Leftovers

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Stevie Nicks ‘never voted’ until age 70: ‘I regret that’

  “You can say, ‘Oh I didn’t have time,’” she said, but “in the long run, you didn’t have an hour? You didn’t have an hour of your time that you could have gone and voted?”

• Venkatesh Rao ☛ Ribbonfarm is Retiring

  After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be my 50th birthday. There will be one final roundup post before then, and perhaps a shortish epitaph post. And the main page will switch to a static landing page. But after that date, this will effectively be a museum site.

• Elliot C Smith ☛ Lessons from one too many model spreadsheets

  Few things can be as helpful and potentially time-wasting as modelling your business with a spreadsheet and setting metrics. A clear model of how you make money is a great tool to help identify bottlenecks or risks. On the other hand, it is very easy for models and the team KPIs or metrics that result from them to be little more than noise. Previously, as a founder and in non-founder roles, I’ve had to build many models. I have learned a lot about how to set metrics, especially a long list of ways to do it poorly. This post will ideally help you to learn from some of my mistakes. I assume you know how to build a model in general; I’ll save Startup Modelling 101 for a future post.

• Michal Zelazny ☛ Reflections #1 - Michal Zelazny

  Thoughts have haunted me recently. Thoughts about many things I have done, I have experienced, and about some things I have witnessed. Those thoughts deserve a space to be expressed, but they’re not thoughts for a longer post. But they deserve more than a bullet point. Hence the new format. Thoughts but longer, let’s call them reflections.

• Thorsten Ball ☛ In Conversation: David Albert

  Today I have something different for you. It’s a transcript of a conversation I had with David Albert, co-founder of the Recurse Center.

  David and I have been talking regularly this year. We always talk about programming and nearly always one of us ends up saying “man, I love programming.”

  Last week, spontaneously, I asked him whether I can record & transcribe our next conversation. He said yes. We talked about learning new things, whether learning’s fun, building your own tools, what David learned at the Recurse Center — all the good stuff, it was fun.

  I shortened the transcript, cleaned it up, and slightly polished some sentences to highlight intended meaning. (Halloween challenge for you: record yourself, get a transcript, and scream at all the filler words you use.) Here it is.

• NeoMam Studios LtNeoMam Studios Ltd ☛ HouseFresh disappeared from Google Search results. Now what?

  In February 2024, we published an article warning readers not to trust product recommendations from well-known newspapers and magazines ranking at the top of Google search results.

  I wasn’t expecting so many people to care (even though I secretly hoped they would), but we’re still getting emails and messages about it ten weeks later.

• Wesley Moore ☛ Building and Launching My New Link Blog, linkedlist.org (Twice)

  I initially toyed with the idea of using micro.blog to host the site as it can host blogs, micro or not, and has a lot of built-in support for cross-posting to services like Mastodon. Ultimately I decided it wasn’t quite the right fit for what I was aiming for.

  Concluding I’d need to build it myself I reached for my go-to static-site-compiler: Zola. As part of the micro.blog experiment I took a liking to their Alpine theme, which as it was open-source I used as the base style for the Zola site.

• James G ☛ Readable and memorable URLs

  In a recent call, I typed a URL to a wiki page rather than finding the document. This allowed me to share the document faster than going to the website and manually copying the URL.

• The Atlantic ☛ The Genius of Handel’s 'Messiah'

  This skewed acclaim is unfair to Handel, who was as brilliantly prolific as any composer who ever lived. But it is also a tribute to the overwhelming effect of the Messiah, which is a feat of sustained inspiration arguably unsurpassed in the canon of Western classical music. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my People,” the libretto opens, pulling us in at the beginning, its flow of compelling melody and stirring choruses enthralling us for the next two hours and leaving us singularly exalted.

• Adafruit ☛ Vintage Computing Electronic Halloween

  Nearly as long as there have been home computers, folks have been using them for Halloween fun. Today we look back at how the community has celebrated Halloween over the years, as told by vintage computing publications in the Internet Archive: [...]

• Jeremy Kun ☛ How This Blog Does IndieWeb

  Earlier this year I migrated this blog off Wordpress to the Hugo static site generator. Over the last six months I’ve been gradually sculpting and shaping this digital place to feel more like my cozy corner of the web. This was partly motivated by withering social media, partly inspired by the IndieWeb POSSE philosophy (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), and partly driven by my desire to do more with the space like embed Javascript demos and have footnotes and endnotes.

  So one of the big new features is that I have a “shortform” section on the blog, which corresponds roughly to threads I would post on Twitter or Mastodon. Syndication automatically converts those to full threads on all platforms, with a link back to the website.

• Science

  • Science News ☛ Using AI, historians track how astronomy ideas spread in the 16th century

    Historians working with an artificial intelligence assistant have begun tracking the spread of astronomical thinking across Europe in the early 1500s.

    The analysis contributes to challenging the “lone genius” idea of scientific revolutions. Instead, it shows that knowledge about the positions of the stars was widespread and used in a variety of disciplines, researchers report October 23 in Science Advances.

  • Bartosz Milewski ☛ Covering Sieves

    In order to define a sheaf, we have to start with coverage. A coverage defines, for every object u, a family of covers that satisfy the sub-coverage conditions. Granted, we can express coverage using objects and arrows, but it would be much nicer if we could use the language of functors and natural transformations.

    Let’s start with the idea that, categorically, a cover of u is a bunch of arrows converging on u. Each arrow p_i \colon u_i \to u is a member of the hom-set \mathcal C (u_i, u). Now consider the fact that \mathcal C (-, u) is a presheaf, \mathcal C^{op} \to \mathbf{Set}, and ask the question: Is a cover a “subfunctor” of \mathcal C (-, u)?

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Two High Schoolers Found an 'Impossible' Proof for a 2,000-Year-Old Math Rule—Then, They Discovered Nine More

    The research published on Sunday in The American Mathematical Monthly outlines “five or ten” new ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry. That is to say, each of their proofs demonstrates that the square of a right triangle’s longest side equals the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides.

  • The Royal Society UK ☛ A City on Mars announced as winner of 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

    A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by American husband and wife team Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, was announced as the winner of the prestigious prize at an award ceremony and dinner at the Royal Society in London this evening.

    An accumulation of thorough research, from “conferences, endless interviews and 27 shelves of books and papers on space settlement and related subjects,” the book, published by Particular Books, takes readers on a journey to clear up misconceptions about the feasibility of space settlement. From space law and lawyers to space farms and the creation of space nations, the Weinersmiths tackle every conceivable question about space with a comedic twist, crucially warning readers that “going to the stars will not make us wise […] we have to become wise if we want to go to the stars.”

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ Europa Clipper telemetry

    In my previous post I spoke about the recording I did of the Europa Clipper X-band telemetry shortly after launch with one of the Allen Telescope Array antennas. In that post I analysed the recording waterfall and the signal modulation and coding, and decoded the telemetry frames with GNU Radio. In this post I analyse the contents of the telemetry. As we will see, there are several similarities with the telemetry of Psyche. This makes sense, because both are NASA missions that have been launched only one year apart.

• Education

  • NL Times ☛ Children are much better at math when they eat healthy, exercise: Maastricht researchers

    School children perform much better in mathematics if they eat a healthy lunch at school and exercise more, a study by Maastricht University found. The researchers were surprised by how big the effect was, they told RTL Nieuws.

  • ARRL ☛ ARRL Recognizes University of Scranton During Amateur Radio Station Dedication

    The new W3USR University of Scranton Amateur Radio Station supports the radio club, academic research, and the university’s outreach to the community. Frissell kicked off the dedication by framing the station’s purpose for education, research, service, and fun.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Father and son revisit their wars at Marine Corps museum

    For Travis and Patrick Reese, the museum gave them a chance to reflect on their combat experiences while recognizing that they were not defined by their wars.

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Ivory Tower Architect

    Note: I’m fully aware that this essay may rub some people the wrong way especially those who make a living by taking advantage of the fact that in many organizations, the ability to pretend to work is as payable as doing the actual work. Nevertheless, if it wasn't important, I wouldn't write it.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Bakelite To The Future – A 1950s Bluetooth Headset

    A decade ago, [Jouke Waleson] bought a Dutch ‘model 1950’ PTT (The Dutch Postal Service) rotary-dial telephone of presumably 1950s vintage manufactured by a company called Standard Electric, and decided it would be neat to hack it to function as a Bluetooth hands-free device. Looking at the reverse, however, it is stamped “10.65” on the bottom, so maybe it was made as recently as 1965, but whatever, it’s still pretty old-tech now.

  • Hackaday ☛ Few Things Are Cheaper Than This Antenna

    As far as hobbies go, ham radio tends to be on the more expensive side. A dual-band mobile radio can easily run $600, and a high-end HF base station with the capability of more than 100 watts will easily be in the thousands of dollars. But, like most things, there’s an aspect to the hobby that can be incredibly inexpensive and accessible to newcomers. Crystal radios, for example, can be built largely from stuff most of us would have in our parts drawers, CW QRP radios don’t need much more than that, and sometimes even the highest-performing antennas are little more than two lengths of wire.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ LTT's Precision Screwdriver - better than iFixit?

    Two years ago, Linus Sebastian released a general purpose ratcheting screwdriver tailored towards PC building and IT needs. I reviewed the LTT Screwdriver, and found it to be a good tool that did improve a couple things where it counted: the ratchet mechanism was useful for a broad range of lighter tasks, and the in-handle bit storage was a creative improvement over the patented MegaPro Automotive design the LTT Screwdriver was based on.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Nothing Lasts Forever

    Some great films from the early days of the movie industry weren't preserved, and the works of people like Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, and many others from the silent era will never be seen again. The military records of hundreds of thousands of World War Two veterans were burned in a fire at a VA records warehouse in the '60s, and the information on them is not retrievable. People think that the advent of computers means that data will last forever, but that's not true. CDs, floppy disks, and hard drives all have life spans, and if the data, whether it be pictures or music or books, isn't continually moved from one medium to another, one day it will be gone.

  • Marcus Buffett ☛ Creating an optimized keyboard layout for the next generation of the Datahand

    Ever seen this keyboard? This was called the Datahand, it was a radical new approach to keyboards that mostly only existed within a small community of RSI sufferers. It cost $2,000 in 1993, which is north of $4,000 today, so you really had to need this thing to justify the price. Even now there’s a small community that continues to use these.

  • SparkFun Electronics ☛ How Many ROMs Are There? Funny You Should Ask…

    SparkFun recently finished up a series of short videos called Funny You Should Ask that covers acronyms and electronics concepts in under 1 minute. Since producing a bunch of boards that offer EEPROM, such as the SparkFun Qwiic EEPROM Breakout we figured it would be smart to explain just what EEPROM is. But to explain EEPROM, you need to understand EPROM, PROM, and ROM. So we might as well explain all 4 within the series.

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ Winner, Name that Ware September 2024

    Last month’s Ware was a Cue COVID test reader. It uses LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) to perform a fast and sensitive detection of nucleic acid sequences. Thanks again to Curtis Galloway for contributing this ware for me to take apart and photograph!

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ Name that Ware, October 2024

    This one should be a smidge easier to guess than last month’s ware. The main reason I liked this ware is actually the board shown below with the prominent star-routing. It’s such traditional hand-routing work, I love craftsmanship like this.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Pro Publica ☛ In Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic Sometimes Called the Shots With Gov. Tim Walz

    At the vice presidential debate against Republican Sen. JD Vance this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did something he’s done throughout his nearly 20-year career in politics: name-drop the Mayo Clinic.

    “If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump,” Walz said.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Parents Trust ChatGPT More Than Doctors, New Study Finds

    “During the study, some early iterations of the AI output contained incorrect information. This is concerning because, as we know, AI tools like ChatGPT are prone to ‘hallucinations’—errors that occur when the system lacks sufficient context,” Leslie-Miller said. “In child health, where the consequences can be significant, it’s crucial that we address this issue. We’re concerned that people may increasingly rely on AI for health advice without proper expert oversight.”

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Woman's 'horrific' death under Texas abortion ban was preventable, doctors say

    Doctors noted in her medical records that a miscarriage was “in process” and “inevitable,” but they told Barnica and her husband they couldn’t intervene because they detected fetal cardiac activity.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU investigates Temu over illegal products

    Worried about counterfeit items being sold on Temu, Vestager wants to know what systems Temu has in place to crack down on curb "rogue traders" selling "non-compliant goods" as well as how the platform restricts their "reappearance."

    The Commission is also concerned about the aggressive sales tactics and the "potentially addictive design" of Temu, including "game-like" reward programs.

    It could face hefty fines, as high as six percent of its global turnover, if the company is found to be in breach of the act.

  • Wired ☛ OpenAI’s Transcription Tool Hallucinates. Hospitals Are Using It Anyway

    The fabrications pose particular risks in health care settings. Despite OpenAI’s warnings against using Whisper for “high-risk domains,” over 30,000 medical workers now use Whisper-based tools to transcribe patient visits, according to the AP report. The Mankato Clinic in Minnesota and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are among 40 health systems using a Whisper-powered AI copilot service from medical tech company Nabla that is fine-tuned on medical terminology.

    Nabla acknowledges that Whisper can confabulate, but it also reportedly erases original audio recordings “for data safety reasons.” This could cause additional issues, since doctors cannot verify accuracy against the source material. And deaf patients may be highly impacted by mistaken transcripts since they would have no way to know if medical transcript audio is accurate or not.

  • YLE ☛ Study: Problematic use of social media affects all age groups

    The addictive nature of social media platforms, loneliness, and social needs can combine with psychological issues such as a tendency towards addictions and underlying mental health problems.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The risks of OpenAI's Whisper audio transcription model – Baldur Bjarnason

    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.

    It took me a couple of days to find the time to properly dig into it and it’s a mixed bag. The report highlights a number of very serious and real issues, but in the process glosses over a few details that might be important.

    It mixes anecdotal evidence with studies, that use varying versions of OpenAI’s Whisper, wrapped in a range of different software, using a variety of audio types.

    Audio quality, length, number of voices, speech patterns matter a lot, and the longer the recording the more likely it is to have errors

    But, there are two core conclusions to take away from it.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Scoop News Group ☛ DHS touts AI work and pilots a year after executive order

    The agency reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received positive reviews from officers using generative AI-assisted training for testing, with pledges to continue to assess the technology in officer training. Similarly, Homeland Security Investigations, which evaluates global threats, said it will “continue to test and optimize the use of open-source models in supporting law enforcement investigations.”

    The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, appears to be in a preliminary phase with the technology. FEMA’s pilot involved the use of a large language model to help draft hazard mitigation plans, but the DHS component found that “increasing user understanding of AI and receiving feedback directly from community users is an important first step to integrating GenAI into any existing process.”

  • 404 Media ☛ Zuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improves

    In a quarterly earnings call that was overwhelmingly about AI and Meta’s plans for it, Zuckerberg said that new, AI-generated feeds are likely to come to Facebook and other Meta platforms. Zuckerberg said he is excited for the “opportunity for AI to help people create content that just makes people’s feed experiences better.” Zuckerberg’s comments were first reported by Fortune.

  • USMC ☛ Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

    Despite the investigation finding Del Pizzo followed the proper procedures and was not derelict in his duties, investigators concluded Del Pizzo could have continued flying the jet and his decision to eject was a mistake.

    The investigation concluded that the mishap resulted from pilot error, and said Del Pizzo “incorrectly diagnosed an [out-of-controlled flight] emergency and ejected from a flyable aircraft — albeit under extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions,” the report said.

  • Michał Sapka ☛ AI radio was straight out of a nightmare

    A few days ago, I wrote about AI radio. Well, we can now talk about it in past tense as they gave up. The response was so negative, that they are no longer doing it. This is the happy part.

    But they are not the only ones doing such “experiments”. LLMs may have proven themselves to be unreliable doing anything, but this won’t stop evil people from using it everywhere. We can only oppose.

  • Roy Tang ☛ How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why

    I never liked the idea of SEO. Even in it's infancy I always felt like it was sleazy marketing voodoo. And the worst part was that all of it was completely dependent on a platform that could change things on a whim.

  • Macworld ☛ What you need to know about Thunderbolt 5

    The standard is built on USB4 V2, DisplayPort 2.1, and PCI Express Gen 4 and is fully compatible with previous Thunderbolt versions. The increased performance is achieved using a new signaling technology called “PAM-3” which should enable today’s printed circuit boards and passive cables (up to 1 meter) to achieve this performance.

  • Futurism ☛ Google Has Deep Ties to AI Startup Accused to Causing Teen Suicide

    The billion-dollar AI companion company Chatbot.AI has been accused of failing to protect a 14-year-old user who died by suicide after developing an intense emotional relationship with one of the platform's chatbots.

    The tragedy sounds like dark sci-fi, but it could prove to be a real-world problem for tech behemoth Google, which is paying serious money for access to Character.AI's underlying technology in a deal that could threaten its squeaky-clean corporate image.

  • Techdirt ☛ ChatGPT Dreams Up Fake Studies, Alaska Cites Them To Support School Phone Ban

    Sometimes I love a good “mashup” story hitting on two of the different themes we cover here at Techdirt. This one is especially good: Alaska legislators relying on fake stats generated by an AI system to justify banning phones in schools, courtesy of the Alaska Beacon. It’s a mashup of the various stories about mobile phone bans in schools (which have been shown not to be effective) and people who should know better using ChatGPT as if it was trustworthy for research.

  • Futurism ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Pledges to Fill Facebook With Even More AI Slop

    Reading between the lines, instead of making the company's social media platforms a more livable and less ad-infested space, the billionaire is instead choosing to fan the flames — at the same time that Meta pours resources into its own AI.

  • Fortune ☛ Mark Zuckerberg says a lot more AI generated content is coming to fill up your Facebook and Instagram feeds | Fortune

    Zuckerberg described our future feeds during Facebook-parent company Meta’s third quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, describing it as a natural evolution.

    “I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” the Meta CEO said. “And I think that that’s gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time.”

  • Pi My Life Up ☛ Setting up an AI Image Analyzer on Home Assistant

    We will use an integration known as LLM vision to integrate AI quickly into Home Assistant. One of the benefits of this integration is that you can use it to talk with various AI providers such as Google, OpenAI, Local AI, and more. To use this integration, you must have HACS installed, as it is not built into the core of Home Assistant.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: AI’s “human in the loop” isn’t

    The operator checking those fiche indices is something AI people like to call a "human in the loop" – a human operator who assesses each judgment made by the AI and overrides it should the AI have made a mistake. "Humans in the loop" present a tantalizing solution to algorithmic misfires, bias, and unexpected errors, and so "we'll put a human in the loop" is the cure-all response to any objection to putting an imperfect AI in charge of a high-stakes application.

    But it's not just AIs that are imperfect. Humans are wildly imperfect, and one thing they turn out to be very bad at is supervising AIs. In a 2022 paper for Computer Law & Security Review, the mathematician and public policy expert Ben Green investigates the empirical limits on human oversight of algorithms: [...]

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Adafruit ☛ The Open Source AI Definition – 1.0 #OSI [Ed: Openwashing stunt

      For a quick rundown you can see this article from The Verge. They note this definiation directly challenges Meta’s Llama which has been trumpeted as open source: [...]

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ "Is My Phone Listening To Me?"

      Whether you’re just starting to question some of the effects of technology in your life or you’re the designated tech wizard of your family looking for resources to share, Digital Rights Bytes is here to help answer some common questions that may be bugging you about the devices you use.  

      We often hear the question, “Is my phone listening to me?” Generally, the answer is no, but the reason you may think that your phone is listening to you is actually quite complicated. Data brokers and advertisers havesome sneaky tactics at their disposal to serve you ads that feel creepy in the moment and may make you think that your device is secretly taking notes on everything you say. 

      Watch the short video—featuring a cute little penguin discovering how advertisers collect and track their personal data—and share it with your family and friends who have asked similar questions! Curious to learn more? We also have information about how to mitigate this tracking and what EFF is doing to stop these data brokers from collecting your information. 

    • Site36 ☛ Frontex spends half a billion on aerial surveillance, new research shows more involvement in pullbacks

      On the 20th anniversary of the founding of Frontex, new details about its complicity with the Libyan Coast Guard have come to light. Activists and lawyers are protesting and taking legal action. The European border agency Frontex has invested over €500 million in aerial surveillance in the Mediterranean region since 2017.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Sweden and Norway rethink cashless society plans over Russia security fears

      In a brochure with the title If Crisis or War Comes that will be sent to every home in Sweden next month, the defence ministry advises people to use cash regularly and keep at least a week’s supply in various denominations as well as access to other forms of payment such as bank cards and digital payment services. “If you can pay in several different ways, you strengthen your preparedness,” it says.

      The government is also considering legislation to protect the ability to pay in cash for certain goods. Cash is legal tender in Sweden, but shops and restaurants can effectively make themselves cashless as long as they display a notice setting out their restrictions on payment methods.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Data is the ‘new oil,’ and it’s outperforming the old, literal oil

      Data, the so-called “new oil,” is outperforming the old, literal oil. Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet all reported better-than-expected results this week — on Tuesday, Google’s parent company saw revenue jump 15% quarter-on-quarter — sending the tech-heavy Nasdaq soaring.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Looking for new activities? Google wants you to turn to its navigation app

      The tech giant is adding generative AI features to Google Maps so people can easily get recommendations for places to go and activities to do.

      With 2 billion people using Google Maps every month, the company envisions people also will turn to the navigation app for inspiration, executives said at a press event at the company’s Street View Garage in Palo Alto on Wednesday.

    • El País ☛ No masks in public spaces: Mexico tightens restrictions on Halloween celebrations due to rising violence

      Three cities in northern Mexico — Tijuana in Baja California, Hermosillo in Sonora, and Mazatlán in Sinaloa — have implemented strict measures for Halloween celebrations on October 31. These restrictions include banning masks and costumes that fully cover the face, both in public spaces and while driving, and are aimed at increasing public safety amid the rising violence in the country.

    • Futurism ☛ NYC Attempt to Scan Subway for Weapons With AI Fails Miserably as System Flooded by False Positives While Detecting Zero Actual Guns

      After City & State pointed out that the New York Police Department had been silent about the month-long test, launched at the end of July, officials were forced to reveal to the website its underwhelming results: that the subway scanners had recovered exactly zero guns and 12 knives. Those figures were dwarfed by the fact that it had also turned up more than 118 false positives.

      "That's 118 additional New Yorkers who were subjected to additional stop and search, who had their privacy invaded for no reason," Legal Aid Society attorney Diane Akerman told CBS. "The fact that the NYPD notes 12 knives but no arrests leads me to believe these were completely legal knives."

      Evolv's scanners have proven so faulty, they even proffered false positives on multiple occasions when a specific CBS reporter walked through them in 2022 and then again earlier this year. Talk about a dud.

    • CBS ☛ NYC's subway weapons scanning pilot program "objectively a failure," critics say - CBS New York

      According to the NYPD, some 2,749 scans were done during the pilot program. There were 118 false positives, the NYPD said. Twelve knives were recovered. No guns were recovered.

      The Legal Aid Society opposed the use of the scanners before the pilot program started, and now hopes it will be shelved for good.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Recommends Feeding Your Medical Scans Into His Grok AI

      X-formerly-Twitter owner and xAI CEO Elon Musk claims that his foul-mouthed AI chatbot Grok is now capable of understanding images. And what does its creator want you to do? Feed it private medical documents, of course.

  • Confidentiality

    • Jan Schaumann ☛ TLS 1.3 Hybrid Key Exchange using X25519Kyber768 / ML-KEM

      Over the last few months, we've seen a fair bit of action in the industry relating to Post-Quantum Cryptography: NIST at long last standardized the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM), and browsers and cloud providers started rolling out hybrid key exchange in TLS 1.3 (primarily1 using X25519 with Kyber768). Having had to wrap my head around what that TLS 1.3 hybrid key exchange handshake actually looks like in practice, I figured I'd share my explanation here as well:

      For the most part, we're following the standard TLS 1.3 connection flow. What's different here is what keys are generated and how they're used, so let's focus on that: [...]

    • University of Toronto ☛ Keeping your site accessible to old browsers is non-trivial

      The first issue is that old systems generally can't handle modern TLS and don't recognize modern certificate authorities, like Let's Encrypt. This situation is only going to get worse over time, as websites increasingly require TLS 1.2 or better (and then in the future, TLS 1.3 or better). If you seriously care about keeping your site accessible to old browsers, you need to have a fully functional HTTP version. Increasingly, it seems that modern browsers won't like this, but so far they're willing to put up with it. I don't know if there's any good way to steer modern visitors to your HTTPS version instead of your HTTP version.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Local DK ☛ Danish party wants to ‘profile’ citizenship applicants to ensure ‘democratic values’

    That entails “believing that all your fellow citizens have the right to the same freedoms as you,” he said.

    Vanopslagh cited opinions such as “thinking Jews should be exterminated” and “homosexuals should not be permitted” as the type of views that should preclude you from becoming Danish.

  • RFERL ☛ Finnish Prosecutor Charges Russian Ultranationalist Leader With War Crimes

    Deputy Prosecutor-General Jukka Rappe said Torden and his group are linked to the deaths of 22 Ukrainian soldiers and the injury of four others. He is accused of violating the laws of war and committing acts of cruelty against both injured and deceased enemy combatants, according to the indictment as cited by Yle.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Here’s what a second Trump term might look like for federal employees

    Former President Donald Trump, running for a second term, has repeatedly criticized much of the federal workforce, and taken measures to make it easier to fire career federal employees.

    Here’s a rundown of how the Trump administration impacted the federal workforce — andd what Trump has vowed to bring back if he is elected for a second term: [...]

  • Common Dreams ☛ FEC Snoozes Through the Election While Allegedly Illegal Coinbase Spending Reaches $50M

    "Coinbase has spent more than $50 million in what appears to be illegal campaign contributions from a federal contractor to attack candidates who might stand up to Big Crypto; meanwhile, the FEC is snoozing through the election. The time to hold campaign finance violators accountable is now — not after illegal election spending has corrupted our democracy."

  • Rolling Stone ☛ How Elon Musk Helped Fuel the UK’s Far-Right Riots

    Musk’s interventions in Britain’s summer unrest did not come from nowhere. Through his warping and wilding of X, he has spent the past two years helping create the ideal conditions for far-right violence in the U.K. — and beyond.

  • RFERL ☛ What Moldova And Georgia Showed Us About Pushback Against Russian Influence

    The election outcomes in Moldova and Georgia highlight the starkly differing ways their respective governments and civil society pushed back to resist Russian meddling and other nefarious elements at crucial junctures for both countries.

  • YLE ☛ Finnish Coast Guard reports GPS interference and "shadow fleets" in Baltic Sea

    Finland's Coast Guard says it has detected constant disturbances to satellite navigation signals in the Baltic Sea and tankers spoofing location data to cover up visits to Russia.

  • The Verge ☛ Tech leaders line up to flatter Trump’s ego

    Here’s what we do know: Zuckerberg said Trump’s reaction to being shot at was “badass.” Jeff Bezos reportedly killed The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris, and executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin met with Trump the same day the Post published its non-endorsement.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ What happens if Americans claim asylum from a Trump regime?

    The basic pattern is clear: liberal democratic states allied to the US would face a choice between their state interests as allies of the US on the one hand and upholding the right to asylum and defending liberal democratic values on the other. Nobody can be confident about what would happen in practice. If I were a US dissident, I would choose my place of asylum carefully.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Musk ordered to appear in court to explain cash-for-voters lottery

    Elon Musk's daily $1m giveaways to registered voters are not illegal, he insists. But it has been noted that the winners are attendees at political rallies for the candidate he has given hundreds of millions to—and that it looks awfully like vote-buying and a lottery. Musk was ordered to appear in court in Philadelphia, having been sued by local prosecutors to explain the difference between cash for voters and cash for votes.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Musk to appear in court as part of Trump campaign suit

    Philadelphia's chief prosecutor Larry Krasner lodged the suit on Monday, calling Musk's project "an illegal lottery scheme", with the judge in the case ruling Wednesday that the billionaire is required to appear in court.

    "It is further ordered that all parties must be present at the time of the hearing," judge Anne Marie Coyle said.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Crypto industry spending big to sway California congressional races

    A super PAC funded by cryptocurrency companies and investors has spent more than any other industry group to back incumbent Orange County Rep. Michelle Steel.

    [Cryptocurrency] has spent more than any other industry lobby in congressional races across California, including in the U.S. Senate primary.

  • European Commission ☛ Report: Safer Together – Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness

    On 20 March, the President of the European Commission, together with the High Representative / Vice President, asked Special Adviser Sauli Niinistö – Former President of the Republic of Finland – to write a report on how to enhance Europe’s civilian and defence preparedness and readiness by October 2024. This report has the purpose of assessing the complex challenges the EU and its Member States face in a volatile geopolitical landscape and present recommendations to enhance the preparedness and readiness of the EU01.

    The following questions guided the work on the report: [...]

  • European Commission ☛ Safer together: A path towards a fully prepared Union - European Commission

    The report underlines the need for an ambitious new approach to our preparedness and readiness. To this end, it presents around 80 recommendations for both short-term and medium to long-term actions.

  • EuroNews ☛ EU urgently needs to act on defence, says landmark report

    The EU must signal to the US that it is prepared to pay its way on military and civil preparedness, former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö says in a new report presented to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.

    The EU urgently needs to be more pro-active in its response to the increasingly complex crises facing the world, according to a report on Europe's civilian and military preparedness published today by former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö.

  • New Statesman ☛ The West will pay a steep price if it ignores Brics countries

    Of the latter, the most important has been the Brics+. The acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The “plus” stands for the new members: Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia is to join soon. Several other countries are semi-attached too.

    Together the Brics+ accounts for 35.4 per cent of the world economy. The G7 advanced industrial countries account for 29.6 per cent. The gap is even wider when we consider their respective shares of the global population. Brics+ has almost 45 per cent, while the G7 has 10 per cent.

    So what makes us so sure that we can win this 21st-century cold war when they are bigger than us and, collectively, richer too?

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Putin is making the most of a distracted and divided United States

    American neglect couldn’t come at a more perilous time. Autocratic aggressors are acting in increasing common cause, particularly through unprecedented defense-industrial cooperation, recognizing a rare chance to reshape the international order to their advantage, with the Biden administration losing steam and the two US presidential candidates focused more on defeating each other than any external foe.

  • The Hill ☛ North Korea comes to Europe: How will the next president respond?

    Having Pyongyang’s forces fighting in Ukraine would both bolster Moscow tactically and provide those troops with battlefield experience, greatly benefitting them in future conflicts on the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, the risk that, in return, the Kremlin supplies Kim Jong Un with nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile technology — if it hasn’t already — directly imperils South Korea, Japan and deployed U.S. forces in the region.

    By contrast, in 2018, Trump canceled regular U.S.-South Korean “war games” to please Kim, thus compromising allied combat readiness. In a tense environment, where the U.S.-South Korean troops’ preparedness mantra is “Fight Tonight,” this is crucial.

    There is no sign that Trump understands his mistake. And Harris’s thoughts on Pyongyang’s menace appear to be a blank slate.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Italian Navy tasks Fincantieri to design drone-laden warships

    “We expect new navy vessels in ten years will be using a large number of drones and we want to be prepared,” said Capt. Gianluca Marcilli, who heads the Technology Innovation Office at the Navy General Staff’s General Space and Innovation Office (UGSI).

  • The Nation ☛ Elon Musk Eyes a Shadow Presidency

    We’ve never seen the American plutocracy operate quite like this. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, spent the homestretch of the 2024 presidential campaign providing a degree of public and financial support to a candidate that’s all but unprecedented in the annals of pay-to-play American electioneering. Not since Howard Hughes secretly funneled cash to Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon in 1968 has an unstable, flamboyant billionaire industrialist exerted such influence on a presidential race.

  • The Nation ☛ That “Little Secret” Between Trump and Johnson? Here’s What It Could Mean.

    During the Nazi-throwback rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, after Donald Trump and his MAGA cohorts finished insulting pretty much every non-white person who might even think of voting for him, Trump revealed that he doesn’t actually need votes to be installed as president again. Referencing a “secret plan” he has with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Trump said this: “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a little secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”

    When pressed, Speaker Johnson released a statement effectively confirming the existence of the plot: “By definition, a secret is not to be shared—and I don’t intend to share this one.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Washington Post ☛ Gen Z hears Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ tape on TikTok for the first time

    Many first-time voters were young teens in 2016 when The Washington Post first reported the incident, in which the former president seemed to endorse sexual assault during a behind-the-scenes conversation on an “Access Hollywood” set when he didn’t realize his microphone was on. Despite widespread criticism of Trump’s comments at the time, he went on to win the 2016 presidential election, and the mainstream news cycle moved on.

  • Vox ☛ Republicans are using Biden’s ‘garbage’ gaffe to obscure a damaging truth | Vox

    That is the official White House transcript of the remarks, at least. Republicans argue that what Biden actually said was, “the only garbage I see floating out there is his [i.e., Trump’s] supporters.” In other words, Biden says he was calling Hinchcliffe’s demonization of Puerto Rico garbage, while Republicans say he was calling all Trump supporters trash.

    It is impossible to distinguish “supporter’s” from “supporters” by ear. So, it cannot be known with certainty what Biden intended in the moment that those words escaped his lips. The surrounding context, however, undercuts the GOP’s interpretation. Immediately after uttering his controversial statement, the president said the following: [...]

  • New York Times ☛ Internal Emails Show Harvard Leaders Debating Response to Hamas Attack

    The report, part of a nearly yearlong inquiry by House Republicans investigating antisemitism on university campuses, offers a rare window into the discussions at multiple universities and how difficult judgment calls made by a small handful of people were scrutinized around the world.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ The misinformation network profiting off the ‘invasion’ narrative

    Two nonprofit compliance experts who examined Border911’s 2023 tax documents said it was unusual to see nearly identical expenditures for the two entities, while one of them — the dark money organization — reported no revenue. It appears, they said, that the tax-exempt charity money may have been passed through the dark money organization, which would violate IRS tax law. “I don’t have any explanation for how the (c)(4) can bring in zero money in its first year and be able to spend tens of thousands of dollars,” said Robert Maguire, vice president of research and data at the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

  • American Oversight ☛ Inside Election Integrity Network Meetings

    Recordings obtained by American Oversight reveal members of the prominent election denial group commenting on the deficiencies of EagleAI and their own efforts to find evidence of nonexistent widespread voter fraud.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather

    What would make a man undertake such a radical change? Isaacson writes that Haldeman had come “to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft.” One of Haldeman’s sons has written that it may have simply been “his adventurous spirit and the desire for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family.” But another factor was at play: his strong support for the brand-new apartheid regime.

    An examination of Joshua Haldeman’s writings reveals a radical conspiracy theorist who expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and antidemocratic views repeatedly, and over the course of decades—a record I studied across hundreds of documents from the time, including newspaper clips, self-published manuscripts, university archives, and private correspondence. Haldeman believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead “White Christian Civilization” in its fight against the “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” they controlled.

  • The Hill ☛ Half of Gen Z voters admit to lying about their votes: Survey

    The intense polarization this election cycle might result in some staying quiet or lying on the topic of their political beliefs when around friends and family.

• Environment

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘You can’t shoot climate change’: Richard Seymour on how far right exploits environmental crisis

    Ecological disaster transforms into disaster created by human evil; the climate crisis turns into a crisis of interpersonal rivalry, aggression and victimhood. The destruction of the planet creates the structural conditions for these ideas but it wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t already circulating, Seymour argues.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Overshooting 1.5°C is risky. That's why we need to hedge our bets

    In a recent study in the journal Nature, we discuss the pitfalls of being overly optimistic about the feasibility and safety of such temperature overshoot scenarios. Excessive confidence could lead to underestimating the risks associated with going over 1.5°C—even temporarily.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Scientists Urge FCC to Suspend LEO Launches

    More than 100 scientists are urging the FCC to temporarily suspend new broadband satellite launches until the agency assesses the environmental effects of planned mega-constellations. They note the number of LEO satellites has increased 12 times in five years, led by SpaceX.

    “The new space race is ramping up quickly: some experts are estimating an additional 58,000 satellites will be launched by 2030,” say the scientists, who come from the realms of astrophysics, aerospace engineering and astronomy, in a letter to the agency. “Other plans have been proposed to launch 500,000 satellites to create new mega-constellations that would power satellite [Internet].”

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Remote Work Cuts Office Emissions 25%, Ottawa Study Finds

    Federal public servants in Ottawa who work remotely contributed 25% fewer emissions than those who worked only from the office, a new report suggests as a major public sector union fights against more mandated office days.

    Remote workers on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River contributed even fewer emissions thanks largely to greener homes heated by electricity (even inefficient electric baseboards) rather than natural gas, and the province’s virtually all-renewable energy grid, the report said.

  • Futurism ☛ Congratulations, Buffoons! We Did More Global Warming Last Year Than in Any Other Year in Human History

    Despite increasingly dire global calls to curb deadly emissions, 2023 was apparently the worst year for global warming on record.

    In its new Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has found that atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are now growing more rapidly than at any other point in human history.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft AI called ‘greenwash’ fuel for Big Oil

    Redmond-based Microsoft reckons its agreements with the oil and gas industry could represent a market opportunity of $35 to $75 billion annually in the coming years, using its technology services to aid fossil fuel exploration and production.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Atmospheric CO2 Hits 420 ppm, Rises 11% in Just Two Decades

    Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations increased to 420 parts per million (ppm) last year, the 12th year in a row when climate pollution rose by at least 2 ppm, the World Meteorological Organization reports in the latest edition of its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Protecting northern water supplies from toxic metals in thawing permafrost

    Elliott Skierszkan, a geologist at Carleton University, and his colleagues recently measured the concentrations of naturally occurring uranium and arsenic in water released from permafrost samples collected in the Yukon.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ How social media is influencing our interactions with public lands

    When Ford travels, she’s looking for those less-busy places, not just to discover somewhere new to her, but also to not contribute to the demand of places that don’t have infrastructure to support an onslaught of visitors. Pulling off the side of a road inundated with visitors may not just cause traffic chaos, but also could damage wildlife and road infrastructure, she said.

    “I think also another thing that I’ve seen globally is just people wanting to see a place more than they have respect for the place,” Ford said.

  • DeSmog ☛ DeSmog and Pocket Project Team Up to Host Climate Consciousness Summit 2024

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Norwegian Oil Giant’s Plan to Capture UK’s Carbon Is Fraught With Risks

    • DeSmog ☛ How Saudi Arabia’s Neom Giga Project Became a Global Showroom of False Climate Solutions

    • The Record ☛ Russia to ban cryptocurrency mining in some regions due to electricity shortages

      The Russian government will begin banning cryptocurrency mining in certain regions in November as it struggles with electricity shortages amid its war with Ukraine, according to the country’s energy officials.

      The new law imposing restrictions on both private and industrial miners was signed earlier in October, just a few months after Russia legalized virtual currency mining for legal entities and entrepreneurs.

    • Vox ☛ Apple Intelligence, ChatGPT, and the climate cost of AI | Vox

      If that fills you with dread, it’s understandable. Maybe you feel bad participating in the race to build a superintelligent AI nobody asked for. You may feel complicit for using AI models trained on copyrighted material without paying the creators. You probably feel just plain bad about the flood of AI slop that’s ruining the internet even if you did not personally create the slop.

      Then there’s the climate consequences of it all. AI, in its many shapes and forms, requires a lot of energy and water to work. A lot. That might make you feel downright guilty about using AI.

    • VOA News ☛ Thousands of passenger flight signals jammed over war zones in Ukraine, Middle East

      There has been a big increase over the past two years in the use of electronic warfare technology, which is frequently used to disrupt drones or missiles that use global positioning system or other satellite navigation technology to home in on their targets.

      However, the blocking or spoofing of GPS signals also affects commercial aircraft, explained Raphael Monstein, a research associate at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk May Have Made a Huge Mistake on Full Self-Driving That It's Too Late to Correct

      Those flaws have caught — and continue to catch — the attention of regulators. Earlier this month, Tesla became the subject of yet another investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

      The probe hones in on one of Tesla's most eyebrow-raising decisions when it comes to its driver assistance package: the insistence on exclusively relying on camera sensors instead of LiDAR and radar like its competitors, which CEO Elon Musk has long derided as a "crutch."

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • YLE ☛ Endangered Saimaa ringed seals continue to flourish as population grows to 500

      A seasonal ban on fishing with nets in parts of the Saimaa lake region, usually imposed from spring until the end of June, has been credited with protecting the species.

    • CBC ☛ Move aside, moose — a new study has found the most distinct animals in Canada

      Easily identified by its peculiarly pointed snout, the freshwater turtle embodies nearly 180 million years of independent evolutionary history, researchers wrote last week in Canadian Field-Naturalist.

• Finance

  • Fingersoft lays off 14 staff amid decline in ad revenue

    CEO Jaakko Kylmäoja attributed the layoffs to a “substantial decline in ad revenue,” according to Pocket Gamer.

    The layoffs affected staff in development, marketing, community, and ASO departments.

    “Unfortunately, we had to conclude the change negotiations with the difficult decision to lay off a total of 14 employees,” Kylmäoja stated.

  • 1 Year on From Xbox’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard: A Year of Uphill Battles For Microsoft Gaming

    The word came in on January 18, 2022, that Microsoft intends to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. Almost a couple of years later, Activision ultimately came under Microsoft Gaming, with Phil Spencer leading the charge. Fans expected the tech giant wouldn’t make any games exclusive to their console, and so far, it hasn’t.

    A year later, the acquisition hasn’t proven to be too fruitful. Maybe it will in the future, but as of now, all the news we got to hear were the layoffs or studio shutdowns.

  • Arkane Austin’s Closure Was “Not A Good Decision,” Per Former President

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• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Conspiracy of silence? Why business leaders are so quiet on Trump

    In an open letter in support of Harris, a dozen former CEOs brought together by Sonnenfeld said Trump was “anti-business”.

    “While each of us has different political affiliations, we are coming together to vote for Kamala Harris in this presidential election – and we believe the majority of sitting CEOs will do the same,” the letter reads.

  • Wired ☛ Unpacking Mark Zuckerberg’s Midlife Crisis

    For years, Mark Zuckerberg’s style could be summed up in a look: the hoodie. But now he has entered a new style era. One that involves gold chains and oversized tees of his own creation (with a little help from a high-end designer). In this episode of Uncanny Valley, we look into Zuckerberg’s style evolution, how it aligns with what is going on at Meta, and why you should care.

  • The Verge ☛ Tidal is laying off more staff

    The music streaming app Tidal is laying off more workers. In a statement to Fortune, an unnamed Tidal spokesperson confirmed “the elimination of some roles across our business and design teams.”

  • PC World ☛ Intel lost more money than it made last quarter

    In August, Intel said it would lay off thousands of employees while restructuring the company to cut expenses by $10 billion. Most of the loss is attributable to accountants sloshing red ink over all of the company’s papers: $2.8 billion in restructuring charges and $15.9 billion in depreciation charges, including equipment attached to its Intel 7 manufacturing process. If you look at so-called “non-GAAP” numbers, the company lost $2 billion for the third quarter of 2024.

  • New York Times ☛ Apple’s Quarterly Profit Down Because of Tax Payment in Europe

    On Monday, the tech giant said sales of iPhones, iPads and subscription services like Apple Music had helped the company increase its quarterly revenue by 6 percent to $94.93 billion during the three months that ended in September.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Why Michigan election results won't be immediate. And why it’s not a conspiracy

    In 2020, as returns trickled in on election night without a declared winner in Michigan, the absence of conclusive results left a daylong information vacuum that quickly filled with mis- and disinformation driven by then-President Donald Trump and his allies. Crowds responding to their false claims created an uproar at Detroit’s vote counting center and cast doubts over the whole state’s elections.

  • VOA News ☛ Russia fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

    Russian business newspaper RBC reported this week that legal claims brought by 17 Russian TV channels against Google in Russian courts, which have imposed compound fines on Google, had reached $20 decillion — an incomprehensible sum with 34 zeros.

    By comparison, the International Monetary Fund estimates the world's total gross domestic product to be $110 trillion. Google's parent company Alphabet, meanwhile, has a market value of around $2 trillion.

  • Futurism ☛ Donald Trump's "Truth Social" Meme Stock Just Had Its Worst Day Ever

    "Fundamentally the valuation is a head scratcher but we have seen other meme stock narratives like AMC and GameStop on similar paths the last few years," Wedbush Securities senior equity analyst Dan Ives told CNN.

  • Techdirt ☛ Russia Issues Fine To Google For More Money Than Exists Over Banned YouTube Channels

    Here are two things that are not secrets, but play into this story. First, it’s known that Google and Russia have had an acrimonious relationship for some time. Between various threats from the Russian government to ban Google and/or YouTube here and there, typically because the country doesn’t like Google’s decisions over what content to block or allow, and Russia’s more general heartburn over speech it doesn’t like, the two entities tend to butt heads frequently. Second, Putin’s stranglehold on his government, forcing it to operate at levels high and low according to his own personal whims can produce government actions so absurd that they would be funny were it all not so terrifying.

    So, it’s a mixture of those two truths that generate absurd activities such as the Russian government issuing a fine on Google for literally more money than even exists in the world.

  • The Register UK ☛ Intel losses hit $16.6B as restructuring efforts take a toll

    Intel posted a $16.6 billion loss in the third quarter – the largest in the silicon veteran's history – as it booked more than $18 billion in restructuring and impairment related charges.

  • [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ Dropbox cuts 20% of staff, CEO takes 'full responsibility'

    CEO Drew Houston said some parts of the business are, but cuts were needed where the company had over-invested or underperformed. In all, 528 staff will be let go.

  • India Times ☛ Kremlin says Google should lift its YouTube block on Russian broadcasters

    The Kremlin said on Thursday that Alphabet's Google should lift its block on Russian TV channels broadcasting on YouTube and said it hoped huge legal claims racking up against the U.S.-based company would jolt it into action.

  • India Times ☛ crypto: Kraken lays off 15% of workers and names new co-CEO

    The cuts amounted to about 400 of the company's roughly 2,600 employees, two people with knowledge of the company said.

  • New York Times ☛ Kraken Lays Off 15% of Workers and Names Arjun Sethi New Co-CEO

    They included two members of the leadership team: the chief operating officer, Gilles BianRosa, and the chief technology officer, Vishnu Patankar, two people said.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Eyeing ‘AI at scale,’ intel community aims to get data house in order

    It’s no secret the intelligence community is pursuing applications of artificial intelligence to further its national security mission. But one of the underlying challenges for the IC is the scattered and often-unorganized patchwork of data across the 18 intelligence components.

    Last year, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines signed out a two-year strategy aimed at overhauling the IC’s data management practices. And last week, the office of the director of national intelligence finalized a new “data reference architecture” that aims to enable a “distributed data ecosystem,” IC Chief Data Officer Lori Wade said at the Defense Department Intelligence Information System conference in Omaha, NE, on Tuesday.

  • Wired ☛ Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

    The contract these door knockers signed with Blitz Canvassing, which is a subcontractor of Musk’s America PAC, says they are “expected to maintain a 17-22% engagement rate during the campaign,” which is a high target relative to the number of people who typically open their door for a stranger. A group of out-of-state America PAC canvassers were told during a recent team meeting that if they didn’t hit their targets, which the door knocker says were more than 1,000 a week on total doors knocked, the organization would stop paying for their motel rooms.

    “What’s gonna happen is, they’re gonna stop paying for these rooms,” a manager told the door knockers in an audio recording obtained by WIRED. “And then you’re gonna end up having to pay for it yourself. You can’t do that with no money.” The door knocker also alleges that they were told that they will have to pay for their own flight home.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Pro Publica ☛ Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook, IG in Run-Up to Election

      In December, the verified Facebook page of Adam Klotz, a Fox News meteorologist, started running strange video ads.

      Some featured the distinctive voice of former President Donald Trump promising “$6,400 with your name on it, no payback required” just for clicking the ad and filling out a form.

    • RTL ☛ Deceptive 'bait-and-switch' Facebook groups snare US voters: study

      Dozens of Facebook groups bill themselves as Kamala Harris fan pages but mount racist attacks, criticize her record on immigration and promote her rival Donald Trump, in what disinformation researchers call a "bait-and-switch" tactic aimed at deceiving voters in a tight US election race.

      The Washington-based American Sunlight Project analyzed over 300 groups on the Meta-owned platform that masquerade as pro-Harris pages while misleading the Democratic contender's supporters with abusive, hateful posts or capitalize on her popularity to promote merchandise.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: No, noncitizens cannot vote in US elections

      False claims alleging that noncitizen Canadians can simply cross the border to cast their ballots have gone viral on social media . DW investigates how US voter ID rules really work.

    • VOA News ☛ Musk's X ineffective against surge of US election misinformation, report says

      Out of the 283 misleading posts that CCDH has analyzed on the digital social media platform, 209 or 74% of the posts did not show accurate notes to all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the elections, the report said.

    • New York Times ☛ Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way

      In June 2023, YouTube decided to stop fighting the most persistent strain of election misinformation in the United States: the falsehood that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.

    • NPR ☛ Crowdsourced voting fraud claims could become grist for Republican lawsuits

      The feed is full of unverified claims and rumors. A video of a Republican poll watcher suggesting — incorrectly — that ineligible noncitizens can vote as long as they can present a driver's license got over a million views. Other users were suspicious when they were told by election workers to put their ballots into drop boxes, which have been a subject of baseless conspiracy theories since 2020. A surge of posts claimed that voting machines were flipping votes in Georgia and elsewhere, which both the Georgia secretary of state and the manufacturer have debunked.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Report says crowd-sourced fact checks on X fail to address flood of US election misinformation

      X's crowd-sourced fact-checking program, called Community Notes, isn't addressing the flood of U.S. election misinformation on Elon Musk's social media platform, according to a report published Wednesday by a group that tracks online speech.

      The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed the Community Notes feature and found that accurate notes correcting false and misleading claims about the U.S. elections were not displayed on 209 out of a sample of 283 posts deemed misleading — or 74%.

    • NPR ☛ A baseless voting claim is being amplified by a network of social media accounts

      A network of accounts on the social media site X is claiming to be foreign nationals who have illegally voted in the U.S. presidential election, according to new research from the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

      The accounts have multiple signatures that suggest they are coordinated, drawing the attention of researchers in the final stretch of election.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Woman given suspended prison sentence for criticizing Erdoğan over Instagram ban

    Dilruba Kayserilioğlu, a woman in İzmir, received a suspended prison sentence of 11 months and 20 days for “insulting the president” during a vox pop in August. Her comments criticizing the government’s blocking of Instagram access had led to her arrest and brief imprisonment.

  • VOA News ☛ Cartoonist sentencing shows Saudis' 'determination to silence any voice,' analysts say

    Known as al-Hazza, al-Ghamdi gained prominence for cartoons that critiqued Saudi policies and highlighted sociopolitical issues in the Gulf. But his work, considered by some as sympathetic to Qatar during a politically tense period, was labeled as anti-state by Saudi authorities.

    Al-Ghamdi was arrested in 2018 on charges including alleged sympathy for Qatar and for producing what Saudi authorities said were 100 insulting drawings. At the time, he was sentenced to six years in prison and a travel ban.

  • The Scotsman ☛ Google: Russian court issues comically large fine to Google

    What is the largest amount of money you can imagine? If you shut your eyes right now and try to visualise a number, what starts to form in the inky darkness of your subconscious?

    No matter the answer, I am going to guarantee it will not have been as big as the fine handed down to Google by a Russian court. It has been ordered to pay $2 undecillion, a number so hilariously large it has 36 zeros in it (a million has six for reference).

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Atlantic ☛ Is Journalism Ready for a Second Trump Administration?

    In this episode, we talk to Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic. This year, The Atlantic made the decision, rare in its history but consistent during the Trump years, to endorse a presidential candidate. (You can read the magazine’s endorsement of Kamala Harris here.) Goldberg talks about navigating both pressures from owners and threats from the administration. And we discuss the urgent question of whether the media, pummeled and discredited for years by Trump, is ready for a second Trump administration.

  • JURIST ☛ Press freedom groups demand Georgia authorities protect journalists amid election results

    The hostility against journalists and media workers in Georgia is therefore partly a result of the increased legal and physical barriers for journalists. The Media Freedom Rapid Response noted that this election season reflects a longer pattern of repression toward Georgian media, worsened by legislation that targets journalistic freedom. In 2024, the government reintroduced the Transparency of Foreign Influence law which is a measure requiring foreign-funded organizations to register with the state. This drew intense criticism worldwide for potentially stifling independent journalism, with UN experts stating it will have “a chilling effect on civil society, journalists and human rights defenders.” This law has been said to mirror Russian “foreign agent” legislation used to restrict press and non-governmental organizations. This potentially raises concerns that Georgia is backtracking on democratic commitments.

  • VOA News ☛ 2 Mexican journalists shot dead in past 24 hours

    Two Mexican journalists were shot dead in less than 24 hours in western states, according to authorities, as the country faces a flare-up of violence in the region.

  • VOA News ☛ Trump sues US television network for $10 billion over Harris interview

    The lawsuit follows Trump's threats to revoke CBS's broadcasting license if elected.

  • Futurism ☛ Tech Exec Sues Journalist for Reporting the Fact That He Was Arrested for Domestic Violence

    San Francisco Police Department officers and Blackman himself admit that the arrest took place — but the issue, it seems, is that Poulson had the audacity to publish it.

    After the journalist first published a report on his blog TechInquiry last year, the tech investor lost his job as CEO of Premise Data, a gig app firm that was gathering data for contractors like the US military. While not arguing with the facts of the reporting, Blackman is clearly seeing red as he seeks $25 million in damages resulting from the journalist airing his dirty laundry.

  • San Fancisco ☛ Tech exec sues journalist for publishing his arrest report

    A tech executive is suing a journalist for $25 million for reporting, accurately, that he had been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence.

  • CPJ ☛ Ahead of the US election, we delivered safety training to over 700 journalists. Here's what the press must know to keep safe.

    The November 2024 U.S. presidential election will take place after years of an increasingly polarized political climate in the country. This election comes after two previous contentious presidential election cycles, amid high levels of distrust in the media and a recent history of journalists being arrested, assaulted, and attacked in-person and online, including at protests.

  • CPJ ☛ Vietnamese blogger handed 12-year prison sentence for anti-state propaganda

    “Vietnam’s harsh sentencing of blogger Duong Van Thai is grotesque and an outrage, particularly amid allegations he was kidnapped in Thailand and forcibly sent back to Vietnam for wrongful prosecution,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “The real criminal in this instance is the Vietnamese state. Thai should be released immediately and allowed to leave Vietnam.”

  • CPJ ☛ Mexican journalist Paty Bunbury shot dead in Colima, 2nd killed in less than 24 hours

    Ramírez, an entertainment reporter for the privately owned Hechos newspaper, was the second Mexican journalist killed in less than 24 hours following Tuesday’s shooting of Mauricio Cruz Solís. The killings occurred during the first month of Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration.

    “The brutal killing of Paty Bunbury is especially shocking, as it comes less than a day after her colleague Mauricio Cruz was killed,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “The killings demonstrate the urgent need for President Sheinbaum to take steps to protect the press from violence.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ Washington Post Report: Subscriber Loss After Non-Endorsement Reaches a Quarter Million

    The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, said presidential endorsements create a perception of bias at the newspaper while having little real influence on how readers vote. His said his only regret was making the decision known when passions are heated so close to Election Day; the paper's editorial staff had reportedly prepared an endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris.

    “A lot of people would have forgotten about the Harris endorsement slated to run in the newspaper,” the Post's media critic, Erik Wemple, wrote. “Few will forget about the decision not to publish it.”

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Bezo’s data-driven Washington Post gets its clearest signal yet

    Last week, the Post received what was probably the clearest signal in the history of newsroom analytics. Some 250,000 subscribers — 10% of the total, an unheard of wave in digital media — canceled after Bezos spiked a Kamala Harris endorsement.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EFF ☛ EFF Launches Digital Rights Bytes to Answer Tech Questions that Bug Us All

    “It’s increasingly clear there is no way to separate our digital lives from everything else that we do — the internet is now everybody's hometown. But nobody handed us a map or explained how to navigate safely,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “We hope Digital Rights Bytes will provide easy-to-understand information people can trust, and an entry point for thinking more broadly about digital privacy, freedom of expression, and other civil liberties in our digital world.” 

    Initial topics on Digital Rights Bytes include “Is my phone listening to me?”, “Why is device repair so costly?”, “Can the government read my text messages?” and others. More topics will be added over time. 

    For each topic, the site provides a brief animated video and a concise, layperson’s explanation of how the technology works. It also provides advice and resources for what users can do to protect themselves and take action on important issues. 

  • RTL ☛ In US swing state Pennsylvania, inflation means 'rent or eating'

    Rents have shot up as much as 50 percent in the last three years, Colquhoun said.

  • RFERL ☛ Germany To Close 3 Iranian Consulates Over Execution Of Dual Citizen

    "We have repeatedly made it clear that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences," Baerbock said in New York. "I have therefore decided to close the three Iranian consulates-general in Frankfurt am Main, Munich, and Hamburg."

    Baerbock added that relations with Iran have reached “more than a low point” following the execution of Sharmahd, which was announced by Tehran on October 28.

  • Deseret Media ☛ California could soon have nation's highest minimum wage if voters approve

    The ballot measure, known as Proposition 32, calls for raising the threshold to $17 for the rest of 2024 and then to $18 in January for employers with more than 25 workers. Smaller employers would have to pay a minimum of $17 next year and $18 in 2026. It will be adjusted for inflation thereafter, though increases would be no greater than 3.5% a year.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Russia’s Torture of Ukrainian Civilians, Prisoners Is a Crime Against Humanity, UN Expert Panel Says

    Russia’s torture of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war is a crime against humanity, U.N.-backed human rights experts said Thursday.

    Erik Møse, chair of the independent commission investigating human rights violations in Ukraine, told reporters that the panel previously described Russia’s widespread and systematic use of torture in Ukraine and Russia against civilians and prisoners, both men and women, as a war crime.

  • Michigan News ☛ ‘Right to sit’ could become the law across Michigan following Ann Arbor’s lead

    State Rep. Dylan Wegela, D-Garden City, has introduced House Bill 5983, similar to an ordinance the Ann Arbor City Council approved Oct. 21 requiring employers to let workers sit down on the job as long as it doesn’t interfere with their duties.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Adobe tells artists to get with the program on NFTs, er, AI – Pivot to AI

    Taking advantage of hot trends is the next wave of growth for Adobe, said CEO Shantanu Narayen ahead of the 2021 MAX conference, speaking of the “demand” for generative AI.

    No wait, Narayen was saying all that about “demand” for NFTs and the Metaverse, in 2021! [Fortune, 2021, archive]

    What Adobe actually said in 2024 was that artists who don’t embrace Adobe’s AI-ified products are “not going to be successful in this new world without using it” and all their products will be full of AI buttons hooked to Adobe’s Firefly diffusion model. Old software versions without AI will no longer be available. [Verge]

    The catch is that Adobe’s customers aren’t the artists, but the artists’ bosses — who would dearly love to replace these annoying creatives with a bot.

  • CBC ☛ After decades of 'slime,' B.C. First Nation celebrates clean drinking water

    Sometimes, he would go to the creek near his home on IR #1 of St'uxwtéws (Bonaparte First Nation) to grab jugs of water because it was cleaner and safer than the water he was able to get from his taps.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Mohamed Al Fayed’s victims call for Harrods boycott

    Lawyers for the group revealed they had been approached by 421 people, most of whom alleged they were sexually abused or harassed by Fayed when he was the owner of Harrods from 1985-2010.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ More than 400 people come forward over Al-Fayed sexual abuse claims

    "The sheer scale of abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed and facilitated by those around him, sadly, continues to grow," lawyer Dean Armstrong told a news conference.

    The billionaire Egyptian businessman -- who died in August last year aged 94 -- bought Harrods in 1985, six years after acquiring the Ritz in the French capital. He bought Fulham in 1997.

  • CBC ☛ Nearly 400 women have now levelled assault allegations against Mohamed Al-Fayed

    They are among more than 400 people who have come forward to the Justice for Harrods Survivors group to lodge complaints against the deceased business magnate, in what lawyer Bruce Drummond has called "industrial-scale abuse."

    Of the 421 people who have come forward with complaints against Al-Fayed, 25 are not victims but witnesses.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Kye Fox ☛ Nobody cares about decentralization until they do

    A recurring line in discussion of federated, decentralized social media is that no one cares about it. They just want their Twitter without the Nazis.

    Which is okay. But how it looks on the backend matters. When the illusion of a unified user experience breaks, how accessible the escape pod is matters.

    Consider this scenario: you try to log on to your favorite social media one day and the server you were on is just gone.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Starlink Suspends New Kit Sales and Subscriptions in Malawi Due to Currency Pricing and Regulatory Issues; Similar Problems in Nigeria

    Indeed, Starlink had a run-in with Nigeria’s telecoms regulator just last week after a price hike was rejected, forcing the company to reverse it. Nigeria is, of course, a much larger economy than Malawi, and one in which Starlink is incentivized to compromise.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Lee Peterson ☛ The new Mac mini looks a great value desktop and I’m tempted

    I could trade it in, not spend a huge amount more and get an M4 with 16GB RAM.

  • MB ☛ MacBook Pro M4 Released

    Wrapping up the Mac triple header this week brought the announcement of the new MacBook Pro’s with M4.

  • MB ☛ Mac mini M4 Released

    The form factor (miniaturized into a new tiny 5x5x2 footprint) is the Mac mini I’d always hoped we would see. Unfortunately, the time has passed on my need for one, now that I have my 15" MacBook Air.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Vox ☛ Is Trump less of a threat to democracy than Google? This expert thinks so.

  In a cover story for Harper’s Magazine this month, Barry Lynn makes the case for the “antitrust revolution.” Lynn is the intellectual godfather of the modern antimonopoly movement. Once a business reporter, he has spent the better part of two decades chronicling the evils of corporate concentration. His antimonopoly think tank, the Open Markets Institute, employed Khan as its legal director before she entered government.

• Drew Breunig ☛ AI Search Apps Succeed Because of Their UI, Not their LLMs

  These things – which Google has accumulated over decades – are nearly impossible to remove right now. Their ad business customers, their partners, the ecosystem of content creators, businesses with webpages, their internal products, many of thier employees, and their own users whould scream, protest, walk away, and sue if Google wiped the slate clean and delivered the design ChatGPT and Perplexity are delivering.

• India Times ☛ Nvidia's proposed buy of AI startup Run:ai requires EU approval

  US chipmaker Nvidia's proposed acquisition of AI startup Run:ai will have to be approved by EU antitrust regulators before the deal can be completed, the European Commission said on Thursday.

  The EU competition enforcer said Nvidia will have to formally seek its approval for the deal, following a request from the Italian competition authority which received an application for approval for the deal from the company.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Jonathan Faber ☛ Observations on Forbes' 2024 list of top-earning dead celebrities

      Forbes’ annual list of top-earning deceased celebrities always presents an interesting gathering of the dearly departed. It can be especially interesting to compare the newest list to those of prior years. For example, this year, Michael Jackson comes in at $600,000,000, whereas last year, Jackson topped the list at $115,000,000. The various Michael Jackson-themed stage productions reportedly contribute significantly to Jackson’s earnings.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Men Arrested For Transcribing Godzilla Minus One, Posting Details to a Website

    In what is believed to be the first case of its type in Japan, three men have been arrested for transcribing movies and then using the material without obtaining permission from rightsholders. Between January 2023 and February 2024, the men allegedly transcribed details of the Toho movie Godzilla Minus One and Kadokawa's Overlord III, before posting articles to a website as part of a conspiracy to unfairly generate advertising revenue.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • Stargazing 2024-10-30: Lyra w/ Binocs

      I noticed after uploading the sketch, that I wrote the incorrect date on it. It should read Oct 30 2024. The time should also read "AKDT".

      My goal was to get another magnitude or two worth of stars, beyond what I could see with the naked eye, but still restrict myself to stars that likely would be shown on my Cambridge charts. That is, I was able to see a lot more stars, dimmer stars, that what I recorded in my sketch.

      It was interesting, of course, to be able to split the δ and ε double stars, which appear as one star each, to the naked eye. All the stars shown on my sketch were also on the Cambridge chart, though some of the stars near γ did not have identification letters or numbers.