Links 22/08/2024: Misinformation and Surveillance Ramped Up Fast
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Yukinu ☛ Yukinu is back
I had gotten burnt out from updating my site, spending too much time resolving technical paper cuts and getting overwhelmed with too many half finished articles. At the same time, I was also handling a lot of technical debt on my dev machine (which is based on Debian 11 with a lot of additional packages and custom configurations that need cleaning up), further stalling progress on some of my projects. So I decided to shelve my site for a bit of time, think about the future of the site, and work on other projects. In the end I've decided to scale back a few site features, notably I will be archiving my software forge and instead will be moving things back to Codeberg for 3 reason: [...]
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Pete Brown ☛ Never underestimate greed and ignorance.
I kind of wonder if thinking about the world in this way—that there is someone with a master plan—doesn’t make it easier for people to go about their day-to-day lives, even if that master plan is awful. If someone else is in control, it gives you a either single point to attack or a reason not to do anything.
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Jacky Alciné ☛ The Wrong Ideas about the Wrong Things
Is it me, then? Am I doing "too much"? Am I asking for more than people can care about? Is it that it's too dangerous to consider these ideas, even in semi-private spaces? Regardless of the first question, I won't stop working to close this gap and I'm hoping that I can join other folks who've been doing this for longer - some of which I'm lucky to lean on for support. This is hopefully a way to give those on the fence or who've been confused a peak inside my mind, where I'm at and why I won't stop talking about the things that I do. We need to do better, myself included.
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Barry Hess ☛ It’s Been Awhile
The fact is, twenty years is a long time to do things. So long, in fact, that I didn’t do the things all twenty of those years! Still, this here is the 469th post on the blog, and that’s not nothing. Heck, I probably deleted 100 posts along the way (deeming them of questionable value), so…more than 500 posts!
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Brandon ☛ Remodel Underway - Site Refresh | NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST
These past few days I've been thinking a lot about my site design. I initially wrestled the base BearBlog theme into something I was excited about, added some design elements, brushed off my hands and moved on to writing.
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Anne Sturdivant ☛ Diving into indiewebify.me & microformats, Part IX
Last week I decided I needed a new template for weblog. The new post type has taken shape over the last few days and I went with linklist for the name after putting up a poll on Mastodon and made the decision before it was even done. Turns out my choice ended up being the majority of voters' choice as well.
I mocked up a test post with two different types of link lists: a list of bookmarks or saved links for later, such as a group of tabs from some research I'm doing; a postroll that I publish as a blogroll spin, including links for each new blog that I add. The main "subject" of each of these links is a bit different, so the microformats structure I came up with is different for each. Let's take a look at what I came up with and my thinking that went along with it.
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Science
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Futurism ☛ Chinese Scientists Working on Magnetic Launch System to Fling Cargo From Moon's Surface Back to Earth
And whoever comes on top, in terms of technology and territory under its control, will most likely set the rules of engagement in space for generations to come. Extracting helium is just the beginning, in other words.
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ Oops, All Crabs
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Education
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teleSUR ☛ Most Norwegian Public Schools Adopt Mobile Phone Restrictions - teleSUR English
On Monday, Norway’s Ministry of Education announced that a survey titled “Questions for Schools in Norway” reveals that over 96 percent of primary schools in Norway have implemented restrictions on mobile phone use.
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Robert Birming ☛ Ditching the Desk for Dreams
Fast forward ten years, and here I am now. I love my current job as a house inspector, even though I still make less than I did back then.
And when it comes to IT, I'm more passionate about it now that it's a hobby instead of a career. It's fun again!
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Buttondown LLC ☛ An idea for teaching formal methods better
I was recently commissioned by a company to make a bespoke TLA+ workshop with a strong emphasis on reading specifications. I normally emphasize writing specs, so this one will need a different approach.
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Drew Breunig ☛ Domain Expertise is the Difference Maker for Data Scientists | Drew Breunig
We over-index on the first two roles when developing data scientists. Business decision making? Well, that’s somebody else’s job: a product manager or an exec views an analysis and makes the call.
But domain knowledge in a company’s field is a difference maker for data scientists.
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Crooked Timber ☛ 6 (or more) things you might want to know how to do as a new TA. — Crooked Timber
Note: all the strategies I describe here are to some extent dependent on how the physical space of your classroom is organized. If you have fixed seats in rows, and the classroom is full, many of these will be challenging. But to the extent that students can be moved around the classroom so that they can see each other, some will work better or worse. (Structure Academic Controversy, for example, can work even in a fixed seat room: I recommend that you organize the A and B groups so that they are in front of and behind each other, not next to each other). One of the few joys of the Humanities building is that many of the classrooms have entirely moveable seating.
Also: you get to choose where your students sit. They don’t. This isn’t a cafeteria, it’s a place of work. Move them to optimize the learning experience. You might think this seems authoritarian: it isn’t and students don’t experience it as such. They appreciate that someone is thinking about their learning.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Afghan women arrive in Edinburgh to finish medical degrees denied under Taliban
The foundation worked with UK and Scottish government officials to arrange safe passage and student visas for the women. They have been given places at four medical schools after Scottish ministers changed the law to treat them as home students eligible for free tuition.
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Jeroen Sangers ☛ Jeroen Sangers ◦ brain tags - Speed up informative videos
Speeding up informative videos can be an efficient strategy to save time without significant loss of understanding, as long as the speed stays within certain limits. Research shows that increasing the playback speed of videos up to 1.5x or 2x the normal speed has minimal adverse effects on both immediate and delayed (after a week) levels of understanding. This means that viewers are able to comprehend and remember the core content of the videos, even when they are played at a faster pace. However, it is important to note that performance can significantly decrease at speeds above 2x.
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Lucidity ☛ Quitting My Job For The Way Of Pain
But what I say instead is "I'm sure that you'll find a better job eventually. Okay, clocking out for the week, bye." How lightly I withhold the opportunity for self-improvement, because I know that they will take the news badly, and because I do not believe that they have what it takes to change. It's not that it's my job to be responsible for all that, but withholding that information from people that think of me as being honest with them goes against my own values. And what standard is there to hold myself to if not my own?
At the end of January 2025, I'll be leaving my employer to focus full-time on my own business. It doesn't currently make enough money to pay my rent.
Two helpings of suffering with a side of principles, please.
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Hardware
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Cyble Inc ☛ Widespread Backdoor Found In FM11RF08S RFID Smart Cards
Security researchers have discovered a widespread hardware backdoor in the FM11RF08S variant of the MIFARE Classic RFID smart cards manufactured by the Chinese chip company Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics.
The backdoor allows instantaneous cloning of the cards, posing a major security risk for businesses and consumers using the affected cards. The variant had been released around 2020 and touted as resistant to all known ‘card-only’ attacks – attacks that can be carried out on the card itself without access to its reader.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Being second with physical media
The history of disks, chips, tapes, and cartridges are filled with examples of companies getting this right and wrong.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ Video Games Can Boost Your Mental Health – But There's a Catch
A study of almost 100,000 people in Japan aged 10 to 69 found playing video games – or even owning a console – can be good for mental health. But playing too much each day can harm wellbeing.
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NPR ☛ She was on the surgical table just once but was billed for two operations
Sabrina Corlette, co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said it was absurd for the surgery center to bill for two operations and then refuse to back down when the situation was explained. “It’s like a Kafka novel,” she said.
Corlette said surgery center staffers should be accustomed to such scenarios. “It is quite common, I would think, for a surgeon to look inside somebody and say, ‘Oh, there’s this other thing going on. I’m going to deal with it while I’ve got the patient on the operating table.’”
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American Psychological Association ☛ Fast-Forward to Boredom: How Switching Behavior on Digital Media Makes People More Bored
People often switch between videos and fast-forward through them on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix. We show that people consume media this way to avoid boredom. However, this switching behavior makes people feel more bored, less satisfied, less engaged, and less meaningful in some instances. Our results provide valuable insights on how to consume digital media in a more adaptive and enjoyable manner in everyday life. Enjoyment may be better attained by immersing oneself in videos rather than swiping through them.
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Michael Yeadon turns on ivermectin, and hilarity ensues
We’re now nearly four and a half years into the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the longer it goes on the more odd things happen in the contingent of people, be they physicians, scientists, or lay people, who have minimized the disease, peddled unproven—and now disproven—repurposed drugs as cures, claimed that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was due to a “lab leak,” and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about COVID-19 vaccines. Sure, there are the usual crank fights (everyone versus Robert Malone, “inventor of mRNA vaccines,” comes to mind). One blast from the past whom I’ve seen resurfacing lately is Dr. Michael Yeadon. Before the pandemic, Yeadon worked for Pfizer in drug development for respiratory diseases as a vice-president of of the company’s allergy and respiratory research unit in Sandwich, Kent, and later formed his own biotech company. However, after the pandemic hit in 2020, he soon pivoted to become of the earliest purveyors of the antivax lie that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility—in December 2021, just as the vaccines were rolling off the production lines for the first time in large quantities at Pfizer!—and later expanded his antivax fear mongering to claim that the vaccines were not just causing infertility but “depopulation.” Amazingly, it’s been over three years since I last wrote about this particular antivax crank, which is why his resurgence interests me.
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Pro Publica ☛ Amid Baby Formula Crisis, U.S. Trade Reps Opposed Lifting Import Tax
As U.S. parents struggled to find baby formula during a nationwide shortage in May of 2022, the Biden administration frantically sought ways to restock empty store shelves. Among the options was lifting steep tariffs on formula imported from other countries.
But as White House lawyers drafted a proclamation to remove the import tax, one federal agency resisted: the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Popular Science ☛ AI trained on AI churns out gibberish garbage
Large language models like those offered by OpenAI and Google famously require vast troves of training data to work. The latest versions of these models have already scoured much of the existing internet which has led some to fear there may not be enough new data left to train future iterations. Some prominent voices in the industry, like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have posited a solution to that data dilemma: simply train new AI systems on old AI outputs.
But new research suggests that cannibalizing of past model outputs would quickly result in strings of babbling AI gibberish and could eventually lead to what’s being called “model collapse.” In one example, researchers fed an AI a benign paragraph about church architecture only to have it rapidly degrade over generations. The final, most “advanced” model simply repeated the phrase “black@tailed jackrabbits” continuously.
A study published in Nature this week put that AI-trained-on-AI scenario to the test. The researchers made their own language model which they initially fed original, human-generated text. They then made nine more generations of models, each trained on the text output generated by the model before it. The end result in the final generation was nonessential surrealist-sounding gibberish that had essentially nothing to do with the original text. Over time and successive generations, the researchers say their model “becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”
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Futurism ☛ Tech CEO Admits That He “Really F*cking Hates” Generative AI
"I fucking hate generative AI," Procreate CEO James Cuda said in a brief company video, posted yesterday to Procreate's official X-formerly-Twitter account.
"I don't like what's happening in the industry, and I don't like what it's doing to artists," Cuda continued. "We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products."
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The Register UK ☛ Microsoft unveils unified Teams app
Teams has traditionally been the tool enterprises impose on users as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription – at least until Microsoft was forced to uncouple the collaboration software from its productivity suite. However, it hasn't gained the same traction with consumers.
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The Washington Post ☛ Investors who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter revealed after judge’s order
The filing lists nearly 100 entities with a stake in X, although many appear to represent different funds controlled by the same firm or person. Other investors include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud; Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey; and 8VC, a venture capital firm co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of intelligence contractor and data analysis platform Palantir.
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Publicizing the Bugs, Malfunctions, Failures, and Locations of Lethal AWS to Avoid Accidental Escalations
Executive Summary: AI-lethal autonomous weapon systems are likely to begin seeing the battlefield or widespread adoption in the near future. However, AWS possesses the major risk of an AWS failure causing an accidental escalation or conflict, due to their novelty, speed, and ambiguity. I recommend that the U.S. begins publicizing instances of AWS failures and their locations as a confidence-building measure norm. While there are some drawbacks to publishing AWS failures and locations, the U.S. has previously demonstrated with nuclear arms treaties that it is willing to make these tradeoffs for the sake of stability and security.
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Security Week ☛ Thousands of Apps Using AWS ALB Exposed to Attacks Due to Configuration Issue
As many as 15,000 apps that use AWS’s Application Load Balancer (ALB) for authentication could be vulnerable to attacks, according to application security company Miggo.
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Wired ☛ An AWS Configuration Issue Could Expose Thousands of Web Apps
The researchers say that looking at publicly reachable web applications, they have identified more than 15,000 that appear to have vulnerable configurations. AWS disputes this estimate, though, and says that “a small fraction of a percent of AWS customers have applications potentially misconfigured in this way, significantly fewer than the researchers' estimate.” The company also says that it has contacted each customer on its shorter list to recommend a more secure implementation. AWS does not have access or visibility into its clients' cloud environments, though, so any exact number is just an estimate.
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Wired ☛ An ‘AI Scientist’ Is Inventing and Running Its Own Experiments
The project demonstrates an early step toward what might prove a revolutionary trick: letting AI learn by inventing and exploring novel ideas. They’re just not super novel at the moment. Several papers describe tweaks for improving an image-generating technique known as diffusion modeling; another outlines an approach for speeding up learning in deep neural networks.
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C4ISRNET ☛ Reliant on Starlink, Army eager for more SATCOM constellation options
The Army is leaning heavily on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network for advanced command and control, but service officials say they want to keep their options open as new commercial megaconstellations materialize.
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The Verge ☛ Telecom will pay $1 million over deepfake Joe Biden robocall
Lingo Telecom relayed a fake Biden message to New Hampshire voters in January, urging them not to turn out for the Democratic primary. The FCC identified political consultant Steve Kramer as the person behind the generative AI calls and previously proposed Kramer pay a separate $6 million fine.
Under the new settlement with Lingo, the FCC said the company will need to strictly adhere to its caller ID authentication rules, including “know your customer” principles. The FCC will also require Lingo to “more thoroughly verify the accuracy of the information provided by its customers and upstream providers,” according to a press release. A Lingo spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Deseret Media ☛ Company that sent AI calls mimicking Joe Biden to voters agrees to pay $1M fine
The case is seen by many as an unsettling early example of how AI might be used to influence groups of voters and democracy as a whole.
Meanwhile Steve Kramer, a political consultant who orchestrated the calls, still faces a proposed $6 million FCC fine, as well as state criminal charges.
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Security Week ☛ Microsoft Copilot Studio Vulnerability Led to Information Disclosure
A vulnerability in Microsoft Copilot Studio could be exploited to access sensitive information on the internal infrastructure used by the service, Tenable reports.
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The Washington Post ☛ How to get back into a hacked Facebook account
Bull-Humphries said she tried for six weeks to get her account back, following the steps in Facebook’s official account recovery process. She pored over threads in the company’s community forums and even sent a picture of her driver’s license to verify her identity. Nothing worked.
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Macworld ☛ Microsoft apps on the Mac have a security hole that won't get fixed soon
The apps affected are Microsoft Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and Word. Microsoft runs an entitlement that disables macOS’s hardened runtime, which provides security against Dynamically Linked Library hacks. This can allow a [attacker] to install malicious software into Microsoft’s apps.
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Federal News Network ☛ Navy’s journey to new procurement system remains in peril
The Department of the Navy’s third attempt to modernize its contract writing system and overall electronic procurement system is on shaky ground. The latest bid, which followed at least two previous failures, is facing similar troubles as earlier projects: incomplete planning, a technology platform with questionable maturity and, maybe most striking, the hubris of the leadership that their current plan will be successful no matter what evidence emerges that tells a different story.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ How deepfakes on social media could threaten the election
Deception has long played a part in politics, but the rise of artificial intelligence tools that allow people to rapidly generate fake images or videos by typing out a phrase adds another complex layer to a familiar problem on social media. Known as deepfakes, these digitally-altered images and videos can make it appear someone is saying or doing something they aren’t.
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Games
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VOA News ☛ Burgeoning Africa gaming industry attracts major tech firms
An Africa game industry report says the number of gamers in sub-Saharan Africa has grown from 77 million in 2015 to 186 million in 2021. Ninety-five percent of gamers play on their mobile phones.
According to survey company Geopoll, for the majority, gaming is seen as a primary source of entertainment, relaxation and a remedy for boredom, with 73% playing for fun and 64% for stress relief.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Ars Technica ☛ Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.
The TV business isn't just about selling TVs anymore. Companies are increasingly seeing viewers, not TV sets, as their most lucrative asset.
Over the past few years, TV makers have seen rising financial success from TV operating systems that can show viewers ads and analyze their responses. Rather than selling as many TVs as possible, brands like LG, Samsung, Roku, and Vizio are increasingly, if not primarily, seeking recurring revenue from already-sold TVs via ad sales and tracking.
How did we get here? And what implications does an ad- and data-obsessed industry have for the future of TVs and the people watching them?
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Privacy International ☛ Social media monitoring in the UK: the invisible surveillance tool increasingly deployed by government
Privacy International presents how the use of social media monitoring by governments and companies is an increasingly prevalent one, and as this article explores, largely unregulated.
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NYOB ☛ noyb complaints against EU Parliament over data breach
In early May 2024, the European Parliament informed its staff of a massive data breach in the institution’s recruiting platform (called “PEOPLE”). The breach affected the personal data of more than 8,000 staff. This included ID cards and passports, criminal record extracts, residence documents and even sensitive data such as marriage certificates that reveal a person’s sexual orientation. The Parliament only found out about the breach months after it happened, and still doesn’t seem to know the cause. This is particularly worrying as the Parliament has long been aware of vulnerabilities in its cybersecurity system. EU institutions are naturally high up on the list of hackers and foreign adversaries. noyb has now lodged two complaints with the European Data Protection Supervisor on behalf of four parliament employees.
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Wired ☛ Stadiums Are Embracing Face Recognition. Privacy Advocates Say They Should Stick to Sports
Thousands of people lined up outside Citi Field in Queens, New York, on Wednesday to watch the Mets face off with the Orioles. But outside the ticketing booth, a handful of protesters handed out flyers. They were there to protest a recent Major League Baseball program, one that’s increasingly common in professional sports: using facial recognition on fans.
Facial recognition companies and their customers argue that these systems save time, and therefore money, by shortening lines at stadium entrances. However, skeptics argue that the surveillance tools are never totally secure, make it easier for police to get information about fans, and fuel “mission creep” where surveillance technology becomes more common or even required.
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VOA News ☛ US appeals court revives Google privacy class action lawsuit
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the lower court judge who dismissed the proposed class action should have assessed whether reasonable Chrome users consented to letting Google collect their data when they browsed online.
Tuesday's 3-0 decision followed Google's agreement last year to destroy billions of records to settle a lawsuit claiming the Alphabet unit tracked people who thought they were browsing privately, including in Chrome's "Incognito" mode.
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Techdirt ☛ 84% Of Americans Want Tougher Online Privacy Laws, But Congress Is Too Corrupt To Follow Through
As is the norm for U.S. journalism, the outlet frames our failure to pass an internet privacy law over the last 30 years as something that just kind of happened without meaningful cause. The “question” of whether to have even baseline public privacy protections has been left unanswered due to some sort of ambiguous externality. Just blame that pesky, ambiguous gridlock.
In reality, Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law because it’s blisteringly, grotesquely corrupt. U.S. policymakers have decided, time and time and time again, that making gobs of money is more important than consumer welfare, public safety, market health, or even national security (see: our obsession with TikTok, while ignoring the national security risks of unregulated data brokers).
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The Register UK ☛ Slack AI can leak private data via prompt injection
The core problem identified by PromptArmor is that Slack allows user queries to fetch data from both public and private channels, including public channels that the user has not joined. According to the security vendor, Slack considers this intended behavior – but it's behavior that can be abused.
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El País ☛ Canyon Lake: A soda and 9mm ammo: The Texas grocery store with a bullet vending machine
A blond man with long hair, cargo pants and a loose shirt browses through the options while holding a bag of food and a case of beer. The vending machine has a touchscreen. Once activated, it states that only people over 21 years of age with ID are permitted to use it. And that it only accepts payments by card. The man talks to his wife about the variety of ammunition for sale, but doesn’t buy anything. If he had wanted to buy some bullets, he would have had to scan his face and his official ID. Once he’s finished seeing how it works, he leaves in a hurry, not wanting to answer any questions. Another woman in the same supermarket does want to share her thoughts on the bullet vending machine.
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Confidentiality
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404 Media ☛ US Feds Are Tapping a Half-Billion Encrypted Messaging Goldmine
European cops hacked the encrypted phone provider Sky in 2021. More and more cases in the U.S. are using that mass of collected messages.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Generative AI is a security vulnerability
None of this should be surprising, though I’m glad it’s getting coverage. To be crystal clear: there is no safe use for this tech with proprietary or confidential information. Data leaks aren’t merely an unavoidable or inevitable byproduct, they’re intrinsic to how these tools operate.
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Dhole Moments ☛ Federated Key Transparency Project Update - Dhole Moments
Earlier this year, I wrote about planned effort to design a federated Key Transparency proposal.
The end goal for this work was constrained to building end-to-end encryption into a new type of Direct Message on the Fediverse, with other protocols and services being a stretch goal rather than its primary purpose.
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Defence/Aggression
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Atlantic Council ☛ How a ‘Free North’ strategy can ensure Arctic and Baltic security
From the United States to Finland, NATO allies represent a contiguous northern flank. Finland and Sweden’s NATO accessions have strengthened the Alliance and repositioned its regional security framework. Finland spans from the Arctic Circle to the Baltic, so along with the United States, it is optimally positioned to anchor a collective commitment to a Free North. The Baltic Sea, which is now nearly surrounded by NATO members, offers a resolute coalition of reinforcements for Arctic security.
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VOA News ☛ US official holds talks in Africa on responsible use of military AI
Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability, said her two-day visit with Nigerian officials from the regional bloc ECOWAS was part of the United States’ commitment to deepen security cooperation in Africa.
The U.S. government has been working with 55 nations, including African nations, “to agree upon responsible uses of AI in the military context, using AI in a manner consistent with international laws [and] recognizing inherent human bias,” Stewart told journalists Wednesday.
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C4ISRNET ☛ This system could allow small Army teams to hit 1,000 targets per hour
Since going through at least 10 iterations, with more planned in the coming months and years, the command has developed the Maven Smart System, a combination of sensors and software that allows users to quickly assess a battlespace, gather reams of data and analyze that data using artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify targets and strike.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Investigating Americans Who Worked With Russian State Television
This month, F.B.I. agents searched the homes of two prominent figures with connections to Russian state media: Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of American foreign policy, and Dimitri K. Simes, an adviser to former President Donald J. Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016. Prosecutors have not announced charges against either of the men.
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Sightline Media Group ☛ Commanders find new ways to leverage network in theater and training
The Army is employing diverse methods to keep its network up, data flowing and signals passing between units in a major field exercise as it continues to build the next generation of command and control.
Deployed brigades will need to establish their networks quickly, work seamlessly with partner or ally networks and toggle between multiple options — from 5G to low-earth-orbit satellites — to maintain connectivity, officials said.
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The Independent UK ☛ Taliban bans UN special rapporteur who sought education for girls from entering Afghanistan
Mr Bennett is based outside of Afghanistan but has visited the country on multiple occasions since his appointment in 2022 to research the human rights situation on the ground.
He is yet to respond to the travel ban, although The Independent understands his office is likely to issue a statement later today.
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VOA News ☛ Taliban block UN human rights investigator from visiting Afghanistan
Bennett reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council based in Geneva and has conducted several trips to Kabul to investigate the Afghan human rights situation since assuming duties in 2022 — a year after the radical [sic] Taliban returned to power.
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The Guardian UK ☛ More than 200 unexploded second world war shells found near Solomon Islands school
On Tuesday, Inspector Clifford Tunuki said the long-hidden weapons cache had been ferried away to a safe location and was now “waiting for safe destruction”.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran orders closure of German language institute in Tehran
Another media outlet, Nournews, considered close to Iran's state security apparatus, suggested that the closures were a response to the closure of the Hamburg Islamic Center (IZH) in Germany in July.
At the time, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had described the IZH as an "important Iranian propaganda center in Europe."
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The Moscow Times ☛ Moscow Patriarchate Condemns Move to Ban Ukrainian Orthodox Church - The Moscow Times
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which officially broke ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022, has been accused by some lawmakers of maintaining covert connections with Russian clergy despite the ongoing war.
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RTL ☛ Cutting Moscow-aligned ties: Ukraine MPs vote to ban Russia-linked Orthodox Church
Kyiv has been trying to curb spiritual links with Russia for years -- a process accelerated by Moscow's 2022 invasion, which the powerful Russian Orthodox Church endorsed.
A majority of Ukrainian lawmakers approved the bill outlawing religious organisations linked with Russia, which will mostly affect the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Site36 ☛ German Left Party Chairman visits Maja T. in Budapest: Politicians call for shift in policy towards Hungary
Two leading politicians from the Left Party met Maja T., who is imprisoned in Budapest waiting for an Antifa trial. One of their demands is that the German judiciary should organise her return.
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Environment
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Futurism ☛ Tesla Semi Truck Catches Fire, Prompting Hazmat Response for Toxic Smoke
It took first responders many hours to put out the big rig fire, highlighting just how challenging it is to extinguish a lithium-ion battery blaze — especially at the scale required to haul freight.
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CBS ☛ Tesla semi-truck fire prompts I-80 closure in California as hazmat response halts Sierra Nevada freeway traffic - CBS Sacramento
First responders say that the batteries of the electric big rig were still burning hours later.
Due to the situation surrounding the batteries, people were being kept at least a half mile away from the scene.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources
If we extract, process, use, and discard these metals, conceptually there must be some point in the future when we run out of them. And as the energy transition has gotten underway, plenty of forecasts have attempted to understand which metals we should worry about and when they might start to be depleted. But experts say that understanding the availability of resources in this sector is much more complicated than picking out a single future peak.
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University of Michigan ☛ It’s time for Michigan to demand climate accountability
But, we also can’t ignore how we got into this mess. Major fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their products could lead to “dramatic climatic changes” and require a shift away from oil and gas. To protect their massive profits, companies like ExxonMobil and others took a page from the Big Tobacco playbook and ran ads insisting the science was “unsettled” while they lobbied against solutions. This deception stole precious time in the fight against climate change, and now Michiganders are paying the price.
No company should be allowed to sell a product they know is harmful, lie about it and get away with it. That’s why I’m glad that Michigan’s top law enforcement official is now taking steps to hold Big Oil accountable.
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Maine Morning Star ☛ PFAS-laden firefighting foam spill reinvigorates calls for proactive government response
However, PFAS also make the material difficult to dispose of. For instance, incineration risks failing to break down all the chemical bonds or creating harmful byproducts.
Brunswick Sewer System General Manager Rob Pontau said now that the foam has gotten into the sewer system, remediation options are limited. “We don’t have a treatment technology to deal with it, and that’s probably a long way out,” Pontau said.
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El País ☛ Bitcoin mining uses the same amount of energy as Argentina, while laptops need a ton of material
The trail left by an airplane is a small, perceptible sample of the pollution generated by air traffic. But digitalization does not leave smoke, and its effects are less evident. However, according to the UNCTAD report, the information and communications technology sector’s carbon footprint accounted for 1.5 to 3.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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Energy/Transportation
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FAIR ☛ ‘This Is a Push to Pass Laws Criminalizing Protest of Fossil Fuel Infrastructure’: CounterSpin interview with Emily Sanders on criminalizing pipeline protest
Janine Jackson interviewed ExxonKnews‘ Emily Sanders about criminalizing pipeline protests for the August 16, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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DeSmog ☛ BBC Accused of Doing PR for Major Polluters
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DeSmog ☛ How U.S. governments could crack down on greenwashing
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The Record ☛ FAA proposes new cybersecurity rules for airplanes
The FAA believes the rules will “protect the equipment, systems, and networks of transport category airplanes, engines, and propellers against intentional unauthorized electronic interactions (IUEI) that could create safety hazards.”
Applicants would be required to identify cybersecurity deficiencies and develop instructions for how pilots would continue operating in the event of a cyber incident.
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CNBC ☛ Ford delays new EV plant, cancels electric three-row SUV
Instead, Ford said it will prioritize the development of hybrid models, as well as electric commercial vehicles such as a new electric commercial van in 2026, followed by two EV pickup trucks in 2027.
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Gannett ☛ Ford shifts EV strategy, dropping plans for three-row all-electric SUV
Ford's announcement comes as other automakers are also adjusting their strategies based on slower U.S. EV adoption than predicted. EV purchases are forecast to represent about 8.3% of new car sales, according to Cox Automotive, a slight increase from last year when EV's market share was 7.6%.
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NPR ☛ Ford scraps all-electric SUV plan, saying drivers want hybrids
Ford, which is the No. 2 U.S. EV company, had been working to produce an all-electric three-row SUV. But it tapped the brakes on that vehicle earlier this year, and now, Lawler and Ford say, it’s stalled. Instead, Ford will offer hybrid versions of the SUVs. The next EVs in its pipeline are now pickup trucks and commercial vans — areas where Lawler sees a competitive edge.
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Lewis Dale ☛ The Raleigh Refurb
Last year, I bought a Raleigh Randonneur touring frame, which I used as my commuting bike for work. For a while, it was brilliant, but last winter was pretty hard on it, and there were parts of the frame that weren’t properly painted or protected from the elements. So it got rusty, parts broke, and at the start of this year I abandoned it in favour of a NoLogo singlespeed.
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Michigan News ☛ Michigan reports 4-year high for bicyclists, pedestrians struck by vehicles - mlive.com
In 2023, Michigan reported 2,114 vehicle crashes involving pedestrians, and 1,480 involving bicyclists, according to state police data released this summer. That’s 11% more pedestrian-involved crashes and 10% more bicyclist-involved crashes than in 2022.
Katie Bower, director of the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, voiced concern over the surge in residents hit while biking or on foot.
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Wildlife/Nature
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BBC ☛ Man killed by XL bully dog in his own home
A man has been killed by his own XL bully dog at his home in Lancashire, police have said.
David Daintree, 53, was attacked by the pet in Ashley Court in Accrington and was found dead at about 21:30 BST on Tuesday.
Lancashire Police said officers had “no alternative” but to shoot the dog to “prevent it from causing further injury”, the force said.
Supt Marie Jackson said Mr Daintree's family were being supported by specialist officers after the "tragic incident".
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Wired ☛ The US Government Wants You—Yes, You—to Hunt Down Generative AI Flaws
At the 2023 Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, prominent AI tech companies partnered with algorithmic integrity and transparency groups to sic thousands of attendees on generative AI platforms and find weaknesses in these critical systems. This “red-teaming” exercise, which also had support from the US government, took a step in opening these increasingly influential yet opaque systems to scrutiny. Now, the ethical AI and algorithmic assessment nonprofit Humane Intelligence is taking this model one step further. On Wednesday, the group announced a call for participation with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, inviting any US resident to participate in the qualifying round of a nationwide red-teaming effort to evaluate AI office productivity software.
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The Verge ☛ OpenAI exec says California’s AI safety bill might slow progress
The letter is addressed to California State Senator Scott Wiener, who originally introduced SB 1047, also known as the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.
According to proponents like Wiener, it establishes standards ahead of the development of more powerful AI models, requires precautions like pre-deployment safety testing and other safeguards, adds whistleblower protections for employees of AI labs, gives California’s Attorney General power to take legal action if AI models cause harm, and calls for establishing a “public cloud computer cluster” called CalCompute.
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Smithsonian Magazine ☛ British Government Places Export Ban on Alan Turing's World War II-Era Notebooks | Smithsonian
The papers contain Turing’s notes related to the Delilah project, a lesser-known endeavor to develop a portable voice encryption system. Dating to the mid-1940s, the notes “offer unique insights” into Turing’s mind, as arts minister Chris Bryant says in a statement from the British government.
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ SEBI Issues New Cybersecurity Framework for Regulated Entities
The framework provides a structured methodology to implement various solutions for cybersecurity and cyber resiliency. In order to facilitate better understanding and ease of compliance.
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India Times ☛ Big Tech wants AI to be regulated. Why do they oppose a California AI bill?
Advanced by State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat, the proposal would mandate safety testing for many of the most advanced AI models that cost more than $100 million to develop or those that require a defined amount of computing power. Developers of AI software operating in the state would also need to outline methods for turning off the AI models if they go awry, effectively a kill switch.
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Techdirt ☛ Dear Taylor Swift: There Are Better Ways To Respond To Trump’s AI Images Of You Than A Lawsuit
Please don’t do this. First, it probably won’t work. Suing via an untested law that is very likely to run afoul of First Amendment protections is a great way to waste money. Trump also didn’t create the images, presumably, and is merely sharing or re-truthing them. That’s going to make making him liable for them a challenge.
But the larger point here is that all Swift really has to do here is respond, if she chooses, with her own political endorsement or thoughts. It’s not as though she didn’t do so in the last election cycle. If she’s annoyed at what Trump did and wants to punish him, she can solve that with more speech: her own. Hell, there aren’t a ton of people out there who can command an audience that rivals Donald Trump’s… but she almost certainly can!
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CNBC ☛ GM lays off more than 1,000 salaried software and services employees
The layoffs include roughly 600 jobs at General Motors' tech campus near Detroit. The job cuts represent about 1.3% of the company's global salaried workforce of 76,000 as of the end of last year.
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El País ☛ Donald Trump spreads fake images of electoral support from Taylor Swift
The superstar voiced her support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election, but has not yet declared her preference this year
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU greenlights new chip factory in Dresden
The European Commission on Tuesday said it had approved a new silicon chip factory in Dresden as Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC broke ground on its first European factory.
European leaders are keen to avoid dependence on other regions of the world for the supply of semiconductors — indispensable in an array of electronics from computers, to cars and and even missiles.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Misinformation targeting Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz
Tim Walz, a 60-year-old veteran and former geography teacher, has recently gained national prominence after being chosen as the vice-presidential running mate by Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 Democratic presidential campaign. Prior to this, Walz was not widely known outside the state of Minnesota, where he serves as governor.
Walz has been a critic of former President Donald Trump, particularly regarding national security, healthcare and social justice issues. However, his ascent to the national stage has also made him a target of misinformation, much of it perpetuated by Trump and his supporters.
DW has investigated a few of these claims: [...]
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The Washington Post ☛ Pakistani police charged man for spreading UK riot disinformation
Farhan Asif, 32, is accused of sharing fake information that incited riots in the United Kingdom, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency said Wednesday. He is accused of amplifying misinformation about the identity of the attacker who stabbed three children to death July 29 in an article on the website Channel3Now.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Meduza ☛ As Telegram, WhatsApp, and numerous other web services go down in Russia, Moscow blames attackers while activists suspect Kremlin interference
Internet users in Russia reported outages affecting a wide range of online services on Wednesday, including Telegram, WhatsApp, and Skype. About an hour after the issues began, Russia’s federal censorship agency blamed the disruption on a massive DDoS attack, but digital rights activists said it bears all the hallmarks of an attempted block by the authorities. Here’s what we know.
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[Repeat] France24 ☛ Nicaragua outlaws 1,500 NGOs, including religious charities
The government of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega on Monday banned 1,500 non-governmental organisations it views as hostile, most of them religious charities. The move was part of an ongoing crackdown on civil society groups seen as opposing Ortega's rule.
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India Times ☛ How a law that shields big tech is now being used against it
Section 230, introduced in the internet's early days, protects companies from liability related to posts made by users on their sites, making it nearly impossible to sue tech companies over defamatory speech or extremist content.
Zuckerman has focused on a part of Section 230 that spells out protection for blocking objectionable material online. In 2021, after a developer released software to purge users' Facebook feeds of everyone they follow, Facebook threatened to shut it down. But Section 230 says it is possible to restrict access to obscene, excessively violent and other problematic content. The language shields companies from liability if they censor disturbing content, but lawyers now say it could also be used to justify scrubbing any content users don't want to see.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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The Dissenter ☛ Chicago Police Arrest Several Journalists While Cracking Down On DNC Protest
During the Democratic National Convention, Chicago police aggressively cracked down on a protest outside of the Israeli consulate. Officers carried out a mass arrest that included multiple members of the press, according to several independent reporters that were on the ground.
Josh Pacheco, a photojournalist from New York City, and Olya Fedorova, a freelance photojournalist, were singled out by police and arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct.”
Police reportedly damaged Pacheco and Fedorova’s camera equipment during their arrests, and they were released from the Area 3 police station in the early morning after being held in police custody for nearly 10 hours.
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Defence correspondents: the journalistic wing of the military?
An analysis of broadcasters’ online coverage of defence spending and strategy since Keir Starmer won the election shows that reporting is virtually 100% in line with the government’s own priorities.
Critical voices, where they are included, are entirely from the right.
All 20 articles posted under ‘defence’ since 4 July – 14 from Sky, 5 from the BBC and 1 from ITV – faithfully reproduce the government’s agenda.
These include its proposals for a defence review, its promise to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP, its commitment to Ukraine and NATO (described on the BBC by foreign secretary David Lammy as ‘part of Britain’s DNA’).
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RFA ☛ Hong Kong journalists say press freedom declines further
Press freedom in Hong Kong has fallen to its lowest point since an annual survey of the city’s journalists began 11 years ago amid fears it will weaken still further in the wake of Article 23 security legislation passed in March.
More than half of journalists who responded to the latest Hong Kong Journalists' Association survey said press freedom had declined over the past year, with more than 90% of respondents saying that press freedom had declined overall for the fifth year in a row.
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VOA News ☛ RFE/RL journalist marks 1,000 days jailed in Belarus on charges viewed as bogus
Kuznechyk is one of several journalists and activists who have been jailed in Belarus since 2020, when President Aleksander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, claimed yet another victory in a contested presidential election. Massive protests against the disputed election were met with a severe government crackdown.
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VOA News ☛ 5 journalists killed, dozens injured covering Bangladesh protests
During the mass protest movement in Bangladesh that drove former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from office on August 5, dozens of journalists were injured and at least five killed.
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VOA News ☛ Nevada official sent angry messages to reporter before his murder, Las Vegas court told
They argued that Telles’ anger over the coverage motivated him to kill the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter.
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CPJ ☛ Yet again, Zambian journalist Thomas Allan Zgambo faces prison over reporting
Zambian journalist Thomas Allan Zgambo is facing up to seven years in prison for his reporting on corruption and poor governance in the southern African nation. It is at least the third time that Zgambo has risked imprisonment for his online journalism, a growing threat for journalists in many African countries.
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CPJ ☛ In Nigeria, at least 56 journalists attacked and harassed as protests roil region
“He hit me with a gun butt,” Premium Times newspaper reporter Yakubu Mohammed told the Committee to Protect Journalists, recalling how he was struck by a police officer while reporting on cost-of-living protests in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja on August 1. Two other officers beat him, seized his phone, and threw him in a police van despite his wearing a ”Press” vest and showing them his press identification card.
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BIA Net ☛ Journalist threatened after exposing public contracts secured by holding
Demirdaş explained to bianet that his report, titled “Veysel Demirci Wins Another Tender,” was published on Aug 17. It detailed the 460 million lira contract awarded to Demirci’s company for a project in Adana and highlighted other government contracts that Ziver Holding has secured.
The journalist emphasized that his report was based on factual data obtained from the Electronic Public Procurement Platform (EKAP) and contained no falsehoods or insults.
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[Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong press freedom falls further, according to HKJA survey
According to the results of the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s (HKJA) annual press freedom index, published on Tuesday, the rating recorded by reporters was just 25 out of 100, the lowest since the survey was first conducted in 2013.
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VOA News ☛ Investigation sought after influential Thai general hits journalist
The ethics code for Thai parliamentarians states members should respect the rights and liberty of others and refrain from threats, showing malice or use of force to harm others.
The incident happened on Friday moments after the Pheu Thai Party's Paetongtarn Shinawatra won a vote in parliament to become prime minister, Thailand's third premier from the billionaire Shinawatra family, with which Prawit has a bitter history.
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CPJ ☛ Iraqi security forces assault 2 news crews covering protests
On August 18, in Halabja, Sulaymaniyah province, Iraqi Kurdistan Asayish security forces attacked Zoom News TV reporter Avin Atta and cameraman Zhyar Kamli while they were reporting on a demonstration against the killing of a porter, known as a kolbar, by Iraqi border forces in the Hawraman area.
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The Nation ☛ Real-Time “Fact-Checking” Is the Lowest Form of Journalism
In practice, this vision of reporters as above-the-fray priests of a higher empirical truth could not be more ill suited to the Trumpified political age. Indeed, the vision of our political press as a performative fact-checking outlet functions as a kind of learned institutional helplessness. As Trump derides the canons of the Lügenpresse and calls journalists “the enemy of the people,” and MAGA elected officials discuss the lynching of reporters, the whole enterprise of compulsively calling out the movement’s empirical shortcomings is a case study in self-undermining futility. It seems a lot like pointing out that your mugger’s shoe is untied while you’re pinned against the wall with a knife at your throat.
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Semafor Inc ☛ Burkina Faso jihadist attacks expose Ibrahim Traoré's problems
Civilians who have displeased the regime, including judges and journalists, have been forcibly drafted into front-line combat. Those drafted include the popular radio journalist Alain Traoré, known to his audience as Alain Alain, who was reported “killed in action” on Aug. 17.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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EFF ☛ Geofence Warrants Are 'Categorically' Unconstitutional | EFFector 36.11
If you'd like future lessons about the fight for digital freedoms, you're in luck! We've got you covered with our EFFector newsletter. You can read the full issue here, or subscribe to get the next one in your inbox automatically. You can also listen to the audio version of the newsletter on the Internet Archive, or by clicking the button below:
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VOA News ☛ Senior US officials meet Dalai Lama in New York
China took control of Tibet in 1951 before the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959.
Tibet had previously been largely autonomous, following the fall of the Qing dynasty, which lasted three centuries.
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JURIST ☛ Austria agrees to ban marriages for those under 18
Austrian news outlet Kurier reported one of the reasons for this reform is UNICEF’s worldwide call for a minimum age of marriage of 18 years. The European Union does not legislate on marriage, leaving space for each member state to establish rules on the matter. In this sense, all member states require the legal age of marriage to be the same as the age of majority, set at 18 for most states. Despite this, most countries are free to establish exceptions.
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RFERL ☛ Taliban Bars UN's Human Rights Envoy From Entering Afghanistan
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have banned UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Richard Bennett from entering the country, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted as saying by private Afghan broadcaster Tolo. [...]
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ANF News ☛ Demonstration for Yazidi women in front of the UN building in Beirut
The action was promoted by the Women's Life Foundation, Newroz Community and Culture Foundation and Werde Butrus-Equality for Women's Affairs Association.
Lebanese and Palestinian women gathered in front of the UN to express their support for the resistance of Yazidi women and to call for the perpetrators of the genocide attacks of 2014 to be held to account.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Jonathan Dowland ☛ Fediverse and feeds
The Fediverse (or the Mastodon-ish bits of it) should avoid the fate of Twitter. JWZ puts it better and more succinctly than I can.
The Fedi experience is, sadly, pretty clunky. So I want to try and write a bit from time to time with tips and tricks that might improve people's experiences.
First up, something I discovered only today about Mastodon instances. As JWZ noted, "If you are worried about picking the "right" Mastodon instance, don't. Just spin the wheel.". You can spend too much time trying to guess a good answer to this. Better to just get started.
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Inside Towers ☛ Democratic Platform Highlights Broadband Infrastructure Investments - Inside Towers
The platform for the Democratic National Convention happening in Chicago this week links together investments in broadband infrastructure with policies promoting semiconductors and easing supply chain woes. Broadband infrastructure is featured beginning on page two of the 92-page platform, stating the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is breaking ground on over 57,000 projects across 4,500 communities.
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The Conversation ☛ Avalanches can grow 100 times larger under the sea than on land – here’s why they’re a risk to the internet
My new study of an ancient underwater avalanche challenges our understanding of how underwater avalanches develop and may change the way geologists assess their risk potential.
It is estimated that there are now over 550 active seafloor cables around the world with a combined length of 1.4 millionkm – enough to wrap around the circumference of the Earth 35 times.
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US News And World Report ☛ Russia Says It Records Mass Disruption in Telegram, Whatsapp Apps
It did not say what could have caused the disruptions.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Internet giants must 'pay to play' in South Africa
According to ACT’s white paper, the only OTT players regulated in South Africa are voice-over-IP service providers. Streaming services for music and video and messaging platforms are not regulated, and ACT believes telecoms policy needs to be updated to include these companies in the regulatory regime.
Central to ACT’s argument is the concept of “Fair Share”: the idea that OTT service providers, as high-bandwidth users of broadband networks, should pay network operators for the capacity they take up on the networks so that they, the operators, have more capital to maintain and upgrade their infrastructure.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Matt Birchler ☛ Netflix is more serious about games than you might expect
It’s a good get for Netflix, and a reminder that they have been developing a pretty impressive library of games over the last year or two. Out of curiosity, I checked out the full list of game they currently have available to subscribers, and it’s pretty good! It’s similar to Apple Arcade, but what stands out to me is that it has more of the sorts of games that appeal to me. Below are some standouts, some of which are on Apple Arcade as well, and some that were game-of-the-year contenders in the larger gaming space outside of iOS.
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Silicon Angle ☛ UK antitrust watchdog closes Google, Apple probes to revise regulatory approach
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, has closed two parallel probes into Google LLC and Apple Inc. that focused on their business practices in the mobile market.
Officials announced the decision today. The development relates to a new piece of legislation, the DMCC Act, that became law in the U.K. this past May. The CMA signaled that it could resume its scrutiny of Apple and Google in a new form to make use of the additional regulatory tools that the DMCC Act puts at its disposal.
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India Times ☛ The case against Microsoft that "personally wounded" Bill Gates
However, the book's claims have not gone unchallenged. A spokesperson for Bill Gates told Business Insider that the book includes "highly sensationalised allegations and outright falsehoods that ignore the actual documented facts our office provided to the author on numerous occasions."
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PC World ☛ Sick of Google? Try one of these 5 search engines instead
You don't have to use Google to search the internet. Here are five contenders you don't want to miss.
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Copyrights
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Walled Culture ☛ OCLC says “what is known must be shared”, but sues Anna’s Archive to stop it sharing knowledge
The current lawsuit will probably be the first of many, just as happened with Sci-Hub. How Anna’s Archive will respond is not yet clear. But an interesting post on the latter site points out that the continuing rapid fall in storage costs means that in a few years’ time it will be possible to mirror the entirety of even expanded versions of Anna’s Archive for a few thousand dollars. When that happens, there won’t be one or two backups of the site – and hence most human knowledge – but thousands, possibly millions of copies: [...]
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The Register UK ☛ AI copilots are getting sidelined over data governance
Microsoft positions its Copilot tool as a way to make users more creative and productive by capturing all the human labor latent in the data used to train its AI models and reselling it.
But technology reached the market far ahead of safety and security. It was only two years ago that generative AI services started to appear and there's still some work to be done.
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India Times ☛ OpenAI signs content deal with Condé Nast
News and digital media have faced steep challenges over the last decade as many technology companies eroded publishers' ability to monetize content, Roger Lynch, CEO of Conde Nast, said in a memo to employees.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Unofficial M3U8 Playlists For Pluto TV, Samsung & Plex, Shut Down By Warner
Offering movies and TV shows at no cost to the consumer has seen 'FAST' services like Pluto TV attract tens of millions of users. Consumption is also thriving via unofficial methods, including M3U8 playlists that are versatile despite their simplicity. During the past 24 hours, the most popular unofficial playlists were taken offline by Warner Bros, succeeding where earlier attempts failed.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Webtoon Targets 170+ Pirate Domains Through DMCA Subpoena
In June, Webtoon Entertainment celebrated going public by sounding the closing bell at the Nasdaq exchange. Thus far, early investors haven't been rewarded, but the company itself sees a bright future ahead. By targeting roughly 170 pirate site domains though a DMCA subpoena, it hopes to unmask their rogue operators and clear the path for future growth.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Kakao Reveals Anti-Piracy Successes, Legal Action Against Major Manga Sites
Kakao Entertainment's pursuit of pirates distributing the company's 'webtoon' comics has been controversial at times, yet appears to be delivering results. Earlier this year the company's P.Cok anti-piracy unit offered rewards for webtoon fans to snitch on pirates. With the release of Kakao's fifth anti-piracy report, the company details its successes and reveals legal action targeting three major manga sites.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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