Links 28/10/2024: Facebook's Openwashing in India and Microsoft's "AI Copilot" Becoming a Confusing Failure With Brand Shuttle
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Pseudo-Open Source
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ I miss my paper theme
But I’ll admit I kinda miss my paper theme, which itself was based on my pseudo-Wikipedia theme from 2010-ish. I always loved how 11 to 12-point sans serif fonts rendered on *nix desktops and macOS, and the shadows and paper motifs helped visually separate posts without needing a tonne of white space.
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Tedium ☛ Why Are Butterfinger Candy Bars Always Broken In Half?
Today in Tedium: Ok, so we're near Halloween, and I've been thinking a bit about candy. (Beats politics or, as it turns out, journalism.) In particular, I'm always drawn to the structural integrity of candy bars. On the surface, they are often stacked, solid, as thick as a smartphone. (It must be the nougat.) But they break down easily, with only a minimum of outward pressure. Which is why it's not a bad thing to put a smartphone in your pocket, but maybe not a Snickers. But I am drawn to one candy bar in particular, one that breaks with a minimum of pressure, despite feeling otherwise stiff. I'm of course talking about the Butterfinger, an unusual beast of candy, seemingly designed to break before you've even opened the wrapper. Today’s Tedium talks about candy bars, structural integrity, and Butterfingers. Yes. Really. — Ernie @ Tedium
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New York Times ☛ Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years
After testing the manuscript’s paper and ink, analyzing its handwriting and musical style, and consulting outside experts, the Morgan has come to a momentous conclusion: The work is likely an unknown waltz by Frédéric Chopin, the great fantasist of the Romantic era, the first such discovery in more than half a century.
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The Washington Post ☛ How to stop political text spam before Election Day
“Text messaging as a form of outreach can work if it’s authentic,” says Sarah Morris, an e-commerce professional in Texas who volunteered for past Democratic and leftist campaigns. But most of the political messages from big campaigns she gets these days feel “spammy” and transactional, she says. Even worse, our shared frustration with campaign text spam might be a symptom of a broader disconnect between people and politics, she notes.
“It’s almost symbolic in a way, of a bigger issue, which is that we lack that control over the political situation in general,” Morris said. “We just kind of have to take what rolls downhill to us, and I think that’s why people are so upset by it.”
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Science
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Deseret Media ☛ Fossil trapped in amber reveals previously unknown species that lived during time of dinosaurs
The discovery comes from a fossil of an ancient firefly species that was initially discovered in 2016, trapped in 99 million-year-old Burmese amber from northern Myanmar. The beetle is only the second firefly species from the Mesozoic to be identified.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Invented an Entirely New Way to Refrigerate Things
The researchers modeled the theory of the ionocaloric cycle to show how it could potentially compete with, or even improve upon, the efficiency of refrigerants in use today. A current running through the system would move the ions in it, shifting the material's melting point to change temperature.
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Science Alert ☛ This Skeleton Is The First Person Ever Found From a Norse Saga
The Well Man is barely a throwaway line describing a conflict that took place in 1197 CE – a corpse thrown into a castle well by an invading force, probably to make any water therein undrinkable by decaying in it. But that throwaway line has suddenly become one of the most significant in the saga – by being the first incident in such a document ever to be linked to real, historical remains.
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Science Alert ☛ We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For 300 Years
Revisiting the archives, Hoek realized this common paraphrasing featured a misinterpretation that flew under the radar until 1999, when two scholars picked up on the translation of one Latin word that had been overlooked: quatenus, which means "insofar", not unless.
To Hoek, this makes all the difference. Rather than describing how an object maintains its momentum if no forces are impressed on it, Hoek says the new reading shows Newton meant that every change in a body's momentum – every jolt, dip, swerve, and spurt – is due to external forces.
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Education
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YLE ☛ Helsinki University reduces PhD requirements
The university is also reducing the number of mandatory credits for PhDs from 40 to 30, easing the workload to gain a doctorate.
Academia in Finland is now worried about a race to the bottom, but HU rector Sari Lindblom emphasises that the one-article quota is only applicable to exceptional candidates publishing in top international journals.
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LUT University ☛ What are ECTS credits? | LUT University
In Finland, a standard academic year refers to 60 ECTS credits of full-time study or work. The duration of Bachelor’s studies at LUT University is three years (180 ECTS credits) and that of Master’s studies is two years (120 ECTS credits).
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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BBC ☛ Is the system letting down people who were harmed by Covid vaccines?
There is nothing in life that is free of risk. That includes vaccines. But the evidence is compelling that the benefits of getting immunised with those vaccines recommended in the UK far outweigh the possibility of serious side effects.
The level of benefit from Covid vaccines is well documented. And the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is credited with saving more lives, external in the first year of its use than any other - 6.3m globally compared to 5.9m for Pfizer/BioNTech’s jab.
However, we need to discuss not just the huge positives that Covid vaccines brought, but also the small minority left injured or bereaved by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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YLE ☛ Only a fifth of young Finnish kids meet WHO recommendations
"The average screen time among the children in the study was 1 hour and 20 minutes. But the variation was significant — some children had no screen time at all, while others spent several hours a day on screens.
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CBC ☛ Self-driving tractors to robots: Farmers turn to automation to address labour shortage
One-third of jobs in Canadian agriculture — about 100,000 — are expected to be automated in the next decade, according to new research from The Conference Board of Canada. Technology is now being used for everything from killing weeds and tracking crop health to self-driving grain carts and tillage equipment.
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The Verge ☛ Hospitals use a transcription tool powered by a hallucination-prone OpenAI model
Whisper is used by a company called Nabla for a medical transcription tool that it estimates has transcribed 7 million medical conversations, according to ABC News. More than 30,000 clinicians and 40 health systems use it, the outlet writes. Nabla is reportedly aware that Whisper can hallucinate, and is “addressing the problem.”
A group of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Washington, and others found in a study that Whisper hallucinated in about 1 percent of transcriptions, making up entire sentences with sometimes violent sentiments or nonsensical phrases during silences in recordings. The researchers, who gathered audio samples from TalkBank’s AphasiaBank as part of the study, note silence is particularly common when someone with a language disorder called aphasia is speaking.
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India Times ☛ Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text - known in the industry as hallucinations - can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.
Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Stevie Nicks says Fleetwood Mac would have been ‘done’ without 1977 abortion
“So we would be dragging a baby around the world on tour, and I wouldn’t do that to my baby. I wouldn’t say I just need nine months. I would say I need a couple of years, and that would break up the band period.”
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BoingBoing ☛ "Ancient lights" protect the right to light
Throughout London, you can see signs underneath window sills that read "ancient lights." Although not technically necessary to assert the right, the signs indicate that the windows in question have had natural sunlight for over twenty years, protecting that natural light by law. New construction must respect the ancient lights, which cannot be blocked. Even the venerable BBC had to redraw plans for its headquarters when it was found to violate the right to light.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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The Register UK ☛ Is Microsoft's AI Copilot? CoPilot? Co-pilot? MVP creates site to help get it right [Ed: Bad products need to be renamed a lot to hide past failure (or abandon brands whose reputation is tarnished)]
If you've lost track of what Microsoft's calling its AI assistant this week, Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created just the resource you need: a site called Let me correct that for you!
The site was born out of his frustration at seeing members of the Microsoft community write product names incorrectly. Often.
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Marcin Juszkiewicz ☛ Powered by Arm
First try was “let use a quarter”: one cpu core, 6 GB of memory and 50 GB of storage. Turned out that is quite enough to run several websites with small traffic. After some tweaks here and there machine got some testing and works.
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Otávio C ☛ Week 2024-43 | Otávio’s blog
I don’t want to use Bluesky’s default handle, which is long and not exactly appealing. If the error persists for another week, I’ll just delete my Bluesky account again.
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Deseret Media ☛ AI 'agents' ready to take over your computer — if you want them to
Artificial intelligence software startup Anthropic released its own chatbot, Claude, in March 2023, and has since risen as one of the top developers in its category. On Tuesday, the company announced an upgraded release of Claude that includes "computer use" capability. Anthropic says the new functionality, which is currently only available in a beta version to developers, can use computers "the way people do" including looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons and typing text.
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CBC ☛ Why this major airline is testing tech that shames you for boarding too early
If the passenger lines up before their designated zone has been called, they won't be able to scan their boarding pass when they reach the gate agent.
A spokesperson for American Airlines said a gate agent would then "politely" tell the customer that they can't accept their boarding pass, and that they can rejoin the line when their zone is called.
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IT Wire ☛ Nokia and Lenovo partner to develop AI/ML data centre solutions
Under their agreement, the companies will leverage the Lenovo ThinkSystem AI-ready portfolio of high-performance servers and storage with the Nokia Data Centre network solution — which spans data centre fabric, IP routing, and DDoS security portfolios, along with the recently announced data centre network automation platform, Event-Driven Automation (EDA).
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TechSpot ☛ The Zero Click Internet
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter stopped promoting posts with links a few years ago. This forced users on those platforms to post content directly there instead of directing followers to external sites. And now with generative AI in the mix, platforms are even more incentivized to surface content directly, whether it's pulled from their databases or created by AI.
This phenomenon isn't entirely new; it began when Google started answering simple queries directly on its search results page. But it's escalated significantly with the rise of AI chatbots and advanced recommendation algorithms.
Google is now aggressively scraping content from websites and displaying it directly in search results. What few search results remain are buried so far down the page that almost no one sees or clicks on them anymore. And Google's plan is to bury them even further in coming months. And that's what a Zero Click Internet means. It means an end to users visiting websites, entirely.
Instead you'll spend all your time on a small handful of platforms and apps like Google or TikTok and never leave them. The impact this will have, not just on your experience but on the world, will be massive.
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Pseudo-Open Source
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Openwashing
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India Times ☛ Meta partners with IT ministry to set up Centre for Generative AI at IIT Jodhpur
Global social media company Meta has announced a partnership with the ministry of electronics and information technology to set up a Centre for Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), the latter said.
The IT ministry said the Centre for Generative AI, to be set up at the Indian Institute of Jodhpur, will work towards advancing open-source AI in India.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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The Record ☛ FBI, CISA investigating China-linked telecom hacks following reports of intrusions on Trump, Harris phones
“The investigation is ongoing, and we encourage any organization that believes it might be a victim to engage its local FBI field office or CISA. Agencies across the U.S. Government are collaborating to aggressively mitigate this threat and are coordinating with our industry partners to strengthen cyber defenses across the commercial communications sector.”
The statement comes weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that a Chinese government group called Salt Typhoon breached systems at AT&T, Verizon and Lumen — specifically targeting the systems U.S. law enforcement agencies use for wiretaps.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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India Times ☛ Bits & Bytes: Meta to face more lawsuits in Japan over fake ads
Meta Platforms is facing potential legal action in Japan due to fraudulent advertisements that falsely used celebrity endorsements to solicit investments. It is argued that Meta has a responsibility to scrutinize ad content and prevent potentially harmful advertisements from being posted. Meanwhile, Apple and Goldman Sachs have been fined a total of $90 million by US federal regulators for their mismanagement of the Apple Card business. Finally, Starlink terminals have sold out in Harare, Zimbabwe, just two months after receiving regulatory approval.
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Defence/Aggression
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Task And Purpose ☛ Air Force lets troops play this video game on its secure networks
The U.S. Air Force’s latest way to prepare for a global conflict? Video games. The Air Force is increasingly using video games as a cheap, detailed and internal way to test potential war scenarios. And it’s increasingly using one game in particular: “Command.” And as of this past week, airmen can play the game’s professional edition on the Air Force’s internal network.
One unusual aspect is that the game the Air Force turned to isn’t some in-house project developed by the Department of Defense for the military or a blockbuster release like “Call of Duty” or “Total War,” but rather a popular game studio that specializes in detailed two-dimensional combat.
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The Atlantic ☛ Trump Attacks The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg Over Hitler
Trump called The Atlantic “a failing magazine run by a guy named Goldberg.” He added that “they were the ones that made up the story about me saying bad things about this, about the soldiers.” That’s a reference to another article that Goldberg published, in September 2020, reporting that then-President Trump had called Americans who died in wars “suckers” and “losers.” Trump’s attack is factually wrong on nearly every count, but it’s still a useful demonstration of Trump’s political methods and aims.
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Semafor Inc ☛ Pro-Europe opposition groups call foul on Georgia election result
Meanwhile, European observers described widespread intimidation and a “climate of hatred” surrounding the ballot, The Associated Press reported.
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TruthOut ☛ Sanders Warns Trump Is a Fascist Who May Let Musk Control the Presidency
Sanders emphasized Trump’s role in inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and said there was a reason why his former Vice President Mike Pence and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would not support his 2024 election bid.
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The Hill ☛ Bernie Sanders concerned with potential Elon Musk influence if Trump wins
Sanders, in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, was asked about recent reporting in the Wall Street Journal that said Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been in touch since late 2022 and have had conversations on a range of issues, including “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.”
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The Atlantic ☛ Taiwan Isn’t Ready for China—Or Trump
Trump’s rhetoric shows how his reelection could undo the central promise sustaining the post–World War II order: that the United States will act as an international cavalry, riding to the rescue of allies, or at least seeking to deter autocratic aggressors. That guarantee, explicit or implicit, has led countries within the American alliance network to stake their national security on U.S. commitments. In Asia, for example, Japan has not developed a nuclear arsenal, even as Chinese leaders expand theirs, because the country is already under the American nuclear umbrella. But if the U.S. loses the will to uphold its promise under a second Trump presidency, or if other governments simply perceive that it has, the entire system of international security could unravel, potentially encouraging regional arms races, nuclear proliferation, and armed conflict—especially over Taiwan.
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Michigan Advance ☛ Michelle Obama warns against casting protest votes, says women would be the ‘collateral damage’
“It’s either Donald Trump in there stewing over his enemies list – or me, working for you, checking off my to-do list,” Harris said.
Obama expressed her frustration that more people don’t see that contrast.
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn,” Obama said. “I hope that you’ll forgive me if I’m a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon, a known slum lord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse, all of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”
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India Times ☛ Mayor Amer Ghalib: Why Muslims in Michigan are backing 'Islamophobic' Donald Trump
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Axios ☛ Grassroots campaigns remind U.S. women: Votes are private
Tampon boxes, bathroom mirrors and cereal boxes have become the unlikely messaging boards for a disconnected effort to remind women in the U.S. that their votes are private.
Why it matters: Voters have needed a reminder in this hyper-partisan environment that while their party affiliation can be public, their ballots are secret.
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NBC ☛ Pro-Harris sticky notes pop up in women's restrooms and gyms and on tampon boxes
“I live in a very red state, and I know women who do what their husbands tell them to do, and it’s very sad,” Nace said. “And so if we can give a voice to somebody who might have some fears, it would just be a good thing for them to know that nobody’s going to know how you vote when you vote.”
Women in Republican-dominated areas shared that writing sticky notes was a way for them to get involved politically without dealing with potential backlash.
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The Straits Times ☛ Japan’s ruling coalition set to lose parliamentary majority, election exit polls show
Voters are unhappy over an LDP funding scandal and inflation.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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JURIST ☛ North Korea claims military cooperation with Russia aligned with international law
North Korea announced on Friday that sending troops to support Russia in the war in Ukraine would align with international law, though it held back from confirming any actual deployments in a statement from North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong Gyu to North Korea’s state news agency.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korean delegation to brief Nato on North Korean troops for Russia, alliance says
Ukrainian military intelligence said on Oct 24 that about 12,000 North Korean troops were already in Russia.
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New York Times ☛ Ukraine Invaded Russia. Here’s What It Was Like for Civilians.
Russians in the area of Ukraine’s invasion have described seeing signs of violent encounters, as well as respectful treatment from Ukrainian troops.
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The Strategist ☛ War risks from nuclear power plants? Just look at Zaporizhzhia
Proposals for nuclear power in Australia will have to take national security risks into account. As evidenced in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report released in September,
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Atlantic Council ☛ Experts React: Georgia just concluded a contested election, with the country’s future at stake. Now what?
After Saturday’s contested election in Georgia, our experts share their thoughts on whether the ruling Georgian Dream party will pull Tbilisi further toward Russia and how the West should respond.
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France24 ☛ Georgia thrown into political turmoil after disputed parliamentary elections
Georgia's pro-Russia ruling party came out ahead in parliamentary elections, the electoral commission announced, as leading opposition figures called the result "fraudulent" amid accusations of ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation. The victory gives Georgian Dream enough seats to govern but falls short of the supermajority that would have allowed it to ban opposition parties.
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RFERL ☛ How The World Sees The Disputed Georgian Elections
The ruling Georgian Dream party claimed victory in the October 26 parliamentary elections following the release of official results, but the pro-Western opposition refused to accept the outcome, calling it a Kremlin “coup” and a “Russian special operation.”
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RFERL ☛ Georgian Dream Hails Victory, While Opposition Decries 'Stolen Election'
The pro-Russian Georgian Dream party is set to extend its control of parliament, according to preliminary results of the country's October 26 elections, but the stark difference in exit polls triggered cries of a "stolen election" from the pro-Western opposition.
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RFERL ☛ Georgian President Won't Recognize Vote Results, Calls For Protests, Alleges Russian Interference
Pro-Western Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, who has broken with the ruling Georgian Dream party, said she will not recognize the results of parliamentary elections held on October 26 and alleged that the country has been the victim of a “Russian special operation.”
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RFERL ☛ Bulgarian Exit Polls Raise Fears Of Another Prolonged Political Stalemate
In what appears to be the continuation of a long-standing political deadlock, exit polls gave former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s center-right GERB party the most votes in Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections but without enough support to cobble together a government.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Register UK ☛ "Open banking" rules issued, requiring data portability
Under this "open banking" rule, covered financial firms: "shall make available to a consumer, upon request, information in the control or possession of the covered person concerning the consumer financial product or service that the consumer obtained from such covered person, subject to certain exceptions."
This data has to be made available in an electronic form usable by consumers and authorized third parties.
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The Washington Post ☛ Elon Musk denies working illegally in the United States
He later claimed to have possessed “a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B.”
The J-1 Exchange Visitor visa allows foreign students to obtain academic training in the United States. The H1-B is a visa for temporary employment.
Musk did not say when he transitioned from a student visa to the temporary work visa. Six former business associates and shareholders said Musk claimed he was on a student visa around the time his status became a concern for the company, Zip2.
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The Washington Post ☛ Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally
Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.
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Environment
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Omicron Limited ☛ Melting Arctic sea-ice could affect global ocean circulation, study warns
The warming climate in polar regions may significantly disrupt ocean circulation patterns, a new study indicates. Scientists discovered that in the distant past, growing inflows of freshwater from melting Arctic sea-ice into the Nordic Seas likely significantly affected ocean circulation, sending temperatures plummeting across northern Europe.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Delhi water crisis: AAP blames Haryana for ammonia contamination in Yamuna, BJP hits back
Delhi is grappling with severe water shortage due to alarmingly high ammonia contamination in the Yamuna River, primarily attributed to industrial waste from Haryana, AAP alleged on Sunday.
With the water treatment plants (WTPs) at Sonia Vihar and Bhagirathi struggling to cope with the ammonia content in the Yamuna's raw water, supply in the national capital is being disrupted, it said.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ No 'hard' deadline for second phase of HK's disposable plastics ban
Restaurants had the half-year period to phase out certain single-use plastics including disposable plastic cutlery and straws. The Environmental Protection Department on Monday called on businesses to “take action as soon as possible to comply with the legal requirements.”
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Energy/Transportation
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The Register UK ☛ Your options if you're powering a datacenter in a hurry
Schneider Electric's veep of Innovation and Datacenter, Steven Carlini, shared his thoughts on the choices facing bit barn developers and operators in the short, medium, and long-term scenarios in a posting on the company site.
Demand for extra datacenter capacity is currently outstripping supply, especially in regions such as Europe, but developers face challenges in securing sufficient power and appropriate land for building new facilities.
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The Korea Times ☛ Ticketing system error disrupts bus terminals across nation
At 1:06 p.m., the system error occurred at the T-money smart ticketing network and lasted for about two hours, according to T-money, the operator of smart transportation cards.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Wired ☛ The Secret Electrostatic World of Insects
For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have another grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by flying—similar to the charge generated when you shuffle across carpet in thick socks—could be potent enough for them to sense and influence surrounding objects through the air. Aquatic animals such as eels, sharks, and dolphins are known to sense electricity in water, which is an excellent conductor of charge. By contrast, air is a poor conductor. But it may relay enough to influence living things and their evolution.
In 2013, Daniel Robert, a sensory ecologist at the University of Bristol in England, broke ground in this discipline when his lab discovered that bees can detect and discriminate among electric fields radiating from flowers. Since then, more experiments have documented that spiders, ticks, and other bugs can perform a similar trick.
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Overpopulation
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The Hindu ☛ Combination of interventions is key to water conservation, finds Indian Institute of Management Bangalore study
Contrary to popular belief that increasing water tariff might curtail usage, a study by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) shows that it is actually a combination of price and non-price interventions that could help in achieving conservation effects that are large and persistent.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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"The U.S. is persecuting Rafael Correa – and his family."
The Progressive International expresses its outrage regarding the recent decision by the U.S. State Department to persecute Ecuadorian politicians Rafael Correa, Jorge Glas, and their families.
This illegitimate and interventionist action not only represents a significant interference in Ecuador's current electoral process but also constitutes a reprehensible attack on innocent family members who have no involvement in the political sphere.
The arbitrary nature of this decision is particularly alarming, as it extends beyond the politicians themselves to explicitly name President Correa's children and wife in the U.S. State Department's announcement. This unwarranted targeting of family members is a gross violation of ethical standards and human rights.
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Idiomdrottning ☛ The Fancy Neighborhood
Turns out that completely coincidentally, this day there was supposed to be a big anarchosocialist demo. This was back in the day before the kids turned right wing. It was the first Bush term. Maybe a li’l less than one year after the Gothenburg shitshow in 01. Now, back in my home town, yes, that was absolutely the kind of punks I hung out with on the daily. But I had no idea that this demo was gonna take place. I learned that in the day there, I saw a poster or something. The whole shtick of the demo was the “class journey”, everyone meeting up in another neighborhood then marching to the fancy one. I wasn’t gonna participate. I was just there to meet my pen pal.
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India Times ☛ Bomb threats hit 50 flights; government seeks help of international agencies, IB
The deluge of anonymous online hoax threats causing turbulence in airline operations since mid-Oct continued Sunday, affecting over 50 flights operated by various carriers amid futile attempts by the govt to get social media platforms to filter such messages.
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The Register UK ☛ Indonesia bans iPhone 16 over Apple's investment plans
Industry minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita last week reportedly told local media that Apple's latest handset hasn't been approved for use in Indonesia and is "illegal" to use, or import.
The minister cited Apple's unfulfilled promises to invest in Indonesia, and failure to meet requirements for locally produced components, as the reasons for the ban.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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CS Monitor ☛ Foreign interference in US 2024 election is on the rise
Russia is the most active and sophisticated nation working to manipulate the U.S. election, using fake websites, state-controlled media, and unwitting Americans to spread misleading and polarizing content aimed at undermining confidence in elections.
The Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus seizes on contentious issues like immigration, crime, the economy, or disaster relief. The goal is to weaken the U.S., erode support for Ukraine as it fights off Russian invaders, and reduce America’s ability to counter Russia’s growing ties to China, North Korea, and Iran, officials have said.
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The Register UK ☛ Senator says domain reg firms aiding Russian disinfo spread
Warner sent letters to NameCheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, NewFold Digital, NameSilo, and Versign last week following the Biden administration's seizure of 32 domains used to spread pro-Russian propaganda, many masquerading as well-known Western news outlets.
The whole thing is part of a long-running Russian disinformation campaign known as "Doppelgänger," which makes use of a huge network of fake news sites, phony social media mouthpieces, and other tricks to fool gullible Americans into supporting Putin's agenda. The whole affair was highlighted by Meta in 2023, the report of which also played into Warner's reasoning.
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NPR ☛ What is the No. 1 leading cause of stress for you? Hint: It's not family
A majority of respondents are also concerned about misinformation and disinformation — 82% said they are worried that people are basing their values and opinions on false or inaccurate information.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Alexei Navalny, persecuted to death by Putin, somehow never lost hope
“I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life,” Navalny writes, “either for the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime.”
The Russian authorities announced in February that Navalny had collapsed after a walk and died. No specific cause of death was ever confirmed, but he had been severely weakened by the 2020 poisoning, at least 300 days of solitary confinement in a punishment cell and a lack of adequate medical care.
Navalny could have avoided his imprisonment and death at 47. After he was poisoned, he could have stayed in Germany, or any Western country, with his wife and two children. On principle, however, he returned to Russia, to his country, his home, his mission.
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The Independent UK ☛ Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate hospitalized with severe health issues
On Saturday, Iranian authorities issued an additional six-month sentence against her after she staged a protest against the execution of another political prisoner in the women’s ward of Evin Prison on Aug. 6.
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RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Laureate Moved To Hospital, Husband Says
Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner and rights activist, has been moved to a Tehran hospital after suffering health issues for more than two months, her husband said on October 27. [...]
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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UK snubs Council of Europe over Assange inquiry
Britain’s Home Office is making a “grave mistake” by ignoring a call from the Council of Europe to review its treatment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has warned.
The Council’s parliamentary assembly, of which the UK is a member, passed a resolution earlier this month designating Assange as a “political prisoner”.
Assange endured five years in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London before being released in June, and flying to his native Australia. The UK government had incarcerated him while the US pursued extradition proceedings in the British courts.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Media Started Capitulating to Trump with Russia Russia Russia
That’s not the only way the media has failed. Hell, there have been maybe two stories about Trump’s abuse of pardons. There has been no scrutiny about whether Trump works for the Saudis, rather than the American people. We don’t talk about the fact that Trump stole 100 classified documents, and probably more we haven’t located.
This failure is not surprising. After all, the first act via which Trump cowed the media came with his success at spinning the results of the Russian investigation.
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The Washington Post ☛ The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate for president
An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision.
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Axios ☛ WaPo trends on WaPo after presidential endorsement news
Why it matters: The newspaper, with a decades-long history of endorsing presidential candidates, announced on Friday it would not be doing so this election — sparking a firestorm of controversy and vows to cancel subscriptions.
An endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris "had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published," the Post reports.
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RFERL ☛ RFE/RL Journalists Among Georgian Reporters Threatened While Covering Pivotal Elections
[...] The hostile climate was said to have undermined the election outcome that looks set to keep the country's ruling Georgian Dream party in power.
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Scheerpost ☛ UK Snubs Council of Europe Over Assange Inquiry
His treatment has outraged the Council of Europe, which was created in the aftermath of World War Two with strong backing from Winston Churchill.
Its resolution urged the UK authorities to conduct a review “with a view to establishing whether he [Assange] has been exposed to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, pursuant to their international obligations”.
It found the UK authorities “failed to effectively protect Mr Assange’s freedom of expression and right to liberty, exposing him to lengthy detention in a high-security prison despite the political nature of the most severe charges against him.”
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VOA News ☛ Experts: Apple’s removal of news apps in Russia sets 'dangerous precedent'
The affected apps are for Current Time, a Russian-language network produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, in cooperation with VOA, and a Kyrgyz-language news app.
RFE/RL and VOA are independent media outlets funded by the U.S. Congress.
In a letter to RFE/RL, Apple said the action was in response to content that is deemed illegal in Russia. Apple added that in Russia, RFE/RL is labeled an “undesirable” organization.
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Arena Group ☛ Trump Threatens Mass Arrests of Political Opponents if He Wins in 2024
Meanwhile, the corporate media is failing when our nation needs a Fourth Estate the most. Endorsements for Vice President Harris from editorial boards of both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were overruled by their billionaire owners, either out of fear that Trump might win or due to their personal support of Trump. The United States is no longer heading towards fascism—we are in the beginning stages. And the 2024 election may well be our last opportunity to prevent a full-blown collapse into autocracy.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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VOA News ☛ War affects more than 600 million women and girls, UN says
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and "generational gains in women's rights hang in the balance around the world."
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ MPA is Concerned About Plans to 'Outlaw' Password Sharing Restrictions
Brazil is considering legislation that would prohibit streaming services from charging additional fees or blocking access for users outside the registered 'household'. Representing major Hollywood studios and streaming giants like Netflix, the MPA is pushing back against these plans. Such restrictions would negatively impact revenue and undermine copyright enforcement efforts, the industry group warns
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India Times ☛ Universal Music release AI-powered Spanish version of Brenda Lee's hit song
Universal Music said that the song demonstrates how AI can be used while respecting artists and ensuring their full authorisation. The ethical use of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry has been a point of discussion after several incidents where AI-generated content raised concerns about copyright infringement and artist consent.
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The Register UK ☛ Perplexity AI decries News Corp's 'simply false' data claims
At the start of the week, News Corp took legal action on behalf of its publications, claiming in court documents [PDF] that Perplexity was posting whole chunks of the newspaper's articles, wrongly attributing facts to the sources, and that Perplexity ignored them when the issue was raised. News Corp wants $150,000 for every proven infringement.
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India Times ☛ Meta Platforms to use Reuters news content in AI chatbot
Meta AI, the company's chatbot, is available across its services including Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. The social media giant did not disclose whether it plans to use Reuters content to train its large-language model.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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