Leftovers

• Justin Vollmer ☛ Bluesky and Enshittification

  I like the idea of this website being my home on the [Internet], my little corner of the web, and being able to syndicate from here to the world. I like being able to point friends, family, coworkers, and anyone who is curious to a single location, from which they can read my thoughts, and learn about who I am, and what I value.

• Roy Tang ☛ PH Comic Strips: Pugad Baboy

  Pugad Baboy is also known for it's longer story arcs (these are hit or miss for me) and also for being one of the comic strips that are unafraid to comment on PH politics and current events: [...]

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ The Non-Prime Regex is in the cross-section of two of my interests

  Roughly 4.5 years ago I shared in this blog my interest for recreational mathematics. Yes, I’m that kind of geek.

  I’ve been keeping up with my hobby throughout these years.

  I also have confessed my love for regular expressions.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ This Flesh-Eating 'Terror Bird' May Have Stood Over 3 Meters Tall

    Phorusrhacid 'terror birds' stalked what's now Colombia's Tatacoa Desert around 12 million years ago, among car-sized armadillo relatives, giant sloths, and saber-toothed marsupial cousins.

    The recently analyzed fossil suggests this specimen was far larger than its relatives, which have been estimated to range from 1 to 3 meters (3 and 9 feet) in height.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Fossil of huge terror bird offers new information about wildlife in South America 12 million years ago

    Now a desert, scientists believe this region was once an environment full of meandering rivers. This giant bird lived among primates, hoofed mammals, giant ground sloths and armadillo relatives, glyptodonts, that were the size of cars. Today, the seriema, a long-legged bird native to South America that stands up to 3-feet-tall, is thought to be a modern relative of Phorusrhacid.

  • Michigan News ☛ The Taurid meteor showers peak a week apart in November

    While the two showers only produce around five visible meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions, they are often very bright fireballs, said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum.

    “What’s notable is that they’re likely to produce brighter and longer-lasting meteors than some other showers, even if there aren’t as many” at a time, she said.

• Career/Education

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Breaking a role into multiple titles

    Narrow titles, typically create single-minded professionals who only care about their perception. The problem is that many decisions are multi-dimensional and require building a perspective from multiple perceptions. This is very tricky to get right, and leads to delay, expensive, and sometimes wrong decisions.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ What the Thai cave rescue can teach us about unconventional leadership

    The 17-day rescue operation involved a co-ordinated response from thousands of people, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and personnel from 100 government agencies. The success of the operation was largely due to an unconventional group of leaders: an international group of cave divers whose unique expertise was vital to the rescue effort.

    Our recent research on the rescue aimed to explore how leadership can emerge outside of the traditional chain of command. To do this, we analyzed a documentary and news coverage about the rescue, along with scientific literature and online searches, including LinkedIn profiles.

  • Rachel ☛ I've had a change of heart regarding employee metrics

    Why? It's surprisingly simple. It's the job of a manager to know what their reports are up to, and whether they're doing a good job of it, and are generally effective. If they can't do that, then they themselves are ineffective, and *that* is the sort of thing that is the responsibility of THEIR manager, and so on up the line. They shouldn't need me (or anyone else) to tell them about what's going on with their damn direct reports!

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deseret Media ☛ Limiting babies' exposure to sugar may protect from disease later

    A new study published in the journal Science finds that a low-sugar diet in utero and for baby's first two years offers "meaningful" risk reduction for chronic disease as an adult. Those with sugar restrictions during those first couple of years had as much as a 35% reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and as much as 20% less risk of hypertension. "Low sugar intake by the mother prior to birth was enough to lower risks, but continued sugar restrictions after birth increased the benefits," per a news release on the study.

  • The Hill ☛ Kroger settles opioid lawsuit for $1.4 billion

    Supermarket chain Kroger has finalized a nearly $1.4 billion agreement to settle the majority of the claims made by states, counties and Native American tribes that accused the company of helping fuel the opioid epidemic.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Pregnant teenager died trying to get help on three trips to Texas ERs

    A healthcare policy professor believes that strict abortion laws enacted by Republican states have made pregnant women "untouchables" — and have resulted in their deaths.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Ban to stop children from ever smoking a cigarette to be introduced in Parliament

    The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which aims to create the “first smoke-free generation”, will prevent anyone born after 1 January 2009 from legally smoking by gradually raising the age at which tobacco can be bought,

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Is your child breathing in poor learning, memory-harming air pollutants? What parents need to know about toxic AQI

    Previous studies have found ammonium nitrate to heighten risk of ageing-related conditions such as Alzheimer's and dementia -- in which cognition and memory is affected, suggesting that long-term exposure to PM2.5 can cause neurocognitive harm across one's lifespan.

  • Tedium ☛ Tedium As Palate Cleanser: Get Your Mind Off The Pre-Election Chaos

    Today in Tedium: The odds are that, based on my recent schedule, this will be the last issue of Tedium before the 2024 presidential election. I’m not really expecting a lot of breaking news in the market for tedium. (As our about page states, tedium is noted for its pattern of stillness, which one cannot say about an election.) But I do think there is something to be said about a moment of zen amid chaos. I am not perfect at this. Some people meditate or spend entire weekends in the woods. I, instead, like digging into Tedium. And with that in mind, tonight’s pre-election Tedium attempts to make the case for Tedium as a palate cleanser. Because, let’s be honest, we need it right now. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • Rach Smith ☛ Social skills

    ”Yes. Social skills are like maths, english or soccer skills, they can all be practised. But just like those other types of skills some people find them easier to learn than others. And we all have different things we are good at. You’re only in grade 1 so you and your school friends are still learning about social skills, so you’re all going to make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s part of learning and getting better.”

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Darren Goossens ☛ URLs with parentheses and other naughty characters

    Now, these codes do show up as codes, not brackets, in EndNote and in Word, but the URL does work when clicked. These codes are part of the HTML standard, so it is the browser that translates them, not EndNote. Hence they pass through EndNote unchanged and end up in your Word file.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Silicon Valley and Wall Street invent collateralized GPU obligations. Surely this will work out fine – Pivot to AI

    The zero-interest era is over. Money isn’t free anymore. How can Silicon Valley venture capital, and the rest of Wall Street, generate lottery-winning yield levels in this economy?

  • The Register UK ☛ Black screens persist for Windows 10 AVD users

    In this instance, Microsoft has admitted that there are still problems for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) users after the installation of July's non-security preview update (KB5040525).

    The issue manifests as a black screen following a login to AVD that can last between 10 and 30 minutes. Additionally, single sign-on (SSO) for Office applications such as Outlook and Teams might have problems, while other apps in the suite might lose connectivity.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Humane Is Trying to License Its Operating System, a Move It Swears Was the Strategy All Along

    There is a diagram in this article illustrating the difference between the architecture of a “traditional O.S.” and that of this “A.I. operating system”, and I think I understand it — but only kind of. The way I interpret Malik’s explanation is that it works almost like a mix of plugins and a sort of universal data layer.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ NYT's Sample Versus Early Vote

    At this stage in the Presidential race should start to show some herding towards what we’re seeing in the early vote. But NYT’s last poll suggests NYT was inconsistent in doing so.

    This table attempts to compare how many people in NYT’s state-by-state samples said they had already voted, as compared to the demographics of those who’ve actually voted.

  • [Old] The Atlantic ☛ Facebotlish: Understanding an AI's Non-Human Language

    In the case of Facebook’s bots, however, there seems to be something more language-like occurring, Facebook’s researchers say. Other AI researchers, too, say they’ve observed machines that can develop their own languages, including languages with a coherent structure, and defined vocabulary and syntax—though not always actual meaningful, by human standards.

  • Google execs grilled by staff over cost-cutting measures - while dressed in Halloween costumes

    This year’s Halloween will live long in the memory of Google employees who watched their senior execs respond to questions about the possibility of cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, while dressed in costumes.

  • TechStory Media ☛ Oracle Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Cloud Division

    Oracle Corporation has cut off several hundred workers in its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) subsidiary as part of a recent wave of layoffs in the tech sector. As the firm looks to maximize its staff and concentrate resources on high-growth sectors, reports suggest that Oracle is implementing these layoffs as part of its continuous strategy to adapt its operations in response to changing needs in the cloud computing sector.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Independent UK ☛ Oasis fans falling for ticket scams have lost £346 on average, major bank finds

      Oasis fans who have fallen victim to scams amid the rush to buy tour tickets have lost £346 on average, according to analysis by a major bank of reports made by its own customers.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ TSA launches smartphone-based digital ID scheme

      Brushing off objections from the Identity Project and others, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued regulations creating the framework for an all-purpose smartphone-based national digital ID and tracking system.

      The TSA’s new rules are piggybacked on the REAL-ID Act of 2005, and are ostensibly standards for what states will have to do to issue digital versions of driver’s licenses or ID cards that the TSA and other Federal agencies will accept for Federal purposes, in circumstances where ID is required by other Federal laws. This doesn’t include airline travel, for which no ID is legally required, although the TSA keeps lying about this.

      The TSA’s new rules provide that acceptable digital IDs can only be issued to individuals who already have physical driver’s licenses or state-issued ID cards. And individuals are still required by standard state laws to “have their Physical Credential on their person while operating a motor vehicle”, even if they also have a digital ID on their smartphone. So this regulatory scheme isn’t really about driver’s licenses at all. It’s about pressuring states to move from uploading information about all their residents to a national ID database to putting a digital tracking app with a state-issued identifier on each resident’s smartphone.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Many smart devices gathering ‘excessive’ amounts of personal data, says Which?

      According to the report, all three air fryer products tested wanted to know a user’s precise location and wanted permission to record audio on a user’s phone, for no specified reason.

      Which? said one of the air fryers – made by Chinese firm Xiaomi – used a connected app which linked to trackers from Facebook, an ad network linked to TikTok and, depending on location, Chinese tech giant Tencent.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Is your air fryer spying on you? Concerns over ‘excessive’ surveillance in smart devices

      The organisation tested three air fryers, increasingly a staple of British kitchens, each of which requested permission to record audio on the user’s phone through a connected app.

      Smart air fryers allow cooks to schedule their meal to start cooking before they get home. Not all air fryers have such functionality but those that do often use an app installed on a smartphone.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Atlantic Council ☛ US absence in the world is as dangerous as US weakness

    Some on the conservative side of the political spectrum have bemoaned this weakness while at the same time eagerly trumpeting their isolationist impulses. Yet on the world stage, there are many similarities between a weak United States and an absent United States. Both foster an international environment that is harmful to US interests, objectives, and priorities. Thus, it is time for conservatives to reconsider their national security positions to avoid producing the same disastrous results that have been evident during the current administration. Weakness and absence are strategic cousins that degrade deterrence and make adversary aggression much more likely.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Musk's Twitter Is the Blueprint for a MAGA Government

    Ramaswamy’s invocation of Twitter is meaningful. In 2022, after acquiring the social network, Musk infamously purged Twitter’s ranks and fired 80 percent of its employees in the first six months, and then made a series of management decisions that ultimately threw the company into further financial disarray. Listening to Ramaswamy speak and hearing the respect in his voice as he cited the centibillionaire’s tenure, it became clear that he sees a blueprint for the Trump administration. Should Musk be appointed as a federal firing czar, it will likely not be because of his electric cars or rockets or internet-beaming satellites: It will be because he acted out the dream of draining the swamp, albeit on a smaller scale. Musk’s purchase of Twitter is not just a Republican success story; it is the template for the MAGA federal government. Even Musk’s mom said as much in a recent interview with Fox News: “He’s going to just get rid of people who are not working, or don’t have a job, or not doing a job well, just like he did on Twitter … He can do it for the government, too.”

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ What It Would Take to Charge Donald Trump with Inciting Insurrection

    That’s one reason I’ve been thinking about the January 6 impeachment: because, in fact, it was McConnell’s job to disqualify Trump from running this race, and McConnell chickened out. Oh, I think there are things that might have altered the outcome of impeachment. Most notably, I think Nancy Pelosi made a mistake in not appointing Liz Cheney to the prosecution team. That would have given Cheney an earlier opportunity to play the formidable leadership role that she later played on the January 6 Committee. Cheney, as a member of GOP leadership, was witness to conversations involving Mike Johnson and Kevin McCarthy that might have tipped the decision to call witnesses. And as her support for Kamala Harris’ campaign has shown, she has the stature to persuade Republicans to put country over party.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Real Election Risk Comes Later

    The more pressing concern, however, is what happens after Tuesday, in that period, fraught with impatience, between when election workers are counting votes and the results are confirmed. During this interval—which may be only hours, but may run to days in some places—there will be little actual news and many attempts to create some: At the very moment when a watchful press will be desperate for new developments, conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump’s allies will be intent on sowing chaos and doubt.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ States put National Guard on standby in case of election violence

    In a joint bulletin, DHS and the FBI warned of potential violence from domestic extremists who believe claims of election fraud or harbor anger toward perceived political adversaries. The agencies wrote that extremists would likely target voting locations, ballot drop-boxes, voter registration locations, political rallies, campaign events and the offices of political parties.

  • The Strategist ☛ How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive

    In the US, Russia is refraining from sabotage, but it’s working hard on disinformation.

    The head of MI5 warned in October that agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, had conducted arson attacks, sabotage and other dangerous actions ‘with increasing recklessness’. His MI6 counterpart said Russian intelligence services had gone ‘a bit feral’.

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden blocks 13 offshore wind farms: 'Unacceptable consequences for defence'

    According to the Armed Forces, the wind turbines above the water risk obstructing the view of important security systems, and the parks themselves affect sensors both above and below the surface.

  • France24 ☛ Parents of French teenagers who took own lives sue TikTok over harmful content

    Seven French families have filed a lawsuit against social media giant TikTok, accusing the platform of exposing their adolescent children to harmful content that led to two of them taking their own lives at 15, their lawyer said on Monday.

    The lawsuit alleges TikTok's algorithm exposed the seven teenagers to videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion told broadcaster franceinfo.

  • The Scotsman ☛ Donald Trump puts democracy and the free world at risk

    What his compatriots are being asked to choose between is not just two visions of the future but two ways of life. Two completely different concepts of a modern country.

  • The Independent UK ☛ New York Times shares searing 112-word warning against Trump winning election

    The New York Times’s editorial board has issued a strongly-worded denunciation of Donald Trump's the presidential election looms, telling readers the Republican nominee “is unfit to lead” and a serial liar whose policies are “cruel” and will only “wreak havoc” on the nation.

    Without explicitly endorsing his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the piece, the board wrote a searing 112-word op-ed warning of a possible Trump second term.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ What if Trump’s campaign is cover for a slow-motion coup?

    In theory, Republicans could seize the chance at last to break with Trump, who, after all, has only delivered defeats to the party. He has stated that he will not run again (though it would of course be naive to take any of his promises at face value). Yet there were already plenty of incentives to get rid of Trump in early 2021, and still Republicans did not disown, let alone impeach, him.

    Most worryingly, Maga members have been primed to resort to violence. Trump and his allies – including the world’s richest man, who just happens to be a rightwing extremist – have framed the election as an apocalyptic battle. If Democrats win, Musk has claimed, there will not be any proper elections ever after; they will bring in more foreigners to secure a permanent majority. It is already half forgotten that Trump held his first major rally this election cycle in Waco, Texas.

  • VOA News ☛ French families sue TikTok over alleged failure to remove harmful content

    Seven French families have filed a lawsuit against social media giant TikTok, accusing the platform of exposing their adolescent children to harmful content that led to two of them taking their own lives at 15, their lawyer said on Monday.

    The lawsuit alleges TikTok's algorithm exposed the seven teenagers to videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion told broadcaster franceinfo.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Is Busy Signing Indie Label Deals Without Merlin

    According to those sources, the compensation terms provided under the new individual offers are not any better or worse than Merlin’s collective bargaining. But that doesn’t mean no changes at all. The big one? TikTok is not paying out music licensors based on views a song receives, rather than new creations. TikTok calculates market share based on views and the payment to the licensor is divided up from there—but that doesn’t mean there’s now a certain royalty amount per view.

  • Penske Media Corporation ☛ Merlin's TikTok License Has Expired. What Happens to Indie Music Now?

    Instead, Merlin explained, TikTok wanted to forge deals with most of the labels and distributors the coalition represented directly, a move that Merlin read as an attempt to “fragment” its membership and “minimize” payments for indie music. (TikTok says it walked away from negotiations with Merlin due to concerns about fraudulent content from certain Merlin members making its way onto the social media app. The company also says it wanted to form closer relationships with Merlin members.)

  • New York Times ☛ Right-Wing Groups Are Organizing on Telegram Ahead of Election Day

    Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

  • CS Monitor ☛ What happens if Trump tries to overturn another election?

    Yet while post-election chaos is possible, 2024 is unlikely to be a replay of 2020. The system has been strengthened: Congress passed legislation making clear that elected officials cannot reject the will of the voters. And states and localities have worked assiduously to harden the voting process against attacks. Mr. Trump also doesn’t have control over the military or Justice Department this time around, and it will be Vice President Harris, not Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over the Electoral College count in Congress.

    In speeches, social media posts, and interviews, former President Donald Trump has been signaling that he is highly likely to challenge the election results should he lose on Tuesday. The big question is what may happen next.

  • The Atlantic ☛ How Is the Election This Close?

    A little over a week ago, campaigning in Kalamazoo, Michigan, former First Lady Michelle Obama had a moment of reflection. “I gotta ask myself, why on earth is this race even close?” she asked. The crowd roared, but Obama wasn’t laughing. It’s a serious question, and it deserves serious consideration.

  • YLE ☛ Monday's papers: Russia fears, ADHD misdiagnosis and mindful sweating

    Former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö's report on enhancing EU civilian and defence preparedness, published last week, is still making headlines.

    In the report, Niinistö said that the threat posed by Russia is now at the highest level since the Cold War. Ilta-Sanomat asked how concerned Finns should be about a confrontation between [NATO] and Russia.

  • YLE ☛ Niinistö unveils report on enhancing EU civilian and defence preparedness

    "Threats don't stop at our borders, they cascade between the interconnected sectors of our economy," said Niinistö, adding that "if we are not doing all we can for our own security, we cannot expect others to do it for us."

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Vox ☛ Elections 2024: How Peanut, a euthanized pet squirrel, became a Republican talking point

    The more one discovers about Peanut, the more questions arise. That said, here’s one attempt to parse the story of how a charming rodent somehow became the only thing Republicans were interested in less than 24 hours before Election Day.

• Environment

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Why did so many die in Spain? Because Europe still hasn’t accepted the realities of extreme weather

    From the global north’s vantage point, the climate crisis, caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has long been seen as a distant threat, affecting poor people in the global south. This misconception has perpetuated a false sense of security.

    Scientists have long known that heating the climate with fossil fuel emissions will result in the intensification of floods, storms, heatwaves, drought and wildfires. However, it was not until 2004 that the first attribution study formally linked a weather event – the devastating 2003 European heatwave – to our changing climate. Despite the evidence, people have been hesitant to connect extreme weather with the climate crisis.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • FAIR ☛ When Lights Go Out in Cuba, Media Blame Communism—Not US Sanctions

      Reporting on Cuba’s blackouts have either omitted or paid brief lip-service to the effects of US sanctions on the Cuban economy, and how those sanctions have created the conditions for the crisis. Instead, media have focused on the inefficient and authoritarian Communist government as the cause of the island’s troubles.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Russia suspected in plot to target cargo planes in Europe and the U.S.

      European security officials have linked suspected Russian operatives to a plot to smuggle incendiary devices onto a cargo plane in Germany, in what investigators believe may have been a trial run for future attacks targeting North America-bound aircraft.

    • DeSmog ☛ Beyond Action for Action’s Sake: Why the Climate Crisis Demands More Than Relentless Positivity

    • DeSmog ☛ Q&A: ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Your Voice. Because It Will Make a Difference.’

    • DeSmog ☛ Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s Views on Climate Change

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ India’s Plans to ‘Develop’ Great Nicobar Island Threatens Its Unique Wildlife and Indigenous Peoples

    • The Independent UK ☛ Peanut the Squirrel owner denies using pet’s death to promote OnlyFans

      “Honestly, this still kind of feels surreal, that the state that I live in actually targeted me and took two of the most beloved animals on this planet away, didn’t even quarantine them. They took them from my house and just killed them,” he told the Associated Press in an interview. “We will make a stance on how this government and New York state utilizes their resources.”

    • The Independent UK ☛ Peanuts: He made an orphaned squirrel a social media star. Then authorities euthanized it

      A man who took in an orphaned squirrel and made it a social media star says New York state’s decision to seize and euthanize the animal won't go without a response

    • NYPost ☛ P’nut the squirrel fundraising page gets over $158K in donations

      The squirrel’s death has sparked so much fury that it prompted a state lawmaker to propose legislation to improve animal-rights statutes — calling the bill “Peanuts Law: Humane Animal Protection Act.”

  • Overpopulation

    • CBC ☛ We asked women why they aren't having as many kids. Turns out, it's complicated

      Among those who have decided to not have children, two-thirds say they simply don't want them.

      But polls and data can't always capture the complexity of individual decision making. To take falling birth rates beyond the numbers, CBC spoke with several women about what went into their choices.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pro Publica ☛ Julie Adams’ Rise From Conservative Activist to Georgia Election Official

    In an ornate room in Georgia’s Capitol, Julie Adams — a member both of the election board serving the state’s most populous county and of a right-wing organization sowing skepticism about American elections — got the news she was waiting for. And she couldn’t wait to share it.

    With pink manicured nails that matched her trim pink blazer, she tapped out a message on her phone to a top election lawyer for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. “Got it passed,” she wrote to Gineen Bresso, photographs reviewed by ProPublica show.

  • NL Times ☛ Government advisor warns that Europe is far behind the US when it comes to technology

    The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) has warned that Europe is increasingly lagging behind the United States when it comes to technology. According to the Cabinet's key advisor, the Netherlands has had a close connection with the American economy for years. "But in the last ten years, we have become much more dependent on the Americans than the other way around," said CPB researcher Debby Lanser after new research.

    The attention has recently been focused on the American presidential elections and the possible consequences of import duties announced by presidential candidate Donald Trump. But the impact of this is "still manageable", according to Lanser.

  • India Times ☛ The art and craft of earning in times of AI

    India accounts for Adobe’s largest employee base outside the US with 8,000 people in five campuses. “Some of our teams are working on the Firefly model, others are operating our GPU (graphics processing unit) cluster while some of them are building services like the Adobe Illustrator,”said Alexandru Costin, vice president of GenAI at Adobe.

  • India Times ☛ Tracking global AI policy play

    India does not have an AI law but it has rolled out the `10K-cr IndiaAI Mission earlier this year. The mission is indicative of India’s approach — to focus on building AI capabilities through computing infrastructure, skills, datasets and support for AI innovators.

  • The Walrus ☛ This Is the Most Important Election in History | The Walrus

    Efforts to compare this election with other pivotal ones from the past usually start and stop with 1860. That year’s election triggered the civil war, which ended legal slavery and transformed the nation. It also reverberated globally, while the question of slavery’s westward “expansion” was, at its heart, settler colonialism. But in 1860, the US was not the superpower it is today. The world had not yet been saturated with its bombs and missiles, its interests and image. This year’s election matters not just for Americans or the people who care about the integrity of the country’s democratic system. It matters for people in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Taiwan, Guatemala, Haiti, Yemen, Venezuela, Sudan, and all over the world, because the US has its hands in so many conflicts and concerns. In an election dominated mostly by domestic issues, it’s hard to map out trajectories specific to each candidate. But Kamala Harris seems to represent more of the same in terms of American foreign policy, while Donald Trump remains defiant in his vindictiveness, volatility, and chronic lying. He’s also spoken favourably of authoritarian figures like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un.

    I’ve heard historians make the claim that disinformation isn’t new—and it isn’t: during the lead-up to the civil war, northerners and southerners lived in different realities, in part because the south banned abolitionist press, and once the war broke out, some newspapers blurred the line between propaganda and news. What’s unique now is the scale, speed, and technological prowess of the dis- and misinformation that shape our world. Hence the ability of Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen to spread so rapidly or the proliferation of [astroturfer] farms and deepfakes. It’s also hard to compare traditional print media to the vast amounts of data—millions or trillions of data points—that AI models process to form algorithms, ads, chatbots, and so much more.

  • India Times ☛ Facebook, Nvidia ask US Supreme Court to spare them from securities fraud suits

    The US Supreme Court is set to consider bids by two tech giants - Meta's Facebook and Nvidia - to fend off federal securities fraud lawsuits in separate cases that could make it harder for private litigants to hold companies to account.

    After a trio of Supreme Court rulings in June that weakened federal regulators - including the Securities and Exchange Commission that polices securities fraud - the justices may now be poised to rein in the power of private plaintiffs to enforce federal rules aimed at punishing corporate misconduct.

  • VOA News ☛ US tech firms warn Vietnam's planned law to hamper data centers, social media

    U.S. tech companies have warned Vietnam's government that a draft law to tighten rules on data protection and limit data transfers abroad would hamper social media platforms and data center operators from growing their businesses in the country.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel CEO complains 'this is taking too long' after investing $30B but receiving zero CHIPS Act funding

    "We see the CHIPS Act as a critical thing that we have invested a lot of energy to," said Gelsinger. "As we said on our [earnings] call, we are disappointed by the time it is taking to get it done: it is well over two years since the CHIPS Act passed and over that period I have invested $30 billion in U.S. manufacturing and we have seen $0 from the CHIPS grants. This is taking too long, we need to get it finished."

  • Seth Godin ☛ At all costs | Seth's Blog

    Principles have a priority.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Many military ballots won’t be counted until after Election Day

    Those nuances include how states handle absentee and overseas military ballots. Only 16 states allow election workers to begin counting votes cast by mail to be processed before Election Day.

    Fourteen others — including the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — can begin tallying mail-in ballots on Election Day, with some restrictions. The remaining 20 states don’t allow any work to be done on those ballots until after polls close, typically after 8 p.m. local time on election night.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Atlantic ☛ Meta Is Keeping Quiet This Election

      What is happening on Facebook now? On the eve of another chaotic election, journalists have found that highly deceptive political advertisements still run amok there, as do election-fraud conspiracy theories. The Times reported in September that the company, now called Meta, had fewer full-time employees working on election integrity and that Zuckerberg was no longer having weekly meetings with the lieutenants in charge of them. The paper also reported that Meta had replaced the war room with a less sharply defined “election operations center.”

    • The Zambian Observer ☛ Voter fraud claims flood social media before US election

      Rumours, misleading allegations and outright lies about voting and fraud are flooding online spaces in unprecedented numbers in advance of the US election.

    • The Walrus ☛ Canadian Media’s Evolution In The Digital Age

      With the takeover of the digital era, the old traditional media began to lose momentum. Many Canadians today would rather read news [sic] on digital platforms than spend time and money purchasing newspapers. This shift has affected many industries, including the gaming sector which is now shifting to the use of online casinos to adapt to the digital trend.

    • Techdirt ☛ Editor-In-Chief Of RT, Russia’s Main Propaganda Network, Says Many Of Its Presenters Are AI-Generated – If You Can Believe Her

      RT, formerly Russia Today, has appeared a few times here on Techdirt. As the long article about RT on Wikipedia explains, the TV channel has morphed from an attempt to create a state-supported international news network along the lines of the BBC or France 24, but one that offered a Russian perspective on the world, to something that is now regarded as little more than a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda (disclosure: I was interviewed by Russia Today a couple of times over a decade ago.).

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Psychological inoculation: Combining two simple tools could combat election misinformation

      Psychological inoculation, a form of "prebunking" intended to help people identify and refute false or misleading information, uses short videos in place of ads to highlight manipulative techniques common to misinformation, such as emotional language, false dichotomies and scapegoating. The strategy has already been deployed to millions of users of YouTube, Facebook and other platforms, and could be utilized after the U.S. presidential election.

    • India Times ☛ How Elon Musk's own account dominates X

      Musk has posted more than 3,000 times on the site in the past month. During a two-week period in October, Musk's 1,220 posts generated nearly 65,000 engagements on average, according to the Times analysis of Musk's posts over the past year that tallied likes and reposts.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Editorial: Election results take time. Ignore the conspiracy theories

      This is a politically fraught moment. Foreign powers and opportunists have already been spreading disinformation to undermine confidence in the election. Last week, U.S. intelligence agencies blamed Russia for a viral video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs claiming to have voted multiple times. Russia is also allegedly responsible for a fake video that purports to show someone destroying ballots marked for Trump in Pennsylvania.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ What DecisionDesk HQ learned from calling 2020 election first

      Managing the flow of misinformation will be one of the biggest challenges facing news organizations in 2024. In an age of viral social media posts, rumors and falsehoods — whether pushed by campaigns, supporters or foreign adversaries — can easily overshadow the facts. McCoy says his team’s approach remains grounded in real-time data from election officials, insulating them from speculation and unverified reports. “We don’t care if somebody tweets out an election result or if they put a photo up — that’s not a source,” he says.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • NYPost ☛ Disney wouldn't allow Jessica Rabbit in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' sequel: director

    “The current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today. They can’t make a movie with Jessica [Rabbit] in it,” he said.

    Zemeckis claimed Disney would never go there again, pointing out that the company covered her body up for the Disneyland ride Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin ride in 2021 — an update that angered fans.

  • TMZ ☛ Peanut The Squirrel Owner Mark Longo Denies Using Tragedy to Promote Porn

    Mark's theory ... officials used the animals as a way to get into his home and dig up dirt on his porn biz.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Academic freedom lecture to address extramural speech

    Butler’s lecture is titled “Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extra-Mural Speech,” and will explore how the distinction between intramural and extramural is difficult to define.

    Butler will address questions such as: [...]

  • France24 ☛ Terrorism trial opens in Paris for Islamists accused of beheading teacher Samuel Paty

    Eight people went on trial in Paris on terrorism charges Monday over the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, who was killed by an Islamic extremist after showing caricatures of Islam's prophet to his middle school students for a lesson on freedom of expression.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ France: Trial starts over beheading of teacher Samuel Paty

    Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class during a lesson on freedom of expression. Those cartoons had been published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and resulted in the terror attacks on the publication's offices in January 2015 in which 12 people were killed. The two attackers had claimed to "avenge the prophet" — just like Paty's assassin.

    Last year, a Paris court handed down prison sentences of up to two years to six teenagers in connection with the Paty attack. Four of them received suspended sentences.

    Now, eight adults are standing trial, two of whom are accused of complicity in the murder.

  • VOA News ☛ Trial opens in France in beheading of teacher over prophet cartoons

    Paty's shocking death left an imprint on France, and several schools are now named after him. Paty was killed outside his school near Paris on Oct. 16, 2020, by an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, who was shot to death by police.

    Those on trial include friends of assailant Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped purchase weapons for the attack, as well as people who are accused of spreading false information online about the teacher and his class.

  • NDTV ☛ Iran Woman Who Stripped At University Not Seen Since. What We Know

    Two days back, a young Iranian woman took the Internet by storm when she stripped to her underwear on a Tehran university campus, apparently to protest against the country's strict dress code for women. Visuals showed her roaming on the campus of Islamic Azad University as others gaped in surprise. Soon after, security guards detained her and took her away. Her current location is not known.

  • France24 ☛ Samuel Paty: Terror trial opens over beheading of teacher who showed prophet cartoons - France 24

    [...] The trial comes a year after six teenagers were found guilty of helping the assailant identify Samuel Paty. [...]

  • RFERL ☛ Amnesty Calls For Release Of Iranian Woman Who Removed Clothes In Protest

    Amnesty International has called for the immediate release of a young woman who took most of her clothes off during an apparent protest against harassment outside her Tehran university on November 2.

    Iranian authorities arrested the female student -- who has not been identified -- after she stripped to her underwear on the street outside the university.

  • France24 ☛ Iran arrests female student who stripped to protest harassment

    [...] The woman, who has not been identified, had been harassed inside Tehran's prestigious Islamic Azad University by members of the Basij paramilitary force who ripped her headscarf and clothes, according to reports by several news outlets and social media channels outside Iran. [...]

  • CBC ☛ Woman detained after taking off clothes and walking in underwear at Iran university

    CBC News has not independently verified the footage and has not established what happened before and after the videos were filmed.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Young woman strips down in protest at Iranian University

    The video quickly spread across various Persian-language news platforms, including the Hengaw rights group, IranWire, and Amnesty International. Amidst the discussion, some social media users interpreted the woman’s actions as a deliberate protest against the government’s rigid enforcement of mandatory hijab laws. A user on X, identified as Lei La, remarked, “For most women, being in public in their underwear is one of their worst nightmares. This is a reaction to the authorities’ stubborn insistence on the mandatory hijab.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Site36 ☛ Justice for German journalist: Four racists sentenced for attack on the island of Lesbos

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalists detained over reports on ‘Newborn Gang’

    Two journalists were detained on Nov 3 as prosecutors in İstanbul have launched an investigation into media reports that alleged the prosecutor of the high-profile “Newborn Gang” case was replaced.

    The reports had claimed Prosecutor Yavuz Engin who led the inquiry into a criminal network exploiting newborns with health issues, was forced off the case.

  • Axios ☛ Trump says he doesn't mind if a shooter takes aim at "fake news" to get him

    Why it matters: Trump, who's in a dead-heat race against Vice President Harris days before voting ends, has been open to seeking retribution against his growing list of perceived enemies. Mainstream news networks and media are not new to the list, but his allusions to violence have become more blatant.

  • TMZ ☛ Donald Trump Says He's Fine If Someone Shoots 'Fake News Media' at Rally

    Trump says he wouldn't mind that so much ... repeating it multiple times to make sure he really got his point across.

  • 404 Media ☛ 404 Media Is Partnering With Wired

    Today we are happy to announce WIRED is going to co-publish two of our articles a month on its website. We are really excited to get our stories in front of a wider audience and grow 404 Media. We also hope to occasionally collaborate with our friends and colleagues at WIRED on stories we can do better together.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Open letter to Jeff Bezos: To restore trust in news, we need to look forward, not backward

    To restore trust in our information sources, we need to look forward, not backward. Most of the news industry is still tinkering with dying 20th century models, importing forms and ideologies from printing presses into digital spaces, moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. Respectfully, your decision to end endorsements falls into this category. As the decades of tech-driven chaos settle, publishers may be overcome with nostalgia — but readers are desperate for new forms of journalism to help them navigate this new world. As leaders of this industry, this is our highest responsibility, especially at this fragile moment when AI will soon further complicate this challenge.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Donald Trump Hates Free Speech

    In America, a country consecrated to freedom, the dystopian scenes out of China seemed distant. Americans understand on a bone-deep level that, to paraphrase James Madison, absolute sovereignty belongs to the people, not the government. Americans are free to say what we believe, and free to share our ideas with our fellow citizens. We are free to criticize the government, which is accountable to the people, not the other way around. The First Amendment does not grant us these freedoms—they are an inviolable right. The First Amendment does, however, dictate that the government dare not interfere with these freedoms, that officials have no right to cut down the American people’s speech, including the people’s right to free press.

    To be comfortable in these freedoms, to assume that we would never need to resort to holding up blank sheets of paper to criticize the powerful, is a luxury that Americans cannot presently afford.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ ‘Tis the Season to Organize Amazon

    From a labor organizing perspective, this is a terrifying situation. It means that, for most of the year, if you did the hard work of organizing a strike by the thousands of workers at any given Amazon fulfillment center, it would hardly register on Amazon’s radar — not because the company has the resolve not to flinch in a labor dispute, but because they could so efficiently reroute order fulfillment to other facilities that it would likely not slow down their operation in any noticeable way.

  • The Register UK ☛ Labor watchdog says Grindr used RTO policy to hinder union

    By demanding folks get back to their office desks, after said workers formed a union, causing scores of them to quit, the software house broke American labor law, it is claimed.

  • New York Times ☛ New York Times Tech Workers Go on Strike

    Times management said in an email to workers on Sunday that it had offered a 2.5 percent annual wage increase, a minimum 5 percent pay increase for promotions and a $1,000 ratification bonus. It also said that the company would maintain its current in-office work requirements of two days a week through June 2025, while allowing employees to work fully remotely for three weeks per year.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Black Americans Were Killed for Exercising Their Political Right to Vote

    What is known is that Williams’ lifeless, beaten and bruised body was found in the nearby Hatchie River on June 23, 1940, three days after law enforcement officers’ late-night visit. The 31-year-old had been fatally shot. His feet were tied with rope, and his head battered in. It is believed that Williams, who was never seen alive again after being detained by Hunter, was killed because of his voter registration efforts in the majority-Black town of Brownsville.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Telecoms Bankroll More Misleading Attacks On Community Broadband Networks

    I’ve written for years about how U.S. broadband is expansive, patchy, and slow thanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That’s resulted in a growing number of pissed off towns, cities, cooperatives, and city-owned utilities building their own, locally-owned and operated broadband networks in a bid for better, cheaper, faster broadband.

    Regional giants like Comcast, Charter, or AT&T could have responded to this organic trend by offering better, cheaper, faster service. But ultimately they found it far cheaper to undermine these efforts via regulatory capture, congressional lobbying, lawsuits, protectionist state laws, and misleading disinformation.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Ed Sheeran Beats ‘Thinking Out Loud’ Copyright Lawsuit

    In the three-judge panel’s decision, the Copyright Act of 1909 only protects the musical composition of “Let’s Get It On” as defined by the sheet music filed with the Copyright Office in 1973. Therefore, it does not protect elements present solely in the audio recording of the song. Further, the court rejected SAS’ argument that the combination of a four-chord progression and a syncopated harmonic rhythm in Gaye’s track was sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection. Instead, it found this combination to be too commonplace to protect it without granting it an overly broad monopoly.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Shield Crisis Erupts as AGCOM Board Member Slams Huge Toll on Resources

    Critics of Italy's Piracy Shield are not difficult to find but, with its powerful and influential proponents rarely far away, getting heard is a considerable challenge. Not to mention getting anything done. After calling for the platform's suspension and meeting resistance in the wake of the recent Google Drive blocking blunder, AGCOM board member Elisa Giomi has gone public with a laundry list of concerns. It pulls zero punches.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Braflix to Shut Down: Pirate Site Throws in the Towel Citing Legal Pressure

    Pirate streaming site Braflix burst onto the scene last year, offering a vast library of movies and TV shows via a user-friendly interface. With millions of monthly visits the site was destined to profit from the demise of several large competitors. The opposite happened. Facing legal pressure, Braflix has decided to throw in the towel instead.