Leftovers

• University of Michigan ☛ Michigan Sustainability Community offers living‑learning experience

  The Sustainable Living Experience pilot program, which introduces programming and learning opportunities during the first year of college, will become the Michigan Sustainability Community.

• Marijke Luttekes ☛ Technical documentation writing quick tips / Marijke Luttekes

  Below are several quick tips to help you make your technical documentation (docstrings, READMEs) more accessible to read.

  These are tips that I give colleagues and pupils based on practical experience. Writing is a skill, and people have written entire books about the subject; this “quick tips” article serves as an everyday primer.

• Michal Zelazny ☛ Experiences

  Anyway, I resigned from the Ko-Fi thing. I feel better when there’s no incentive connected with my writing. I’ve been thinking about it for a whole week, and that’s really long in my standards. I don’t regret trying it. I know a bit more about myself after this experience, and this is the most valuable knowledge one can have.

• Seth Michael Larson ☛ Writing a blog on the [Internet]

  Today is the 5-year anniversary of my first blog post in 2019. Since that time I've written nearly 100 articles for my blog, something that I am quite proud of! Writing has had a huge positive impact on my life and career.

  I invite you, dear reader, to start writing about topics you're interested in and sharing those writings on the [Internet]. This article is me putting my finger on the scale by sharing what I would do differently if I were to start over again.

• Variety ☛ Art Garfunkel Cried at Lunch With Paul Simon, Wanted to 'Make Amends'

  Garfunkel added that he and Simon, who are both 83 years old, have made plans to meet up again. “Will Paul bring his guitar? Who knows,” he said. “For me, it was about wanting to make amends before it’s too late. It felt like we were back in a wonderful place. As I think about it now, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I can still feel his hug.”

• Tedium ☛ Free Sample History: Better For Consumers Or Marketers?

  Today in Tedium: When my wife and I got married in 2013, we ended up honeymooning near the Great Smoky Mountains at the worst possible time. The government had shut down at this point, which meant the park was closed. As a result, we were stuck trying to make the most of the kitschy cultural offerings in the eastern Tennessee strongholds of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. We did a lot of stuff around this time—we had our first and last experience with dinner theater, for example. But the thing that caught us off guard was Ole Smoky Moonshine having free samples at two separate locations on the Gatlinburg strip. At the time, it was possible to go between locations and get the equivalent of two and a half shots of flavored moonshine—from each—for free. Obviously, as newlyweds upset that a free resource was taken away from us, we took advantage of this poorly controlled regulatory loophole to access another free resource. We got straight-up toasted for absolutely free, though we did later buy some moonshine to take home with us. But when we returned a decade later, this time with the national park open for business, there were many more businesses offering alcohol samples, including another moonshine place, but now you have to pay money to get those samples—and now, they check IDs, going so far as to scan then so you don’t abuse the privilege. What happened? This weirdly specific memory has me thinking about free samples, and at what point the samples become a bad deal for the seller and community. Today's Tedium talks samples. — Ernie @ Tedium

• Leon Mika ☛ Cropping A "Horizontal" PocketCast Clip To An Actual Horizontal Video

  This, I did not care for. So I wanted to find a way to crop the videos to dimensions I find more reasonable (read: horizontal).

  Here’s the ffmpeg command I’m using to do so. This takes a video of the “horizontal” PocketCast clip type and basically does a crop at the centre to produce a video with the 16:9 aspect ratio. This post shows how the cropped video turns out.

• John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: How It Went

• [Repeat] Computers Are Bad ☛ 2024-11-09 iron mountain atomic storage

  There are several ways this goes wrong. First, there are not actually that many data center clients who will pay extra to put their equipment underground. That's not really how modern disaster recovery plans work. Second, and probably more damning, these ventures often fail to anticipate the enormous cost of renovating an underground facility. Every type of construction is more expensive when you do it underground, and hardened facilities have thick, reinforced concrete walls that are difficult to penetrate. Modernizing a former hardened telecom site or, even worse, missile site for data center use will likely cost more than constructing a brand new one. Indeed, the military knows this: that's why they just sold them, often at rock-bottom prices.

  Even if these "secure datacenters" almost never succeed (and rarely even make it to a first paying client), they've provided a lot of stories over the years. CyberBunker, one of the less usual European examples (a former NATO facility), managed to become entangled in cybercrime and the largest DDoS attack ever observed at the time, all while claiming to be an independent nation. They were also manufacturing MDMA, and probably lying about most of the equipment being in a hardened facility to begin with.

• Evan Hahn ☛ 95% is very different from 99%

  This post is a rant.

  I feel a vast difference between interfaces that work most of the time and ones that seem to work every time.

• The Scotsman ☛ World's oldest joke shop and iconic 138-year-old Scottish store closes for good

  High operating costs and uncertainty over the future of the premises have been cited as reasons for the decision. The building the joke shop operated from is set to be redeveloped, with city officials having recommended that permission be granted for a 14-storey, 195-bed development on the site.

  Tam Shepherds will continue to trade online despite the closure of the Queen Street store.

• Science

  • NYPost ☛ Scientific American editor’s partisan rants expose a deep ignorance of what science IS

    Scientific American chief editor Laura Helmuth apologized Friday for her utterly classless Election Night rants against Donald Trump and his voters. It’s a start, but a lot of self-examination needs to follow.

  • New York Times ☛ Uranus Might Have Experienced a Freak Event When Voyager 2 Visited

    Much of the understanding of the seventh planet comes from a brief flyby nearly 40 years ago, which researchers now say overlapped with an exceptional solar event.

  • Simon Willison ☛ Binary vector embeddings are so cool

    It's so unintuitive how well this trick works: take a vector of 1024x4 byte floating point numbers (4096 bytes = 32,768 bits), turn that into an array of single bits for > 0 or <= 0 which reduces it to just 1024 bits or 128 bytes - a 1/32 reduction.

  • El País ☛ The ingredients of the universe were chosen in three minutes

    Our knowledge of physics — gained through astrophysical experiments, or in laboratories via machines such as particle accelerators — is sufficient to know what happened in the first three minutes of the universe, where everything we see today was forged

• Career/Education

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Group assignments and expectations

    There were many reasons why people like me hated group assignments, but generally it boiled down to work allocation. I somehow always became the group lead, which roughly translates to “you do all the work”… some of you I’m sure are nodding your heads recalling a similar experience. Occasionally I’d be matched with someone who was willing to split half the work with me in a wider group, but it wasn’t unusual for me to be carrying several concurrent assignments for three to eight people.

  • The Local SE ☛ 'Bewildering': Foreigners in Sweden explain impact of work permit salary hike

    Helena, from Russia, had just finished training as a teacher in Sweden when the law came into force, and quickly realised that this meant that all her efforts would come to nothing.

    "All the effort was in vain and my plans on being a teacher in Sweden were broken as teachers, unfortunately, start with a lower salary. The thing is Sweden has a great shortage in teachers, which means it is shooting itself in the foot."

  • LRT ☛ New life for old books: Lithuanian libraries to hold auctions for discarded publications

    Lithuanian libraries used to pulp discarded books, but under new rules they will be offered up to auctions or anyone who would take them.

    The various branches of the Akmenė Public Library, in the north-west of Lithuania, discard around 5,000 books each year. These are old, tattered books with frayed covers that readers no longer take.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Palmshell SLiM X4L is a low-cost, ultrathin mini PC based on defective chip maker Intel N100 Alder Lake-N SoC

    Radxa Palmshell SLiM X4L is a low-cost, ultrathin mini PC powered by an defective chip maker Intel N100 Alder Lake-N SoC, equipped with 8GB to 32GB LPDDR5 RAM and a 128GB to 1TB NVMe SSD, and with a design that somewhat reminds me of the MeLE Quieter4C fanless mini PC. It’s also an update of the Palmshell SLiM X2L based on the Radxa X2L SBC powered by an defective chip maker Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor and the X4L features the exact same port layout with two USB ports on the side, a USB-C port for power, a low-profile Ethernet RJ45 port, two more USB 3.2 Type-A ports on the rear panel, two HDMI outputs, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Kensington lock.

  • Quentin Santos ☛ On-Die ECC - Quentin Santos

    It turns out that “ECC memory” has now been overloaded to mean two subtly different concepts: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ The NPU: Neural processing unit or needless pricey upsell?

    NPUs are specialized processors within system-on-chips (SoCs) designed to handle AI-specific tasks, like for example, background noise suppression, real-time video enhancement, and basic generative AI functions. Companies including Intel with its VPU in Meteor Lake, AMD with Ryzen AI, and Qualcomm with the Hexagon AI processor have all embedded NPUs into their silicon, claiming they will revolutionize the computing experience by making devices smarter and more efficient. The idea is to offload AI workloads from the CPU and GPU to save power, theoretically improving battery life and providing faster on-chip AI processing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • El País ☛ Individualism, cell phones and social fatigue: Why unexpected visitors are in danger of extinction

    “A sense of community is not necessarily based on really getting to know one’s neighbors, nor becoming immersed in their lives, but rather, maintaining good relationships, which means avoiding conflict. While it’s true that big cities favor individualism and loneliness, they also protect intimacy, because they prevent one from forever living in view of everyone else, something that often happens in small communities. That is to say, they have their pros and cons,” Pedro Azara, architect and professor of aesthetics and art theory at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, tells EL PAÍS. In this sense, not running into people you know on the street or expecting a neighbor or friend to show up at the front door isn’t necessarily an indication that the urbanite has become more self-absorbed, but rather, that the contemporary makeup of cities invites one to stand at a certain distance from people in order to maintain a sense of freedom. Becoming perturbed when someone visits you without warning has to do, in a certain way, with the feeling that one’s intimate moments have been exposed.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What I Didn’t Understand About Apple Picking

    Farms like these, offering what has become known as “agritainment,” have transformed apple picking from a simple activity into one that can resemble visiting a theme park. Some people might dismiss this sort of spectacle (or apple picking of any kind) as trivial. “Cosplay outdoorsiness with us!” the Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant says in a 2019 sketch parodying the harvest experience. But going to a farm each autumn—even if it’s not the most tranquil orchard—can offer more than it may seem to on the surface: a ritual, an encounter with nature, and a connection to history.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Pivot to AI ☛ UK Home Office speeds up visa and refugee processing with Copilot AI reject-a-bot

    Under years of pressure from the right-wing press, the previous and current UK governments have required the Home Office to reduce immigration numbers by any means possible — whether it makes sense or not.

    But visa and asylum applications keep coming. What to do about the backlog? Let’s clear it with an AI-powered black box!

  • Daniel Miessler ☛ Using the Smartest AI to Rate Other AI

    But I wanted a simpler architecture that uses high-quality prompting to do the work. In other words, what could I give a smart, Judging AI as instructions such that it can evaluate the sophistication of less smart, to-be-tested AI? So here’s the structure I used.

  • MacRumors ☛ Apple courier (Uber) may have stolen 2 Macbooks I bought and it's looking like Apple is not going to help.

    I couldn't believe my eyes. Picked up the phone and called them and what they didnt tell me in the email was that I should file a police report (which ive done). They said do the police report and the police will reach out to Apple. Problem is I talked to the police and they said they dont reach out to anyone, Apple reaches out to them once I give Apple the police report number. Apple also said they came to that decision because Uber says the item shows as delivered.

  • The Register UK ☛ QNX 8 goes freeware – for non-commercial use

    QNX is venerable code now. It dates back to the 1980s, and it's probably the most proven genuine microkernel OS in the business. We stress genuine microkernel, because microkernels were very trendy in the late 20th century for a while and as a result everyone and their dog claimed their OSes were microkernels.

    Microsoft bruited it about the massively monolithic Windows NT kernel. Carnegie-Mellon's Mach broadly is, and alongside several long-dead proprietary OSes such as Tru64 and OSF/1, Mach lies deep underneath macOS – but that has a big in-kernel "Unix server" that rather nixes the "micro" part. The FOSS Minix version 3 definitely counts, but despite being shipped inside millions of Intel Core microprocessors' management engines, Minix 3 remains somewhat incomplete, and since creator Andy Tanenbaum has retired, it looks likely to stay that way.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ CISA Warns Of CVE-2024-8934 And Critical ICS Vulnerabilities

    CISA issued advisories on critical ICS vulnerabilities in Beckhoff, Delta, and Bosch systems, posing risks to energy, manufacturing, and smart machine sectors.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ What Africa needs to do to become a major AI player

    Africans want AI to speak their local languages, but many Africans cannot speak and write in these languages themselves, Adebara said.

    Although Africa accounts for one-third of all languages in the world, many oral languages are slowly disappearing, their population of native speakers declining. And LLMs developed by Western-based tech companies fail to serve African languages; they don’t understand locally relevant context and culture.

  • The Verge ☛ How Auto-Tune took over the music industry

    We’re now more than two decades into the Auto-Tune era, and Charlie makes the case that all the backlash and frustration with Auto-Tune is both overrated and misguided. Maybe, after all this time, we should think of Auto-Tune not as a way to mask our deficiencies as musicians, but just as another instrument to play. And as ever more of the music-making process becomes digitized and perfectible, the change Auto-Tune wrought isn’t going anywhere.

    As we barrel toward whatever the “AI era” of music will be, we also look for clues in Auto-Tune’s story that point to what’s coming next. We talk about the distinct sound that comes from tools like Suno and Udio, how artists will use and abuse AI, and whether we should be worried about what it all means. We haven’t yet found the “Believe” of the AI music era, but it’s probably coming.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Turns out the Twit Export was garbage

    I got to wondering: "In the intervening years, have any of the people I used to follow on Twitter come to their senses and migrated to a non-Nazi platform, where I might again follow them? I should check!"

    When you finally left the Nazi Bar and closed your Twitter account, you probably did the big data export. Guess what, it sucks! The archive does not list the accounts you followed. Well, the data is technically there, which as we know is the best kind of there: [...]

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • CBC ☛ Mattel apologizes for mistakenly printing porn website on Wicked toy doll packaging

      Instead of linking to Universal Pictures' official WickedMovie.com page, the website listed leads to an adult film site that requires consumers to be over 18 to enter.

      In a statement sent to The Associated Press, Mattel said it was "made aware of a misprint on the packaging of the Mattel Wicked collection dolls," which it said are primarily sold in the U.S.

    • The Verge ☛ Mattel accidentally linked a porn site on Wicked doll packaging

      Barbie producer Mattel has issued an apology after customers spotted its Wicked edition dolls listed an adult website on the packaging. The toy merchandise mistakenly directed customers to the homepage of the Wicked Pictures pornographic movie studio, instead of the correct WickedMovie.com URL.

      “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this,” Mattel said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 404 Media ☛ The Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World

      Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully “eliminate crime” with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible.

    • The Register UK ☛ FBI: Rise in crooks stealing data using government emails

      The uptick in abuse was first registered in August, and the FBI recently issued a Private Industry Notification as an increasing number of US businesses and law enforcement agencies are served fraudulent requests.

      Emergency data requests (EDRs) exist in the US as a legal mechanism through which law enforcement agencies can obtain the necessary information from service providers during – you guessed it – an emergency.

    • The Korea Times ☛ McDonald's executive awarded for teaching older patrons to use kiosks

      The 10-chapter textbook, titled “Digital Illiteracy Education with McDonald’s Kiosks,” details key features and terms related to food-ordering kiosks in general and methods on how to use the machines — from navigating menus to selecting choices, making payments in multiple options and getting a number slip and a receipt.

      The program also employed a specially designed smartphone app that simulated the interface of McDonald's kiosks to train the students before inviting them to a McDonald’s restaurant to get their hands on the machines.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Dissenter ☛ US Supreme Court Asked To End CIA's 'Absurd' Secrecy Over Gitmo Files

  • Deseret Media ☛ Remembering Armistice Day in Europe: Liberty should be cherished and defended

    With armed conflict again on their continent, many European leaders marked the end 106 years ago of World War I with warnings that liberty, so often taken as self-evident, should be cherished and defended.

  • ANF News ☛ An ISIS terrorist wanted for two years captured in Hol

    ISIS terrorists are trying to conceal themselves among civilians in villages and within the Hol Camp itself, exploiting the humanitarian conditions to carry out terrorist attacks against both military personnel and civilians. To counter this threat, Operation Enduring Security was launched to eradicate the ISIS presence in the Hol area and its environs, including the camp.

  • ANF News ☛ 11 ISIS members captured in Hol Camp on the fifth day of ‘Operation Enduring Security’

    Over the past period, the terrorist organization ISIS has attempted to activate its terrorist cells and carry out terrorist attacks to destabilize the security and stability of the northern and eastern regions of Syria, focusing mainly on the Hol Camp, where it has repeatedly attempted to smuggle its elements and families from the camp, strengthening its power among the camp residents, introducing weapons and explosives, and trying to dig tunnels and trenches.

  • VOA News ☛ 17 Chadian soldiers and 96 rebels killed in a Boko Haram attack, army says

    The Lake Chad region has been plagued this year by frequent attacks from insurgents, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa. It has revived fears of violence after a period of peace following a successful operation launched in 2020 by the Chadian army to destroy the extremist groups' bases.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced AI processors to China: Report

    This action was prompted by a recent discovery: a TSMC-manufactured chiplet was found in an AI processor developed by Huawei, which suggested a breach of existing export regulations. Indeed, it was promptly discovered that Huawei used a proxy to plant an order at TSMC.

  • The Register UK ☛ Australia to ban social media until age of 16

    The Australian government has confirmed it will create legislation that bans access to social media for people under the age of 16.

    "The Bill builds upon the Australian Government's work to address online harms for young people, including the $6.5 million age assurance trial, establishing an online dating apps code, legislating new criminal penalties for non-consensual sexual deepfakes, and quadrupling base funding for the eSafety Commissioner," explained a notice from the prime minister's office on November 8.

  • Australia ☛ Minimum age for social media access to protect Australian kids | Prime Minister of Australia

    The Albanese Government will legislate 16 as the minimum age for access to social media, following endorsement by National Cabinet today.

    The decision follows extensive consultation with young people, parents and carers, academics and child development experts, community, industry and civil organisations, First Nations youth, and state and territory governments.

    The Albanese Government will introduce legislation in the next Parliamentary sitting fortnight.

  • New Statesman ☛ The horror of the Amsterdam riots

    The facts: after the Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv football game (5-0, if you still care), Arabic-speaking men appeared to chase and beat Israeli football fans. The Telegraph reported that they were organised in advance, and that one person involved called them a “Jew hunt”. There was provocation: some Israelis burned a Palestinian flag, chanted anti-Arab slogans, and mocked a one-minute silence for the flood victims of Valencia. They vandalised a taxi. In this case – but no other I can summon – the punishment was being run over with scooters, chased into canals, and beaten while, in some cases, the police said there was little they could do. Some say they were forced to show their passports.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Revealed: How Pro-Palestinian mob organised via WhatsApp to ‘Hunt Jews’ across Amsterdam

    Now it has emerged that the attacks on the Jewish football fans were planned in advance and co-ordinated using WhatsApp and Telegram.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Futurism ☛ Donald Trump Put Elon Musk on the Phone With Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy

      Apparently you can buy anything, if you're rich enough.

    • The Hill ☛ Trump taps fierce UN critic Stefanik to serve as envoy to it

      The posting also sends a broader message to the world that Trump’s “America First” approach — which envisions a shrinking role for the United States in world diplomacy and global affairs — is likely to reign supreme in his second term.

      That strategy is likely to surface most prominently in Ukraine, where Trump has declined to commit more military support as Kyiv continues the years-long battle against Russia’s invading forces. Stefanik called for “devastating action” to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin early in the war, but voted against a multibillion-dollar aid package to Ukraine earlier this year.

    • Meduza ☛ Moscow puts ICC judge who issued arrest warrant against Russian officials on wanted list

      A Russian court has issued an arrest warrant for Haykel Ben Mahfoudh, a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the outlet Mediazona reported on Monday.

      Mahfoudh was one of three judges who issued arrest warrants against former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov in June for ordering attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine. He was charged under Russia’s law against unlawful detention.

    • France24 ☛ What do Ukrainians on the frontline think of Donald Trump's election?

      With Trump’s history of foreign policy stances and statements about the war in Ukraine, his return to office could bring significant changes to America’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Although he has said in the past that he would end the war in 24 hours if he was elected, he has not yet explained how he would proceed. What in the feeling on Ukraine's frontline regarding Trump's election? Details with FRANCE 24 correspondent in Kyiv, Gulliver Cragg.

    • The Strategist ☛ As Trump returns, European countries’ first priority must be backing Ukraine

      As European leaders wake up to the reality of Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House, they must take care to avoid two big traps: panic and denial.

    • Ukraine reveals ‘intercepted’ radio communications of North Korean soldiers in Russia

      Russia has amassed 50,000 soldiers in Kursk, including North Korean troops, for assault.

    • RFERL ☛ EU On Way To Reach Million-Shell Pledge For Ukraine This Year, Borrell Says

      EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said the bloc is on its way to belatedly fulfill a pledge to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian-American Loses Appeal Over $51 Ukraine Donation, Faces 12 Years

      A Russian court in Yekaterinburg has upheld the 12-year prison sentence handed down in August to dual U.S.-Russian citizen Ksenia Karelina for treason after she was found guilty of transferring $51 to a Ukrainian aid charity in early 2022.

    • RFERL ☛ Syrskiy Says Russians Pressing Kursk Advance As Borrell Makes Final Visit To Ukraine

      Russia is massing tens of thousands of troops in Kursk, where it is attempting to regain control of the territory lost to Ukrainian forces following Kyiv's incursion into the Russian region this summer, Ukraine's top military commander said on November 11.

    • RFERL ☛ Moldova Blasts 'Aggressive' Russian Drone Incursion On Its Territory

      Moldova's Foreign Ministry has condemnd Russia's "aggressive" actions after two Russian drones entered Moldovan airspace and crashed on its territory on November 10.

    • Dispatches from Europe, No. 11, November 6, 2024 – Socialists and Anarchists in Ukraine

      The nonsense coming from Russian propaganda and its campist echo chambers online in the West claiming that all opposition to the Zelensky government in Ukraine is banned and persecuted is belied by the very active anti-capitalist left in Ukraine.

    • Meduza ☛ Pyongyang ratifies strategic partnership with Russia that reportedly contains secret clause authorizing North Korea’s Ukraine intervention — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Three children among dead in Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih — Meduza

    • Latvia ☛ Nearly 47,000 Ukrainians have found refuge in Latvia

      On September 30, almost 4.2 million people (4 197 365), who have fled Ukraine as a consequence of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, were under temporary protection in the EU. Of that number nearly 47,000 have found refuge in Latvia according to the latest Eurostat statistics.

    • Meduza ☛ What top Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak expects a Trump presidency will mean for Ukraine — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Reuters: Mood ‘bleak’ in Kyiv and NATO invite ‘less likely’ for Ukraine after Trump win, official source says — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Cost to repair damage from Ukraine’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk region over $7 billion, local authorities say — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Dam in Ukraine’s Donetsk region blown up, reportedly flooding nearby villages — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Prankster Dupes Russian Teachers Into Wearing Tinfoil Hats To Ward Off 'Foreign Enemies'

      A famous Belarusian prankster who has garnered a reputation for duping schools to highlight the “fascistization of Russian society” has tricked teachers in Russia's Voronezh region into wearing pro-Russia “protective” tinfoil hats.

      [...]

      Vladislav Bokhan, an exiled Belarusian artist and activist who lives in Poland, wrote on Telegram on November 9 that in July he sent out what appeared to be an official government directive to schools in the Voronezh region to organize events in which tinfoil hats bearing the Russian flag were made.

    • RFERL ☛ Pro-EU Rally Held In Tbilisi As President Says Ruling Party 'Captured' Georgia

      Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili said after meeting a visiting EU delegation that the ruling Russian-friendly Georgian Dream party had "virtually captured" all institutions and called for new elections to put the Caucasus country back on track toward Euro-Atlantic integration.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Russian, Indonesian navies hold joint counter-terrorism drills

      Russian and Indonesian ships practiced freeing a vessel captured by terrorists and fought unmanned boats during the first joint naval exercises between the two countries in the Java Sea, Russia's RIA state news agency reported on Monday.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian lawmakers to consider bill requiring language test for children of migrants to enroll in schools — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s Central Bank wants to cap mortgage terms amid fears about growing time horizons — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ State Duma moves forward with plans to forbid ‘foreign agents’ and anti-war Russians from transferring money abroad — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian lawmakers amend ‘child-free propaganda’ ban to exempt religious celibacy — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Kremlin denies reports that Putin and Trump spoke by phone last week — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin authorizes five more companies to bypass public financial disclosure requirements — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin’s latest boasts of battlefield success are exaggerated — but Ukraine is still rapidly losing ground — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ The Telegraph: Putin aiming to recapture Russian territory under Ukrainian control before Trump’s inauguration — Meduza

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea ratifies mutual defence treaty with Russia

      Russian President Vladimir Putin has also signed the treaty into law.

    • RFERL ☛ Kremlin Denies Report Of Putin-Trump Call As 'Completely Untrue'

      The Kremlin has denied media reports of a phone call between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the reports were "completely false."

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Nokia board of directors resolved on directed issuance under Nokia Equity Programs

    Nokia’s Board of Directors has resolved on a directed issuance of a maximum number of 28 651 000 Nokia shares held by the company as a result of the issue of new shares on 4 October 2023, to settle the company’s commitments under the Nokia Long-Term Incentive Plan 2021–2023, Employee Share Purchase Plan - and other equity-based incentive plans in respect of shares to be delivered during the year 2025 to the eligible employees as participants in the plans.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Microplastics Are Infesting Clouds, Affecting Weather

    Published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology: Air, this new lab-based study saw Penn State researchers place four different types of microplastics — low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — in small droplets of water, allowing them to cool slowly to see how they affected the freezing process.

    The results? The droplets with microplastics in them produced ice crystals between nine and 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those without, demonstrating that rain-producing ice crystals can form at warmer temperatures with these inorganic particulates than without them.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ [COP29] jargon buster: key terms for this year’s climate conference in Azerbaijan

    [COP29] will be the 29th conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement. It takes place in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where some of the world’s first ever oil wells were dug in the mid-19th century. Azerbaijan has a claim to be the world’s first petrostate, and is still dependent on oil and gas for 90% of its export revenues.

  • Wired ☛ COP29 Begins With Climate Finance, Absent Leaders, and Trump Looming Large

    At these conferences, held every 12 months, everyone has a microphone—small islands with 10,000 inhabitants sit next to the giant countries of the world as they try to make decisions on how to curb climate change and its impacts.

    The meeting kicks off today with a plenary, and tomorrow will hear from heads of state and their environment ministers. They will then make way for the negotiators and so-called sherpas: the people who prepare the text of the conference’s decisions.

    To avoid stalemate, these final decisions are approved by consensus rather than voted on; approval is obtained in the absence of overt objections, though the decisions’ text may be repeatedly amended in order to reach an agreement. Here’s what to look out for.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Report: Number of people impacted by climate disasters in the Pacific increased 700% in the last decade

    The number of people impacted by climate disasters in the Pacific increased 700% on average in the last decade, compared to the previous decade, according to new analysis by Oxfam Australia released as COP29 climate negotiations begin today in Baku.

  • France24 ☛ ‘Nothing grows anymore’: In Malawi, eating becomes a daily struggle due to climate change

    The combined effects of cyclones and droughts, worsened by climate change, have led to widespread food insecurity in Malawi. While some adaptation efforts are emerging in this agriculture-dependent country, they have yet to gain traction on a larger scale.

  • Le Monde ☛ 2024 will be hottest year on record and exceed 1.5°C warming for first time

    In its provisional report on the state of the climate in 2024, published on Monday, November 11, the World Meteorological Organization said global average temperatures will be 1.54°C warmer than the preindustrial era. It issued 'a Red Alert at the sheer pace of climate change in a single generation.'

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ How the SDGs Are Shaping the Research Agenda, and What Publishers Need to Know and Do

    I’ve spent a lot of the last couple of years working on initiatives related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I’m a Fellow of the SDG Publishers’ Compact. I’ve drunk the Kool Aid, got the badge, even bought the t-shirt👇 But on my occasional forays into the wider world I am reminded that not everyone knows what the SDGs are — and not everyone is bought into them.

  • El País ☛ The prosecutors who have rescued tens of thousands of people from slave labor in Brazil

    The inspectors had traveled from the national capital of Brasilia to rescue 50 people from slave labor in the jungle. Araújo — along with the other men — had been lured by recruiters to work in what became one of the largest illegal deforestation operations in the region this year, which has destroyed nearly 1,300 hectares of Amazonian forest between January and April. Nothing the men were promised materialized: they ended up being subjected to conditions comparable to modern slavery.

  • CBC ☛ COP29 begins today. On the table this year: global uncertainty and a looming Trump presidency

    The crowning achievement at last year's COP28 in Dubai was a global consensus on the need to "transition away from fossil fuels."

    But already, BBC News has exposed senior members of the COP29 team using the conference to arrange potential deals for fossil fuel expansion. And the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. has created uncertainty among climate groups, familiar with the former president's disdain for climate-related action.

  • New York Times ☛ Why Is COP29 Being Held in Baku, Azerbaijan?

    The economy of Azerbaijan, host of COP29, relies almost entirely on the fossil fuels that are the main driver of global warming.

  • BBC ☛ COP29 chief secretly filmed promoting fossil fuel deals

    A senior official at COP29 climate change conference in Azerbaijan appears to have used his role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals, the BBC can report.

    A secret recording shows the chief executive of Azerbaijan's COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing "investment opportunities" in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ Free transit actually is a thing, and you might be surprised where

      While public transit in many Canadian cities struggles with fares going up and ridership going down, in one community the passenger count has more than doubled in the past two years.

      Transit ridership in the town of Orangeville, Ont., will, by the end of the year, have increased by 150 to 160 per cent, according to Mayor Lisa Post.

      "It's really impacting the entire community positively," she said.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Electric vehicles in Africa: what's taking so long?

      In sub-Saharan Africa, high levels of particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution from vehicle tailpipe emissions cause poor health, developmental stunting and even death. Vehicle emissions also contribute to global warming.

      Electric vehicles could help solve these problems but they’ve been slow to take off in the region. The continent’s biggest economy, South Africa, had only about a thousand electric vehicles by 2022.

    • C4ISRNET ☛ Why Sweden nixed new wind farms for fear of missing Russian missiles

      In this case, the issue is about two dueling interests: sustainable-energy independence and surveillance of the national airspace. That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky.

      “The reaction time in the event of a missile attack could go from 2 minutes to 60 seconds with wind farms in the way,” Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson wrote in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. They were accompanied by a schematic drawing of the wind farms casting a “shadow” behind them in which missiles and cruise missiles would stay undetected.

    • Futurism ☛ China Working on Energy Weapon That Converges Multiple Beams

      According to the report, scientists claim they've "completed experimental trials on its potential military use."

    • SCMP ☛ Chinese scientists say they have made converged energy beam weapon a reality | South China Morning Post

      The weapon system, which has completed experimental trials on its potential military use, consists of multiple microwave-transmitting vehicles deployed to different locations. They then emit microwaves that can merge into a powerful energy beam to attack one target.

    • Russell Graves ☛ Charcoal Experiments #1: The Solo Stove Process

      This is the first of several posts that are, for lack of any better description, “documenting my experiments in charcoal production.” It’s hard to find much information on small-scale charcoal production on the [Internet] anymore, and so I’ve had to work out some of the details of this myself. Fortunately, stainless steel is fairly cheap these days, which improves the process rather dramatically.

    • The Local DK ☛ EU in new push to make European train travel easier with single ticket plan

      However, even though these platforms can be used to find international train routes, tickets are currently sold separately for each part of the journey.

      Without the option to buy a single ticket for the entire trip, booking gets complicated, passenger rights do not apply if connections are missed, and travellers are left to cover extra costs on their own.

      At a hearing on November 5th, EU Transport Commissioner-designate Apostolos Tzitzikostas announced that he wants to change this.

    • New York Times ☛ Why Did Tens of Thousands of Chinese Students Go on Night Bike Rides?

      It isn’t clear when the craze really took off, but by early this month, it was drawing hundreds of riders seemingly every night. At first it had been celebrated online and even by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, which described the night rides as “a symbol of youthful energy and the joy of shared experiences.”

      But over the weekend, after the number of riders swelled to the tens of thousands in a country where officials are increasingly wary of impromptu crowds, local authorities shut it down, citing traffic and safety concerns.

    • India Times ☛ Bitcoin nears $90,000 as [Cryptocurrency] market exceeds pandemic-era peak

      The largest token has jumped about 32% since the US election on November 5 and hit an all-time high of $89,599 early on Tuesday. The original cryptocurrency changed hands at $89,165 as of 9:25 am in Singapore.

    • India Times ☛ Record-breaking bitcoin rally nears $90,000 on Trump boost

      The world's biggest cryptocurrency has become one of the most eye-catching movers in the week since the election and touched $89,637 in Asia - a gain of more than 25% since Nov. 5.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ Mysterious flower pressed into WW I soldier's last letter home identified a century later

      It was the last his family would ever hear from him. He was last seen one day later, crossing the German front line at Thiepval with a wounded arm. His body was never recovered, but he was presumed to have died that day, along with most of his battalion.

      Now, 108 years later, with the help of modern scanning technology and artificial intelligence, researchers at U of T believe they have finally identified the flower — a blue cowslip.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘I can hear dry-retching from inside’: queuing for hours to smell Geelong’s corpse plant

      When walking past a snaking line of thousands of people, all waiting for a sniff of the plant, the smell of rotten blue cheese left in the sun wafts out of a glasshouse.

      As I approach, I can hear dry-retching from inside. Once up close, the smell comes at you in waves. You briefly get used to it, before a new foul odour emerges.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Occasional Paper: Four Hidden Species of Portuguese man-o’-war

      There’s been a a certain amount of negativity floating around lately. So, let’s talk about a toxic, venomous freak of nature and the parasite that afflicts it.

      Biology warning, this gets slightly squicky.

      Let’s start with the toxic, venomous freak of nature: the Portuguese man-o’-war.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ 53 years of survey data confirm African elephant decline

      Declines were not uniform across the continent, with some populations disappearing completely and others showing rapid growth. Colorado State University Professor George Wittemyer, one of the architects of the study and chair of the scientific board of Save the Elephants, said that identifying success stories where elephant populations are stable or increasing could help with their conservation.

    • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Bees help tackle elephant-human conflict in Kenya

      The deep humming of 70,000 bees is enough to make many flee, including a six-tonne elephant, but Loise Kawira calmly removes a tray in her apiary to demonstrate the intricate combs of wax and honey.

      Kawira, who joined Save the Elephants in 2021 as their consultant beekeeper, trains and monitors farmers in the delicate art.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Clever Elephant Uses Shower Like Human, Rival Plots Revenge

      Researchers at the Berlin Zoo have documented sophisticated tool use by an Asian elephant named Mary, who demonstrated remarkable skill in handling water hoses for showering.

    • AAAS ☛ This elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her rival sought revenge

      Bates says both behaviors suggest insight instead of simple trial and error. But that’s a difficult thing to prove without more observations, she says. “Obviously we don’t know if [Anchali’s] original intention was to stop Mary’s shower, but the fact she persevered and got better at doing this is quite compelling.”

• Finance

  • MWL ☛ “Dear Abyss” live on Kickstarter

    Confession time: I don’t love Kickstarter. I don’t love money either, but it does seem to be a dependency when living in capitalism.

    When I release a book on my site, I sell a few copies. When I launch it on Kickstarter, sales go up tenfold.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • France24 ☛ Is Keir Starmer's visit to Emmanuel Macron in Paris purely symbolic?

    France's president Emmanuel Macron is joined by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a ceremony to commemorate the 106th anniversary of WWI's Armistice at the Arc de Triomphe.

  • VOA News ☛ Web Summit kicks off in Lisbon as tech leaders weigh Trump’s return

    Lisbon will this week play host to Europe’s biggest annual tech conference, Web Summit, where industry leaders and lawmakers will weigh the pros and cons of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

  • India Times ☛ Web summit kicks off in Lisbon as tech leaders weigh Trump's return

    Senior executives from firms such as Apple, Microsoft, and Meta will join high-ranking officials from Europe for debates about the future of artificial intelligence, social media regulation, and the impact a second Trump presidency may have on the continent.

  • The Korea Times ☛ South Korea's ruling party proposes special chips act to avert Trump

    The semiconductor industry is critical for the trade-dependent economy, Asia's fourth biggest, with chips making up 16 percent of total exports last year.

    Last week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol warned of the risks stemming from Trump's threat of steep tariffs on Chinese imports that could prompt Chinese rivals to slash export prices and undercut Korean chip firms overseas.

  • The Register UK ☛ CHIPS Act future questioned in a Trump presidency

    Taiwanese silicon wafer provider GlobalWafers said last week it expects its award from the CHIPS and Science Act to continue, despite a change in the US presidency and direction.

  • Axios ☛ Senate majority leader fight shows power of X

    Why it matters: It all played out in just a few hours on Elon Musk's X — a tiny taste of the platform's rising juice as Trump maps his new government.

    How it happened: Here's how it unfolded, as reported in real time by Axios' Stef Kight: [...]

  • Federal News Network ☛ Upswing in direct hire helps DoD fill cyber workforce gaps

    The Defense Department has significantly ramped up its use of direct hire authority for civilians in its cyber workforce over the past year: about half of the people who’ve been added to positions into DoD’s Cyber Excepted Service have been hired via the expedited process instead of the competitive ranking process the government uses for most civilian positions.

    The Pentagon’s enthusiastic embrace of the authority comes eight years after Congress first allowed DoD to create a new pay and personnel system for civilian cyber experts. And although the department’s implementation of the Cyber Excepted Service was somewhat slow during its initial years, officials made its expansion a priority in 2023 when they published a detailed implementation plan for DoD’s first cyber workforce strategy.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Hill ☛ Donald Trump pulls Elon Musk, son, into family photo on election night

      Musky heavily supported Trump in his bid for the presidency, endorsing him following an assassination attempt against the president-elect in July. He also made appearances at rallies for Trump and started America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC, giving $118 million to the committee.

    • The Hill ☛ X becomes backdrop for Senate leader fight 

      The race for the next Senate majority leader ramped up over the weekend, with prominent figures taking to social media platform X to catapult their endorsements.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ How West Africa is fighting disinformation

      And the country seems to be achieving its goals: "Russia has managed to influence public opinion in countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso in its favor using dishonorable means," said Zufferey.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Rolling Stone ☛ House Fast Tracks Bill That Would Give Trump Power to Target Nonprofits

    The House is set to vote this week on a bill that would grant the Treasury Department authority to revoke tax-exempt status from any nonprofit it declares to be a “terrorist supporting organization,” giving the agency broad latitude to determine what that means.

    The legislation, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R. 9495), was originally drafted to prevent the IRS from issuing fines and tax penalties to Americans held hostage by international terrorist groups as well as citizens unjustly incarcerated abroad. By putting these two measures together under one bill, Republicans are trying to make it more difficult to oppose.

  • RTL ☛ Moustaches, horns, and beards: How doodles got a Russian art teacher locked up for 20 years

    Art teacher Daniil Klyuka believes the headmistress of the provincial Russian school where he worked reported him for doodling horns on pictures of officials in a newspaper.

    The 28-year-old was later sentenced to 20 years in jail.

    His case illustrates the severity of the crackdown on dissent -- both real and imagined -- in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Project 2025’s threat to public media must be resisted

    The Freedom From Religion Foundation is sounding the alarm on an underreported threat to democracy posed by Project 2025: its intention to defund and muzzle public broadcasting.

    Pages 246–248 of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership outline its scheme to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations,” moving them from the desirable low end of the radio spectrum so religious programming can replace the prime 88 to 92 FM frequencies.

  • [Old] Index On Censorship ☛ Why Project 2025 is a threat to a free media - Index on Censorship

    The US has one of the most highly developed mass media networks in the world, TV being the most consumed. The “big three” – Fox, MSNBC and CBS – dominate the mainstream independent sphere and are often criticised for a consistently “far left” or “far right” bias; public government-supported networks PBS and NPR, meanwhile, promise to provide unbiased factual reporting.

    Many on the right, including former President Donald Trump, accuse NPR and PBS of left-leaning bias and call for ending government-funded media. Republican lawmakers’ past efforts to defund NPR and PBS have gained traction with Project 2025.

    But defunding public media could lead to local news station closures, increasing the influence of biased reporting from major networks like Fox, which the left claims is a mouthpiece for Trump’s political agenda.

  • VOA News ☛ Jailed Swedish Eritrean journalist wins rights prize

    Dawit Isaak was among a group of around two dozen people, including senior cabinet ministers, members of parliament and independent journalists, who were seized in a purge in September 2001.

    He was awarded the Edelstam Prize "for his outstanding contribution and exceptional courage in standing up for freedom of expression, one's beliefs, and in the defense of human rights," the Edelstam Foundation said in a statement.

  • The Local SE ☛ Jailed Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak awarded rights prize

    A Swedish-Eritrean journalist held incommunicado without charge in Eritrea for more than 23 years won a Swedish rights prize on Monday for his fight for freedom of expression, the jury said.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Polly Hudson, Paul Routledge and Miriam Stoppard axed by Mirror

    Some of the the Mirror’s best-known columnists are leaving in the latest cutbacks at the title.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Two Thousand Issues and Counting

    You would think if you do something 2,000 times, it would get repetitive, right? Not so the case with producing a daily newsletter on the digital infrastructure industry. This edition is my 2,000th as its Managing Editor and, I can honestly say, not two issues and no two days have been alike over the nine-plus years I’ve been at the editorial helm.

    Each one is its own winding road as far as it is compiled, written and edited. What starts each morning as a virtual blank slate ends around 4 P.M. as the best collected efforts of the most savvy journalists in the business to reflect what news impacted our industry on that particular day. Many days, the news finds us but more times than not, we have to find it. Then the “refining” process, if you will, begins. We assess its news value, prioritize the content (always with the industry’s focus in mind), check with resources and present it in as concise a format as possible for morning consumption over crullers and coffee.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: General Strike 2028

    Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, and the Dems are not faithful friends to unions. Harris campaign advisor – her brother-in-law Tony West – is Uber's chief legal officer and the architect of Prop 22, California's scab law that formalized "gig work" labor violations. The fact that when the eminently guillotineable union-buster Howard Schultz tries to win a presidential nomination he does so in the Democratic party speaks volumes. If your political party has room for Michael Bloomberg, it doesn't have room for workers. Seriously, fuck that guy.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Dutch police use hologram of murder victim to seek tips in cold case

    Visitors to Amsterdam’s famous red-light district this week will see a startling new face among the brothel windows and displays that line the streets: a life-size hologram of a 19-year-old woman, sitting on a stool and peering out at passersby to ask them for help.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Veterans Day: How one Georgia veteran held off homelessness

    In 2023, the total number of homeless American veterans was 35,574 – an increase of 7.4% over the year before. Another 1.4 million other veterans across the country, like Mr. Hilado, are considered at risk of homelessness or living in unsafe surroundings. “Homeless” can mean the former soldier is squatting or couch surfing. “Unsheltered” means that person lives in a tent or on a park bench.

  • News AU ☛ ‘Legalise child rape’: Iraq to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

    The proposal to overturn it is the latest step in a more than decade-long push to erode women’s rights by conservative Shia Muslim groups, a coalition of which now dominate the Iraqi parliament.

  • Business Standard ☛ Child marriage at 9? Iraq's controversial law ignites fiery protests

    Iraq is on the brink of a significant legislative shift that could lower the legal marriage age from 18 to nine, potentially allowing men to marry young girls. The move, reported The Telegraph, has sparked widespread international condemnation, as it threatens to strip Iraqi women of their fundamental rights, including divorce, child custody, and inheritance.

    Iraq’s Parliament, largely dominated by a coalition of conservative Shia Muslim parties, is preparing to vote on changes to the ‘personal status law’, or Law 188. Introduced in 1959, this law was once one of the Middle East’s most progressive, protecting the rights of Iraqi families regardless of religious background.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Iraq to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

    Iraq is poised to slash the legal age of consent from 18 to to nine, allowing men to marry young children.

    The proposed legal change also deprives women of rights to divorce, child custody and inheritance.

    Iraq’s parliament, which is dominated by a coalition of conservative Shia Muslim parties, is preparing to vote through an amendment that would overturn the country’s “personal status law”.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Iraq to amend marriage laws, allowing men to marry even 9-year-old girls: Report

    The coalition government said the proposed amendment is in line with strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and aims to “protect” young girls. The government, with parliamentary majority, is expected to push through the legislation despite opposition from Iraqi women groups.

    According to UNICEF, high child marriage rates are already prevalent across Iraq. Around 28% of Iraqi girls are married by the age of 18 and the proposed amendments are expected to worsen the state of affairs.

  • [Old] Amnesty International ☛ Reject changes to Personal Status Law which would allow child marriage in Iraq

    The current Personal Status Law applies to all Iraqis irrespective of their religion. The proposed amendments would grant religious councils of the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam in Iraq the authority to develop their own “code of Sharia rulings on personal status matters” within six months of the law being passed, effectively threatening women’s and girls’ rights and their equality before the law.

    The amendments would also open the door to legalizing unregistered marriages, which are often used to circumvent child marriage laws, and removing penalties for adult men who enter such marriages and clerics who conduct them. It would also remove critical protections for divorced women, such as the right to remain in the marital home or receive financial support from the former husband.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ US Postal Workers Are Fighting Massive Service Cuts

    Thousands of US Postal Service jobs are at stake under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s modernization plan, which would close 200 mail processing plants and funnel all mail to 60 mega-plants. Postal workers are organizing to stop the plan.

  • El País ☛ Alice Schwarzer, journalist: ‘We are facing profound changes in the relationship between the sexes. It’s dangerous’

    Schwarzer, founder, editor and director of the magazine Emma, has had a first-row seat for a half-century of feminist struggle. Her Simone de Beauvoir Today: Conversations, 1972-1982 (Chatto and Windus, 1984), a book of interviews she conducted with the French philosopher, explain as much about Schwarzer as they do Beauvoir. At this point, criticism matters little to her — a point that becomes clear in this interview.

    Question. What would Simone de Beauvoir think about the situation in which women find themselves today?

    Answer. She would be horrified by the complete victory of capitalism and the unimaginable extent to which women are commodified. The [Internet] and globalization were unthinkable to her. Today we are faced with some problems having multiplied hundredfold. There have also been some advances.

  • El País ☛ Joy Harjo, poet: ‘The land does not belong to us; we’re just its stewards’

    This time around, I think the attention will persist, because Native Americans are intrinsically linked to what it means to be American.

  • YLE ☛ Nordic police unions raise alarm over Swedish [sic] gang violence

    Police unions across the Nordic countries have issued a joint statement saying that gang violence originating in Sweden has become a regional issue that they cannot solve on their own.

    The unions from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland expressed concern that officers are increasingly unable to contain and prevent gang-related crime from becoming a shared Nordic problem.

  • Clémence Lamirand published an article in AGEFI, Mathieu Parreaux never passed the bar exam

    She wrote (original in French) The cabinet is young, like the majority of employees who work there. The founder, Mathieu Parreaux, has not yet passed the bar exam. For the moment, the business is his priority, the final exams will come later.

    The reporter, Madame Lamirand doesn't pose difficult questions. Journalists in Switzerland fear criminal prosecution for writing any form of inconvenient truth.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: India Peering Forum 2024 and SCAT India 2024

    Pubudu Jayasinghe and Vivek Nigam met with APNIC Members at the India Peering Forum 2024 and SCAT India Tradeshow 2024, held in Mumbai, India from 16 to 19 October 2024.

  • APNIC ☛ How we measure: ISP user counts

    You’d think that the Internet itself would be awash with similar information. After all, much of the Internet’s economy is based on the aggregation of user profile data, repackaging this data, and selling it to advertisers in the form of advertisement (ad) placement capabilities. So, it’s likely to be the case that similar census-related data is being continually gathered in the Internet.

    However, this data is a key commercial asset, owned by the corporate entities that gather the data. There is very little public data of a similar nature that relates to the market positioning of ISPs in terms of the number of users of their services.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk's Starlink licence application is likely on track as it agrees to security norms, the company may need to show how ...

    Elon Musk's Starlink licence application is likely on track as it agrees to security norms, the company may need to show how ... Starlink's India licence application is reportedly set to move forward after the Elon Musk-led satellite broadband company agreed to meet the government's data localisation and security requirements. According to a report in MoneyControl.com, this has been a major point of contention. Starlink had applied for a global mobile personal communication by satellite services (GMPCS) licence in October 2022. The Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite Services (GMPCS) licence is the first step towards setting up a satellite internet by acquiring a trial spectrum at a nominal application fee.

  • South Africa ☛ Fixing a major cause of fibre [Internet] service interruptions

    The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) in South Africa has issued new best-practice guidelines to improve fibre line transfers, addressing issues such as delayed line switching and wrongful disconnections.

    Across Western Cape neighbourhoods, an estimated 80% of customers are left without viable alternatives to their current fibre provider — a predicament worsened in private estates that negotiate exclusive contracts on behalf of residents.

    This monopoly position should come with a commitment to quality and reliability, yet, in many cases, an incentive for high standards is absent.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ How Data Breach Laws Impact Debt Costs And Cybersecurity

    Published in The British Accounting Review, the study highlights how the US data breach notification (DBN) laws affect borrowing terms for companies, with a particular focus on the financial implications of breach disclosures.

    Data breach notification laws, which require companies to notify individuals if their personal data has been compromised, are a critical part of consumer protection. While these laws serve to safeguard consumers, they also introduce financial burdens for businesses that suffer data breaches.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Supreme Court Patent Cases – November 2024

    Patent law cases continue to be brought to the Supreme Court's attention, even though the court has not granted certiorari in any patent monopoly case for some time.  Twelve potential cases have documents on file with the court. Currently, eight certiorari petitions are briefed and pending before the Court, while four additional petitions are anticipated in the coming months based on recently-filed extension requests.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Per-Song or Per-Album? Record Labels Challenge Court's Piracy Damages Ruling

    Several major record labels are asking the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a rehearing en banc in their piracy lawsuit against Grande Communications. They argue that the court erred in holding that piracy damages should be calculated per album, rather than per song. They argue that this decision, which will lower the $47 million damages award, doesn't reflect the way that music is commercialized today.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DAZN's Piracy Shield 'Smart TV' Block Revoked After IPTV Portal Complaint

    After DAZN received a warning for the blunder that saw Google Drive blocked in Italy, a company behind a smart TV video player app had a DAZN-initiated blocking decision revoked after a successful appeal. That may seem like a win, but the finer details reveal a legal framework that favors rightsholders so strongly, online services incurring liability for the actions of users seems inevitable.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Two news outlets lose copyright claim against OpenAI over scraping of content

    They alleged that their copyrighted work was “caught in a “scrape of most of the internet” to train ChatGPT and stripped of their author, title and copyright information” and sought damages from OpenAI.

    On Thursday a judge in New York granted a request by OpenAI to dismiss the complaint in its entirety.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Raw Story, Alternet copyright suit against OpenAI dismissed for failure to show harm – Pivot to AI

    News sites Raw Story and AlterNet sued OpenAI in February, claiming ChatGPT scraped their stories and that ChatGPT regurgitates their copyrighted material. [Complaint, PDF; Docket]

    NY District Judge Colleen McMahon has dismissed the suit without prejudice for lack of standing, saying the outlets could not show harm.

    Raw Story and AlterNet brought suit under the DMCA — rather than for straight-up copyright infringement. They alleged that OpenAI stripped their stories of copyright management information, such as article titles and author names — and that this removal created a risk that ChatGPT would reproduce the copyrighted works word for word.