Leftovers

• Computers Are Bad ☛ A pedantic review of the las vegas loop

  Did you hear that Elon Musk dug a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center?

  I think it is pretty universally known by now that the "Las Vegas Loop" is impractical, poorly thought out, and generally an embarrassment to society and industry. I will spare an accounting of the history and future of the system, but I will give a bit of context for the unfamiliar reader. The Las Vegas Loop is a (supposed) mass-transit system built and operated by The Boring Company for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Besides four (ish) stations in the Convention Center, it has been expanded to serve Resorts World as well. It will, according to plan, be expanded to as many as 93 stops throughout the Las Vegas metropolitan area, despite the mayor of Las Vegas calling it "impractical" and "unsafe and inaccessible." This odd contradiction comes about because The Boring Company is footing a very large portion of the construction cost, while much of the rest is coming from casinos and resorts, making it extremely inexpensive for regional government agencies.

• Digital Music News ☛ Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies Aged 56

  After joining Google as one of the company’s earliest employees, Wojcicki led the development of its AdSense software. AdSense has enabled the company to broker ads for millions of independent websites and helped to cement its place early on as a technology giant.

• Trail of Bits ☛ Trail of Bits Advances to AIxCC Finals

  The AIxCC semifinal featured a series of challenges based on real-world software, including nginx, Jenkins, Apache Tika, SQLite, and the Linux kernel. Teams’ CRSs had to automatically discover and patch vulnerabilities in these complex codebases within strict time and resource constraints.

• Science

  • [Old] Nature ☛ Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor

    On Google Cloud servers, we estimate that performing the same task for m = 20 with 0.1% fidelity using the Schrödinger–Feynman algorithm would cost 50 trillion core-hours and consume one petawatt hour of energy. To put this in perspective, it took 600 seconds to sample the circuit on the quantum processor three million times, where sampling time is limited by control hardware communications; in fact, the net quantum processor time is only about 30 seconds. The bitstring samples from all circuits have been archived online (see ‘Data availability’ section) to encourage development and testing of more advanced verification algorithms.

• Education

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post - Learning from the Archives to Build the Future at the APS Press

    In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Press and De Gruyter, the APS Press is in the process of digitizing this vast backlist, with the goal of making every volume ever printed easily available in the modern marketplace. This has not been an easy task, as no complete list of all APS Press publications has ever been produced. Things inevitably get lost in the shuffle of 250 years in the book business, especially when many of the works in question were published before modern cataloging practices became widespread and before Library of Congress numbers even existed.

  • Chris ☛ Traffic Flow Fundamentals Flashcards

    I have read the first half of Traffic Flow Fundamentals; May; Pearson; 1990. and since I have never shared how I write my flashcards, I figured I might take the opportunity to do so. This first half of the book generated around 120 flashcards. I wouldn’t normally make so many for just half a book, but this touches on an area which I have wanted to learn more about for a long time.

• Hardware

  • Your Next Laptop Won’t Be “Intel Inside”

    Intel-based laptops have poor energy performance, with batteries lasting less than 2 hours and overheating. Besides, these CPUs have accumulated many design bugs over the years, requiring inefficient workarounds from compiler and operating system manufacturers.

    This became evident when Apple switched its computer CPUs to M1 in 2020 and never looking back, resulting in laptops that stay cool and have long-lasting batteries. The MacBook Air M1 set a new standard for laptops, being excellent, better than any entry laptop, affordable at around $1000 while good enough for 99% of users.

    Other manufacturers struggled to compete, with only their premium lines matching Apple’s display and lightness, but never battery life and energy efficiency. To justify premium prices, they offered excessive configurations, leading to energy and silicon waste.

    A lawyer who wants a Windows laptop with Intel that is as light and has a screen as good as the Retina of the Air M1 will only find it in something like a Dell XPS (premium line of Dell) for $1700 because they don’t make it with less than 500GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and i7, even when 128GB, 8GB, and i3 are totally sufficient for her and for 99% of people and all their tasks. They won’t manufacture or will not have it ready for delivery. If they’ll customize it, the price won’t be worth it.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-08 [Older] Central Africa's high-risk mpox clade 1b outbreak sparks alarm

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-08 [Older] Central Africa's high-risk mpox outbreak sparks alarm

  • VOA News ☛ South Korea deploys sniffer dog to screen for bedbugs after Paris Games

    Ceco is capable of sweeping a standard hotel room in under two minutes, company official Kim Min-su said.

    The pest control company has teamed up with South Korea's ministries of security and transportation, as well as the Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and is working with airlines and Incheon airport to screen travelers on arrival.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • India Times ☛ Piecing together an ancient epic was slow work until AI got involved

    For 152 years since Smith's discovery, successive generations of Assyriologists -- experts in the study of cuneiform and the cultures that used it -- have taken up his quest to piece together a complete version of the poem known now as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Fragments of the epic, which was written more than 3,000 years ago and was based upon still earlier works, have reemerged as tablets have been unearthed in archaeological digs, found in museum store rooms or surfaced on the black market.

    The researchers face a daunting task. There are as many as half a million clay tablets housed in the Mesopotamian collections of various world museums and universities, along with many more tablet fragments. But since there are so few experts in cuneiform, many of these writings are unread and many more are unpublished.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Everything's the same, they say

    The absence of novelty is down to economics and your mindsets. The media themselves are as unexplored as the galaxy.

    Short version: novelty and creativity is not rare; it’s unfunded.

    The point of automation in media creation should be to make novelty affordable to create, not to crowd it out of existence and make practicing creativity even less economically viable.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Blogging in the age of 'AI'

    After photography, all that was gone. The innovation turned an industry into a vocation. Painters were either poor or had enough money to spend time on it as a hobby. It recovered somewhat over time, but it never grew back to the same size and it never returned to being the crafts-led industry it was.

    If AI has even remotely the same effect on the various coding or office jobs we do, then we’re all fucked.

  • Gizmodo ☛ 2024-08-07 [Older] Facebook’s Twisted Incentives Created Its AI Slop Era

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Elon Musk's X Sues Advertisers Over Alleged 'Massive Advertiser Boycott' After Twitter Takeover

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Social media platform X sues advertisers over alleged boycott after Musk's Twitter takeover

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Big Tech Must Reveal Their Roles in Tech Used in Human Rights Abuses

      Since the start of the Israeli military response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack, U.S.-based companies like Google and Amazon have been under pressure to reveal more about the services they provide and the nature of their relationships with the Israeli forces engaging in the military response. 

      We agree. Without greater transparency, the public cannot tell whether these companies are complying with human rights standards—both those set by the United Nations and those they have publicly set for themselves. We know that this conflict has resulted in alleged war crimes and has involved massive, ongoing surveillance of civilians and refugees living under what international law recognizes as an illegal occupation. That kind of surveillance requires significant technical support and it seems unlikely that it could occur without any ongoing involvement by the companies providing the platforms.  

      Google's Human Rights statement claims that “In everything we do, including launching new products and expanding our operations around the globe, we are guided by internationally recognized human rights standards. We are committed to respecting the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementing treaties, as well as upholding the standards established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and in the Global Network Initiative Principles (GNI Principles). Google goes further in the case of AI technologies, promising not to design or deploy AI in technologies that are likely to facilitate injuries to people, gather or use information for surveillance or be used in violation of human rights, or even where the use is likely to cause overall harm.” 

    • The Washington Post ☛ Google’s new Pixel 9 can search your screenshots with AI

      The feature isn’t on by default — you have to specifically opt-in if you want to use it. And thankfully, none of your screenshots are ferried off to far-flung servers to be processed; Google says all of its image analysis happens directly on its Pixel phones, thanks in large part to its new Tensor G4 processors.

    • Macworld ☛ Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN review

      That all comes at a cost that’s lower than many rivals, and the open-source nature of the PIA apps means they can be taken apart by just about anyone in the hunt for bugs or other invasions of a user’s privacy, and the “no logs policy” is just as robust as others, too.

    • NYOB ☛ 8 Years of GDPR: Greek supermarket’s Loyalty Card still not compliant

      Greek supermarket chain Alfa Vita (AB) runs a loyalty card program, allowing the collection of personal data of shoppers. Still, the company can’t even comply with baseline GDPR rights. When the complainant requested access to her data, AB left out most of the personal data it processed. noyb now filed a complaint with the Greek DPA.

    • Alexandru Nedelcu ☛ On Advertising and Tracking

      Ads are now, unfortunately, a vehicle for malware, scams, or services that are deceptive and barely legal, which is why many secretly wish for the entire business model to burn to the ground. Also, ads are very annoying. So the answer to this question should be settled already: Should we block ads? #

      Unfortunately, there are second-order effects to blocking ads…

  • Confidentiality

    • [Old] The Lawfare Institute ☛ When a Quantum Computer Is Able to Break Our Encryption, It Won’t Be a Secret

      One of the most important quantum computing algorithms, known as Shor’s algorithm, would allow a large-scale quantum computer to quickly break essentially all of the encryption systems that are currently used to secure [Internet] traffic against interception. Today’s quantum computers are nowhere near large enough to execute Shor’s algorithm in a practical setting, and the expert consensus is that these cryptanalytically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) will not be developed until at least the 2030s.

      Although the threat is not yet imminent, the consequences of a hostile actor’s execution of Shor’s algorithm could be incredibly dire. Encryption is at the very bedrock of most cybersecurity measures. A hostile actor who could read encrypted information transmitted over the [Internet] would gain access to an immeasurable amount of critically sensitive information—from personal information such as medical or criminal records, to financial information such as bank account and credit card numbers, to cutting-edge commercial research and development, to classified national security information. The U.S. National Security Agency has said that “the impact of adversarial use of a quantum computer could be devastating to [National Security Systems] and our nation.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • Science Alert ☛ Earth's Climate Faces Risk of No Return If Warming Exceeds 1.5 °C

    On our current climate trajectory, the risk of surpassing one of four tipping points by 2300 could reach 45 percent.

    The findings come at a critical point in the climate crisis.

    Last year, for the very first time, all 365 days in the year exceeded 1°C above pre-industrial levels, bringing the planet uncomfortably close to exceeding the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5 °C of warming above pre-industrial levels.

  • The Hill ☛ Donald Trump on climate change: ‘You'll have more oceanfront property’

    By the end of the century, the sea level could rise even higher. By the year 2100, sea levels are expected to be between 2 and 7 feet higher than they were in 2000.

    More broadly, scientists have warned that more climate change is expected to lead to heat waves and more frequent and intense precipitation and droughts.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump is setting the stage to challenge the election

    Trump’s claims were pathetically easy to debunk. His rally-crowd lie is yet another of his denials of the truth in front of him. But it was also a warning of a different sort: The former president is openly laying the groundwork for challenging the legitimacy of the November election.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Economic Overlords Are Destroying Democracy — and Our Lives

    Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity, the upcoming book from Peter Phillips, professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, explores the influence of the “titans” — the board members of the top ten investment management firms who control nearly $50 trillion in assets. In conversation with Jacobin’s David Moscrop, Phillips explains how these 117 corporate overlords wield unparalleled economic and political power, shaping global policies and deepening economic inequalities. They exploit crises like global warming and rising food prices, using institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF) to promote their interests.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Launches Group Chat to Take On Messaging Apps

    Users can only be added to a group chat by a mutual follower. For example, if a teen gets an invite to join a group chat, they can only join if the group contains at least one mutual friend. Additionally, when a teen joins a group chat, TikTok will require them to review and approve new additions to that chat.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Bangladesh: What's next after PM Sheikh Hasina forced out?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Bangladesh updates: PM Hasina resigns amid massive protests

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Bangladesh: Nearly 100 dead, more injured in protests

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Who is Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh's interim leader?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Air drills bring new thrust to India, Germany defense ties

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Comic classics that portray the Holocaust

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Pakistani man charged with US assassination plot

  • Defence Web ☛ 2024-08-08 [Older] Less peacekeepers as conflict and violence rise to “unprecedented levels”

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Orbán-linked institutions have deep ties with U.S. anti-immigration groups, new report reveals

    Orbán adjacent institutions have formed alliances with U.S. anti-immigrant groups linked to white nationalist John Tanton, according to a report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE). Tanton, known for his belief that immigrants undermine American society, founded organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and Numbers USA. The report highlights that CIS and Numbers USA have developed close ties with Hungarian institutions that share their anti-immigrant views.

    The report notes that CIS’s interest in Hungary dates back to Orbán’s hardline stance during the 2016 refugee crisis, particularly his opposition to Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros. Since 2019, CIS staffers have made visits to Hungary, including trips to see the country’s border fence. Through joint events and collaborations, CIS has fostered a strong partnership with Hungary’s Migration Research Institute (MRI), an anti-immigrant think tank. CIS also reportedly works with the Heritage Foundation, an influential US Conservative organization that often held talks with individuals close to the Orban government.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Atlantic Council ☛ NATO must recognize the potential of open-source intelligence

    Today, seventy-five years after the Alliance was formed, such open-source intelligence (OSINT) is more important—and more powerful—than ever. However, underinvestment in OSINT capabilities and a culture favoring classified data currently hold back member states’ intelligence-collection potential. To fully utilize the available technology to detect threats from adversaries, NATO member states must overcome these barriers to embrace open-source intelligence enabled by artificial intelligence (AI).

  • 404 Media ☛ 'She Turned Ghost White:' How a Ragtag Group of Friends Tracked Down a Sex Trafficking Ringleader

    Pratt fled the U.S. in the middle of a massive civil trial in 2019—where 22 victims sued him and his co-conspirators for $22 million—and just before being charged with federal counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion. (Today, there are more than 100 women who’ve come forward in lawsuits as victims of Girls Do Porn.) Facing life in prison, Pratt was a fugitive, but investigators hadn’t been able to apprehend him. He’d been wanted by the FBI for two years when the small team of open-source and human intelligence experts—who called themselves OP Phoenix Fury, after DeBarber’s investigative firm—decided to try to find Pratt themselves. They had traced Pratt to Barcelona, Spain.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Journalists Struggle to Distinguish Elon Musk's Chat from Press Conference They Validated

    Twelve paragraphs later, WaPo mentioned — with no comment on any challenge presented by journalists involved — the presser last week, where journalists allowed Trump to make the very same attacks that Musk did.

    "He has drawn headlines for falsely questioning her heritage, reigniting a feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and holding a meandering news conference last week."

    It’s as if there were no journalists with agency at that presser.

• Environment

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Longyearbyen sees first time ever above 20°C in August

    Normally, August should bring chilly winds here at 78° North. But nothing is normal any more. Especially in the Arctic.

    The old record for the month was 18,1°C. August 11th came with more than two degrees warmer, 20,3°C.

  • Le Monde ☛ With 30.8°C off Corsica and 29.4°C at Villefranche-sur-Mer, temperatures in the Mediterranean have reached record levels.

    Another buoy, installed between Nice and Corsica, measured a temperature of 29.7°C late on Sunday, compared with 28.9°C on August 5. On Saturday, the temperature was also 30.8°C off Porto-Vecchio, Corsica. "We're really seeing the effect of this weekend's heat," said Thibault Guinaldo, an oceanographer at the French National Center for Meteorological Research (Météo-France/CNRS). "We're reaching orders of magnitude similar to those of the summer of 2022," marked by extreme heatwaves.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2024-08-05 [Older] Albertans sought respite during record-hot July. Spike in electricity use suggests they found AC

    • Wired ☛ Extreme Weather Poses a Challenge for Heat Pumps

      But this technology is not without its quirks. Strong winds, unexpectedly low temperatures, and high humidity can all affect heat pump performance. And because the climate could change even more quickly and drastically than some expect in the coming years, there is a risk that many of today’s heat pump installations might not cope well with what lies ahead. Heat pumps may be the future, but the big question is, what, exactly, does that future look like?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Noise cannons, netting deployed by Toronto's transit agency to thwart swarm of seagulls

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Sponge City: Berlin collects rainwater to fight water shortages

    • Overpopulation ☛ Losing Our Minds

      Fifty years ago, the brightest minds in the United States were deeply concerned that 210 million Americans were too many and that 280 million would be “much too many.” Now that we total 335 million Americans, the titans of Silicon Valley claim that we are running out of people.

      How did we lose our minds so quickly?

    • [Old] Education Resources Information Center ☛ Population and the American Predicament: The Case Against Complacency [PDF]

      The goals of the Caltech Population Program are to increase understanding of the interrelationships between population growth and socioeconomic and cultural patterns throughout the world and to communicate this understanding. This series of occasional papers is on step in the process of communicating research results. The papers deal primarily with such variables as resources, food supply, environment, urbanization, employement, economic development, and social and cultural values. This fourth paper in the series concentrates on the consequences of population growth in the United States. The author presents the position that the American population should be stabilized or even reduced. Reasons for this belief, as well as possible methods and their liabilities, are discussed. (LS)

    • The Hill ☛ Imperial Irrigation District agrees to leave water in Lake Mead

      As far as the Imperial Irrigation District agreement is concerned, the related conservation programs will include an expansion of the region’s existing on-farm efficiency conservation initiative, as well as the idling of certain water-intensive crop cultivation.

    • Colorado ☛ Four Colorado River states, feds ramp up water "credit" negotiations

      Water conservation is a big issue in the Colorado River Basin, where prolonged drought, a changing climate and overuse have strained the water supply for 40 million people. Currently, water conserved on a farm simply reenters streams and can be used by anyone downstream. The negotiations aim to set up a program to track, count and store that water so it can benefit the four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ Democracy or autocracy: what is the choice about?

      Yet, the current age’s biggest problem is the impending exhaustion of the planet’s biosphere. Let us have the clarity of mind to admit that humanity is part and parcel of this biosphere and (for now) is unable to exist outside it.

      Until the mid-20th century, the resources of water, air, land, fauna or vegetation were thought to be limitless. That humans could use them without an end, and they would remain abundant. Now we know that this thinking – as informed by the Bible, which claims that humanity was given “dominion” over the planet – is utterly incorrect. We as humans, due to the overuse and abuse of the aforementioned natural resources, now face global warming, extreme weather events, shortage of water, or life-threatening levels of pollution. In a quest for profit, we wipe out entire species or through deforestation turn huge swathes of land into deserts. These are symptoms of the biosphere under stress. The worsening situation leaves millions at the edge or already outside the habitable ecumene, or the biological (natural) niche of the human species in this biosphere.

• Finance

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] EU funding is fostering increased collaboration on innovation between Europe and Africa

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-08 [Older] Foreign entrepreneurs need patience in Africa

  • Quartz ☛ Toyota recalled more than 33,000 cars because of a bad sticker

    If you’re currently the owner of any 2023 or 2024 Toyota (TM), you may want to listen up. The automaker is recalling thousands of every model it sells because the vehicles may have been fitted with the wrong load sticker.

  • Portfolio Media Inc ☛ Green Generator Startup Moxion Files Ch. 7 After Layoffs - Law360

    Amazon-backed electric generator startup Moxion Power Co. filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in Delaware with between $100 million and $500 million of total estimated liabilities, not long after the San Francisco Bay Area company announced scores of layoffs.

  • The Gamer ☛ Arkane Austin's Founder Was Shocked By The Studio's Closure

    Microsoft's closure of Arkane Austin in May was one of the more shocking events of the past couple of years, even considering the gaming industry's ongoing struggles with layoffs and downsizing. Only a year after the disappointing release of Redfall, a critically panned misstep by Arkane Austin, Microsoft shuttered the historic studio, despite its previous successes in creating beloved games like Dishonored and Prey.

  • Washington Examiner ☛ Californian titan to cut 15% of workforce amid $500 billion budget slash

    Paramount is making deep cuts to its workforce starting Tuesday as the Hollywood entertainment titan looks to slash costs.

    Paramount co-CEOs Chris McCarthy, Brian Robbins, and George Cheeks made the announcement in a memo to employees, stating that the layoffs will occur in three phases. A total of nearly 2,000 jobs, 15% of Paramount’s workforce, is planned to be cut by the end of 2024.

  • Report: Major RTP employer to lay off thousands in second big jobs cut of 2024

    Citing people “familiar with the matter,” Reuters wrote over the weekend that Cisco will further reduce staff as the network products maker increasingly focuses on sectors like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Techdirt ☛ Breton Wields DSA As Censorship Tool, Musk Tells Him To ‘Go Fuck His Own Face’

    Let’s take a step back, because this requires some background. We’ve been warning for many years that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) would be abused for censorship by the government. EU officials and supporters of the DSA kept insisting that we were overreacting. But, Thierry Breton has made it clear that while the DSA is under his purview as a Commissioner, it is his own personal censorship tool for anything he dislikes online.

  • The Register UK ☛ The Open Model Initiative joins the Linux Foundation

    The Open Model Initiative (OMI) has joined orgs under the Linux Foundation's umbrella as it continues to push open standards for training and developing AI models.

    The OMI was launched earlier this year with an initial membership comprising Invoke, ComfyOrg, and Civitai. Its lofty goals, aimed at offering an alternative path to more proprietary AI tech, involve shared standards, a governance framework, and open source models that are at least as good as the proprietary alternatives.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Vulnerability disclosure policies eyed for federal contractors in Senate bill

    The Federal Contractor Cybersecurity Vulnerability Reduction Act of 2024 from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and James Lankford, R-Okla., is a companion to legislation from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., which was advanced by the House Oversight Committee in May.

    The bill from Warner and Lankford on vulnerability disclosure policies (VDPs) aims to create a structure for contractors to receive reports of vulnerabilities in their products and then act against them before an attack occurs.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Speaking Plainly About Who Is Robbing You

    There is no social value to such advice. It is a form of legalized robbery, of polite fraud. It amounts to hanging up a sign that says “I WILL TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE GOOD FINANCIAL DECISIONS” and then telling you, instead, how to make bad financial decisions. It is false advertising, it is the act of surreptitiously selling the opposite of what it claims to be selling, it is an entire industry that exists to extract the maximum amount of money from unsuspecting customers while telling them that it is helping them maximize their own wealth. It is a con, a lie perpetrated upon people not savvy enough to understand they are being robbed. It is a dishonorable way to make a living, and, unfortunately, a multibillion-dollar business.

  • Deseret Media ☛ News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it

    Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

    Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.

  • TechSpot ☛ Cisco is cutting over 4,000 jobs for the second time this year

    US tech giant Cisco is planning to cut thousands of workers in what will be its second round of layoffs this year. Reports state that slowing demand and shifting focus to growth areas, including AI, means 4,000 or more workers at the company could soon be out of a job.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel offers Irish employees voluntary severance packages up to €500K — chipmaker provides an alternative to layoffs

    Intel recently announced it would lay off 15% of its total workforce to cut costs and turn around lackluster earnings. In Ireland, the chipmaker recently offered voluntary severance packages to its Leixlip staff that could amount to 500,000 euros.

  • Inside Towers ☛ NATE Supports Bill to Fully Fund ‘Rip & Replace’

    NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, applauded the introduction of Pfluger’s bill. “This is a critical proposal to fully fund the Rip and Replace Program, removing Chinese components from our nation’s wireless communications systems. It is imperative to take this step to ensure the security of our broadband infrastructure,” said NATE President/CEO Todd Schlekeway.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] US convicts academic of being Chinese 'foreign agent'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Venezuela election: Army stands by Maduro despite opposition

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Stone Age art in Germany tells of our ancestors' creativity

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Tim Walz: Who is Kamala Harris' running mate?

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Gray Zone ☛ Internal crisis rocked Balkan media network run by UK intel, leaked emails show

    • El País ☛ Donald Trump: Elon Musk gives Donald Trump free rein for a feast of misinformation on X

      Fade to black and loading errors. That was the first thing tens of thousands of users experienced when they logged into X to watch the keenly anticipated conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Technical glitches caused thousands to disconnect from the chat, which eventually started 45 minutes later than scheduled. The tech mogul argued that his social network had been the target of a hacking offensive to prevent users from gaining access. “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down,” said Musk, who explained that they had run tests to allow the platform to support up to eight million viewers. When the talk finally began, millions of people were exposed to two hours of half-truths, exaggerations, and lies.

    • The Record ☛ Russia is pushing disinformation about Kursk operation, Ukrainian officials say

      According to the SBU’s statement, Russia is spreading fake news and purported information leaks about Ukraine’s military activities in Russia's Kursk region, accusing Ukrainian soldiers of war crimes.

      This information “has nothing to do with reality,” Ukraine’s security officials said. "The enemy's information and psychological operations are mainly a result of their inability to effectively counter the offensive actions of the Ukrainian armed forces."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Time Warner Discovery Merger’s Latest Victim: Cartoon Network’s Entire Web Presence

    At Paramount, that meant the complete erasure of both Comedy Central’s online footprint and the entire MTV News journalism archive. At Warner Bros Discovery, that most recently meant the deletion of Cartoon Network’s entire online presence (without any warning, we should add):

    “Warner Bros. Discovery this week pulled the entire contents of cartoonnetwork.com offline — redirecting visitors to a landing page on Max, its subscription-streaming service, encouraging fans to sign up to watch their favorite Cartoon Network shows. The shuttering of the site appears to have happened Thursday, Aug. 8.”

    At the same time users are losing features and history, Max is slathering their products with new ads and restrictions, while endlessly raising prices on a streaming product that’s of lower quality than before the entire saga began.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Axios ☛ Independent journalist era takes off on Substack

    Why it matters: Journalists with big brands or unique expertise are betting there's more upside in building their own products and audience relationships right now than freelancing or joining another potentially volatile newsroom.

    News industry cuts totaled 2,569 between January and July, up 10% from the same time last year, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Scotsman editor Neil McIntosh resigns after three and a half years

    Staff at the National World-owned title, which is currently going through a round of redundancies, were informed on Tuesday that McIntosh will be replaced as editor by his deputy Alan Young, who starts on 2 September.

  • VOA News ☛ Former Kansas police chief charged with felony over newspaper raid

    The charge, which was filed Monday, comes just over one year after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid on the weekly newspaper. Press freedom groups and government officials condemned the raid as a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.

    “This raid was so egregious,” Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S. and Canada program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA. “It’s really important that there has been a rigorous investigation into what happened, because this kind of police behavior shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Former Marion police chief charged with witness interference after raid on Kansas newspaper

    A special prosecutor in court documents filed Tuesday says former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody “induced a witness to withhold information” in the days after Cody led a raid on a newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.

  • [Old] KSHB TC ☛ Witness: Police chief who led raid on Marion newspaper wanted texts deleted

    Judge Steve Leben, who served on the bench for 27 years and is now a Professor of Law at University of Missouri - Kansas City, said if Cody directed Newell to delete the text, it could cause trouble for him criminally and civilly.

    “Police are supposed to preserve evidence,” Leben said. “Not have it be destroyed.”

  • Press Gazette ☛ Scotsman staff lament 'death of a thousand cuts': See newsroom letter to HR in full

    According to the union, staff had asked for a meeting with editor-in-chief Neil McIntosh about the cuts but he said he could not as he was focusing on the redundancies and restructuring process.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-08-06 [Older] Kenya Protest is a Warning to All East Africans

  • EFF ☛ The UN General Assembly and the Fight Against the Cybercrime Treaty

    The UN General Assembly could consider the treaty as soon as next month. If it passes, Member States will be invited to sign and ratify the treaty, a process that often involves legislative debate and votes. The treaty will officially come into force 90 days after at least 40 countries ratify it.

    This presents a vital opportunity for us to push back. We must rally a strong, unified opposition to ratification and demand that the treaty, if ratified, be augmented with robust human rights safeguards and accountability. Civil society, defense attorneys, and data protection authorities must ensure implementation laws adhere to the highest human rights standards—especially where the treaty is silent or vague.

  • The Register UK ☛ White House cracks down on deceptive online practices

    "These hassles don't just happen by accident," the White House stated in a press release. "Companies often deliberately design their business processes to be time-consuming or otherwise burdensome for consumers … all with the goal of maximizing profits.

    "Americans should not be subject to confusing, manipulative, or deceptive practices online."

  • Michigan News ☛ Trump praises Elon Musk for firing union workers: ‘You’re the greatest cutter’

    The two businessmen had an awkward rapport. Trump praised Musk’s electric cars -- “incredible” -- and his move to fire workers who were involved in union activity.

    “You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said. “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk away. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’ And you are the greatest.”

  • ANF News ☛ Iraqi and Yazidi women: Marrying off a 9-year-old girl is killing in every respect

    We consider the proposed amendment to this law as a threat to the lives of every woman living in Iraq. In the current situation, women have no right to protect themselves in any way. With such laws, the state establishes inequality between men and women, which gives men more power over women. Women in Iraq are at risk in all areas of life. Women's rights are violated politically, economically, educationally and legally. The marriage of a 9-year-old girl is a massacre. It is a massacre of society in the person of women. To marry off a 9-year-old child is to kill life.

    This amendment to the law will officially pave the way for the marriage of girls at the age of 9. The legitimisation of this will lead to the physical, mental and social murder of women and girls.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• FAIR ☛ ‘Google Is Able to Profit Extraordinarily Off of Not Having Competition’: CounterSpin interview with Lee Hepner on Google monopoly

• India Times ☛ The Google antitrust case must not end with a slap on the wrist

  A truly effective remedy need seek not only to punish Google for its past offenses but also open markets by meaningfully restraining the company from similar conduct in the future. The best way to do that is to ensure that a new generation of companies can compete fairly not just in the search market but also in new markets -- especially the emerging markets for artificial-intelligence-driven tech services. That sort of remedy would return antitrust law to its historical role as a form of industrial policy that restrains monopoly to promote economic growth and innovation.

• Silicon Angle ☛ FTC enters Google v. Epic Games case and hints that Google should be broken up

  The case involved Epic Games, best known as the company behind the highly popular online game “Fortnite,” suing Google over allegations that the search engine giant holds an illegal monopoly with its Play store. Despite losing a similar case against Apple Inc., Epic Games won its case against Google in the federal court in December.

  The court case in December was appealed by Google to the Supreme Court, with the FTC now entering the case via an amicus brief. Though some observers consider the idea of the FTC breaking up Google unlikely, the idea that it could be an option is suggested in a media release from the FTC itself.

• Federal Trade Commission ☛ FTC Outlines Remedy Concerns in Amicus Brief After Jury Finds Google Illegally Monopolized App Store | Federal Trade Commission

  The FTC filed its amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in an ongoing antitrust case where a jury found Google liable for multiple antitrust violations related to its Google App Store, including finding that Google monopolized the Android App Distribution and Android In-App Payment Solutions markets for digital goods and services transactions. Google’s App Store serves as an essential platform used by developers, which includes Epic, to market their software. Google’s App Store is also critical for users that seek to purchase applications, such as Epic’s online game Fortnite.

• The Register UK ☛ US trade regulator nudges judge to discipline Google

  Epic Games initially sued Google [PDF] in August 2020 alleging that Google violated competition laws through its control over the Android platform and the Google Play Store. Three years later, in December 2023, a jury found Google liable.

  The gaming giant at the time characterized the decision as a win for app developers. "It proves that Google’s app store practices are illegal and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition and reduce innovation," the company said.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The paradox of choice screens

  Defaults matter. That's a huge part of Judge Mehta's finding in the Google case, where the court saw evidence from Google's own internal research suggesting that people rarely change defaults, meaning that whatever the gadget does out of the box it will likely do forever. This puts a lie to Google's longstanding defense of its monopoly power: "choice is just a click away." Sure, it's just a click away – a click, you're pretty sure no one is ever going to make.

• Matt Birchler ☛ It’s bad for consumers and it’s bad for Patreon, but what are you going to do, not ship on iOS?

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think Apple can either take a commission on all commerce they want on the App Store or they can be the exclusive place to get software for you iPhone and iPad, but they can not be both. As we’re spoken about before on this blog, iPhones are such an essential part of the market that it’s suicide for most businesses to not ship on the iPhone, which means they’re forced to use Apple’s terms and conditions. I think this gives too much power to Apple and they should be forced to either give up their excessive commissions or their exclusivity on software distribution. In my view, this story is Apple doing something bad for consumers, bad for businesses on their platform, and Apple has so much market power that these parties just need to follow orders.

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ Patreon screws me over, says a big Apple did it and ran away

  For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.

  Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ "We've always respected intellectual property": Bambu Lab responds to 3D Printer patent lawsuit

      Stratasys, Inc., the company that invented FDM 3D printing, fired shots last week at rising star Bambu Lab for using technology that’s become commonplace in consumer 3D printing. At question is the company’s use of PEI-coated build plates, purge towers, and automatic bed leveling.

• Copyrights

  • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ Universal Music Group and Meta Ink Expanded Licensing Deal

    And in comments of his own, UMG EVP and chief digital officer Michael Nash praised Meta’s “commitment to artists and songwriters,” applauding as well steps “to amplify the importance music holds across its global network of engaged communities and platforms.”

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Judge rules artists' copyright claims against AI companies can proceed

    A U.S. District Court judge has given permission to a group of artists to pursue claims against several generative artificial intelligence image- and video-making companies that alleges their services infringe on their copyrights.

    The case was brought by three artists against Stability AI Ltd., DeviantArt Inc. and Midjourney Inc. in January 2023 and alleged that the companies make unauthorized use of existing copyright images. A generative AI model is trained based on existing works to create new works. The artists claimed that the training of the AI models, allegedly based on their works – it has not been proven that the models were – constitutions copyright theft.

  • Reuters ☛ AI companies lose bid to dismiss parts of visual artists' copyright case

    U.S. District Judge William Orrick said the artists plausibly argued, opens new tab that the companies violate their rights by illegally storing their works on their systems. Orrick also refused to dismiss related trademark-law claims, though he threw out others accusing the companies of unjust enrichment, breach of contract and breaking a separate U.S. copyright law. The decision did not address the artists' core claim that the alleged misuse of their work to train AI systems directly infringes their copyrights, or the key defense that AI companies make fair use of copyrighted material.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Uptobox Bid to Resurrect File-Storage Service Fails in French Court

    File-hosting service Uptobox was taken offline last year following complaints from entertainment industry giants including Amazon, Disney, and StudioCanal. The platform's servers were targeted in a police raid just months after a French court ordered ISPs to block the site. Uptobox tried to reverse this decision, arguing that it's not the piracy haven rightsholders make it out to be, but the court denied that challenge.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Top French Football Leagues Win Pirate IPTV Blocking Orders

    Top tier French football leagues, Ligue 1 McDonald's and Ligue 2 BKT, have obtained a new court order to block dozens of pirate IPTV platforms. As presented on the Paris Judicial Court's website, the list of domains amounts to a wall of merged text simply asking to be misinterpreted. Fortunately they're more easily determined in the downloaded order, but that doesn't mean precision blocking won't be needed. Perhaps now more than ever, one mistake could go terribly wrong.