Leftovers

• The Conversation ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] In defence of midges

• TMZ ☛ Gymnast MyKayla Skinner Says She's Received Death Threats Amid Simone Biles Feud

  Former Team USA gymnast MyKayla Skinner says she's been targeted with a ton of hate after Simone Biles shaded her on social media ... claiming her family has even received death threats amid the drama -- and she's begging for it all to stop.

• Seth Godin ☛ The challenge of “a risky scheme”

  The opportunity is to get better at identifying the risky schemes, particularly when they seem easy, convenient or short-term greedy. We can name them and push back on the pressure to go along because being manipulated is not in our interests.

• David L Farquhar ☛ Andy Warhol's lost Amiga art found

  After 39 years, Andy Warhol’s lost Amiga art has been found. And it’s for sale. Details of the reemergence help to shed light on an earlier discovery from about a decade ago. And those details come from the very person who taught Andy Warhol how to use a computer. In this blog post, I’ll put these discoveries in context, and offer some thoughts from both an art teacher and a sales engineer.

• [Old] David L Farquhar ☛ The Warhol Amiga discovery in context

  I’m not sure how many of the critics realize Warhol created this stuff in 1985 or perhaps even late 1984, using preproduction, prerelease hardware and software. All of it was likely buggy. And, as much as I like the Amiga, none of it was anywhere near today’s standards at that point. The stuff he had to work with was nowhere near 1989 standards–the Amiga in its early days was notoriously finicky.

  But let’s talk about the technology. Most of the images are 640×200 and 32 colors. That’s not much to work with, especially by today’s standards. But in 1985 it was revolutionary. Computer graphics got better because software publishers quickly took to doing the graphics development on an Amiga, like Warhol’s, then downscaling the images to the target computer. Ironically, the Amiga made its competition better by making their software better. The graphics capabilities of computers today is much better, which is why Warhol’s images are blocky and have very simple colors.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] Will a heat wave in Eastern Europe upset global food supply?

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • CNN ☛ ‘Terrible’: Apple removes new promo video after backlash in Thailand

    Tech giant Apple has pulled a new promotional video from the internet after heavy criticism in Thailand, with many social media users claiming it offered an unrealistic, outdated view of the country.

    The 10-minute clip, which received more than 5 million views after its release on Apple’s YouTube channel on July 18, is the fifth installment of the tech firm’s “Apple at Work – The Underdogs” series.

    But on Friday, the ad could no longer be accessed on the video-sharing platform.

    An Apple spokesperson confirmed to CNN that the short film “is no longer being aired.”

    “In our fifth installment of ‘The Underdogs’ ad series, we collaborated with a local production company to create a film set in Thailand. Our intent was to celebrate the country’s optimism and culture, and we apologize for not fully capturing the vibrancy of Thailand today,” he said.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Tech giants reveal plans to combat AI-fueled election antics

    Six months later, policymakers and experts say that while AI firms are living up to some of those commitments, they have failed to deliver on others, while not being sufficiently transparent about the steps they are taking.

  • The Record ☛ [Attackers] remotely wipe 13,000 students’ iPads and Chromebooks after breaching safety software

    Customers have been affected on a global basis, including in North America, Europe, and, particularly egregiously, in the high-tech city-state of Singapore.

    As proudly trumpeted on Mobile Guardian’s website, the company’s services are used by Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MoE) to protect all of the iPads and Chromebooks used by students in the country’s secondary schools.

  • 404 Media ☛ Where Facebook's AI Slop Comes From

    Facebook itself is paying creators in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines for bizarre AI spam that they are learning to make from YouTube influencers and guides sold on Telegram.

  • 404 Media ☛ Reddit Hentai Community Fights Over AI-Generated Monster Girls

    r/MonsterGirl, a community of 642,000 members for “content relating to the Monster Girl genre of hentai, mostly NSFW Content” according to the description, appeared to have reached a boiling point over AI images late last week with a number of threads about the issue being voted to the top of the subreddit.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ How long does Apple support Mac firmware?

    It’s common knowledge that Apple supports each version of macOS for a full year of updates, then a further two years of security updates. But for how long does it support the firmware in each model? Now that the only way to update a Mac’s firmware is by installing a macOS update, how does that affect the support period? This article tries to answer those questions, and in doing so unearths a bit of a mystery that happened just over a decade ago.

  • Science Alert ☛ Cannibal AIs Could Risk Digital 'Mad Cow Disease' Without Fresh Data

    A new study by researchers from Rice University and Stanford University in the US offers evidence that when AI engines are trained on synthetic, machine-made input rather than text and images made by actual people, the quality of their output starts to suffer.

    The researchers are calling this effect Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD). The AI effectively consumes itself, which means there are parallels for mad cow disease – a neurological disorder in cows that are fed the infected remains of other cattle.

  • teleSUR ☛ Journalist Murdered With Police Protection in Mexico - teleSUR English

    According to reports, Alejandro Martínez went to cover an accident in the municipality of Villagrán and when he returned to Celaya a van reached the police unit in which he was traveling and shot at the crew.

  • Futurism ☛ Is the Tech Stock Collapse Related a Sign of the AI Bubble Popping?

    But the sharp selloff could also be indicative of growing disillusionment with the priorities of the tech industry, with analysts becoming increasingly concerned that generative AI has yet to generate any significant profits despite untold billions of investment.

    Could this week's tech wipeout be symptomatic of a growing "AI bubble" that's set to burst? It's tough to say for sure, and there are many factors at play — but there's no question that lean times for tech will tighten the timetable to profitability for AI experiments.

  • CNBC ☛ FTC launches probe into 'surveillance pricing'

    The agency is seeking more information about how artificial intelligence is used to change pricing rapidly based on data about customer behavior and characteristics.

  • Federal Trade Commission ☛ Behind the FTC’s Inquiry into Surveillance Pricing Practices | Federal Trade Commission

    Recent media reports indicate that a growing number of grocery stores[1] and retailers may be using algorithms to establish targeted prices.[2] Advancements in machine learning make it cheaper for these systems to collect and process large volumes of personal data, which can open the door for price changes based on information like your precise location, your shopping habits, or your web browsing history.

    This means that consumers may now be subjected to surveillance pricing when they shop for anything, big or small, online or in person: a house, a car, even their weekly groceries.[3]

  • Omicron Limited ☛ What is 'surveillance pricing,' and is it forcing some consumers to pay more?

    Tech firms and consultants have been offering companies the ability to set "personalized" prices online based on a customer's ability or willingness to pay, using algorithms and artificial intelligence to sift through mountains of data to help maximize sales and profits. Advocates say the technology simply takes the principle of efficient pricing to its logical extreme; critics say it's unfair, discriminatory and a perversion of free-market capitalism.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Emerging Danger of Surveillance Pricing

    Economists soft-pedal this emerging trend by calling it “personalized” pricing, which reflects their view that tying prices to individual characteristics adds value for consumers. But Zephyr Teachout, who helped write anti-price-gouging rules in the New York attorney general’s office, has a different name for it: surveillance pricing.

    “I think public pricing is foundational to economic liberty,” said Teachout, now a law professor at Fordham University. “Now we need to lock it down with rules.

  • Robert J Sawyer ☛ Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar 7 Archive

    I spent weeks putting all this together. The archive contains not just the WordStar program but also extensive resources on how to use it, in addition to fully text-searchable PDFs of the original manuals, totaling over 1,000 pages, scanned from my own copies.

    Since MS-DOS programs, such as WordStar, can't run under modern operating systems without using an MS-DOS emulator, I've provided two complete plug-and-play packages for running WordStar under Windows, one using DOSBox-X, an emulator that's still actively developed and maintained, and another using vDosPlus, which still works wonderfully but is no longer maintained.

  • Yury Molodtsov ☛ What Makes Telegram Special

    Telegram is a secretive social media platform with 900 million users. Their employees aren’t allowed to talk about their jobs. It only has one product manager in its founder. And they got to 900 million users without turning into Facebook but also aren’t earning as much.

    Telegram is not really a secure messenger app. It’s one of the largest social media platforms. But certain product choices and the location of its audiences make it almost invisible to people based in the United States or Western Europe.

  • Futurism ☛ Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

    It's a practice that blurs the line between journalism and advertising to the breaking point, makes the web worse for everybody, and renders basic questions like "is this writer a real person?" fuzzier and fuzzier.

    And sources say yes, the content is frequently produced using AI.

  • Vox ☛ Nvidia, ChatGPT and more: Is there an AI bubble — and is it about to pop?

    That’s how much the tech industry as a whole is set to spend building out the artificial intelligence industry over the coming years. And even in Silicon Valley, where several companies have market capitalizations that start with “T,” a trillion dollars is a lot of money. And while you won’t find more fervent evangelists for AI anywhere than in the C-suite of companies like Google and Microsoft, eventually, all that money has to be recouped. The alternative would be an economic meltdown of the sort we haven’t experienced for years.

    Which may just well be in the process of happening.

  • The Conversation ☛ ‘Intersectional hallucinations’: why AI struggles to understand that a six-year-old can’t be a doctor or claim a pension

    Wild inaccuracies from image generators and chatbots are easy to spot, but synthetic data also produces hallucinations – results that are unlikely, biased, or plain impossible. As with images and text, they can be amusing, but the widespread use of these systems in all areas of public life means that the potential for harm is massive.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Zambia Begins Importing 218 Megawatts of Power from South Africa's ESCOM

    This strategic move by ZESCO aims to enhance the reliability of power supply and support the country’s essential services amid growing energy demands.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ Illinois relaxes biometric privacy law, reduces penalties

      Alan L Friel, deputy chair of the Data Privacy & Cybersecurity practice at law firm Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP, criticized the change. Writing in the National Law Review, Friel opined the revised penalty regime "will be unwelcomed by plaintiffs' lawyers" as it "will significantly reduce the potential damages and lower the settlement value of BIPA claims."

  • Confidentiality

    • VOA News ☛ Bloomberg apologizes for premature story on prisoner swap, disciplines journalists involved

      Bloomberg's story, released before the prisoners had actually been freed, violated the company's ethical standards, John Micklethwait, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, said in a memo to his staff.

      The company would not say how many employees were disciplined and would not identify them. The story carried the bylines of Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter for Bloomberg News, and Cagan Koc, Amsterdam bureau chief.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-30 [Older] UK Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary handed life sentence

  • Politico ☛ British MPs want to haul Elon Musk before parliament over riots

    Labour MPs Chi Onwurah and Dawn Butler, who are competing to chair parliament’s science, innovation and technology committee, both told POLITICO they’d press the billionaire X owner and other technology executives to answer questions about the role of social media platforms amid mounting unrest in the U.K.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Risk of Dangerous Climate Tipping Points Rises with Each 0.1°C of Warming, New Analysis Shows

    Every 0.1°C of planetary warming increases the risk of reaching dangerous tipping points, says a new open-access article published in the journal Nature Communications. It illustrates why emissions must be scaled back immediately, without waiting for future carbon capture technologies, the authors stress.

    A tipping point arises when the next increment of temperature rise caused by greenhouse gas emissions shifts the structure of one of the Earth’s natural systems, producing a cascade of climate impacts out of proportion to the emissions themselves.

    The new analysis, by a team of 10 scientists based at leading universities and environmental research institutes in Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden, focuses on four tipping points: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Michigan election officials probe website of Musk-backed PAC

    Crucially, the PAC's voter registration page didn't work properly and still doesn't work. No one using it would be registered to vote. The concern here is that residents of Michigan, a contested battleground state, as well as people in other swing states, might think they've registered to vote via this website, only to discover too late that they're not.

  • India Times ☛ ByteDance joins OpenAI's Sora rivals with AI video app launch

    ByteDance has expanded its offering of a software that can generate videos based on text prompts, joining a growing number of Chinese tech firms entering an emerging market also targeted by ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

    Since Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled in February its text-to-video model Sora, which is not open for public use yet, Chinese companies have rapidly developed similar tools, with several launching models accessible to users.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What I Saw in the Darién Gap

    More than 600 people were in the crowd that plunged into the jungle that morning, beginning a roughly 70-mile journey from northern Colombia into southern Panama. That made it a slow day by local standards. They came from Haiti, Ethiopia, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela, headed north across the only strip of land that connects South America to Central America.

    The Darién Gap was thought for centuries to be all but impassable. Explorers and would-be colonizers who entered tended to die of hunger or thirst, be attacked by animals, drown in fast-rising rivers, or simply get lost and never emerge. Those dangers remain, but in recent years the jungle has become a superhighway for people hoping to reach the United States. According to the United Nations, more than 800,000 may cross the Darién Gap this year—a more than 50 percent increase over last year’s previously unimaginable number. Children under 5 are the fastest-growing group.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok Lite rewards program removed in E.U. because of ‘addictive effect’

    After TikTok Lite was launched in Spain and France in April, the European Union, which is composed of 27 countries, accused the company of failing to report the potential risks of using the rewards program.

    That type of reporting is required under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a regulation introduced last year to protect people from illegal content, targeted ads, unwanted algorithmic feeds and disinformation. The act requires companies behind popular social media apps to be transparent about how content and products are algorithmically recommended and how their features could be addictive.

  • European Commission ☛ TikTok commits to permanently withdraw TikTok Lite Rewards

    Today, the Commission has made TikTok's commitments to permanently withdraw TikTok Lite Rewards programme from the EU binding. These commitments have been submitted by TikTok to address the concerns raised by the Commission in the formal proceedings opened against TikTok on 22 April and ensure compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).

  • New Statesman ☛ Social media has turned the riots into a spectacle

    The positive, if there is a positive, is that whilst our phones have become smart, the people using them haven’t. What they’re doing is they’re recording their criminality and the criminality of people around them. As we move to the next stage, which is the justice stage, there is now an overwhelming amount of evidence. I’ve already heard people have pleaded guilty [on Monday] morning, because they are faced with their own video evidence of whatever it is that they’ve done.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘I put myself in this trap’: In his own words, one gay Russian official describes working for a government that doesn’t believe he should exist — Meduza

• Environment

  • The Atlantic ☛ Humanity Is Slowing Down Earth

    The effects of climate change are even more apparent in studies of Earth’s axis, which can wander because of geological and atmospheric processes. For example, when Earth entered its post-glacial era and the frigid weight of all that ice melted into the oceans, the planet’s viscous mantle began to shift, and the crust rose like foam. The rebound has occurred unevenly, shifting the planet’s balance. In the early aughts, scientists registered a sudden change: After a century of wobbling toward roughly the same part of Canada, the axis began drifting eastward. Adhikari and other researchers have attributed most of that shift to the melting of polar ice sheets and the resulting sea-level rise. Once again, the movement of water from the poles to the equator is to blame. “It all boils down to the transport of mass from one part of the planet to another part of the planet,” Adhikari said. In fact, the very shape of the planet is changing, turning a flattened sphere into an even flatter sphere.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Pro Publica ☛ Oklahoma Oil Companies Opt Out of Voluntary Fund to Clean Up Oil Wells

      Oklahoma’s oil and gas industry touts its altruism and environmental stewardship by pointing to a voluntary levy that companies pay on their production, which is then used to clean up orphan wells that have been left to the state.

      But some of Oklahoma’s biggest oil companies have opted out of the fund, forcing the state to return millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to restoring land scarred by discarded drilling infrastructure and contaminated by leaks and spills, according to a ProPublica and Capital & Main analysis.

    • The Hindu ☛ With Carbon Neutral Goshree Campaign, island gears up to earn its place in the sun

      Thanthonni Thuruth, an island home to around 60 families right in the heart of Kochi, will have a place in the sun as the Carbon Neutral Goshree Campaign under the aegis of the Goshree Islands Development Authority (GIDA) is aiming to make all households on the island fully reliant on solar power. When the goal is achieved, it is expected to be the first island in the country relying solely on solar power for household requirements.

    • Futurism ☛ Cybertruck Catches Fire, Killing Driver

      While we still don't know what caused the driver to veer off the road, Tesla's unorthodox EV pickup has been recalled four times already since going on sale late last year in response to a barrage of technical issues. In April, Tesla had to recall all Cybertrucks over a serious design flaw that could cause the massive pickup's accelerator pedal to get stuck.

    • ABC ☛ Driver dies in fiery Tesla Cybertruck crash on Fisher Road in Chambers County, Texas DPS says - ABC13 Houston

      Texas Department of Public Safety officials said a Tesla Cybertruck left the roadway and struck a culvert before catching fire.

      Video from the scene shows the Cybertruck was just a burned-out shell after the flames were extinguished.

    • University of Michigan ☛ ‘We’re not going to give up’: UMich Solar Car Team wins American Solar Challenge

      Astrum, the team’s 17th solar car since its founding in 1989, took 4th place in the 1,800-mile Bridgestone World Solar Challenge race across Australia’s Outback in 2023. After the car returned home in early 2024, the team faced several design challenges when adapting the car to a new set of regulations for the ASC. U-M alum Daniel Benedict, the team’s project manager, said the World Solar Challenge had more lenient guidelines than the U.S.-based race.

    • European Commission ☛ Feedback: Upcoming: Motor vehicles: effective and secure access to on-board diagnostic and repair & maintenance information (delegated act)

      This initiative clarifies the measures related to cybersecurity and access control that vehicle manufacturers can apply to the on-board diagnostic and repair & maintenance information on their vehicles.

      It also introduces requirements to ensure that Article 61 of the Type Approval Regulation remains effective in light of recent technical and regulatory developments, in particular in the area of cybersecurity.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-01 [Older] Fires in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest for July Surge to Highest in Two Decades

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-03 [Older] Severe Drought Has Returned to the Amazon. and It's Happening Earlier Than Expected

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-30 [Older] Italy: Bear shot dead after attack on hiker

  • Overpopulation

    • [Old] The Conversation ☛ Climate crisis sees rise in illegal water markets in the Middle East

      Water delivery via road is increasingly relevant in major cities worldwide. In parts of the world, urban water networks have deteriorated to such a degree that 1 billion people already face frequent public water supply interruptions. This has led to a proliferation of informal water markets. In many water-scarce countries, truck drivers, well owners, or both operate without a license to evade charges and try to obscure their activities. Whether these markets alleviate or exacerbate water stress is a question research has yet to answer.

      This is because the nature of illegal markets – they operate covertly – makes it tricky to analyse them. However, our team at the FUSE project has successfully connected models developed by economists and hydrologists to map out illegal water markets in Jordan, the world’s fifth most water-scarce country in the world. To ration its scarce water resources, Jordan introduced scheduled piped water supply interruptions in 1987. Since then, Jordanians have seen the average public water access duration fall from 7 to 1.5 days per week.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-30 [Older] German inflation edges up to 2.3% in July

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-30 [Older] German economy contracts unexpectedly in second quarter

  • PC Mag ☛ Dell Makes Cuts to Boost AI Pivot, Reportedly Laying Off 12,500 Employees

    Dell is cutting more staff, its second round of mass layoffs in the past 15 months.

    Two Dell sales executives broke the news in an internal memo to employees on Monday, Bloomberg reports. Dell is switching up its sales teams to put a big emphasis on AI products and make changes to how it handles data center sales, which are in demand as AI firms look to train their latest models.

    "We are getting leaner," says the internal memo from Dell's Bill Scannell and John Byrne. "We’re streamlining layers of management and reprioritizing where we invest."

    In a statement to The Register, Dell said: "We are combining teams and prioritizing where we invest across the company. We continually evolve our business, so we're set up to deliver the best innovation, value, and service to our customers and partners."

  • WSWS ☛ Dell announces mass layoffs amid expanding global tech job cuts [Ed: Windows OEMs when Windows does not sell well]

    Bloomberg reported that two sales executives sent an internal memo to Dell employees that said, “We are getting leaner. We’re streamlining layers of management and reprioritizing where we invest.”

    The Bloomberg report added that the executives Bill Scannell and John Byrne told the staff the company is creating a new group focused on artificial intelligence products and services and that Dell will change how data center sales are approached.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Dow sinks more than 1,000 points in global market sell-off

    Global markets slid Monday as fears of a slowing U.S. economy sparked investor angst, resulting in some of the most intense volatility Wall Street has seen in years.

    Investors were rattled by a trickle of disappointing economic data last week, including a weaker-than-expected jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed nearly 1,034 points, or 2.6 percent, and closed at 38,703.27. The broader S&P 500 lost 3.0 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 3.4 percent as wariness around artificial intelligence led investors to turn away from big names such as Nvidia and Microsoft.

  "Microsoft: Although the company has made no official announcements, it is reported to have reduced its workforce by approximately 1,000 employees" https://lacartita.com/the-controversial-wave-of-layoffs-and-its-impact-on-the-economy/

  • The Controversial Wave of Layoffs and Its Impact on The Economy

    Microsoft: Although the company has made no official announcements, it is reported to have reduced its workforce by approximately 1,000 employees, primarily in the mixed reality and Azure divisions. The move suggests a shift in the company’s priorities and possibly a reassessment of its investments in emerging technologies.

  • Reuters ☛ Phillips 66 slashes jobs, caps reduction at 1%

    "Phillips 66 continues to look to ways to position our organization to help advance its strategic priorities and enable more efficient ways of working," a company spokesperson said.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] With Nguyen Phu Trong gone, are EU-Vietnam ties at risk?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-07-30 [Older] Belarus pardons German sentenced to death

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Former Meta Security Chief Alex Stamos Joins SentinelOne

    SentinelOne (NYSE: S), a prominent figure in AI-driven security, has announced the appointment of Alex Stamos as its new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Stamos, who previously served as Chief Security Officer at Meta and Chief Information Security Officer at Yahoo!, will be tasked with overseeing SentinelOne’s security engineering and operations teams.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ A Better Investigatory Board for Cyber Incidents - Schneier on Security

    The most recent report—on China’s penetration of Microsoft—is much better. This time, the CSRB gave us an extensive analysis of Microsoft’s security failures and placed blame for the attack’s success squarely on their shoulders. Its recommendations were also more specific and extensive, addressing Microsoft’s board and leaders specifically and the industry more generally. The report describes how Microsoft stopped rotating cryptographic keys in early 2021, reducing the security of the systems affected in the hack. The report suggests that if the company had set up an automated or manual key rotation system, or a way to alert teams about the age of their keys, it could have prevented the attack on its systems. The report also looked at how Microsoft’s competitors—think Google, Oracle, and Amazon Web Services—handle this issue, offering insights on how similar companies avoid mistakes.

    Yet there are still problems, with the report itself and with the environment in which it was produced.

  • Council on Foreign Relations ☛ What Is Hamas? | Council on Foreign Relations

    Dozens of countries, including the United States, have designated Hamas a terrorist organization over the years, though some apply this label only to its military wing. The United States has pledged billions of dollars in new military aid since the Israel-Hamas war began and remains Israel’s top weapons supplier.

    Hamas’s most important ally in the region is Iran, but it has also received significant financial and political support from Turkey. Qatar hosts the Hamas political office and also provides it with financial resources, though with the knowledge and cooperation of the Israeli government. Hamas is meanwhile one component of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, a regional network of anti-Israel partners that includes Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and various militias in Iraq and Syria. Given these connections, many security experts fear that the Israel-Hamas war could engulf the region in a wider conflict.

  • [Old] The Hamas-Iran Relationship

    As details emerge of potential direct links to the attack on Israel, one thing is clear: Hamas would not have been able to plan and conduct such an operation without years of Iranian training, Iranian weapons, and hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian funding.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic

    John Schulman, a member of OpenAI’s founding team who played a key role in its product development efforts, is leaving for rival Anthropic PBC.

  • Wired ☛ Elon Musk’s X Sues Advertisers Over Alleged Boycott

    The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, says dozens of advertisers followed the recommendation of a key advertising coalition, Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), to boycott buying ads on X since Musk bought the company. The suit says this turn of events cost the company billions of dollars in revenue. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for violation of US antitrust law.

  • uni Northwestern ☛ Can Local Journalism Find Fatigue Cure?

    The 2024 presidential election remains months away, yet a new Medill survey shows that as of May almost half of surveyed adults already were sick of hearing about it—a finding that could have significant implications not only for national news organizations but also local ones.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Corporate values: Why do companies bother saying 'sorry'?

    Sometime saying "sorry" is just not enough. To mean something it should come from the heart. But what about when it comes from a company?

  • India Times ☛ Google has an illegal monopoly on search, US judge finds

    This move is also a green light to aggressive US antitrust enforcers prosecuting Big Tech, a sector that has been under fire from across the political spectrum. The ruling paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, possibly including a breakup of Google parent Alphabet, which would change the landscape of the online advertising world that Google has dominated for years.

  • BIA Net ☛ Erdoğan labels critics of Instagram ban ‘house negros’

    The president used harsh language to describe those opposing the ban, referring to them as ‘house niggers’ who align themselves with foreign interests over national sovereignty, and accused social media giants of ‘digital fascism’ during a speech at a human rights event at his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) headquarters.

  • VOA News ☛ Turkey to meet Instagram officials after access ban, minister says 

    The move came after a senior Turkish official accused Instagram of blocking condolence posts following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Press Gazette ☛ ‘The first podcast election’: Podcasts saw explosion in downloads over UK election

      A spokesperson for Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, painted a similar picture, telling Press Gazette: “Total hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK have increased by 49% over the last 12 months.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ Why Has Hu Xijin, a Chinese Nationalist, Suddenly Gone Silent?

    Mr. Hu has not explained his silence; nor have China’s internet authorities. But many in China think he has been censored, pointing to signs that party officials may have been irked — paradoxically — because Mr. Hu lauded them in the wrong way. In China, even misplaced praise for the party may be enough to draw the ire of censors.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Artist Who Terrifies Vladimir Putin

    Skochilenko offers the same kind of hope about Russia, even in this dark moment. Putin has tried to lock down information about the war in Ukraine, and she looked for other ways to make its price known. In the speech she gave in the courtroom when she was convicted, she talked about being motivated by her pacifism, about the sacredness and beauty and brevity of life. And she ended by addressing the state prosecutor directly: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban suspends broadcast licenses of 14 media outlets in Afghanistan

    The Afghan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) suspended 17 broadcast licenses for 14 media outlets on July 22 in eastern Nangarhar, one of Afghanistan’s most populous provinces.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Next NCTJ chair warns journalism has become 'elite sport'

    Brooks said another of her priorities as chair would be to help ensure the Community News Project lives on after Meta pulled its funding for more than 100 reporters in under-served communities across the UK.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Prosecutors' report on Marion newspaper raid excuses abuse of power, leaves questions dangling

    Officials who carted off computers and cellphones from the Record on a flimsy pretext didn’t do so out of ill will, according to Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson. The fact that a Marion County Record reporter had investigated Police Chief Gideon Cody? The fact that 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer died the day after the raid? Both dismissed as immaterial. The damage done to journalism and journalists across the United States? Simply not the their problem.

    With lawsuits about the raid thick on the ground, Bennett and Wilkerson aren’t commenting further. It’s a shame, given all the loose ends and unanswered questions.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Abuses In Kansas Newspaper Raid Excused By Prosecutors

    "It is not a crime under Kansas law for a law enforcement officer to conduct a poor investigation and reach erroneous conclusions," the special prosecutors asserted.

    Judge Laura Viar, the magistrate who authorized the search warrants for the raids, was also cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, even though it was recently reported that Viar may have deliberately misrepresented key facts to ensure the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct did not hold her accountable.

  • NPR ☛ Prosecutors say they plan to charge former police chief over Kansas newspaper raid

    Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that the staff at the Marion County Record committed no crimes before former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody led a raid on its offices and the home of its publisher. They said police warrants signed by a judge to allow the searches contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation" and that the searches were not legally justified.

  • CPJ ☛ Russia sentences journalist Dmitry Kolezev to 7½ years in absentia on ‘fake’ news charges

    The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces Tuesday’s sentencing of exiled journalist Dmitry Kolezev to 7½ years in prison in absentia on charges of spreading “fake” news about the Russian army and urges authorities to stop harassing Russian journalists abroad.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] The Amazon Labor Union Just Elected New Leadership

  • [Old] Reason ☛ Ohio Cops' Defamation Suit Against Afroman Will Partially Proceed

    The Adams County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) executed a search warrant on Afroman's house last August on suspicion of drug possession, drug trafficking, and kidnapping. As Reason reported in June, the deputies were searching for evidence of outlandish claims from a confidential informant that the house contained a basement dungeon.

    Deputies found neither large amounts of marijuana nor a depraved dungeon. Afroman was never charged with a crime. He responded by releasing two music videos viciously mocking the deputies—"Lemon Pound Cake" and "Will You Help Me Repair My Door." He also sold merchandise with images of the deputies and used the footage to promote his products and tours.

    The mockery offended the deputies so much that seven of them filed a lawsuit against Afroman in March. The deputies argued Afroman used their personas for commercial purposes without permission, causing them to suffer "embarrassment, ridicule, emotional distress, humiliation, and loss of reputation."

  • [Old] Gannett ☛ What's happened with the Afroman case in Ohio?

    The case arose when Adams County Sheriff deputies obtained and executed a search warrant on Afroman’s Adams County home. Afroman wasn’t home at the time, but his wife captured the police on her cell phone camera and home security cameras captured other images.

    Afroman incorporated many of the images in his Lemon Poundcake video. It appears the song was inspired when one of the cops appeared to look longingly at the pound cake as he was executing the warrant.

  • [Old] Southeast Ohio ☛ Afroman breaks it down

    As much as Foreman relies on comedy to cope with his day-to-day life, the reality of his current situation isn’t something he takes lightly. Foreman is in the middle of a lawsuit with the Adams County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) due to three songs he released in late 2022 and the event that inspired them.

    The trio of tracks — “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera” and “Lemon Pound Cake” — take a comedic spin on the Office deputies searching Foreman’s kitchen, closet, bedroom and garage on Aug. 21, 2022.

    Office deputies knocked down his kitchen door and nearly took a slice of the cake while executing a search warrant on suspicion of kidnapping and drug trafficking, all of which was caught on a home surveillance system.

  • Techdirt ☛ 9th Circuit: No Immunity For Officers Who Answered Distress Call By Killing Distressed Person

    Here’s yet more anecdotal evidence demonstrating why we’re be better off routing mental health calls to mental health professionals, rather than to people who tend to respond to things they can’t immediately control with violence. The good news is more cities are experimenting with multiple options for 911 response. The better news is that those experiments have been successful.

    The bad news is everything else. Most cities aren’t willing to do this. And because they’re unwilling to explore their options, more people suffering mental health crises are going to end up dead. That’s what happened to Roy Scott, a Las Vegas resident who was “helped” to death by Las Vegas police officers Kyle Smith and Theodore Huntsman.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] [Book Review] The EU Geo-blocking Regulation: A Commentary

  • Techdirt ☛ 6th Circuit Temporarily Puts Net Neutrality On Ice As The Post-Chevron GOP Assault On The Regulatory State Accelerates

    In mid-July, the Sixth Circuit temporarily paused restoration of the rules. Now the court has granted an extended stay, preventing the rules from being restored until the courts can hash out the legal debate between industry and government, which won’t happen until at least November. There’s a very real possibility that thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the rules won’t survive legal challenge.

    The court’s stay makes it pretty clear they’re inclined to see things the way of the telecom industry: namely that the FCC lacks the authority to impose net neutrality rules without a more specific new net neutrality law crafted by Congress. It doesn’t appear to matter that previous courts confirmed the FCC has that right, or that Congress is clearly too corrupt to pass more tailored consumer protections.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Logitech: 'Forever mouse' was just a (bad) idea

    Logitech’s idea of a mouse that you’d buy once and pay for forever is just a “peek” into a possible future, Logitech said, in a statement sent to PCWorld and other publications. The company has no plans to bring it to market and will keep selling its existing mice, which you pay for, then own for the life of the mouse.

  • The Verge ☛ Logitech’s ‘forever’ mouse isn’t happening

    The statement came in response to immediate backlash over a concept described by Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shared her company’s early concept of a “forever mouse” with The Verge’s EIC Nilay Patel on the Decoder podcast. Faber described the potential mouse as a high-quality, software-enabled mouse that lasts as long as a good wristwatch.

  • The Register UK ☛ Nvidia’s subscription software empire is taking shape

    Software is Nvidia's not-so-secret weapon, but until recently that weapon has taken the form of enablement. Over the past two years we've seen the accelerator champ's software strategy embrace a subscription pricing model in a meaningful way.

    In early 2022, months before OpenAI's ChatGPT set off the AI gold rush, Nvidia CFO Collete Kress detailed the GPU giant's subscription fuelled roadmap – which, she opined, would eventually drive a trillion dollars in revenues.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] WIPO releases Guide to Trade Secrets and Innovation [Ed: Propaganda in "Guide" clothing]

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-08-03 [Older] 10 IP Books to Pack in Your Summer Totes [Ed: Propaganda and protectionism as "literature"]

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-08-02 [Older] [Book Review] Intangible Intangibles

• New York Times ☛ Nvidia Scrambles for a Response to Antitrust Scrutiny

  With a 90 percent share of the A.I. chip market, the company is facing antitrust investigations into the possibility that it could lock in customers or hurt competitors.

• Wired ☛ A US Judge Ruled That Google Is an Illegal Monopolist. Here's What Might Come Next

  The jurist could order big changes to the unboxing experience, with users having to select their default search provider. He also could go as far as to force Google to sell parts of its business. Mehta scheduled a hearing for September to begin the process of deciding the penalties, but with Google appealing the verdict, it could be years—if ever—before the search giant must comply.

  Though legal and economics experts say it’s difficult to guess where Mehta might land with his remedies, they have some ideas of what he might be considering. Here’s a look at five options.

• New York Times ☛ How the Google Antitrust Ruling May Influence Tech Competition

  The influence of the Microsoft antitrust case was, in fact, apparent in the Google decision. In Judge Mehta’s 277-page judgment, Microsoft appeared on 104 pages, both as an aspiring rival to Google and as a legal precedent.

• JURIST ☛ US federal judge rules Google violated antitrust law by monopolizing internet searches

  Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits monopolization or attempts to monopolize and targets unfair practices to achieve monopoly power. Google was accused of employing an unfair strategy to stifle competition by paying billions of dollars to companies like Apple and Samsung to allow its search engine to be the default option on their devices and browsers. The ruling also found that Google’s monopoly enabled the undertaking to inflate prices for search ads, increasing its revenue to further entrench its dominant position.

• The Atlantic ☛ Google Already Won

  But even if the payola is forced to end, that doesn’t mean competitors would arise or thrive in the search market. The DOJ has been aggressively pursuing antitrust action—against Google but also against Apple (for its alleged iPhone monopoly) and Meta (for its control of Instagram and WhatsApp)—but these cases arguably needed to happen a decade or more earlier, when the tech companies had accrued less power and the activities they facilitated were still developing. Blocking the Google acquisition of the ad-tech company DoubleClick in 2007 might have prevented some of the company’s subsequent monopoly abuse, because DoubleClick put the digital-ad industry under Google’s control.

• CBC ☛ Google has illegal monopoly over online searches, U.S. judge rules

  His ruling against Google paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, such as breaking up the company or requiring it to stop paying smartphone makers billions of dollars annually to set Google as the default search engine on new phones.

  Ultimately, Google will have a chance to appeal the court's rulings to the U.S. District Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit.

• India Times ☛ How the Google antitrust ruling may influence tech competition

  At the time, a federal judge said Microsoft had abused the monopoly power of its Windows operating system and ordered that the company be split up. A breakup was reversed on appeal, but key legal findings were upheld. And Microsoft was prohibited from forcing restrictive contracts on its industry partners and ordered to open some of its technology to outsiders -- preventing the company from single-handedly controlling the internet.

  More than two decades later, a ruling in a Google antitrust case similarly promises to shape new rules for the tech industry. Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found on Monday that Google had violated antitrust laws by stifling rivals in internet search to protect its monopoly.

• VOA News ☛ Google loses massive antitrust case over its search dominance

  After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft and Apple during last year's 10-week trial, Mehta issued his potentially market-shifting decision three months after the two sides presented their closing arguments in early May.

  "After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling.

• The Verge ☛ Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case

  Judge Amit Mehta’s decision represents a major victory for the Department of Justice, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing the online search market. Still, Mehta did not agree with all of the government’s arguments. For example, he rejected the claim that Google has monopoly power in one specific part of the ads market. He agreed with the government, however, that Google has a monopoly in “general search services” and “general search text advertising.”

  It’s not yet clear what this ruling will mean for the future of Google’s business, as this initial finding is only about the company’s liability, not about remedies. Google’s fate will be determined in the next phase of proceedings, which could result in anything from a mandate to stop certain business practices to a breakup of Google’s search business.

• Patents

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] When is the inventor of an AI model also an inventor of the model's output? A closer look at the USPTO Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions [Ed: They use misleading terms here]

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • IP Kat ☛ 2024-08-02 [Older] [UPCKat] UPC Court of Appeal demonstrates (surprising) flexibility in order on appeal timelines [Ed: UPC is illegal and violates constitutions, but the litigation profiteers continue not to care and carry on with the crime]

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] Revving halt: EUIPO upholds refusal to register Porsche’s accelerating engine sound mark

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-07-31 [Older] [Guest post] Does ‘ICE LAND’ mislead consumers about the origin of the goods? (Unlike EUIPO) No, says Appeal Board in Uzbekistan

  • Right of Publicity

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Google is finally taking action to curb non-consensual deepfakes

      Though terrible, Swift’s deepfakes did perhaps more than anything else to raise awareness about the risks and seem to have galvanized tech companies and lawmakers to do something.

      “The screw has been turned,” says Henry Ajder, a generative AI expert who has studied deepfakes for nearly a decade. We are at an inflection point where the pressure from lawmakers and awareness among consumers is so great that tech companies can’t ignore the problem anymore, he says.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site Blocking Can’t Prevent Pay TV Subscriber Decline in Uruguay

    Uruguay's Ministry of Industry issued a decree in October 2022 which heralded the country's first pirate site blocking program. Since then the country has blocked over 300 pirate domains following requests from various broadcasters. Some other figures of interest; in December 2022, there were around 573,000 pay TV subscribers in Uruguay. A year later that figure had fallen to 496,000. Pay TV revenues were less affected than one might expect.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Record Labels Ask Court to Deny Cox's Challenge of '$1 Billion' Piracy Verdict

    Internet provider Cox Communications wants a do-over of the piracy liability trial, where it was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages to the record label plaintiffs. The ISP previously argued that 'concealed' evidence warrants a new look at the case. According to the music companies, however, Cox is grasping at straws, relying on speculation in the hope of getting a do-over.

  • EFF ☛ Support Justice for Digital Creators and Tech Users

    This week, many EFFers will head to the Las Vegas hacker conferences—BSidesLV, Black Hat USA, and DEF CON—to rally behind researchers and tinkerers. EFF gives legal advice to folks like them all year because computer security has always relied on skilled hackers, and your privacy and free expression rely on strong web security. Check our conference Deeplinks post to get a full rundown of EFF's presentations and activities in Las Vegas.

  • Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ The Universe of Disco : Look at what they tried to take from us

    In 1987, the album was rereleased, with the missing tracks restored. But until I was in college, I had not only never heard the three omitted tracks, I didn't even know they existed.

  • Futurism ☛ Nvidia Caught Stealing Mind-Boggling Quantity of YouTube Videos to Train AI

    Leaked documents obtained by 404 Media reveal that AI-powering chip giant Nvidia has been quietly scraping astronomical numbers of YouTube video data to train its AI models — a legally and ethically murky decision that adds to the ever-growing pile of deeply questionable, and often very secretive, AI training practices by entities ranging from startups to corporate giants.

    According to 404's explosive scoop, Nvidia has obtained an eye-watering amount of YouTube data to train AI models including its Cosmos deep learning model, a self-driving car algorithm, a "digital human" AI avatar product, and its 3D world-building tool called Omniverse.