Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Education/Schools

Leftovers

• Matt Birchler ☛ I’ve written 1 million words in the past 8 years

  Anyway, it was really something seeing that I’ve written just over 1 million words in less than a decade, so thanks for reading whatever fraction of those you have over the years. ❤️

• The Nation ☛ Jimmy Carter, at 100, Is Best Honored by Listening to His Advice About the Middle East

  While his presidency, which began almost five decades ago, had its ups and down, his post-presidency has been characterized by bold truth-telling that—while frequently controversial—has placed him on the right side of history.

• Task And Purpose ☛ Jimmy Carter, former President and Navy veteran, turns 100

  Carter’s presidency is widely remembered for assuming office during turbulent years and for serving just one term. However, his post-presidential public life has been among the most influential and effective of any former president as a global humanitarian leader.

  Less remembered is Carter’s military career prior to entering politics, but he played supporting roles in some of the Navy’s most important history. Carter was a member of the development team of nuclear-powered submarines, served above and below the surface and helped prevent a nuclear disaster in North America.

• El País ☛ 100 years of Jimmy Carter: The centennial president’s legacy

  The politician from Plains, Georgia is known for his concept of moral leadership, with which he governed the United States for four years

• Hindustan Times ☛ Jimmy Carter at 100: A century of changes for president, US and world since 1924

  The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, will turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrating in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924.

  Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life.

• Chris ☛ Tagnostic: Determine Tag Quality

  Using tags is hard. It’s easy to accidentally fall into tagging anti-patterns, such as creating tags that are synonyms to existing tags, or one-off tags for single pieces of content, or tags so vague as to be meaningless in practice. I know because I made those mistakes on this site!

• Robert Birming ☛ Creative Currents

  I've had many blogs and other projects over the years. They've always been accompanied by great enthusiasm and inspiration on my part. For a while...

• Lou Plummer ☛ Memorable Internet Moments

  From my first encounter with the online world on my uncle's 286 using Prodigy back in 1993 to this very moment on my tricked-out MacBook Air with all the bells and whistles, I’ve experienced quite a few memorable moments involving the Internet.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ On personal websites and social web

  I’m currently restructuring my RSS library. I started using Feedbin—and the reason why I did that is something I’m going to blog about in the future—and I’m following a lot more people. One thing I noticed is that many of those people have written their thoughts on the current state of the web when it comes to social media, the fediverse, and blogs. And in those posts, I’m starting to see a trend of some sort. People are apparently starting to split into two camps that follow two very different ideological approaches when it comes to being social on the web. And when I say “people” I mean tech people, those who care about this type of stuff.

• Zig ☛ The Zig Website Has Been Re-engineered

  As some have already noticed, when we announced in the last post that we moved ziglang.org off the cloud, we also moved the website from Hugo to Zine, a static site generator written in Zig by yours truly (with the help of a few very kind contributors).

  While most of the speed improvement comes from having an overall saner deployment architecture, Zine does play a role simply by properly leveraging the Zig cache system to avoid re-generating pages that have not changed.

• Education/Schools

  • Rlang ☛ How to Split a Data Frame in R: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

    Splitting data frames is useful in various scenarios:

    1. Grouping data for analysis
    2. Preparing data for machine learning models
    3. Separating data based on specific criteria
    4. Performing operations on subsets of data

  • Nina B Zumel ☛ Bachet’s Four Weights Problem

    Here’s another puzzle from Henry Dudeney’s article “The World’s Best Puzzles”, The Strand Magazine, December 1908. According to Dudeney, this puzzle is originally from Problèmes plaisans et délectables qui se font par les nombres (Pleasant and delectable number problems), by French mathematician Claude Gaspar Bachet de Méziriac (1551-1636).[1] Illustration of a balance scale and four weightss

    You have four (integral) weights w1,w2,w3,w4 and a balance scale such that you can weigh any object weighing from 1 lb to 40 lbs (no fractions). The weights may go on either side of the scale (eg, with the object, or in the opposite pan). What are the wi?

  • Pro Publica ☛ How We Enlisted a Community to Report on Idaho’s Crumbling Schools

• Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

    “My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.

• Hardware

  • USMC ☛ Marines to receive new system for zapping drone swarms out of the sky

    Developed by Eprius, the long-pulse, high-power microwave technology known as Leonidas Expeditionary can drop swarms of drones with massive and pointed walls of electromagnetic energy.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ The most popular reason people use drones in 2024

    But as it turns out, the top way that businesses use drones in 2024 is neither of those things. Photography was just the third most popular use case among both internal businesses and drone service providers, accounting for 25% and 22% of overall drone use cases, respectively. Drone delivery accounts for just 1% of drone operations across business internal services and 4% of drone service providers.

    So what is the top reason people use drones for commercial applications these days?

  • Talospace ☛ Music production on Power: an adventure in porting

    The switch to a truly owner-controlled Power ISA system was a welcome one, but it wasn’t without its growing pains. I could no longer assume any given piece of Linux-compatible software would successfully compile and run on my machine, due to the small but significant portion with architecture-specific issues. That didn’t deter me from continuing to use my Blackbird as my main device, but when I wanted to get back into music production, I knew I would have to confront this problem: my previous endeavors, although sticking entirely to free software, were all on x86.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • US pharmacy chain CVS shedding thousands of jobs

    Drug retail giant CVS Health has confirmed plans for a significant number of layoffs as part of a broader cost-saving initiative.

    The Rhode Island-based pharmacy chain will eliminate approximately 2,900 positions nationwide, representing 1% of its total workforce. The restructuring primarily targets corporate roles, leaving front-line positions in stores, pharmacies, and distribution centres unaffected.

    Mike DeAngelis, a CVS spokesperson, cited "continued disruption, regulatory pressures and evolving consumer needs" as key factors driving the decision. He emphasized the company's need to "remain competitive and operate at peak performance" in the face of ongoing business challenges.

    “Before taking this step, we prioritized finding cost-saving everywhere we could, including closing open job postings,” DeAngelis explained. “Decisions on which positions to eliminate were extremely difficult and do not diminish the value that impacted colleagues have brought to the company.

  • New York Times ☛ What Is Dead Butt Syndrome?

    The name might make you snicker, but addressing “gluteal amnesia” can help you avoid chronic pain.

  • El País ☛ Get up, stand up: How a job that ties us to a chair affects our body

    This “memory loss” does not only affect the buttocks, it can also trigger pain in other parts of the body. Imagine muscle tissue as a machine made up of dozens of gears. If any of them malfunctions, a chain failure can occur. Back pain, hip pain, or even knee pain could be among the collateral damage suffered by the muscles that end up assuming functions that should be performed by those amnesiac glutes. Luckily, there is a solution and it involves staying active and counteracting those static hours of the workday. For Carabel, strength training is very effective in alleviating general muscle pain caused by long hours in the office, regardless of “physical condition or age,” but always adapted to the needs of each person. “Strength is not just lifting weights, you can do strength exercises with your own body, with an elastic resistance band, or getting up from a chair; that is strength training,” says the expert. In the specific case of the glutes, the ideal method is to activate the area and strengthen it with specific routines in the form of reps. From the glute kick, to the famous hip thrust (for those unfamiliar with the sports jargon, it consists of pushing the hip with a weight) or the lateral plank with leg split.

  • RTL ☛ Unsafe online interaction concerns : Parents can now limit Fortnite play time

    Fortnite has gained immense popularity among children and teenagers, often sparking concerns among parents and educators about screen time, exposure to violence and unsafe online interactions.

    The new parental control lets children know when they are nearing the end of a day's alloted time in the battle royale survival game.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • PC World ☛ Microsoft abandons HoloLens 2 in a final break from mixed reality [Ed: Microsoft boosters writing about another spectacular Microsoft failure]

    Microsoft has discontinued production of the HoloLens 2, apparently ending its love affair with its augmented-reality headset and perhaps the metaverse in general.

    UploadVR cited a Microsoft representative who told the outlet that Microsoft has stopped producing the HoloLens 2. While the company will support the headset until the end of 2027 with security updates, it will stop support in 2028.

    [...]

    The U.S. Army continues to play with it, but it's otherwise just another dead product.

  • 404 Media ☛ Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic

    A woman was stuck in a self-driving Waymo vehicle that was stopped by two men who harassed her, asked for her number, and prevented the car from moving forward by standing in its way.

  • [Repeat] The Verge ☛ Microsoft is discontinuing its HoloLens headsets

    Microsoft’s struggles with HoloLens have been apparent over the past two years. Former HoloLens boss Alex Kipman departed the company in 2022 following misconduct allegations. Microsoft then changed its “hardware portfolio” in January 2023 amid layoffs that impacted its devices teams. Employees on the HoloLens 2 team were also impacted by additional Microsoft layoffs earlier this year.

  • Dan Langille ☛ Self-hosting Bitwarden / VaultWarden on FreeBSD

    The time has come for me to consider another application for my TOTP data (think 6-digit codes produced by Google Authenticator or an RSA device. I’ve been using an app called 2STP – I have long liked it. Support for it ended about 7 years ago, yet it continued to slug along on my phone and on my watch.

    Recently, it stopped working on my watch. That was the tipping point.

    I decided to move to BitWarden. I’ll use BitWarden apps on my phone and watch, and use VaultWarden for the storage engine. VaultWarden is a “Bitwarden server API implementation written in Rust compatible with upstream Bitwarden clients”.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Shambles, But Make It Digital

    I work at a very large University. I am the parent of a child who has just started secondary school, and of one in the middle of their primary school journey. I am currently taking what in the UK is called a Level 2 Adult Education course. In all four of those domains – and more – there is a conspicuous absence of a streamlined place to access, or input, material – be it learning materials; homework; stuff to mark; lecture slides; lists of students; exam dates; you name it. Things are instead, scattered through a multiplicity of platforms and apps, with no particular rationale, order, or clear chain of command.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • University of Toronto ☛ Two views of what a TLS certificate verifies

      This second answer has a whole raft of problems in practice, which is why the CA/Browser Forum has adopted the first answer, but it started out and persists because it's much more useful to actual people. Most people care about talking to (the real) Google, not some domain name, and domain names are treacherous things as far as identity goes (consider IDN homograph attacks, or just 'facebook-auth.com'). We rather want this human version of identity and it would be very convenient if we could have it. But we can't. The history of TLS certificates has convincingly demonstrated that this version of identity has comprehensively failed for a collection of reasons including that it's hard, expensive, difficult or impossible to automate, and (quite) fallible.

    • NYPost ☛ Painting hated by owner's wife turns out to be $6M Picasso

      But despite the distinctive signature in the top left-hand corner, Lo Rosso somehow didn’t realize the Spanish painter was famous.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ How to Stop Advertisers From Tracking Your Teen Across the Internet

      Teens between the ages of  13 and 17 are being tracked across the internet using identifiers known as Advertising IDs. When children turn 13, they age out of the data protections provided by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Then, they become targets for data collection from data brokers that collect their information from social media apps, shopping history, location tracking services, and more. Data brokers then process and sell the data. Deleting Advertising IDs off your teen’s devices can increase their privacy and stop advertisers collecting their data.

      Advertising identifiers – Android's Advertising ID (AAID) and Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) on iOS – enable third-party advertising by providing device and activity tracking information to advertisers. The advertising ID is a string of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your phone, tablet, or other smart device.

      In most countries, children must be over 13 years old to manage their own Google account without a supervisory parent account through Google Family Link. Children over 13 gain the right to manage their own account and app downloads without a supervisory parent account—and they also gain an Advertising ID.

    • Security Week ☛ T-Mobile to Pay Millions to Settle With FCC Over Data Breaches

      According to the FCC, T-Mobile failed to protect customer personal information, provided third-parties with access to customer proprietary network information (CPNI) without customer consent, failed to protect CPNI, did not engage in reasonable information security practices, and failed to inform customers of its information security practices.

    • 404 Media ☛ NASA Bought Facial Recognition Tech Clearview AI

      The news shows that Clearview AI is spreading beyond federal law enforcement agencies and into other parts of the U.S. government. It also raises questions about what exactly NASA is using the tool for. The part of NASA that will use the Clearview AI license is its oversight body, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has special agents who sometimes carry concealed firearms, perform undercover operations, and develop cases for criminal or civil prosecution.

    • Wired ☛ ICE Signs $2 Million Contract With Spyware Maker Paragon Solutions

      Paragon has received the award under the FAR 6.302-1 rule reserved for unique and innovative services not otherwise available to the government and not via the typical competitive process.

    • Wired ☛ 23andMe Is Sinking Fast. Can the Company Survive?

      Perhaps customers are just wisening up to all the ways their personal data is being used by third parties and no longer trust tech companies with their data. Wojcicki herself has acknowledged as much. In an interview with WIRED earlier this year, she suggested that the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the personal data of millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent and used for political advertising, has contributed to declining test kit sales.

    • Bitdefender ☛ British man used genealogy websites to fuel alleged hacking and insider trading scheme

      Once inside executives' Office 365 accounts, Westbrook is alleged to have set up rules to automatically forward messages containing sensitive information to anonymous accounts under his control - specifically targeting emails containing information about upcoming earnings announcements.

    • Bert Hubert ☛ CSAM Regulation Update: Dutch Intelligence agency weighs in

      After a serious struggle, the Dutch government has now consulted with their civilian Intelligence and Security Service AIVD (where I used to work in the mid-2000s, and of which I later became a regulator until 2022).

      This is their translated conclusion: [...]

    • Scott Smitelli ☛ This is [my dead grandmother]’s special day! § Scott Smitelli

      There are all kinds of things a person might want to commemorate. Some, like birthdays and anniversaries, are happy occasions. Not everything is. Some people might use these fields to remind them of something somber or sad. The date a person went away. The date somebody went through something unthinkable. A date on which one chapter closed, and a significantly different one opened. Just because we choose to remember a date doesn’t automatically mean we want to be happied at each that date recurs.

      There is actually an entire goddamn RFC that adds DEATHDATE and DEATHPLACE to the list of properties that can be stored in a vCard, although Google Contacts does not seem to understand how to import or preserve them.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Bill Barr Didn't Hear When Trump Asked, "Russia Are You Listening?"

    But in reality, it didn’t appear to their bosses at all. Both Rod Rosenstein and Bill Barr, for example, repeatedly excised a key part of Mueller’s findings: that Russia was seeking to help Trump and Trump was happy to accept the help from a hostile foreign country.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Russian Su-35 revives Cold War antics by ‘headbutting’ US F-16

    The Sept. 23 incident marked the first time that aircraft from North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, has had to deal with unsafe and unprofessional Russian conduct since Russia resumed long-range aviation flights in 2007, a NORAD spokesperson told Task & Purpose Russia had suspended such flights in 1992 when the Cold War ended.

  • Axios ☛ Trump preps catalog of "cheating" claims for potential election loss

    Why it matters: The Trump-aligned efforts to overturn the 2020 election — both overtly and covertly, peacefully then violently — shocked the American public. No one should be surprised this time around.

    Listen to Trump: The former president, who risks jail time and more criminal trials if he loses, has expanded his range of baseless attacks on U.S. voting procedures in recent weeks and months.

  • PC World ☛ The life-threatening 'chroming' challenge TikTok trend, explained

    Once again, a dangerous social media trend has reared its head. The so-called “chroming” challenge involves sniffing nail polish remover, deodorants, adhesives, paint thinners, and other cleaning products while filming yourself for TikTok.

  • VOA News ☛ Exclusive: AFRICOM Chief says Islamic State doubles size in north Somalia

    Islamic State in Somalia has approximately doubled in size over the past year, the chief of U.S. Africa Command told VOA.

    “I am concerned about the northern part of Somalia and ISIS growing in numbers,” AFRICOM commander Gen. Michael Langley said in an exclusive interview, using an acronym for the terror group.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russians deserting the army often turn to their families for help — but in small communities, hiding can prove impossible — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities reportedly planning to send 40 percent of criminal defendants to war after changes to legislation — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ American historian Amy Knight sizes up Russia’s ‘war weary’ elites — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Fact check: States Newsroom assesses claims from the Vance-Walz vice presidential debate

    Here’s a look at some of those claims and States Newsroom’s assessment of the facts: [...]

• Environment

  • Pro Publica ☛ Heritage Foundation Staffers Flood Federal Agencies With Thousands of Information Requests

    Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

    The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.

  • Wired ☛ The UK Has No Coal-Fired Power Plants for the First Time in 142 Years

    On Monday, the UK saw the closure of its last operational coal power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The closure of the plant, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, brought to an end to the history of the country's coal use, which started with the opening of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal played a central part in the UK's power system in the interim, in some years providing over 90 percent of its total electricity.

    But a number of factors combined to place coal in a long-term decline: the growth of natural-gas-powered plants and renewables, pollution controls, carbon pricing, and a government goal to hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

  • The Verge ☛ Zillow will now show climate risks for property listings in the US

    Zillow has announced that its real estate property listings in the US will soon feature details about climate risks, including the potential for wildfires, flooding, extreme temperatures, high winds, and poor air quality. Buyers will also see what types of insurance are required or recommended for a property.

    The climate risk data, provided through a partnership with First Street, which specializes in “climate risk financial modeling,” will be introduced to the Zillow website and iOS app by the end of the year and will be available on Zillow’s Android app early next year.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Canadians Are Still Paying for Trudeau’s Trans Mountain Pipeline

    • DeSmog ☛ Michael Gove’s Climate Views Put Him on Collision Course With New Spectator Bosses

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science News ☛ Bird nests made with a toxic fungus seem to fend off attacking ants

      In Costa Rica’s Palo Verde National Park, two bird species that live often on swollen-thorn acacias build their nests almost entirely using rhizomorphs of horsehair fungus (Marasmius) — and appear to successfully keep out ants. So Cortés-Romay and behavioral ecologist Sabrina Amador Vargas of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, placed strands of horsehair fungus onto the branches of 30 acacia trees inhabited by one species of symbiotic ant (Pseudomyrmex spinicola), along with fibers of a nonfungal plant of similar thickness and type that birds also use to build nests. Then the researchers filmed the ants to record their reactions to the different strands.

• Finance

  • Mitchell Hashimoto ☛ Pledging $300,000 to the Zig Software Foundation

    My wife and I have pledged $300,000 to the Zig Software Foundation (ZSF).

    The ZSF has posted their own announcement which clearly explains their mission and specifically what the money will be used for. Instead, I want to talk more broadly about why we've decided to support ZSF.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Record ☛ CISA: Thousands of bugs remediated in second year of vulnerability disclosure program

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published its second report on the Vulnerability Disclosure Policy (VDP) Platform, which launched in 2021 as an organized way for federal civilian agencies to take in bug discoveries from researchers and resolve them.

  • CISA ☛ Vulernabilituy Disclosure Policy Platform: 2023 Annual Repor [PDF]

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Vulnerability Disclosure Policy (VDP) Platform achieved remarkable success in 2023, its second full year of operation. Throughout 2023, CISA focused on advocating for the increased agency adoption of the VDP Platform, supporting federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies in identifying vulnerabilities in their systems, and engaging the security research community.

    Since launching in 2021, the VDP Platform has triaged over 12,000 submissions (over 7,000 in 2023) on behalf of 51 onboarded agency programs, saving agencies a significant amount of time and resources. Additionally, through the VDP Platform, over 2,400 unique, valid vulnerability disclosures have been identified, of which nearly 2,000 have been remediated by agencies. Since launch, over 3,200 security researchers have participated on FCEB VDPs via the VDP Platform.

  • Jacky Alciné ☛ Dropping the 'Vegan' Label from my Political Banner - Jacky Alciné

    I'm not a vegan but for the most part, I am plant-based. At home, I'll mainly continue the array of dishes that I've made and adapted. I will be practicing my cultural dishes. I'll say that I have a bit more of a radar for what I have in my plates because of being vegan[4] and for my own personal goals around my body image. I'll be very curious to see how much of a shift I notice; if any. I don't know how soon I'll reincorporate other things into my life. It was only in July that I had salmon for the first time and I didn't have any adverse reactions. I know that I will never consume dairy again. I'm extremely comfortable with that and I don't miss it; it is not worth the reactions. I don't plan to eat things like chicken or pork in the United States due to their increased chances of contamination and the lax nature of curbing that.

  • India Times ☛ Google says Malaysia investments to add $3 billion to its GDP by 2030, create 26,500 jobs

    Google's $2 billion data centre and Cloud region project in Malaysia, part of a broader Southeast Asia expansion, aims to create 26,500 jobs and add over $3 billion to the economy by 2030. This initiative, following their partnership with Dagang NeXchange Berhad, highlights Malaysia's emerging role as a regional tech hub.

  • Tedium ☛ Critics Turned Artists: When The Hater Becomes The Hated

    Today in Tedium: If you’re someone who creates things, you have a giant target on your back, and you are at risk of sniping by people who weren’t involved in the creation of your work. Any commentator or critic who wants to can easily knock you down a peg. But what happens when the critic flips sides and takes a stab at creative output? Well, there’s a chance you’re going to create something great—but a much higher chance that you’re opening yourself up to a boatload of criticism. Just ask Marques Brownlee, who has spent the last week getting roasted for releasing a wallpaper app that many fans see as overly expensive and half-baked. Is it even possible to step out of your lane in that way? Today’s Tedium considers the fate of the critic-turned-creator. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • Silicon Angle ☛ SoftBank expected to invest $500M in OpenAI as Apple exits funding round

    SoftBank Group Corp. plans to invest $500 million in OpenAI as part of a forthcoming funding round, The Information reported today.

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Sam Altman wrote a blog post…

    Sam Altman wrote a blog post titled “The Intelligence Age,” which I imagine wasn’t reviewed by OpenAI’s marketing team. Not just because it’s published on a domain with Altman’s name, but more because it’s a mediocre piece, so bad and filled with grand, empty, and/or unverifiable promises that I doubt even ChatGPT could generate it.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Verge ☛ The Springfield pet-eating hoax wasn’t Vance’s only immigration lie during debate

      Among Vance’s other lies and misleading statements, some of which were made at different points in the debate, were [...]

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Hiltzik: What Trump doesn't know about the 1890s could fill a book

      But let’s examine one that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: Trump’s glorification of the 1890s as the wealthiest in American history. It should go without saying that Trump couldn’t be more wrong about that. But because his remarks, uttered at a town hall session Friday in Michigan, have been largely ignored by the political media, we’ll say it.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • El País ☛ Apple quietly deletes nearly a hundred VPNs that allowed Russians to get around censorship

    The multinational has removed dozens of apps, even though the Kremlin’s censorship body did not order the move. These services, half-permitted by the government, enable people in Russia to access social networks and independent media

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • SBS ☛ Julian Assange says he 'pled guilty to journalism' in first public remarks since release

    The WikiLeaks founder pleaded guilty to publishing US military secrets earlier this year, in a deal with the US Justice Department that concluded a drawn-out legal saga and led to his release after five years in a British prison.

    [...]

    Julian Assange says he was freed after years of incarceration because he "pled guilty to journalism".

    "I am not free today because the system worked," the Australian WikiLeaks founder said during an address to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday — his first public remarks since he was released from prison.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Julian Assange's Speech To Council Of Europe In Strasbourg

    Below is a transcript of the prepared remarks that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange read before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. He testified as part of their inquiry into the United States government's political prosecution against him.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Assange Delivers First Remarks Since Obtaining Freedom

    Assange further stated, “I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe. The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime; it is a pillar of a free and informed society.”

    He urged the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to act now to protect journalists, publishers, and others from the attacks on freedom of expression that have fueled a climate of censorship.

  • El País ☛ Julian Assange: ‘I am free because I pleaded guilty to journalism’

    “I want to be clear: I am not free today because the system worked,” he said. “If I am free, it is because I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I pled guilty to nothing else,” the Australian activist said during a hearing of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in Strasbourg, France. Assange has asked institutions to “act” so that what happened to him for publishing classified information “does not happen again.”

  • France24 ☛ Wikileaks' Assange says he 'pleaded guilty to journalism' to secure his freedom

    "I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism," Assange said.

    He was addressing the Council of Europe rights body at its Strasbourg headquarters in his first public comments since his release.

    The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) had issued a report expressing alarm at Assange's treatment, saying it had a "chilling effect on human rights".

  • teleSUR ☛ Julian Assange: I Am Free Because I Pleaded Guilty to Journalism - teleSUR English

    Assange, who considered himself a political prisoner because the U.S. charged him with 18 counts of espionage and computer intrusion, said, “The transition from years of imprisonment in a maximum-security prison to appearing before representatives of 46 countries has been a truly profound change.”

    The WikiLeaks founder also said that his agreement with U.S. justice prevents him from suing the country over its extradition request and seeking information on what happened, and he claimed that the CIA has remained “unpunished” before his country’s judges.

  • CPJ ☛ US press freedom under unprecedented pressure ahead of election, CPJ report finds

    The report, “On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom,” found that the hostile media climate fostered during Donald Trump’s presidency has left a legacy that poses great risks to media inside and outside the country.

    “It is concerning that in an increasingly polarized environment, threats to the media have become routine in the U.S.,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator and author of the report. “The scapegoating of journalists not only has consequences for them personally, but also poses grave risks to the public’s right to be informed, a core element of any democracy.”

  • CPJ ☛ On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom

    Journalists are bracing for the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. CPJ’s research ahead of the November vote finds that the hostile media climate fostered during Donald Trump’s presidency has continued to fester, with members of the press confronting challenges – including violence, lawsuits, online harassment, and police attacks – that could shape the global media environment for decades. A special report by Katherine Jacobsen.

  • CPJ ☛ Award-winning journalist Mech Dara arrested for incitement in Cambodia

    Cambodian authorities must release and drop criminal incitement charges against investigative journalist Mech Dara, who was arrested Monday by military police at an expressway toll booth near the coastal city of Sihanoukville, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Tim Walz vs JD Vance: CBS News draws ire for declaring moderators won't fact-check VP debate; ‘It’s mud wrestling’

    The moderators are appointed in accordance with the editorial standards of CBS News to both assist and uphold the rules of the discussion between the candidates. But when it comes to fact-checking during the broadcast, they delegate that task to the candidates. CBS News Confirmed Unit confirmed their journalists will provide live fact-checking via an online blog.

    Although CBS was once “the gold standard for television news,” political scientist Norman Ornstein lamented that “those days and their standards are long gone”.

  • VOA News ☛ Cambodian reporter who investigated online scam centers has been arrested

    Known especially for investigating online scam centers, Mech Dara's arrest followed posts he made about a rock quarry — that local officials denounced Monday as an attempt to foment dissent.

    Mech Dara managed to send an SMS message to the rights group Licadho saying he was being arrested by military police before his phone was seized, said Am Sam Ath, a Licadho spokesperson.

  • [Old] The Washington Post ☛ The unique, damaging role Fox News plays in American media

    Obvious in broad strokes but now confirmed and with a sense of scale.

    But this top-line assessment of the face most associated with the right-wing cable network misses an important secondary assessment included in the Martin-Burns reporting. Fox News, the president feels, is “one of the most destructive forces in the United States,” as the reporters put it. This is the more important revelation as it recognizes the breadth of Fox News’s influence even beyond the elder Murdoch.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Allen Pike ☛ Our Unevenly Distributed Future - Allen Pike

    But Waymo hasn’t gotten approval to drop off at SFO yet, and I had a flight to catch, so I booked an Uber, old-school style. I climbed in, and felt… a little uncomfortable. The ride was a bit erratic. Who was this human driver, exactly? Will he notice that cyclist? And why can’t I control the music?

    I’d glimpsed the future, and quickly become an on-demand transport snob.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Apple Accused by US Labor Board of Imposing Illegal Workplace Rules

    A U.S. labor board issued a complaint accusing Apple of violating employees' rights to organize and advocate for better working conditions by maintaining a series of unlawful workplace rules.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street’s Internet of Shit slumlords

    With stagnant wages and out of control medical, educational and end-of-life bills, homeownership – the thing you do as an individual, where your gain is someone else's loss – became the American secular religion. Your house wasn't just a place to sleep and keep your photo albums: if it appreciated enough, you might be able to liquidate it on your deathbed and pay off your eldercare, your healthcare, your kids' college debt, and leave enough left over for your kids' downpayments.

  • Associated Press ☛ Court revives lawsuit of Black pastor who was arrested while watering his neighbor's flowers

    Jennings was arrested in May 2022 after a white neighbor reported him to police as he was watering his friend’s garden while they were out of town. The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID. Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was “Pastor Jennings” and that he lived across the street.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tony Finch ☛ getentropy() vs RAND_bytes() – Tony Finch

    UUID v4 and v7 are great examples of the need for high performance secure random numbers: you don’t want the performance of your database inserts to be limited by your random number generator! Another example is DNS source port and query ID randomization which help protect DNS resolvers against forged answers.

  • Sean Conner ☛ Ch-ch-ch-changes

    I recall that previous communication. A few months ago I received a letter from my ISP trying to upsell me on a new plan, one that did not support static IP addresses. I called, and when I said that wasn't an option because of work (a slight embellishment on my part) they replied “how unfortunate” since they had no plans to offer one with the new plan. So I did nothing. I was happy with the plan I had (well, kind of still have).

    And then last week, the letter above.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Washington Post ☛ Cable is dying. Streaming is the new cable. It’s all getting worse.

    If you’re among the shrinking number of people who pay for cable or satellite TV service, your bills are probably going to keep going up for a product that’s getting worse. A merger announced Monday to create the country’s largest TV company could make it crummier still.

    Or if you’re hooked on streaming TV services like Netflix, your bills are also probably going to keep going up for a product that’s getting worse.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Washington Post ☛ FTC can proceed with central thrust of its antitrust case against Amazon, judge rules

  In a sealed order on Monday, U.S. District Judge John Chun delivered a blow to Amazon’s months-long efforts to have the agency’s landmark case dismissed, according to two people familiar with the ruling, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nonpublic document. The court is expected to unseal the order later this month.

• Silicon Angle ☛ Epic Games sues Google, Samsung over ‘Auto Block’ mobile cybersecurity feature

  The complaint is the second that the video game maker has brought against Google in recent years. The previous lawsuit, which dates back to 2020, ended last year with a jury verdict against the search giant. In its latest complaint, Epic charges that Samsung’s Auto Block feature is meant to mitigate the impact of last year’s jury verdict.

• Copyrights

  • Frank Meeuwsen ☛ LLM pushes back on publisher’s LLM deal promises

    Ton asked ChatGPT if it is a good idea for publishers to pushing academic authors to finish manuscripts and articles before the end of year, because of deals with LLM-companies. Spoiler: no, of course not!

    I used the exact same prompt on Claude 3.5 Sonnet and got a longer version of basically the same answer: It’s a dumb idea. But to be honest, I think it’s pretty clever for a server with a really large harddisk and lots of power to come up with such a conclusion at the end…Read for yourself.

  • Ali Reza Hayati ☛ AI and copyright

    People are still being fined, sued, and threatened by various punishments for simply downloading a 20-year-old movie yet are expected to provide their material to these giant corporations for free and even if they don’t, they can’t do anything about it as we see thousands (or millions) of examples of copyright violations by these corporations and copyright infringements every single day regarding AI training.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ RIAA and MPA Urge Court Not to Disarm the DMCA Subpoena Anti-Piracy Tool

    The RIAA and MPA are concerned about a recent court ruling that could hinder their ability to combat online piracy using DMCA subpoenas. The court's decision suggests that IP addresses may not be considered "links", potentially limiting the scope of these subpoenas. This interpretation could impact the music and film industries' efforts to identify and take action against infringers and operators of piracy services.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Italy Approves Piracy Shield VPN/DNS Proposal, Risk of Prison For ISPs Intact [Updated]

    Italy's Senate Budget and Finance Committees have approved amended legal proposals that require VPN and DNS services located anywhere, to block pirated content flagged by rightsholders. Other service providers, including ISPs, will face prison for failing to report "known" criminal conduct. A vote on the text is scheduled for today and the new legislation could be in place in less than a week.