Links 15/07/2024: Google Wants Wiz and Why "Sports Ruin Everything"
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Instand Messaging Clients of Yore
Before nowadays WhatsApp, there was Google Hangouts, and before Hangouts, we mostly just relied on plain old SMSes. I never used the AIM network and we haven’t even touched upon the two most important messaging networks of yore: IRC and BBS.
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R Scott Jones ☛ It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about human connection
Look, the early internet sucked. It was shitty design. We aren’t looking to go back to shitty design for shitty design’s sake. What we are nostalgic for isn’t terrible websites. It’s personal websites. It’s just a bit of diversity in design choices. It’s a hint of a person. Not a personal brand. An actual fucking person. We want humanity. A connection with an actual real life person. Not a logo, an actual face. A human face. Someone we can relate to, as a fellow human being.
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Michał Sapka ☛ Sports ruin everything
When I was a kid, it was always the same. We were having a great time, just goofing around. “OK, now it’s for real. Zero to zero, you start”. And boom, just like that. All enjoyment is gone.
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Lou Plummer ☛ On Cross Posting
I have a webring set up on one of my blogs and it looks like I get some occasional traffic from that. I also have my blogs listed in a few directories and they also generate a little traffic.
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Science
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Scientists re-emerge after a year in Mars simulation project
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-03 [Older] Oldest narrative cave art in the world found
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Can Finally Reveal The Secret of How Pterosaurs Took Flight
Imaging the four specimens with a technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence revealed hidden anatomical details in the pterosaurs' tail vanes: thick, vertical rods projecting out of the central tail bone laced with thinner fibers to create a cross-linked lattice that prevented the tail vane from bending out of shape, reducing drag and stabilizing flight.
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Wired ☛ Everything You See Is a Computational Process, If You Know How to Look
Once you start thinking about computation, you start to see it everywhere. Take mailing a letter through the postal service. Put the letter in an envelope with an address and a stamp on it, and stick it in a mailbox, and somehow it will end up in the recipient’s mailbox. That is a computational process—a series of operations that move the letter from one place to another until it reaches its final destination. This routing process is not unlike what happens with electronic mail or any other piece of data sent through the internet. Seeing the world in this way may seem odd, but as Friedrich Nietzsche is reputed to have said, “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
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ARRL ☛ The K7RA Solar Update
Despite the appearance of so many new sunspots, average daily sunspot number declined from 181.6 to 129, compared to the previous week. Average daily solar flux barely moved, changing from 175 to 176.6.
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Education
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Biden Cancels Speech at Teachers Union Convention in Philadelphia After Union Staff Goes on Strike
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Bertrand Meyer ☛ Blog Archive The French School of Programming
July 14 (still here for 15 minutes) is not a bad opportunity to announced the publication of a new book: The French School of Programming.
The book is a collection of chapters, thirteen of them, by rock stars of programming and software engineering research (plus me), preceded by a Foreword by Jim Woodcock and a Preface by me. The chapters are all by a single author, reflecting the importance that the authors attached to the project. Split into four sections after chapter 1, the chapters are, in order:
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Murtuzaali Surti ☛ 5 Newsletters Every Developer Should Read
Newsletters can be hard to follow along, especially when you subscribe to too many of them. That's why, today you will get to know about five newsletters every developer should follow and read. These are the newsletters I personally subscribe to.
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Hardware
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Germany to phase out Chinese components in 5G networks
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Laptop fire caused American Airlines jet to be evacuated
Current airline regulations state that laptops should be only carried in hand luggage and contain batteries rated at 100Wh or lower. Thus, we see workstation replacement-style laptops often boast of having a 99 Wh battery. However, up to two extra battery packs of up to 160Wh are permissible with airline approval.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Pongamia Trees Grow Where Citrus Once Flourished, Offering Renewable Energy and Plant-Based Protein
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Off Guardian ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] War on Farmers: World Bank Sowing Seed-Colonialism in Africa
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Rabid, Biting Seals Send Swimmers Rushing for Safety in South Africa
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Futurism ☛ For Some Reason Nobody's Ever Tested for Heavy Metals in Tampons Before, and the Results Are Alarming
In sum, the researchers — who worked with counterparts at Columbia University in New York — found levels of 16 different chemicals in the 14 brands they measured (which were not, we should note, listed in the paper itself.) Along with arsenic and lead, they found concentrations of cadmium, copper, iron, mercury, and nickel.
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Matt Birchler ☛ The pit it's so easy to fall into
One of the hard parts about sharing one's opinions online like I do is that it's very easy to fall into the trap of mostly complaining about things. Do you like tech? Careful, lest you post mostly about what tech you hate. Do you like movies and TV? It will be very tempting to latch onto something you don't like and roast it far more than you celebrate the shows and films you love. Are you into politics? Again, it's very tempting to complain about all the things going wrong without advocating for the things and people that you think can make a difference. I'm certainly not perfect at getting this ratio just right, but I do try to keep these things in mind as much as I can.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Intuit to close Edmonton office as global tech firm cuts 1,800 jobs across operations
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Daniel Miessler ☛ Dynamic Content Summaries (DSC)
I don’t think humans are going to be consuming most content directly from the source within a few years.
Instead, I think our Digital Assistants (our personal AIs) will be creating individual summaries of the content for us, which I’m calling Dynamic Content Summaries (DCSs).
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El País ☛ AI swings between market euphoria and the specter of a bubble
Investors have backed a technology that, without being new, is creating language and images, and whose development promises to revolutionize everything from the pharmaceutical sector by speeding up the creation of medicines to advertising thanks to hyper-personalization, to technology and computer programming to the oil industry. However, as the big tech companies break capitalization records week after week, the market is also expressing doubts: will this technology ever crystallize into corporate profits, or is the great AI rally a new version of the dotcom bubble of the 2000s?
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Futurism ☛ Researchers Call for "Child-Safe AI" After Alexa Tells Little Girl to Stick Penny in Wall Socket
In her paper, Kurian detailed a number of interactions between children and AI chatbots that led to potentially dangerous situations.
In one incident cited by Kurian, a ten-year-old girl in the US was told by Amazon's Alexa assistant to touch a live electrical plug with a coin back in 2021. As the BBC reported at the time, the girl's mother managed to intervene just in time, shouting "No, Alexa, no!"
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The Register UK ☛ Honey, I shrunk the LLM! A beginner's guide to quantization
The problem comes when you try to run models, particularly larger ones, with 16-bit tensors on a single chip. At two bytes per parameter, a model like Llama-3-70B requires at least 140GB of very fast memory, and that's not including other overheads, such as the key-value cache.
To get around this, you can either split that model up across multiple chips - or even servers - or you can compress the model weights to a lower precision in a process called quantization.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Opinion: What's behind the AI boom? Exploited humans
The illusion of autonomous AI has historical roots. In the late 18th century, a supposedly automated chess-playing machine, the “Mechanical Turk,” was developed to impress the empress of Austria. The inventor of the machine, Wolfgang von Kempelen, claimed it could play chess automatically of its own accord, but hidden inside the box was a human chess master who operated it through a series of levers and mirrors. Today’s AI benefits from a similar illusion. Sophisticated software functions only through thousands of hours of low-paid, menial labor — workers forced to work like robots in the hopes that AI will become more like a human. Amazon even coined the term “artificial artificial intelligence” to describe this process of keeping human labor integrated into seemingly automated processes.
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Windows Central ☛ 'Microsoft killed my online life,' Microsoft is reportedly banning people in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza | Windows Central
Reportedly, Microsoft has been banning and wiping the accounts of users who have leveraged Skype to contact relatives in Gaza. In some cases, email accounts over a decade old have been locked, destroying access to banking accounts, OneDrive storage, and beyond. United States resident Salah Elsadi lost his account of over 15 years in the dragnet. "I've had this Hotmail for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I have violated their terms — what terms? Tell me. I've filled out about 50 forms and called them many many times." Eiad Hametto from Saudi Arabia echoed the report, "We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families. They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online."
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Amazon and Walmart Employ Hostile Surveillance Technology against Warehouse Employees
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive hosted PDF files without permission — user complains feature can't be disabled
As part of the wider tech industry's wider push for AI, whether we want it or not, it seems that Google's Gemini AI service is now reading private Drive documents without express user permission, per a report from Kevin Bankster on Twitter embedded below. While Bankster goes on to discuss reasons why this may be glitched for users like him in particular, the utter lack of control being given over his sensitive, private information is unacceptable for a company of Google's stature —and does not bode well for future privacy concerns amongst AI's often-forced rollout.
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The Register UK ☛ Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union
So how does it work? In the first instance, the speed limit on a given road can be detected by using data from a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) – such as Global Positioning System (GPS) – and a digital map to come up with a speed limit. This might be combined with physical sign recognition.
If the driver is being a little too keen, the ISA system must notify them that the limit has been exceeded but, according to the European Road Safety Charter "not to restrict his/her possibility to act in any moment during driving."
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Defence/Aggression
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] HK activist Joshua Wong requests leniency in major trial
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] A Declining Empire & Its Delusional Allies
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Defence Web ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Sahel becoming less safe and coastal states under threat – Africom
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] State Governments Profiting from Tribal Lands
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] You’re a Hypocrite, And So Am I
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] UK's Starmer says Rwanda deportation plan 'dead and buried'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Decoding China: Striving for a new world order
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Kosovo: Conservative traditions fuel sexual cyberbullying
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Orban visits Putin on 'peace trip,' EU laments 'appeasement'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Hungary's Orban concludes Beijing 'peace mission 3.0' visit
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova channels her rage against Putin into art
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-03 [Older] Bardella: French far-right poster boy turned aspiring statesman
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-04 [Older] Germany: Far-right AfD's donation account shut down
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] North Korea: Kim's sister calls South's live-fire drills 'suicidal hysteria'
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] More than 1,000 individuals detained across Turkey over anti-refugee violence
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] ISIS, Its Affiliates, and U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies Against Syria
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-03 [Older] Germany, Sweden arrest 8 over suspected war crimes in Syria
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Canada Police Charge Syrian Returnee With Terrorism Offenses
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Could a Syrian war criminal be attending Paris Olympics?
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Two Israelis Critically Hurt in Hezbollah Retaliatory Attack on Golan, Says Ambulance Service
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Germany: US missile announcement divides opinions in Berlin
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Jews in Europe face rising antisemitism: report
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The true, tactical significance of Project 2025
The threats to democracy and its institutions aren't new. The right has been bent on their destruction for more than a century. As Perlstein says, the point of taking note of this isn't to minimize the danger, rather, it's to contextualize it. The American right has, since the founding of the Republic, been bent on creating a system of hereditary aristocrats, who govern without "interference" from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself is checked only by rivalries with other aristocrats. The project of the right is grounded in a belief in Providence: that God's favor shines on His best creations and elevates them to wealth and power. Elite status is proof of merit, and merit is "that which leads to elite status."
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India Times ☛ Germany to ban Chinese giants from 5G network
German officials said their telecom networks must be protected from cyberattacks, calling it an “existential threat”. Officials added that they have reached agreements with 5G network operators in the country. Huawei responded saying there was “no specific evidence” that the technology has “cyber security risks”.
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[Old] BBC ☛ Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny
The dangerous activity, known as "the penny challenge", began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.
Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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India Times ☛ OpenAI whistleblowers ask SEC to investigate alleged restrictive non-disclosure agreements
OpenAI whistleblowers have filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, calling for an investigation over the artificial intelligence company's allegedly restrictive non-disclosure agreements, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
"Given the well-documented potential risks posed by the irresponsible deployment of AI, we urge the Commissioners to immediately approve an investigation into OpenAI's prior NDAs, and to review current efforts apparently being undertaken by the company to ensure full compliance with SEC rules," according to the letter, which was provided to Reuters by the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley.
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Environment
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Unhappy with new greenwashing rules, Alberta and fossil fuel companies push back
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Vox ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] How public universities hooked America on meat
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Vox ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Heat is deadly. Why does our culture push us to ignore it?
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Transit Workers and Climate Activists Alliance Stage Massive Strike in Germany
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TruthOut ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] As Climate Warms, Extreme Weather Events Are More Frequent and More Deadly
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Leaders From Beryl-Battered Caribbean Say Urgent Climate Financing Needed
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Latvia ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Government approves Latvia's national climate plan
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] How a Twentieth-Century Family Planning Strategy Fueled the Climate Crisis
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Truthdig ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Working for the Climate Clampdown in British Courts
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Can we reach climate goals despite new record heat?
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Workers Need New Heat Protections Immediately
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] As Climate Change Alters Lakes, Tribes and Conservationists Fight for the Future of Spearfishing
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] New US Solar Duties Would Raise Costs and Threaten Climate Goals, Report Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Former US Sen. Jim Inhofe, Defense Hawk Who Called Human-Caused Climate Change a 'Hoax,' Dies at 89
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Is new record heat putting climate goals at risk?
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] CLIMATE GLIMPSE: Heat and a Hurricane Descend on the U.S., Other Wild Weather Around the World
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] How Science Fiction Can Inspire Climate Activism
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] The Paradox of Public Health Situations That Worsen With Climate Change
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-04 [Older] Climate change simulator tool draws gasps, even tears from P.E.I. residents
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Energy/Transportation
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Futurism ☛ AI's Outrageous Environmental Toll Is Probably Worse Than You Think
By now, you're probably well aware of the staggering energy and resource costs of generative AI. But even if the whole industry is a bubble ready to burst, chances are that the environmental toll we're hearing about now is only going to get worse — because AI's appetite is absolutely insatiable.
Consider the obscene amounts of water that's needed just to cool the data centers that train and host generative AI models, which is somewhere in the millions of gallons per year. Internal estimates from Microsoft about its data facility in Goodyear, Arizona, for example, show that it's set to annually consume 56 million gallons of drinking water — which is more than a drop in the ocean for such a water-scarce region.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries
In 2023, Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh of electricity, surpassing the consumption of over 100 nations, including places like Iceland, Ghana, and Tunisia, according to an analysis by Michael Thomas. While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry.
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Antipope ☛ The coming storm, part 2
What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is this: we're living through a once-a-century energy economy transition, from fossil fuels to renewables. Some time in 2019-2021, the number of jobs on renewables exceeded traditional fossil extraction employment for the first time; the political lobbying clout of the new energy sector is still trailing that of the fossil incumbents by a long way but it's growing rapidly. (Hint: elected politicians like industries that can deliver jobs for their voters. It gives them a tangible value proposition to justify re-election.) Meanwhile, climate change is gathering pace alarmingly, with record-setting high intensity storms unprecedentedly early in the hurricane season, and lethal heat events occurring in India and elsewhere.
The financial value of a fossil fuel industry is a function not just of the current spot price of their energy assets, but of how much their reserves in the ground will be worth in future. And most of the oil multinationals' value lies in their reserves. If we transition away from oil and gas, never mind coal, that hits the share price before the transition takes place because the markets will discount the future value of those reserves. So the trad energy industries are running scared.
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Bridge Michigan ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Opinion | Electrification will bolster national and economic security
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Major construction begins on German rail
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Milan airport to be named after former late PM Berlusconi
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] China: Dam breach forces almost 6,000 people to evacuate
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The Age AU ☛ 2024-07-12 [Older] Renewables v nuclear: the facts point to one clear winner
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] New Panel Charged With Helping Massachusetts Meet Its Renewable Energy Goals
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Keeping cool by harnessing the sun's energy
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Politics and Pakistan’s Energy Crisis
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Satellite oversight: ensuring Europe’s renewable energy security from above
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Wildlife/Nature
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] South Africa: Spanish tourist trampled by elephant herd
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] ECJ rules against wolf hunting in Austria
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Lightning sparks more wildfires in northern Alberta as firefighters face another tough day
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Eels writhe on Vancouver airport tarmac after escaping from box
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Alberta issues fire ban for entire forest protection area as extreme temperatures continue
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Over 300 properties on alert as dozens of new B.C. wildfires burn
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Dozens of heat-related emergency calls in B.C. as more temperature records fall and wildfire risk rises
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Finance
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Thousands of LCBO workers on strike after midnight deadline passes
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Quick purchase of housing for asylum seekers takes Ottawa neighbours off guard
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Safeguarding Economic Security: Sri Lanka’s Perspective on Migrant Workers
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Ponzi scheme charges stayed against B.C. woman after drowning death of co-accused
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] Rising shipping costs hit global trade hard
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Turkey’s unemployment rate at 8.4% in May, gender gap persists
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The Age AU ☛ 2024-07-10 [Older] Financial security or following my passions – can I have both?
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Musk Suggests Late Twitter Disclosure Was a Mistake, Seeks to End Lawsuit
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Germany gets top marks for integration of migrants
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Germany: Passport renewal delays frustrate vacationers
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Hungary: Could Peter Magyar bring a future without Orban?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-08 [Older] What does Hungary's Viktor Orban want?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] OECD: Germany gets top marks on integration
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-07 [Older] Pope Francis warns of 'populists' and ailing democracy
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Brazil Charges Coup-Plotter Bolsonaro for Saudi Gifts as Trump Org Unveils New Saudi High Rise
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TruthOut ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Congress Has “Moral Obligation” to Impeach Alito, Thomas, AOC Says in Speech
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Federal Judge Rules Protesters Can't March Through Republican National Convention Security Zone
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CBC ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] 'Canada's standing in the world has slipped' under Trudeau, Marc Garneau says in autobiography
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JURIST ☛ EU finds social media platform ‘X’ breaches EU guidelines
The Commission’s formal proceedings into X were launched on 18 December 2023 to assess any possible breaches of the DSA. X is categorised as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under EU law, as it reaches over 45 million EU users monthly, and is therefore required to comply with the DSA. Investigations into other breaches, including “dissemination of illegal content and the effectiveness of the measures taken to combat information manipulation” are ongoing.
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, commented on the findings: [...]
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Nicolas Magand ☛ Users of the fourth kind
In short: annoying but clueless.
This fourth kind of tech user may even be the most popular now. So many times at work, I’ve seen friends — who confidently refer to themselves as “Mac and iPhone people” — share the screen of their Mac and still have Launchpad in the dock while using Chrome with its icon only appearing in the “Recent apps” section. The kind of tech enthusiasts who can sometimes call a blog article a “blog.” [intense shivering]
Everything would be fine if these users didn’t end up working in the European Commission on the DMA legislation, with the confidence of true technology erudites. Most parts of the legislation I applaud and understand: clearly, some of the “gatekeepers” need to be regulated, and these companies had it coming, after cashing in billions on top of at-best questionable practices and at the expense of users.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Fact check: Fake image of al-Shifa Hospital director
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact Check: Fake suspects in Trump's assassination attempt
Claim: Mark V. is the attacker.
DW Fact-Check: False
Soon after the attack, false claims started circulating on different social media platforms, asserting that the attacker was an Antifa activist named Mark Violets. Many accounts shared screenshots of social media posts with this claim, as seen in our image. These posts included a picture of a man in sunglasses.
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New York Times ☛ Even the Best Tools to Fight Disinformation Are Not Enough
Ruth Quint volunteers as the webmaster for the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh. “It’s really hard to get through to anybody,” she said regarding holding the line against misinformation and disinformation online.
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The Verge ☛ Shooting conspiracies trend on X as Musk endorses Trump
Conspiracy theories about the shooting at a rally for Donald Trump began surfacing on X shortly after the news broke this afternoon, with the platform promoting topics including “#falseflag” and “staged” to users. X owner Elon Musk has staunchly advocated for “free speech” on social media platforms — which can include misinformation like the above.
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[Old] Casey Newton ☛ The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled
After five years of pioneering research into the abuse of social platforms, the Stanford Internet Observatory is winding down. Its founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November. Renee DiResta, its research director, left last week after her contract was not renewed. One other staff member's contract expired this month, while others have been told to look for jobs elsewhere, sources say.
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[Old] The Washington Post ☛ Rep. Jim Jordan, GOP allies amplify scrutiny of top disinfo researchers
The push caps years of pressure from conservative activists who have harangued such academics online and in person and filed open-records requests to obtain the correspondence of those working at public universities. The researchers who have been targeted study the online spread of disinformation, including falsehoods that have been accelerated by former president and candidate Donald Trump and other Republican politicians. Jordan has argued that content removals urged by some in the government have suppressed legitimate theories on vaccine risks and the covid-19 origins as well as news stories wrongly suspected of being part of foreign disinformation campaigns.
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404 Media ☛ Has Facebook Stopped Trying?
Meta now at best inconsistently responds to our questions about these problems, and has declined repeated requests for on-the-record interviews for this and other investigations. Several of the professors who used to consult directly or indirectly with the company say they have not engaged with Meta in years. Some of the people I spoke to said that they are unsure whether their previous contacts still work at the company or, if they do, what they are doing there. Others have switched their academic focus after years of feeling ignored or harassed by right-wing activists who have accused them of being people who just want to censor the internet.
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Crooked Timber ☛ Sex, lies and Videotape
It’s important to understand that there is nothing fundamentally new here. Both propaganda and forgery have been around at least since the invention of writing.
Deepfakes raise two issues, because they are more realistic and potentially more convincing than ever before.
First, their use in harassment, particularly sexual harassment, is more problematic and distressing by virtue of their greater realism. A range of legal and social responses are needed, but this is outside my area of competence.
Second, a form of evidence we have assumed to be reliable (video) can now be faked. This has happened before with forged paper documents, and then with photography. While there may be technical solutions, the main response must be social and relies on trust, in the form of assured provenance. If we know that a photo or video was taken by someone we trust and transmitted to us through a trustworthy process we can believe it to be accurate.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Nonprofit Watchdog Suffers Due to Elon Musk’s SLAPP Suit
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-07-05 [Older] Extreme Inequality is a Threat to Free Speech
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EFF ☛ Platforms Have First Amendment Right to Curate Speech, As We’ve Long Argued, Supreme Court Said, But Sends Laws Back to Lower Court To Decide If That Applies To Other Functions Like Messaging
The cases dealt with Florida and Texas laws that each limited the ability of online services to block, deamplify, or otherwise negatively moderate certain user speech.
Yet the Supreme Court did not strike down either law—instead it sent both cases back to the lower courts to determine whether each law could be wholly invalidated rather than challenged only with respect to specific applications of each law to specific functions.
The Supreme Court also made it clear that laws that do not target the editorial process, such as competition laws, would not be subject to the same rigorous First Amendment standards, a position EFF has consistently urged.
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HRW ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Saudi Arabia: 20-Year Sentence for Tweets
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] Pride Month marked by event bans in Turkey
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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CPJ ☛ 2024-07-09 [Older] CPJ joins call for new European authorities to support media freedom in Turkey
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JURIST ☛ UNSMIL calls for immediate release of detained Libyan journalist
The United Nations mission in Libya (UNSMIL) called for the immediate release of a journalist arbitrarily detained in Tripoli on Saturday. In the statement, the UNSMIL further requested Libyan authorities to protect all journalists and media workers.
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The Verge ☛ Why The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI
I was really excited to talk to Nick — like so many media CEOs, he just signed a deal allowing OpenAI to use The Atlantic’s vast archives as training data, but he also has a rich background in tech. Before he was the CEO of The Atlantic, Nick was the editor-in-chief of Wired, where he set his sights on AI reporting well before anyone else, including me. So he’s been paying attention to this for a long time.
Now, I feel like I should disclose right away that Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company where I work, also has a deal with OpenAI, which was announced on the same day as The Atlantic’s deal.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Project Censored ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] United Auto Workers Put 32-Hour Work Week on the Agenda
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RFERL ☛ The Push To Recognize 'Gender Apartheid' As A Crime
The world has long been aware of the scourge of apartheid -- the systemic segregation or discrimination of people based on their race. But what about the institutionalized practice of singling people out for ill-treatment due to their gender?
The push to recognize "gender apartheid" under international law is gaining steam, with oppression against women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran fueling calls for immediate action, but tremendous obstacles remain.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-06 [Older] Tour de France: Cyclist Bernard fined for kissing wife
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Report documents hate crime against belief groups in Turkey
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] Nearly 900 workers killed on the job across Turkey in first half of 2024
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India Times ☛ Google parent in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23 billion
Wiz, which is headquartered in New York and has research and development facilities in Tel Aviv, generated about $350 million in revenue in 2023 and works with 40% of Fortune 100 companies, according to its website.
The U.S.-Israeli startup recently raised $1 billion in a private funding round that valued the four-year-old cloud cybersecurity company at $12 billion.
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New York Times ☛ Google Close to Its Biggest Acquisition Ever, Despite Antitrust Scrutiny
Google is in talks to buy Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity start-up, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to discuss them. Wiz was last valued at $12 billion.
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Patents
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Copyrights
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-07-11 [Older] The Beastie Boys Sue Chili's Parent Company Over Alleged Misuse of 'Sabotage' Song in Ad
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Torrent Freak ☛ Religious Group Targets Parent With Copyright Lawsuit Over Kids' Curriculum
Alarmed at what they describe as "psychologically damaging" religious instruction, received by school children from LifeWise, an organization providing off-site teaching in the United States, a group of parents decided to take action. As part of their mission to raise awareness, Parents Against LifeWise recently obtained LifeWise's curriculum and published it on the group's website. LifeWise responded with a potentially crushing copyright infringement lawsuit.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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