Leftovers

• IT Wire ☛ iTWire - The future of file sharing: Trends to watch out for

  GUEST OPINION: File sharing has come a long way from the days of floppy disks and email attachments. As technology advances, the methods and tools we use to share files continue to evolve, offering greater convenience, security, and efficiency. File sharing has become an indispensable tool for both personal and professional communication.

  In this article, we’ll explore the future of file sharing and highlight key trends that are set to revolutionize how we exchange information in both personal and professional contexts.

• Robert Birming ☛ Writing Workout

  Instead, I change clothes right away and head to the gym. If I don't, I know from experience that the chances of me postponing my workout increase dramatically. That's when that inner voice starts whispering, "Take it easy today. You can work out tomorrow."

  I have the same strategy when it comes to my writing. After my workout, I sit down and write, no matter how uninspired I feel.

• Frank Meeuwsen ☛ My blog turns 24 today

  24 years later, I’m still up in the mornin’… I started blogging on this day in 2000 with a link to this page. I changed servers, domains and blogsoftware through all those years, but the posts remain.

• Kodsnack ☛ Kodsnack 595 - Maintain curiosity, with Woody Zuill and Martin Lassbo

  Fredrik paid a visit to Hogia and got the opportunity to talk to Woody Zuill and Martin Lassbo about mob programming, innovation, and keeping an open and curious mind.

• Ignacio Brasca ☛ Practical Math: My Journey from Idea to Application | Happiness Machines

  On my last trip to Stockholm to visit company headquarters, I ended up in a park during the lovely Swedish summer, thinking about how to improve our system in terms of data integrity. Right there, I had a eureka moment.

  This post is a summary of how the idea, which was generated from endless conversations with coworkers, ended up being a real practical application of a mathematical problem I was reading about.

  After a lot of discussions with coworkers, I realized, after spending a few hours on it, that I should bring tools other than the practical software engineering skills I have been using for the past ten years. These tools should be more oriented towards critical thinking, robustness, and similar aspects.

  I vaguely started with TLA+; however, I didn’t find any practical usage other than mathematical formality. So, I went back to the research phase.

  This, as far as I remember, might be the first time ever I applied literal textbook math to a piece of software (other than the well-known mathematical concepts we use daily).

• Science

  • Chris ☛ Student Resampled His t Distribution

    First off, I’m impressed people back in the day managed to do any statistics at all, when their idea of resampling from a table was “write out each row on 3000 pieces of cardboard, shuffle thoroughly, draw one at a time and write into a table again.” But also, isn’t that a little inspiring? Student – a successful, working statistician – wasn’t immediately able to solve his problem analytically, so he took to writing things out on cardboard and shuffling! It’s okay to not get things right away and have to experiment first.

• Education

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention

    Since leaving my day job two years ago, I’ve been writing personal weeknotes. In short: once a week, I publish on my blog a set of notes about what I did the past week. I believe weeknotes started inside organizations (here’s a good primer on professional weeknotes), but I appreciate using the weekly checkpoint as a personal tool to steer my attention and action.

  • Austin Kleon ☛ Life in the matrix

    In The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Katherine Morgan Schafler2 talks about how both stress and happiness are experienced in three stages: anticipation, event, and recall. There’s the anticipation that leads up to the event: dreaming about an upcoming vacation or dreading a scheduled meeting. There’s the event itself: the vacation or the meeting, which usually doesn’t last very long. Then there’s the recall: looking through the beach photos or replaying the meeting in your brain.

    I really love this “AER” model — although I prefer thinking of it as anticipation, experience, and remembering — and I’ve been playing around with it this summer to stretch out the fun of things I like doing, like going on vacation, and to minimize the stress of stuff I don’t like doing, like writing book proposals.

  • Dominik Schwind ☛ 20 Books: designing with web standards

    This book still informs how I think about websites – the techniques of the books are old by now, the spirit of thinking about websites isn’t. And all other ideas that came after it – progressive enhancement, responsive design etc. – carry that spirit with them.

• Hardware

  • Pro Publica ☛ Chicago Accuses Glock of Making It Too Easy to Modify Pistols

    Some call it an “auto sear.” Less formally, it’s also referred to as a “switch” or “button.” It’s made with metal or plastic and about the size of a thimble. The device can be purchased on the internet or made with a 3D printer for a few bucks. Once installed, it transforms a Glock semiautomatic into a small machine gun, allowing a shooter to empty an entire clip in seconds.

    The city of Chicago is awash in them as it endures yet another violent summer. Desperate for solutions, it has once again turned to the courts.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Scheerpost ☛ ‘Violence Has No Place in American Life.’ Except, Like, Everywhere You Look

    Many have ventured to assert that the U.S. is the most violent, militaristic nation in human history, both in terms of our astronomical military budget and our almost subliminal bombardment with pro-military, pro-police propaganda. It is easier in the U.S. to procure a firearm than it is to get a decent haircut or a high quality slice of pizza, and we shoot one another with such casual predictability that a mass shooting passes out of the news cycle faster than a celebrity divorce.

  • CBC ☛ She lost 200,000 bees to bandits — and is now one of many paying thousands on surveillance

    "Stealing a hive is like stealing a cow from a cattle farm.… My bees are very precious to me," said Lamothe-Boudreau, owner of Rayons de Miel, about 100 kilometres south of Quebec City. Close up of hundreds of bees in a hive

    Even the loss of a few hives will impact her 700-hive business.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Play Streets for Kids Are Magic—For Adults

    In the summer of 2009, Amy Rose and Alice Ferguson, two mothers living on Greville Road in Bristol, a midsize city in southwest England, found themselves in a strange predicament: They saw entirely too much of their kids. “We were going, like, Why are they here?” Rose told me. “Why aren’t they outside?” The friends decided to run an experiment. They applied to shut their quarter-mile road to traffic for two hours after school on a June afternoon—not for a party or an event but just to let the children who lived there play. Intentionally, they didn’t prepare games or activities, Rose told me, as it would have defeated the purpose of the inquiry: “With time, space, and permission, what happens?”

    The results were breathtaking. The dozens of kids who showed up had no problem finding things to do. One little girl cycled up and down the street “3,000 times,” Rose recalled. “She was totally blissed out.” Suddenly, the modern approach to children’s play, in which parents shuttle their kids to playgrounds or other structured activities, seemed both needlessly extravagant and wholly insufficient. Kids didn’t need special equipment or lessons; they just needed to be less reliant on their time-strapped parents to get outside.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ A policymaker’s guide to ensuring that AI-powered health tech operates ethically

    At the roundtable, experts from the public and private sectors discussed the complex challenges that arise with the transformation of the healthcare sector, arguing that these challenges lie not only in the development of the technology but also in the implementation and use of it.

    As AI becomes more and more integrated with healthcare, policymakers must lay the groundwork for a future in which AI augments, rather than replaces, human expertise in the pursuit of better health outcomes for all. Below are the roundtable participants’ recommendations for policymakers, focusing on building strong data foundations, setting guidelines for algorithm testing and maintenance, fostering trust and transparency, and supporting a strong workforce.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ HEIC Images: A New Graphics Format Player In The Game

    To be perfectly honest, I have zero ideas of why Apple chose to support HEIC over WEBP. At least WEBP graphics are displayable by most top-tier web browsers, and have found a greater and wider range of acceptance among users on different platforms. While “this” is only conjecture, I suspect it may have something to do with Google buying up On2 Technologies (the makers of the VP8 codec), and Apple not wanting to tie its fortunes to something owned and controlled by Google, despite WEBP being released for free usage. The “climate” between Apple and Google hasn't always been “clear skies” or “clear sailing.”

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ ICYMI: SSH Server Bug Opens Vulnerabilities

    Microsoft has been charged by the EU for breaking antitrust rules. The European Commission claims that by bundling Teams into the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, the company disproportionately restricts competition in the market for communication apps, according to an article from TechRepublic. The primary reason for this is because Microsoft's suite of business productivity tools, like Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, is the second most popular worldwide after Google Workspace. Therefore, when Teams is included with 365 by default, it gives the company a so-called “distribution advantage.” Customers are unlikely to seek out another communications app if they have invested in the 365 tools, and Teams comes with them automatically. Any interoperability limitation between Microsoft's offerings and Teams' competitors exacerbates this issue.

  • Intel to lay-off thousands of employees as chipmaker seeks revival

    Intel is reportedly planning to cut thousands of jobs as part of its cost reduction strategy.

  • OSTechNix ☛ Turn Images Into Hey Hi (AI) Videos With Runway Gen-3 Alpha

    Runway has launched a significant update to its Gen-3 Alpha model. This update allows users to generate videos using still images and text prompts.

  • Wired ☛ Zombie Alt-Weeklies Are Stuffed With AI Slop About OnlyFans

    “We’re seeing an ever-increasing part of old media be reborn as AI-generated new media,” says Reality Defender cofounder and CTO Ali Shahriyari. “Unfortunately, this means way less informational and newsworthy content and more SEO-focused ‘slop’ that really just wastes people’s time and attention. Tracking these kinds of publications isn’t even part of our day to day, yet we’re seeing them pop up more and more.”

    LA Weekly laid off or offered buyouts to the majority of its staff in March 2024, while the Riverfront Times laid off its entire staff in May 2024 after it was sold by parent company Big Lou Media to an unnamed buyer.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta apologies after its AI chatbot said Trump shooting didn’t happen

    Since ChatGPT burst on the scene, the tech industry has been grappling with how to limit generative AI’s propensity for falsehoods. Some players, like Meta, have attempted to ground their chatbots with quality data and real-time search results as a way to compensate for hallucinations. But as this particular example shows, it’s still hard to overcome what large language models are inherently designed to do: make stuff up.

  • Android Authority ☛ Facebook AI opt-out is possible, needlessly difficult - Android Authority

    The company appears to be using every dirty trick in the book to prevent you from opting out.

  • MacRumors ☛ X Training Grok AI On Tweets Without Notifying Users

    The hidden setting gives X permission to use all posts, interactions, inputs, and results for "training and fine-turning" Elon Musk's Grok AI model.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Three Years With My M1 MacBook Air

    Question is, will I upgrade? Well, no. Not any time soon anyway. The M1 Air still does everything I need it to extremely well. So why upgrade? Why drop another £1,000 or so on the latest version of the Air? Because it looks a little nicer? Because it comes in blue? Because the chipset is 2 increments better? Nah, I'll stick with this workhorse until it dies.

    Speaking of the dead of Macs, I saw this post in the Bear Blog discovery feed recently - if my M1 Air can last 15 years, that would be incredible value for money. Realistically, I don't think it will last that long; I don't even know if Apple would support it for that long.

    Right now, 3 years in, I think my M1 Air is good value for money, but if I can get 5 or 6 years out of this thing, that would be fantastic.

  • John Stawinski IV ☛ Black Hat and DEF CON Preview: “Grand Theft Actions” or “Continuous Integration, Continuous Destruction”?

    These talks are a culmination of CI/CD vulnerability research I performed with Adnan in 2023 and 2024. During this research, we identified CI/CD vulnerabilities in organizations like Google, Microsoft, PyTorch, TensorFlow, GitHub Actions, blockchains, and more, most of which could have caused critical supply chain attacks. I’m still shaken when I think about how catastrophic some of our exploits could have been in the hands of the bad guys.

  • Devon Dundee ☛ AI Writing

    Writing – and, I would argue, communication itself – is not a means to an end. It's a way of conveying information, sure, but it's more than that. It's a connection between people, a back-and-forth that reflects each individual involved, and I don't believe that inserting an AI layer in the middle adds any value.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ AI washing: What is it and why you should worry

    Imagine this: You want to buy the latest vacuum cleaner, you go to your favorite online store and begin to scroll through your mobile. Then, you see a product that claims it is powered by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which makes it sound super high tech and smart.

    But really, it just has a simple sensor button to make sure it doesn't bump into furniture. Nothing special or groundbreaking. That's AI washing. It means making products sound way cooler or smarter by claiming they have AI when they are just doing regular stuff.

  • Windows TCO

    • The Register UK ☛ Delta Air Lines may sue CrowdStrike, Microsoft over outage • The Register

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Texas Tribune ☛ Meta to pay Texas $1.4 billion in facial recognition case | The Texas Tribune

      Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Facebook parent company in 2022, claiming it had used personal biometric data without permission.w

    • New York Times ☛ How YouTube Became the Most Popular Streaming Service on TVs

      YouTube’s viewership on TVs jumped during the pandemic, when people were stuck at home and willing to consume more content. The trend has continued, in a sign of growing interest in a more laid-back TV experience. The platform’s popularity underscores the sharp differences between YouTube’s hands-off approach to content creation and the billion-dollar bets of old guard media companies like Disney, Paramount and NBCUniversal as they compete for audiences.

    • 404 Media ☛ How a Microsoft App is Powering Employee Surveillance

      “The study shows that it is not only gig work firms or software from small, shady vendors that enable extensive worker monitoring and algorithmic management,” Wolfie Christl, a public-interest technology researcher and the author of the report, told 404 Media. “Microsoft software provides employers with similar functionality.”

    • The Register UK ☛ Google's cookie climbdown attracts W3C TAG criticism

      Members of the W3C community had been working with Chrome's Privacy Sandbox team for several years, attempting to devise an approach that would address the privacy concerns surrounding third-party cookies while keeping advertisers happy. Beeman said: "While we haven't always agreed with the Privacy Sandbox team, we have made substantial progress together."

    • IT Wire ☛ Experts weigh in on cookie deprecation and data privacy

      The crumbling of the third-party cookie has been up for debate for a good four years since Google made their initial announcement to deprecate the cookie - but how quickly things have changed.

      In the beginning, Google heavily cited consumer privacy concerns as its reasoning for removing third-party cookies. But after repeatedly delaying cookie deprecation over the years, Google recently decided not to crumble the cookie after all.

      So, what does this mean for the digital ecosystem that impacts thousands of retailers, brands, marketers, and advertisers? We spoke with industry experts to uncover their views of the announcement that cookies are here to stay (for now, anyway).

    • NDTV ☛ US Priest Sues Grindr After He Was Outed And Forced To Step Down

      Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who served as the top administrator of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) until his resignation in 2021, claims that Grindr failed to inform him that his data was being sold to vendors, thereby allowing people outside the app to discover his presence on it.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Hill ☛ TikTok removed from House-managed phones on August 15

    “Starting August 15, 2024, the CAO Office of Cybersecurity will initiate the block and removal of all ByteDance products from all House-managed devices and app stores,” Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor wrote in a memo to House staffers that was obtained by The Hill.

    “ByteDance applications are NOT ALLOWED on any House device,” the communication adds.

  • RFERL ☛ U.S. Intelligence Says Foreign Actors Seeking To Better Hide Election Interference

    "Foreign actors are turning to commercial firms, such as marketing and public relations companies, to leverage these firms' expertise in communications, technical sophistication, and to complicate attribution," said the Election Security Update for late July issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on July 29.

    The report notes that such companies "are often able to operate more nimbly and with fewer bureaucratic hurdles than government entities."

  • RTL ☛ Following guilty verdict: Notorious UK Islamist preacher to be sentenced

    Long in the authorities' sights, the 57-year-old former lawyer has already spent time in jail for supporting the jihadist Islamic State group.

    But he could now spend the rest of his life behind bars following a joint investigation by the UK, the United States and Canada.

    A jury at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London last week convicted him of being the "caretaker" leader of Al-Muhajiroun (ALM), which was proscribed in the UK in 2010.

  • Inside Towers ☛ EU Assesses Cybersecurity Threats to Europe’s Telecom Companies

    The risk assessment was the first such exercise performed by EU Member States, with the support of the European Commission and ENISA (the EU Agency for Cybersecurity). The risk evaluation identified technical and non-technical risks, especially regarding 5G rollout and renewable energy infrastructures.

    To mitigate these risks, the report suggests resilience can be improved through sharing good practices on mitigating ransomware, vulnerability monitoring, human resources security and asset management. Cooperation also should be encouraged between technical member states’ networks, the computer security incident response teams, law enforcement and international partners, the EU said in a press release.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Air Force picks five firms to build autonomy package for drone wingmen

    Voorheis, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, described the autonomy package as the “brains” of the Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, fleet. The systems are being designed as drone wingmen that will fly alongside crewed fighter aircraft like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and perform a range of missions, including strike, reconnaissance and electronic warfare.

    The service plans to field at least 1,000 CCAs by the late 2030s. It will do so in increments, with each batch bringing a different capability to the mix.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Is this unit the future of Army combat formations?

    Squad leaders had their own small drones to recon their area as far as three to five kilometers ahead. Traditionally, they would have had to rely on drones at higher-level units such as the company or battalion, all competing with demands from other squads or platoons.

    That allows units to rely less on the limited number of trained forward observers needed to call in fire or direct aircraft to strike a target.

    But at the same time, those drone operators require some extra considerations, according to Evans.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The major Atlantic current that keeps Northern Europe warm could have new variations and tipping points

    Now, using a climate model that takes a more detailed look at the AMOC, scientists have a better view of its future, finding details earlier models missed. In this new, more resolute model, the AMOC abruptly collapses in some regions, and unexpectedly increases in others. The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Radical UK Islamist Preacher Choudary Jailed for Life for Terrorism Offences

    But Wall said al-Muhajiroun was "a radical organisation intent on spreading sharia law to as much of the world as possible, using violent means where necessary".

  • Mirror UK ☛ Southport stabbing: 'Hero' window cleaner tackled knifeman after girls attacked in dance class

    A window cleaner has been branded a “true hero” after tackling the crazed knifeman as he stabbed young children at a Taylor Swift dance party.

    Joel Verite, 25, rushed to the aid of a woman who screamed “forget about me, there’s a fella in there stabbing kids". Colleagues of Joel, a young new dad and a 6ft personal trainer, told how he bravely jumped on the killer with police officers before carrying stabbed young girls away from the scene.

  • ABC ☛ How the British were forced to reveal secret files on torture of Kenyan resistance fighters

    As the colonial forces were preparing to leave Kenya, in the days leading up to its independence from Britain in 1963, they were given one last order.

    Before they left, they took with them crates upon crates of files; the contents of which painted a gruesome picture of the violence and torture they'd inflicted on Kenya's resistance movement, the Mau Mau.

    For decades afterwards, the British government denied the files existed and hid them from the world.

  • BBC ☛ Microsoft says cyber-attack triggered latest outage

    A global outage affecting Microsoft products including email service Outlook and video game Minecraft has been resolved, the technology giant said in an update, external.

    The firm said preliminary investigations show the outage was caused by a cyber-attack and a failure to properly defend against it.

    Earlier, the company issued an apology for the incident, which lasted almost 10 hours and caused thousands of users to report issues with Microsoft services.

    It comes less than two weeks after a major global outage left around 8.5 million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

  • ABC ☛ The assassination of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh could bring full-scale war — and devastation to three countries

    With the killing in Iran of Hamas's top political leader Ismael Haniyeh, the possibility that all key players have wanted to avoid — a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah — is now closer than ever.

    Until now, the United States has felt the backlash to its support of Israel's war in Gaza both internationally and inside America.

    Israel has not wanted a full-scale war as it knows very well that Hezbollah is a seriously more formidable fighting machine than Hamas.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Lukashenko agrees to pardon German citizen sentenced to death — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Deadly innovations: How Russia’s technological advances have led to higher civilian casualty rates in Ukraine in recent months — Meduza

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ Landslides Hit Kerala in India, Killing More Than 100 People

    Rescue workers struggled to reach isolated villages in the state of Kerala, where torrential rains have washed away terrain. The death toll was expected to rise.

  • RFERL ☛ Flash Floods Kill 11 Members Of Pakistani Family

    Flash flooding caused by torrential seasonal rains have killed 11 members of one family, including six children, in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, rescuers said on July 30.

  • France24 ☛ More than 90 dead, hundreds feared trapped in southern India landslides

    Landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala on Tuesday killed at least 93 people, according to local authorities. Hundreds are still feared missing after heavy monsoon rains collapsed hillsides and triggered torrents of mud, water and tumbling boulders.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Charity Commission Fails to Clamp Down on Climate Science Denial Group

    • The Business Journals ☛ Once high-flying residential solar company shuts down Bellevue office

      SunPower Corp., one of the world's largest residential solar panel installation companies, is laying off 90 workers and closing its Bellevue office, per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the state of Washington Monday.

      The job cuts will hit the San Jose, California-based company's City Center Bellevue office, at 500 108th Ave. NE. The layoffs are set to take effect in September, according to the filing. It's unclear whether the company will continue to have a physical presence in the area.

    • Lev Lazinskiy ☛ I've Visited all 50 States

      It feels so good to finally finish this project. I don’t think I will make any more lists any time soon, but I do plan to continue to travel as much as possible. I look forward to revisiting many of these places over the coming years.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Gravatar Dunning-Krugerrands

      Automattic's self-immolation continues apace. They are about to find out that pivoting from "here's some mildly-convenient free image hosting to put an avatar on your email address" to "Enterprise-ready, planet-incinerating cryptocurrency grift" is not going to go the way that they think it will.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Electric vehicles: South Africa's next boom industry?

      Transforming this industry is not only vital for environmental reasons but also to protect over 140 000 jobs in manufacturing and maintain global competitiveness. The Presidential Climate Commission’s 2022 report underlines this need, acknowledging risks and opportunities in the transition toward net-zero emissions.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Trump's embrace of bitcoin is the art of the grift

      It’s the ultimate grift, in a way. When Trump was president, he rightly worried about the volatile price and destabilising geopolitical impact of crypto, whose lack of intrinsic value is still a deterrent for many investors. But this is the campaign trail. Bigging up bitcoin and selling tacky NFTs is a way of doubling down on crypto’s largely male user base as a key demographic for Trump and running mate JD Vance, who has mocked “childless cat ladies”. It’s also a way of angling for dollars: talk of friendlier regulation or replacing Gensler (whose term isn’t up until 2026) is cheap from Trump’s point of view, while the prize of support down the line from pro-crypto political action committees (PACs) is anything but — they have already raised $170-million this cycle.

    • Terence Eden ☛ One Year With A Solar Battery

      It's important to note that the battery doesn't only charge from the panels. Because we have a a smart electricity tariff, it will fill up from the grid when electricity prices are negative and empty when they are expensive.

    • New York Times ☛ Are Electric Cars Worth the Money?

      Most electric cars haven’t been on the road that long, so it’s hard to say definitively how long batteries will remain usable. Lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in virtually all electric vehicles, do lose range over time.

      But the degradation is very slow. Electric cars from Tesla and other automakers have software that does a good job of protecting batteries from excess heat or voltage that can cause damage, especially when charging.

  • Overpopulation

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ From Abundance to Scarcity: The Political Indifference to Indonesia's Water Crisis

      Several factors contribute to water scarcity in Indonesia, based on author perspective. First, for the example is population growth and urbanization. Rapid population growth and urbanization have increased the demand for water. Cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung face acute water shortages due to the high concentration of people and inadequate infrastructure to meet their needs. Second, the deforestation and environmental degradation also take important reason. Large-scale deforestation and environmental degradation have disrupted the natural water cycle. The loss of forests, which play a crucial role in maintaining the hydrological balance, has led to reduced water availability and increased instances of drought.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Robin Rendle ☛ Robin Rendle — Design ain’t a democracy

    So what happens is tons of back and forth about competing ideas or competing projects instead of building things (building should be hard, decisions should be easy and if that’s not the case then it’s management who’s to blame). And this leads to all sorts of wacko pseudo-scientific ways to prioritize tasks and even whackier ways of measuring the success of a product (NPS, questionnaires, etc. etc.)

  • US News And World Report ☛ Russia's Yandex, Under New Ownership, Proposes Dividend for First Time

    Russian's Yandex on Tuesday proposed paying dividends for the first time, a shift from the technology firm now under new ownership following a lengthy and complex split from its Nasdaq-listed, Dutch parent company.

    A Russian consortium of buyers this month finalised a $5.4 billion cash and shares deal to acquire Yandex's Russia-based assets from Yandex NV, marking the largest corporate exit since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, albeit at a hefty discount.

  • H2 View ☛ Plug Power appoints Amazon veteran as COO

    Dean Fullerton spent 14 years at Amazon, where he was responsible for Global Engineering Services. Most recently, he was the Vice-President of Global Engineering and Security Services, overseeing operations engineering, planning and analytics and global procurement.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft to discourage use of kernel drivers by AV tools

    Weston's post justifies how Windows performed, on the grounds that kernel-level drivers – like those employed by CrowdStrike – can improve performance and prevent tampering with security software. He noted, however, that infosec vendors must rationalize those benefits against potential negative impacts on resilience.

    If kernel-mode code breaks, like what happened with CrowdStrike when its Falcon suite tried to parse a bad configuration file pushed to millions of Windows machines, the resulting crash will take out the whole operating system and its applications.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Trump Media Made Deal Involving GOP Donor James E. Davison

    This month, former President Donald Trump’s media company announced it was making its first major purchase: technology to help stream TV on Truth Social, its Twitter-like platform.

    There was a mystery at the center of the deal: One of the companies on the other side of the transaction, which went unmentioned in Trump Media’s press release but was named in securities filings, is an obscure entity called JedTec LLC. Based in a North Louisiana village, the company has virtually no public footprint and no website, and it is unknown to streaming technology experts.

  • The Daily Beast ☛ Jeffrey Epstein Called Bill Gates His ‘Brightest’ Star: New Book

    An upcoming book claims the Microsoft founder referred to his time with Jeffrey Epstein as an “adventure.”

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Why Chinese Propaganda Loves Foreign Travel Influencers

      Videos by influencers documenting their trips have been widely promoted on Chinese media — if they tell a certain story.

    • Axios ☛ For AI deepfakes, "it's parody" becomes a legal loophole

      As AI keeps refining its ability to copy the voices and moving images of public figures, deepfake creators are turning to the "it's just a parody" defense.

      The big picture: American media's long tradition of political humor is well-protected by the First Amendment — letting citizens inject almost any kind of fiction or fraud into the national dialogue as long as they label it comedy.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • ANF News ☛ 11 people sent to prison for dancing at weddings with Kurdish songs

    House raids were carried out in the boroughs of Bağcılar, Esenyurt, Sultangazi and Gaziosmanpaşa in Istanbul on Saturday 27 July.

    18 people were taken into custody for dancing the halay accompanied by Kurdish songs at weddings on different dates.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ 'Broken' Uzbek Blogger Struggles For Justice As The System Strikes Back 

    But Miraliev has doubts that the incident will be fairly investigated insofar as he believes the violence was ultimately ordered by local authorities in Qashqadaryo, for whom he has been a thorn in the side for several years.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Barents Observer ☛ 55 Russian indigenous, regional and ethno groups labeled as extremists | The Independent Barents Observer

    “Putin’s regime doesn’t want truth both inside Russia and on international platforms from indigenous peoples. So this shows the indigenous peoples of Russia now have no rights and no voice. They can only do what the authorities say.”

    The extremism law is used to silence voices of opposition and those still voicing anti-war arguments.

  • ANF News ☛ Musicians jailed for singing Kurdish songs at a wedding in Hakkari

    The arrests came at a time of increasing attacks against Kurdish citizens dancing to Kurdish music in various cities of Turkey in recent days. Dozens of people were detained and over 20 were remanded in custody as part of the state operations directed against the music and dance of the Kurdish people.

  • NDTV ☛ The 12-Letter Word Giving The Government Sleepless Nights

    A citizen cannot truly enjoy any liberty when perpetually anxious about her family's unmet needs. This becomes even more important when the Budget skirts around the issues of health, nutrition, social security, and education. It is difficult to think about personal liberties on an empty stomach.

  • ANF News ☛ Christian villages in South Kurdistan to be evacuated by the KDP-Turkey alliance

    While the attacks on southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) supported by the ruling KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) have reached a new dimension, astonishing alliances are being forged in the region. The racist, right-wing extremist and driving factor in the extermination concept against the Kurdish population, Devlet Bahçeli of the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party in Turkey), and the KDP government in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have formed an alliance under the supervision of the AKP that includes a Turkish right-wing extremist and Islamist settlement policy in South Kurdistan.

  • ABC ☛ A woman who took an abortion pill was charged with murder. She is now suing prosecutors

    Lizelle Gonzalez, a Star County, Texas, resident, filed a civil rights complaint alleging that hospital staff provided her private information to prosecutors and the county sheriff who later charged her with murder, according to court documents.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Wired ☛ The Affordable Connectivity Program Died—and Thousands of Households Have Already Lost Their Internet

    Across all ISPs, there were 23 million US households enrolled in the ACP. Research released in January 2024 found that Charter was serving more than 4 million ACP recipients, and that up to 300,000 of those Charter customers would be "at risk" of dropping [Internet] service if the discounts expired. Given that ACP recipients must meet low-income eligibility requirements, losing the discounts could put a strain on their overall finances even if they choose to keep paying for [Internet] service.

  • Informa PLC ☛ ACP takes a bite out of Charter's broadband base

    Charter shed 149,000 broadband subs in Q2, attributing about 100,000 of them to the winding down of the Affordable Connectivity Program. Non-pay churn linked to the demise of the ACP will become more pronounced in Q3 and Q4.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ French [Internet] cables severed in Olympics attack

    A number of fibre-optic cables carrying broadband service across France’s southern and eastern regions were cut overnight in the latest attack on the country’s infrastructure during the Olympic Games.

    SFR said five lines were cut overnight and teams are working on repairs, a spokesman for the French telecommunications carrier said.

  • VOA News ☛ Vandalism hits communication lines in France during Paris Olympics

    The scale of the impact is unclear, as is whether it has affected any Olympic activities. The vandalism came after arson attacks hit train networks around France on Friday, hours before the Olympics opening ceremony.

  • Wired ☛ Saboteurs Cut Internet Cables in Latest Disruption During Paris Olympics

    The second largest French telecoms company, SFR, appeared to be one of the most impacted by the vandalism. “Our long-distance fiber network was sabotaged between 1 am and 3 am last night in five different locations,” a spokesperson from SFR told WIRED. SFR says its maintenance teams are working on repairing the damage and said the impact on its customers was “limited.”

    “Also, between three and eight other operators are impacted since they use our long-distance network,” the spokesperson said.

  • EFF ☛ The KOSA Internet Censorship Bill Just Passed The Senate—It's Our Last Chance To Stop It

    Bill proponents have focused on some truly tragic stories of loss, and then tied these tragedies to the internet. But anxiety, eating disorders, drug abuse, gambling, tobacco and alcohol use by minors, and the host of other ills that KOSA purports to address all existed well before the internet. 

  • EFF ☛ Weak Human Rights Protections: Why You Should Hate the Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty

    This risks turning international efforts to fight cybercrime into tools for human rights abuses and transnational repression.Safeguards like prior judicial authorization call for a judge's approval of surveillance before it happens, ensuring the measure is legitimate, necessary and proportionate. Notifying individuals when their data is being accessed gives them an opportunity to challenge requests that they believe are disproportionate or unjustified.Additionally, requiring states to publish statistical transparency reports can provide a clear overview of surveillance activities. These safeguards are not just legal formalities; they are vital for upholding the integrity and legitimacy of law enforcement activities in a democratic society.¸Unfortunately the draft treaty is severely lacking in these protections. An article in the current draft about conditions and safeguards is vaguely written, permitting countries to apply safeguards only "where appropriate," and making them dependent on States domestic laws, some of which have weak human rights protections.¸This means that the level of protection against abusive surveillance and data collection can vary widely based on each country's discretion.

    Extensive surveillance powers must be reined in and strong human rights protections added. Without those changes, the proposed treaty unacceptably endangers human rights around the world and should not be approved.Check out our two detailed analyses about the lack of human rights safeguards in the draft treaty. 

  • EFF ☛ Calls Mount—from Principal UN Human Rights Official, Business, and Tech Groups—To Address Dangerous Flaws in Draft UN Surveillance Treaty

    EFF has called on delegates to oppose the treaty if it’s not significantly improved, and we are not alone in this stance.The Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multistakeholder organization that sets standards for responsible business conduct based on human rights, in the liability of online platforms for offenses committed by their users, raising the risk that online intermediaries could be liable when they don’t know or are unaware of such user-generated content.“This could lead to excessively broad content moderation and removal of legitimate, protected speech by platforms, thereby negatively impacting freedom of expression,” GNI said.“Countries committed to human rights and the rule of law must unite to demand stronger data protection and human rights safeguards. Without these they should refuse to agree to the draft Convention.”Human Rights Watch (HRW), a close EFF ally on the convention, called out the draft’s article on offenses related to online child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material (CSAM), which could lead to criminal liability for service providers acting as mere conduits. Moreover, it could criminalize or risk criminalizing content and conduct that has evidentiary, scientific, or artistic value, and doesn’t sufficiently decriminalize the consensual conduct of older children in consensual relationships.This is particularly dangerous for rights organizations that investigate child abuse and collect material depicting children subjected to torture or other abuses, including material that is sexual in nature. The draft text isn’t clear on whether legitimate use of this material is excluded from criminalization, thereby jeopardizing the safety of survivors to report CSAM activity to law enforcement or platforms.HRW recommends adding language that excludes material manifestly artistic, among other uses, and conduct that is carried out for legitimate purposes related to documentation of human rights abuses or the administration of justice.The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which represents over 150 companies, raised concerns in a statement today that aspects of the draft treaty allow cooperation between states to be kept confidential or secret, without mandating any procedural legal protections.The convention will result in more private user information being shared with more governments around the world, with no transparency or accountability. The statement provides specific examples of national security risks that could result from abuse of the convention’s powers. The International Chamber of Commerce, a proponent of international trade for businesses in 170 countries, said the current draft would make it difficult for service providers to challenge overbroad data requests or extraterrestrial requests for data from law enforcement, potentially jeopardizing the safety and freedom of tech company employees in places where they could face arrest “as accessories to the crime for which that data is being sought.”Further, unchecked data collection, especially from traveling employees, government officials, or government contractors, could lead to sensitive information being exposed or misused, increasing risks of security breaches or unauthorized access to critical data, the group said.The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a network of law enforcement, governance, and development officials, raised concerns in a recent analysis about the draft treaty’s new title, which says the convention is against both cybercrime and, more broadly, crimes committed through the use of an information or communications technology (ICT) system.“Through this formulation, it not only privileges Russia’s preferred terminology but also effectively redefines cybercrime,” the analysis said. With this title, the UN effectively “redefines computer systems (and the crimes committed using them)­ as ICT—a broader term with a wider remit.”

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• MacRumors ☛ Spain Launches Investigation Into Apple's App Store

  The National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) this week announced a probe into the ‌App Store‌, citing concerns that the company might be imposing unfair trading conditions on developers who distribute their applications through the platform. The investigation was initiated ex officio, reflecting the significant economic influence of app stores in Spain. Apple's practices could constitute an abuse of a dominant position, which is prohibited under Spanish competition laws and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

• 9to5Mac ☛ Spain antitrust regulators begin App Store investigation

  The CNMC started their investigation last week, alleging that Apple may be abusing their dominant position to impose unfair commercial conditions to app developers. This could be in violation of the Spanish Competition Act, as well as Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Apple has traditionally charged a 30% commission on all App Store developers making more than $1 million per year, and a lower 15% commission for smaller developers.

• NL Times ☛ Booking.com slapped with €413 mil. fine from Spanish competition watchdog

  CMNC concluded that the company has abused its dominant position in the market over the last five years. “These practices have impacted hotels in Spain and other online travel agencies that are competing with the platform,” the regulator said in a statement. According to a spokeswoman, this is the largest fine ever imposed by CNMC.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Fast Company ☛ AI threats are causing SAG-AFTRA video game actors to strike - Fast Company

      The union says the unregulated use of AI poses “an equal or even greater threat” to performers in the video game industry than it does in film and television because the capacity to cheaply and easily create convincing digital replicas of performers’ voices is widely available.

      “We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse AI to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement Wednesday. “

    • BBC ☛ Video game performers go on strike over artificial intelligence

      The industrial action was called by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists ([SAG-AFTRA]), which last year paralysed Hollywood with a strike by film and television actors.

      The performers are worried about gaming studios using generative AI to reproduce their voices and physical appearance to animate video game characters without providing them with fair compensation.

      "Although agreements have been reached on many issues... the employers refuse to plainly affirm, in clear and enforceable language, that they will protect all performers covered by this contract in their AI language," [SAG-AFTRA] said in a statement.

    • CBC ☛ Hollywood's video game actors vote to strike over AI protections

      SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract but that the studios will not make a deal over the regulation of generative AI.

      Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor's voice or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

    • Gannett ☛ SAG-AFTRA video game strike: Union cites AI, pay concerns

      Apart from AI protections, SAG-AFTRA's most pressing issues in the contract negotiations for video game performers are higher pay, medical treatment and breaks for motion capture performers.

      SAG-AFTRA says pay for video game performers has not kept pace with inflation. It is also pursuing more protections for the motion-capture performers who wear markers or sensors on the skin or a body suit to help game makers create character movements.

    • New York Times ☛ Actors’ Union to Go on Strike Against Video Game Companies

      “We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members,” Fran Drescher, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Enough is enough.”

      Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s executive director and chief negotiator, added, “Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of the last year — that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to A.I.”

      The union also wants video game companies to improve safety on sets, such as having a medic on site.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Nhentai 'Pirate' Site Wants Court to Quash 'Improper' Cloudflare DMCA Subpoena

    Copyright holders' representatives frequently use DMCA subpoenas to compel online intermediaries to share personal details of alleged pirate site operators. Cloudflare is a popular target for these requests but according to the people behind popular adult site nhentai.net, DMCA subpoenas shouldn't apply to 'mere conduit' intermediaries.

  • 404 Media ☛ Skibidi Toilet Copyright Takedown Request to Garry’s Mod Is Very Dumb

    If you’re not familiar with most of the proper nouns in the above sentence, first of all, congratulations. Second of all, I promise you I am not having a stroke, but merely trying to explain the complicated consequences of optioning for movie and TV rights a meme that is composed almost entirely of recycled assets from a 20-year-old video game.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: An open copyright casebook, featuring AI, Warhol and more

    The copyright nonsense that accompanies an ebook transcends mere Newtonian physics – it exists in a state of quantum superposition. For you, the buyer, the copyright nonsense appears as a license, which allows the seller to add terms and conditions that would be invalidated if the transaction were a conventional sale. But for the author who wrote that book, the copyright nonsense insists that what has taken place is a sale (which pays a 25% royalty) and not a license (a 50% revenue-share). Truly, only a being capable of surviving after being smeared across the multiverse can hope to embody these two states of being simultaneously:

  • India Times ☛ Apple claims to not use unethical data to train its AI

    “We use data that we have licensed from publishers, curated publicly available or open-sourced datasets, and information collected by our web crawler, Applebot,” the company said.

  • Techdirt ☛ Sharing Material Used To Be The Norm For Newspapers, And Should Be For LLMs

    Material was not only copied verbatim, but modified and built upon in the process. As a result of this constant exchange, alteration and enhancement, newspaper readers in the US enjoyed a rich ecosystem of information, and a large number of titles flourished, since the cost of producing suitable material for each of them was shared and thus reduced.

  • The Verge ☛ Perplexity is cutting checks to publishers following plagiarism accusations

    Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, declined to share exact deal terms but said that the revenue share is a multiyear agreement with a “double-digit percentage,” consistent across all publishers, with especially favorable terms for the initial partners. Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick added that payments are made on a per-source basis, meaning publishers are compensated for each article used in responses. The program will temporarily provide cash advances on revenue to publishers as Perplexity builds a long-term advertising model. The advances aren’t a licensing fee for content like OpenAI’s deals.