Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Using A Potato As Photographic Recording Surface

  Following in the tracks of unconventional science projects, [The Thought Emporium] seeks to answer the question of whether you can use a potato as a photograph recording medium. This is less crazy than it sounds, as ultimately analog photographs (and photograms) is about inducing a light-based change in some kind of medium, which raises the question of whether there is anything about potatoes that is light-sensitive enough to be used for capturing an image, or what we can add to make it suitable.

• Jake Bauer ☛ An Update About This Very Webbed Site - paritybit.ca

  I don’t know why 10kbclub.com died or when it happened, but what I do know is that I no longer have to care about keeping the transmitted bandwidth of my front page under 10kB. I can stop with the stupid page size measuring contest and have nice things again!

  Besides, I’m really not interested in website asceticism anymore. I want my site to feel like it’s my site; to have a kind of personality rather than just being a plain slab with words.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Supermassive Merger: Sgr A* Formed by Black Hole Collision 9 Billion Years Ago

    The Milky Way's black hole has a violent past.

  • Science Alert ☛ Common Weight-Loss Diet May Come With a Serious Downside, Long-Term Study Finds

    Creating a whole other problem.

  • Science Alert ☛ Rock Used as Doorstop For Decades Turns Out to Be Worth Over $1 Million

    A value missed even by jewel thieves!

  • Science Alert ☛ Weight Loss Involves More Than Calories In, Calories Out. Here's How.

    You can optimize your metabolism.

  • Science Alert ☛ Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Galaxy Caught on The Brink of Collision

    It'll literally shake the Universe.

  • Science Alert ☛ Genetic Evidence Overrules Ecocide Theory of Easter Island Once And For All

    This isn't a cautionary tale.

• Education

  • Harvard University ☛ Speech is never totally free

    But universities should strive to keep a balanced approach to free speech while protecting their educational mission, said Sunstein.

    “The idea of the educational mission being a permission slip for universities to regulate speech seems to me both essential and rightly evocative of the phrase ‘That way lies madness,’” said Sunstein. “Suppose there is a faculty member who thinks America is rotten to the core, there may be students who think, ‘America is the opposite of rotten to the core’ and ‘How can I learn from someone who despises my nation?’ The idea that leading to discomfort or feeling of something like exclusion as a basis for regulating speech is like the heckler’s veto, and that is not consistent with the kind of pluralism educational institutions prize.”

  • Molly White ☛ Big publishers think libraries are the enemy

    My beliefs are simple, and hardly radical: Libraries are critical infrastructure. Access to information is a human right. When you buy a book you should truly own it. When a library buys a book, they should be able to lend it. Readers should be able to read without any third parties spying over their shoulders, or preventing them from accessing the materials they have legally obtained.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Freelancing in the Old Days

    I continued the business for about five years, doing everything from building custom computers to clearing viruses, setting up printers, tutoring a millionaire's six kids to setting up the first satellite-connected computer in the area. People thought nothing of calling me on a Saturday night in the middle of a movie to ask me random computer questions because I'd been to their house one time months before. Others would have a floppy drive fail sometime after I'd installed AOL for them and insist the problem was my fault because I was the last one who touched it. By this time, I'd started working professionally in IT support, making decent pay, and I decided that the hassle was no longer worth it. For a long time, I wouldn't even disclose to people what I did for a living for fear that they'd hit me up for free computer help.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel partner offers refund for faulty Core i9-14900K CPU due to lack of stock — affected user sells off defective chip maker Intel hardware and switches to AMD

    One of Intel's partners in Hong Kong is reportedly refunding Core i9-14900K processors instead of replacing them because it is running out of CPUs.

  • Hackaday ☛ Supercon 2023: Aleksa Bjelogrlic Dives Into Circuits That Measure Circuits

    Oscilloscopes are one of our favorite tools for electronics development. They make the hidden dances of electrons visually obvious to us, and give us a clear understanding of what’s actually going on in a circuit.

  • Hackaday ☛ 2024 Tiny Games Contest: Micro One-Armed Bandit Hits The Cuteness Jackpot

    They don’t call slot machines one-armed bandits for nothing. And although it’s getting harder and harder to find slot machines with actual pull-able handles instead of just big buttons, you can easily simulate the handle at home with the right kind of limit switch, as [Andrew Smith] did with their micro slot machine.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • RFA ☛ Opium replaces meth as North Korea’s drug of choice

    Decline in methamphetamine supplies from China prompt farmers to grow and sell poppies.

  • NYPost ☛ Bizarre treatment may be better for dry eyes than eye drops: study

    More than 360 million people around the world suffer from chronically red, scratchy or irritated eyes, a condition that can worsen with stress.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Coalition of US attorneys general calls for warning labels on social control media

    A bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general today called for Congress to require Surgeon General warning labels on social control media apps to attend to the growing mental health crisis among young adults in the U.S.

  • El País ☛ How a pioneering movement of Basque families managed a ‘digital delay’ for their teenage kids

    “When we started in 2019, 99% of 12-year-old kids going into their first year of secondary school had a cell phone; today 90% of those starting their second year don’t have one. We’ve turned it around,” says Miren Ros, an educator and promoter of a pioneering group in Spain that is working to delay the age of the first cell phone in adolescence. Those percentages represent “only 60-65 children, but it’s already an achievement,” she adds.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reward Modeling of Generative Hey Hi (AI) Systems

    New research evaluating the effectiveness of reward modeling during Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF): “SEAL: Systematic Error Analysis for Value ALignment.”

  • India Times ☛ AI: Humans not AI should control nuclear weapons: Seoul summit

    Officials at the Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit in Seoul, which involved nearly 100 countries including the United States, China and Ukraine, adopted the "Blueprint for Action" after two days of talks.

    The agreement -- which is not legally binding, and was not signed by China -- said it was essential to "maintain human control and involvement for all actions... concerning nuclear weapons employment".

  • Yury Molodtsov ☛ Social Media Platforms Have Killed Links

    Platforms dislike links because they are, by definition, links to other websites. You click a link, and your attention goes elsewhere. But that’s how the internet works. Links are the foundation, and people use links for all kinds of reasons. A desire to start a discussion about an article or a video is one of the incentives to post on social in the first place.

    Meta and Twitter imagine a future where all content is directly syndicated through their properties. Even if they don’t support this kind of content natively. Have you tried using Twitter Articles? They’re primitive, can take 10 seconds to load, and in the end, the engagement figures are not too different from an ordinary post with a link. Twitter videos can’t replace YouTube in their dreams. Most importantly, as an ordinary user, you can’t just reupload someone else’s video or a news article to Twitter to share it natively.

    So you paste a link, and nobody sees it because social platforms push users towards the algorithmic feeds they control. As a result, people post less or nothing at all.

  • EDRI ☛ What the arrest of Telegram’s CEO means for digital rights

    The occasion of Durov’s arrest also presents an opportunity for the French government to review its overly-broad Internal Security Law, and in particular to withdraw the antiquated encryption registration obligation in its Trust in the Digital Economy Law. The Internal Security Law was last modified this summer but still fails to provide meaningful human rights safeguards for law enforcement requests to personal communications data. The Trust in the Digital Economy Law, under which Durov is also charged for having failed to register Telegram in France, contains a 20th century obligation for services to notify the government of any encryption service they might offer. In 2024 that could even be interpreted as including practically any online service in existence, because TLS/SSL-based transport encryption (i.e. basic website security!) has become ubiquitous. As a result, the obligation constitutes an infringement of the freedom to provide digital services in France (and hence in the EU) and, in particular, a threat to smaller providers and the free and open source software community.

  • India Times ☛ Adobe to launch generative AI video creation tool later this year

    Dubbed Adobe Firefly Video Model, the artificial intelligence tool will be released in beta and will join the Photoshop maker's existing line of Firefly image-generating applications that allow users to produce still images, designs and vector graphics.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Cyberattackers have a new target: your car

    In the connected cars of today, virtually all communication between a driver’s smartphone and their vehicle takes place over the internet via the cloud for functions as basic as starting the engine remotely and turning on the air conditioning. Sometimes it’s a user sending a command to the car, and sometimes it’s the manufacturer sending a request for the car’s software to be updated.

    There have been several instances where cybersecurity experts successfully sent commands to a vehicle remotely over the internet using an unauthorised account, according to Liz James, a consultant at IT security firm NCC Group, whose clients include some European car makers.

  • Terence Eden ☛ Why does no-one discuss negative dynamic pricing?

    But that's not the only way dynamic pricing works. Some shows don't sell out. Even the biggest names can sometimes fail to fill a massive venue on a wet Tuesday. When an event doesn't have the numbers expected, negative dynamic pricing kicks in.

    I'm subscribed a number of "Seat Filler" mailing lists. They offer cut-price tickets to events which haven't sold enough tickets.

  • Andrea Contino ☛ Is the PlayStation 5 Pro price a problem? - Go With The Flow

    The PS5 Pro's price increase over the original PS5 is significantly larger than the jump from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro, while it was the opposite in terms of technology (PS4 didn’t have 4K support originally while PS4 Pro was equipped with that). This has led many to question whether the performance enhancements justify the higher cost.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Tripwire ☛ WordPress Plugin and Theme Developers Told They Must Use 2FA

      Developers of plugins and themes for WordPress.org have been told they are required to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) from October 1st.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ Google's AI model faces down data use inquiry in EU

      The DPC is concerned about whether Google fully complied with its Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), an evaluation that EU regulators ask data controllers to perform before they ingest large amounts of personal data in a systemic way. A DPIA defines the scope, context, and purposes of data processing and assesses whether that processing might result in a high risk to the freedoms and rights of individuals.

    • University of Michigan ☛ UMich students launch app RushLink to anonymously rank FSL

      Arceo also expressed interest in expanding the app across the University, but voiced concerns about the anonymity aspect if the app were to grow.

    • Six Colors ☛ FDA approves AirPods hearing aid functionality

      No surprise: a multibillion dollar company is not going to announce a feature like this unless it’s really confident that it’s essentially all signed off on.

    • India Times ☛ Top EU privacy regulator opens probe into Google's AI compliance

      Ireland's Data Protection Commission has launched an inquiry into Google's handling of EU users' personal data in developing its AI model, PaLM 2. This investigation is part of broader efforts to regulate data processing in AI development. Recently, social media platform X agreed not to use EU users' data for AI training without consent.

    • Press Gazette ☛ 'Consent or pay': Why UK news sites are getting tough over data

      The “consent or pay” model arrived in the UK this summer after first being introduced by European news titles including Bild and Der Spiegel in Germany. At others, such as El Pais in Spain, only paying subscribers to the site’s overall offering can opt out of personalised advertising, adding an extra subscription incentive.

  • Confidentiality

    • PC World ☛ Your VPN's 'kill switch': What it is and why it matters

      A VPN’s kill switch is one of the first features I recommend people enable with their VPN and something I always have on whenever I connect. It’s a simple, fail-safe way to guarantee your data is never accidentally exposed if your VPN disconnects. It’s so important that a service must include a robust and trustworthy kill switch in order to make it onto my list of best VPNs.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan president Lai Ching-te calls for full support of troops after fighter jet crash

    Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday rallied residents to support the island’s troops after a fighter jet crashed during a night training flight.

  • New York Times ☛ Violence Resurges in Manipur, Indian State Locked in Bloody Conflict for 16 Months

    Ethnic tensions have turned Manipur into an open war zone. Struggling to contain the unrest, the authorities have reimposed a curfew and internet blackout.

  • Defence Web ☛ Sudan conflict “a perfect storm of crises” – WHO Director-General

    Sudan – where fighting rages on between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its opposing Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has drawn widespread criticism with the latest coming from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

  • Atlantic Council ☛ A next-generation agenda: Bridging Indo-Pacific and European perspectives on security

    This next generation agenda proposes policy recommendations designed to improve security cooperation among the United States, South Korea, and European NATO countries in the context of current global security threats, diverging national security perspectives, and imminent leadership changes.

  • Defence Web ☛ Concerning crime figures revealed in key Stats SA report

    Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) conducted the Governance, Public Safety, and Justice Survey (GPSJS) from April 2023 to March 2024. The GPSJS is a countrywide household-based survey that aims to bridge the statistical information gap in the field of governance statistics.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ North America’s moment: The case for energy cooperation

    Cultivating a United States, Canada, and Mexico energy strategy will bolster the competitiveness and security of North America in an increasingly multipolar market.

  • Defence Web ☛ Lack of security at DoD ammunition depot worrying AfriForum

    Apparent security breaches and shortcomings at 93 Ammunition Depot are reasons for concern when the presence of what AfriForum calls “foreign militias” in South Africa is taken into account.

  • Latvia ☛ Man suspected of planning terrorist attacks in Latvia

    On September 2 this year, the State Security Service (VDD) urged the Prosecutor's Office to prosecute a Latvian non-citizen for obtaining instructions and knowledge for terrorist attacks, as well as acquiring and possessing explosives and firearms ammunition.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Why Ukraine will remain central to the future of European security

    Russia’s war against Ukraine has thrown into stark relief what has long been obvious to many international relations scholars, namely that the Cold War ended more than three decades ago but left Europe with a security architecture that has gradually decayed in subsequent years and is now outdated. Mechanisms such as the OSCE and multiple arms treaties are clearly no longer effective. The sole exception here is NATO, but the alliance has been unable to put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

    It is therefore misleading to regard the invasion of Ukraine as an isolated problem within the framework of an otherwise stable European security environment. Instead, the current war is at least partially a consequence of the absence of effective alternative mechanisms for maintaining European security. These mechanisms are highly unlikely to emerge if Russia continues to achieve its goals in Ukraine.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Sanjauli Mosque Row: As protests intensify, police use water canons, lathicharge protestors

    The protests have been called by Hindu organizations over the alleged illegal construction of Sanjauli mosque.

  • Truthdig ☛ Did Saudi Officials Deliberately Assist the 9/11 Hijackers?

    The court files also raise questions about whether the FBI and CIA, which repeatedly dismissed the significance of Saudi links to the hijackers, mishandled or deliberately downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible complicity in the attacks that killed 2,977 people and injured thousands more.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump’s Repetitive Speech Is a Bad Sign

    If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to target critics

    Instead, officials said, Iran hired criminals in Eastern Europe who encountered few obstacles as they cleared security checks at Heathrow Airport, spent days tracking Zeraati and then caught departing flights just hours after carrying out an ambush that their victim survived — perhaps intentionally, investigators said, to serve as a warning but not trigger the fallout that would come with the murder of a British citizen.

    Iran’s alleged reliance on criminals rather than covert operatives underscored an alarming evolution in tactics by a nation that U.S. and Western security officials consider one of the world’s most determined and dangerous practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of violence and intimidation in others’ sovereign territory to silence dissidents, journalists and others deemed disloyal.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Jordan: Islamists win big in parliamentary elections

    Jordan's main Islamist opposition party made significant gains and won 31 out of 138 seats in parliament, according to official results.

    The election outcome is the best yet for the Islamic Action Front (IAF) — who were able to capitalize on people's anger over Israel's war against Hamas.

    The IAF is the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ The Taliban’s Role in Al Qaeda and TTP's Afghan Resurgence

    An article published in Foreign Policy recently disclosed that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are rapidly gaining a foothold in Afghanistan. Contrary to this revelation, the IAG has persistently denied the presence of these groups, particularly the TTP. The international community, however, has presented compelling evidence to the contrary. Reports from multiple intelligence agencies suggest that Al Qaeda has established new terrorist camps across Afghanistan, with at least 21 distinct terrorist organizations now believed to be operating within the country. This proliferation of extremist groups undermines the IAG’s assertions and has alarmed nations around the world, highlighting a potential disconnect between the Taliban’s public messaging and the on-ground realities.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Donald Trump a de facto Russian asset, FBI official he fired suggests

    He added: “I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term. But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ FBI Sued For Withholding Files On Assange And WikiLeaks

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump refuses second debate with Harris, claims he won first one

    Trump did not specify which polls he was referring to, and the claim strained credulity, since the best known national polls all showed the opposite — that a wide majority of viewers said Harris won the 105-minute debate on ABC News.

    Polls taken by CNN, YouGov and a consortium including SoCal Strategies all showed a majority favoring Harris’ performance, by a roughly 20-percentage-point margin in each.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Scientists discover crude oil decimates sea otter buoyancy

    Sure enough, the fur's buoyancy plummeted by almost 55% to 0.145 N, making it much more difficult for the animals to remain afloat. The reduction in buoyancy coupled with the loss of insulation would almost certainly prove fatal in the wild.

  • France24 ☛ Libya: One year after deadly floods, reconstruction in full swing in Derna

    Exactly one year ago, on September 11, 2023, the eastern Libyan coastal town of Derna was hit by deadly floods. Cyclone Daniel left around 5,000 people dead, as many missing and 45,000 displaced. Today, the city is undergoing a full reconstruction. Belgacem Haftar, the son of powerful Libyan military and political leader Khalifa Haftar, has assumed a lead role in the reconstruction process. He has plans for several cities in Libya's east as a way to make amends to a population traumatised by more than a decade of civil war. Our correspondents Lilia Blaise and Hamdi Tlili sent us this exclusive report from Derna over the summer, with Fadil Aliriza.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ Train Speed Signaling Adapted For Car

      One major flaw of designing societies around cars is the sheer amount of signage that drivers are expected to recognize, read, and react to. It’s a highly complex system that requires constant vigilance to a relatively boring task with high stakes, which is not something humans are particularly well adapted for. Modern GPS equipment can solve a few of these attention problems, with some able to at least show the current speed limit and perhaps an ongoing information feed of the current driving conditions., Trains, on the other hand, solved a lot of these problems long ago. [Philo] and [Tris], two train aficionados, were recently able to get an old speed indicator from a train and get it working in a similar way in their own car.

    • France24 ☛ Amsterdam to Berlin in 90 minutes? Europe tests hyperloop vehicles

      The first successful test of a hyperloop vehicle in Europe has been carried out at the European Hyperloop Center in the Netherlands, bringing the dream of passengers hurtling between the continent’s cities at more than 700kph one step closer to reality.

    • DeSmog ☛ Conservatives Accepted £5,000 From Laurence Fox’s Media Company

    • The Register UK ☛ Domo arigato, Mr Roboto: Japan's bullet trains ditch drivers

      JR East highlighted [PDF] several benefits of autonomous operation – including enhanced safety and transport stability, energy savings from efficient operations, increased flexibility to meet demand, and the ability to reallocate employees to other tasks.

      The Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed rail vehicles often described as "bullet trains," connect Japan's major cities at speeds of up to 320km/h (199 mph).

    • VOA News ☛ Electric vehicle sales in China transform auto market

      Foreign brands that used to dominate the Chinese automotive industry have taken a back seat to cars made domestically in China, particularly “new energy vehicles,” or NEVs.

    • Axios ☛ Bitcoin price fell as the presidential debate began

      Why it matters: Bitcoin has been seen as a proxy bet on the election, with traders assuming a win for Former President Donald Trump would boost the price of the oldest cryptocurrency.

      Zoom in: The price started falling almost as soon as the debate began.

    • LRT ☛ Dutch bicycle maker opens factory in Lithuania’s Kėdainiai

      Pon.Bike, the world’s largest bicycle maker owned by the Dutch holding Pon Holdings, has opened its new production facility in Lithuania’s central town of Kėdainiai, having invested 57 million euros.

  • Overpopulation

    • Kansas Reflector ☛ U.S. senators from Kansas, Colorado, Arizona introduce bill to unlock funds for water preservation

      Kansas and Colorado — along with Ciscomani’s home state of Arizona — struggle with continual drought and limited access to water. As of last week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 51% of Kansas is in some level of drought, mostly moderate or severe. Almost 5% of Arizona is in extreme drought. Colorado is currently the least affected with about 12% of the state in some level of drought.

• Finance

  • RFA ☛ US lawmakers ask Biden to end China trade ‘loophole’

    Critics say the ‘de minimis’ exception lets retailers sell clothes made with Uyghur slave labor to Americans.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ EU firms weigh mounting risks, declining rewards of doing business in China, report says

    European firms are considering a “substantial” rethink of their operations in China in the face of lacklustre demand and a lack of action by Beijing to mitigate economic woes, a business lobby warned Wednesday.

  • New York Times ☛ Inflation Cooled in August, Keeping the Fed Poised to Cut Rates

    Consumer Price Index inflation continued to cool, reaching a new three-year low. But signs of stubbornness lingered under the surface.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Lawmakers tee up federal fraud scorecard to measure agency programs

    Social Security’s SSI program and the IRS’s Earned Income Tax Credit program are among those subject to the new federal fraud scorecard.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Exeter Finance’s Offers to Help Cost Car Owners More

    Jessica Patterson tensed as she tore open the letter from Exeter Finance. “This notice is being sent to you concerning your default,” the company wrote.

    She didn’t need to keep reading to know she was in trouble.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Auto Loan Calculator with Extensions/Deferments

    On this page, you can find out how much a car loan deferment might cost by using our free Car Loan Deferment Calculator, explore frequently asked questions about car loan deferments, read our glossary of car loan terms or get in touch with ProPublica reporters.

    Have you taken out a car loan and struggled to pay it back? You’re not alone. Borrowers like you owe more than $1.6 trillion in auto debt, and many are falling behind. Your lender might have given you the option to move payments to a later date, also known as a “deferment” or “extension.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ More jobs cuts hit Microsoft's Xbox unit

    Microsoft said it is cutting 650 jobs in its Xbox unit, the third such layoff this year as the company tries to rein in costs and integrate its US$69-billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft to cut 650 support jobs in Xbox Games unit

    Microsoft Corp. said it is cutting 650 jobs in its Xbox unit, the third such layoffs this year as the company tries to rein in costs and integrate its massive $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc.

    The roles to be eliminated are in “mostly corporate and supporting functions,” according to a memo sent to staff by Xbox chief Phil Spencer on Thursday. “No games, devices or experiences are being cancelled and no studios are being closed as part of these adjustments today.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Dell announces further layoff plans in SEC filing

    In its latest 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, published in the wake of its fiscal Q2 2025 earnings report, the systems maker admitted that those sparkling sales numbers don't change the fact that AI means "business transformation" will continue.

  • VOA News ☛ Samsung Electronics plans global job cuts of up to 30%, sources say

    The plan will be implemented by the end of this year and would impact jobs across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, one person said. Six other people familiar with the matter also confirmed Samsung's planned global headcount reduction.

    It is not clear how many people would be let go and which countries and business units would be most affected.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: What the presidential debate revealed about how Trump and Harris would conduct foreign policy

    On Tuesday night in Philadelphia, the two candidates often presented sharply contrasting visions on a range of foreign policy issues, from tariffs to energy and immigration, and from China to the Middle East.

  • New Yorker ☛ Will Kamala Harris’s Debate Win Be Enough to Move the Needle?

    Vinson Cunningham and Clare Malone break down the first, and perhaps only, Trump-Harris debate.

  • Craig Murray ☛ That Harris/Trump Debate

    I just sat through a recording of the Trump/Harris debate. Ignoring the merits of their political stances, I agree with the general consensus that Kamala Harris “won” in performance terms, but only because Trump was awful.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Nova H1 Audio Earrings Promise ‘Special Edition’ for Presidential Debates After Kamala Harris Accusations

    Following a conspiracy theory circling online that Vice President Kamala Harris was ‘fed’ debate questions through audio earrings—the company that makes them is leaning into the rumor.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Why Did Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes Meet With North Macedonia’s New Prime Minister?

    Earlier this summer, Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and a former California congressman, touched down just outside Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.

    He and a small group of other North American executives were there to talk business. But they weren’t there to meet with representatives from another company. A high-ranking official from the Macedonian government greeted them on the tarmac outside their private jet. Then a police escort ferried them from the airport. They were there to meet with the Balkan nation’s newly elected prime minister.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ VIDEO: Ecuador’s exiled ex-president Correa discusses the US lawfare agenda with The Grayzone

  • New Yorker ☛ The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump

    On today’s social control media, the only way to counteract the overflow of online content is to put out an overflow of your own.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Cybersecurity, disinformation dominates hearing on elections

      Cybersecurity was once considered a side issue in election administration. Eight years after the Russian government waged a multi-pronged effort to interfere in the 2016 elections and four years after former President Donald Trump left office spewing a flurry of falsehoods in a scorched-earth campaign to undermine the integrity of U.S. voting, things look a little different.

      When six secretaries of state descended upon Washington to testify in front of Congress this week on the state of U.S. election readiness, virtually every topic discussed related to cybersecurity or false and misleading claims around election fraud driven by foreign or domestic disinformation.

    • The Verge ☛ Right-wingers continue their anti-Haitian AI disinformation campaign

      One of the most recent examples comes from Tyler Oliveira, a YouTuber and MrBeast associate, who posted a misleading video about Springfield on Wednesday. Oliveira’s video intersperses interviews with locals — including some Haitians — with AI-generated images and memes. Just five seconds in, the video shows a clearly AI-generated clip of a Black man driving a white van surrounded by cats. The video also features clips totally unrelated to Springfield, including footage of a woman being arrested for eating a cat in Canton, Ohio, and a clip of gang members marching on a street in Haiti. It’s a textbook example of disinformation.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Google’s new tool lets large language models fact-check their responses

      Google is releasing a tool today to address the issue. Called DataGemma, it uses two methods to help large language models fact-check their responses against reliable data and cite their sources more transparently to users.

    • Axios ☛ Anatomy of a Trump conspiracy theory

      • The result — on display as he falsely claimed immigrants are eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio — is a candidate who's become a walking liability for his own campaign.

      The big picture: Today, the 78-year-old Trump routinely feasts on a stream of misinformation on Truth Social and X, where a cottage industry of MAGA influencers has flourished since Elon Musk acquired and renamed Twitter.

    • Meduza ☛ A year after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, Russia’s influence campaign in Africa continues apace — but it may have new competition

      Shortly after Prigozhin’s death, Moscow created a new tool to help it expand its influence in African countries: a media agency called African Initiative. The organization publishes articles promoting pro-Kremlin narratives and disinformation about Western countries, especially the United States. According to BBC News Russia, experts have linked it to Russian intelligence services.

    • France24 ☛ Musk brands Australia 'fascists' over fines for tech giants spreading misinformation

      Australia introduced a "combating misinformation" bill on Thursday, which includes sweeping powers to fine tech giants up to five percent of their yearly turnover for breaching online safety obligations.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Americans Who Yearn for Anti-American Propaganda

      But the real question is not whether the talking heads of Tenet Media—the founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who were the main interlocutors with the Russians, but also Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson—had guessed the true identity of their “investor.” Nor does it matter whether they knew who was really paying them to make videos that backed up absurd pro-Moscow narratives (that a terrorist attack at a Moscow shopping mall, loudly claimed by the Islamic State, was really carried out by Ukrainians, for example). More important is whether the audience knew, and I think we can safely say that it did not. And now that Tenet Media fans do know who funds their favorite influencers, it’s entirely possible that they won’t care.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ We Called on the Oversight Board to Stop Censoring “From the River to the Sea” — And They Listened

    We’re happy to see that the Oversight Board agreed. In last week’s decision, the Board found that the three pieces of examined content did not break Meta’s rules on “Hate Speech, Violence and Incitement or Dangerous Organizations and Individuals.” Instead, use of the phrase “From the River to the Sea” was found to be an expression of solidarity with Palestinians and not an inherent call for violence, exclusion, or glorification of designated terrorist group Hamas. 

    The Oversight Board decision follows Meta’s original action to keep the content online. In each of the three cases, users appealed to Meta to remove the content but the company’s automated tools dismissed the appeals for human review and kept the content on Facebook. Users subsequently appealed to the Board and called for the content to be removed. The material included a comment that used the hashtag #fromtherivertothesea, a video depicting floating watermelon slices forming the phrases “From the River to the Sea” and “Palestine will be free,” and a reshared post declaring support for the Palestinian people.

    As we’ve said many times, content moderation at scale does not work. Nowhere is this truer than on Meta services like Facebook and Instagram where the vast amount of material posted has incentivized the corporation to rely on flawed automated decision-making tools and inadequate human review. But this is a rare occasion where Meta’s original decision to carry the content and the Oversight Board’s subsequent decision supporting this upholds our fundamental right to free speech online. 

  • Meduza ☛ The Russian authorities slowed YouTube speeds to near unusable levels — so why are Kremlin critics getting more views?

    Curiously, journalist Dmitry Kolezev, who tracks the audiences of Russian socio-political media, activists, and vloggers on YouTube, noted that in early August, viewership for these channels continued to grow, despite the slowdown. Data from Mediascope also indicated an increase in traffic in Russia to both YouTube’s web and mobile app versions.

  • Techdirt ☛ California Politicians Embarrass Themselves By Calling For ‘Warning Labels’ On Social Media

    Just the fact that he flat out lied to the public and declared victory in one of the cases he lost should give you a sense of Bonta’s priorities in spitting on the First Amendment. But now he’s doubling down.

  • CPJ ☛ Civil Society Demands Attention to Human Rights and Climate Justice Ahead of COP29 in Azerbaijan [PDF]

    Azerbaijan’s government has a longstanding and well-documented pattern of repressing independent civil society and silencing critical voices. Hosting an international gathering such as COP29 in this context raises grave concerns about the ability of civil society, including environmental activists, human rights defenders and journalists, to participate freely and safely before, during and after the conference.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ DPG Media’s investment in print technology helped it focus on digital

    Leading Dutch/Belgium newspaper and magazine publisher invested in modular print/digital platform.

  • 404 Media ☛ Historic Newspaper Uses Janky AI Newscasters Instead of Human Journalists

    A company that owns several newspapers in Hawaii is using AI-generated newscasters to create video news segments against the wishes of its unionized journalists, who say the newspaper’s owners are replacing journalists with AI and described the practice as “digital colonialism.”

  • JURIST ☛ Journalists file complaint with Germany constitutional court over phone wiretapping

    The three associations that filed the complaint are the Bavarian Journalists Association (BJV), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Society for Civil Rights (GFF). They claimed that investigators illegally listened to phone conversations between journalists and members of the group the Last Generation (Letzte Generation). They argued that this measure constituted a violation of press freedom and a threat to democracy. The Last Generation is a group of climate activists who use direct action methods such as traffic blockades and vandalism of buildings, private boats and planes to protest against and raise awareness of climate change.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 23 countries express concern over sedition ruling against HK journalists

    Members of the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) in a statement on Monday said they were “gravely concerned” about the court verdict and “the wider suppression of media freedom” in Hong Kong. Among the 23 signatories were the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, and Ireland.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ UK counter-terror police drafted in after Telegraph journalist dies in Gibraltar

    David Knowles died while on holiday on Sunday after what his employers said was believed to be a cardiac arrest.

    The audio journalist, 32, had joined the Telegraph in 2020 and was behind its Ukraine: The Latest podcast.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Police probe sudden death of Telegraph's David Knowles

    Royal Gibraltar Police said on Thursday it is “investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death” of Knowles although it added that “there are no specific concerns at this time with regard to the death”.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ David Knowles, broadcaster who helped make Telegraph’s Ukraine podcast a runaway success – obituary

    He ‘asked relevant and sensible questions, never seeking a performative edge to his journalism. The story and the guest took centre stage’

  • CPJ ☛ Turkmen journalist Ruslan Myatiev banned from entering Turkey

    “Journalist Ruslan Myatiev’s account that Turkey acceded to Turkmenistan’s request to ban him is a startling suggestion of Turkey’s complicity in transnational repression with one of the world’s worst press freedom violators,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Turkish authorities should revoke the travel ban against Myatiev, and Turkmenistan must stop retaliating against exile-based journalists.”

  • teleSUR ☛ Journalists Seek Asylum in Canada After Threats to Their Lives in Ecuador

    Journalists Andersson Boscan and Monica Velasquez, who work for the digital media outlet La Posta, have sought asylum in Canada, claiming their lives are in danger in Ecuador due to death threats and plans to murder them orchestrated by “corrupt police officers.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ Guards Say Top Adams Aide, Timothy Pearson, Threatened Them After Having Them Arrested

    Two security guards said the aide, Timothy Pearson, attacked them then had them arrested. Federal agents seized his cellphone last week as part of a separate investigation.

  • Site36 ☛ Demand for EU directive for refugees: 15 German organisations criticise persecution as “smugglers”

    Human rights organisations are calling on the German government to take a stand against the criminalisation of refugees and solidarity in Europe.

  • Site36 ☛ Government plans: German police should get green light for facial and voice recognition on the internet

    The German coalition government wants to extend the surveillance rights of the police to include facial and voice recognition on the internet in a fast-track procedure. This should enable networks of suspects to be revealed more quickly. The planned expansion of police surveillance powers in Germany goes far beyond the facial recognition discussed so far.

  • ACM ☛ The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman

    It is difficult to even discuss these issues because both sides are not using the same framework of what is acceptable “moral” behavior and what is not. Just like in distributed systems, we can’t make progress on this topic when there is disagreement on the underlying system model. These beliefs are so deeply held that, consciously or not, when people meet someone who challenges their beliefs, the cognitive dissonance can cause them to do something truly harmful. For example, my very existence as a moderately young, moderately successful computer scientist threatens some men’s sense of identity, thus making them uncomfortable and/or lash out. But if a successful woman in computer science makes men in our community uncomfortable, then we are not likely to have too many successful women in the community.

    In this blog post, I will attempt to describe the system within which I exist as a moderately successful computer scientist and woman. I will highlight the fallacies that lead to women (1) leaving tech, (2) generally being anxious in our society, and (3) experiencing horrific harassment and misogyny.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Navy to commission first sub designed for both men and women sailors

    Female officers did not join the submarine force until 2011, and such roles only opened up to enlisted sailors in 2015.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Listen: Republicans Do Not Want Unions to Exist

    If there were a button that you could push that would eliminate the existence of every labor union in America, the Republican Party would push that button. If it were possible to pass a bill that outlawed labor union membership in America, and if it were possible to pass that bill without a political backlash that might cause them to lose their next election, virtually every state and federal Republican politician of note would vote for it. I feel the need to make sure that anyone who reads this publication understands this fact. It’s hard to get a good grasp on “labor and politics in America” without this baseline understanding.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Afghan women continue medical school in Scotland after Taliban ban

    The Linda Norgrove Foundation was founded by Lorna and John Norgrove and named after their daughter, an aid worker who was kidnapped in Afghanistan and killed in a rescue attempt in 2010. The organization had previously sponsored roughly 100 scholarships for women studying in Afghan universities, including Hussaini, when the Taliban took over the country.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ IODA: Internet Outage Detection and Analysis

    Guest Post: A scalable and reliable system for detecting Internet outages in as near to real-time as possible.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• JURIST ☛ ECJ ruling upholds €2.4B fine against Surveillance Giant Google and orders Fashion Company Apple to pay €13B in tax

  The European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued two rulings on Tuesday, imposing a €2.4 billion fine on Surveillance Giant Google for abuse of its dominant market position and ordering Fashion Company Apple to repay Ireland €13 billion in tax.

• The Register UK ☛ Musk's Starlink dominance sparks FCC competition concerns

  When Elon Musk's Starlink hit its 7,000th broadband satellite milestone, it's unlikely he expected the FCC chair to suggest his space dominance might be stifling competition—but here we are.

  Speaking at the US Chamber of Commerce's annual Global Aerospace Summit, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel expressed a desire to encourage competition in the burgeoning commercial space industry. She didn't name any names, but her message was clear.

• India Times ☛ Ex-Google executive said goal was to 'crush' competition, trial evidence shows

  A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday.

  The statements underscored the US Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle.

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ Big Tech Is Lobbying to Keep Its Stranglehold on Local News

  California legislators were considering bills that would have forced Google, Meta, and other tech firms to pay ongoing fees for earning billions from using news outlets’ content. Big Tech’s lobbying and strong-arm tactics helped kill the legislation.

• Patents

  • JUVE ☛ What associates earn in German patent monopoly litigation practices [Ed: Parasites preying on actual scientists]

    In the battle for the most talented lawyers with an interest in patent monopoly litigation, the absolute top offer comes from Quinn Emmanuel with a starting salary of €175,000 plus bonus.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Mexico’s new judicial reforms could put the USMCA on shaky ground

    All eyes were on Mexico’s Senate as it voted early on Wednesday on an eighteen-point judicial reform package, which passed 86-41. While the last major legislative hurdle has been cleared, the constitutional changes that come next will likely be front and center for US legislators, who will soon begin their review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ahead of the trade deal’s six-year mark on July 1, 2026.

• Trademarks

  • The Register UK ☛ Google sued for using trademarked Gemini name for AI service

    Google renamed its generative AI service from Bard to Gemini in February, after introducing its Gemini model family in December 2023. But the Chocolate Factory did so without evident concern that the name was already in use as an AI brand.

  • Right of Publicity

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Taylor Swift calls out AI deepfakes in Harris endorsement

      “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post officially endorsing Harris. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”

    • Techdirt ☛ Taylor Swift Responded To Trump’s AI Driven Nonsense With An Endorsement Rather Than A Lawsuit

      Now, the focus of this post is not that Trump is the Big Bad, or to suggest that anyone view Swift’s endorsement as a gospel they themselves must follow. Instead, the point is the one we made originally: no lawsuit was needed for Swift to address this. As we said: “she can solve [this] with more speech: her own.” That lines up fairly well with Swift’s statement: “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

• Copyrights

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Wikipedia is facing an existential crisis. Can gen Z save it?

    And therein lies the problem: as Wikipedia’s visibility diminishes, reduced to mere training data for AI applications, it also loses prominence in the minds of readers and potential contributors. When someone notices a topic that is poorly described on Wikipedia, they might feel motivated to correct it. But this can-do spirit goes away when the error comes through an AI summary, where the source of the information isn’t clear.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries

    I was raised in the 1980s and ’90s, and for my generation and generations before us, the public library was an equalizing force in every town, helping anyone move toward the American dream.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Gottfried Mind, The Raphael of Cats

    Labelled a “cretin” and “imbecile” in his lifetime, the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind had profound talents when it came to drafting the feline form. Kirsten Tambling reconstructs the biography of this elusive figure, whose savant-like qualities inspired later French Realists, early psychiatric theorists, and Romantic visions of the artist as outsider.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ACE Helps Egypt to Dismantle the Region's Largest Piracy Site

    Anti-piracy coalition ACE reports that Egyptian law enforcement authorities have shut down Laroza, the 'largest' pirate site in the Middle East and North Africa. Two of the alleged operators were arrested. The piracy ring operated dozens of domains and generated millions of pageviews per month.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ 'Parasitic' IPTV Piracy is Killing Football, "It's Them or Us" Says Serie A CEO

    Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo's dramatic take on Italian football's piracy problems isn't new, likewise his insistence that only coercive action will produce results. "Football is being killed," he said in a recent interview. "However, at the end of this battle we will win. Because it's either them or us." How this will be achieved isn't clear. Pirates keep jumping to new servers and if promises are kept, fans are getting sued next.