GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Author of "Stallman Report" Hit Piece Collects and Publishes Child Porn?

Leftovers

• Rachel ☛ Set me right on whether caring is even possible

  My goal would be to get more people in this life who, at least for that topic, look at everything they encounter and go "what if this fails, and is restarted". I basically would love to see more people going "what if" for that particular topic. Worry about the robot and the five quarts of oil. (Go look at the 2013 post if that made no sense.)

• Daniel Miller ☛ The Trouble with Tools

  I spend a lot of time in productivity tools and thinking about productivity tools. I follow the development of new ones, I’m subscribed to the subreddits. I frequently try new tools or systems, hoping to land on something that will finally work for me. I develop my own scripts and small apps.

• Michał Sapka ☛ RE: Michał Sapka’s new home

  I changed the domains because I moved the site to my homelab and having DDNS on my mail domain seemed scary. Most likely nothing bad would happen, but better safe then sorry. Plus, “Crys Site” is a wordplay and no one has yet guessed it.

• Ali Reza Hayati ☛ Is it necessary?

  However, this blog has something special for me that prevents me from deleting it. That one step away from deleting it is that it made me some amazing friends along the way that I probably couldn’t enjoy their friendship if I wasn’t publishing it. I have the pleasure of talking and communicating with some awesome people because of this blog.

• Lou Plummer ☛ A Meditation on Nice People

  Look for kind people today. Better yet, be kind. Get your name added to someone's gratitude list.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Scientists Think a Skeleton Found in a Well Is the Same Man Described in an 800-Year-Old Norse Text

    The well is located near the ruined Sverresborg Castle outside the city of Trondheim in central Norway. During a period of political instability in the 12th century, Sverre insisted he had a claim to the throne, but he faced opposition from the archbishop. The 182-verse Sverris Saga, which Sverre ordered one of his associates to write, describes battles between the new king and his opposition, though historians don’t know whether these accounts are accurate. According to one passage, Roman Catholic “Baglers”—from the Norse for “bishop’s wand”—raided Sverresborg Castle while Sverre was out of town in 1197.

  • The Register UK ☛ NASA narrows Artemis III landing target list to nine

    A return to the Luna has been an ambition for decades, and the Artemis program was named in 2019 before a 2022 decision to target the Moon's south pole.

    At that time, 13 potential sites were identified after NASA analyzed data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). But, as the launch window was so far away, the space org decided to leave any further narrowing down for a later date. It was a smart move, given that the launch slipped from a planned 2024 aspiration to its current 2026 target.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ 'Paleo-robots' provide an experimental approach for understanding how fish started to walk on land

    "Paleontologists examine ancient fossils for clues about the structure of hip and pelvic joints, but there are limits to what we can learn from fossils alone. That's where robots can come in, helping us fill gaps in the research, particularly when studying major shifts in how vertebrates moved."

  • AAAS ☛ Paleoinspired robotics as an experimental approach to the history of life | Science Robotics

    Paleontologists must confront the challenge of studying the forms and functions of extinct species for which data from preserved fossils are extremely limited, yielding only a fragmented picture of life in deep time. In response to this hurdle, we describe the nascent field of paleoinspired robotics, an innovative method that builds upon established techniques in bioinspired robotics, enabling the exploration of the biology of ancient organisms and their evolutionary trajectories. This Review presents ways in which robotic platforms can fill gaps in existing research using the exemplars of notable transitions in vertebrate locomotion. We examine recent case studies in experimental paleontology, highlighting substantial contributions made by engineering and robotics techniques, and further assess how the efficient application of robotic technologies in close collaboration with paleontologists and biologists can offer additional insights into the study of evolution that were previously unattainable.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ New 'Paleo-Robots' Could Shed Light on Animal Evolution, Revealing How Some Fish Evolved to 'Walk' on Land

    The researchers want to understand the amount of energy it takes for the creatures to walk in certain patterns, with the aim of pinpointing which movements would have been most efficient—and thus might have led the way toward marine animals evolving to walk on land.

    “In the lab, we can’t make a living fish walk differently, and we certainly can’t get a fossil to move, so we’re using robots to simulate their anatomy and behavior,” Ishida says in a statement from the University of Cambridge.

• Hardware

  • Inside Towers ☛ AT&T Signs Multi-year $1B+ Purchase Agreement with Corning

    As Corning’s largest customer with preferential volume status for Corning’s connectivity solutions, AT&T believes it can accelerate its network expansion and enhance network performance while minimizing deployment costs. AT&T will use the latest additions to Corning’s Evolv portfolio of connectivity solutions, including Evolv FlexNAP with Multifiber Pushlok Technology, which will be compliant with the Build America, Buy America provisions of the BEAD program.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

    But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients: [...]

  • 404 Media ☛ Leaked Training Shows How Doctors in New York’s Biggest Hospital System Are Using AI

    An internal presentation and employee chats obtained by 404 Media shows how healthcare professionals are using LLMs and chatbots to edit writing, make hiring decisions, do administrative tasks, and handle patient data.

    In the presentation given in August, Rebecca Kaul, senior vice president and chief of digital innovation and transformation at Northwell, along with a senior engineer, discussed the launch of the tool, called AI Hub, and gave a demonstration of how clinicians and researchers—or anyone with a Northwell email address—can use it.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Alaskan education commissioner uses AI to hallucinate some policy-based evidence – Pivot to AI

    When the Alaska Beacon asked the education department where they could find the nonexistent studies, Bishop said the citations were just part of a draft that was put up on the website by accident.

    Bishop said that when she realized the error, she sent the correct citations to board members, who only then voted to adopt the proposal. But there were still several AI hallucinations in the corrected document.

  • India Times ☛ Meta develops own AI search engine to cut reliance on Google, Bing: reports

    Meta Platforms is working on an artificial intelligence-based search engine as it looks to reduce dependence on Alphabet's Google and Microsoft's Bing, the Information reported on Monday.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Electronics boffin creates slot-in MacBook SSD module system — breaks storage limits for every modern MacBook

    YouTuber fixes a key design flaw of modern Fashion Company Apple MacBook laptops.

  • GeekWire ☛ F5 confirms new round of job cuts, continuing annual pattern of workforce reductions

    F5 continued its practice of trimming its workforce after the completion of its fiscal year, confirming Tuesday that it has made job cuts impacting roles across several teams inside the company.

    The workforce reduction amounts to less than 2% of the company’s global workforce, a spokesperson for the Seattle-based application security and delivery company told GeekWire via email. F5 employs about 6,500 people, according to previous SEC filings, which means that the cuts impacted more than 100 positions.

  • IT Web ☛ Hiring activity in IT sector sees significant drop in SA

    Over the last two years, significant declines in hiring activity have been evident within South Africa’s IT sector.

    This is according to online recruitment firm Pnet in its Job Market Trend Report for September 2024. The Pnet Job Market Trends Report has been created and interpreted by the firm’s expert team of data insights specialists.

    The report is based on empirical data sourced from The Stepstone Group South Africa’s online recruitment platforms, which currently hold a combined database of over nine million registered users.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Silicon Angle ☛ The OSI clarifies what makes Hey Hi (AI) systems open-source, but most ‘open’ models fall short [Ed: Microsoft-funded Openwashing Drive]

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Michigan Advance ☛ Computer programs monitor students’ every word in the name of safety

      School districts across the country have widely adopted such computer monitoring platforms. With the youth mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and school violence affecting more K-12 students nationwide, teachers are desperate for a solution, experts say.

      But critics worry about the lack of transparency from companies that have the power to monitor students and choose when to alert school personnel. Constant student surveillance also raises concerns regarding student data, privacy and free speech.

    • The Register UK ☛ Macron's bodyguards show his location by sharing Strava data

      The French equivalent of the US Secret Service may have been letting their guard down, as an investigation showed they are easily trackable via the fitness app Strava.

      An investigation by Le Monde has shown that members of the Security Group for the Presidency of the Republic (GSPR) have been openly displaying their location on the popular software during their workout sessions. Since they travel with President Emmanuel Macron, this makes it fairly easy to work out his location. A dozen of his bodyguards were leaking key information this way.

  • Confidentiality

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Law Enforcement Deanonymizes Tor Users

      The German police have successfully deanonymized at least four Tor users. It appears they watch known Tor relays and known suspects, and use timing analysis to figure out who is using what relay.

    • GnuPG ☛ [Announce] GnuPG 2.4.6 released

      The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG, GPG) is a complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP and S/MIME standards.

      GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign data and communication, features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for public key directories. GnuPG itself is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. The separate library GPGME provides a uniform API to use the GnuPG engine by software written in common programming languages. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries making use of GnuPG are available. As an universal crypto engine GnuPG provides support for S/MIME and Secure Shell in addition to OpenPGP.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Verge ☛ A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles

    Collective action problem is the term political scientists use to describe any situation where a large group of people would do better for themselves if they worked together, but it’s easier for everyone to pursue their own interests. The essential work of every government is making laws that balance the tradeoffs between shared benefits and acceptable restrictions on individual or corporate freedoms to solve this dilemma, and the reason people hate the government is that not being able to do whatever you want all the time is a huge bummer. Speed limits help make our neighborhoods safer, but they also mean you aren’t supposed to put the hammer down and peel out at every stoplight, which isn’t any fun at all.

  • JURIST ☛ Dropbox incendiary attacks damage ballots in Washington and Oregon

    The two incidents, which took place in the neighboring cities of Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, are believed to be related. Police stated that they believe that the acts were intended to “affect the election process.” In Vancouver, hundreds of deposited ballots were affected. The Clark County Auditor’s office reported that all ballots unaffected by the fire have been processed, and voters are encouraged to check online to confirm whether their votes have been received. Those whose votes have not been received must request a new ballot by visiting, calling, or emailing the Elections Office. In Portland, Oregon, only three ballots were damaged. Multnomah County elections director Tim Scott stated that voters in Portland with compromised ballots could be easily identified by a ballot number that was not damaged in the incident. Elections officials will reach out to those impacted and recast votes must be submitted by election day on November 5.

  • The Nation ☛ Trumpism Is Not a “Rogue Wave”

    Before the conversation, Maddow read, at Kushner’s request, a piece of narration from the second season of the podcast, which ends like this: “It’s never going to be just one blow that takes down the demagogue. It’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take 10 blows or 100. But not a million. The American system of government is strong, too. It just needs brave Americans to believe that and to show it and to step up, despite the costs.”

  • Deseret Media ☛ Utah's drop box safety measures include fire suppressant

    Utah election officials have implemented safety measures for ballot drop boxes, including fire suppressants and 24/7 camera monitoring.

  • New York Times ☛ How TikTok Saved Its E-Commerce Business in Indonesia

    Then one day, TikTok said it was removing Shop from its app in Indonesia. The government declared that social media platforms would no longer be allowed to process online payments. TikTok was forced to abruptly halt its e-commerce operations.

    Some Indonesian officials argued that TikTok was so popular it threatened to monopolize online shopping, while others said it didn’t have the right license. TikTok’s defenders in the industry said the government was acting on behalf of TikTok’s competitors in Indonesia.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner sues to stop Elon Musk $1 million voter sweepstakes

    “To be clear, this is not a case about whether Defendants have violated state or federal laws prohibiting vote-buying. Instead, this case is very simple because America PAC and Musk are indisputably violating Pennsylvania’s statutory prohibitions against illegal lotteries and deceiving consumers,” the lawsuit says.

    Krasner’s suit seeks an injunction to stop America PAC and Musk from continuing the violations. It says allowing them to continue would irreparably harm Philadelphia and Pennsylvania residents and “tarnish the public’s right to a fee and fair election.”

  • New York Times ☛ Teen Accused in U.K. Taylor Swift Dance Class Stabbing Charged With Terror Offenses

    After searching the family’s home, in a quiet corner of the village of Bank, just outside Southport, the police found ricin, a lethal poison, leading to charge of production of a biological toxin. He was also charged with possession of an Al Qaeda training manual, “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism,” Ms. Kennedy said in a statement.

  • RFERL ☛ Toomas Hendrik Ilves: 'There Has To Be A Price' For Alleged Election Rigging In Georgia

    After the ruling Georgian Dream declared victory, Ilves told RFE/RL’s Georgian Service that Georgians opted for a democratically elected coalition and liberal democracy but are being stymied thanks in part to Russian influence. He says “there has to be a price,” and the West’s response should be to punish billionaire Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili and the party’s elites. The aim should be to demonstrate that Europe and the United States “won’t accept” election manipulations no matter what Hungary’s Viktor Orban says.

  • The Record ☛ Russia and China-linked state hackers intensify attacks on Netherlands, security officials warn

    Russian and Chinese state threat actors are ramping up their cyberattacks against Dutch organizations, according to a new government report.

    Most of these attacks primarily aim to gain a foothold within critical infrastructure for potential future sabotage, as well as to obtain sensitive information, the Dutch principal counterterrorism unit (NCTV) said in research published Monday.

  • David Rosenthal ☛ 1.5C Here We Come

    Source John Timmer's With four more years like 2023, carbon emissions will blow past 1.5° limit is based on the United Nations' Environmental Programme's report Emissions Gap Report 2024. The "emissions gap" is: [...]

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Ballot boxes set on fire in Washington and Oregon

    Authorities are investigating at least two incidents of ballot drop-off boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington as the US election enters its final week.

  • The Local DK ☛ Nordic countries vow joint crackdown on gangs and migration

    Sweden is struggling to rein in a surge in shootings and bombings by gangs which officials say have a habit of recruiting children from poor immigrant families.

    Violence linked to Swedish [sic] gangs has recently been reported in both Norway and Denmark.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Chechnya’s Mufti Slams Ban on Hijabs in Schools

    Supreme Mufti Salah Mezhiev issued his criticism a week after education authorities in central Russia’s Vladimir region ordered a ban on religious clothing, including hijabs and niqabs, in public schools.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia’s Vladimir Region Bans Hijabs in Schools

    The Vladimir region’s Education Ministry insisted in a statement on Saturday that the ban does not violate students’ rights since Russia’s Constitution establishes the country as a secular state without an official religion.

  • India Times ☛ Trump says he's 'opposite of a Nazi' as toxic MSG rally poisons America

    Trump and some of his allies were visibly rattled by the shock and revulsion Sunday's MSG rally caused across the political spectrum, with some speakers using filthy, vitriolic language to denigrate Kamala Harris and minorities. Many commentators pointed to the use of extremist symbols, idioms, and language to argue the gathering was redolent of a neo-Nazi rally. Political analysts also noted the use at the rally of the song Dixie, which is considered by many as a Confederate anthem celebrating slavery and secession, but which is cherished by some conservatives as an ode to Southern pride. The song is banned in many institutions because it is evocative of a racist America that condoned slavery.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ A U.S.-Saudi Deal and America’s Obsession With Military Primacy

    Under the reported terms of this proposed U.S.-Saudi deal, Riyadh would not allow China to expand its military footprint in the kingdom and the Saudis would also agree not to purchase advanced Chinese weaponry. But these U.S. fixations on China overlook the nature of Beijing's relationship to Saudi Arabia, which is primarily driven by economic rather than military ties. China is Saudi Arabia's most important oil customer, consuming about 20 percent of total Saudi oil exports last year. Likewise, after Russia, Saudi Arabia is China's most important source of fossil fuels, as well as China's largest trading partner in the Middle East. This economic relationship is unlikely to change, deal or no deal with Washington.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Researchers urge caution over satellite mega-constellations

    While the FCC evaluates the potential harms of satellite constellations, it currently exempts almost all telecommunications projects — including satellites — from facing formal environmental reviews. The researchers’ letter, released on Thursday, argues that much has changed since the rule was created almost four decades ago.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Research aims to solve ‘wicked problem’ in Lake Erie

    There’s a famous piece of advice from hockey, attributed to Wayne Gretzky, about how it’s better to skate to where the puck is headed rather than where it is.

    Research is now showing that regulations designed to protect Lake Erie’s water quality are heeding the Great One’s words when it comes to safeguarding the Great Lake’s fisheries.

    Specifically, the currently recommended limits on the flow of nutrients into Lake Erie from agriculture may be too restrictive for some species of fish. They are, however, suited to maintain healthy fisheries until the middle of this century amid a warming climate, according to a new study led by the University of Michigan.

  • PNAS ☛ Water quality–fisheries tradeoffs in a changing climate underscore the need for adaptive ecosystem–based management

    Our study showcases an approach to assess nutrient management decision-making in aquatic ecosystems. By combining fisheries data with reconstructed nutrient loads and hypoxic extent during the past century, we demonstrate why nutrient abatement plans designed to curtail Lake Erie hypoxia appear too restrictive in today’s climate yet may be insufficient in the future. Beyond illustrating how nutrient management can cause water quality–fisheries tradeoffs that can vary with climate change, we offer a rare example of nutrient-driven hypoxia shaping long-term fisheries harvest dynamics in a large ecosystem. Ultimately, our study highlights why adaptive ecosystem–based management that uses simple predictive models to assess tradeoffs between management priorities over long timescales can help sustain valued services in ecosystems experiencing change.

  • Futurism ☛ Boeing Satellite Exploded Into at Least 500 Pieces of Debris

    And the extent of the resulting cloud of space junk is only starting to come to light. As SpaceNews reports, space-tracking company ExoAnalytic Solutions has identified a whopping 500 pieces of debris now littering the Earth's geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles above the surface — and that's only the big ones.

    "The size of the debris we are tracking ranges from small fragments roughly the size of a softball to larger pieces up to the size of a car door," ExoAnalytic CTO Bill Therien told SpaceNews. "The majority of the tracked objects are on the smaller end of that spectrum, which contributes to the difficulty of consistently observing all the debris pieces."

  • The Revelator ☛ Protect This Place: The Mountainous Ulu Masen Ecosystem

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ The Telegraph Ramps Up Anti-Climate Coverage During Labour’s Early Months

    • RTL ☛ Controversial : EU adopts extra tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese EVs

      The EU on Tuesday decided to slap hefty tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars after an anti-subsidy probe concluded Beijing's support undercut European automakers.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • New York Times ☛ What Ants and Orcas Can Teach Us About Death

      A philosopher journeys into the world of comparative thanatology, which explores how animals of all kinds respond to death and dying.

  • Overpopulation

    • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Bought a Texas Compound for His 11 Kids and Their Mothers

      Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr. Musk seems to want to make even bigger.

• Finance

  • NPR ☛ JP Morgan Chase is suing customers over 'infinite money glitch' ATM scam

    The trend shot across social media with TikTok users broadcasting how to deposit the fraudulent checks and walk away with huge sums of cash.

  • France24 ☛ Volkswagen plans major layoffs, factory closures

    Volkswagen staff have sounded the alarm over plans to cut 'tens of thousands' of jobs, cut wages, and close three factories across Germany. The carmaker's employee council said management had described the cost-cutting plans as necessary. If confirmed, the restructuring will mark a symbolic blow to German industry. Also in the show - France 24 reporters in Malaysia meet a former Fentanylware (TikTok) employee who has been replaced by artificial intelligence, in a controversial move by the Chinese-owned app.

  • ABP ☛ Intel Cuts Free Coffee Service For Employees As It Prepares For Upcoming Layoffs

    Intel employees at the company's offices in Israel recently faced an unwelcoming surprise: the previously well-stocked kitchenettes, known for offering complimentary coffee, tea, and fruit, which is a standard perk in high-tech workplaces—were now empty. A lone sign on the counter read: "Fruit and beverage service update. Free coffee, tea, and fruit service will end on 27.10.2024." This change was implemented following the conclusion of the holiday period in Israel.

    “This may lead to further employee departures. This comes on top of losing company vehicles and cuts to stock options. A 'small' thing like coffee really affects employees—it's just embarrassing,” one Intel Israel employee told Calcalist.

  • Nvidia «has picked up» of Intel’s laid-off employees — and some will receive 30% higher salaries

    Intel is currently experiencing one of the biggest crises in its 50-year history, forcing the company to announce the layoffs of thousands of employees — some of them along the way intercepted Nvidia.

  • Politico ☛ Audi Brussels to close in early 2025, signaling deepening VW crisis

    German carmaker Audi will close its Brussels plant on Feb. 28 next year, the company’s management announced at a special works council meeting Tuesday.

    Management added it is still in talks with a potential buyer to take over the Belgian plant, which has been facing the ax for several months due to poor sales and a crisis affecting its owner, the Volkswagen Group.

    No layoffs are expected until the beginning of 2025, and the plant’s management continues to talk with a potential investor who might take over the factory, although not necessarily to continue making passenger vehicles. A savior could emerge from the commercial vehicle sector, for example, with unions suggesting a manufacturer of tractors.

  • VW disaster highlights Europe’s decline

    Heartbreak struck crowds of workers amassed outside of Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg after a company representative declared that tens of thousands will be sacked and three major plants will be shuttered for good, writes Josh Schlicht.

  • Volkswagen to lay off tens of thousands of staff, cut salaries and close three factories in Germany amid electric car slowdown

    Volkswagen plans to shut at least three factories, lay off tens of thousands of its workforce and introduce further cost-cutting measures in Germany as part of a deeper-than-expected overhaul to the business, the company's works council head said on Monday.

    Europe's biggest car maker has been negotiating for weeks with unions over intentions to adjust its operations and slash costs as the manufacturer responds to headwinds in the motor industry.

    A slowdown in uptake of electric vehicles and the emerging popularity of cheaper Chinese brands in Europe has forced the German powerhouse to consider factory closures on home soil for the first time.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | The TikTokification of Social Media May Finally Be Its Undoing

    Let’s back up and start with the problem. Section 230, a snippet of law embedded in the 1996 Communications Decency Act, was initially intended to protect tech companies from defamation claims related to posts made by users. That protection made sense in the early days of social media, when we largely chose the content we saw, based on whom we “friended” on sites such as Facebook. Since we selected those relationships, it was relatively easy for the companies to argue they should not be blamed if your Uncle Bob insulted your strawberry pie on Instagram.

    Then, of course, things got a little darker. Not everything Uncle Bob shared was accurate, and the platforms’ algorithms prioritized outrageous, provocative content from anyone with internet access over more neutral, fact-based reporting. Despite this, the tech companies’ lawyers continued to successfully argue that they were not responsible for the content shared on their platforms — no matter how misleading or dangerous.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Alphabet’s strong Q3 earnings see boost from cloud computing business

    A big reason for the boost appears to lie in Google’s Cloud division, which increased revenue by 35% year-on-year and brought in $11.35 billion for the quarter, beating analysts expectations. In its report, Alphabet highlighted the cloud as an area of growth, particularly as it makes more of its artificial intelligence products available to cloud customers.

  • IT Wire ☛ Chunghwa Telecom selects Nokia for 5G-Advanced expansion

    Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) has selected Finnish telecoms vendor Nokia for a one-year extension deal to modernise its 5G network across the central and southern regions of Taiwan.

  • APNIC ☛ The realities of building an IPv6-only city

    As previously discussed in this post, Xiong’an New Area (Xiong’an), a pilot city established in 2017 about 100 kilometres west of Beijing, aims to be a model for future digital cities, built with IPv6-only infrastructure from the start. To achieve this, the local government is prioritizing IPv6 in its top-level planning, designing for the deployment of 198,000 sensors per square kilometre, and supporting over 1 million Internet of Things (IoT) devices per square kilometre. This post will look at the lessons the Xiong’an team has learned so far from building this IPv6-only city.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft accuses Google of 'astroturfing' cloud lobby OCC

    Microsoft made the accusation in a Monday post penned by deputy general counsel Rima Alaily, who wrote "This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching. It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public."

    Alaily further claimed "Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization."

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Omnivore acquired by ElevenLabs AI startup

    He assures that “the Omnivore code base will remain 100% open-source for all developers,” and that “ElevenLabs has been truly committed to ensuring the developer community can continue to build upon the foundation we’ve built as a preferred read-it-later service”.

  • Pro Publica ☛ This Trump Supporter Was Labeled a Noncitizen and Kicked Off Texas’ Voter Rolls

    Mary Howard-Elley fervently believes illegal immigration in the U.S. is a critical problem that only former President Donald Trump can solve. She says the continuation of his border wall and promised mass deportations will make the country safer.

    She agrees with Trump’s unfounded claims that Democrats are opening the borders to allow noncitizens to vote, fearing that it could ultimately cost him the election.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Rick Roth’s Support of Florida’s Immigration Bill Had Consequences. But Not for Him.

  • FAIR ☛ White Men Get Short End of Stick—in NYT Chart, if Not in Reality

  • Off Guardian ☛ The BillBC Fight For Propaganda

  • The Straits Times ☛ Indonesia’s Prabowo drills Cabinet in teamwork, key programmes at ‘boot camp’

    Over 100 of the new Cabinet members gathered for a retreat at the Military Academy in Central Java

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • 404 Media ☛ Elon Musk-Funded PAC Supercharges ‘Progress 2028’ Democrat Impersonation Ad Campaign

      An Elon Musk-funded PAC is targeting Republicans with ads that depict a fever-dream caricature of what Harris would do if elected president.

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ Conspiracies, calls for violence spike online ahead of Election Day

      The Global Project on Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit that tracks extremist activity online, reported Tuesday that chatter of election denialism increased on Telegram, Gab, Communities.win and Fediverse — social media sites that lack moderation and allow users to share extreme and controversial viewpoints. Posts about election denialism, the false belief that elections are unfair and could be “stolen,” increased by 317% on Telegram and 105% on Gab throughout October, the nonprofit said.

    • Alabama Reflector ☛ Worries grow about disinformation, false claims and even violence as election nears

      “I think the biggest vulnerability will continue to be the mis- and disinformation that will happen in the aftermath of the election,” said Olivia Troye, who previously worked for Vice President Mike Pence as a special adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism.

      Troye raised concerns that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may make false claims about election fraud and encourage violence similar to what took place on Jan. 6, 2021, should he lose the Electoral College again.

    • The Atlantic ☛ What ‘Election Integrity’ Really Means

      The “consistent, disciplined, repetitive use” of the term election integrity in this new context is “designed to confuse the public,” Alice Clapman, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, told me. A sad irony, she added, is that those who use this framing have done so to push for restrictions that actually suppress voting, including strict voter-ID laws and limitations on early ballots, or to threaten the existence of initiatives to ensure fair voting. Many of the same activists promoting “election integrity,” including Cleta Mitchell, organized a misinformation campaign to undermine a bipartisan state-led initiative called the Electronic Registration Information Center, which was created in 2012 to ensure that voter rolls were accurate. Multiple states eventually left the compact.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Jeff Bezos' Manifesto of Impotence

      There’s so much logical collapse that gets papered over in this pablum. Which parts of “most people” believe the media is biased? More importantly, do they believe in or value “reality”? Because if many of them don’t — spoiler alert! the people squawking most loudly about media bias do not believe in empirical reality — then you’ve wildly misdiagnosed the problem. Those people won’t decide whether to trust voting machines based on anything the vendors do — just ask Dominion about that! They’ll decide whether to trust voting machines based on faith. And no amount of pandering will change that until you change the foundation on which their faith in propaganda is built.

      Reality is in fact on the ballot this year, the race remains neck and neck, and you, Jeff Bezos, decided to go down without a fight.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Bots and fake accounts praise Azerbaijan, host of COP29 climate talks

      The analysis by Marc Owen Jones, an expert on disinformation at Northwestern University in Qatar, focused on roughly 2,800 X accounts that collectively sent around 10,800 tweets, retweets and replies about the conference between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24. It found that nearly three-quarters of the accounts were created this year and roughly two-thirds had activity patterns consistent with bots.

    • VOA News ☛ Putin claims, falsely, US, not Russia, escalated situation in Ukraine

      The claim is false.

      This “U.S.-staged coup” is a false narrative the Kremlin has been using for over a decade to white-wash its aggression against Ukraine.

      It originated from a distorted statement by Victoria Nuland, then U.S. assistant secretary of state.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ Iran executes dual German-Iranian citizen Jamsid Sharmahd

    Sharmahd was first arrested in 2020 in Dubai, where he was kidnapped by Iranian authorities and promptly accused of leading a monarchist dissent group within Iran. During his trial, Sharmahd’s lawyer requested $250,000 and would not provide any legal representation beyond attending court until compensated. Subsequently, Sharmahd was accused of “corruption of the earth,” a vague criminal sentence used to penalize an indeterminate number of “moral” offenses against the state, in what Amnesty International has called a “sham trial.” Leading up to his execution, Sharmahd was subject to frequent isolation and torture, spending nearly 1000 days in solitary confinement, causing him to lose his teeth and become dangerously underweight.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Fines Google $2.5 Decillion Over YouTube Bans – RBC

    According to RBC’s sources, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels. Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles.

    Undecillion is a number equal to 1 followed by 36 zeros. Google, whose parent company Alphabet reported a revenue of more than $307 billion in 2023, is unlikely to ever pay the incredibly high fine.

  • Freedom House ☛ The Struggle for Trust Online | Freedom House

    Free expression online was imperiled by severe prison terms and escalating violence. In three-quarters of the countries covered by FOTN, internet users faced arrest for nonviolent expression, at times leading to draconian prison sentences exceeding 10 years. People were physically attacked or killed in retaliation for their online activities in a record high of at least 43 countries. Internet shutdowns and reprisals for online speech created even more perilous environments for people affected by several major armed conflicts around the world.

    Censorship and content manipulation were combined to sway elections, undermining voters’ ability to make informed decisions, fully participate in the electoral process, and have their voices heard. Voters in at least 25 of the 41 FOTN countries that held or prepared for nationwide elections during the coverage period contended with a censored information space. In many countries, technical censorship was used to constrain the opposition’s ability to reach voters, reduce access to reliable reporting, or quell concerns about voting irregularities. In at least 21 of the 41 countries, progovernment commentators manipulated online information, often stoking doubt about the integrity of the forthcoming results and seeding long-term mistrust in democratic institutions. In addition, interference from governments and a reduction in transparency mechanisms on major social media platforms chilled the efforts of independent researchers and media groups to shed light on election-related influence operations.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Axios ☛ Washington Post editorial board members step down after Bezos decision

    Zoom out: At least 21 opinion section columnists, including Hoffman and Roberts signed onto a statement saying their employer's "refusal to endorse a presidential candidate is a mistake."

  • The Hill ☛ Over 200 Gannett outlets not 'endorsing in presidential or national races'

    Over 200 American outlets under USA Today parent company Gannett will not back candidates “in presidential or national races,” according to USA Today.

    “None of the USA TODAY Network publications are endorsing in presidential or national races,” a spokesperson for USA Today, Lark-Marie Antón, said in an email to The Hill on Monday.

  • The Hill ☛ Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos: The cowardly retreat of American journalism

    Third, denying reality. Again, both papers have condemned Donald Trump for engineering the Jan. 6 riot. The Post was even awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Jan. 6. Yet now both papers pretend to have no official opinion on whether or not the man behind the assault on the Capitol, and who promises to pardon those convicted of invading the Capitol, should be reelected president. Really? That’s simply not credible. It’s like, after breaking the news on Watergate and forcing Richard Nixon out of the White House, the Post had said it doesn’t care whether Nixon was allowed back in the Oval Office.

    No matter how Soon-Shiong and Bezos try to spin it, their refusal to endorse for president in 2024 is the greatest display of cowardice in the history of American journalism. And also one of the worst displays of blatant conflict of interest.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Is internet freedom slipping away in Southeast Asia?

    The survey and analysis measures ways that governments and non-state actors restrict rights online. This includes blocking access, putting limits on content, and violations of the right to privacy along with legal and extralegal repercussions for online speech.

    Thailand and Vietnam were among the bottom 20 countries, while Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia were rated as "partly free." No surveyed country in the region was classified as "free."

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ No time limit set for prosecuting 2019 protest arrestees: HK officials

    It was not unfair for the arrestees to wait for prosecution for more than five years because the authorities needed time to gather evidence, Secretary for Security Chris Tang said in a media briefing on Monday, which HKFP was not invited to attend.

    Less than 30 per cent of those arrested during the 2019 protests have been charged, according to figures as of the end of March.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense’ - lonestarlive.com

    William McNichol, a professor at Rutgers Law School with a background in chemistry, has studied DRE.

    “It is a classic example of ‘police science,’” said McNichol. “That is to say, it is not science-based at all, but is merely a police officer’s lay opinion encrusted with some of the trappings but little or none of the substance of science.”

    Or as Dr. Jeffrey Janofsky, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, testified several years ago during a challenge in Maryland, no medical doctor would use the DRE steps and charts to decide who was on what drugs.

    “It’s ridiculous, I can’t emphasize that enough,” he told the court.

  • New York Times ☛ How a Data Center Divided a Small Missouri Town

    For years, that golden wheat had been the backdrop of this 6,000-person hamlet, best known as a pit stop on trips from Kansas City to the Ozarks. Now, it was a battleground between a tech giant’s proposed data center and the rural community around it.

  • USMC ☛ Marines continue to make female infantry officers, with little fanfare

    But since then, even without the press releases and news profiles, women have continued to graduate from IOC in small, but consistent, numbers.

    According to data from the last four years provided to Marine Corps Times, women are now making it through the course with a success rate of better than 50%, though the number of volunteers opting to attend IOC remains low. The course attrition and redesignation rate for male officers, meanwhile, has at times been as high as 25%.

  • JURIST ☛ Rights organizations criticize 'flawed' assessment of Saudi Arabia 2034 World Cup bid

    Amnesty International claims this assessment “contains no substantive discussion of extensive and relevant abuses in Saudi Arabia documented by multiple human rights organisations.” The first concern is over fears that the assessment purposely disregarded international human rights which Saudi Arabia has not recognized, or that the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF) considers irrelevant. Saudi Arabia is not a signatory of several international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has not signed the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

    Other concerns include an allegedly selective presentation of findings and a lack of credible external stakeholders in the report. All this led to “an artificially limited, misleading and overly positive perspective, that serves only to whitewash the reality of abuse and discrimination faced by Saudi Arabia’s citizens and residents,” argues Julia Legner, Executive Director of ALQST for Human Rights, a Saudi Arabian organization.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ World Cup 2034: Saudi Arabia human rights report 'flawed'

    "By producing a shockingly poor report, AS&H Clifford Chance, part of one of the world's largest law firms that makes much of its human rights expertise, has helped to remove a key final stumbling block."

    A number of charges have been laid by the various advocacy groups including Football Supporters Europe, Human Rights Watch, Middle East Democracy Center and Amnesty International, who branded the report a "whitewash".

    These center on three key issues: that the report failed to analyze human rights issues because Saudi Arabia had not ratified treaties or do not accept them as applicable to Saudi Arabia; that it was selective in using United Nations reports; and that the law firm failed to consult external experts.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban bans television broadcasts and public filming and photographing in Takhar province 

    “The Taliban’s latest ban on television and filming and photography in Takhar should trouble anyone who cares about media freedom worldwide,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “The citizens of Afghanistan deserve fundamental rights, and the international community must cease its passive observation of the country’s rapid regression.”

  • WCCF Tech ☛ Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s QA Team Strike Over Activision Blizzard’s Return-to-Office Mandate

    The QA workers for Activision Blizzard have recently been on strike in protest of the company's return-to-office (RTO) mandate, as stated by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). On October 25, the QA team who worked on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 rallied to make sure that there were work-from-home (WFH) accommodations for those who needed them. In this strike, they claimed that Activision and Microsoft had not granted any accommodations for employees with ADA-certified medical conditions. In addition to the QA team striking, over 300 Activision employees signed a petition earlier in the month to ask for the return of work-from-home options. This led to workers in Texas and California joining the Eden Prairie team in striking.

    In a statement from the CWA, they wrote: "Despite multiple requests from the Union representing the video-game workers, Activision and Microsoft have been unable to articulate why specifically they are insisting workers must work in the office, even those with serious medical conditions and doctor's recommendations to work from home."

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ The Starlink vs cable conundrum in the Pacific

    SpaceX’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite Internet service Starlink has arguably been a significant game changer for many users in the Pacific Islands who were previously accustomed to geostationary (GEO) and medium-earth orbit satellite services that charged in the hundreds of US dollars a month for a megabit per second of bandwidth. Starlink now reaches even the most remote of islands — and thanks to their inter-satellite laser link mesh, users in such remote places have reported seeing download rates of 100Mb/s and more.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• EFF ☛ Court Orders Google (a Monopolist) To Knock It Off With the Monopoly Stuff

  Each of these measures is well crafted, narrowly tailored, and purpose-built to accomplish something vital: improving competition in mobile app stores. [...]

  Some background: the mobile OS market is a duopoly run by two dominant firms, Google (Android) and Apple (iOS). Both companies distribute software through their app stores (Google's is called "Google Play," Apple's is the "App Store"), and both companies use a combination of market power and legal intimidation to ensure that their users get all their apps from the company's store.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Shueisha Hunts Manga Pirates But Needs Google, PayPal & VISA to Assist

    Japan-based publishing giant Shueisha has asked a court in the United States to issue an order that requires Google, VISA & PayPal to provide information on several pirate site operators. Shueisha's goal is to obtain enough information on these currently anonymous individuals so that it can file lawsuits against them in Japan. A DMCA subpoena obtained earlier against Cloudflare appears to have provided plenty of fresh leads.

  • Gannett ☛ McDonald's now has 'right to repair' broken machines for McFlurrys

    Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal for third parties to bypass digital locks on any copyrighted materiel, including software used in commercial devices like those McDonald's ice cream machines, even for repairs.

    What that has meant for McFlurry fans until Monday is that every time an ice cream machine in a McDonald's location breaks or has any kind of technical problem, it can only be repaired by the manufacturer and copyright holder.

  • The Verge ☛ Copyright Office exemption makes McDonald’s ice cream machines repairable

    McDonald’s always-broken ice cream machines might finally get easier to fix. That’s because the US Copyright Office granted an exemption allowing third parties to diagnose and repair commercial equipment — including the ones that make your McFlurries.

  • CNN ☛ McDonald’s finally has a solution to their busted McFlurry machine problem

    The United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption last week that gives restaurants the “right to repair” the machines by bypassing the digital locks that prevented them from being fixed. The inability to make timely fixes has been a bane of the customers’ existence, so much so, that there’s a third-party website called McBroken.com that tracks their availability.

    The exemption, which goes into effect Monday, was requested by advocacy group Public Knowledge and repairs website iFixIt to allow third parties to circumvent digital locks on the machines for repairs. Although the full request wasn’t granted, commercial restaurant equipment received a narrow exemption.