Leftovers

• Ars Technica ☛ Ward Christensen, BBS inventor and architect of our online age, dies at age 78

  On Friday, Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Christensen, along with Randy Suess, created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Seth Godin ☛ Some simple rules for source control

    The original format: The original document is better than a PDF, and a PDF is better than a screenshot. If you start with a spreadsheet, take a screenshot, put the image in a Powerpoint and then email it to someone as a PDF, you’ve pretty much guaranteed that editing it going forward is going to be a mess. Always include a folder of the underlying documents, properly named.

• Science

  • The Atlantic ☛ We’re Entering Uncharted Territory for Math

    After I saw Tao post his impressions of o1 online—he compared it to a “mediocre, but not completely incompetent” graduate student—I wanted to understand more about his views on the technology’s potential. In a Zoom call last week, he described a kind of AI-enabled, “industrial-scale mathematics” that has never been possible before: one in which AI, at least in the near future, is not a creative collaborator in its own right so much as a lubricant for mathematicians’ hypotheses and approaches. This new sort of math, which could unlock terrae incognitae of knowledge, will remain human at its core, embracing how people and machines have very different strengths that should be thought of as complementary rather than competing.

    This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

  • The Korea Times ☛ In Denmark, 50 well-preserved Viking Age skeletons have been unearthed, a rare discovery

    Borre Lundø said the brooch designs suggest the dead were buried between 850 and 900 A.D.

    “There’s different levels of burials,” he explained. “Some have nothing with them, others have brooches and pearl necklaces.”

    Archeologists say many of the artefacts came from far beyond Denmark’s borders, shedding light on extensive Viking trade routes during the 10th century.

  • Deseret Media ☛ In Denmark, 50 well-preserved Viking Age skeletons have been unearthed, a rare discovery

    During the Viking Age, considered to run from 793 to 1066 A.D., Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raids, colonizing, conquering and trading throughout Europe, even reaching North America.

    The Vikings unearthed at Aasum likely weren't warriors. Borre Lundø believes the site was probably a "standard settlement," perhaps a farming community, located about 3 miles from a ring fortress in what's now central Odense.

  • Hans-Dieter Hiep ☛ A sound and complete proof system for separation logic (part 1)

    The purpose of this article is to show the novel proof system of [5] in a straightforward way. The new proof system can be used to prove all valid formulas, which until now were impossible to prove using existing automatic and interactive tools for separation logic. In Section 2 we quickly revisit the formulas of separation logic, in Section 3 we introduce the proof system, and in Section 4 we have a look at a number of example proofs. We then continue the discussion that motivates the design of the proof system: in Section 5 we discuss referential transparency and the binding structure of separation logic, and in Section 6 we discuss issues such as univalence, well-foundedness, and finiteness.

    This article is part one of a series of articles about the new proof system for separation logic. In this article, we focus on the syntax of the proof system. In Section 7, the conclusion, we discuss the topics of the next parts of this series, namely semantics and the soundness and completeness of the proof system.

• Education

  • Pro Publica ☛ Congress Is Underfunding Tribal Colleges by $250 Million Per Year

    In the 1970s, Congress committed to funding a higher education system controlled by Indigenous communities. These tribal colleges and universities were intended to serve students who’d been disadvantaged by the nation’s history of violence and racism toward Native Americans, including efforts to eradicate their languages and cultures.

    But walking through Little Big Horn College in Montana with Emerson Bull Chief, its dean of academics, showed just how far that idea has to go before becoming a reality. Bull Chief dodged signs warning “Keep out!” as he approached sheets of plastic sealing off the campus day care center. It was late April and the center and nearby cafeteria have been closed since January, when a pipe burst, flooding the building, the oldest at the 44-year-old college. The facilities remained closed into late September.

• Hardware

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ I Bought A Mechanical Keyboard

    It seems to be a self-expression trend among developers lately to take their own keyboard to work. During pre-COVID times, I have never seen this occur, and during my PhD years, that didn’t happen either. Academics do spend a lot of type typing reports, tests, and emails, but they also are on the move a lot: in and out different buildings, in and out class. Hogging that mechanical keyboard along every time seems a bit silly then.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Sun Princess adds drone show to debut North American sail

    The cruise industry has always been about grandeur, from world-class dining to lavish onboard entertainment. And with the North American debut of Princess Cruises’ newest ship, Sun Princess, the cruise line turned to what we’re calling the grandest sort of debut ever: a drone show.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Antivax ideology: The main influencers are “controlled opposition” and “limited hangouts”

    [Orac update: When I alluded to all the difficulties I was having in meatspace dealing with family health issues that, for the first time in nearly two decades, have drastically decreased my output here to close to zero, other than reposts of posts written elsewhere, I honestly thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that I’d be back to a normal posting schedule by now. That light wasn’t quite a train, but I underestimated how much time I would need. Now, I think it will probably not be until after I give my talk on cancer misinformation on Friday that I will be able to resume something resembling a normal posting schedule. In the meantime, here’s the controlled opposition running limited hangouts. At least that’s what antivaxxers are telling me…]

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Diablo 4’s Redemption Ruined: How Microsoft’s Timing To Axe Blizzard’s Plan To Fix The Game’s Biggest Annoyance Couldn’t Have Been Worse [Ed: Microsoft destroyed the biggest franchises with its mass layoffs]

    Given how problematic the mechanic has been for the game right from the beginning, it’s rather difficult not to wonder what the game could have become had these microtransactions been less egregious. As we mentioned earlier, we know now that what we wonder was actually a reality for Blizzard before ABK was acquired by Microsoft.

    As Jason Schreier briefly mentions in his latest book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, the former president of Blizzard, had proposed a plan to significantly reduce the game’s microtransactions. It could have gone over really well with the franchise’s fans but not with the company’s executives.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Digital Music News ☛ WIN Calls Out Fentanylware (TikTok) Indie Label ‘Negotiations,’ Warns of ‘Risks to Cultural Diversity, Market Access, and Fair Payment’

    Last week, ahead of the TikTok-Merlin deal’s expiration, leaks shed light on the app’s alleged hardball offers to individual indie labels. Now, the Worldwide Independent Network (WIN) and several member organizations are speaking out against the possible attempt “to pay less for music.”

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok's Own Internal Reporting Knows How Addictive It Is

    The documents also reveal that TikTok’s touted features about limiting the amount of time a child spends with the app were designed to increase public trust rather than actually limit addictive behaviors. After internal testing, TikTok found that these tools had a negligible impact on the amount of time teens were spending in the app—leading to a 1.5 minute drop in usage. TikTok estimates teens spend about 107 minutes per day in the app. Aside from the addictive nature of the app, the documents also uncovered censorship efforts that Digital Music News reported on back in 2020. When TikTok discovered that a “high volume of … not attractive subjects” were filling the algorithm, the company retooled it to amplify what it considered to be attractive. Digital Music News also reported on TikTok’s efforts to hide disabled persons and LGBTQ+ people from the main ‘For You’ algorithm-driven feed during its meteoric growth phase.

    TikTok’s research determined that the best way to get people sucked into the app was to target younger users. “As expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance,” reads a TikTok document from 2019.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Sensor upgrades next up for the Army’s new rifle and machine gun

    The high-tech optic is more than just a simple rifle scope. It contains a ballistics calculator and a built-in range-finding module that help shooters determine their aiming point and adjust their fire as they go.

    It also includes an atmospheric sensor, compass and both visible and infrared aiming lasers.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Drones swarmed an air base for days. They're still a mystery.

    Ten months after multiple drones flew over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for more than two weeks, the Pentagon is still unsure where they came from.

  • The Hill ☛ Walz slams Trump over military threat to 'enemy within'

    “Donald Trump is suggesting that his fellow Americans are worse ‘enemies’ than foreign adversaries, and he is saying he would use the military against them,” Harris campaign senior adviser and senior spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement.

    Trump’s campaign stood by the [former] president’s remarks.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ JD Vance Asserts that He and Trump Cannot Win Legitimately

    Instead of serving as an opportunity to get Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, Republicans exploit the “Cotton swab” to perform obeisance to Trump’s fascism and air propaganda on the mainstream media.

    It works every single time.

    Yet journalists keep trying it, never varying their method.

  • Derek Kędziora ☛ The depth and breadth of journalism

    Inspired by recent museum visits I’ve been thinking about wide, superficial knowledge vs. in-depth knowledge of far fewer areas. I’ve generally found the massive collections but lack of deep, contextual story-telling museums (MoMA, Musical Instrument Museum) to be wanting. I don’t walk away with much. Conversely, the Asia Society and Met were power experiences that I’ll remember for years to come.

    I’ve been noticing the same thing lately with journalism. I’ve grown less interested in reading The Economist, which offers a high-quality look at everything. Instead, I’ve been reading long essays from the New Yorker, often an hour-long read each, once a week or so.

  • [Old] New Yorker ☛ Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic

    Recently, crew on a vessel that had been associated with the destruction of subsea communications cables had steered a motorboat into restricted waters near a Norwegian Army garrison. Were they testing their equipment, or the speed of the Norwegian response? A search of two trawlers had revealed radios that could tune into military frequencies which are used by the Northern Fleet. I asked Roaldsnes whether the trawlers were effectively functioning as intelligence vessels. “No, they’re fishing vessels,” he said. “Well . . .” He winced, and rephrased his assessment: “They fish.”

    For the past few years, civilian life in northern Norway has been under constant, low-grade attack. Russian hackers have targeted small municipalities and ports with phishing scams, ransomware, and other forms of cyber warfare, and individuals travelling as tourists have been caught photographing sensitive defense and communications infrastructure. Norway’s domestic-intelligence service, the P.S.T., has warned of the threat of sabotage to Norwegian train lines, and to gas facilities that supply energy to much of Europe. A few months ago, someone cut a vital communications cable running to a Norwegian Air Force base. “We’ve seen what we believe to be continuous mapping of our critical infrastructure,” Roaldsnes told me. “I see it as continuous war preparation.”

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Every day, Ukrainian soldiers fight to hold off the Russian army in the Kharkiv region. See what life looks like for them during brief lulls in combat. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Meet Artem Zhoga — a Donetsk ‘separatist’ turned Kremlin symbol of military men rising in the Russian government — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Oil Flows Through Western ‘Price Cap’ as Shadow Fleet Grows

      A report shows how Russia has largely evaded sanctions aimed at limiting its revenue from oil sales.

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Disinformation Targets U.S.-Backed Anti-Malaria Campaign

      Scientists fighting the spread of infectious diseases on the continent have been targeted online by pro-Russian activists, part of an effort to spread fear and mistrust of the West.

    • France24 ☛ Russia jails French researcher Laurent Vinatier for three years in 'foreign agent' case

      A Russian court Monday sentenced French researcher Laurent Vinatier to three years in a penal colony for breaking a law on registering as a "foreign agent". The French Foreign Ministry called for Vinatier's immediate release, denouncing the "extreme severity" of his sentence.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Court Jails French Researcher For 3 Years

      A Moscow court sentenced French researcher Laurent Vinatier on October 14 to three years in prison on a charge of violating "foreign agent" laws, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Media Editor Resigns Amid Government Pressure

      Razif Abdullin, the chief editor of the online independent media outlet Aspekty, resigned from his position last week amid pressure from the authorities in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, according to a statement by Aspekty’s founder, Ruslan Valiyev.

    • RFERL ☛ Tajikistan Raises Alarm Over Migrant Abuse In Russia

      Umed Bobozoda, Tajikistan’s Human Rights Commissioner, has voiced serious concerns over the mistreatment of Tajik migrants in Russia.

    • RFERL ☛ EU Sanctions Pro-Russian Governor, Others For Meddling In Moldova

      Less than a week after European parliamentarians blasted Russia to stop its "provocations and attempts to destabilize" Moldova ahead of a crucial presidential election and referendum on European Union membership, the bloc has sanctioned five people and one legal entity for similar actions.

    • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Activist Faces New Trial For 'Disobedience'

      Jailed Belarusian political activist Palina Sharenda-Panasyuk is again facing accusations of showing "disobedience" to the administration of the prison where she is incarcerated.

    • RFERL ☛ 18 Months In Prison With No Word From Ailing Belarusian Opposition Figure

      Maryya Kalesnikava, a key figure in the Belarusian opposition and a symbol of defiant protests against the country's authoritarian regime, has been held incommunicado in prison for 18 months amid fears over her reportedly declining state of health.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Chuck Carroll ☛ The Myers-Briggs Horoscope

    People proudly share their MBTI personality type on their social media profile, much like they do their astrological sign. The reality is that people naturally love hearing things about themselves, most especially compliments. Why is this? This is due to what's called the Barnum-Forer effect. Humans give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that they believe that the results are specifically for them, when in reality they're vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

    Confirmation bias is another problem. We tend to interpret information in ways that confirms our existing beliefs about ourselves. When reading our "result", we will give me weight or inflate the parts that coincide with what we wanted to hear, and give less weight or deflate the parts that the don't really fit our existing views. This impacts how we rate the accuracy of the test.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ Earth’s Land and Trees Absorbed Almost No Net Carbon in 2023

    Earth’s land-based carbon sinks — forests, wetlands, grasslands and soil — are essential for absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, regulating the planet’s temperature and mitigating climate change.

    A preliminary report shows that last year — the hottest ever recorded — almost no net carbon was absorbed by land. This means the world’s terrestrial carbon sinks temporarily collapsed, reported The Guardian.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Jacky Alciné ☛ In the Dark of the Night - Jacky Alciné

      A local bar and grill managed to open up the next day. I went in for something to eat and check on the staff. There was a conversation that I won't reproduce in full but it had parts that I struggled to relate to. Two women were speaking about what they missed the most in the last two days. As it developed, one mentioned that power was more important to them than water; that they'd much rather have no water than it. I was reading a book as I was eating at the bar[2] as this exchange went down. It made me think of those times in New York — without the power and the snow. If there was one thing I was grateful during this time, it was that I had water. You can go some time without food, we have gone longer as a species without power than with, but we absolutely need water. The angle the pro-power woman was coming from began clear as it was more that she didn't want to lean on her family over in Lido Park for aid. I couldn't help but smirk at this[3].

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Atlantic ☛ Dogs Are Entering a New Wave of Domestication

      Until about the 1990s, these pedigreed dogs were well adapted to the suburban lifestyle. They spent most of their lives outside, perhaps jumping the fence and roaming the neighborhood. They might chase the occasional car or mailman, or even wander off for a day or two. Veterinary medication was not what it is today, and if your dog slept on your bed, you would likely wake up covered in ticks or fleas. But as more city dwellers adopt pets, and cultural shifts have led dogs and people to spend more time inside, some behaviors that made dogs appealing to our ancestors have become maladaptive. For instance, guarding against strange people and animals might make a dog more difficult to walk around the neighborhood—so it gets stuck in a small yard or a small apartment with tons of pent-up energy. Dogs that are more energetic, excitable, fearful, or anxious than average are more likely to be relinquished to shelters, where they may struggle to find a new home.

  • Overpopulation

    • Europe's state of water 2024: the need for improved water resilience

      This report presents the state of Europe's water. It outlines three overarching challenges facing future European water management: 1. protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems; 2. achieving the zero pollution ambition; 3. adapting to water scarcity, drought and flood risks.

• Finance

  • Boston Globe ☛ Broad Institute announces 87 layoffs, largely in IT, software engineering

    The layoffs came as a lucrative partnership with Microsoft was expected to conclude at the end of the year.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ The Death of a Dynasty

    Dynasty do not die; they are only killed.

    As their citizens happily kill them. Nations are, in reality, people in a boundary fortifying their nationalism. The borders fall when the same people lose competence and drift into chaos.

    Learn to recognize the signs, especially for great Empires, when prolonged injustice leads to the breakdown of the system, creating perpetual distrust, restlessness, hunger, and worthlessness; weird morbidity starts to appear.

  • Wired ☛ Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem Can Make It the New Palo Alto

    More than a third of these high-potential companies are headquartered in what we call New Palo Alto: not a singular location, but a network of interconnected ecosystems within a five-hour train ride of London. After the Bay Area, this is the world's second most productive innovation cluster and includes cities with industrial heritage like Glasgow, Eindhoven, and Manchester, as well as world-renowned capitals of culture, policy, and academia like Amsterdam, Cambridge, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, and Paris.

    They’re home to companies such as low-cost computer maker Raspberry Pi, whose technology was invented and developed in Cambridge, manufactured in Pencoed, South Wales, and sold worldwide. Raspberry Pi recently crowned over a decade of growth with a listing on the London Stock Exchange. At the time of listing, it had revenue of $265 million and $66 million in gross operating profits.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Register UK ☛ China again claims Volt Typhoon was invented by the US

      In its latest document, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) and National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention Technology claim that Beijing's previous publications on the matter saw over 50 cyber security experts contact it to share their belief that US authorities and Microsoft lacked evidence to associate Volt Typhoon with China.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • VOA News ☛ Afghan Taliban vow to implement media ban on images of living things

    Afghanistan's Taliban morality ministry pledged Monday to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists told the rule will be gradually enforced.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Houston-area library moves Indigenous history book to fiction section

    In September, “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story,” by Linda Coombs, was challenged in Montgomery County libraries by an unknown person, according to public records obtained by Kenney. Per county policy, the book was reviewed by a group of five citizens who weren’t required to consult a librarian.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Digital Music News ☛ Guitar Player Magazine Ends Print Edition After 58 Years

    “You have witnessed a revolution,” Scapelliti wrote in his final editor’s letter. “When Guitar Player made its debut 58 years ago in 1967, it marked a new era for guitar. For the first time, the instrument was celebrated in a regularly published magazine devoted to furthering guitarists, guitar gear and its makers, and guitar virtuosity.”

  • Press Gazette ☛ Why news publishers should not give up on print

    The decline among local newspapers in the U.S. accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the country will have lost a third of the newspapers that existed in 2005 by the end of 2024.

    The economic situation is taking its toll.

  • Tedium ☛ A Guy Took A Stab At My Ego. He Said I Wasn’t A Journalist.

    Journalism is an ecosystem that has expanded gradually over the past 30 years even as its economic prospects have dwindled. And honestly, if we’re going to kick out anyone, it should be the gatekeepers who want to keep the parameters of journalism as tight as possible.

    Just as the standards have moved away from print, and printing presses can be had for close to nothing, so has the spectrum of what journalists cover and represent. Journalists exist to tell others about the world around them, and that world has a lot of colors. If you only color in one tone, that’s on you for ignoring the rest of the crayon box.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ How to… delete your 23andMe data

    MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done.  Things aren’t looking good for 23andMe. The consumer DNA testing company recently parted ways with all its board members but CEO Anne Wojcicki over her plans to take the company private.

  • Papers Please ☛ Comments on TSA proposal for decentralized nonstandard ID requirements

    Today the Identity Project joined almost 8,000 individuals who have filed comments with the Transportation Security Administration opposing the TSA’s latest bizarre proposal for  decentralized, nonstandard, selective enforcement of the REAL-ID Act of 2005.

    The introduction to our comments summarizes our objections as follows: [...]

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Where Maine's congressional candidates stand on recognizing sovereignty of Wabanaki Nations

    The Wabanaki Nations — the Penobscot Nation, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe — are treated more like municipalities than independent nations because of a 1980 agreement known as the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, which Wabanaki leaders say their tribes signed to get fair compensation for stolen lands, not to give up the level of sovereignty that has been interpreted by the state and courts to date.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ What It Means to Be "A Tad Radical"

    The UMWA is a union whose fortunes have risen and fallen with the power of organized labor itself. It is a union with more than a century’s worth of struggles against the power of money, including a number of shooting wars with coal companies and their public and private allies. Roberts’ own family history stretches back to the early days of the union. Hundreds of current and retired coal miners in camouflage UMWA t-shirts sat in folding chairs around the Mother Jones memorial to hear him shout his message over the sound of the whipping winds.

    I meet many people today who hold progressive values, who feel sympathetic to the goals of the labor movement, yet feel adrift and disconnected from its reality, and who feel anxious about our nation’s political future. I thought that Cecil Roberts’ words would be good for all of you to hear. Below is a transcription of some of his remarks yesterday. The spirit of Mother Jones lives.

  • GreyCoder ☛ A List Of Text-Only & Minimalist News Sites

    Text-only websites are quite useful, especially today, because web pages are increasingly filled with ads, videos, and bandwidth-heavy content.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Why a Pirate IPTV Seller's 4-Year Prison Sentence Means Little Without Context

    After pleading guilty to several charges in connection with the sale of pirate IPTV subscriptions, last Friday a man and a woman were sentenced at a court in Northern Ireland. With estimated profits of £475,000, across four years of offending, the man was sentenced to two years' prison and a further two on license, the Federation Against Copyright Theft reports. Is that sentence too long, or not long enough? That could depend on relevant information that FACT isn't reporting.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Rightsholders Seek U.S. Help to Collect $1.4 Million Piracy Judgment Against Cloudflare

    Two book authors are asking a U.S. federal court to enforce a $1.4 million piracy judgment against Cloudflare. A Moldovan court previously ruled that Cloudflare is liable as it failed to block access to a pirated book offered though one of its customers. The company has yet to pay these damages. The case can have broad implications, but it's uncertain if the U.S. court will indeed validate the Moldovan order.