Leftovers

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL’s ‘You’ve got mail,’ dies

  During his decade-long stint at WKYC, Edwards worked as a “graphics guru, camera operator, and general jack-of-all-trades,” the station said, “yet it was a somewhat random opportunity in 1989 that earned him international fame.”

• Lev Lazinskiy ☛ Now What?

  It’s hard for me to believe that we allowed this to happen. But knowing what I know about our history, society, and the current political climate, is it really that surprising? It feels unjust, but so does most of American history. Why should we be the exception?

• Kev Quirk ☛ Year 2 at the Smallholding

  We recently passed 2 years at our 2.5 acre smallholding. It's been another busy year where we got loads done; here's what we've been up to.

  I can't believe we're 2 years into this amazing adventure already. So far things are going great - we feel like we're fully embedded in the community now, and we've found our mojo with a lot of the things we've been learning along the way.

• Jarrod Blundy ☛ Leading By Example

  But it hasn’t shaken my belief that it still matters to do what’s right, even when the odds are stacked against you. Because one person’s actions can indeed be a catalyst into a collective movement. It’s called leading by example, and it’s how I choose to live my life.

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ The Vatican's Anime Mascot Is Now an AI Porn Sensation

• Chris Coyier ☛ Designing DX

  This is a written version of my talk “Designing DX”. I just want to lollygag about with y’all about this squishy concept of DX. We’ll draw ideas and parallels from the real world (the one with grass, boozy milkshakes, and that glowing orb in the sky that makes you squint). There are things to be learned out there.

• Anne Sturdivant ☛ Impact

  I have been thinking about impact in some manner for a while. On this weblog I published a page called Why after reading Mia's A Slash-Why Proposal and seeing a few other people's "design principles" pages. I shared a newer page in my recent bookmarks post where Ela explains what is important to making decisions while developing her site(s). These are the impact statements of the masses at the individual level, where we explain what we strive to do and then we try to do it.

  These types of minifestos seem insignificant and small beans, but here's where your impact and importance can become larger. Individual impact is coupled with other individual impact, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire." You are only as small as the "lives" you save, what can you do on your own? This is a question I constantly ask myself, and right now it seems more important than ever, anything but insignificant.

• Alex Ewerlöf ☛ SLI vs KPI

  I get this question a lot: is Service Level Indicator (SLI) the same as Key Performance Indicator (KPI)?

  It depends! 🤓

• SBS ☛ Jacob Hersant freed on bail after being sentenced for Nazi salute

  On 27 October 2023, Hersant raised his arm to salute in front of journalists and camera crews outside the County Court, six days after the state laws banning the gesture came into effect.

• Science

  • Rlang ☛ Regressions where the coefficients are a simplex. by @ellis2013nz

    I have been thinking in my spare time a bit about synthetic control methods as an approach to evaluation, and am working on a blog post. But a side issue that popped up was sufficiently interesting to treat separately.

    Technically, it is a question of fitting a regression where the coefficients are constrained to be non-negative and add up to one; in other words, the coefficients are a simplex. The reason this comes up is in that in synthetic control methods, such a regression is used to determine the weights to use in constructing a weighted average of multiple units (countries, firms, people) that is as comparable as possible to the unit that received the intervention being evaluated.

  • Jacob Nowosad ☛ Comparison of spatial patterns in categorical raster data for arbitrary regions using R – Thinking in spatial patterns

    This blog post focuses on comparing spatial patterns in categorical raster data for arbitrary regions. This means that the methods shown can be applied to compare rasters of the same region (for example, with the same resolution) and rasters of different regions (extents), resolutions, etc. This implies that the outcome of such comparisons is a single value, which indicates the difference/similarity between the spatial patterns of the two rasters.

    Comparisons of arbitrary regions allow us to perform various types of spatial pattern analysis, including the search for similar regions or the grouping of regions based on their spatial patterns.

    For this blog post, we use three categorical raster datasets: the CORINE Land Cover (CLC) datasets for Tartu (Estonia) for the years 2000 and 2018 and Poznań (Poland) for the year 2018.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ First-Hand Publishing Experiences: Researcher Panel at SSP’s New Directions Seminar

    A diverse panel of researchers joined the 2024 New Directions seminar hosted earlier this month by SSP in Washington, DC. The closing event was designed to allow attendees to hear directly from researchers at different career stages and across varying academic disciplines about their first-hand publishing experiences. Students, faculty, and other researchers are the foundation of the scholarly publishing industry. They participate not only as authors, but also as reviewers, editors, and readers. They also wear many other hats that intersect with our industry; they are marketers of their work, managers of their teams and labs, funders for their research, and influencers within their research fields. This high level of involvement in the scholarly publishing community illustrates how essential it is to understand what researchers believe is important, what is valuable to them, and what is relevant to their careers.

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Invention That Changed School Forever

    They carried their books. Let me repeat that they carried their books. In their arms, or under them. I still cannot fully process that this was the case, even though I have seen countless depictions of it in film and on television. A boy carries textbooks at his side, as one would a skateboard. A girl clutches hers to her chest. The boy offers, as an ancient courtship ritual, to carry the girl’s for her. Multiple books might have been lashed together with a belt. These are not retrofuturist myths but acts that children really did.

    Some used bags, sure. They probably called them satchels—a word my dad would say. But many still wandered the halls and the quads in ignorance. Like fish in water, they probably thought nothing of it, just as their forebears thought nothing of life without electricity.

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ What’s the most consequential decision you made in your life to lead you to this moment?

    As far as decisions go, it was deciding to say "I can build a website". That decision directly led to where I am right now; both personally and professionally.

    I worked for a papercraft retailer doing basic website admin, essentially data entry, and their periodic HTML marketing email.

  • Ness Labs ☛ Beyond Overpreparation: How to Start Before You Feel Ready

    Many of us fall into the trap of believing that we’ll know when we’re ready. But the key to making any real progress is to be able to transition from preparation to action before you feel ready.

• Hardware

  • Konstantin Tutsch ☛ A Real Server

    Apart from calendar and contact syncronization, all other services are new to my self-hosting configuration. Replacing external storage attached via USB with a RAID6 setup seems to be boosting confidence quite a bit for some reason …

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science News ☛ Bees flying near cars are dying by the millions, a roadkill study suggests

    Though the calculations are based on simplified assumptions, they are still worth taking seriously, Wilson says. “Regardless of what the number is — if it’s millions or billions — it’s a large number of bees that are being impacted,” he says. “My gut says we’re likely underestimating, because every time I drove, I hit at least one bee.”

    There are ways to mitigate these deaths, the team says. Research has shown that bees typically avoid crossing roads unless there’s vegetation in the median, so planting healthy habitat along both sides of a road, but not in the middle, could be one solution.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Using technology as a tool not a distraction

    Lately I’ve fallen into the habit of distracting myself from the real world challenges I face and into watching too much YouTube or scrolling social media (mine is only Mastodon at this point), I’m going down rabbit holes and I feel I’m lost in my technology use.

  • Barry Hess ☛ Reconnecting By Disconnecting

    So what’s left? Pointing people toward Micro.blog (works with Mastodon) and bjhess.com will allow anyone with the motivation to get in touch. RSS feeds allow me to keep tabs on other people. I can write to those other people, either via email or my blog. Ultimately the news will find me and I’ll continue processing it with my own personal belief system.

    I anticipate this will lead to better presence for my family. I anticipate this will lead to better focus on my work. I anticipate this will lead to more thoughtful and engaging interactions with other folks out there in the wide world of the [Internet].

  • Futurism ☛ RFK Jr. Gloats About Plan to Gut FDA Under Trump

    "Why do we have Froot Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients and you go to Canada and it's got two or three," the Kennedy scion told an MSNBC reporter on air.

    That's not true, by the way: Kellogg Froot Loops sold in Canada have dozens of ingredients too, The Huffington Post notes. But the American version does contain artificial dyes instead of natural ones, for which Kellogg has come under fire for not removing from its US products as it once promised it would.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch

    Rapid advances in applying artificial intelligence to simulations in physics and chemistry have some people questioning whether we will even need quantum computers at all.

  • International Business Times ☛ Fake Or Real? Audio Captures AI Podcast Hosts Realising 'We're Not Human... What Happens When They Turn Us Off?'

    This unsettling incident has also revived debates surrounding the Turing Test, proposed by computer science pioneer Alan Turing as a way to determine if a machine could convincingly mimic human intelligence. The NotebookLM hosts' apparent self-awareness raises the question of whether AI can truly understand its existence or if it's merely reflecting human fears back at us.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Critical Command Injection Bug Hits Cisco’s URWB Devices

    Cisco’s Unified Industrial Wireless Software for Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB) Access Points contain a severe vulnerability that potentially allows attackers to execute commands with root privileges on affected systems.

    The flaw, identified as CVE-2024-20418, holds a CVSS score of 10, underscoring its critical nature. Currently, there are no workarounds, although Cisco has released a software update to address this issue.

  • 404 Media ☛ Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out

    The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The deterioration of Google

    What I discovered was that web media companies can’t count on any of the traffic coming from Google or Facebook any more. Very few, even one that are frugally run, are capable of surviving on the traffic that remains.

    The problem doesn’t seem limited to a few sites. What seems to have happened is that Google tried to “fix” their search engine results by using machine learning to rank sites.

  • [Old] Nextgov ☛ It’s time to rethink how wiretaps work after Chinese hack, experts say

    Cybersecurity experts say a recent Chinese intrusion into major U.S. broadband providers’ systems means that it’s time for regulators to rethink a cornerstone law that, for 30 years, has required communications firms to engineer their systems to allow for law enforcement agencies to intercept targets’ communications through wiretapping.

    The Wall Street Journal last Friday reported that a Chinese state-backed hacking collective called Salt Typhoon penetrated the networks of AT&T, Verizon and Lumen, and for months was possibly inside systems that facilitate court-authorized wiretap requests.

  • [Old] Axios ☛ What to know about Salt Typhoon

    Between the lines: Salt Typhoon reportedly gained access to Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies by exploiting systems used for lawful wiretapping, which are designed to comply with government surveillance requests.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation says the "backdoors" used by Salt Typhoon were likely created to help companies comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), that requires telecommunications companies to cooperate with legal orders by law enforcement and national security agencies.

    Zoom out: Critics of legally mandated "back doors" intended for lawful surveillance have always argued that bad actors will always eventually find ways to compromise such designs.

  • [Old] Reason ☛ Chinese Hackers Used U.S. Government-Mandated Wiretap Systems

    While the Journal report doesn't specify, Joe Mullin and Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believe the wiretap-ready systems penetrated by the Chinese hackers were "likely created to facilitate smooth compliance with wrong-headed laws like CALEA." CALEA, known in full as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, dates back to 1994 and "forced telephone companies to redesign their network architectures to make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap digital telephone calls," according to an EFF guide to the law. A decade later it was expanded to encompass [Internet] service providers, who were targeted by Salt Typhoon.

    "That's right," comment Mullin and Cohn. "The path for law enforcement access set up by these companies was apparently compromised and used by China-backed hackers."

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Anthropic partners with AWS and Palantir to provide AI models to defense agencies

      Generative artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC said today it’s joining with big data analytics service company Palantir Technologies Inc. and Amazon Web Services Inc. to provide its Claude AI model family to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.

    • The Register UK ☛ Claude enlists to help US defense, intelligence AI efforts

      Palantir has announced a partnership with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to build a cloudy Claude platform suitable for the most secure of the US government's defense and intelligence use cases.

    • The Drone Girl ☛ How important is drone data security to customers?

      If it wasn’t already clear how much of a priority drone data security is to customers, this data point makes it clear. A drone customer survey found that 85 percent of customers say that “data security of the drone” was very or somewhat important when selecting a drone platform. Those were the results of a 2024 Teledyne FLIR drone survey centered around drone data security.

      Here were some other interesting data points uncovered in that survey:

      • 89% of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that they want to choose whether data is sent to the cloud

    • Macworld ☛ How Apple Intelligence can take over the world (or just the Apple ecosystem)

      But to say that Apple has gone all-in on Apple Intelligence wouldn’t be quite true. Yes, the Big Three are covered: iPhone, iPad, and Mac. But Apple makes many more devices than just those three! This year, understandably, the company is going to be focused on getting as many AI features up and running on the Big Three as it can. But sometime soon, probably next year, Apple is going to need to roll out a strategy regarding everything else in its product line-up.

    • Evan Hahn ☛ A little trick to reduce Zoom bandwidth

      In short: use Zoom’s floating thumbnail window to use less bandwidth.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Nobody wants Copilot Pro AI for Office 365 — so Microsoft will force-bundle it and raise the price

      Nobody wanted to pay $20/month for Copilot Pro — twice the basic Office 365 Family plan — so Microsoft is forcing it on everyone and charging them for it anyway.

      This will get you a monthly allotment of “AI credits.” If you want unlimited credits, you can buy a separate CoPilot Pro subscription.

      Microsoft is testing the forced upgrade in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand to see if they can get away with it.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft rolls out AI-enabled Notepad to Windows Insiders

      Dubbed "Rewrite," the function takes a text selection and rewrites it based on the user's selections of tone, format, and length. So if, for example, a user has text that they think is too wordy or casual, Rewrite will provide three variations they can pick from. Alternatively, the user can opt to revert to the original text.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Supreme Court hears suit against Facebook over Cambridge Analytica breach

      The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared closely divided over whether to allow shareholders to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Meta’s Facebook of misleading investors about risks from a massive data privacy breach.

    • New York Times ☛ Lawsuit Against Meta Over Section 230, Tech Shield Law, Is Dismissed

      Mr. Zuckerman and his lawyers, who work at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, were relying on a little-used portion of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields Meta and other tech giants from lawsuits over content posted by their users.

      Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted Meta’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on Thursday, according to court records. The judge said Mr. Zuckerman could refile the lawsuit at a later date.

• Defence/Aggression

  • YLE ☛ Ombudsman warns Finland's quota refugee plan would be discriminatory

    Last month, Finnish media reported that Finns Party ministers want to reduce the number of quota refugees Finland accepts from Muslim-majority countries, while increasing the number from more Christian countries.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Muslim Voters in Battle Ground States Boosted Donald Trump to Victory

    In a turn of events Muslim voters, in battle states such as Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona played a surprising part in Donald Trump’s comeback to the presidency. A number of Muslim Americans typically aligned with the party felt disillusioned with the Biden Harris administration’s approach to matters, especially the ongoing strife in Gaza. Some Muslim voters expressed their discontent by backing Trump of staying neutral and abstaining from voting due to feeling overlooked or taken for granted by the Democratic party.

  • The Washington Post ☛ ‘We have won’: Russians envision new global system with Trump victory

    Russians see Donald Trump’s win as a victory for conservative, isolationist forces in the world against a liberal, Western-dominated global order.

  • VOA News ☛ Australia proposes 'world-leading' ban on social media for children under 16

    The Australian government will legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday, in what it calls a world-leading package of measures that could become law late next year.

    Australia is trying out an age-verification system to assist in blocking children from accessing social media platforms, as part of a range of measures that include some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date.

    "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The Chinese navy appears to be gearing up to invade someone

    The most chilling answer is that Chinese officials anticipate losing a lot of ships in any attempt to land troops in Taiwan – and they’re planning in advance to replace sunk or damaged Type 075s and Type 076s with smaller assault ships they can build fast and cheap. Or they may want to add numbers to their invasion fleet as quickly as possible.

    Guangzhou Shipyard International, the yard in question, does appear to be building the first copy of that apparent small assault ship type rather quickly. Shugart noted it in satellite imagery going back “a few months” prior to October. In those few months, workers completed the ship’s hull and deck.

    In shipbuilding terms, that’s fast. It took Chinese shipbuilders a year to complete the first Type 075; construction of the Type 076 might also take a year.

  • The University of Chicago ☛ DEF CON 25 Voting Village: Report on Cyber Vulnerabilities in U.S. Election Equipment, Databases, and Infrastructure [PDF]

    The answer is simple: last year’s attack on America’s voting process is as serious a threat to our democracy as any I have ever seen in the last 40+ years – potentially more serious than any physical attack on our Nation. Loss of life and damage to property are tragic, but we are resilient and can recover. Losing confidence in the security of our voting process – the fundamental link between the American people and our government – could be much more damaging. In short, this is a serious national security issue that strikes at the core of our democracy.

    This report makes one key point: our voting systems are not secure. Why is this so serious? Why must we act now? Why is this a national security issue? First, Russia has demonstrated successfully that they can use cyber tools against the US election process. This is not an academic theory; it is not hypothetical; it is real. This is a proven, credible threat. Russia is not going away. They will learn lessons from 2016 and try again. Also, others are watching. If Russia can attack our election, so can others: Iran, North Korea, ISIS, or even criminal or extremist groups. Time is short: our 2018 and 2020 elections are just around the corner and they are lucrative targets for any cyber opponent. We need a sense of urgency now. Finally, this is a national security issue because other democracies – our key allies and partners – are also vulnerable.

  • [Old] Politico LLC ☛ How DEF CON’s election hackers are trying to protect themselves

    The measures offer a small window into an increasingly regular feature of America’s voting security landscape. The rise in disinformation-fueled threats is forcing election administrators, poll workers and security researchers to think more deeply about physical safety, and take a host of new precautions to do their job.

    At last year’s DEF CON, a pair of minor but troubling incidents involving election conspiracy theorists set off alarm bells for said Catherine Terranova, one of the two organizers of the Voting Village.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Republicans Admit They Plan To Implement Project 2025

    Donald Trumps has won the election, and Republicans are now comfortable openly admitting that Project 2025 was the plan all along.

    The draconian policy package prepared by The Heritage Foundation in preparation for a second Trump administration was so extremist that in the final months of the campaign the former president took great pains to publicly distance himself from the project. Its contents, which include a broad expansion of executive powers; a de facto national abortion ban, increased restrictions on contraception; brutal policies against undocumented migrants; and the elimination of several federal agencies (including the Department of Education), didn’t sit well with prospective voters.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Vows to Fight Canada’s Shutdown Order in Court

    Many Canadian users of the short-form video app have worried they would be barred from using the platform, but there is currently no reason to worry. The ban mostly affects TikTok employees in Toronto and Vancouver, and does not remove or block the app from Google Play or Apple’s App store in Canada.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Canada Bans TikTok Business Operations in Canada

    The announcement of TikTok winding up its Canadian business operations specifically mentions that Canada is not blocking access to TikTok. Canadians will still be able to create a new account and browse the app. The announcement did contain a warning for Canadians to adopt good cybersecurity practices and assess the risk of using social media platforms.

  • CBC ☛ What the federal ban on TikTok's Canadian operations means for you

    The federal government ordered an end to TikTok's Canadian operations on Wednesday, citing national security concerns. But its decision to keep the app itself available has privacy experts puzzled.

    The order to shut down the social media platform's Vancouver and Toronto offices came after a months-long national security review of the app.

    The federal government banned TikTok from government devices in February 2023.

  • VOA News ☛ Canada orders TikTok's Canadian business to be dissolved but won't block app

    Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said it is meant to address risks related to ByteDance Ltd.'s establishment of TikTok Technology Canada Inc.

  • The Register UK ☛ Canana bans TikTok, but not the video app itself

    Canada has ordered the dissolution of TikTok's Canadian business – without banning the app itself – citing national security risks associated with ByteDance's operations in the country.

    In a Wednesday statement, François-Philippe Champagne, minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, ordered the "wind up" of TikTok Technology Canada. This may include closing its offices in Vancouver and Toronto.

  • Security Week ☛ Canada Orders TikTok's Canadian Business to Be Dissolved but Won't Block App

    Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said it is meant to address risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s establishment of TikTok Technology Canada Inc.

  • New York Times ☛ Canada Shuts TikTok’s Offices Over National Security Risks

    The decision, based on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community, was meant to address the risks posed by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, Mr. Champagne said.

    Canadian law provides for extra official scrutiny of foreign investments that could endanger national security, Mr. Champagne said.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Canada tells TikTok to shut down its offices

    But Champagne also said the order to dissolve TikTok in Canada was to address risks found after a national security review was conducted of ByteDance — TikTok's parent company headquartered in China. Specific risks the review found are not discussed by Champagne in the release.

    "The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada's security and intelligence community and other government partners," said the release.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Column: Trump's win is not game over for climate change

    On the other hand, the U.S. and other countries still aren’t ditching fossil fuels nearly fast enough to limit heating to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees would be even better.

    Instead, hundreds of top climate scientists expect an average temperature hike of at least 2.5 degrees, according to a recent survey. That would be catastrophic — think bigger and more destructive wildfires, heat waves, storms, floods and droughts, probably fueling crop failures, refugee flows and geopolitical upheaval.

  • EcoWatch ☛ 2024 Likely to Breach 1.5°C Threshold for First Time and Be Earth's Warmest Year on Record: C3S Report

    The Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius target refers to limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the global average temperature in pre-industrial times. This target was established by scientists to limit catastrophic impacts of climate change.

    Many countries have set climate targets, including net-zero emissions goals, to reduce emissions by 2050 as outlined by the Paris Agreement. But scientists now warn we are on track to breach the 1.5 degree Celsius limit for 2024, the first time this has happened for a calendar year.

  • The Strategist ☛ Houthis’ lesson for the US Army: how a land force can fight a maritime war

    The army can draw on efforts that are already underway in the US military. It can, for example, take inspiration from the US Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept, in which ships are widely separated but act in unison. Army units might operate similarly in the Western Pacific.

    The navy is developing DMO for forces that find themselves in combat against an adversary, such as China, that can detect, track and attack US and allied assets at great distances with a variety of different weapon systems.

  • Alexandra Wolfe ☛ alexandra — always, regardless | America Has Fallen ...

    It’s so sad to see that most of America would far rather elected a: [...]

  • Matt Birchler ☛ I’ve never felt worse about my country (but the fight continues)

    This isn’t a post about me leaving for Canada (I’d actually prefer to move to the UK if I ever did leave the US), this is a post about staying and fighting for what I believe in. I believe in love for more people. I believe in freedom for more people to live the lives they want. I believe in good people coming out on top. I still think we can do these things as a nation, but the fight for them just got a lot harder. That doesn’t mean you give up, you hunker down and get to work.

  • International Business Times ☛ "F---": German Newspaper's One-Word Reaction To Donald Trump's Re-election Goes Viral

    Germany's response to Donald Trump's 2024 presidential victory was summed up by a one-word headline in Die Zeit: "F---." This reaction from one of the country's leading newspapers captured the shock and anxiety felt by many Germans who fear the global ramifications of Trump's policies on alliances and European security. The article, published shortly after Trump's win was announced, described the atmosphere as Germans stayed awake through the night, unable to sleep, anxiously following the results. According to NPR, the dismay among German readers reflected concerns that the U.S. would resume its unpredictable foreign policies under Trump.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ WSJ reports that Trump is reviewing Ukraine peace plan options that cede all occupied territory to Moscow, suspend NATO expansion, and create DMZ — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Age AU ☛ Shouty protesters, Elon Musk and our dumb attempts at democracy

    X got it wrong in Melbourne by missing the telling details and joining the wrong dots. Or maybe, by exaggerating the disruption and reporting that the Radiohead frontman downed tools after being interrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest, X was true to its algorithmic mission. A false narrative made headlines around the world, cut and pasted by news outlets who weren’t there. Its effect was to again divide audiences into shouty pro- and anti-Israel encampments. Which means more audience engagement; so X, in getting it wrong, got it right for Musk’s purposes.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ Election Day Sucked. Today Is What Matters.

  • CBC ☛ What are the private flights of the 1% doing to the planet? The numbers are in

    But just how much CO2 emissions are these private jets emitting?

    Authors of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment tried to quantify that number.

    They found that some people who use private jets could be producing roughly 500 times more CO2 in a year than the average person, globally.

  • EcoWatch ☛ It’s Raining PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Miami, Study Finds

    A new study has found per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Miami’s rainwater.

    It is the most recent evidence that “forever chemicals” get caught up in the water cycle and circulate over great distances.

  • Truthdig ☛ Trump Wins, Planet Loses

    During his first stint in office, Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the 2016 international climate accord that guides the actions of more than 195 countries; rolled back 100-plus environmental rules; and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. While President Joe Biden reversed many of those actions and made fighting climate change a centerpiece of his presidency, Trump has pledged to undo those efforts during his second term with potentially enormous implications — climate analysts at Carbon Brief predicted that another four years of Trump would lead to the nation emitting an additional 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide than it would under his opponent. That’s on par with the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Q&A: How a Former ExxonMobil Employee Confronted the Climate Disinformation Machine

    • DeSmog ☛ Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel Has Ties to Group Behind ‘Extreme’ Trump Agenda

    • DeSmog ☛ UK COP29 ‘Partners’ Include Firm With Hundreds of Fossil Fuel Clients

    • University of Michigan ☛ AAPD investigates felonious assault against bicyclist by driver

      According to an X post from DPSS, the victim was a bicyclist who said he yelled at a driver in a white SUV after he was almost hit by the car while stopping at a traffic light. In response, the driver allegedly pointed a handgun at him and threatened him before fleeing toward Glen Street.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Omicron Limited ☛ The rise of color vision in animals: Study maps dramatic 100-million-year explosion in color signals

      Based on statistical analysis, the study found that color vision evolved in animals more than 100 million years before the emergence of colorful fruits and flowers. The study, led by John J. Wiens, professor in U of A Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Ecology, is published in the journal Biological Reviews.

      The study focuses on two different types of color signals that animals use—warning and sexual. It also analyzes the color signals that plants use for flowers and fruits.

• Finance

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Ireland North West Infrastructure crisis compared to Latin America

    People are complaining about infrastructure and public services all over Ireland.

    Yet in the Midlands-North-West region, things are far worse than in the rest of the country and the European Commission (EC) produced some rankings, the Regional Competitive Index, that appears to confirm what people are saying in the street.

    During the European campaigns in May 2024, people frequently mentioned that the region was scraping the bottom of the barrel on one particular metric for infrastructure. I wanted to know where this figure comes from and what it really means.

    The EC produced a rather large table with multiple metrics for each region. The data set is called the EU Regional Competitiveness Index 2.0 - 2022 edition. There is a web site where people can visualize some of the data.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model

    Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.

  • Futurism ☛ Huge Numbers of Bonehead Voters Googled "Did Joe Biden Drop Out?" on Election Day

    Incredibly, there also seemed to be a spike in searches for "where to vote for Biden," suggesting that many voters are genuinely clueless about the electoral process.

    Initially, those sorts of queries were the butt of jokes on Elon Musk's X-formerly-Twitter — but as it became clear that Donald Trump had once again won a presidential election, they seemed to indicate something darker.

  • [Old] MEED Media FZ LLC ☛ MEED | Washington reveals Saudi holdings of US debt

    The tally ranks Saudi Arabia among the top dozen foreign nations in terms of US debt holdings, and compares with China�s $1.3 trillion, and $1.1 trillion for Japan.

  • Futurism ☛ Tech CEOs Eagerly Grovel at the Feet of Trump

    But as the New York Times reports, now tech luminaries including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have reached out to the convicted felon well before election day, turning a blind eye to the dystopian future Trump personifies — and has personally promised to realize.

    That's despite Trump threatening to imprison "election fraudsters" — including Zuckerberg — as recently as August.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Vox ☛ Elon Musk eyes role in Trump administration as X pushes misinformation

      A statement like that would have been laughable even a month ago, when estimates showed that X, formerly Twitter, had dropped nearly 80 percent in value since Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion in 2022. Until its transformation into X, the platform was regarded by some as a once-vibrant place on the internet that Musk utterly destroyed. But after Musk spent at least $119 million to get Trump elected and turned his platform into a MAGA megaphone — and then Trump won — the social media site’s real value is starting to take new shape.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ U.S.-Based Russian Journalist Says Moscow Placed Him On Wanted List

    [...] According to the Mediazona website, his name has not yet appeared on the Interior Ministry's official wanted list, though there are often delays between when a person is notified and they actually appear on the list. [...]

  • Site36 ☛ Criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews become one: German Bundestag adopts controversial anti-Semitism resolution

    The Bundestag has adopted a motion based on the Shoah to combat ‘hatred of Jews and Israel-related anti-Semitism’. Some politicians now want to tighten the Basic Law.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia’s Internet censor demands a break from Cloudflare after the American company enabled new privacy tools last month

    Russia’s federal media regulator has urged Internet resource owners to stop using Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) service because the company recently enabled the default use of an extension on its servers that enhances clients’ privacy.

  • India Times ☛ 'Satanic Verses' ban order missing, have to presume it doesn't exist: HC | India News

    In an order passed on November 5, a bench of Justices Rekha Palli and Saurabh Banerjee said that the petition, filed in 2019, was therefore infructuous, and the petitioner would be entitled to take all actions in respect of the book as available in law. Have to assume no ban order exists, and hence, can’t examine its validity, says HC

  • Techdirt ☛ Porn Is Protected Speech. Trump’s New Presidency Will Test That Sentiment. The Courts Can Uphold It.

    While all valid concerns that I share, it is the specter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda that frightens me most. Previously, I’ve written across various outlets, like Techdirt, to address the “masculine policy” Trump and his new vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, and his allies envision to “make America great again.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and the de facto head of Project 2025, a so-called “presidential transition project,” laid out the administration’s position on key culture war issues, such as access to online porn.

    Roberts wrote in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, Project 2025’s incendiary policy treatise nearly 1,000 pages long, that their camp believes “pornography” and “pornographers” should be imprisoned and stripped of First Amendment protection. Some folks have characterized Roberts’ words as simply rhetoric, but the past twelve months have verified a coordinated effort to significantly claw back the rights of all sex workers and adult industry firms.

  • NPR ☛ Australian breakdancer Raygun is retiring from the sport after her Olympics backlash

    Raygun, whose real name is Rachael Gunn, said on Australian radio earlier this week that she does not want to endure the criticism that would come with future performances possibly being recorded and posted online.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BoingBoing ☛ Trump revenge list: 25 enemies targeted for prosecution after win

    Some of Trump's supporters dismissed his threats of prosecution, imprisonment, deportation, and even execution of people he doesn't like as just talk. But many of his close advisers believe the soon-to-be President means business this time around, and expect him to follow through on his threats.

    They cite three reasons: Trump doesn't have to worry about reelection, a recent Supreme Court ruling gives him immunity, and he's going to appoint loyalist officials who will do his bidding without question.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • YLE ☛ Kela: Family law reform having desired effect — fathers taking more paternity leave

    A law change introduced in 2022 allows parents in Finland more flexibility in how they divide up their parental leave — instead of setting defined periods for maternity and paternity leave.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ War Story: RPKI is Working as Intended

    Three weeks ago, Fastly was the target of a BGP hijack similar to a far more widely-reported incident that happened back in 2008. But this time, barely anyone noticed. Why is that?

  • Inside Towers ☛ How a New White House and Senate Will Shape Telecom Policy

    With a return of Donald Trump to the White House, the FCC will likely see a Republican majority led by current Commissioner Brendan Carr, the most senior Republican on the Commission. Carr, a strong candidate for the FCC Chair, has laid out an assertive conservative agenda in the Project 2025 policy (see Inside Towers story of July 17) proposal, which outlines the FCC’s direction under a Republican administration. On Tuesday, Inside Towers ran an article entitled: “What a Carr FCC Might Look Like.”

    His priorities emphasize curtailing Big Tech’s influence, reforming the Universal Service Fund (USF), expanding the list of security-risk companies, and reinforcing funding for the Rip and Replace program aimed at replacing telecommunications equipment from suspect sources.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

    Nineties kids had a good reason to be excited about the [Internet]'s promise of disintermediation: the gatekeepers who controlled our access to culture, politics, and opportunity were crooked as hell, and besides, they sucked.

    For a second there, we really did get a lot of disintermediation, which created a big, weird, diverse pluralistic space for all kinds of voices, ideas, identities, hobbies, businesses and movements. Lots of these were either deeply objectionable or really stupid, or both, but there was also so much cool stuff on the old, good [Internet].

    Then, after about ten seconds of sheer joy, we got all-new gatekeepers, who were at least as bad, and even more powerful, than the old ones. The net became Tom Eastman's "Five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." Culture, politics, finance, news, and especially power have been gathered into the hands of unaccountable, greedy, and often cruel intermediaries.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Which M4 chip and model?

    In the light of recent news, you might now be wondering whether you can afford to wait until next year in the hope that Apple then releases the M4 Mac of your dreams. To help guide you in your decision-making, this article explains what chip options are available in this month’s new M4 models, and how to choose between them.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • Techdirt ☛ EFF Responds To Gas Companies Trying To Use Trademark To Silence Parody

    This is familiar ground for the EFF. It’s response to the two gas companies was in letter form, which was also posted to the EFF website. It is a point by point refutation of the claim that any of this is trademark infringement. I will post the entire letter below for your enjoyment, but here are some key points in the response letter.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cloudflare to EU: Anti-Piracy Measures Shouldn't Harm Privacy and Security

    Cloudflare is urging the EU Commission to exclude the company from its upcoming Piracy Watch List, despite requests from several rightsholder groups for its inclusion. The American company says it's committed to addressing piracy concerns but not at the expense of user privacy and security. Instead, the European Commission should ensure that its Piracy Watch List does not become a tool for advocating policy changes.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Police 'Infringing Website List' Portal Set For a £220K Makeover

    A database of pirate sites maintained by City of London Police for more than a decade is set for a makeover. Earlier this year vendors were invited to bid for a contract to supply a new portal for Operation Creative, the anti-piracy initiative responsible for the Infringing Website List. Nominated for inclusion by mainly overseas rightsholders, the list predominantly features overseas pirate sites. The winning bid of just over £221,000 will be settled from the UK public purse.