Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ See The Hands-on Details Behind Stunning Helmet Build

  [Zibartas] recently created wearable helmets from the game Starfield that look fantastic, and we’re happy to see that he created a video showcasing the whole process of design, manufacture, and assembly. The video really highlights just how much good old-fashioned manual work like sanding goes into getting good results, even in an era where fancy modern equipment like 3D printing is available to just about anyone.

• Marian Bouček ☛ How to create a web application without spending money

  It all started innocently. One day I said to myself: since you love using Basecamp so much, why not learn their programming tools as well? I decided to learn Ruby on Rails framework, the very same tool that Basecampy and Hey are using for their own products. The tool is very pleasant to use and soon my entrepreneurial mind started wondering: hey, if you can create the web application for yourself, you could later on sell it to other people. Would it be possible to release it without putting my credit card anywhere and still have it ready for people to use?

• Austin Kleon ☛ A plan and not enough time

  Another thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes the best newsletters come when the writer is super busy and doesn’t have enough time and they just drop the bits and bobs they’ve got in there and get out.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Justin Duke

  This is the 57th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Justin Duke and his blog, jmduke.com

  I'm particularly happy to have Justin as a guest on P&B because in addition to be a person with a blog—something I clearly appreciate—he's the founder of Buttondown, a service I used since 2019 and the one used to deliver the People and Blogs newsletter.

• University of Michigan ☛ UMich community learns how to get involved with sustainability at Earthfest

  Live music and overlapping conversation filled the University of Michigan Diag Thursday, while students weaved between folding tables and posters at the University’s 29th annual Earthfest. With more than 45 organizations tabling on the Diag, Earthfest celebrates Ann Arbor’s environment and sustainability initiatives and aims to promote involvement and education.

• Science

  • Rlang ☛ Estimating ecological network robustness with R: A functional approach*

    The basis of the framework is the species-habitat network approach (Marini et al. 2019; Bastazini et al. in press), however it can be directly applied to any type of bipartite networks formed by interacting species. The illustrated framework is depicted in the figure below. In step (1), we modeled the occupancy probability of fish as a function of coral and turf algae cover using site occupancy modeling. Based on the model output, [...]

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ ADLINK AVA-1000 is a rugged EN50155-compliant T2G gateway for railway and industrial applications

    The ADLINK AVA-1000 T2G gateway is a rugged, EN50155-compliant T2G (Train-to-Ground) gateway designed for railway and industrial environments. Powered by a choice of NXP i.MX8M Plus Quad Cortex-A53 processor or an defective chip maker Intel Processor N50 Alder Lake-N processor. The i.MX8M Plus model is equipped with up to 8GB LPDDR4 and a 64GB eMMC flash whereas the Alder Lake variant features up to 4GB LPDDR5 memory and a 32GB eMMC flash.

  • Futurism ☛ Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete

    According to Straight, the issue was caused by a piece of wiring that had come loose from the battery that powered a wristwatch used to control the exoskeleton. This would cost peanuts for Lifework to fix up, but it refused to service anything more than five years old, Straight said.

    "I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?" he wrote on Facebook.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Pro Publica ☛ ExxonMobil Accused of Deceptive Marketing of Plastics Recycling Process

  • Science Alert ☛ Pandemics Seem to Have Made a Comeback. Why Is This Happening?

    Those chickens are coming home to roost.

  • Off Guardian ☛ England’s Chief Medical Officer admits “we may have overstated danger of Covid”

    England’s Chief Medical Officer testified before the (token and pointless)  Covid Inquiry earlier today, claiming he feared the government “overdid it” when talking up the dangers of Covid. No kidding,  Chris.

  • The Nation ☛ Why I Drive Out of State for Prenatal Care

    But as a 37-year-old woman with a high-risk pregnancy and a history of devastating pregnancy-related complications, I do not feel safe seeking care in South Dakota, a state with a near-total abortion ban. So I drive nearly an hour away to nearby Minnesota every two weeks (soon to be once a week), where abortion access is legal.

  • LabX Media Group ☛ Reproductive Lifespan is Partially Encoded in the Genes

    Using large biobanks in the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, and Japan, the researchers combined genetic and age at menarche information from more than 800,000 people. Most prior research of age at menarche focused on people of European ancestry, but menstruation patterns can vary across ancestries, which motivated Ong to look more broadly in this study.

  • NYPost ☛ NYC’s ex-COVID czar’s media ‘spin’ comments on SIGA technologies monkeypox drug sparks investigation

    SIGA Technologies Inc., is now under investigation by a New York City-based law firm for potential securities claims.

  • Science Alert ☛ Long COVID Fatigue Shows Up as Distinct Changes in Brain Scans

    Mental and physical fatigue look different.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • WCCF Tech ☛ Activision Blizzard Lay Off Hundreds of California Workers

    Yet again, there are more layoffs. This time, Activision Blizzard are the ones responsible, and they will soon be laying off nearly 400 people in the mobile gaming divisions of their company, which are located in Santa Monica and Irvine. By doing this, it eliminates redundancies among the staff after their expensive merge with Microsoft last year, which cost $75.4 billion.

    It's hardly surprising anymore when Activision Blizzard lays off staff, as they have already laid off 1,003 staff in the past year, with staff being from Novato, Foster City, and Southern California, as stated by filings with the Employment Development Department.

  • Yahoo News ☛ Activision Blizzard to lay off hundreds in Irvine and Santa Monica starting next month

  • [Repeat] Video game maker Activision Blizzard laying off hundreds of California workers

    Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. will soon lay off nearly 400 people in its in mobile gaming divisions in Santa Monica and Irvine, eliminating redundancies among its staff following last year’s $75.4 billion merger with software giant Microsoft Corp.

  • Molly White ☛ POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world

    First it was LiveJournal, Friendster, and MySpace. Then Facebook exploded onto the scene. Twitter came along not long after, although it would still be a while before it integrated now-ubiquitous features like mentions, retweets, and on-site photos. Google+ came and went. Then Twitter’s acquisition and rapid decline forced many to reckon with their continued presence there, and many either adopted or migrated entirely to alternatives like Mastodon or the nascent Bluesky or Threads.

  • The Atlantic ☛ AI is triggering a child-sex-abuse crisis

    Yesterday, the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology released the latest in a slew of reports documenting the crisis, finding that 15 percent of high schoolers reported hearing about an AI-generated image that depicted someone associated with their school in a sexually explicit or intimate manner. Previously, a report co-authored by a group at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute found that 50 percent of global law-enforcement officers surveyed had encountered AI-generated child-sexual-abuse material (CSAM).

  • Bitdefender ☛ Deepfake Ukrainian diplomat targeted US senator on Zoom call

    The office of Ben Cardin, the Democratic Senator for Maryland, reportedly received an email on Thursday September 19 from someone claiming to be former Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba, requesting a Zoom call.

    During the subsequent video call, "Kuleba" asked Senator Cardin a series of "politically charged questions" related to the upcoming US Presidential election which were, according to a notice issued by the Senate's security office, "likely trying to bait the senator into commenting on a political candidate."

  • The Scotsman ☛ Coldplay reject dynamic ticket pricing for 2025 UK shows after Oasis row

    The band announced that they will not be adopting the controversial model - which sees ticket prices rise based on demand - after thousands of music fans were priced out of tickets for Oasis’s reunion tour last month.

  • Techdirt ☛ Yet Another Study Shows ShotSpotter Can’t Fight Crime Or Get Help To Shooting Victims Faster

    Chicago does have a problem with violent crime, a lot of which involves guns and gunshots. ShotSpotter appeared to be a solution. But, after several years of implementation, the city’s Inspector General’s office decided to look at the data. What it discovered was that the city had been paying millions of dollars a year in exchange for almost no reduction in gun crime or corresponding increase in successful prosecutions of those engaging in gun violence.

  • The Register UK ☛ Automated SAP support renewal deadline looms

    Like car insurance, software support contracts can renew annually by simply doing nothing, a phenomenon with which SAP users should be all too familiar... but sometimes they are not.

    Unless SAP-supported users tell the vendor otherwise by September 30, their current contract will renew in January and continue until the beginning of 2026.

  • Security Week ☛ Millions of Kia Cars Were Vulnerable to Remote Hacking

    Furthermore, the bugs allowed the attackers to harvest the victim’s personal information, such as name, address, email address, and phone number, and to create a second user on the vehicle, without the owner’s knowledge.

    Curry and three other researchers discovered that the Kia owners’ site could execute internet-to-vehicle commands and that it relied on backend reverse-proxy to redirect commands to an API responsible for command execution.

  • 404 Media ☛ Schools Are Failing to Protect Students From Non-Consensual Deepfakes, Report Shows

    According to the report, 40 percent of students and 29 percent of teachers said they know of an explicit deepfake depicting people associated with their school being shared in the past school year. The repercussions for being caught making and spreading these images tended to be severe: Seventy-one percent of teachers reported that students who were caught sharing sexually explicit, non-consensual deepfakes were referred to law enforcement, expelled from school, or suspended for more than three days.

  • Center for Democracy & Technology ☛ Report – In Deep Trouble: Surfacing Tech-Powered Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools - Center for Democracy and Technology

    The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) conducted surveys of public high school students and public middle and high school parents and teachers from July to August 2024 to understand the prevalence of deepfakes, NCII, and related issues in K-12 schools. CDT’s research contributes to better understanding these issues within the U.S. educational context, as research has not yet been publicly published that both quantifies the rising prevalence of deepfakes and NCII in K-12 schools and reflects the perspectives of teachers, parents, and students.

    In short, concerns over the widespread nature of NCII, both authentic and deepfake, in public K-12 schools across the country are well-founded: [...]

  • The Washington Post ☛ How neo-Nazis are using AI to translate Hitler for a new generation

    In audio and video clips that have reached millions of viewers over the past month on TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube, the führer’s AI-cloned voice quavers and crescendos as he delivers English-language versions of some of his most notorious addresses, including his 1939 Reichstag speech predicting the end of Jewish people in Europe. Some seeking to spread the practice of making Hitler videos have hosted online trainings.

  • Wired ☛ China’s Plan to Make AI Watermarks Happen

    However, this new policy outlines more details of how AI watermarks should be implemented by platforms. For the first time, it also promised to punish social media platforms where AI-generated content is posted and travels far without being properly classified. As a result, there are a lot more financial and legal stakes for AI companies and social platforms if they are tempted to take the shortcut and not instate proper labeling features.

    With the speed and proactiveness of its AI legislation, China is hoping to be the domineering regime shaping global AI regulation. “China is definitely ahead of both the EU and the United States in content moderation of AI, partly driven by the government’s demand to ensure political alignment in chatbot services,” says Angela Zhang, a law professor at the University of Southern California studying Chinese tech regulations. And now it has another chance at shaping global industry standards, because “labeling is a promising area for global consensus on a certain technical standard,” she says.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Zuckerberg Weighs In on AI & Copyright Amid Orion Glasses Debut

    Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is betting big on AR glasses as the next tech accessory to take over our lives after smartphones. He recently debuted the Orion augmented reality glasses, which the company says is too complicated and expensive to take to market at the moment. But that will change.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • EFF ☛ New Email Scam Includes Pictures of Your House. Don’t Fall For It.

      Don’t panic. Contrary to the claims in your email, you probably haven't been hacked (or at least, that's not what prompted that email). This is merely a new variation on an old scam —actually, a whole category of scams called "sextortion." This is a type of online phishing that is targeting people around the world and preying on digital-age fears. It generally uses publicly available information or information from data breaches, not information obtained from hacking the recipients of the emails specifically, and therefore it is very unlikely the sender has any "incriminating" photos or has actually hacked your accounts or devices.

      They begin the emails showing you your address, full name, and possibly a picture of your house. 

      We’ll talk about a few steps to take to protect yourself, but the first and foremost piece of advice we have: do not pay the ransom.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Ranveer Allahbadia YouTube Channel Hack: What Happened And What’s Next

      Ranveer Allahbadia, the popular figure behind the YouTube channels BeerBiceps and his main channel, became a victim of a cyberattack. The Ranveer Allahbadia YouTube channel hack resulted in a complete overhaul of their content and branding.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ When Spiders Share Webs: The creeping expansion of INTERPOL’s interoperable policing and biometrics entrench externalised EU borders in West Africa

    • Privacy International ☛ “When Spiders Share Webs”: Unveiling privacy threats of EU-funded INTERPOL policing programme in West Africa

      WAPIS poses a threat to the fundamental human rights of numerous West African populations, including the right to privacy

    • The Atlantic ☛ Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe?

      23andMe is not doing well. Its stock is on the verge of being delisted. It shut down its in-house drug-development unit last month, only the latest in several rounds of layoffs. Last week, the entire board of directors quit, save for Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder and the company’s CEO. Amid this downward spiral, Wojcicki has said she’ll consider selling 23andMe—which means the DNA of 23andMe’s 15 million customers would be up for sale, too.

    • Six Colors ☛ Meta and Apple: Same game, different rules

      The game is to create a wearable, augmented-reality device that takes everything that’s great about a smartphone and overlays it on your vision, making the entire world a smartphone canvas. It’s part of a larger strategy, which is to own the next must-have technology device that supplants or augments the smartphone.

      This game has no rules. There’s no single accepted way to play it.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft has some thoughts about Windows Recall security

      You may not recall what you were doing on your PC but rest assured that Microsoft's Copilot AI can remember it for you wholesale, to borrow the title of the Philip K. Dick story that inspired the film Total Recall.

      Microsoft Recall works by capturing snapshots of your Windows desktop every few seconds, and recording what you're doing in applications, and storing the results so that it can be, well, recalled with text searches or by visually sliding back through the timeline. It's a visual activity log with associated data that can be queried using an AI model, basically.

    • RTL ☛ Password-security: Ireland fines Meta 91 mn euros over EU data breach

      The Data Protection Commission criticised Meta for failing to put in place appropriate security measures to protect users' password data and for taking too long to alert the regulator over the issue.

      An inquiry was launched in April 2019 after Meta Ireland informed the regulator that it had "inadvertently stored certain passwords of social media users" in a readable format on its internal system, the DPC said in a statement.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Ireland fines Meta €91M over plaintext user passwords

      Ireland’s privacy regulator today fined Meta Platforms Inc. €91 million over a cybersecurity flaw in its internal systems that came to light five years ago.

      The Data Protection Commission, or DPC, also issued the company a reprimand over the matter.

    • The Record ☛ Meta fined $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of passwords in plaintext

      Following a five year investigation, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) — which is the EU’s lead privacy authority on Meta, as the company’s European headquarters are based in Ireland — found the incident was a breach of Meta’s legal duties under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

      In a statement on Friday, the DPC said it was issuing a reprimand and fine to Meta for several breaches of the GDPR, including failing to notify the DPC of the personal data breaches and also failing to implement appropriate technical measures to protect users’ passwords.

    • Security Week ☛ Meta Hit With $102 Million Privacy Fine From European Union Over 2019 Password Security Lapse

      The Irish Data Protection Commission said it slapped the U.S. tech company with the 91 million euro ($101.6 million) penalty following an investigation.

      The watchdog started investigating in 2019 after it was notified by Meta that some passwords had been inadvertently stored internally in plain text, which means they weren’t encrypted and it was possible for employees to search for them.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Top 5 Data Privacy Laws In Australia You Must Know

      In this article, we will explore five critical data privacy laws in Australia that you need to know about, each playing a vital role in safeguarding personal information. Understanding these regulations is essential for anyone involved in handling personal data, whether they are part of a large corporation or an individual.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Far-right lawmakers nominate Musk for top EU rights award

    Far-right lawmakers have proposed Elon Musk for the EU's top rights prize for the second year in a row as a champion of "free speech", the European Parliament said on Thursday.

  • BIA Net ☛ Erdoğan skips Biden’s dinner during UN General Assembly

    Although there was no official explanation from Ankara, Turkish media speculated that Erdoğan’s decision was related to the US administration’s support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, which the president had strongly criticized during his speech at the General Assembly.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ “Borrowed servants”? Private military companies and sadism in Abu Ghraib

    Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi is joined by international lawyer Katherine Gallagher to explore her litigation against a prominent PMC for war crimes at Abu Ghraib.

  • RFERL ☛ Afghan Taliban Shuts Down London Embassy

    The staff announced on September 8 that the move was "made based on the requirements of the host country's authorities," following similar action by other countries that had allowed the diplomatic outposts to operate despite lacking ties to the Taliban, which seized power from the Western-backed government in August 2021.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ The power of the Baltic Way

    The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 marked a turning point in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. This non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided the region into spheres of influence, paving the way for Soviet domination. However, the pact’s significance was short-lived. In June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. This brutal attack marked the beginning of the largest and costliest land battle in history, involving millions of soldiers and resulting in millions of casualties. The invasion shattered the fragile peace established by the Hitler-Stalin Pact and plunged the region into further turmoil.

  • The Register UK ☛ Report: Starlink kit found amid wreckage of Russian drone

    The Starlink equipment appears to be a user terminal, and if fitted to the drone could have provided internet connectivity from the Starlink satellite constellation.

  • Latvia ☛ NATO STRATCOMCOE podcast explores Telegram app

    The Rīga-based NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOMCOE) has a new podcast available, this one taking as its subject the unfortunately familiar subject of Russia and the controversial 'Telegram' communications app.

  • New Yorker ☛ Could the War in Gaza Cost Kamala Harris the Election?

    A co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement tells the staff writer Andrew Marantz why Muslim voters in Michigan are turning in droves to Jill Stein—and Donald Trump.

  • New Yorker ☛ Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power

    Gabriel Sherman on “The Apprentice,” his coming-of-age film about Trump. There are “parts of the film that I could imagine Donald Trump liking,” Sherman says.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Iranian Hackers Compromised Roger Stone’s Email Eight Years After Russian Hackers Exfiltrated DNC Emails

    Iranian hackers first compromised Donald Trump's rat-fucker eight years, almost to the day, after Russian hackers stole the emails from the DNC that Roger Stone used to help get Trump elected.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Security Week ☛ US Announces Charges, Sanctions Against Russian Administrator of Carding Website

      US offers up to $10 million for information on Timur Shakhmametov, charging him with running the carding website Joker’s Stash.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ ‘We are going to get to the finish line on Russia’s reserves,’ says White House’s Daleep Singh

      The US deputy national security advisor for international economics spoke at the Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics about navigating today's geopolitical reality with various economic statecraft tools.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian Radio probes border construction delays

      Latvian Radio's Atvertie Faili (Open Files) investigative strand this week turned its attention to delays and other problems linked to upgrades to Latvia's eastern borders with Russia and Belarus.

    • New York Times ☛ Zelensky Meets Trump Amid Fears for Continued U.S. Support for Ukraine

      The session in New York was part of a nearly weeklong U.S. visit by the Ukrainian president in which he has made appeals to both Democrats and Republicans.

    • New York Times ☛ Zelensky Finds Ukraine’s Fortunes Ties to the U.S. Election

      A whirlwind week of top-level meetings failed to alleviate concerns in Kyiv that a Trump presidency could lead to a dramatic shift in American policy.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Meets With Trump, Presents 'Victory Plan' Amid Tensions Over War Aims

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had "very meaningful" discussions with former U.S. leader Donald Trump amid tensions over what critics call the ex-president's pro-Russia stance.

    • RFERL ☛ Elderly U.S. Citizen Held By Moscow On Charge Of Fighting For Ukraine

      The Moscow City Court has placed a 72-year-old U.S. citizen in pretrial detention after prosecutors accused him of joining Ukrainian armed forces that are fighting to repel invading Russian troops, a charge that could see him imprisoned for at least seven years.

    • RFERL ☛ Orban Under Fire After Aide Says Hungary 'Probably' Wouldn't Have Resisted Russian Invasion

      Prime Minister Viktor Orban has found himself in the eye of a rare domestic political storm after his closest aide triggered scathing criticism from Hungary's opposition for suggesting Budapest wouldn't have fought to repel a Russian invasion as Ukraine has.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian platform to help speed up restoration of Ukraine’s Bucha, Borodyanka

      The Russian-destroyed cities of Bucha and Borodyanka in Ukraine will be rebuilt using a Lithuanian-developed interactive 3D platform to assess the damage caused by the war and to simulate the reconstruction of the cities.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Ukraine war: US Sec. of State Blinken questions China peace push over Russia help

      US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday questioned China’s sincerity in seeking peace in Ukraine as he directly pressed his counterpart over exports that boost Russia’s military.

    • France24 ☛ Trump, Zelenskyy meet ahead of a US election with high stakes for Ukraine

      Republican nominee Donald Trump on Friday sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York to discuss the war in Ukraine ahead of November’s US presidential election. The meeting came after Trump, an outspoken critic of US and Western support for Ukraine, excoriated Zelenskyy and his embattled country while campaigning this week.

    • New York Times ☛ Trump Suggests Putin Wants to End War, as Zelensky Looks On

      “I’m sure President Putin wants it to stop,” Donald Trump said of the Russia-Ukraine war on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine stressed that the war shouldn’t have been started.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Targets Alleged Russian Money-Laundering Network

      The United States on September 26 imposed sanctions on an alleged Russian money-laundering operation that caters to cybercriminals around the world and unsealed indictments against two Russian nationals for their alleged involvement in the operation.

    • LRT ☛ Poland faces renewed migration pressure at border with Belarus

      The Polish-Belarusian border has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks, and the situation is becoming more serious, Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (PSL, EPP) said on Thursday.

    • LRT ☛ Wave of arrests targets LGBT community in Belarus

      At least eight transgender people have been arrested and around a dozen others were detained in Belarus since August, the transgender support organization TG House Belarus told RFE/RL on September 26.

    • RFERL ☛ Prosecutors Seek Life Sentence In Attempted Murder Of Pro-Kremlin Writer

      Prosecutors asked a military court in Moscow on September 27 to sentence a man suspected of attempted murder of pro-Kremlin writer and political activist Zakhar Prilepin to life in prison.

    • RFERL ☛ Armenian Troops Boycott Russian-Led Military Exercises As Relations Sour

      A week after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said his country is nearing the "point of no return" with the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), Yerevan has boycotted a key meeting of foreign ministers of the alliance and its troops the latest training exercises.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Urges Israel, Hezbollah To 'Stop Firing' While Iran, Russia Condemn Attacks On Lebanon

      U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that “the path to diplomacy” is still open in the Middle East despite Israel’s latest massive strike targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Lebanon, but he insisted that Israel and Hezbollah must both “stop firing.”

    • LRT ☛ Putin rattles the nuclear sabre again. Bluster? Probably, experts say

      Five days before President Vladimir Putin announced that he would loosen the conditions under which Russia might use a nuclear weapon against an adversary, one of those very same nuclear weapons had a spectacularly explosive mishap.

    • France24 ☛ Putin’s nuclear threats: empty rhetoric or a shift in battlefield strategy?

      President Vladimir Putin made a chilling declaration this week when he proposed changes to Russia’s nuclear war policies. One of the most concerning was the possibility of mobilising the country’s nuclear arsenal if another nuclear power supports a non-nuclear state’s attack on Russia. The comments marked a clear escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric, but some experts say there is a world of difference between Putin’s declarations and the hidden rules of nuclear doctrine.

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Balazs Orban faces backlash over comments on Ukraine war

      Balazs Orbán, Viktor Orbán’s political director (no relation to the PM) suggested that Hungary might have responded differently to a Russian invasion than Ukraine has. Orbán made these comments during a podcast on Wednesday, where he accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of making an “irresponsible” choice to defend his nation after Moscow’s invasion.

      Drawing a comparison with Hungary’s past, Orbán referenced the suppression of the country’s 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, during which the Red Army crushed the revolt, killing up to 3,000 civilians and leaving large parts of Budapest in ruins. He argued that Hungary had since learned the need to safeguard “precious Hungarian lives” rather than “offering them up” in military defense.

    • FAIR ☛ Judges in TikTok Case Seem Ready to Discount First Amendment

      A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism.

    • Meduza ☛ How many Russian civilians are living in Ukrainian-held parts of the Kursk region? Moscow won’t say — so we used open sources to estimate — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Women’s rights activists lead the charge in Armenia’s fight against domestic violence — Meduza

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ Scenes From Florida as Hurricane Helene Approaches

    The Category 4 hurricane is expected to make landfall on the state’s gulf coast on Thursday evening.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ European militaries rush to catch up on space traffic mapping

    The number of active satellites in orbit has more than tripled in just four years, according to European Space Agency data. Most of the new space activity is happening in low Earth orbit, where agile spacecraft zip around at 27,500 kilometers per hour, while much of the surveillance by Western militaries is built on systems adapted to decades of tracking relatively static geostationary orbits.

  • El País ☛ Chile: Vehicles destroying ancient geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert: ‘The damage is irreversible’

    The visual evidence, taken with aerial cameras, shows how the four-meter figures elaborated by pre-Hispanic Andean peoples on the stones of Alto Barraco more than 1000 years ago, are being erased by the relentless passage of jeeps, motorbikes and ATVs. Pimentel explains that this archaeological site has “unfortunately been destroyed for several decades by the passage of off-road vehicles and it seems there’s no end in sight.”

  • teleSUR ☛ Türkiye's Lakes Drying Up Amid Climate Change

    In the past, farmers in Kulu used to grow traditional crops like wheat and barley, but they later shifted to water-intensive crops like maize or beetroot, leading to aggressive use of groundwater which gradually dried up the creeks feeding the lake, Uludag said.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • NL Times ☛ German rail problems putting Amsterdam-Prague night train at risk

      The German infrastructure manager Deutsche Bahn is planning a lot of railworks in the coming months and is not giving European Sleeper clarity about the new timetable, the company said. The new timetable starts in December, and European Sleeper doesn’t know where it stands. “There is a chance that gaps [in the timetable] will continue to exist, making the entire timetable unusable.”

    • LRT ☛ Russia's shadow tankers: a growing threat in the Baltics – opinion

      Up to 60 tankers pass through Danish waters monthly, often operating without proper insurance and outside international regulations. These vessels frequently avoid using local pilots, significantly elevating the risk of accidents and oil spills. Experts warn that if this trend continues, environmental disasters are not just possible – they are inevitable.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Data privacy key for companies seeking on-premises AI solutions

      Companies must weigh the benefits of rapid AI model development offered by cloud hyperscalers against rising long-term costs and concerns about protecting proprietary data. Meanwhile, on-premises solutions are emerging as a viable alternative, offering enhanced data privacy, scalability and reduced expenses over time, according to top executives at Juniper Networks Inc. An on-premises option also offers greater protection for proprietary data.

    • Wired ☛ Ukraine Is Decentralizing Energy Production to Protect Itself From Russia

      Putting her expertise as an energy lawyer and solar power project manager to good use, Onishchuk set up an NGO, the Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation. “I was already in renewables, and I love renewables.” The foundation would help rebuild schools and hospitals and equip them with solar panels, offering them energy independence while at the same time helping Ukrainians understand the importance of clean energy.

    • BikePortland ☛ Three families who bike to fight climate change – BikePortland

      A common thread immediately emerged in the answers I received: Local families who took up biking as their personal contribution to fight against climate change. While this was not the reason I started biking, I found these family bike stories to be edifying, as members of the community explained their personal commitment and major lifestyle changes to fight for a healthier environment for their children and future generations.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ This Month in Conservation Science: The Eagles Who Ate the Lions

  • Overpopulation

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ Army hits recruiting target for the first time in 2 years

      An expected drop of about 10% in the number of college-age young people nationwide in 2026 is a significant concern, Wormuth said. The dip comes 18 years after the financial recession in 2008, which triggered a decrease in the number of children born.

• Finance

  • New Yorker ☛ The Fate of the Finance Bro

    Depictions of high finance have oscillated between glamorizing Wall Street types and condemning them. In the latest season of HBO’s “Industry,” is greed good again?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Some Minnesota ballots listed wrong candidates or party. Elections officials are working on fixes.

    Wabasha County officials said voters in Zumbro Falls had received ballots listing the wrong Minnesota House of Representatives race. In Faribault County, a Republican was listed as a Democrat.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ X does that thing again, but it’s totally chill this time

    This is literally exactly what Twitter did in 2020 when they briefly blocked posting a link to a piece about Hunter Biden, and got conservatives like Elon Musk to be up in arms about censorship. Something tells me conservative media won’t be up in arms about this one.

  • Josh Withers ☛ A front-page of the internet for the good burghers of the Apple nation

    The whole website is just one page, the front page, that shows you the last 36 hours of Apple related content from the web.

    If no-one else ever uses or visits the site I’ll be happy to just use it myself, but I thought I’d share on the chance that there might be other burghers of the Apple nation that might be interested in saving it as a bookmark, or a homepage in their browser like I’ve done.

  • Axios ☛ Newsmax, Smartmatic settle defamation lawsuit

    Newsmax said on its website it was "pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement."

  • India Times ☛ Alphabet to invest $3.3 billion for two data centers in South Carolina

    The new Dorchester County facilities, located in the Pine Hill Business Campus in Ridgeville and Winding Woods Commerce Park in St. George, represent a $2 billion investment and will create 200 new operational jobs, while Alphabet will invest $1.3 billion in Berkeley County, according to the statement.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft to make $2.7 billion cloud, AI investments in Brazil

    The amount is the largest-ever investment to be announced at once in Brazil by Microsoft, which said massive adoption of AI could add as much as 4.2% points to Brazil's economic growth by the end of the decade.

  • VOA News ☛ Brazil imposes new fine, demands payments before letting X resume

    But Judge Alexandre de Moraes responded on Friday with a ruling that X and its legal representative in Brazil must still agree to pay a total of $3.4 million in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court.

    In his decision, the judge said that the court can use resources already frozen from X and Starlink accounts in Brazil, but to do so the satellite company, also owned by Musk, had to drop its pending appeal against the fund blockage.

  • The Register UK ☛ Blackstone bets £10B on AI with UK datacenter development

    However, we expect the bulk of Blackstone’s investment will go to AI accelerators, though it remains to be seen whose chips will power the facility. While Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell accelerators might seem the natural choice due to the maturity of the GPU giant’s software and hardware ecosystem, Intel and AMD have grown far more competitive in recent generations.

  • The Register UK ☛ A for-profit OpenAI? Huh. What would it be good for?

    As for Sam Altman, one of OpenAI's co-founders, he is very much at the helm again and has presided over the company during some of the most recent changes. Altman founded Loopt, a smartphone location-based social networking app, in 2005. It then became one of the first companies to be accepted into Y Combinator, one of the top venture capitalist groups. He promptly sold Loopt and joined Y Combinator as a partner. By 2014, he had become Y Combinator's president.

  • New York Times ☛ OpenAI Is Growing Fast and Burning Through Piles of Money

    OpenAI, the San Francisco start-up behind ChatGPT, has been telling investors that it is making billions from its chatbot and that it expects to make a lot more in the coming years. But it has not been quite so clear about how much it is losing.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: Intel could finalize $8.5B CHIPS Act direct funding agreement by year’s end

    Plans for the cash infusion were first announced in March as part of a broader financing deal. Alongside the direct funding, the Commerce Department intends to provide Intel with access to up to $11 billion in loans. Moreover, the chipmaker is set to receive a Treasury Department tax credit of up to 25% on investments in its manufacturing infrastructure.

  • ACLU ☛ W. Kamau Bell and Michigan's Top Rap Stars Get Down for Voting Rights

    Greeted by the newly constructed “Detroit” sign, my colleagues and I arrived in the Motor City for the final stop on the ACLU’s Know Your Rights bus tour. We didn’t actually ride our Know Your Rights bus to Detroit. Instead, we arrived to find the bus in all its glory parked outside the Garden Theater, just off the bustling Woodward Avenue. While Detroit is the last stop on our tour, the KYR bus has crisscrossed the country helping voters know their rights and feel empowered and excited to show up to the polls this November.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Atlantic ☛ Confessions of a Russian Propagandist

      One thing that the confused response to Russians at War makes clear is that eight years after the revelation that Moscow attempted to influence a U.S. presidential election, most Westerners still don’t really know how Russian propaganda campaigns work. Americans have become familiar with AI botnets, salaried trolls tweeting in broken English about Texas secession, deranged Russian TV hosts calling for a nuclear strike on New York, and alt-right has-beens. But what to make of a French and Canadian documentary, tucked between Pharrell’s Lego-animated film and a Q&A with Zoe Saldaña, that seems cozy with the Russian military and blurs the line between entertainment and politics?

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Michael Tsai ☛ X/Twitter Censorship

    Twitter under Musk is certainly censoring differently. People who were banned have been unbanned and vice-versa. The misleading information policy has changed. Maybe there is more variety of content than before, but it does not really seem to be following the principles that Musk laid out at the acquisition.

  • Matt Webb ☛ Sometimes the product innovation is the distribution (Interconnected)

    Would I have stocked Moleskines if they weren’t distributed by the book wholesaler? No, it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle.

  • RFA ☛ Staff, students 'tread carefully' at Hong Kong's eight universities

    Hong Kong's universities are seeing the erosion of academic freedom under an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the city, much of it in the form of self-censorship, according to a new report.

    Academic freedom in Hong Kong has severely declined since the Chinese government imposed the National Security Law on the city on June 30, 2020, according to the report, which was co-authored by the New York-based group Human Rights Watch and the Hong Kong Democracy Council.

  • RFA ☛ EXPLAINED: How the umbrella became a Hong Kong protest symbol

    It was the largest show of civil disobedience since control of the former British colony was handed over to China in 1997. Tens of thousands of people, many of them students, camped in the streets and for 11 weeks occupied much of the business district of the city of 7 million people.

  • India Times ☛ Google restricts creation of new accounts in Russia: report

    Google has been under pressure in Russia for several years, particularly for not taking down content Moscow considers illegal and for blocking the YouTube channels of Russian media and public figures since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

  • Techdirt ☛ Don’t Forget That The Same People Banning Books Want To Ban Porn

    The PEN America data indicates that more than 10,000 books were removed from the shelves of school libraries across the country during the 2023-2024 academic year. The tally of removed books climbed triple-fold from last year’s tally of 3,362 removals.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Winning technology strategies shared by Times, Mail and Haymarket

    Publishers also warn cross-functional teams are needed to avoid becoming a "three-legged stool".

    >

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Do I Cover Sacred Sites as an Indigenous Journalist?

  • RFERL ☛ The Azadi Briefing: Taliban Imposes New Restrictions On Afghan Broadcasters

    The Taliban has imposed new restrictions on Afghan broadcasters, banning live broadcasts of political shows and on-air criticism of its policies.

    Afghan broadcasters must now prerecord their shows, obtain prior approval of their guest lists, and remove criticism of the Taliban’s laws.

  • Afghanistan Journalists Center ☛ Afghanistan Journalist Center - Taliban Imposes Stricter Regulations on Afghan Media, Raising Concerns Over Press Freedom

    AFJC expressing deep concern over the newly issued instructions affecting independent media outlets in Afghanistan, considers their implementation as another attempt to further weaken and suppress free media in the country. AFJC urges Taliban officials to refrain from imposing media guidelines that suppress free expression and to allow the country’s media law, which has been deemed executable, to be implemented.

  • RFA ☛ Hong Kong sentences 2 journalists to prison for sedition

    The two are the first journalists to be found guilty of sedition since Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997.

    Both defendants pleaded not guilty, with Chung denying the newspaper was politically motivated. Lam declined to testify and did not appear in court to hear the verdict due to health issues.

  • SCMP ☛ Hong Kong court jails 2 former Stand News editors for up to 21 months for sedition | South China Morning Post

    The District Court judge handed down his sentence on Thursday, almost a month after the journalists were found guilty in the landmark case, the first involving media professionals being charged under a colonial-era sedition law since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Winning technology strategies shared by Times, Mail and Haymarket

    Can publishers cope with being software companies?

    This was the question experts addressed at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference on a panel about the role tech plays in finding new revenue streams.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Free speech row erupts over X suspending journalist who published JD Vance dossier

    Various media outlets received the document but didn’t feel there was anything in it worth publishing. Klippenstein didn’t agree, and published it to his Substack page, stating some of the information in the document was “of keen public interest in an election season.” He later posted links to his X account, after which he was suspended and X blocked any links to the document.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong speech therapists’ union ordered to hand over HK$116,000 assets on national security grounds

    A union of Hong Kong speech therapists whose board members were jailed for sedition two years ago has been ordered to hand over HK$116,000 in assets after the city’s justice department said the union’s funds had been used to endanger national security.

  • New York Times ☛ Production Linked to Neil Gaiman Is Halted Amid Sexual Assault Claims

    The British author of dozens of literary works has denied the allegations that five women made against him on a podcast series.

  • JURIST ☛ 26 countries support legal action against Taliban for violations of women's rights

    Twenty-six countries expressed on Thursday their support for a legal initiative to hold the Taliban accountable at the International Court of Justice for systematic human rights violations against women and girls in Afghanistan. In a joint statement, the countries condemned Taliban policies that have severely curtailed the rights of Afghan women and girls since the Taliban took control of the country in 2021.

  • ANF News ☛ Bar Associations: The use of the Kurdish language is prevented through illegalities and obstructions

    The statement by the Kurdish Language Commissions of the bar associations said: “This operation is directed against the Kurdish language. Work on the Kurdish language is criminalised and this causes the Kurdish people to stay away from work to develop their own language. Although there is no legal obstacle to the Kurdish language, the use of the Kurdish language is being prevented through illegalities and de facto obstructions. It is not a crime to work on the Kurdish language. It is the most fundamental right of every Kurd to speak and live his/her mother tongue in every field. We will continue to defend this right everywhere.”

  • 404 Media ☛ AI Avatars Are Doing Job Interviews Now

    “This HR AI avatar is a perfect demonstration of late stage capitalism,” Jack Ryan, someone who was interviewed by a tool called Fairgo.ai, told 404 Media.

  • Wired ☛ Pilots Are Dying of Tiredness. Tech Can’t Save Them

    The pilot fatigue problem isn’t unique to India. In January, two pilots for Indonesia-based Batik Air fell asleep for 28 minutes mid-flight, causing their plane to veer off course between Sulawesi and Jakarta. In April, unionized Virgin Atlantic pilots in the UK voted 96 percent in favor of pursuing an industrial action in response to rising fatigue. Earlier, the CEO of Wizz Air UK faced a backlash for urging crew members to push through their fatigue to avoid flight cancellations. In May, senior pilots at Virgin Australia raised safety concerns, claiming rostering systems were pushing them "to the limits.”

  • SFGate ☛ LAPD raid goes bad after gun allegedly sucked onto MRI machine

    The officers then released the employee and told her to call a manager, the lawsuit said, while they continued to wander around various rooms of the facility. The plaintiffs say the officers’ behavior was “nothing short of a disorganized circus, with no apparent rules, procedures, or even a hint of coordination.”

    At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine. MRI machines are tube-shaped scanners that use incredibly strong magnetic fields to create images of the brain, bones, joints and other internal organs.

  • VOA News ☛ Taliban push back against allegations of gender bias, rights abuses

    The de facto Afghan rulers have imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law, known as Sharia. The enforcement includes banning girls' secondary school education, prohibiting Afghan women from most workplaces, and requiring them not to speak aloud and to cover their faces and bodies in public.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Vote Marches Toward Satellite to Smartphone Service

    With a 5-0 vote, the FCC on Thursday adopted new rules to free up 1300 MHz of contiguous spectrum for non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) fixed-satellite service operations in the 17.3-17.8 GHz band. Officials said the action promotes spectrum efficiency, fosters competition, and expands the ability of satellite operators to deploy advanced services like satellite to smartphone service.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC to Vote to Require Wireless Carriers to Implement Georouting

    If adopted, all U.S. wireless carriers would be required to implement georouting calls to the 988 Lifeline within 30 days following the rules effective date for nationwide wireless providers. Smaller, non-nationwide providers would need to begin using georouting suicide hotline calls 24 months after the effective date.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • India Times ☛ Prime Video: Amazon tops $1.8 billion ad-spending commitment target for video-streaming services: reports

    The spending commitments include ads on Prime Video and Amazon's live sports telecasts, such as the National Football League's Thursday Night Football games, the report said. The ecommerce giant is betting it can keep its ad revenue growth going by investing in streaming TV and capturing a meaningful share of ad budgets, especially as they increasingly shift toward streaming-video services.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Google: Google expert at antitrust trial says government underestimates competition for online ad dollars

  Federal regulators who say Google holds an illegal monopoly over the technology that matches online advertisers to publishers are vastly underestimating the competition the tech giant faces, an expert hired by Google testified Thursday. Mark Israel, an economist who prepared an expert report on Google's behalf, said the government's claims that Google holds a monopoly over advertising technology are improperly focused on a narrow market the government defines as "open web display advertising," essentially the rectangular ads that appear on the top and along the right hand side of a web page when a consumer browses the web on a desktop computer.

• New York Times ☛ How Google Defended Itself in the Ad Tech Antitrust Trial

  The government last week concluded its main arguments in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, which was filed last year and accuses Google of building a monopoly over the technology that places ads on websites around the internet.

  The company’s defense has centered on how its actions were justified and how it helped publishers, advertisers and competition. Here are Google’s main arguments.

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ A Very Tall Tale: Photograph of the Cardiff Giant (ca. 1869)

    Perhaps greatest hoax in American natural history.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Zuckerberg Weighs In on Hey Hi (AI) & Copyright Amid Orion Glasses Debut

    Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is betting big on AR glasses as the next tech accessory to take over our lives after smartphones. He recently debuted the Orion augmented reality glasses, which the company says is too complicated and expensive to take to market at the moment.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Life After TikTok? — WMG Licenses ‘Connyct’ in Limited-Audience Release

    Warner Music Group licenses mobile short-form video app Connyct as potential US Fentanylware (TikTok) ban looms large. As Fentanylware (TikTok) faces a potential ban in the United States, a new platform appears hoping to seize the opportunity to fill TikTok’s role.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Will Piracy Kill Football in Italy? Not if Football Damages the Internet First

    Proponents of Italy's site blocking juggernaut to protect the country's top tier football league have shown their true colors. Proposed amendments to the 'Piracy Shield' law state that, if any network service provider even suspects criminal activity, they must immediately report to the authorities. This includes search engines, DNS and VPN providers, reverse proxy servers, internet security platforms. Failure to report or even a delay in reporting would be punishable by up to a year in prison.

  • Wired ☛ The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself

    It is no exaggeration to say that digital archiving as we know it would not exist without the Internet Archive—and that, as the world’s knowledge repositories increasingly go online, archiving as we know it would not be as functional. Its most famous project, the Wayback Machine, is a repository of web pages that functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. Zoomed out, the Internet Archive is one of the most important historical-preservation organizations in the world. The Wayback Machine has assumed a default position as a safety valve against digital oblivion. The rhapsodic regard the Internet Archive inspires is earned—without it, the world would lose its best public resource on internet history.

  • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Says It's Fine to Train AI on Your Data Because It Probably Has No Value Anyway

    AI companies have been indiscriminately scraping mind-boggling amounts of content to train their AI models, a controversial practice that has led to a litany of lawsuits by copyright holders, from major record labels and newspapers to artists and authors.

    But if it were up to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, content creators and rights holders should just let these companies make use of their work for free.

  • The Verge ☛ Mark Zuckerberg: creators and publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI

    Meta, like nearly every major AI company, is currently embroiled in litigation over the limits of scraping data for AI training without permission. Last year, the company was sued by a group of authors, including Sarah Silverman, who claimed its Llama model was unlawfully trained on pirated copies of their work. (The case currently isn’t going great for those authors; last week, a judge castigated their legal team for being “either unwilling or unable to litigate properly.”)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Lyte Meltdown Continues As Festivals Push Back Against Scalping Claims, Ripples Reach Australia

    The Lyte shutdown’s fallout isn’t finished yet, as two music festivals are pushing back against claims that they used the defunct platform to scalp their own tickets. Meanwhile, the episode’s ripples are still being felt all the way in Australia.