Leftovers

• Locus Magazine ☛ Cory Doctorow: Marshmallow Longtermism – Locus Online

  But the marshmallow test is a tricky one. Replication studies reveal impor­tant details that are missing from Mischel’s triumphant analysis. On average, the kids who “fail” and eat the marshmallow rather than waiting and doubling their haul were poorer, while the “patient” kids were from wealthier back­grounds. When the “impatient” kids were asked about the thought process that led to their decision to eat the marshmallow rather than holding out for two, they revealed a great deal of future-looking thought.

  The adults in these kids’ lives had broken their promises many times: Their parents would promise material comforts, from toys to treats, that they were ultimately unable to provide due to economic hardship. Teachers and other authority figures would routinely lie to these kids, out of some mix of overly optimistic projection about the resources they’d be given to help the kids in their care, or the knowledge that the kids’ poor, time-strapped, frantic parents wouldn’t be able to retaliate against them for lying.

  So the kids had carefully observed the world they operated in and con­cluded, on balance of probability, that eating the marshmallow was the safe bet. At the very least, it foreclosed on the possibility that the adults running the experiment would come back in 15 minutes and declare that, due to circumstances beyond their control, they were taking back the original marshmallow, rather than providing two of them. They were thinking about the future, in other words.

• Lou Plummer ☛ How to Be Yourself and Get Along Online

  That's really pretty simple, if not easy. You can apply it in almost any situation. Even on the Internet.

• Austin Gil ☛ Dear Internet

  And now, after everything, I think it’s time we take a break.

  It feels like you’ve changed. Like all you care about these days is harvesting personal data, creepy targeted ads, misinformation, hate, crypto scams that cause supply-chain issues, AI that overpromises and underdelivers, and algorithms designed to keep me coming back.

  How many hours, days, weeks, months, even years of my life have I spent mindlessly scrolling?

  Enough, probably. I don’t actually know.

• Aman Mittal ☛ Tag gardening

  I recently came across Karl Voit’s blog post about the concept of tag gardening. He uses this process to trim down the various tags he uses and provides explanation on the decision he took during the cleanup.

  His blog post served as a timely reminder of why I should clean up some of the tags from my blog. I wrote this post to appreciate Karl’s efforts and share my thoughts on the topic.

• Education

  • Ignacio Brasca ☛ How I Take Notes

    I use a notebook, a classical one, and from there, I take two pages: the left side is for work, and the right side is for my life outside of it.

    This may sound silly, I know, but it’s incredibly powerful to go back in time and have a glance at how much I was working or living, depending on the period I’m looking at.

  • Paolo Melchiorre ☛ So long, and thanks for all the tabs

    Yesterday was officially my last day at 20tab after 8 long and intense years of professional and human growth. In these last few days we have had the opportunity at various times to retrace with colleagues the moments of these years of working together both remotely and in person.

    I wanted to try to collect some of these thoughts that I exchanged with them and share them with all of you. I am realizing that in reality 8 years are a lot to summarize in a few lines and that I will surely forget many important things about my experience at 20tab. I am consoled by the fact that in these years I have actually already shared many of these experiences in my articles and social posts.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The conspiracy of mediocrity

    The small company that gets worn down by the constant pressure to simply do a bit less and care a bit less, and decides to follow the mass market where it seems to want to go.

    The thing about these conspiracies, though, is that many people have to go along for them to work.

  • Forrest Brazeal ☛ The death of the [modified] developer

    If you read to the end of Steve’s article, he suggests that many top CS graduates are effectively “already senior” by the time they graduate, because they’ve put in a ton of extra time on OSS projects, etc, to pick up relevant skills. This is your competition, he tells the artists-formerly-known-as-junior-developers; you better get good.

    I find this to be a puzzling frame. If someone can be “effectively senior” without years of actual professional experience, then what the heck do the words “senior” and “junior” even mean? Are we just using them as synonyms for “skilled” and “not skilled?” Because that is not going to help all the people out there trying to break into tech jobs who can’t even get evaluated on their merits because the job req demands five years of experience. “Just get good” is not really a helpful thing to tell those people. Not at scale.

    There’s another implication here, an even odder one: if there is no demand for junior developers anymore, then there can’t really be senior developers anymore either, right? “Senior” only has meaning as a contrast to “Junior”.

• Hardware

  • PC World ☛ I switched my $1000 desktop for a $300 mini PC and regret nothing

    Consider this a lesson on technological overkill. Outside of some specialized use cases, the required compute power for getting things done might be a lot less than you think.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel Panther Lake processors could pack up to 16 cores, maximum of four performance cores according to leak

    Based on the Coreboot records, there will be a Panther Lake-U processor featuring four high-performance cores and four ultra-low power cores, but zero efficiency cores. These processors will be aimed at thin and light laptops as they feature a 15W power limit, according to this data. That means, up to eight cores.

  • RFA ☛ Taiwan’s chips industry ‘key reason’ for world to protect island: Lai

    Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said the island can take advantage of its semiconductor industry not only to promote the development of the economy but also as a key reason for the world to protect the island.

    Commenting on a rumor circulating in the U.S. that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry could be the very reason for China to decide to attack Taiwan, Lai said he would try his best to protect the island’s security.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Age AU ☛ More than half of young Queenslanders are exhausted, stressed: survey

    More than half of young Queenslanders are feeling stressed and anxious with health experts warning the sharp mental health decline is a result of social media.

    Research by Health and Wellbeing Queensland revealed that nine in 10 people aged between 14 and 25 had experienced a negative change in their wellbeing in the past year.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 1 in 4 HK teens suffer from moderate to severe depression, NGO finds

    One in four Hong Kong secondary school students said they suffered from moderate to severe depression, a survey conducted by an NGO has found, urging the city to foster a more positive culture for teenagers and include youngsters when planning mental health policies.

  • Greg Morris ☛ Are All Distractions The Same?

    Granted, reading won’t be working to distract me as much as social media is. It won’t be hacking my brain to ruin my attention span and possibly, my mental health. So it’s better. Reading is one of my favourite things to do, but if I will be reading instead of being present in the world, that can’t be as good as I think it is. Can it? Given the choice, wouldn’t it be better to simply learn to be bored a bit more?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Japan: Difficult Fukushima debris clean-up put on hold

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Mind games: Populists' 'downward spiral' to unhappiness

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Modern parenting is so stressful that the U.S issued a health advisory. Parents say it's overdue

  • Stanford University promotes disastrous “natural herd immunity” approaches to the pandemic

    If there was one thing that I would not have predicted—but, arguably, should have been able to predict—regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the degree to which my fellow academics, particularly physicians and scientists, would contribute to public fear, misunderstanding, and doubt about public health interventions utilized to mitigate the worst of the pandemic. If I had been able to predict the level of complicity of my fellow academics in advocating for just letting the disease rip in a futile bid to achieve “natural herd immunity,” opposing tried-and-true interventions to slow the spread of respiratory diseases (e.g., masking) using a narrow fundamentalist interpretation of evidence-based medicine (EBM), promoting unproven “repurposed drugs” as near miracle cures, and even fear mongering about vaccines, I might have been able to predict that Stanford University would end up being the epicenter of such activities, if only because of its tight affiliation with the right wing think tank, The Hoover Institution. If that weren’t enough, then the fact that one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, the document advocating a “let ‘er rip” approach to the pandemic promising “natural herd immunity” in six months, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, is Stanford faculty should have helped. So should the fact that Dr. John Ioannidis, formerly the greatest EBM guru (whom I once admired) who very early in the pandemic took a heel turn in favor of minimizing how dangerous COVID-19 was and advocating—you guessed it—”natural herd immunity” approaches to the pandemic.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] 'Concerning' rise in unprotected sex among teenagers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Germany warns over incendiary devices in freight

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Netherlands: Colombia extradites alleged drug boss for trial

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Quebec towns near U.S. border alerted as Vermont faces mosquito-borne illness threat

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Whooping cough cases are soaring to new heights in Canada. What's behind the sudden spike?

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] 2 dead, 2 critical in apparent group overdose near Vancouver Island beach: RCMP

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Neowin ☛ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady reportedly hit with layoffs

    It's no secret that the release of developer Rocksteady's most recent game, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was met with a generally poor reception from both gamers and game reviewers. It also failed sales expectations from its publisher, Warner Bros. Games. Now, a new report claims that the other shoe has dropped, claiming a large number of layoffs at Rocksteady.

    Eurogamer reports that it has gotten info from unnamed Rocksteady staff members that the developer's QA department has been cut down from 33 team members to just 15 workers in the last month. In addition, it stated that an unnamed Rocksteady staff member announced this weekend on a social media account that they had been laid off as well, in the middle of their paternity leave. According to the story, the mass layoffs in Rocksteady's QA division will add to the work of the remaining 15 team members.

  • VOA News ☛ Brazil Supreme Court panel upholds judge's decision to block X nationwide

    The panel that voted in a virtual session was made up of five of the full bench's 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision.

  • Herman Õunapuu ☛ How to copy media off of an iPhone the hard way (using Linux)

    These are the steps that I took. The commands need to be run in a terminal window.

    Tested with Fedora Linux 40.

  • Futurism ☛ AI Accuses Journalist of Escaping Psych Ward, Abusing Children and Widows

    It appeared that the chatbot amalgamated Bernkalau's decades' worth of reporting on criminal trials and misconstrued him as the perpetrator.

    Bernklau filed a criminal complaint for slander, but was rejected by public prosecutors, who reasoned that no offense was committed because no real person could be considered the originator of the claims, according to SWR.

    He had more success after reaching out to data protection officers, but only marginally.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Deepfake perpetrators pay no heed to police crackdown

    According to a report by Security Hero, a cybersecurity company, the number of online deepfake videos surged by 550 percent year-on-year to 95,820 last year.

  • India Times ☛ Brazil shuts down X, Elon Musk fumes: all you need to know

    The fight between Musk and Moraes began when the latter ordered the suspension of X accounts of supporters of Brazil's former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. These include figures like far-right ex-congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2022 on charges of leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.

  • teleSUR ☛ Brazil Blocks X After Elon Musk’s Judicial Breaches

    Another measure ordered by Moraes involves removing the application from virtual stores of companies such as Apple and Google, with the aim of preventing new downloads by mobile users.

    The sentence is part of an investigation for spreading false news in which the South African businessman is suspected of having committed crimes of obstruction of justice, criminal organization and incitement to crime.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ X is now banned in Brazil

    The feud has led to the freezing this week of satellite internet provider Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX.

    In his ruling, Moraes ordered that X, formerly Twitter, be suspended in Brazil until it complied with all related court orders, including the payment of more than US$3-million in fines, as well as the designation of a local representative, as required by Brazilian law.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] A Regina health clinic is offering a subscription for 'faster service,' but critics say it's privatization

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Strategist ☛ Technology can serve humanity if we don't let it outpace our societies

    As our first speaker Eric Schmidt has written of artificial intelligence: ‘Faster aeroplanes did not help build faster aeroplanes, but faster computers will help build faster computers.’

    And that’s the challenge. Progress is happening so quickly that governments and societies struggle to understand revolutionary and disruptive technology, much less mobilise effective responses.

    And if we don’t roll up our sleeves and wrestle with difficult policy challenges around emerging technologies, we yield the space to others who might be motivated purely by financial gain or political power. Then, technology isn’t serving the needs and interests of the majority of people.

  • India Times ☛ ByteDance taps banks for $9.5 billion Asia dollar corporate loan, sources say

    Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are the coordinators of the financing, which carries a tenor of three years and can be extended to up to five years, the sources, who did not want to be named because the discussions are confidential, said.

  • El País ☛ In Spain, 26% of young men prefer authoritarianism to democracy ‘in some circumstances’

    Almost 70% of Spaniards believe that the democratic system in their country is deteriorating, only half feel represented by a party and 36% believe that politics would get worse if more immigrants actively participated in it

  • VOA News ☛ Turkey arrests 15 accused of assaulting US servicemen

    In a statement, the Izmir governor's office said members of the Turkey Youth Union (TGB), a youth branch of the nationalist opposition Vatan Party, "physically attacked" two U.S. soldiers dressed in civilian clothes in the Konak district.

  • Newsweek ☛ Chase Bank 'Glitch' Goes Viral: What We Know, Don't Know

    Some people noted that the glitch was actually just check fraud and that those who had filmed and posted themselves doing or attempting it on social media could face serious repercussions.

  • The Strategist ☛ China is likely to step up influence operations in Palau

    The prospect of intensified Chinese influence operations increases the risk of a pro-Beijing president taking office in a country that’s just 2,400 kilometres from the South China Sea, is a key ally of the United States and supports it by hosting a major air base, a naval base and a newly installed radar with extremely long range.

    Palau has already been the target of Chinese information operations, and there are several indicators that those efforts are now being directed at the election. China is likely to implement refined tactics that it previously used in the recent Philippine and Taiwan presidential elections. Urgent action to guard against interference is crucial to protect Palau’s democratic process and sovereignty as a whole.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Germany: Anti-far-right protests held ahead of state polls

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Germany: Knife attack on bus injures 6

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Hitler's Germany invaded Poland 85 years ago

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Philippines, China trade blame over latest ship collision

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Switzerland: Inmates escape from jail near German border

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Telegram CEO's arrest fuels debate on platform regulation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Decoding China: The Vatican's difficult diplomacy

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Deportation flight leaves Germany for Afghanistan

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] The unseen Holocaust movie: Jerry Lewis' lost film 'The Day the Clown Cried'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] ABBA tell Trump to stop using their music in campaign

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] China's nuclear weapons a growing concern for US

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] CIA revealed plot to kill 'huge number' at Taylor Swift Vienna concert

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Danish court rejects India extradition request in arms case

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Macron defends giving Telegram CEO Durov French citizenship

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] France hands Telegram CEO Pavel Durov preliminary charges

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] German police investigate shooting of knife-wielding man

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Germany: Government plans response to Solingen knife attack

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] How Middle East authoritarians benefit from conflict in Gaza

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Immigrants in eastern Germany fear AfD’s rise in state elections

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Nepal: Will new laws offer closure to war crime victims?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Germany: Ex-head of banned Islamic center faces deportation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Germany's regional elections threaten Scholz’s coalition

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Islamophobic disinformation spikes after stabbings in Germany, UK and Spain

• Environment

  • Scott Willsey ☛ The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper-and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It

    This is not a normal topic for me on this site, but since I blather on about technology nonstop and make my living thanks to it, it’s important to highlight the very real downsides it brings. For example, the current push towards electrification of everything is ramping the planet’s need for copper, and copper means exploitation, death, and environmental disaster to people in many parts of the world.

  • Wired ☛ Wildfires Are Contaminating Water Supplies

    In a healthy forest, there’s a lot of “litter” on the ground—pine needles, dead leaves, debris. “It acts like a sponge,” says Rhoades. “As rainfall comes in, it moves through that layer slowly and can trickle into the soil.” When fires scorch the land, they burn that vegetation and organic matter, leaving behind a bare landscape that’s highly susceptible to erosion. Instead of filtering into the ground, rain will slide right off the surface, moving quickly, picking up soil, and carrying it into streams and rivers. Not only does this cause sediment build-up, but it can disrupt the water chemistry. Rhoades found elevated levels of nutrients, like nitrogen, in rivers almost 15 years after a high-severity fire. These nutrients can lead to harmful algal blooms, although they don’t directly impact drinking water quality. But other sites show increased levels of heavy metals like manganese, iron, and even lead after a major fire, which can complicate water-treatment processes.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Greece declares state of emergency over flood of dead fish

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Greek islands: Fighting water shortages with desalination units

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Yemen floods kill nearly 100 and damage scores of homes

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] Namibia to cull wild animals amid drought

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Half the world lacks access to safe drinking water

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] E-car trailblazer, biologist win German environment prize

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] What is methane?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Tesla asked Canada to reduce tariffs on its EVs made in China, Reuters source says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Venezuela claims 'sabotage' in widespread power outage

    • Futurism ☛ If You Think Cybertrucks Are a Mess Now, Wait Until Winter Hits

      They may well be right. Metal experts and people who shape aluminum for various applications know that the metal does corrode and weaken in the presence of salt water under certain conditions.

      Though it's not clear what kind of protective coating is covering the aluminum or the quality of the metal, the fact that the consumer model of the vehicle has had a whole host of quality control issues should give anybody cause for concern.

    • The Verge ☛ What a 160-year-old theory about coal predicts about our self-driving future

      Enticing though they are, such arguments conceal a logical flaw. As a classic 19th-century theory known as a Jevons paradox explains, even if autonomous vehicles eventually work perfectly — an enormous “if” — they are likely to increase total emissions and crash deaths, simply because people will use them so much.

    • El País ☛ Europe jumps on the train

      Growing numbers of Europeans are thinking — and acting — like Hagège. Young people, especially, for climatic reasons: switching from planes or cars to trains drastically reduces carbon dioxide emissions. But there is more to it than that: the energy crisis of 2022 accelerated Brussels’ plans to develop a true continental railway network, promoting connections between countries and, above all, night trains, which for years had been relegated to ostracism but re-emerged after the Covid pandemic. The European Commission has supported a dozen pilot projects for new cross-border connections that are “more frequent, faster and more affordable.” And the European Investment Bank (EIB), a financial arm with increasing influence on the EU scene, has supported the railway initiative with multimillion-dollar loans to projects such as the purchase of new high-speed and freight equipment from the Spanish railway company Renfe.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Turn Down the Streetlights

      Municipalities across England and Wales provided an even broader natural experiment. In the early 2000s, high electricity costs and growing climate concerns prompted many of them to dim their streetlights, turn them off late at night, or shut some off permanently. Researchers funded by Britain’s National Institute of Health Research compared collision and crime stats before and after the changes in 62 local jurisdictions. Their findings, published in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, were surprising. Local results varied, but on average the researchers found “no evidence” of any change in crime rates after streetlights were switched off entirely or for part of the night. They did find “weak evidence” that crime rates declined when streetlights were dimmed, and when localities switched from yellowish high-pressure sodium streetlights to bright-white LEDs. None of these changes seemed to affect the number of roadway collisions.

      That study’s takeaways: The benefits of streetlights are overrated. Brighter is not, on average, better. Dimmer may be.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Critics fear for wildlife as Site C reservoir fills in northeast B.C.

    • VOA News ☛ Egyptian team specializes in moving elephants

      When it comes to the niche business of moving elephants, Dr. Amir Khalil and his team might be the best.

      The Egyptian veterinarian's résumé includes possibly the most famous elephant relocation on the planet. In 2020, Khalil's team saved Kaavan, an Asian elephant, from years of loneliness at a Pakistan zoo and flew him to a better life with other elephants at a sanctuary in Cambodia.

  • Overpopulation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Court ruling could limit Sonoma groundwater pumping

      Every year in Sonoma County, steelhead trout and coho salmon return to spawn in creeks along the Russian River that are fed by groundwater.

      Environmental advocates have long urged the county to adopt measures that would prevent groundwater pumping and well drilling from drying up these streams and damaging vital fish habitat.

      Now, a Sonoma County Superior Court judge has sided with environmental groups, ruling that the county violated state law and failed to meet its obligations to protect so-called public trust resources when officials adopted rules for wells under an amended local ordinance.

• Finance

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-08-31 [Older] The Rich Want You to Fear Tax Fairness

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Tensions are rising between Montreal's residents and unhoused people. Is cohabitation possible?

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Quebec's tuition hike triggers financial strain for English universities as enrolment drops

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Judge acquits CPKC of contempt of court in ruling tied to long work hours

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] German inflation sinks to 1.9% in August

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Gabon moves towards democracy one year after coup

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Germany withdraws troops from junta-run Niger

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-30 [Older] Brazilian judge orders suspension of Elon Musk's X

  • India Times ☛ Why one of France’s biggest IT [sic] companies is cutting its revenue forecast

    Once regarded as a leading player in Europe’s software and technology sector, Atos has been on the verge of financial collapse in recent months. However, the company secured an important restructuring agreement with banks and bondholders earlier this year.

  • Futurism ☛ Economists Alarmed by Growing Demand for Sausage

    "As the economy weakens, we are seeing modest growth in our category of dinner sausage," this person is quoted as saying in the survey. "This category tends to grow when the economy weakens, as sausage is a good protein substitute for higher-priced proteins and can 'stretch' consumers’ food budgets."

    The rest of the survey wasn't upbeat either, with respondents saying they're preparing for a recession because they noticed that invoices are getting paid more slowly, along with other signs that several key industry sectors are weakening.

  • NBC ☛ Higher sausage demand could be red flag for economy

    An uptick in sausage demand can offer the latest sign of consumers tightening their belts as they continue grappling with high prices.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ China holds one of the Gao Brothers over 'insulting' Mao sculptures

    Signed by Ma and several other creative artists, the letter called on the Chinese government to release Gao and to repeal the legislation banning "insults" to revolutionary heroes, because it infringes on the freedom of speech guaranteed -- on paper, at least -- in China's constitution.

    It likened Gao's detention to the political witch-hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, in which the Gao brothers lost their father.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Local journalism in Atlantic Canada in trouble as company known to 'slash and burn' buys dozens of newspapers

  • CBC ☛ 2024-08-29 [Older] Despite layoffs, Postmedia says don't expect big changes to Atlantic Canadian newspapers

  • Spiegel ☛ DER SPIEGEL's Coverage of Donald Trump: We Have Failed to Tame the Media Monster

    DER SPIEGEL Editor-in-Chief Dirk Kurbjuweit asked me to write a critique of DER SPIEGEL in an attempt to learn more about what the newsmagazine is doing right in its coverage of Trump and what can be improved. I was given no guidelines regarding content, no covert influence, no friendly nudges in a specific direction. After two weeks of toiling through DER SPIEGEL back issues – helpful archivists sending me vast packets of past archives, sometimes several times a day – I am able to present a few insights.

  • VOA News ☛ New Hampshire man sentenced to 27 months for harassing journalists

    Cockerline, 33, of Salem, New Hampshire, was part of a group that harassed and intimidated two local journalists. They spray-painted threats and vulgar language on the homes of a reporter, her parents and her editor, according to prosecutors. The group also threw rocks and bricks through the windows of some of the homes, prosecutors said.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, others: China criminalizing journalism in Hong Kong with Stand News verdict

    By weaponizing the legal system against journalists, China has ruthlessly reneged on guarantees given to Hong Kong, which should enjoy a high degree of autonomy after the former British colony was handed back to Beijing in 1997, the groups said in a joint statement.

    Former Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong 47: Gwyneth Ho risks longer sentence by forgoing mitigation plea

    Former Stand News journalist Ho appeared at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building on Tuesday alongside eight other pro-democracy activists, whose turn it was to submit mitigation pleas before being sentenced for conspiring to subvert state power under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] Belarus: Activist Andrey Gnyot fights extradition from Serbia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-08-28 [Older] K-pop band NCT drops singer Taeil amid sex crime accusations

  • Futurism ☛ Employee Found Dead in Cubicle After Apparently Dying There Days Earlier

    In a late-stage capitalist tragedy, an Arizona bank employee was found dead in her cubicle on Tuesday — after clocking in on a Friday and apparently never clocking back out.

    As Arizona's KPNX local broadcaster reports, Tempe police are investigating the death of 60-year-old Wells Fargo employee Denise Prudhomme after her body was found at her desk last week, and officials believe she may have died there up to four days prior.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Editorial: It's time to raise federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour

    It’s been 15 years since workers earning the federal minimum wage got a raise. The cost of living has gone up more than 45% since then, with rents and home prices rising faster than incomes in most regions of the country. Yet the nation’s wage floor has stayed stuck at $7.25 an hour.

    That is poverty pay, and an increase to the federal minimum wage is long overdue. It’s mind-boggling that Congress has gone so long without making even modest adjustments to help the lowest-paid workers. This is the longest stretch of time without an increase to the federal minimum wage since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which established the right to a minimum wage.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Rolling Stone ☛ Ticketmaster Faces Investigation After Oasis Reunion Tour Sale

  After millions of fans endured long virtual wait times and multiple site crashes while trying to secure tickets to the much-anticipated reunion tour, it was a further blow that general admission tickets listed in the pre-sale for £150 ($197) had long disappeared by Saturday morning. Instead, new tickets called “In Demand Standing” were available for upwards of £400 ($525).

  The hike is part of Ticketmaster and others’ controversial pricing strategy that causes ticket prices to fluctuate dramatically when there is high demand for a particular show. In recent years, it’s prompted outrage among fans when trying to secure tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and other artists. (A spokesperson for Ticketmaster previously told Rolling Stone that “promoters and artist representatives set pricing strategy and price range parameters on all tickets, including dynamic and fixed price points.”)

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ EFF Assists Critic's Fair Use Defense Over Kids' Religious Program 'Leak'

    A co-founder of a group, formed to raise awareness of "damaging" religious instruction received by schoolchildren in the U.S., now has support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. After Zachary Parrish published the LifeWise Academy's children's curriculum on the website of 'Parents Against LifeWise' he was sued for copyright infringement. In support of a motion to dismiss, EFF says that copyright law isn't a tool to silence critics and a fair use defense will prevail.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Denies Cheat Seller AimJunkies a New Trial, Affirms Bungie’s $4.3m Win

    Cheat seller AimJunkies has suffered two new setbacks in its legal battle with 'Destiny 2' developer Bungie. The Seattle District Court refused to overturn a jury verdict issued in May and will not grant a new trial. Separately, the Court of Appeals affirmed a $4.3 million arbitration award, concluding that no clear errors were made and that the scale of the award is not “completely irrational”

  • Futurism ☛ No One Wants Apple To Scrape Their Websites for AI Training

    Per the report, media companies that have altered their robots.txt files to lock Applebot out include The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Gannett, Vox Media, and Condé Nast. On the social media side, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr all confirmed that they've blocked Apple from scraping their sites, as did the enduring internet elder Craiglist.