcaster, Radio and Television Slovakia (RTVS), went on a three-hour walkout strike Monday to protest against government plans to overhaul the broadcasting service in a manner that they say allows the government to insert influence on news and other media content.

  • Michael Geist ☛ Sour Grapes: Big Media Lobby Wants to Squash the New Collective Responsible For Administering Google’s $100 Million Online News Act Money

    Late last month, I wrote about the behind-the-scenes battle over the selection of a collective to administer and allocate Google’s annual $100 million to news outlets as part of its Bill C-18 deal with the government. I reported that there were two proposals: the Online News Media Collective, a big media consortium led by News Media Canada (NMC), the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), and the CBC, which was pitted against the Canadian Journalism Collective, a proposal spearheaded by a group of independent and digital publishers and broadcasters that promised a more transparent and equitable governance approach. To the surprise of many, last week Google selected the Canadian Journalism Collective.

  • VOA News ☛ In 'land of the unspoken,' New Caledonia journalists are harassed over riot coverage

    Journalists covering the unrest say they have been confronted with violence and harassment from both pro-independence and loyalist camps. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, has documented around 15 incidents.

    “Journalists continue to be threatened, and it’s still difficult for them to circulate freely,” Pavol Szalai, who heads RSF’s European Union desk, told VOA from Paris.

  • NL Times ☛ Seven found guilty in Dutch journalist’s execution; Will serve up to 28 years in prison

    De Vries was shot on 6 July 2021 on Lange Leidsedwarsstraat in the center of Amsterdam after appearing on RTL Boulevard. He succumbed to his injuries in the hospital nine days later. The OM is convinced De Vries was murdered because he acted as a confidant of the key witness in the Marengo trial against Ridouan Taghi and his gang. Key witness Nabil B.’s brother and lawyer were previously assassinated. Taghi denied the accusation and is not a suspect in this case, but was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year in the Marengo case.

  • VOA News ☛ Verdict due in Dutch crime reporter's killing

    Authorities believe gunmen targeted De Vries, 64, due to his role as advisor to a key witness in the case of drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi.

  • CPJ ☛ Iranian journalist Hassan Shanbehzadeh, others imprisoned ahead of presidential election

    “Once again, Iranian authorities are pressuring journalists to silence them ahead of the country’s June 28 presidential election by arresting them on spurious charges. This is a trend CPJ has documented for years,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program coordinator, in New York. “CPJ calls on Iranian authorities to release Hassan Shanbehzadeh and all imprisoned journalists and ensure the media is able to freely cover this consequential election.”

  • CPJ ☛ Pulitzer-winning Mississippi Today appeals order to turn over confidential source material

    “We are outraged by former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s attempt to discredit Mississippi Today’s Pulitzer-prize winning reporting that revealed his corrupt practices,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “It is dangerous and deeply disturbing that Bryant’s team is seeking to compel Mississippi Today to turn over troves of its privileged documents, including reporting materials.”

    The defamation lawsuit relates to the outlet’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Backchannel” investigation into a $77 million welfare scandal that revealed how Bryant used his office to benefit his family and friends.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • US News And World Report ☛ 1,000 Days Have Passed Since the Taliban Barred Girls From Secondary Education, the UN Says

    One thousand days have passed since girls in Afghanistan were banned from attending secondary schools. That's according to the U.N. children’s agency, which said Thursday that “no country can move forward when half its population is left behind.”

    UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in a statement urged Taliban authorities to allow all children to resume learning immediately, and called on the international community to support Afghan girls, who she said need it more than ever. The agency estimates that more than 1 million girls are affected.

  • The Record ☛ Indiana cop who used Clearview AI facial recognition tech for personal reasons resigns

    Clearview AI has proven to be a lightning rod, particularly around law enforcement use of the powerful and controversial software. Some departments have banned the technology though recent reporting has shown that those bans are sometimes skirted by police asking other jurisdictions to run Clearview searches on their behalf.

  • CBC ☛ N.B. Xerox employee who claimed he was paid less because he's Black vindicated by commission

    The New Brunswick Human Rights Commission said it has found sufficient information "to establish an arguable case of race and colour discrimination" against Hector's former employer, Xerox Canada.

    As as result, the commission has recommended an inquiry "by referring the matter to the Labour and Employment Board."

  • 404 Media ☛ Microsoft QA Contractors Say They Were Laid Off for Attempting to Unionize

    The charge states that on April 18, the QA-testing company, Lionbridge Technologies, “terminated the employment of substantially all of the approximately 160 employees working at its Boise, ID, worksite. This termination was motivated by employees’ union and other protected activity.” The union also stated in a press release that Lionbridge has a “documented union-busting track record,” noting that in 2016, it laid off all its union employees just two months after finalizing its first contract with them.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Should clean air and water be the right of every Californian?

    ACA 16, also known as the green amendment, sought to add a line to the state Constitution’s Declaration of Rights affirming that all people “shall have a right to clean air and water and a healthy environment.”

    The single sentence sounds straightforward enough, but by the start of this week, the proposal had not yet made it through the state Assembly or moved into the state Senate. Both houses would need to pass the proposal by June 27 in order to get it on voter ballots this fall.

  • California ☛ California’s Legislature is allowing children to marry

    This year, California had another opportunity to ban child marriage in the state, but a division inside the Democratic Party is dashing those hopes in a disturbing display of indifference.

    In February, Asm. Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine, introduced Assembly Bill 2924 to finally end the gruesome act of state-sanctioned child marriage in California. Last month, Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Ash Kalra, D- San Jose, demanded amendments that would have gutted the bill before the legislation received a hearing. In effect, the Democratic chairman killed the bill before it ever went to a vote.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Jan Schaumann ☛ Whose CIDR is it anyway?

    This is the fifth blog post on the topic of the centralization of the internet. The previous posts cover diversity of authoritative name servers, diversity of MX records, use of CAA records, and naked domains. This research was also presented at RIPE88; video and slides are available here. But be warned: there's a lot of data here, and you have to be quite a network data nerd to make it all the way through to the end, I suppose.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Editorial: Congress should extend internet service aid program

    This month more than 23 million households will lose affordable internet access as part of a pandemic-era federal program that provided low-income households with a credit of between $30 and $75 toward their monthly service bill. Without this aid millions of people risk losing their access to the web — or already have.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ How Low Will Spotify's Royalty Payments Go?

    Spotify’s sudden and massive shift towards bundled offerings—a move that dramatically lowers its publishing payment obligations—is officially barreling forward. DMN understands that MLC’s March statements are now in the final stages of being tallied and distributed.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Bridge Michigan ☛ StubHub backs Michigan effort to battle ticket bots

  Tickets initially worth anywhere from $250 to $500 resold for up to $10,000. For a show in East Rutherford, New Jersey, some tickets were available but at a hefty $17,000. In Boston, a pair of VIP seats were listed for $22,000.

  The move led many, including member of Congress, to criticize Ticketmaster for allowing bots to run rampant as the company’s website crashed or abruptly kicked users from virtual queues, some of whom had been in lines for hours.

• Michigan State University ☛ Michigan lawmakers set hearing for ticket bot bills | WKAR Public Media

  It’s already a misdemeanor in Michigan to use software to mess with ticket sale operations.

  The bill package would set civil fines on top of that and allow the state attorney general to step in and take violators to court.

• India Times ☛ YouTube: YouTube critics ask US to probe video site's 'living room dominance'

  In a letter to Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter dated Tuesday, the American Economic Liberties Project, Demand Progress and nine other groups expressed concern about YouTube's growth as a competitor to cable and streaming services and its pre-installation on smartphones and TVs sold in the U.S.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft sued by ParTec in Texas over AI supercomputer patents

      Microsoft is facing legal action from German HPC vendor ParTec over claims of patent infringement relating to technology used in putting together AI supercomputers.

      Munich-based ParTec is involved in a number of European supercomputer projects, including Jupiter, set to be the EU’s first exascale system, and the Leonardo supercomputer in Bologna.

      The company and its licensing agent, BF exaQC AG, say they hold about 150 patents, with the most important relating to what ParTec calls its dynamic modular system architecture (dMSA), which is at the heart of this patent case.

      In the lawsuit [PDF] filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, on Monday, ParTec asserts that Microsoft has infringed on its patents, such as that relating to dMSA, in building out its cloud-based Azure AI platform. The company is seeking an injunction against the use of what it alleges is its patented technology as well as license fees and compensation for damages.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Biggest IPTV Piracy Trial in U.S. History Underway and Already Controversial

    According to the U.S. government, subscription IPTV services Jetflicks and iStreamitAll were once two of the largest piracy platforms in the country. Several defendants are now on trial in Las Vegas in a case that generated 19TB of data and 175,000 pages of print discovery, and has taken five years to prepare. After accusing MPA and HBO executives of presenting prejudicial evidence to the jury, the lead defendant called for a mistrial; the government didn't give an inch.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Plex Cracks Down on Media Server 'Hacks'

    GitHub has removed several repositories following a copyright complaint from Plex. Through its anti-piracy partner, the streaming software service complained about code that enables 'Godmode' on its media server and provides free access to paid Plex Pass features.

  • Techdirt ☛ Newspaper Drops Paywall, Moves To Reader Patronage, Generates 37% More Revenue

    It’s great to have those figures showing how trusting your readers to support you can work. Too often sceptics claim that people are only too happy to get something for nothing, and to access online material without ever giving back. The experience of The Forward is an excellent counterexample to that. Another crucial point to emerge from the News Revenue Hub post is the importance of preparing thoroughly for the paywall removal, not least by carrying out research among current readers and supporters:

  • Walled Culture ☛ First-mover advantage in the arts means copyright isn’t necessary to protect innovative creativity

    Although copyright may be present, first-mover advantage does not require it to operate – it is simply a function of being early with a new idea, which means that competition is scarce or non-existent. If further research confirms the wider presence of first-mover advantage in the creative world – for example, even where sharing-friendly CC licences are used – it will knock down yet another flimsy defence of copyright’s flawed and outdated intellectual monopoly.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Yes, Apple is also training on public web data

    It would seem Apple is training their model similarly to OpenAI and Google by using some licensed content, but also using (likely) quite a bit of data they’ve scraped from the web. It’s good they’re going so much on-device, and it’s great that they’ve indicated their servers running this stuff are powered by fully clean energy (I believe this was said in last night’s The Talk Show, which is not released yet), but if you had a concern with how LLMs were trained on public data, then you’ll still be annoyed by Apple’s methods.