Leftovers

• Lou Plummer ☛ Why Do You Blog

  I've never been a big fan of the pressure to "Know your why." I'm not into buzzwords and pop psychology and I definitely don't like being put on the spot. I'm still at a loss to articulate why I've done some of the most difficult and incomprehensible things in my life other than it's just what I felt like at the moment. I think that's OK. Still, I do believe in self-examination and realize that sometimes figuring out our motives is helpful, depending on what we do with that information. To that end, I'm looking at my blogging and why it's become as important as it has to me.

• Michael Tsai ☛ Google Search Adds Links to Internet Archive

  This makes it easier to see previous versions of a page. It would also be useful if Google could search pages that are in the archive but no longer available on the Web. For example, many articles and blog posts that I’ve linked to are on sites that are now defunct. I can find them in the Wayback Machine because I have the URL. But without that key, even if I know some of the text on the page, I can’t really search for it in the archive.

• NDTV ☛ US Woman Murdered Husband, Buried Body Under Fire Pit, And Impersonated Him On Social Media

  When Lake County deputies first responded to the Shaver home, Laurie was claiming Michael had abandoned his family, but Laurie became evasive when police asked her to grant them permission to search the property with dogs. A later search, equipped with cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar, led to the discovery of Michael's body, wrapped in a tarp and buried under the fire pit.

  Police confirmed that Laurie Shaver was posing as her husband on social media so that she wouldn't be noticed as the murderer.

• Science

  • Rlang ☛ Keep It Simple: Extracting Value from the Noise of Data Overload

    Information overload is now a common issue. The sheer volume of data can obscure valuable insights, making it harder to sift through the noise and reach the facts that matter. More worryingly, this overload can also lead to the spread of misinformation — data that, due to its poor presentation or overwhelming complexity, is misunderstood or misinterpreted. In some cases, it can even open the door to disinformation, where data is deliberately distorted to mislead.

    In this article, we explore the key to overcoming these challenges: simplification. By keeping data presentations clear, concise, and purposeful, we can avoid falling into the traps of noise, misinformation, or even disinformation. And in a world brimming with data, simplicity is not just a stylistic choice — it’s a necessity.

• Education

  • Robert Birming ☛ The Recipe for Success

    When asked about what has led to his success, the secret sauce, he replied that it depends on three things:

    • Persistence.
    • Surrounding himself with talented people.
    • Working hard.

  • Vox ☛ American kids have fallen far behind in math and reading | Vox

    Even now, according to a new report released this week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research group at Arizona State University that has studied the impact of Covid on education since 2020, the average American student is “less than halfway to a full academic recovery” from the effects of the pandemic. Kids Today

    The report — the group’s third annual analysis of the “state of the American student” — combines test scores and academic research with parent interviews to paint a picture of the challenges facing public schools and the families they serve. That picture is sobering: In spring 2023, just 56 percent of American fourth-graders were performing on grade level in math, down from 69 percent in 2019, according to just one example of test score data cited in the report.

  • Wired ☛ Most US Teens Use Generative AI. Most of Their Parents Don’t Know

    The most common reason for using AI was school-related; more than half reported using it for “homework help,” primarily in “brainstorming ideas.” (Older teens were more likely to do so than younger ones.) The second most-common reason was good, old-fashioned boredom, followed by translating content from one language to another. One in five teens had used generative AI tools to joke around with friends.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Social media post puts Kent school under lockdown

    “The Kent PD has confirmed the social media post was not made on school property,” the email said. “The picture was posted before the student was on school grounds this morning. The Kent PD does not have any evidence the gun was in the school.”

• Hardware

  • The Washington Post ☛ Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah reveals power of supply chain threats

    Experts call the Israeli attack unparalleled in the history of spycraft in its scale and casualty count, and believe the risk is low that other governments will follow suit in rigging consumer electronics this way. But the Lebanon attack brings to life a long-theorized, worst-case scenario that has troubled governments including the United States as electronic devices have grown more complex and global supply chains more convoluted.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Instagram Unveils Sweeping Changes for Users Under Age 18

    Instagram said the accounts of users younger than 18 will be made private by default in the coming weeks, which means that only followers approved by an account-holder may see their posts. The app, owned by Meta, also plans to stop notifications to minors from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. to promote sleep. In addition, Instagram will introduce more supervision tools for adults, including a feature that allows parents to see the accounts that their teenager recently messaged.

  • PHR ☛ Florida’s Abortion Ban Endangers Patients by Causing Delays and Denials of Medical Care: PHR Research Brief

    “Delayed and Denied: How Florida’s Abortion Ban Criminalizes Medical Care” is the first study to document the consequences of Florida’s abortion ban on health care workers’ experiences of patient care since the state’s six-week ban went into effect in May 2024.

  • 404 Media ☛ Delivery Robot Knocked Over Pedestrian, Company Offered ‘Promo Codes’ to Apologize

    An on-campus delivery robot at Arizona State University ran into a university employee after “abruptly changing direction” and caused her to fall over and be injured, according to a police report obtained by 404 Media. After the Starship delivery robot began to drive away, it “abruptly goes into reverse again and heads toward [the victim] again, who is still on the ground,” the report states. In the aftermath of the incident, the company offered to give the victim its insurance information “and promo codes” for use on the service, which is used to deliver takeout food.

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] ‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman

  • The Conversation ☛ 2024-09-13 [Older] Antibacterial discovery: how scavengers avoid infection and what we can learn from them

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Chris ☛ What Does an AI Revolution Look Like?

    Back in 2018 I wanted to turn this into a more ambitious article but that never happened. I do like the plots, though, so I’m publishing it mainly to show them off.

    At some point in 2012 or 2013, something weird happened. After years of nothing, object detection accuracy started going up.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why Microsoft’s Copilot AI falsely accused court reporter of crimes he covered

    The accusations against Bernklau are not true, of course, and are examples of generative AI “hallucinations”. These are inaccurate or nonsensical responses to a prompt provided by the user and are alarmingly common with this technology. Anyone attempting to use AI should always proceed with great caution, because information from such systems needs validation and verification by humans before it can be trusted.

    But why did Copilot hallucinate these terrible and false accusations?

  • Apple Inc ☛ IOS18 bricked my iPad M4

    I took mine into the Genius Bar tonight only to have it confirmed that the iPad is well and truly dead. The guy said that he had never seen it before but said it couldn't possibly be the update. If only he knew that as he was telling me this that apple were pulling the update from the M4 iPad Pros.

  • International Business Times ☛ Tween Says Dad Is 'Ruining Her Life' When He Insists On Buying Her A $600 iPhone 13 Vs. $1200 iPhone 15

    Given that she is only 11 years old, the father reasonably thought the iPhone 13 would be suitable. It costs $600, has a good camera and battery life, and bears a striking resemblance to other iPhones. It seemed like a sensible option.

  • 404 Media ☛ Homemade Porn Site Promises Not to Train AI on Performers

    Lustery, a site for consent-based homemade porn, has added a new clause to its contract promising not to replace human performers with AI without consent.

  • Wired ☛ OpenAI Threatens to Ban Users Who Probe Its ‘Strawberry’ AI Models

    OpenAI truly does not want you to know what its latest AI model is “thinking.” Since the company launched its “Strawberry” AI model family last week, touting so-called reasoning abilities with o1-preview and o1-mini, OpenAI has been sending out warning emails and threats of bans to any user who tries to probe how the model works.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ YouTube to bring AI-generated videos to Shorts with Veo integration

    With Veo, it’s possible to generate six-second video clips at 1080p resolutions, based on a wide range of cinematic themes and styles.

  • Wired ☛ An Avalanche of Generative AI Videos Is Coming to YouTube Shorts

    Now, just a few years later, Google has announced plans for a tool inside of the YouTube app that will allow anyone to generate AI video clips, using the company’s Veo model, and directly post them as part of YouTube Shorts. “Looking forward to 2025, we're going to let users create stand-alone video clips and shorts,” says Sarah Ali, a senior director of product management at YouTube. “They're going to be able to generate six-second videos from an open text prompt.” Ali says the update could help creators hunting for footage to fill out a video or trying to envision something fantastical. She is adamant that the Veo AI tool is not meant to replace creativity, but augment it.

  • Games

    • GamingOnLinux ☛ Nintendo and The Pokemon Company file lawsuit against Palworld maker Pocketpair

      You might want to grab a big bucket of popcorn for this one, as the big fight is about to begin. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have formally gone after Palworld maker Pocketpair.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • New York Times ☛ Prehistoric Earth Was Very Hot. That Offers Clues About Future Earth.

    In a study published Thursday, a team of researchers presents a sweeping new account of this history, one that combines geological evidence with predictions from computer models of the global climate.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ UK activists file complaint with police against NSO Group

      Anas Altikriti, founder and CEO at the Cordoba Foundation; journalist Azzam Tamimi; Mohammed Kozbar, chairman at the Finsbury Park Mosque; and Bahraini activist Yusuf Al Jamri all claim the group violated the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA) and National Security Act 2023 (NSA) by allegedly allowing the leaders of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain to compromise their phones using Pegasus spyware.

    • The Verge ☛ Californians can now add their driver’s licenses to Apple Wallet

      According to Apple, IDs stored in Apple Wallet are encrypted (including the history of when it’s been presented) on a device, and that data is not accessible by Apple or the state issuing the ID. The information can not be accessed until authorized using Face ID or Touch ID, and displaying it doesn’t require the device to be fully unlocked, Apple says.

    • New York Times ☛ Meta, TikTok and More Sites Engaged in ‘Vast Surveillance,’ a New FTC Study Finds

      The F.T.C. said it began its study nearly four years ago to offer the first holistic look into the opaque business practices of some of the biggest online platforms that have created multibillion-dollar ad businesses using consumer data. The agency said the report showed the need for federal privacy legislation and restrictions on how companies collect and use data.

      “Surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” said Lina Kahn, the F.T.C.’s chair, in a statement.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Social media companies engaged in 'vast surveillance,' FTC finds

      “These surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “Several firms’ failure to adequately protect kids and teens online is especially troubling.”

      The agency, which is focused on protecting consumers and enforcing antitrust law, released a 129-page report that analyzes how some of the world’s largest social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube collect and use vast troves of data they gather from users. The findings highlight the mounting scrutiny online platforms face from regulators and lawmakers seeking to combat technology’s potential harms as they become more deeply intertwined with people’s daily lives.

    • Federal Trade Commission ☛ A Look Behind the Screens: Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and VideoStreaming Services [PDF]

      Today, the Commission is approving the release of a groundbreaking report that sheds light on how these powerful Companies have operated. It shows how the tech industry’s monetization of personal data has created a market for commercial surveillance, especially via social media and video streaming services, with inadequate guardrails to protect consumers. The report finds that these Companies engaged in mass data collection of their users and – in some cases – non-users. It reveals that many Companies failed to implement adequate safeguards against privacy risks. It sheds light on how Companies used our personal data, from serving hyper-granular targeted advertisements to powering algorithms that shape the content we see, often with the goal of keeping us hooked on using the service. And it finds that these practices pose unique risks to children and teens, with the Companies having done little to respond effectively to the documented concerns that policymakers, psychologists, and parents have expressed over young people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

      Staff’s report includes detailed analysis of each of these issues and more, and it offers recommendations on how to address these risks. In my view, this report – and the process of putting it together – should point policymakers to three key takeaways.

    • India Times ☛ Facebook parent Meta Platforms beats lawsuit over Apple privacy, COO Sandberg disclosures

      She dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again.

      Other defendants included Sandberg, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li and her predecessor David Wehner.

  • Confidentiality

    • Scoop News Group ☛ AT&T agrees to $13 million fine for third-party cloud breach

      The breach, which resulted in the theft of information related to more than 8.9 million AT&T Mobility customers, happened through an unnamed company the telecom giant used for marketing, billing and generating personalized video content. According to the settlement, AT&T shared customer data, including subscriber data, with the vendor in order to use its services.

    • [Old] Nusenu ☛ Is “KAX17” performing de-anonymization Attacks against Tor Users?

      Two years ago in December 2019, I first wrote about a particular and unusual malicious actor on the tor network. This blog post is about how that actor expanded their visibility into the tor network during the last two years after their removal by the tor directory authorities in October 2019 and why this particular actor is more concerning than the usual malicious tor relay group.

      The threat landscape on the tor network motivates the second part, in which we will outline a design and proof of concept implementation to help tor users defend themselves and significantly reduce their risk of using malicious tor relays without requiring the identification of malicious relays — a problem that has become impractical to tackle.

• Defence/Aggression

  • FAIR ☛ ‘There Are More Guns Than Americans, But Most of Them Are Owned by a Minority

    Janine Jackson interviewed author Robert Spitzer about the history of gun regulation for the September 13, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ Turning Everyday Gadgets into Bombs is a Bad Idea

    I respectfully disagree. Our militaries wear uniforms, and our weapons of war are clearly marked as such because our societies operate on trust. As long as we don’t see uniformed soldiers marching through our streets, we can assume that the front lines of armed conflict are far from home. When enemies violate that trust, we call it terrorism, because we no longer feel safe around everyday people and objects.

    The reason we don’t see exploding battery attacks more often is not because it’s technically hard, it’s because the erosion of public trust in everyday things isn’t worth it. The current discourse around the potential reach of such explosive devices is clouded by the assumption that it’s technically difficult to implement and thus unlikely to find its way to our front door.

  • The Washington Spectator ☛ Endgame: The Risk of a Trump Coup and How to Prevent It

    Donald Trump’s plans for overturning the election result if he loses again have become increasingly visible. This year, Team Trump’s attack on our election system encompasses three distinct phases.

  • American Oversight ☛ Email Cited in Congressional Hearing Details Project 2025 Recruitment  - American Oversight

    At the opening of today’s House Oversight Committee hearing, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) highlighted an email uncovered by American Oversight in which a representative of the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 appears to suggest that contributors to the effort could be recommended for political appointments in a second Trump administration.

    The email, obtained by American Oversight in response to a public records request, provides further evidence of the close links between Project 2025 — an agenda created by the Heritage Foundation to serve as a playbook for a second Trump administration — and right-wing figures who may expect to be in positions of power should former President Donald Trump retake the White House.

  • Google ☛ UNC1860 and the Temple of Oats: Iran’s Hidden Hand in Middle Eastern Networks

    UNC1860 is a persistent and opportunistic Iranian state-sponsored threat actor that is likely affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). A key feature of UNC1860 is its collection of specialized tooling and passive backdoors that Mandiant believes supports several objectives, including its role as a probable initial access provider and its ability to gain persistent access to high-priority networks, such as those in the government and telecommunications space throughout the Middle East.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Iran's UNC1860 Has Backdoors In Middle Eastern Networks

    Likely tied to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), UNC1860 group is known for its specialized tooling and passive backdoors, which enable long-term access to critical networks, including government and telecommunications sectors.

    Operating as an initial access provider, UNC1860 has displayed its ability to infiltrate high-priority networks across the region, aiding in espionage and cyberattacks.

  • VOA News ☛ Sweden charges woman with war crimes for allegedly torturing Yazidi women, children in Syria

    According to the indictment, the aim was "completely or partially annihilating the Yazidi ethnic group as such and were part of or otherwise related to an armed conflict," the court said.

    In 2014, IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq's Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Netherlands seeks EU migration opt-out

    "I have just informed the European Commission that I want a migration 'opt-out' on migration matters in Europe for the Netherlands," Asylum and Migration Minister Marjolein Faber said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

    "We have to handle our own asylum policy once more!" she said.

  • The Register UK ☛ FBI director says Chinese spies 'burned down' their botnet

    The botnet was controlled by the somewhat misnamed Integrity Technology Group, a Chinese business whose chairman has admitted that for years his company has "collected intelligence and performed reconnaissance for Chinese government security agencies," FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the Aspen Digital computer security conference on Wednesday. The internet-connected bots consisted of PCs, servers, and Internet-of-Things gadgets infected with remote-control malware, and more than half of which were in the US.

  • Gizmodo ☛ FBI Shuts Down Botnet Run by Beijing-Backed Hackers That Hijacked Over 200,000 Devices

    Wray explained the operation at the Aspen Digital conference and said the hackers work for a Beijing-based company called Integrity Technology Group, which is known to U.S. researchers as Flax Typhoon. The botnet was launched in mid-2021, according to the FBI, and infected roughly 260,000 devices as of June 2024.

  • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ FBI and partners disrupt 200,000-device botnet linked to Chinese hackers

    Dubbed “Flax Typhoon,” the botnet, linked to allegedly Chinese state-sponsored hackers, infected numerous types of consumer devices, including small-office/home-office routers, internet protocol cameras, digital video recorders and network-attached storage devices. The infections had a tendency to target older devices from the likes of NetGear Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. that were no longer receiving security updates.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ FBI joint operation takes down massive Chinese botnet, Wray says

    The group behind the botnet, Flax Typhoon, hijacked routers and Internet of Things devices like cameras, video recorders and storage devices, Wray said at the Aspen Cyber Summit — a step beyond the much-hyped operations of fellow Chinese hackers Volt Typhoon that had focused on routers. The targets included corporations, media organizations, universities and government agencies.

  • Security Week ☛ Chinese Spies Built Massive Botnet of IoT Devices to Target US, Taiwan Military

    The botnet, tagged with the moniker Raptor Train, is packed with hundreds of thousands of small office/home office (SOHO) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and has targeted entities in the U.S. and Taiwan across critical sectors, including the military, government, higher education, telecommunications, and the defense industrial base (DIB).

  • Cyble Inc ☛ FBI, NSA Say Chinese Botnet Compromised 260,000 Devices

    U.S. intelligence agencies issued a warning today about a Chinese botnet that has compromised 260,000 devices around the globe, including small office/home office (SOHO) routers, firewalls, network-attached storage (NAS) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices from some of the biggest names in IT and networking.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Chinese national charged in alleged spearphishing campaign that targeted NASA, Air Force

    The indictment, which was filed Sept. 10 and unsealed Monday by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, charges Song Wu, 39, with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft related to those efforts. According to a DOJ press release, Song was an employee of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a Chinese state-owned company, and remains at large.

  • The Washington Post ☛ U.S. and allies seize control of massive Chinese tech spying network

    U.S. authorities said the cyberspies used the devices as steppingstones to hide their tracks when they breached government and industry institutions in America, Taiwan and elsewhere. The authorities cited the same intention after a previous seizure in December and January.

  • New York Times ☛ How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

    The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse.

  • Wired ☛ The Mystery of Hezbollah’s Deadly Exploding Pagers

    Pagers started exploding at around 3:30 pm local time, according to a statement from Hezbollah officials, who say that “various Hezbollah units and institutions” were impacted in the incident. The blasts continued for more than an hour, according to Reuters. A Hezbollah statement says a “large” number of people were injured and said they suffered from a wide variety of injuries.

    In the immediate aftermath of the explosions, CCTV and phone footage posted to social media, which has not been independently verified, appears to show hospitals flooded with wounded people, as well as apparent explosions happening around waist height and images of damaged pagers. People with links to the region say the explosions caused street-level chaos.

  • Wired ☛ Walkie-Talkies Explode in New Attack on Hezbollah

    The walkie-talkie explosions appeared to have been orchestrated the same way as the attack on Tuesday, which was likely carried out by intercepting new pagers at some point in their journey through the supply chain and modifying them to add explosive material. Hezbollah had reportedly expanded its use of pagers recently in an attempt to secure communications after the group feared that other channels had been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Hezbollah purchased the walkie-talkies about five months ago as part of the same initiative that led the group to purchase the pagers.

  • Associated Press ☛ Second wave of explosions hits Lebanon a day after pager attack

    The second wave also deepens concern over the potentially indiscriminate casualties caused in the attacks, in which hundreds of blasts went off wherever the holder of the pager happened to be — in homes, cars, at grocery stores and in cafes, often with family or bystanders nearby.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Air Force’s information warfare hub seeks high-tech sensors, AI tools

    The team — which is charged with integrating cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and ISR — convened a summit in August 2023 to talk through its highest priority gaps and technology needs. It then led a months-long deep dive to identify its most important mission sets and consider the most significant vulnerabilities and dependencies within those missions.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Dozens Killed in Mali Attack by Al Qaeda Affiliate

    An elaborate attack by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Mali's capital this week killed some 70 people, diplomatic and security sources said on Thursday, while the government offered no figures on casualties.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russia now has Iranian missiles. Here’s what that could mean for Ukraine. — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ US Court Allows Whistleblower Retaliaton Lawsuit Against Private Prison Company

  • Pro Publica ☛ Emails Show Walz Struggled With Police Reform After George Floyd, Daunte Wright Killings

    In the spring of 2021, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faced multiple crises.

    The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was coming to a close. As the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death approached, authorities were preparing for the kind of unrest that had damaged or destroyed long stretches of the city in 2020. Meanwhile, a package of police reform bills was stalled in the divided Minnesota state Legislature.

• Environment

  • VOA News ☛ 'End of an era': UK to shut last coal-fired power plant 

    But at the end of this month, the site in central England will close its doors, signaling the end to polluting coal-powered electricity in the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How much energy can AI use? Breaking down the toll of each ChatGPT query

    Chatbots use an immense amount of power to respond to user questions, and simply keeping the bot’s servers cool enough to function in data centers takes a toll on the environment. While the exact burden is nearly impossible to quantify, The Washington Post worked with researchers at the University of California, Riverside to understand how much water and power OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using the GPT-4 language model released in March 2023, consumes to write the average 100-word email.

    Let’s look first at water.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • APNIC ☛ Powering the future of data centres

      Did you know that optical transceivers, which convert signals between electrical and optical domains for transmission through fibre optic cables, consume a significant portion of system power at higher data rates?

    • EcoWatch ☛ In World First, EVs Now Outnumber Gas-Powered Cars in Norway

      In a major milestone, electric cars (EVs) now outnumber gas-powered cars in Norway for the first time, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV), as AFP reported.

      Of private cars registered in the country, 754,303 of 2.8 million are all-electric, with 753,905 running on gas.

    • Inside Towers ☛ Vodafone Germany to Install Solar Power Panels Across Network Sites

      Vodafone Germany (NASDAQ: VOD) said it will increase the share of self-produced energy through solar power. The initiative will support Vodafone’s aim to become carbon neutral in its own direct and indirectly generated emissions by 2025, Communications Today reported. All suitable cell towers and smaller regional data centers will be equipped with solar panels by the end of 2025.

    • Futurism ☛ Truth Social Stock Crashes After Trump Reveals His Scammy New [Cryptocurrency] Venture

      Though shares had already begun falling Monday in the aftermath of Trump's second potential attacker being detained and arrested, they continued to do so into Tuesday amid news of the shady new [cryptocurrency] project he's calling "World Liberty Financial."

• Finance

  • The Register UK ☛ Kelsey Hightower: Governments must pay for FOSS they rely on

    Certainly, there'd be no harm in presenting a gold medal to that person in Nebraska who has thanklessly maintained a crucial part of the modern digital infrastructure. Being paid to do so would also doubtless help. Yet, as Hightower says, creating a model to do so remains a challenge.

    "Every country invests in their athletes year-round, and they show up to compete at the highest levels, and when they can no longer do so, then the next breed of athletes show up, and there's always a pipeline for them to train to get better, and hopefully we create nice things."

    In agreement with Hightower's suggestions, Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK tells The Register that in her view it is better to "look to open source as a digital public good".

  • Armin Ronacher ☛ Accidental Spending: A Case For an Open Source Tax?

    Open Source funding could be seen through both of these lenses. Today, in many ways, pledging money to Open Source is a very intentional decision. It requires discussions, persuasion and justification. The purpose and the pay-off is not entirely clear. Companies are not used to the idea of funding Open Source and they don't have a strong model to reason about these investments. Likewise many Open Source projects themselves also don't have a good way of dealing with money and might lack the governance to handle funds effectively. After all many of these projects are run by individuals and not formal organizations.Companies are unlikely to fund something without understanding the return on investment. One better understood idea is to turn that one “random person in Nebraska” maintaining a critical dependency into a well-organized team with good op-sec. But for that to happen, funding needs to scale from pennies to dollars, making it really worthwhile.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Macworld ☛ Apple may soon make at least some chips in the United States

    The A16 is manufactured on an advanced 5nm process (some call it 4nm) that TSMC calls N4P. This is said to be the same process used at TSMC’s plant in Taiwan, and the Arizona plant apparently has yields (the percentage of good, usable chips per silicon wafer) that are only a little behind the Taiwan plant. The process is being refined, and yield parity will probably be achieved by the time the plant goes into full-volume production early in 2025.

  • JURIST ☛ Finland president calls for major reforms to UN Security Council

    Finland’s President Alexander Stubb on Wednesday called for significant changes in the UN Security Council (UNSC), including ending the single-seat veto power of permanent members and doubling the number of permanent seats. In an interview with Reuters, Stubb outlined his proposals and promised to join other voices on these issues at the upcoming UN General Assembly (UNGA) meeting next Tuesday.

  • India Times ☛ Finnish politician tapped as EU digital chief to oversee big tech

    Finnish centre-right politician Henna Virkkunen was nominated on Tuesday as the new EU digital chief to ensure that Big Tech abides by European Union rules and that the bloc can catch up with the United States and China in key technologies.

  • India Times ☛ Cisco lets go thousands of employees in second major layoff this year: report

    US tech conglomerate Cisco has laid off thousands of employees, after announcing a second major job cut earlier this year, as per a TechCrunch report. The decision comes as the company is grappling with declining demand and the need to reduce costs, particularly as it invests heavily in AI.

    Earlier in August, the company announced around 7% job cuts, or around 5,600 employees after its February layoff affecting 4,000 employees.

  • Techdirt ☛ KOSA Advances Out Of House Committee, But Cracks Are Showing

    As we’ve described, the new versions discussed today are different from the version that passed the Senate earlier this year. The House leadership doesn’t much like the Senate version, and the new versions don’t seem likely to fix that. Any changes made to shore up support of House leadership seems likely to lose plenty of Democrats.

    And while backers of the bills complained that they were voting on a “weakened version,” they also admitted that there were concerns about “unintended consequences” creeping into the bill. This statement from Rep. Kathy Castor, one of the key backers of the bill, is the sound of someone who knows they have a shitty bill on their hands, but wants to pass it anyway: [...]

  • Press Gazette ☛ Evening Standard appoints Condé Nast's Albert Read as exec chair

    The Evening Standard has appointed Albert Read, the managing director of Condé Nast in the UK, as its new executive chairman as it prepares to become a weekly publication.

    Staff were informed of the appointment last week by Paul Kanareck, who has served as interim chair of the Evening Standard since last year and remains its interim chief executive.

  • [Repeat] Tedium ☛ The De Minimis Loophole Explained—And How Temu Uses It

    Meanwhile, Temu has managed this model where it ships stuff directly from China, no lengthy stay in customs necessary. Why is that? One answer can be found in an obscure legal principle, called de minimis.

    Essentially, de minimis, at a very simplified level, refers to the idea of something being such small potatoes that it’s not worth the legal system’s time. It is not limited to import law, but it fits neatly into import law context when it comes to shipping goods from other countries. The U.S. codified this into section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which allows for the import of goods “free of duty and of any tax imposed on or by reason of importation” under a certain price point.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ Oops! Army training mislabeled nonprofits as terror groups for years

      Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled as terrorist groups included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed.

    • Task And Purpose ☛ Army officials chewed out by Congress over anti-terrorism PowerPoint

      During the briefing, which was attended by 47 soldiers at the base, the National Right to Life, Earth First, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were listed as terror groups.

      Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower & Reserve Affairs told the committee that the PowerPoint slides used for anti-terrorism training “inaccurately referenced” those groups.

    • The Korea Times ☛ Korean media scholar calls for 'bias literacy' in digital news consumption

      A strong understanding of our unconscious biases, or "bias literacy," is urgently needed for people to identify fake news, misinformation and disinformation in digital media, according to Choi Su-jin, a professor of media at Kyung Hee University.

      For many years, she has been researching digital journalism and political communication from the user's perspective to investigate the determinants and consequences of online news authorship verification. One of her research projects highlights the role of psychological motives and behavioral patterns in news authorship verification.

    • VOA News ☛ False reports of explosives found in car near Trump rally spread online

      Law enforcement officials on Long Island worked quickly on Wednesday to publicly knock down social media posts falsely reporting that explosives had been found in a car near former President Donald Trump's planned rally in New York.

      The false reports of an explosive began circulating hours before the Republican presidential nominee's campaign event at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, just days after he was apparently the target of a second possible assassination attempt.

    • Axios ☛ Vance adopts zero-shame strategy over Haitian pet-eating fact checks

      Backed into a corner over his baseless claims of Haitian pet-eating in Ohio, Sen. JD Vance is taking a page from Donald Trump's playbook: Never back down, never admit fault and never apologize.

      Why it matters: New reporting from The Wall Street Journal reveals that on Sept. 9, the same day that Vance first amplified the right-wing rumors, the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, told his office that they were false.

    • [Repeat] LRT ☛ YouTube removes Belarusian accounts at Lithuanian watchdog’s request

      YouTube on Wednesday removed 18 EU-sanctioned Belarusian radio and television accounts at the request of the Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission.

    • RFA ☛ Did Harris wear audio earrings during a presidential debate to cheat?

      A claim emerged in Chinese-language media posts that US Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was wearing audio earrings – the Nova H1 – to cheat during a presidential debate in September.

      But the claim is false. A photo comparison between earrings worn by Harris during the debate and Nova H1 shows they differ in shape.

    • VOA News ☛ Russia capitalizes on Trump assassination attempt to sow division, deny election meddling [Ed: Microsoft political interference]

      In a September 17 report, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center said that while Russian "influence of U.S. elections has remained a constant over the last decade," Moscow has changed tactics "for reaching American audiences amidst a dynamic social media environment and a shifting electoral calculus."

    • New York Times ☛ How A.I., QAnon and Falsehoods Are Reshaping the Presidential Race

      Three experts on social media and disinformation share their predictions for this year’s chaotic election.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Breach Media ☛ Hindu far right pressured a Canadian university into cancelling a critical lecture

    Exploiting the language of anti-racism and multiculturalism, Hindu nationalists are promoting their far-right ideology in Canada

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • International Business Times ☛ UK Amazon Workers Look To Fight RTO Policy As Search For 'Legal Right To Work From Home' Surges By 3950% In Last Seven Days

    Amazon's recent announcement requiring staff to return to the office has ignited further controversy, despite previous attempts to mandate in-person work having met with significant resistance, including a petition signed by over 20,000 employees.

  • [Old] New York Daily News ☛ Minneapolis cop who fatally shot woman who called 911 to be released from prison

    Initially convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison, Noor’s sentence was dropped to four years and nine months for manslaughter after the Minnesota Supreme Court tossed the murder charge in September 2021.

    Noor will be released early and spend the next 1 1/2 years on parole.

  • RTL ☛ 'It's a form of genocide': How Luxembourg takes action for Afghan women

    Through the Stand Speak Rise Up! association, Chékéba Hachemi, a councillor to the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and co-founder of the NGO, is actively working to defend the few remaining freedoms for women in Afghanistan.

    Éric Cheysson, a surgeon and President of La Chaîne de l'Espoir, refers to the situation as "social feminicide." Hachemi describes it as "a form of genocide and a defiance of the West."

  • The Hindu ☛ “Inmates using [Internet] dongles to evade T-HCBS inside Parappana Agrahara Central Prison”

    Officials at the Parappana Agrahara Central Prison have now uncovered that inmates have been using [Internet] dongles to evade the Tower - Harmonic Call Blocking System (T-HCBS) inside the prison. There are many dark areas and shadow areas inside the prison that are not covered by the three HCBS towers installed within the prison premises. Inmates have been using [Internet] dongles in these blackspots to make calls over WhatsApp and other platforms that provide [Internet] call facilities, a senior prison official told The Hindu.

  • International Business Times ☛ Female Manager Slams Women-Only College Grads As 'Entitled, Inflexible, And Privileged,' Hesitates To Hire Them

    A recent lawsuit filed by a white man against IBM highlights this double standard against men. According to the former IBM employee, he was dismissed to allow the company to hire more women and minorities. "Men's only colleges would be banned, but women's only are still acceptable," the manager pointed out, further highlighting this irrational preference.

  • CBC ☛ A Canadian has been arrested in global crackdown on the Ghost encrypted app. Here's how it works

    Users could buy Ghost without revealing any personal information. It used three encryption standards and allowed messages to be sent with a self-destruct code, erasing all communications from the recipient's device.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ International task force shuts down Ghost crime app

    Prosecutors charge that Ghost’s alleged administrator shipped the app with modified smartphones he sold for 2,350 Australian dollars apiece. Besides a handset, that price included a six-month subscription to Ghost and technical support. The suspect didn’t sell the smartphones directly to criminals but rather distributed them through a network of resellers.

  • The Register UK ☛ 51 arrests made in global takedown of Ghost crime platform

    The platform operated in a similar fashion to EncroChat, although it was much smaller in scale. EncroChat was infiltrated and taken down in 2020, and the analysis of its users' communications continues to yield convictions.

  • [Repeat] Security Week ☛ Australian Police Infiltrate Encrypted Messaging App Ghost and Arrest Dozens

    Australian police had prevented 50 people from being killed, kidnapped or seriously hurt by monitoring threats among 125,000 messages and 120 video calls since March, Assistant Commissioner Kirsty Schofield said.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ Securing Internet Infrastructure in Central Asia

    The third Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum (CAPIF 3) takes place next week in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Experts from Central Asia and neighbouring regions will come together to strengthen regional Internet connectivity and promote digital growth. Ahead of the event, we examine the adoption of Internet technologies in the region.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Silicon Angle ☛ EU to step up enforcement of Apple’s compliance with DMA rules

  The European Commission detailed that the connected device capabilities being scrutinized relate to “notifications, device pairing and connectivity.” Those use cases are also at the center of an antitrust lawsuit that the Justice Department brought against Apple earlier this year. The lawsuit mentions the three use cases in the context of the Apple Watch, which raises the possibility that the EU’s new regulatory initiative may likewise focus on the smartwatch series.

• The Register UK ☛ Google successfully appeals €1.5B AdSense fine in EU

  Google has some thank-you cards to send, as the European Union's General Court (GC) has nullified a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) fine levied against the tech giant for anti-competitive advertising behavior.

• JURIST ☛ Google wins legal challenge against €1.49B EU antitrust fine; Qualcomm appeal fails

  Since 2003, Google has managed an ad intermediation platform called AdSense, which allows third-party websites to display Google ads in response to user queries. In 2019, the European Commission fined Google’s AdSense business for imposing restrictive contracts on third-party websites, limiting their ability to display ads from rival platforms. The EU ruled that this practice was an abuse of Google’s dominant market position and infringed Article. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Article 54 of the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement.

• India Times ☛ Google wins legal bid to overturn 1.5 billion euro antitrust fine in EU digital ad case

  Google won a court challenge on Wednesday against a 1.49 billion euro European Union antitrust fine imposed five years ago that targeted its online advertising business.

  The European Union's General Court said it was throwing out the 2019 penalty imposed by the European Commission, which is the 27-nation bloc's top antitrust enforcer.

• India Times ☛ Google urges tribunal to throw out $9.3 billion UK lawsuit over search 'dominance'

  The lawsuit - valued at up to 7 billion pounds ($9.3 billion) - is the latest case focusing on the business practices of Google, which is currently facing a major antitrust trial in the United States over its online advertising business.

  It is also one of several multibillion-pound cases to have been filed at Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal in recent years, including a similar case against Google for allegedly abusing its dominance in the online advertising market.

• VOA News ☛ EU court confirms Qualcomm's antitrust fine, with minor reduction

  Europe's second-top court largely confirmed on Wednesday an EU antitrust fine imposed on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm, revising it down slightly to $265.5 million from an initial $2.7 million.

• VOA News ☛ Google wins challenge against $1.66B EU antitrust fine

  The European Commission, in its 2019 decision, said Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search adverts. The practices it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

  The Luxembourg-based General Court mostly agreed with the European Union competition enforcer's assessments of the case, but annulled the fine.

• Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Ask the Community - Thoughts on a Class Action Lawsuit Brought Against Scholarly Publishers

  Editor’s Note: On September 12, the law firm of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein announced antitrust litigation against six publishers: Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer. The plaintiff in the case is a UCLA researcher, Lucina Uddin, and the complaint can be read in full here. We reached out to the Scholarly Kitchen Chefs and members of the community for their thoughts on this litigation.

• Silicon Angle ☛ EU court scraps €1.49B antitrust fine against Google, mostly upholds Qualcomm penalty

  The European Union’s second highest court today ruled on two antitrust fines that the bloc issued to Google LLC and Qualcomm Inc. in 2019.

  The General Court annulled the penalty imposed on Google, which was the largest of the two at €1.49 billion. It mostly upheld Qualcomm’s €242 million fine, reducing it by about 1%.

• Trademarks

  • Nick Heer ☛ How Crypto Bros Wrested Flappy Bird From Its Creator

    An ignominious resurrection of an all-time classic. I am not saying you should not play this, but I am not going anywhere near it — not with these owners.

  • PC World ☛ Flappy Bird returns in a tangled web of cryptocurrency controversy

    Gametech passed along the trademark to “The Flappy Bird Foundation,” which may or may not be the same people. (I genuinely don’t know what the connection is—Gametech might have planned a big re-release all along, or simply grabbed a valuable trademark and flipped it immediately.) Whoever they are, they appear to have spent 2024 ramping up for an “epic” reboot. The new game has a dedicated website describing its new game modes and characters.

  • Right of Publicity

    • India Times ☛ California governor signs legislation to protect entertainers from AI

      California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law on Tuesday that aim to help actors and performers protect their digital replicas in audio and visual productions from artificial intelligence, the governor's office said.

    • VOA News ☛ California laws target deepfake political ads, disinformation

      In a step that could have broad implications for future elections in the U.S., California Governor Gavin Newsom this week signed three pieces of legislation restricting the role that artificial intelligence, specifically deepfake audio and video recordings, can play in election campaigns.

      One law, which took effect immediately, makes it illegal to distribute "materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate" in the 120 days leading up to an election and in the 60 days following an election.

    • The Washington Post ☛ California governor signs bills to protect actors from AI exploitation

      California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law a raft of artificial intelligence bills Tuesday, aimed at curbing the effects of deepfakes during elections and protecting Hollywood performers from their likenesses being replicated by AI without their consent.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Video Hosting Domain of Fmovies 'Mothership' Makes Surprise Comeback

    Last month, anti-piracy forces celebrated the takedown of Fmovies, the world's largest piracy ring. Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin boasted that they "took down the mothership". While the victory stands today, not all loose ends were tied up. The domain of Fmovies' hosting platform Vidscr.to is back online, presumably resurrected by another piracy ring. The Empire Strikes Back?

  • The Register UK ☛ LinkedIn scraping user content for its AI without asking

    Microsoft’s self-help network on Wednesday published a "trust and safety" update in which senior veep and general counsel Blake Lawit revealed LinkedIn's use of people's posts and other data for both training and using its generative AI features.

    In doing so, he said the site's privacy policy had been updated. We note this policy links to an FAQ that was updated sometime last week also confirming the automatic collecting of posts for training – meaning it appears LinkedIn started gathering up content for its AI models, and opting in users, well before Lawit’s post and the updated privacy policy advised of the changes today.

  • PC World ☛ LinkedIn is training AI with your data. Here's how to opt out ASAP

    In fact, LinkedIn started using your data before updating its often-intentionally-nebulous Privacy Policy, as spotted by 404 Media. The policy has subsequently been updated to include legalese: [...]

  • teleSUR ☛ Portugal Fines Google for Enabling Access to Pirated Content - teleSUR English

    The Lisbon Intellectual [sic] Property [sic] Court has ruled against Google Portugal for allowing access to a website that shared pirated content, including films, TV series, newspapers, and books.

    The court ordered Google to block the website EZTV, along with over 500 related subdomains, imposing a daily fine of 1,000 euros for each day the company fails to comply after the final ruling.

  • Walled Culture ☛ Taylor Swift: singer, songwriter, copyright innovator

    In other words, as soon as a creator finds a way to take back control from intermediaries that have routinely derived excessive profits from the labour of others, the copyright world fights back with new legal straitjackets to stop other artists daring to do the same. That’s yet another reason for creators to retain full control of their works, and to shun traditional intermediaries that try to impose one-sided and unfair contracts.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Wikimedia Foundation Successfully Sees Off Another SLAPP Suit, But More Protection Is Needed Globally

    Wikipedia seems such an essential and benign aspect of the online world that it is hard to understand why people would want to attack it in the courts. But it is nonetheless subject to lawsuits that try to force it to censor its articles because they contain facts that are inconvenient for someone. The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that runs the Wikipedia family of sites, has just seen off another such attempt to bully it into deleting true information. The case, reported on the Wikimedia blog, exposes some of the difficulties that the Wikipedia Foundation and its community face. As the post notes, this legal action has all the hallmarks of a “SLAPP” lawsuit: a strategic lawsuit against public participation: [...]

  • The Verge ☛ LinkedIn is training AI models on your data

    If you’re on LinkedIn, then you should know that the social network has, without asking, opted accounts into training generative AI models. 404Media reports that LinkedIn introduced the new privacy setting and opt-out form before rolling out an updated privacy policy saying that data from the platform is being used to train AI models. As TechCrunch notes, it has since updated the policy.

    "We may use your personal data to improve, develop, and provide products and Services, develop and train artificial intelligence (AI) models, develop, provide, and personalize our Services, and gain insights with the help of AI, automated systems, and inferences, so that our Services can be more relevant and useful to you and others."

  • 404 Media ☛ LinkedIn Is Training AI on User Data Before Updating Its Terms of Service

    LinkedIn is using its users’ data for improving the social network’s generative AI products, but has not yet updated its terms of service to reflect this data processing, according to posts from various LinkedIn users and a statement from the company to 404 Media. Instead, the company says it will update its terms “shortly.”