Leftovers

• Unicorn Media ☛ Uptime Institute Says Data Center Staffing Issues Not Getting Better or Worse

  Despite grappling with staffing shortfalls for years, one in five data centers have no women on staff.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Anne Sturdivant

  This is the 49th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Anne Sturdivant and her blog, weblog.anniegreens.lol

• Troy Hunt ☛ Troy Hunt: Begging for Bounties and More Info Stealer Logs

  TL;DR — Tens of millions of credentials obtained from info stealer logs populated by malware were posted to Telegram channels last month and used to shake down companies for bug bounties under the misrepresentation the data originated from their service.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Blaugust Introduction

  I'm participating in Blaugust, a ten-year-old blogging challenge this month. The organizer's asked the participants to write an introductory post on Day One, so if this post reaches more people than my Mom and my small group of online friends, you are about to read a mini blogging autobiography of a guy you don't know but might like to, so don't change the channel!

• Lucas da Silva ☛ Blaugust challenge

  Earlier today I saw Jedda's post about this challenge called Blaugust, where essentially the goal is to write a blog post per day, in August. Well, so here I am, writing this post.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ The Largest T. Rex Was Probably Much Bigger Than We Ever Realized

    If you select a random person out of a crowd, odds are they won't be the tallest human that ever lived. So why should we expect the same for dinosaurs?

    Of all the Tyrannosaurus rex fossils we've found, it's statistically unlikely that any of them are the largest of their species to have lived. It's even difficult to gauge where they sit on the T. rex height chart.

  • ARRL ☛ The K7RA Solar Update

    The largest solar flare so far in the 25th 11-year cycle occurred on July 23 on the far side of the Sun. Fortunately, it was observable by the Solar Orbiter (SolO), a solar probe designed to study the Sun from a heliocentric orbit. The spacecraft was manufactured by Airbus for ESA. The individual measuring instruments and sensors were supplied by ESA Member States, including the Czech Republic, while the US NASA is also involved in the probe. The spacecraft was launched on 10 February 2020 on Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Static Electricity May Help Butterflies and Moths Pick Up Pollen

    A new study measured the insects’ electrostatic charges and used computer simulations to show that the charges were strong enough to lift pollen

  • New York Times ☛ As Botanists Drop a Racist Plant Name, Some Fear Scientific Confusion

    The International Botanical Congress voted to change a scientific name belonging to hundreds of plant species because it was offensive in southern Africa.

  • Science Alert ☛ New Study Reveals Global Methane Emissions Rising Rapidly, And How We Can Take Action

    We need to do something very drastic, very soon.

  • Science Alert ☛ Added Sugar in Your Diet May Speed Up Your Body's Biological Aging

    Not so sweet.

  • Science Alert ☛ Iceland's Volcanic Eruptions Will Burn For Centuries. They're A Hotbed For Scientific Discovery

    Here's what we've learnt so far.

  • Science Alert ☛ 520-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Larva Found With Preserved Brain And Guts

    "My jaw just dropped."

  • Science Alert ☛ Maggots Are Tiny Heroes of Medicine. Here's Why We Should Love Them.

    Do we have to?

  • Science Alert ☛ Signal Buried in Biggest Explosion Ever Seen Hints at Total Annihilation

    When matter itself vanishes.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ A controversial Chinese CRISPR scientist is still hopeful about embryo gene editing. Here’s why.

    This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

  • Hackaday ☛ What Are Photons, Anyway?

    Photons are particles of light, or waves, or something like that, right? [Mithuna Yoganathan] explains this conundrum in more detail than you probably got in your high school physics class.

• Education

  • US News And World Report ☛ What Happens to Education Under Trump vs. Harris

    Harris advocates for injecting more funding in K-12, especially for increasing teacher pay and breaking down segregated school systems. She also supports universal preschool. On the higher education front, expect her to build on the Biden’s administration pursuit of student loan debt cancellation and boost funding for historically Black colleges and universities. The Economy Under Trump vs. Harris The two candidates are worlds away when it comes to taxes, deregulation and DEI. But in other key areas, they have expressed goals without fully articulating how they plan to achieve them.

    Meanwhile, Trump favors abolishing the Education Department altogether and boasts close ties to the conservative policymakers behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page transition playbook for Trump, which includes proposals to expand private school choice programs, roll back Title IX protections for LGBTQ students and prosecute colleges that maintain affirmative action and DEI policies.

  • ARRL ☛ Generational Legacy Carried on in ARRL Teachers Institute

    The program equips teachers to incorporate amateur radio and wireless technology into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum. The TI is funded entirely by donor contributions though the ARRL Education Fund. Teachers pay an application fee, but all other costs of transportation, lodging and course materials are covered. It costs $4,000 to send a teacher through the program.

  • Michael Burkhardt ☛ Jobs I don’t put on my resume

    Inspired by this post, here are some jobs I had when I was young that I don't put on my resume.

• Hardware

  • New York Times ☛ Intel Will Cut More Than 15,000 Jobs

    The Silicon Valley chip maker also reported a net loss and declining revenue in the latest quarter.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Intel to lay off around 15,000 staff as they try make $10 billion in savings

    It's not just the gaming industry that likes to get fat and then fire everyone, as Intel has announced a cost-cutting exercise where they will be letting go of around 15,000 staff.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel to layoff more than 15% of workforce — 15,000 or more employees — encountered Meteor Lake yield issues, suspends dividend

    Intel announced plans to lay off more than 15% of its workforce amid troubling results.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ 5 new defective chip maker Intel Granite Rapids chips discovered with up to 128 cores, 500W TDP

    Five new Granite Rapids CPU models have been discovered, including the 6980P, that comes with 128 cores, 500W TDP and a 2 GHz base frequency. The five models boast core counts higher than any of Intel's preceding Emerald Rapids CPUs.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Intel’s stock craters as it reveals plan to cut 15,000 jobs, 15% of its workforce

    Intel Corp. today confirmed reports from earlier this week that it will cut a significant number from its massive global workforce, saying it plans to lay off about 15,000 workers, or 15% of its total.

  • International Business Times ☛ Intel Shares Plunge 18% As It Plans Layoffs, Halts Dividends After Missing Q2 Estimates

    Intel's shares fell over 18% to $23.56 in after-hours trading on August 1 after the chipmaker's Q2 earnings missed top and bottom line estimates. The company's overall revenue fell 1% year-over-year (YoY) to $12.8 billion, missing analyst estimates of $12.9 billion.

    The chipmaker's Q3 revenue estimates between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion were again below expectations of $14.3 billion. Intel also suspended dividend payouts starting Q4 until cash flow increased to sustainable levels. However, for Q3, the company announced a dividend of $0.125 per share, payable on September 1. As part of its more than $10 billion cost-cutting plan, an estimated 15%, or over 17,000 employees of Intel's global workforce, would be let go.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Mobileye shares drop on lowered full-year guidance

    Mobileye Global Inc. today reported better-than-expected results for the second quarter, but lowered its full-year guidance on account of a slowdown in demand for its vehicle chips. Shares of the defective chip maker Intel Corp. unit tumbled more than 5% on the trimmed financial projections.

  • AnandTech ☛ Western Digital: We Are Sampling 32TB SMR Hard Drives

    Working backwards, that 20% capacity increase also means that WD's new drive is starting from 2.56TB CMR platters. And while 2.56TB makes for a very decent areal density, this would mean that WD is still behind rival Seagate in terms of areal density overall, as Seagate has 3TB CMR platters in its latest HAMR-based Exos drives.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ SD to IDE adaptors, and revisiting retrocomputer storage

    Which leads us to SD to IDE adaptors. These “Sintech” clone devices are everywhere on eBay and AliExpress, and you’ll often see them recommended by retro bloggers and YouTubers. SD cards aren’t an ideal bulk storage medium for a host of reasons, and I wouldn’t trust them with irreplaceable data, but they’re the only affordable solution on this entire page! I’d hoped I could get one working for tinkering.

  • Logikal Solutions ☛ Nothing Can Save Intel

    Intel should never have been given billions of dollars as part of the chips act. Honestly upper management should have been trying to stay out of prison for throwing national security under the bus off-shoring fab plants. We the people, and the Federal Government have to stop letting corporations do whatever they want. National security is thrown under the bus time and time again as nearly 100% of production for critical components gets moved off-shore chasing a fast buck.

    Intel’s impending bankruptcy is what chasing a fast buck in the tech world gets you.

    My next build will be AMD and it won’t be that far off. I’m pretty certain Intel will somehow try to screw me out of a replacement i9-gen13 CPU.

  • PC World ☛ Intel's crashing CPU nightmare, explained

    According to Intel, the thermal and power protection mechanisms in the BIOS/UEFI were disabled by motherboard manufacturers at the factory to allow Core processors to run at high voltages and frequencies for extended periods of time, and this contributes to the issue. Motherboard vendors rolled out BIOS updates to include an Intel Default Settings option, but the true source of Intel’s CPUs crashes is flawed processor microcode.

    “Intel has determined that elevated operating voltage is a primary cause of the instability issues in some 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors,” an Intel spokesman told PCWorld. “Analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.”

    Here’s everything you need to know.

  • The Verge ☛ Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs get two additional years of warranty coverage

    Intel has said that a primary cause of the instability issues for the desktop CPUs was due to an “elevated operating voltage” and that it was working on a patch for mid-August that addresses the root cause of that. But the patch apparently won’t fix any damage that’s already happened, meaning the best way to fix a damaged chip is to replace it.

  • Carl Svensson ☛ The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art

    There's a recurring argument made about how modern pixel art often doesn't look right. For example, TikTok user "mylifeisanrpg" has made a popular video in which he explains how pixel artists used to work with the innate physical properties of Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs). In short, he describes how the fuzziness of a CRT smoothed out the rough edges of low resolution pixels and made things look much less blocky than if viewed on a modern flatscreen display.

    This is correct. I also agree that modern, blocky pixel art often is a kind of misdirected, anachronistic nostalgia. However, there's a lot more going on with both pixel art and old gaming hardware than mere CRT fuzziness.

  • Jon Seager ☛ How I Computer in 2024

    I’m always fascinated to see how people use their computers - which applications they choose, how they set up their desktop environments and even how their screens are laid out on their desk. I’ve learned some great tricks from friends and colleagues over the years, so I thought I’d write up how I use my machines in 2024.

    The setup I’m using today has been quite static for a couple of years, with only minor adjustments. Each time I change something significant, I leave it for at least a couple of months to try and build muscle memory and see if I’m going to make the adjustment permanent.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Latvia ☛ 4 out of 10 young people in Latvia experience negative messages online

    In 2023, almost half (49%) of the EU population aged 16 to 29 years old, who used the internet in the past 3 months, reported that they had encountered messages online, which they considered to be hostile or degrading towards groups of people or individuals.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Ramsey County criticized over charges for emergency mental health services

    According to a county spokesman, the department of social services charges $62.50 for every 15 minutes that a team spends assessing a patient, plus $1 per minute of travel time.

  • Science Alert ☛ Almost Half of Dementia Cases Avoidable by Addressing 14 Risk Factors, Major Study Finds

    "Potential for prevention is high."

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Vision Can Predict Dementia 12 Years Before Diagnosis, Study Shows

  • RFA ☛ Laos grapples with high dengue infection rates amid rainy season

    Urban population growth and poor sanitation are mainly to blame, officials say.

  • Science Alert ☛ World First: Heart Made From Titanium Kept a Man Alive For Days

    A paradigm shift in heart transplants.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Confirm Bird Flu Is Now Spreading Between Mammals

    "The concern is that potential mutations could arise."

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Differences in health approaches, via Patreon

    For the record, I think having a solid work ethic is a mark of maturity. But so too is taking care of yourself. What’s the line, you either choose to take downtime, or life will choose for you?

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ With COVID surging in California, is it time to bring back masks?

    As the pandemic fades, many people have abandoned the basic tools for fighting the coronavirus — masks, physical distancing, hand sanitizer and aggressive hand-washing.

    Now, a number of health officials, from California to New York, have been suggesting that more people consider doing those things, given the jump in coronavirus infections.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Atlantic ☛ The generative-AI revolution may be a bubble

    Wall Street is finally starting to wonder if such extravagant spending will turn a profit. In a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Microsoft reported sky-high AI expenses and slowing growth [sic] in its cloud-computing and AI businesses—raising concerns and briefly sending its stock sliding, although it has since rebounded. In the weeks prior, a number of analysts at major financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, and Barclays, have questioned whether generative AI will pay off, as I wrote in an article this week.

  • New York Times ☛ Tech Companies to Keep Spending on A.I. Despite Worries of Slow Payoff

    The tech industry’s biggest companies have made it clear over the last week that they have no intention of throttling their stunning levels of spending on artificial intelligence, even though investors are getting worried that a big payoff is further down the line than once thought.

  • Wired ☛ A New Trick Could Block the Misuse of Open Source AI

    When Meta released its large language model Llama 3 for free this April, it took outside developers just a couple days to create a version without the safety restrictions that prevent it from spouting hateful jokes, offering instructions for cooking meth, or misbehaving in other ways.

  • Logikal Solutions ☛ Time to Boycott All Retailers Using FedEx

    I was wondering where the Hell my Asus mobo was. Kicking myself for not ordering it from Newegg for just a little more money and allowing them to get the back order filled. They shipped everything UPS. It got here. Some of it got here early. Even though I can find an address online for the local FedEx center, I cannot find a phone number. All centers now display the Universal Abuse the Customer Automated Phone System toll free number. I used every trick I could think of, even screaming “human” into the phone which works with some systems. Could not get to a human to ask how a package was “out for delivery” for days.

    Somewhere a Keller MBA is laughing until they wet their pants. They “cut costs” by completely eliminating anything that could remotely be called Customer Service. Oh, they are such shrewd business people! Use Artificial Intelligence to provide artificial customer service via a phone system that ceases all human contact. It’s obvious the Artificial Intelligence exists at the management level and it works just as good as Google’s Black Nazi AI.

  • Greg Morris ☛ Anthropomorphising AI

    As Zack puts it brilliantly, “AI isn’t doing shit. It is not thinking, let alone plotting. It has no aspirations. It isn’t even an it so much as a wide-ranging set of methods for pattern recognition”. Imagine if you looked up a topic in an encyclopaedia, only for it to be entirely wrong and reference things that don’t exist, you wouldn’t tolerate it. Yet Search GPT is already getting things wrong, and that’s OK because it is portrayed as being just like us. Well, it’s not.

  • India Times ☛ Meta just launched the largest 'open' AI model in history: here's why it matters

    Meta, the parent company of Facebook, took up the fight for open-source AI in a big way by releasing a new collection of large AI models. These include a model named Llama 3.1 405B, which Meta's founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, says is "the first frontier-level open source AI model". In the case of ChatGPT, its parent company, OpenAI, releases neither the dataset nor code of its latest AI tools to the public.

  • New York Times ☛ Sabrina Javellana Was a Rising Star in Florida Politics. Then the Deepfakes Started.

    There were several more. These were deepfakes: A.I.-generated images that manipulate a person’s likeness, fusing it with others to create a false picture or video, sometimes pornographic, in a way that looks authentic. Although fake explicit material has existed for decades thanks to image-editing software, deepfakes stand out for their striking believability. Even Javellana was shaken by their apparent authenticity.

  • The Register UK ☛ AI to invade hundreds more Taco Bell drive-thrus this year

    Taco Bell, the pseudo-Mexican restaurant chain, has announced its plan to add "Voice AI technology" to hundreds of its locations by the end of the year. It claims to already have the feature working at over a hundred drive-thrus across 13 states.

    With about 8,000 Taco Bells in the US, perhaps one in every ten or so locations could have a drive-thru with Voice AI at this rate. Just as it sounds, the idea is you drive up to a T-Bell, and an AI system will take your order rather than a person. Yo quiero speech recognition.

  • Security Week ☛ Cloudflare Tunnels Abused for Malware Delivery

    For half a year, threat actors have been abusing Cloudflare Tunnels to deliver various remote access trojan (RAT) families, Proofpoint reports.

    Starting February 2024, the attackers have been abusing the TryCloudflare feature to create one-time tunnels without an account, leveraging them for the distribution of AsyncRAT, GuLoader, Remcos, VenomRAT, and Xworm.

  • Martin Fowler ☛ Instead of restricting AI and algorithms, make them explainable

    The steady increase in deployment of AI tools has led a lot of people concerned about how software makes decisions that affect our lives. In one example, its about “algorithmic” feeds in social media that promote posts that drive engagement. A more serious impact can come from business decisions, such as how much premium to charge in car insurance. This can extend to affecting legal decisions, such as suggesting sentencing guidelines to judges.

    Faced with these concerns, there is often a movement to restrict the use of algorithms, such as a recent activity in New York to restrict how social media networks generate feeds for children. Should we draw up more laws to fence in the rampaging algorithms?

    In my view, the restricting the use of algorithms and AI here isn’t the right target. A regulation that says a social media company should forego its “algorithm” for a reverse-chronological feed misses the fact that a reverse-chronological feed is itself an algorithm. Software decision-making can lead to bad outcomes even without a hint of AI in the bits.

  • Fudzilla ☛ Microsoft Dynamics 365's monitoring tools under scrutiny

    Microsoft Dynamics 365's "field service management" tools have been accused of allowing employers to monitor mobile workers via smartphone apps, reportedly to the detriment of their autonomy and dignity.

    A probe by Cracked Labs, an Austrian nonprofit research group, suggests that the software is part of a broader set of applications that disempower workers through algorithmic management.

  • Game Informer shuts down after 33 years & fans are devastated

    After 33 years and 367 issues, Game Informer confirmed that the publication is closing. It’s a bittersweet moment as fans celebrate the magazine’s legacy.

    Game Informer was a monthly video game magazine that delivered a mix of news, strategy guides, and reviews. In 2000, GameStop acquired the publication and formed a relationship that helped propel the magazine to being one of the most popular in North America.

    In 2019, Game Informer laid off half of its staff due to declining financials for GameStop and spent the latter half of the 2010s shifting its focus to online-based content. In March 2024, Game Informer made one final push, offering a print magazine subscription from GameStop’s Power Up Rewards for 10 print issues per year.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Snap shares plunge 18% on revenue shortfall and lower-than-expected guidance

    hares in Snap Inc. plunged about 18% in late trading today after the company missed on revenue in its fiscal 2024 second quarter and fell short of third-quarter adjusted earnings guidance.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Atlassian reports solid earnings but projects weaker growth in fiscal 2025, and stock falls 14%

    Shares in Atlassian Corp. fell nearly 14% in late trading today after the Australian collaboration software company reported solid earnings and revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter but fell short on both its first-quarter and full-year outlook.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Can’t use /home on macOS

    macOS is a certified UNIX platform, and at times it has enough in common with other Unix-like OS to be useful. Every time I use a backdoored Windows machine, I get frustrated that I don’t have the same shell and utilities that macOS supports natively (and no, Cygwin and WSL don’t count).

    But… occasionally you’re reminded things are a bit different. The location of /home is the one that has always frustrated me, because it breaks certain config files, nor can I type them quickly.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • WhichUK ☛ Which banks are worst at refunding fraud victims?

      While one bank returned 88% of customer losses, the worst returned just 9% – see how yours compares

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Google Breaks Promise to Block Third-Party Cookies

      Cookies are small packets of information stored in your browser by websites you visit. They were built to enable useful functionality, like letting a website remember your language preferences or the contents of your shopping cart. But for years, companies have abused this functionality to track user behavior across the web, fueling a vast network of online surveillance. 

      While first-party cookies enable useful functionality, third-party cookies are primarily used for online tracking. Third-party cookies are set by websites other than the one you’re currently viewing. Websites often include code from third-party companies to load resources like ads, analytics, and social media buttons. When you visit a website, this third-party code can create a cookie with a unique identifier for you. When you visit another website that loads resources from the same third-party company, that company receives your unique identifier from the cookie they previously set. By recognizing your unique identifier across multiple sites, third-party companies build a detailed profile of your browsing habits. 

      For example, if you visit WebMD's “HIV & AIDS Resource Center,” you might expect WebMD to get information about your visit to their page. What you probably don't expect, and what third-party cookies enable, is that your visit to WebMD is tracked by dozens of companies you've never heard of. At the time of writing, visiting WebMD’s “HIV & AIDS Resource Center” sets 257 third-party cookies on your browser. The businesses that set those cookies include big tech companies (Google, Amazon, X, Microsoft) and data brokers (Lotame, LiveRamp, Experian). By setting a cookie on WebMD, these companies can link your visit to WebMD to your activity on other websites.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Register UK ☛ Israeli hacktivist group claims it took down Iran's internet

    It's not clear how much damage WeRedEvils actually did, or if it's even entirely responsible for the current outage, considering how opaque Iran is when it comes to these sorts of things.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Democratic convention will offer special access for online influencers

    Recent studies have found that many voters in the United States have relatively low trust in traditional media. At the same time, content creators have become a major source of news [sic], information [sic] and entertainment for many — especially young people.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Opinion: Trump proved himself unfit to be commander in chief

    All those are awful enough.

    But what settles the question altogether is the certainty that former President Trump would end the military’s bedrock contract with the American people: nonpartisanship. He tried last time and came dangerously close.

    Nonpartisanship isn’t simply a nice tradition. It’s the two-factor authentication that’s been at the heart of our nation’s defense for decades. The former president instead wants military leadership that mimics the Nazi high command.

  • New York Times ☛ Prisoner Deals Stoke Fears of Perverse ‘Incentive’ to Grab Americans

    While loath to criticize any specific swap, current and former U.S. officials worry that strongmen like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are exploiting America’s willingness to horse-trade for its citizens. Among those returned to Moscow on Thursday in a deal involving 24 prisoners and seven nations was a Russian assassin serving a life sentence in Germany for gunning down a Kremlin enemy in a Berlin park.

  • Air Force Times ☛ US to depart final base in Niger next week, nearly ending withdrawal

    The U.S. will depart from a second and final base in Niger Monday, all but ending a monthslong withdrawal from what was once a vital partner in the fight against terrorism, two American defense officials confirmed.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Beirut Marines, 41 years after blast, reflect on killing of mastermind

    Shukr’s death offers “another small brick of closure” for the Marines who survived the 1983 attack and the families who lost loved ones, Shields told Task & Purpose.

    “Yes, it is 40 years later,” Shields told Task & Purpose, “But when you go after the folks that framed this whole thing to kill Marines, kill French, and any kind of multinational task force members, any time is not too late to get them. I’m glad he’s been taken down, even though he wasn’t taken down by us. I’m just glad he’s gone. One more.”

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Sues TikTok Over Child Privacy Violations

    The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Southern California, said those practices violated both the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a law that restricts the online tracking of children, and a 2019 agreement between TikTok and the government in which the company pledged to notify parents before collecting children’s data and remove videos from users under 13 years old.

    The suit, which also names TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, asks for the court to fine the companies over the violations.

  • New York Times ☛ Read the lawsuit

    2. For years, Defendants have knowingly allowed children under 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents ' knowledge or consent, have collected extensive data from those children, and have failed to comply with parents' requests to delete their children's accounts and personal information.

  • The Register UK ☛ US govt sues TikTok over child privacy allegations

    The US government is suing TikTok, claiming the mega-popular app broke the law by playing fast and loose with millions of kids' data and privacy.

    In a civil federal lawsuit [PDF] filed in California today, Dept of Justice prosecutors alleged TikTok and its Beijing-based parent ByteDance violated America's Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and related rules, and are seeking fines and banning orders.

  • The Register UK ☛ Case No. 2:24-cv-06535 COMPLAINT FOR PERMANENT INJUNCTION, CIVIL PENALTY JUDGMENT, AND OTHER RELIEF DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

    3. Defendants’ conduct violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“Rule” or “COPPA Rule”), a federal statute and regulations that protect children’s privacy and safety online. It also defies an order that this Court entered in 2019 to resolve a lawsuit in which the United States alleged that TikTok Inc.’s and TikTok Ltd.’s predecessor companies similarly violated COPPA and the COPPA Rule by allowing children to create and access accounts without their parents’ knowledge or consent, collecting data from those children, and failing to comply with parents’ requests to delete their children’s accounts and information.

    4. To put an end to TikTok’s unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy, the United States brings this lawsuit seeking injunctive relief, civil penalties, and other relief.

  • JURIST ☛ US Justice Department sues TikTok for violations of children's privacy laws

    Social media platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are facing civil charges of violating children’s privacy laws, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday.

    US authorities claim that TikTok knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts and share content without parental consent, failing to adequately protect minors’ personal information as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

  • The Verge ☛ US sues TikTok for collecting kids’ data without parents’ permission

    The lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s age-gating techniques “are deficient in multiple ways.” Under an earlier practice, TikTok would let users restart the account creation process even if they’d originally entered a birthday showing they’re under 13, according to the complaint. TikTok also used to let users log in through Instagram or Google, which would categorize the accounts as “age unknown,” the DOJ alleges.

    The DOJ says TikTok has let millions of kids use its platform but said it’s hard to pin down the exact scale of its violations because it didn’t comply with a requirement from a 2019 injunction to keep records on its COPPA compliance. The DOJ is asking the court to prevent TikTok from violating COPPA in the future and pay civil penalties for each violation. Under the FTC Act, civil penalties can go up to $51,744 per violation, per day.

  • Wired ☛ TikTok Sued by US Justice Department for Alleged Violations of Kids’ Privacy

    In March 2019, TikTok agreed to a US federal court order barring the social media giant from collecting personal information from its youngest users without their parents’ consent. According to a new lawsuit filed by US authorities, TikTok immediately breached that order and now faces penalties of $51,744 per violation per day.

    TikTok “knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent,” the US Department of Justice alleged on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission in a complaint lodged on Friday in federal court in California.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Justice Department alleges TikTok broke child privacy law in suit

    TikTok is the second-most-popular online platform for teens in the United States, behind YouTube, and 17 percent of Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 say they use it “almost constantly,” a Pew Research Center survey found this year.

  • Axios ☛ Harris campaign embraces TikTok as efforts to restrict app sputter along

    The big picture: While her campaign has embraced the platform, the U.S. government is pursuing a lawsuit alleging that TikTok's ties to China represent a national security threat.

    • This week, the U.S. House banned staffers from using ByteDance apps on official congressional devices. The Chinese company is the parent company of TikTok.

  • India Times ☛ US sues TikTok over 'massive-scale' privacy violations of kids under 13

    The lawsuit is the latest U.S. action against TikTok and its Chinese parent over fears the company improperly collects vast amounts of data on Americans for the Chinese government, while influencing content in a way that could harm Americans.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ How TikTok bots and AI have powered a resurgence in UK far-right violence

    Experts have warned that new tools and ways of organising have seen Britain’s fractured far right exploit the Southport attack to unify and rejuvenate its presence on the streets.

    In a surge of activity not seen for years, more than 10 protests are being promoted across social media platforms such as X, TikTok and Facebook in the aftermath of violent disorder up and down the country.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Poland commemorates 80 years since Warsaw Uprising

    This August 1, like every year, the capital of Poland, Warsaw, will hold a minute of silence to mark the beginning of the uprising against the German occupation ahead of the Nazi retreat west.

    At 5 p.m. local time, alarm sirens will blare in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, bringing the city and its inhabitants, regardless of their political views, to a standstill.

    The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, and the bitter fighting dragged on for 63 days before the Polish Home Army was finally forced to surrender to the Nazis. A source of national pride for many Poles, the day symbolizes Poland's fight against totalitarianism and foreign rule, and its desire for freedom.

  • ANF News ☛ Yazidi genocide file by TAJÊ: ISIS and its collaborators must be prosecuted

    On the 10th anniversary of the 3 August 2014 genocide, the Yazidi Free Women's Movement (TAJÊ) prepared a dossier detailing the responsibilities in the genocide and the crimes committed by the KDP, the ruling party in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

    TAJÊ submitted the dossier to the European Court of Human Rights, the Iraqi Prime Minister and the German Foreign Ministry, along with the countries that recognised the mass slaughter of 3 August 2014 as genocide, and demanded the prosecution of the KDP.

    The letter included the file prepared by TAJÊ reads as follows: [...]

  • ANF News ☛ About 1,300 Yazidi children still missing 10 years after genocide, says Save the Children

    The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed, captured and displaced all 400,000 Yazidi people living in Sinjar on 3 August 2014, in a genocide that disproportionately affected children. About 10,000 Yazidis were killed or abducted. Half of all those executed were children, according to a report by multi-national researchers in the journal PLoS Medicine.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ After IS, justice for Yazidis? 'The world has moved on'

    In the early morning hours of August 3, 2014, the extremist "Islamic State," or IS, group attacked communities in northern Iraq that were home to the ethno-religious Yazidi minority.

    Yazidi men were executed on the spot and women and children were captured, with thousands eventually being sold into slavery.

    By 2017, the IS group was declared defeated in Iraq. Today, most members are either dead, imprisoned, or in hiding. But many Yazidis are still waiting for justice.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Risk of Tipping Points From Exceeding 1.5°C Can Be Minimized if Global Heating Quickly Reversed, Researchers Say

    The human-caused climate crisis has the potential to cause a destabilization of large-scale elements of Earth systems like ocean circulation patterns, ice sheets and components of the global biosphere. In the study, the researchers examined the risks that future emissions scenarios and current mitigation levels posed to four interconnected tipping elements, a press release from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) said.

  • India Times ☛ Turkey blocks access to Instagram platform but gives no reason

    Turkey has restricted access to Instagram, citing unspecified reasons. This move came after Fahrettin Altun criticized the platform for blocking condolence posts related to Ismail Haniyeh, a key Hamas official. The situation has not received an official response from Instagram's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., leaving users and commentators puzzled.

  • RTL ☛ Censorship: Turkey blocks access to Instagram

    Turkey on Friday blocked access to the Instagram social media network, the national communications authority said without explanation, following censorship accusations against the US company by a high-ranking Turkish official.

    The BTK communications authority said in a post on its website that "instagram.com has been blocked by a decision on the date of 02/08/2024", without adding further details.

  • VOA News ☛ Turkey blocks access to Instagram, gives no reason

    Unlike its Western allies, Turkey does not consider Hamas to be a terror organization. A strong critic of Israel's military actions in Gaza, Erdogan has described the group as "liberation fighters."

  • Vox ☛ Is Caroline Gleich’s Utah Senate campaign a sign of more influencers running for office?

    Influencers have long played a role in politics, though typically they’re asked by established politicians to stump for them or push certain policies online to their followers. Trump, for instance, has lately been making videos with YouTuber Jake Paul, while senators are tapping influencers to help push legislation in addition to relying on traditional media.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ With 2024 campaign growing intense, watchdogs warn of election threats

    But Solomón said the country’s election integrity was damaged by the 2020 experience, with many veteran election workers opting to leave the profession rather than deal with the threats and harassment from believers in election conspiracies.

    “We’re still living with the legacy of those lies,” she said. “They’ve undermined the faith of many Americans in our elections and fed anger and heated rhetoric … Those lies have also led to threats and harassment to election officials who have seen massive turnover in their ranks.”

  • VOA News ☛ UK police brace for more far-right protests

    John Woodcock, the British government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, said there was a “concerted and coordinated” attempt to spread the violence.

    “Clearly, some of those far-right actors have got a taste for this and are trying to provoke similar in towns and cities across the U.K.,” he told the BBC.

  • New York Times ☛ In a 911 Call, Sonya Massey’s Mother Asked That Police Not Hurt Her

    A day before an officer shot and killed her daughter, Donna Massey told a dispatcher that she was having mental health issues and asked that they not send “combative” police.

  • RFA ☛ Vietnam’s coast guard to hold first drills with Philippines

    Vietnam and the Philippines have conflicting territorial claims with China, and each other, in the South China Sea.

  • RFA ☛ Protest in China's Hunan calls for democracy, end of Pooh-tin Jinping's rule

    The anti-Xi slogan is heard in a video of a banner calling for change in an echo of the 2022 ‘Bridge Man’ protest.

  • RFA ☛ Xinjiang authorities target Uyghurs cadres in ‘dark forces’ crackdown

    The measure is meant to purge government workers deemed disloyal to China.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China sanctions US Democrat Jim McGovern for ‘interference’ over Tibet support

    China sanctioned US lawmaker Jim McGovern on Wednesday for “interference” over his support for Tibetans. The US Congress adopted a bipartisan law last month that strengthens support for Tibet, where China is accused of human rights abuses. McGovern, a Democrat, was one of the authors of the bill.

  • France24 ☛ Deadly explosion in the Golan Heights: Tracing a rocket’s trajectory

    An explosion on a football pitch in a Druze village in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the Lebanese border killed 12 people on July 27, all of them children. This region has been the theatre of military conflict between Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a close ally of Hamas and Iran, and Israel since October 2023. While Hezbollah denies any responsibility, our investigations indicate that the deadly explosion could have been caused by a “Falaq-1”, an Iranian-made rocket used by Hezbollah.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Trump uses inflammatory racial rhetoric about Harris. How that plays in 2024.

    A debate over racism and sexism has surged to the forefront of the presidential campaign, after Donald Trump's latest remarks about Kamala Harris.

  • New York Times ☛ Secret Service’s Tech Errors Helped Gunman at Trump Rally Slip By

    Technologies that might have protected the former president failed because they were improperly deployed or because the Secret Service chose not to use them.

  • JURIST ☛ UN Security Council passed resolution lifting arms embargo on Central African Republic

    The UN Security Council (UNSC) on Tuesday passed a resolution to lift the arms embargo on the Central African Republic (CAR) and decided that all UN member states shall take necessary measures to prevent the supply of arms to armed groups operating within the CAR until July 31, 2025.

  • BBC ☛ US deploys jets and warships as Iran threatens Israel

    The United States will deploy additional warships and fighter jets to the Middle East to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, the Pentagon said.

    Tensions remain high in the region over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and a key commander of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

    Missile defence forces were placed on a state of increased readiness to deploy, the Pentagon said, adding that its commitment to defend Israel was "ironclad".

    Iran's leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed "harsh punishment" against Israel for the assassination of Haniyeh, and declared three days of national mourning.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Forbes op-ed saying security laws made Hong Kong ‘riskier place to do business’ rejected by gov’t as ‘misleading’

    The Hong Kong government has rejected an opinion article published by US publication Forbes Magazine, which claimed that the city had become a “far risker place to do business” following the enactment of two security laws.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong secondary students may soon be schooled in ‘Xi Jinping Thought’

    The political ideology of China’s leader Pooh-tin Jinping could soon be taught to Hong Kong secondary school students, according to curriculum guidelines for new subject Citizenship, Economics and Society.

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok is one of Microsoft’s biggest Hey Hi (AI) clown computing customers [Ed: Microsoft profits from enabling attack on the West, especially the minds of young people]

    A source told The Information that Fentanylware (TikTok) was paying Abusive Monopolist Microsoft almost $20 million per month to access OpenAI’s models as of March, making up nearly a quarter of the revenue...

  • Pro Publica ☛ Investigating Matthew Trewhella, the Far-Right Wisconsin Pastor

    In the fall of 2022, Phoebe Petrovic, an investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, noticed a pastor and his church appearing in local news coverage for their anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Looking closer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling history. And digging even deeper, she noticed an untold story: his broader influence on modern Republican politics. His rise helps illustrate the growing power of the Christian right in the Republican party. Here, Petrovic describes how she reported the story and what she learned.

    Some Republican operatives in Wisconsin questioned why we were doing this story. They said Trewhella was old news from the ’90s. That’s not what our reporting showed. We found him cited by county commissioners, state lawmakers and former Trump administration officials, all in the past several years. In my home state of Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Waukesha County, the heart of the state’s Republican politics, has invited Trewhella to speak twice and promotes his teachings and book on its website, although its leaders downplayed the link when asked for comment.

  • New York Times ☛ Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

    The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.

  • New York Times ☛ Security Concerns Grow for Israeli Olympians in Paris

    Concerns for the Israeli team — which has been shrouded in protection at every Games since 1972 — have substantially increased since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and the war in Gaza.

  • New York Times ☛ Turkey Revels in the Role It Played in Prisoner Swap

    Turkey has frustrated its NATO allies by often refusing to get tough with Russia, but its good relations with Moscow may have helped it participate in the exchange.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ German authorities’ decision to hand over Krasikov to Russia ‘not made lightly’ — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ FSB confirms eight Russian citizens returned in prisoner swap — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘These are just names’: The Kremlin wants state media to spin Russia’s biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War as no big deal — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘We spent the last three days searching for her’: Freed Russian political prisoners’ loved ones react to their release — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russia traded seven of its citizens for hackers, spies, and an assassin. Will they ever be able to return home? — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Who Is Vadim Krasikov, the Russian Exchanged for a U.S. Reporter?

      Vadim Krasikov was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for a brazen assassination in a downtown park in Berlin. Now he is free.

    • LRT ☛ Belarusian politician in Vilnius defects to the regime, appears in Minsk

      A Belarusian opposition politician living in Vilnius appeared on a regime propaganda programme on July 31, where she talked about alleged plans of other political refugees to strike Minsk with drones and infiltrate "sabotage groups".

    • JURIST ☛ Belarus President pardons German national on death row

      The president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko pardoned a German national who was sentenced to death in June, the government’s press service announced on Tuesday. Lukashenko’s statement has now commuted the German’s verdict to a life sentence.

    • Latvia ☛ Large groups try to cross Latvia-Belarus border

      On July 30-31, the State Border Guard prevented 81 people from illegally crossing the Latvian-Belarusian border. This is one of the highest numbers in one day this year, Latvian Television reported July 31.

    • Meduza ☛ Kremlin spokesman admits hitman Krasikov is FSB agent and says children of spies returned in prisoner swap didn’t know they’re Russian — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Finally free Photos from the hospital where Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and other political prisoners released by Moscow were sent after arriving in Germany — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘A diplomatic loss for the Kremlin’: Investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov on Russia’s ‘unprecedented’ prisoner swap with the West — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Sitting Russian senator is stripped of immunity and arrested on charges of ordering business partner’s murder — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘I see it as an illegal expulsion against my will’: Newly freed Russian opposition politicians Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and Andrei Pivovarov hold first press conference since their release — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Cira Pascual Marquina

  • Simon Willison ☛ Today's research challenge: why is August 1st "World Wide Web Day"?

    So the mystery remains! Who decided that August 1st should be "World Wide Web Day", why that date and how did it spread so widely without leaving a clear origin story?

  • The Hill ☛ NABJ president: Donald Trump interview delayed over fact-checking dispute

    Lemon told Axios he was called back to address an issue just moments before Trump took to the stage. The former president did not want to be fact-checked live and was refusing to begin the interview, he said.

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ South Korea Offers Humanitarian Aid to Flood-Stricken North Korea

    If accepted, the help could lead to the first official dialogue in years between the two Koreas, which have recently been sending each other trash balloons and propaganda.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Kim Jong Un orders relief for flood-hit regions in North Korea. Will he accept aid from South Korea?

    In North Korea, flooding has hit large swaths of residential and agricultural land. South Korea offered humanitarian aid on Aug. 1, but it remains unclear whether North Korea will accept the assistance.

  • RFA ☛ State media shows North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un leading flood rescue

    Dispatched workers in China are being forced to donate to relief efforts back home.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong urged to review heat stress warning system as street cleaners show signs of heat stroke at work

    The Hong Kong government should review its Heat Stress at Work Warning system to better reflect the effects of sweltering heat on street cleaners and other outdoor workers, an NGO has said.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ July was China’s hottest month since records began, amid summer of extreme weather

    Chinese weather authorities said Thursday July was the country’s hottest month since records began six decades ago, as extreme temperatures persist across the globe. China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Summer sun in Finland? Åland isles aim to lure tourists to cooler climate

    In this Swedish-speaking autonomous region of Finland, there is plenty of space to go around. With 6,757 islands of at least 2,500 sq meters – plus a further 20,000 smaller islands and skerries – and a population of little more than 30,500, there is almost an island per person.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Why Are Giant, Ancient Tropical Trees Dying?

    Last October on the island, Gora, Esquivel-Muelbert and their research team embarked on the first expeditions of the Gigante Project, an ambitious effort to find out what’s killing giant tropical trees around the world. And the island was a great place to start. The largest trees in the research forest are about 1,000 times bigger than the median tree size, Gora says.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ Solar Fountain Aerates Garden Pond

      Sometimes off-the-shelf solutions to a problem don’t meet your expectations. That’s what led [TomGoff] to build his own solar pond fountain.

    • DeSmog ☛ Outrage as Senate Panel Advances Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill

    • Latvia ☛ Survey: Latvians think infrastructure is to blame for crashes

      The majority, or 55%, of Latvian citizens, believe that accidents on the roads could be reduced by improving the infrastructure, including by introducing more photo radars, according to a survey conducted by Norstat for LSM.lv.

    • New York Times ☛ Like Cyclists in a Peloton, Schooling Fish Save Energy, Study Finds

      Like Olympic cyclists, fish expend less effort when swimming in tight groups than when alone. The finding could explain why some species evolved to move in schools.

    • RFERL ☛ Montenegro To Extradite Do Kwon To South Korea To Face Cryptocurrency Charges

      A Montenegrin court of appeals confirmed on August 1 the decision to extradite Hyeong Do Kwon to South Korea, rejecting Washington's request for extradition.

    • The Straits Times ☛ More airlines return to Malaysia’s Subang Airport as rejuvenation plans take off

      Public transport connectivity to the city area and noise pollution are some issues for concern.

    • Soeren ☛ eBike Struggles

      And while I still struggle from time to time, I am convinced that as long as you grab your bike and go for a tour it doesn’t matter if it’s with or without electric support. In my case, I know, that in the past weeks I went for tours that I would have never even started if I didn’t had the engine. Tours with long or steep uphill distances for example. When the bad feeling comes back, I just remind myself that others drive cars in circles and call that motor sport.

    • PC World ☛ How Bitcoin’s founder disappeared because of PCWorld

      It was Bitcoin’s unique decentralized nature that inspired a PCWorld freelance author to report that Wikileaks and Bitcoin may be able to work together.

      With its growing reach, Wikileaks had been trying to collect funding through donations, but many of the major payment systems like Paypal refused to work with the platform due to its controversial nature. But what if Bitcoin could become a viable Paypal alternative?

    • Wired ☛ Trump's [Cryptocurrency] Embrace Could Be a Disaster for Bitcoin

      Clearly Trump doesn’t. That didn’t stop him from making promises that only someone who deeply misunderstood bitcoin both technically and philosophically would ever make. He compared bitcoin to the steel industry of a century ago, a mind-boggling mismatch between an icon of the industrial revolution and a cutting-edge movement of the digital world. Then he promised to make the United States the “[cryptocurrency] capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Wayanad landslide survivors urged elephant to spare them: 'Could see eyes welling up'

      The tusker appeared to recognise their plight and remained still, without causing them any harm.

      "We were very close to the tusker's legs, but it seemed to understand our predicament. We stayed there till 6am, and the elephants also stood there till we were rescued by some people in the morning. I could see its eyes welling up as the dawn broke," she recalled.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Earth has already exceeded 2024 annual ecological limits

      Germany exceeded its sustainable consumption limits for 2024 on May 2 — meaning that if everyone in the world lived like the Germans, humanity would need three Earths to provide enough resources to sustainably accommodate their consumption.

    • New York Times ☛ Nationwide Protests Over Hunger Rock Nigeria

      Organizers have called for 10 days of protest in cities across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, a response to rising inflation and hunger caused by policies that the government argues are necessary to revive what it has called a dead economy.

      “Life cannot continue like this,” said Usman Abdulhamid, a protester in the northern city of Kano, where many have been unable to afford food, medicine or even bus fares to the hospital. “People cannot survive without eating.”

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids

      Policy shifts that make life easier and less expensive for parents are worthwhile in their own right. But so far, such improvements haven’t changed most countries’ low-fertility rates. This suggests the existence of another, under-discussed reason people aren’t having kids—one that, I have come to believe, has little to do with policy and everything to do with a deep but unquantifiable human need.

      That need is for meaning. In trying to solve the fertility puzzle, thinkers have cited people’s concerns over finances, climate change, political instability, or even potential war. But in listening closely to people’s stories, I’ve detected a broader thread of uncertainty—about the value of life and a reason for being. Many in the current generation of young adults don’t seem totally convinced of their own purpose or the purpose of humanity at large, let alone that of a child. It may be that for many people, absent a clear sense of meaning, the perceived challenges of having children outweigh any subsidy the government might offer.

• Finance

  • University of Michigan ☛ Studies look at health, employment impacts of guaranteed income programs

    Guaranteed income programs don't appear to improve the health of recipients, but they remain an important tool to consider for reducing poverty, according to research that included U-M.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Amazon’s stock slides on revenue miss, sluggish cloud growth and lower guidance

    Shares of Amazon.com Inc. took a beating in extended trading today, falling more than 7% after the company reported revenue that came in below expectations and followed with lower guidance for the current quarter.

  • New York Times ☛ Amazon Cautions That When the News Gets Nutty, People Shop Less

    The e-commerce giant reported a profitable second quarter, but warned that the third quarter will be harder to predict.

  • JURIST ☛ Kenya Court of Appeal declares Finance Act 2023 unconstitutional over inadequate public participation

    The Kenya Court of Appeal at Nairobi delivered a judgement Wednesday rendering the controversial Finance Act 2023 unconstitutional. The Finance Bill 2023 was tabled before the National Assembly on May 4, 2023. It was later assented to by the president on June 26, 2023 and became Finance Act 2023.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Tenable shares drop 10% after revised revenue guidance and potential sale reports

    Shares in Tenable Holdings Inc. fell more than 10% in late trading after the cybersecurity exposure management revised its revenue guidance downward in its second-quarter earnings report, as reports suggest that the company is exploring a potential sale.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ New global reality, not alignments, behind Malaysia’s pursuit of Brics membership

    The promise of deeper trade and investment ties is key to Anwar's strategy to win over voters

  • The Straits Times ☛ Xi’s letter to Hong Kong entrepreneurs seen as boost for city

    President Pooh-tin Jinping called on Hong Kong entrepreneurs to boost China’s development.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump Escalates Race Attacks On Harris

    A day after telling Black journalists that Vice President Kamala Harris had recently decided to become “a Black person,” Mr. Trump shared a photo of Ms. Harris in traditional Indian clothing.

  • France24 ☛ ‘Not independent’: Maduro's call for Venezuela high court to audit election draws criticism

    Following widespread calls from global leaders to verify the results of Sunday's presidential election, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro tasked the country's top court with auditing the election. Initial results showed Maduro winning another term, but many expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the elections and the court's ability to be transparent in its review.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Senate Commerce Passes Bill to Fund ACP, Rip & Replace - Inside Towers

    UPDATE The Senate Commerce Committee passed onto the full senate the PLAN for Broadband Act (S. 2238) on Wednesday. It includes $7 billion in funding to revive the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and more than $3 billion to fully fund the Commission’s Rip & Replace program. Rip & Replace is meant to reimburse small carriers that remove and replace untrusted gear made by Huawei and ZTE from their networks.

  • India Times ☛ Intel layoffs: Intel to lay off 15,000 employees as chipmaker tries to revive its business

    Intel revealed plans to cut around 15,000 jobs, which amounts to 15% of its workforce, as a strategic move to save $10 billion by 2025. The decision comes in response to disappointing quarterly results and aims to realign costs and revitalize its position against competitors like Nvidia and AMD.

  • India Times ☛ Crowdstrike: Google-parent Alphabet cut stake in Crowdstrike before July global outage

    The company cut its stake to 427,895 class A shares from 855,789 shares. The change in holdings is as of June 30.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ A note on the EU AI Act

    There’s an announcement from the EU doing the rounds saying that the EU AI Act has “entered into force” on 1 August 2024.

    This is true, but not in the way most people think.

    • When they say that the EU AI Act “enters into force” what they mean is it has officially become a law and the work to build its regulatory infrastructure is beginning.

    • The act won’t start being enforced for another six, twelve, and 24/36 months, for prohibited, general purpose models, and high risk models respectively.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Entertainment industry gets behind new bill that will outlaw Hey Hi (AI) deepfakes

      The entertainment industry today came out in support of a new bill designed to prevent people from using artificial intelligence to recreate a person’s voice or likeness without that person’s consent.

    • Jonathan Faber ☛ USPTO Roundtable on Right of Publicity, NIL, and Artificial Intelligence

      A USPTO roundtable will take place on August 5, 2024 on the topic of Right of Publicity and Artificial Intelligence.

    • New York Times ☛ The U.K. Riots Were Fomented Online. Will Social Media Companies Act?

      Prime Minister Keir Starmer called out social media groups for the misinformation on their platforms that sparked violent clashes this week. But holding them accountable is tough.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ The U.K. Riots Were Fomented Online. Will Social Media Companies Act?

    Prime Minister Keir Starmer called out social control media groups for the misinformation on their platforms that sparked violent clashes this week. But holding them accountable is tough.

  • Techdirt ☛ Justice Alito Almost Messed Up The Internet; Then He Threw A Temper Tantrum

    In both cases, Alito’s view of the First Amendment seems disconnected from reality and history. And, in both cases, he still had a chance to write the majority opinion (sending both cases down on what is, effectively, technicalities). But, in both cases, he was unable to write a reasonable opinion, causing his colleagues on the bench to jump ship to more reasonable rulings.

  • CNN ☛ How Samuel Alito got canceled from the Supreme Court social media majority

    Behind the scenes, the conservative justice sought to put a thumb on the scale for states trying to restrict how social media companies filter content. His tactics could have led to a major change in how platforms operate.

    CNN has learned, however, that Alito went too far for two justices – Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson – who abandoned the precarious 5-4 majority and left Alito on the losing side.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Senior Republican Senator demands that OpenAI prove it doesn’t silence staff

    Grassley’s letter also adds to the controversy OpenAI has faced around whether it is silencing its employees from sharing concerns to federal authorities. In a July letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, OpenAI whistleblowers said they had filed a complaint with the agency alleging the company illegally issued restrictive severance, nondisclosure and employee agreements, potentially penalizing workers who wished to raise concerns to federal regulators. Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokeswoman, said in a statement in July that the company has “made important changes to our departure process to remove nondisparagement terms.”

  • RFA ☛ China mulls digital ID cards, sparking fears of tighter monitoring

    Analysts and political commentators said the rules, if implemented, would give the government "another tool" to track people's online activity, while free speech activists called for a reversal of the real-name registration system for internet users.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ ‘SLAPP’ libel action against TBIJ dropped after two years

    Open Democracy and The Telegraph have also settled libel claims brought by Jusan Technologies Ltd.

  • New York Times ☛ Don Lemon Sues Elon Musk Over Canceled X Deal

    The former CNN reporter said in a lawsuit that X had refused to pay him after a testy interview with its billionaire owner.

  • EFF ☛ EFF to Ninth Circuit: Don’t Shield Foreign Spyware Company from Human Rights Accountability in U.S. Court

    Our brief highlights multiple examples of Pegasus spyware having been used by governmental bodies around the world to spy on targets such as journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents, and their families. For example, the Saudi Arabian government was found to have deployed Pegasus against Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

    In the present case, Dada v. NSO Group, the plaintiffs are affiliated with El Faro, a prominent independent news outlet based in El Salvador, and were targeted with Pegasus through their iPhones. The attacks on El Faro journalists coincided with their investigative reporting into the Salvadorian government.

  • New Yorker ☛ Evan Gershkovich Is Finally Coming Home

    In exchange, the U.S and Germany, along with a number of other European countries, agreed to free a collection of Russian spies, fraudsters, and alleged smugglers. The most notorious among them is the convicted Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who, in 2019, shot a former Chechen separatist fighter in Berlin’s Tiergarten park. The open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat linked Krasikov to an élite unit inside the F.S.B., the Russian security service. In court, German prosecutors said that the Russian state was behind the assassination; Krasikov was issued a life sentence, after a court ruled that he was guilty of a “state-contracted killing.”

  • VOA News ☛ Freed activist feared dying in Russian prison

    President Biden greeted the Americans — journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva and former Marine Paul Wheelan — as they arrived at Joint Base Andrews late Thursday.

    Speaking with the gathered media, Biden praised the partnership with U.S. allies, saying, “They stepped up, they took a chance for us, and it mattered a lot.”

    Those allies — Germany, Poland, Norway and Slovenia helped the U.S. with the never-before-seen multi-country negotiations that played out over months to secure the largest swap with Russia since the Cold War.

  • RFERL ☛ Kazakh Court Sentences Journalist To 7 Years In Prison

    A court in Kazakhstan's southern town of Qonaev on August 2 sentenced journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim to 7 years in prison for financing an extremist group and participating in a banned group's activities, charges he rejects as politically motivated.

    The court also banned Mukhammedkarim from performing public activities for three years.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ HRW reports Tanzania government coercing Maasai residents into relocation

    The government of Tanzania is implementing policies intended to force Maasai residents to relocate outside of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday.

  • JURIST ☛ Human Rights Watch calls for Pakistan authorities to respect rights while dealing with Balochistan protests

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated on Wednesday that the Pakistan government should exercise restraint in dealing with ongoing protests in the province of Balochistan.

  • Latvia ☛ Court rejects suspended lecturer's claim against music academy

    The court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Rolands Kronlaks, the former head of the Music Technology Department at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (JVLMA), against the JVLMA, Latvian Radio reports August 1. He had challenged his suspension, claiming that it was unlawful.

  • New York Times ☛ Pakistanis Rise Up Against Ruling Elite as Misery Multiplies

    Unrest over a range of economic and security issues threatens to deepen the political turmoil that has plagued Pakistan for years.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ No social workers stripped of license over national security offences yet, head of restructured registration body says

    Hong Kong’s social workers’ registration body has begun reviewing social workers’ records following the introduction of a new rule that bars anyone convicted of endangering national security from the sector. No one has been stripped of their license for this reason yet, the head of the body has said.

  • The Revelator ☛ Rediscovering the Legacy of Mary Elizabeth Barber, South Africa’s First Female Botanist

  • EFF ☛ Here Are EFF's Sacramento Priorities Right Now

    EFF has been tracking nearly 100 bills this session in California alone. They cover a wide array of privacy, free speech, and innovation issues, including bills that cover what standards Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) systems should meet before being used by state agencies, how AI and copyright interact, police use of surveillance, and a lot of privacy questions. While the session isn't over yet, we have already logged a significant victory by helping stop S.B.1076, by Senator Scott Wilk (Lancaster). This bill would have weakened the California Delete Act (S.B. 362), which we fought hard to pass last year. 

    Under S.B. 362, The Delete Act made it easier for anyone to exert greater control over their privacy under California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The law created a one-click “delete” button in the state's data broker registry, allowing Californians to request the removal of their personal information held by data brokers registered in California. It built on the state's existing data broker registry law to expand the information data brokers are required to disclose about data they collect on consumers. It also added strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure that data brokers comply with these reporting requirements.

    S.B. 1076 would have undermined the Delete Act’s aim to provide consumers with an easy “one-click” button. It also would have opened loopholes in the law for data brokers to duck compliance. This would have hurt consumer rights and undone oversight on an opaque ecosystem of entities that collect then sell personal information they’ve amassed on individuals. S.B. 1076's proponents, which included data brokers and advertisers, argued that the Delete Act is too burdensome and makes it impossible for consumers to exercise their privacy rights under California's privacy laws. In truth, S.B. 1076 would have aided fraudsters or credit abusers to misuse your personal information. The existing guardrails and protections under the Delete Act are some of the strongest in empowering vulnerable Californians to exercise their privacy rights under CCPA, and we're proud to have protected it.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Eyebrow-raising AI amendment passes Senate Commerce committee 

    As written, the amendment to the Future of Artificial Intelligence Innovation Act of 2024 (S. 4178) would prohibit government actions to promote AI systems being designed equitably, modify input data in systems to prevent disparate impacts on protected classes, conduct assessments for impact on protected classes, and review data inputs to ensure systems aren’t biased or spreading misinformation. The amendment also includes several prohibitions on actions such as promoting one race or sex as superior.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us

    A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

    A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine, reduced to a mere peripheral for a cruelly tireless robotic overlord that directs you to do the work that it can't, at a robotic pace, until your body and mind are smashed.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Internet Society ☛ Going for Gold: Strong Internet Resilience Matters

    When a host city is selected for the Olympics, major work begins to update the necessary infrastructure to accommodate thousands of athletes and millions of spectators.

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Sixth Circuit Court Stay Decision Risks Consumer Protections, Net Neutrality

    The court's action delays the FCC's net neutrality rules and other consumer protections from going into effect while the court decides the merits.

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Joins Nearly 30 Public Interest Groups Urging FCC To Lower Broadband Costs, Increase Consumer Choice for Apartment Residents

    Groups ask the FCC to act to increase consumer choice and ensure that Americans can access more affordable broadband plans and benefits.

  • RFA ☛ Bangladesh internet shutdown hits Rohingya camps hard

    With mobile data finally restored, refugees speak of struggling to feed themselves.

  • APNIC ☛ Bytes from IETF 120 — DNS topics

    Where are we going with the DNS?

  • The Register UK ☛ Appeals court maintains pause on net neutrality rules in US

    The appeals judges initially agreed to pause the changeover until August 5, and have now kicked it further down the road: The court will keep that pause in place, and hear oral arguments from each side in late October and early November before making any further judgments, with filings also expected to be submitted this month and next. We're thus unlikely to get a decision before the November 5 election.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • EFF ☛ Federal Appeals Court Rules That Fair Use May Be Narrowed to Serve Hollywood Profits

    Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a ban on reading any copyrighted work that is encumbered by access restrictions. It makes it illegal for you to read and understand the code that determines how your phone or car works and whether those devices are safe. It makes it illegal to create fair use videos for expressive purposes, reporting, or teaching. It makes it illegal for people with disabilities to convert ebooks they own into a format they can perceive. EFF and co-counsel at WSGR challenged Section 1201 in court on behalf of computer science professor Matthew Green and engineer Andrew “bunnie” Huang, and we asked the court to invalidate the law on First Amendment grounds.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Silicon Angle ☛ Apple asks court to dismiss Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit

  Apple Inc. has requested the dismissal of a Justice Department lawsuit that alleges its business practices in the smartphone market breach antitrust rules. The iPhone maker filed its motion today with the federal court in Newark, New Jersey that is presiding over the case.

  [...]

  The lawsuit accuses Apple of maintaining a monopoly in the smartphone market through illegal business practices. Furthermore, the Justice Department charges that the company is using its market position to raise prices for consumers, developers and content creators.

  The lawsuit points to the Apple Watch as one example of Apple’s alleged anticompetitive behavior. Many of the smartwatch’s features are only available to users who also have an iPhone. According to the Justice Department, this requirement reduces consumers’ incentive to buy smartphones from rival handset makers and thereby harms competition.

  The lawsuit also accuses Apple of engaging in anticompetitive practices across a range of other areas. The list includes the cloud-based video game streaming, entertainment and advertising segments.

• The Verge ☛ Nvidia faces two DOJ antitrust probes over market dominance

  The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly launched two separate probes into Nvidia regarding antitrust concerns about the computing giant’s AI-focused business dealings. The first investigation, reported by Politico, will see the DOJ examine Nvidia’s buyout of Run:ai, while the second, as reported by The Information, will assess if Nvidia abused its dominance in AI chips to discourage customers from using competing products.

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Slices the Bologna Thin with IPR Rehearing Waiver Decision

    Unified Patents is paid by its members to fight against non-practicing entity (NPE) patent monopoly assertions — often by challenge patent monopoly validity via inter partes review.  In this case, Unified challenged Voice Tech’s U.S. Patent No. 10,491,679 which covers technology for controlling a computer via a mobile device using voice commands. At the conclusion of the IPR, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) sided with Unified – finding all challenged claims (1-8) of the ‘679 patent monopoly unpatentable as obvious over the combination of two prior art references, Wong and Beauregard.  The PTAB also denied Voice Tech’s request for rehearing.

  • Congress Refocuses on Third-Party Litigation Funding Transparency

    Although some Congressmen are trying to resurrect bad ideas, other Congressional leaders are once again focused on taking action to address third-party litigation funding, a rapidly-growing industry with opaque business practices that have raised serious concerns on Capitol Hill and beyond.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel wins patent monopoly spat with R2 Semiconductor in the UK — chipmaker still has ongoing cases in Germany, Italy, and France

    Intel won over R2 Semiconductor in the UK regarding the voltage regulation technology used in the 10th—to 12th-gen defective chip maker Intel chips, which the latter alleges infringed on its patents.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Comments submitted to the USPTO over Hey Hi (AI) impacts on prior art

    Through policy advocacy work with Unified Edge, Unified Patents has submitted comments to the USPTO's request for comments regarding the impact of the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) on prior art, the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art, and determinations of patentability made in view of the foregoing.

    Unified has suggested that the USPTO may need to be wary of unscrupulous actors creating Hey Hi (AI) data dumps, including using bulk patent monopoly applications at the USPTO itself to create patent monopoly thickets.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ Imminent infringement at the core of Novartis’ UPC claim against Celltrion [Ed: UPC is a kangaroo court that exists against the law and against constitutions, but law firms and their bribed publishers (like this one) still try to legitimise it]

      The morning of the hearing was muggy, nevertheless room BZ5 at Düsseldorf local division was almost full. Large international teams were in force for both parties. The hearing took place in English and in hybrid form. Several representatives from both sides listened in via video without actively participating.

    • JUVE ☛ No luck for Dexcom at UPC after judgment from Munich local division [Ed: The UPC 'court' should not at exist in the first place, but it's connected to serious crimes of the EPO and severe corruption in patent spheres in Europe]

      For now, medical devices manufacturer Abbott must not fear a sales stop in the UPC region. Yesterday, the UPC local division in Munich declared Dexcom’s EP 3 797 685 B1 invalid. The patent monopoly protects “communication systems between a sensor electronics unit and a display device of an analyte monitoring system”.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Posts August 2024 Hearing Schedule

    The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled three (3) oral hearings for the month of August 2024. The second one will be held virtually, while the first and third will be held in-person at the USPTO's Madison East Building in Alexandria, Virginia. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.

    
    

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Independent UK ☛ Digital replicas to be banned under proposed AI law

      The NO FAKES Act, which stands for ‘Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe’, comes in response to advanced generative artificial intelligence tools that are able to create realistic deepfakes from a single photo or voice recording.

      Introduced by Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Amy Klobuchar and Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Thom Tillis this week, the bill would prevent a person’s likeness from being digitally replicated without their consent during their lifetime, and for 70 years after their death.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Pershing Square USA Officially Calls Off IPO, Plans to Explore ‘A Better Transaction Structure’

    Pershing Square USA has officially withdrawn its IPO and will now explore “a better transaction structure.” Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman announced the news on Twitter/X, after reports earlier this week pointed to a dramatically reduced value for the offering.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Buzzfeed sends ‘cease and desist’ letter over Hey Hi (AI) aggregator’s logo

    Trending Now accused of copyright monopoly infringement with its logo.

    [...]

    Buzzfeed also sent a similar letter to Press Gazette, saying our story was adding to Trending Now’s “infringement” because it featured two screenshots of the brand’s website in which the logo was visible.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Sports Leagues See 'X' as the 'Home of Social Media Piracy'

    Several prominent football leagues and organizations, including UEFA, the Premier League, and LaLiga, have sent a letter to X urging the social media platform to take live-streaming piracy more seriously. Supported by broadcasters, they are demanding more advanced anti-piracy features. According to the letter, lack of enforcement has turned X into the home of social media piracy.

  • Digital Music News ☛ New Yorker Writer Decries the ‘Enshittification of Spotify’ — But It’s Been a Years Long Process

    New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka finally got around to updating his Macbook and learning what the rest of us have known since the TikTokification of Spotify began—the new app design sucks on both desktop and mobile.

  • The Verge ☛ AI music startups say copyright violation is just rock and roll

    The lawsuits against Suno and Udio were raised in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for every work infringed.