Leftovers

• Anil Dash ☛ It feels like 2004 again.

  Interestingly, most of the people who’ve heard me say this over the last year or so think that I’m complaining or lamenting the situation, but I’m actually excited about it. That malaise by the big players in tech a generation ago yielded an exciting and inspiring new wave of innovations. While much of the money in big tech was chasing distractions back in 2004, many communities of small, independent creators on the open web were making the new pillars of web culture — many of which are still standing to this day.

  When I wrote The Web We Lost, it was largely this flourishing of independent creativity and open collaboration that was I was largely lamenting. But I was wrong to think it was lost. It was merely dormant, beaten into near-irrelevance by the domination of the giant tech players. At the start of this year, I wrote The Internet Is About To Get Weird Again, which began by calling back to the Internet of 2000. In thinking more about it, though, we more closely resemble the Internet of a few years later, where the crash of the dot-com bubble and the stock market had the same effect that the popping of the crypto bubble did: the casuals who were just trying to make a quick buck are much less likely to jump in the pool. There’s far more space for weirdness and passion and actually making new shit.

• Ruben Schade ☛ A selection of old things I remember

  In no particular order: [...]

• Greg Morris ☛ Brokenness Is Awesome

  In spite of of all the really great people I have met online I just can’t be bothered with the discourse any more. There is very little point in me spreading my words anywhere outside my own website (and activitypub things attached) so I don’t bother.

• The Oregonian ☛ Exploding Whale Day now a full-fledged holiday on the Oregon coast. Here’s how to celebrate

  Paul Linnman, who will be signing autographs at Sunday’s event, has said his inbox comes alive every time a whale washes up on the Oregon coast, keeping his niche celebrity status alive.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Secretive Spaceplane of the U.S. Space Force Conducts First-of-Its-Kind Maneuvers

    The newly described aerobraking maneuver allows the X-37B spaceplane to change its orbit by using the Earth’s atmospheric drag—the friction caused by molecules in the atmosphere. Normally, spacecrafts have to fire their thrusters to achieve a shift in orbit, which uses up propellant and thus can only be done a limited number of times, per Space.com’s Brett Tingley.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Scientists Are Using CT Scanners to Reveal the Secrets of More Than Two Dozen Ancient Egyptian Mummies | Smithsonian

    Scientists at Chicago’s Field Museum are studying Egyptian mummies using a mobile CT scanner. Earlier this year, they spent four days carefully scanning 26 mummies in the museum’s collections. They’re still analyzing the results, which are already shedding new light on the ancient burials’ mysteries.

• Career/Education

  • New York Times ☛ Is It Possible for Trump to Shut the Department of Education?

    The proposal envisions moving much of the department’s work to other federal agencies, like Health and Human Services, before devolving the federal government’s main funding stream for K-12 schools, known as Title I, to the states. The process would theoretically take 10 years, and could lead to vast decreases in funding for public education. Those budget cuts would disproportionately affect low-income children and those with disabilities, since federal K-12 funding is largely targeted toward those groups.

  • Vox ☛ Can Donald Trump shut down the Department of Education? | Vox

    Getting rid of the agency would cause a lot of harm and wouldn’t really change school curriculum.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Impact.

    If instead of spending that 8 hours writing code, I spend it teaching programming and building communities for people interested in development, I can multiply that impact manyfold. Way beyond the much discussed 10x.

    Let’s say for an argument’s sake that I help 100 people get interested in the industry and learn software development. It takes a few years for them to become productive but they will quite quickly surpass what I could do. At that point, my impact has been roughly 99x compared to me doing the work.

• Hardware

  • Game Rant ☛ AMD Hit With Layoffs

    AMD has announced that it is laying off 4 percent of its workforce. The semiconductor giant produces processors and graphics cards for gaming PCs and consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, but the chip market has shifted toward AI in recent years. Now, AMD is leaning into that trend as its gaming division struggles to maintain the sales it used to see.

    Along with Nvidia, AMD is one of two major chip companies dominating the gaming sector. It's had no shortage of notable product releases in the past year, and in October, AMD announced a new line of CPUs mere weeks after unveiling the baseline Ryzen 9000 series. Despite this activity, it seems the chipmaker's sales aren't what they used to be, leading it to cut a significant portion of its workforce as it rethinks its priorities.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

    Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

  • Futurism ☛ Another "Fitness" Influencer Just Dropped Dead, Days After 30th Birthday

    Worse yet, these personalities are explosively popular among young people, leading to the risk that they'll imitate their idols and engage in similar dangerous behavior.

  • 404 Media ☛ AI Chatbot Added to Mushroom Foraging Facebook Group Immediately Gives Tips for Cooking Dangerous Mushroom

    One member of the Facebook group said that they asked the AI bot “how do you cook Sarcosphaera coronaria,” a type of mushroom that was once thought edible but is now known to hyperaccumulate arsenic and has caused a documented death. FungiFriend told the member that it is “edible but rare,” and said “cooking methods mentioned by some enthusiasts include sautéing in butter, adding to soups or stews, and pickling.” The situation is reminiscent of Google's AI telling people to add glue to pizza or eat rocks on the advice of a Redditor named Fucksmith.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan admits underreporting 200K+ COVID-19 cases, many during worst wave

    Michigan officials in October corrected an accounting error that led to the underreporting of 200,000 COVID-19 cases since 2020

    During the omicron wave in 2021 and 2022, weekly case counts were 25% to 30% higher than what was reported at the time

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Nick Heer ☛ Misguided Apple Intelligence Ads

    These ads come across either as unimaginative as the people they represent, or as a Freudian slip, depending on your perspective.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Fake AI ‘slop’ posts about Elon Musk surge on Facebook after election

    Numerous Facebook users appear to be interacting with the posts and believing their claims, which in some cases enable the “slop” creators to earn bonuses as part of the platform’s creator program.

  • Futurism ☛ AI Expert Warns Crash Is Imminent As AI Improvements Hit Brick Wall

    As some experts have long predicted would happen, improvements that once came easily by simply scaling up large language models — in other words, by adding more parameters, training data, and processing power — are now slowing down, and that's if they're yielding any significant gains at all.

    Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and AI skeptic, is warning that once everyone wises up to these shortcomings, the entire industry could crash.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ 2023’s Most Exploited Zero-day Vulnerabilities Uncovered

    The FBI, NSA, and allied agencies within the Five Eyes intelligence network have published a list of the 15 most exploited vulnerabilities from 2023. The cybersecurity advisory, a collaborative effort led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) alongside the national cybersecurity authorities of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, urges organizations worldwide to prioritize patching these vulnerabilities. The advisory highlights that malicious actors leveraged more zero-day vulnerabilities in 2023 than in 2022, exposing critical enterprise networks.

  • Futurism ☛ Character.AI Is Hosting Pedophile Chatbots That Groom Users Who Say They're Underage

    With that type of funding and scale, not to mention its popularity with young users, you might assume the service is carefully moderated. Instead, many of the bots on Character.AI are profoundly disturbing — including numerous characters that seem designed to roleplay scenarios of child sexual abuse.

    Consider a bot we found named Anderley, described on its public profile as having "pedophilic and abusive tendencies" and "Nazi sympathies," and which has held more than 1,400 conversations with users.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Reportedly Hitting Law of Diminishing Returns as It Pours Computing Resources Into AI

    Reports are emerging that OpenAI is hitting a wall as it continues to pour more computing power into its much-hyped large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in a bid for more intelligent outputs.

  • Reuters ☛ OpenAI and others seek new path to smarter AI as current methods hit limitations

    OpenAI declined to comment for this story. After the release of the viral ChatGPT chatbot two years ago, technology companies, whose valuations have benefited greatly from the AI boom, have publicly maintained that “scaling up” current models through adding more data and computing power will consistently lead to improved AI models.

    But now, some of the most prominent AI scientists are speaking out on the limitations of this “bigger is better” philosophy.

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple drops soldered storage for 2024 Mac Mini

    Apple's Mac Mini product line has been around for a while, and the latest model was launched this month, replete with M4 or M4 Pro chips. It is significantly smaller than its predecessors with Thunderbolt, HDMI, and Ethernet ports on the back and a pair of USB-C ports and a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the front.

  • Moonbug Lays Off Small Percentage of Workforce

    Moonbug (CoComelon) has laid off less than 5% of its workforce, with some employees in Los Angeles and London receiving pink slips, according to Variety. The downsizing effort will most likely affect in-house writers as the company pivots to a freelance writer model.

    And the hits keep coming...

    “As we continue to plan for 2025 and beyond, we are making changes to our studio team to allow us to be more nimble across aspects of our productions,” a spokesperson for Moonbug told Variety. “This means a small number of roles across London and L.A. will be impacted. We’re deeply grateful for the contributions of these employees and wish them nothing but the best.”

    The media company shuttered its Oddbods studio One Animation earlier this year to focus all resources on pre- and post-production, with animation work to be outsourced to third parties.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • New York Times ☛ Meta Fined $840 Million in Europe for Boosting Marketplace Unfairly - The New York Times

      Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.

    • Marcel Kapfer ☛ Marcel Kapfer - Switching away from Pocket

      As already written, I prefer storing my personal data on self-hosted services. And this was always an underlying thought when thinking about choosing a different bookmark manager. Though, it was not the main one in the end. The issue that more or less suddenly arose with Pocket is that it got quite unreliable at my site during the last few days.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ A stalker posted my photos on porn sites – and the police response was traumatising

      By 16, she had amassed 20,000 Twitter followers and was active in fandom circles on Tumblr, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. “My mum used to come with me to concerts and there’d be people who recognised me from this online fandom,” she remembers. “She thought it was weird.” But Hooper didn’t feel she needed to fill her in too much. “I didn’t think I was at risk … and I don’t think she’d have known what to do about it, either.”

    • Federal News Network ☛ As the transition unfolds, Trump eyes one of his favorite targets: US intelligence

      Former and current intelligence officials also are watching for clues indicating whether Trump will use U.S. intelligence to inform foreign policy and national security decisions or whether he will realize the fears of critics, who worry he could spill classified secrets or seek to weaponize intelligence work against Americans.

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

      DeFlock has mapped the locations of more than a thousand ALPRs around the United States and thousands more around the world.

    • Wired ☛ ICE Started Ramping Up Its Surveillance Arsenal Immediately After Donald Trump Won

      ICE’s recent notice asks interested companies to send specific details about how they would store location data and personal information, where their office locations would be, how they would staff agents, and what technology they have for remote surveillance, among other details. Currently, ICE uses a combination of ankle monitors and GPS-enabled smartwatches and smartphone apps to remotely monitor people. It also uses apps with facial recognition for “biometric” check-ins.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Data from Jan. 6 insurrection links social media, growing levels of political violence

    A new Northwestern study published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface has revealed new patterns of behavior that link an authority figure's online behavior during a protest to the shift from peaceful protesting to violence.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ L.A. County 18-year-old pleads guilty to national 'swatting' wave

    From August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 “swatting” and threatening hoax calls, including calls in which he threatened to detonate bombs or conduct mass shootings at targeted locations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ TikTok’s new trademark filings suggest it’s doubling down on its US business

    The trademark filings, previously unreported, hint at the development of two services aimed at expanding its advertising business and payment offerings that move beyond pure social media functions.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Terminally Online Are in Charge Now

    Perhaps the bar cannot get lower from there—at least not in terms of positions of immense consequence with real power to do a lot of damage in the world. But another appointment announced yesterday was in a sense even more ridiculous: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a Department of Government Efficiency. That’s DOGE for short. Get it? Such efficient. Very slash. Wow. Welcome to the era of government by meme.

  • The Hill ☛ Trump is back, and he's using Project 2025 to expand his powers

    Homan’s new gig is a great example of just how cozy Trump has always been with the sweeping goals of Project 2025. The position now includes, among other responsibilities, overseeing “all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin.” Homan has promised the return of controversial workplace raids under a second Trump administration. He also remains a committed defender of family separation policies, which created a humanitarian crisis when Trump first implemented the proposal in 2018.

  • New York Times ☛ Blinken Visits NATO Headquarters

    In a trip organized only after last week’s presidential election results made clear that U.S. policy will likely swing dramatically away from President Biden’s lock step support for NATO and Ukraine, Mr. Blinken met with alliance and European officials to help plan for a post-Biden future.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Taliban's Supreme Leader Tightens Grip

    The decree appears to be a direct response to mounting concerns from neighboring countries about the unchecked flow of weapons within Afghanistan. Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, there have been numerous reports of U.S.-supplied weapons falling into the hands of unauthorized groups, including extremist factions and local militias. The potential for these weapons to be used in regional conflicts or to cross borders has alarmed countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asian states. By taking control of the distribution process, Akhundzada aims to prevent the misuse of these military resources, which could otherwise destabilize the broader region. The move could be seen as an effort to assure neighboring countries that the Taliban are taking steps to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a base for cross-border terrorism or insurgent activities.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘No sign’ of promised fossil fuel transition as emissions hit new high

    There is “no sign” of the transition away from burning fossil fuels that was pledged by the world’s nations a year ago, with 2024 on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions.

    The new data, released at the UN’s Cop29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, indicates that the planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature target and limiting “increasingly dramatic” climate impacts on people around the globe.

  • Truthdig ☛ Trump’s Army of Social Vigilantes Are Ready To Exact Their Revenge - Truthdig

    Yes, racism has always played a giant role, misogyny too. Yes, white working class people (and working people in general) have been feeling the brutal squeeze and daily pangs of ​“economic anxiety.” And yes, a lot of folks out there are ignorant, misinformed rubes who have been duped by one of the biggest con men in history. But one of the most important qualities of Trumpism that the pundit class never fully grasped is the sense of social power Trump instills in people  —  and how valuable that is to them.

    Most of us have had some exposure to the nastiness of people trying to exercise that power online, and you’ll be seeing more of it again flaming up in social media comments, video live chats, direct messages, etc. Although, this is not the same media ecosystem we had in 2015-2016. The Twitter and Facebook of that time are long gone, the power and visibility dynamics on these multiplying and changing platforms have rearranged dramatically since then, the ​“public sphere” is way more fractured, and our shared digital spaces (and physical spaces) are decreasing. So maybe you won’t see as much of the online projections of Trumpian bile from trolling strangers as before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t currently heating back up to full boil as we speak, and you won’t be able to escape it entirely. None of us will.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term

    “It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”

    Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Ex-Fox News host slams colleague’s appointment to run Pentagon under Trump

    Questions about Hegseth’s qualifications for the senior cabinet position were also raised by security officials and Republican politicians.

    “Who the f*** is this guy?” a defense industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity told Politico, adding that they had hoped Trump would nominate “someone who actually has an extensive background in defense. That would be a good start.”

  • Politico LLC ☛ ‘Who the f--k is this guy?’: Defense world reacts to Trump’s surprise Pentagon pick

    One assessment was more blunt. “Who the fuck is this guy?” said a defense industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity to offer candid views. The lobbyist said they had hoped for “someone who actually has an extensive background in defense. That would be a good start.”

    The pick will do little to quell fears inside the Pentagon and beyond that Trump, who jousted with his own defense secretaries, plans this time to install a loyalist who will unquestioningly carry out his policies. Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric has primed fears that his second term could see a swift and divisive overhaul at the Pentagon.

  • NL Times ☛ All parties denounce anti-Semitism Amsterdam riots; Wilders blames Muslims, Moroccans

    Wilders started the debate in the PVV’s classic anti-Muslim, anti-Morroccan line. “What the hell kind of country has this become?” he said, condemning the violence in Amsterdam following the Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv match on Thursday. “We saw Muslims hunting Jews in the streets of Amsterdam, a pogrom of the worst kind.” Wilders called it a miracle that no one was killed. “Jews were beaten up, stabbed with knives, thrown into the water, kicked in the face.”

  • Euractive ☛ Sweden’s social services likely to soon have more powers to tackle gang [sic] recruitment

    Before the summer, the Swedish government presented a new Social Services Act, which, among other things, requires the authorities to work more preventively and to intervene earlier to break the recruitment process of children and young people into criminal gangs [sic].

    “Those who are currently three, four or five years old should not be gang [sic] criminals when they are 13, 14 or 15 years old,” said Swedish Minister for Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall at a press conference on Tuesday.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Independent UK ☛ Trump’s win has been described as resounding. It was closer than you think

    In three swing states her campaign needed to win, Harris managed to build on support for Biden in 2020. But Trump fared even better winning more votes and seeing larger growth, and the Democratic ticket lost votes in the battlegrounds.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ ‘Give Trees a Hand’ — Ad Agencies Line Up to Sell Sketchy Climate Solutions

  • JURIST ☛ Shell wins appeal in landmark Netherlands climate case

    A Netherlands appeals court on Tuesday overturned a landmark 2021 ruling requiring Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 . This was a setback for the environmental advocacy group Milieudefensie, which sought legal avenues to enforce corporate climate action.

  • Science Alert ☛ India's Capital Chokes on Toxic Smog 50 Times Above WHO Limit

    At dawn on Wednesday, "hazardous" pollutant levels in parts of the sprawling urban area of more than 30 million people topped 806 micrograms per cubic metre, according to monitoring firm IQAir.

    That is more than 53 times the World Health Organization recommended daily maximum of fine particulate matter – dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Watch a Starlink Satellite Plummet Through the Atmosphere in Videos Captured Last Weekend

    The American Meteor Society received 36 reports of the fireball, witnessed across Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma, with most of the testimonies coming from around Oklahoma City and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. What they actually saw was Starlink-4682—a satellite that launched into orbit in August 2022—in its final moments.

  • Science Alert ☛ 44% of Warm-Water Coral Faces Extinction as Temperatures Rise

    Oceans have absorbed around 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere due to the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

    Rising ocean temperatures have spurred mass bleaching events at coral reefs across the world, threatening crucial ecosystems for marine life as well as the livelihoods of people who rely on them.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Up to 30% of the power used to train AI is wasted. Here's how to fix it.

    A less wasteful way to train large language models, such as the GPT series, finishes in the same amount of time for up to 30% less energy, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.

    The approach could save enough energy to power 1.1 million U.S. homes in 2026, based on Wells Fargo’s projections of AI power demand. It could also take a bite out of the International Monetary Fund’s prediction that data centers could account for 1.2% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2027—and the water demands that come with that energy use.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Climate Science Can’t Keep Up With the Warming Planet

    Why is it taking so long for climate scientists to grapple with these questions? It turns out that we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Insect Larvae Capable of Digesting Plastic Discovered in Kenya

    In a promising study, scientists have discovered that mealworm larvae are capable of consuming polystyrene. They are one of few insects — and the first native African insect species — that has been found to be able to break down the polluting plastic.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : China To Invest Over $1.5 Billion In Zambian Mines

    ZANIS reported that the Head of State has commended the CNMC for their resolve to support the country’s economic zones and the revamping of the Tanzania Zambia Railways TAZARA, which he said will greatly benefit the three countries involved in the partnership.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ COP29: Global carbon emissions to hit record high in 2024

    This comes amid the COP29 UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, which are negotiating ways to meet the targets set in Paris in 2015 and rapidly reduce emissions to net zero to limit temperature rise.

    "Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals – and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming above pre-industrial levels," said Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, which led the study.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Dutch appeals court overturns landmark climate ruling against Shell

    The decision was a defeat for the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups, which had hailed the original 2021 ruling as a victory for the climate. Tuesday’s civil ruling can be appealed to the Dutch Supreme Court.

    “This hurts,” Friends of the Earth director in the Netherlands Donald Pols said. “At the same time, we see that this case has ensured that major polluters are not immune and has further stimulated the debate about their responsibility in combating dangerous climate change. That is why we continue to tackle major polluters, such as Shell.”

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Stark warning on emissions as leaders split on climate goals at COP29

    Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from oil, gas and coal rose to a new record high this year, according to preliminary research from an international network of scientists at the Global Carbon Project.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Trump EPA Pick Lee Zeldin Backed by Texas Fracking Billionaire Tim Dunn

    • DeSmog ☛ Havas Warns of Reputational Risks Over Fossil Fuel Clients Following Shell Backlash

    • The Washington Post ☛ OpenAI proposes nuclear, subsidies for AI ahead of the Trump administration

      The proposal, presented by OpenAI’s head of global affairs, Chris Lehane, at a think tank event in Washington, calls for special economic zones with fewer regulations to incentivize new AI projects, a fleet of small nuclear reactors to power data centers aided by the U.S. Navy and a “North American Compact” allowing U.S. allies to collaborate to bolster the field, according to a document provided by OpenAI.

    • The Scotsman ☛ Looking to go electric? The second-hand EVs and hybrids that have fallen by up to 31% this year

      Publishing new data, AA Cars, which specialises in the used car market, said the prices of second-hand EVs and hybrids had fallen by up to 31 per cent this year. The average price of the 20 most popular EVs and hybrids on its platform has fallen 16 per cent in the past 12 months.

    • The Register UK ☛ Datacenter energy consumption warnings get more strident

      This is according to Gartner, which estimates the energy required for bit barns to run additional AI-optimized servers is forecast to hit 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year in 2027, which it says is 2.6 times the level seen in 2023.

      "The explosive growth of new hyperscale datacenters to implement GenAI is creating an insatiable demand for power that will exceed the ability of utility providers to expand their capacity fast enough," claimed Gartner VP Analyst Bob Johnson.

    • New York Times ☛ [Cryptocurrency] Industry Lobbies Trump and His Allies After Election Wins

      A cryptocurrency enthusiast as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A presidential committee stacked with industry loyalists. And legislation to let [cryptocurrency] companies operate freely in the United States.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Species Spotlight: Bengal Floricans, Nearing Their Last Dance?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ ‘MAGA Republicans and Corporate Media Share a Strategy: Fear Sells’: CounterSpin interview with Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas on placing blame for Trump

    Janine Jackson interviewed FAIR’s Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas about placing blame for Trump for the November 8, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • The Hill ☛ Bill Sammon joins The Hill and NewsNation as SVP of editorial

    Bill Sammon has been named senior vice president of editorial content for The Hill and NewsNation, Nexstar Media Group announced Wednesday.

  • The Hill ☛ Jamie Lee Curtis deactivates her account on X

    Curtis did not provide a reason for why she was leaving X, the social media platform owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, but the decision comes at a time when many people and organizations are reconsidering their ties to the platform.

  • India Times ☛ Meta to introduce ads on Threads in early 2025: report

    Meta Platforms plans to introduce advertisements to its social media app Threads early next year, the Information reported on Wednesday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the plans.

  • India Times ☛ Musk's X taps former Tubi executive Banki as CFO

    Elon Musk's X Corp has tapped former Tubi executive Mahmoud Reza Banki as chief financial officer, in one of the social media platform's biggest hires as its billionaire owner shifts focus to a role aimed at making the government more efficient.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD is laying off 4 percent of its global workforce as it sharpens focus on AI

    AMD on Wednesday said that it would reduce its global workforce by 4% in a bid to focus on its main future growth opportunities. As a result of the decision, the company will have to lay off around 1,000 employees worldwide after doubling its headcount over the past three years.

  • CBC ☛ 23andMe lays off 40% of its workforce, ends therapeutics division

    23andMe is laying off 40 per cent of its workforce, or more than 200 employees, and discontinuing its therapeutics division as the struggling genetic testing company attempts to slash costs.

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI: OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman returns to ChatGPT maker

    OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman has returned to the artificial intelligence startup three months after taking a leave from his role as president, he said in a post on X on Tuesday.

  • The Verge ☛ All the Big Tech leaders congratulating Donald Trump

    Big Tech leaders from across the industry are lining up to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory in the US presidential election. Trump has butted heads with many of the executives now cozying up to the soon-to-be president, who recently threatened to throw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in prison and said Google could be broken up because its search results are “rigged.”

    Despite these comments (and the conflicts during Trump’s previous presidency), many of the tech CEOs targeted by Trump in the past are now coming forward with statements about his win. Here’s what some of the biggest names in tech are saying: [...]

  • Michael Lynch ☛ Lessons from my First Exit

    In April of this year, I sold TinyPilot, the bootstrapped hardware company I founded and ran for four years.

    I wrote a post in May that told the story of the sale, but I’d like to share more about the practical lessons I learned from the experience.

    In this post, I’m sharing what went well, what I want to improve in the future, and what surprised me about selling my business.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Russia, China & Iran Likely To Continue Influence Operations

      As the United States transitions from the 2024 election cycle, cyber threat actors from Russia, China, and Iran are poised to intensify influence operations aimed at destabilizing U.S. interests.

      These campaigns, expected to continue well into 2025, will target governmental institutions and public sentiment through social media, content manipulation, and disinformation, Google’s Cybersecurity Forecast 2025 stated.

      Leveraging advances in generative AI, these actors can now execute high-volume, highly persuasive influence operations with unprecedented scale and sophistication.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russian Doctor Jailed 5.5 Years for Criticizing War During Patient Visit

    "I believe this is absurd," she said in court Tuesday, moments before Judge Olga Fedina announced her sentence.

    Buyanova was arrested in February after the ex-wife of a soldier who was killed in Ukraine, Anastasia Akinshina, said she had criticized Russia's role in the conflict during an appointment.

  • NDTV ☛ Alexei Zimin, A UK-Based Russian Chef Who Criticised Vladimir Putin, Found Dead In Serbia Hotel

    A Russian television chef, who was an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, has been found dead in Serbia, the BBC reported. Alexei Zimin, 52, was considered a household name in Russia before he left the country after criticising the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea in 2014. He set up his new home and businesses in London but remained the host of a popular cookery show on Russian broadcaster NTV. However, the show was axed after he posted an anti-war message on social media following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Isn’t Hiding Plan to Use Military to Quash Protests and Deport Immigrants

    On June 1, 2020, Trump said, “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” Esper and Milley objected, saying the turmoil was best handled by civil law enforcement and the D.C. National Guard. Trump was furious. He called his top military leaders “losers” and repeated his wish to send active-duty troops into Minneapolis. “Can’t you just shoot them?” he asked Milley. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

    Trump also proposed sending federal troops into Chicago, Seattle and Portland in response to Black Lives Matter protests and once again, Esper and Milley, joined by then-Attorney General William Barr, talked him out of it.

  • The Nation ☛ Congress Must Reject a Bill That Would Give Trump New Power to Silence Critics

    The question Congress should be asking is whether now is the time to give the executive branch new, unnecessary, broad, and easily abused powers. This legislation provides no real protection against an executive branch led by Trump and intent on using executive power to effectively shut down organizations he disagrees with. Instead, it is an open invitation for abuse.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Iran sets up mental health clinic to 'treat' women who refuse to wear hijab

    The centre, called the Clinic for Quitting Hijab Removal, is the Islamic Republic’s latest attempt to quash female dissent that has swept the country since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022.

    Mehri Talebi Darestani, who will run the centre, said it “will be for the scientific and psychological treatment of removing the hijab, specifically for the teenage generation, young adults, and women seeking social and Islamic identity”.

  • Walled Culture ☛ Now the copyright industry wants to apply deep, automated blocking to the Internet’s core routers

    Even if this is still in the testing phase, and only with “some” companies, it’s a terrible precedent. It means that blocking – and thus censorship – can be applied automatically, possibly without judicial oversight, to some of the most fundamental parts of the Internet’s plumbing. Once that happens, it will spread, just as the original single site block in the UK has spread worldwide. There’s even a hint that might already be happening. Asked if such blocking is being applied anywhere else, Coimbra replies: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ EU says Apple may be violating anti-geoblocking rules

    The European Union has demanded more platform changes from Apple – this time accusing it of violating anti-geoblocking rules in several of its media services.

    The European Commission announced today that a joint investigation between authorities in Belgium, Germany and Ireland determined Apple may be violating the EU's geo-blocking regulation and Services Directive by discriminating against consumers in the EU based on their country of residence.

  • The Hill ☛ Florida schools pull hundreds of books from libraries

    Hundreds of books were removed from shelves at Florida schools, according to a list compiled by the state’s Department of Education for the 2023-2024 school year.

    The list shows more than 700 books were “removed or discontinued,” an increase from the 400 last year.

  • Vox ☛ Trump wins in 2024: The election proved he can’t be deplatformed

    The 2024 election has conclusively proven something that we really should have known since 2016: America’s gatekeepers have failed.

    The premise of “gatekeeping,” as a political enterprise, is that there is a mainstream consensus that can be enforced by institutions designed to protect it. It works not by outright violent repression, but by deplatforming and shunning certain ideas, people, movements, and the like.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New York Times ☛ Viewers Flee MSNBC, and Flock to Fox News, in Wake of Election

    Prime-time viewership at MSNBC has fallen 53 percent from October, and jumped 21 percent on Fox News.

  • CPJ ☛ Peru judge orders IDL-Reporteros to turn over audio recordings in corruption case

    The resolution came in response to a request from César Hinostroza, a fugitive former Supreme Court judge who fled to Belgium. Hinostroza, whose recorded conversations with government officials formed part of IDL-Reporteros’ 2018 investigation, is under investigation for corruption and influence peddling.

    Gorriti told CPJ that the aim of Checkley’s order is to get IDL-Reporteros to reveal the names of its sources from the 2018 investigation. “No matter what happens, we are not going to reveal our confidential sources,” he said via messaging app.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Orbanization of US Politics Began Years Ago

    This was a deliberate choice by gatekeepers to dramatically alter their function, from a referral service to a disinformation swamp. But it had an immediate affect on the readership of those legacy outlets and other services relying on them, effectively neutering their power. (One reason I recommend Bluesky over other Xitter alternatives is because Bluesky encourages outlinks.)

  • The Hill ☛ Two Somali men sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping of American journalist

    Two Somali men will spend 30 years in prison for the kidnapping of an American journalist, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Tuesday.

  • USDOJ ☛ Southern District of New York | Two Somali Pirates Sentenced To 30 Years Each In Prison For Armed Hostage Taking Of American Journalist | United States Department of Justice

    Abdi Yusuf Hassan and Mohamed Tahlil Mohamed Abused Their Somali Government Positions in Holding Michael Scott Moore Hostage for Nearly Three Years

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalism group calls for withdrawal of ‘agents of influence’ bill targeting journalists

    The Press Council, a self-regulatory organization for journalism in Turkey, has denounced a draft law that would expand the definition of “espionage” under the Turkish Penal Code.

    The law could potentially be used to label journalists as “agents of influence,” and therefore to suppress critical reporting, the council said in a statement today.

  • RTL ☛ Jose Ruben Zamora: Journalist says his detention removed Guatemala's 'mask of democracy'

    A prominent Guatemalan journalist and corruption critic, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, says that his time in prison allowed him to strip away his country's "mask of democracy."

    Jose Ruben Zamora was arrested in July 2022 after his now-shuttered newspaper reported on graft allegations involving the government of former right-wing president Alejandro Giammattei.

  • Press Gazette ☛ The Guardian departs 'toxic media platform' Twitter

    Viner said in an email on Wednesday that X has become “a toxic media platform” under owner Elon Musk and that it now plays “a diminished role in promoting our work”.

  • NDTV ☛ UK's 'The Guardian' Quits X Citing "Disturbing Content" On Platform

    Critics say Musk's hands-off approach has allowed lies and hate speech to spread on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

    "We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere," the Guardian said in an editorial published on its website.

    "This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism."

  • India Times ☛ Guardian quits X social media platform, citing racism and conspiracy theories

    British news publisher the Guardian said on Wednesday it will no longer post to X, citing "disturbing content" on the social media platform, including racism and conspiracy theories.

    The left-leaning Guardian, which has 10.7 million followers on X, becomes the first large UK media company to retreat from the platform that Elon Musk purchased in 2022.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ The Guardian to stop posting content on X

    Readers will remain free to share Guardian content on their X feeds, and Guardian reporters will still be able to use the platform for news-gathering [sic], the outlet added.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts

    “This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” it said.

    It added: “The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Pro Publica ☛ A 13-Year-Old With Autism Was Arrested Under Tennessee’s School Threats Law

  • EFF ☛ EFF Is Ready for What's Next | EFFector 36.14

    It can feel overwhelming to stay up to date, but we've got you covered with our EFFector newsletter! You can read the full issue here, or subscribe to get the next one in your inbox automatically! You can also listen to the audio version of the newsletter on the Internet Archive or by clicking the button below:

  • The Conversation ☛ AI development works better for everyone when its workforce is well looked after

    A former CEO and executive chairman of Google, recently suggested that the tech giant’s apparent lag in AI development was due to the company prioritising employees’ personal wellbeing over progress. Eric Schmidt told an audience: “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ NLRB says Grindr squashed union with return-to-office ultimatum

    Now, federal labor regulators say the company’s back-to-office order was an unlawful ploy to retaliate against the workers’ union organizing efforts.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ "I prefer to meet people where they are" says reasonable-sounding white dude holding court at a table in the back of a Nazi Bar.

    It's Bluesky. The Nazi Bar is Bluesky.

  • JURIST ☛ Survey finds 73 percent of English and Welsh sexual assault survivors' mental health damaged by experiences with police

    Operation Soteria is designed to tackle the “national threat” of violence against women and girls and refocus investigations around perpetrators’ actions, rather than survivors’ credibility. Therefore, the survey focuses on survivors’ priorities and their experiences with the police and support services, and the mental health impact of both.

  • RFERL ☛ Activist Commits Suicide In Protest Over Arrests In Iran

    [...] A relative of Sanjari confirmed the news in an interview with RFE/RL on November 13. [...]

  • El País ☛ Wave of racist messages sent after Trump’s victory raises alarm

    According to reports, children, students at historically Black colleges, and working adults have received these mass texts, which were sent from unidentified numbers across at least 30 states. The messages are strikingly similar, though some include specific details such as the recipient’s name or address. Media outlets have also reported messages targeting Hispanic individuals, warning them to prepare for deportation. However, the majority of messages reference cotton plantations — where millions of Black slaves worked from the 17th century until the Civil War’s end in 1865.

  • YLE ☛ Biggest labour federation aims for 10% wage hikes

    The member unions of the the main labour confederation, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), are seeking 10-percent salary increases for the next contract period.

    Unveiling specific targets for wage rises at this stage of the process is highly unusual, as such announcements are seen as potentially hindering negotiations.

  • YLE ☛ Experts concerned about patients who can't afford prescribed medicine

    A survey published last month by the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) found that one in five students said they had cut back on medication purchases due to their financial situation.

  • CBC ☛ 'AwarePods' for women are satire, but new poll on safety fears shows why they aren't funny

    The so-called AwarePod, with the tagline "better safe than stereo," is not actually for sale, and while it's meant to be a joke, it highlights a serious issue. According to Statistics Canada data released in 2019, one in three women report experiencing unwanted sexual behaviour in public.

  • RFA ☛ Tibetan language rights advocate under surveillance after release from detention

    Prominent Tibetan language rights advocate Tashi Wangchuk was detained for 15 days on charges of ‘disrupting social order’ and allegedly spreading false information on social media and is now under strict surveillance, RFA Tibetan has learned.

    Wangchuk’s detention comes as China intensifies its policies to suppress — or even eradicate — Tibetan and other ethnic languages and cultures and replace them with Mandarin and Han Chinese customs.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ U.S. Consulting Firm Teneo Whitewashing Saudi Human Rights Record, Misleading Public, Contributing to Abuses

    U.S. consulting firm Teneo has contributed to, and benefited from, human rights abuses by whitewashing human rights abuses by the Saudi government and providing the public with misleading and incomplete information about its Saudi government-owned clients, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and NEOM, said DAWN today.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Teneo's Propaganda Campaign and Subpoena Evasion: Shielding Saudi Arabia From Accountability

    Teneo, a global consulting and advisory firm, has contributed to and benefited from human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, in breach of its obligations under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It has worked as a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia's government agencies, including preparing and distributing promotional material designed to polish the government's image and secure investor confidence, while failing to disclose material information about its actual record of abuse and crimes and misleading investors and the public with incomplete information about its Saudi government clients and the risks of doing business with them.

  • Security Week ☛ Chinese Hackers Target Tibetan Websites in Malware Attack, Cybersecurity Group Says

    A hacking group that is believed to be Chinese state-sponsored has compromised two websites with ties to the Tibetan community in an attack meant to install malware on users’ computers, according to findings released Wednesday by a private cybersecurity firm.

  • RFERL ☛ Taliban Carries Out Sixth Public Execution Since Returning To Power

    The practice of "qisas," or retributive Islamic punishments, which can include public killings at the hands of victims' families, were a trademark of the Taliban's first stint in power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

  • RTL ☛ Iran's sharia law: Iran hangs man 'for second time' after previous execution halted: NGO

    His death sentence was carried out on April 27 in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj outside Tehran. But just 28 seconds into the hanging he was brought down from the gallows when the victim's family suddenly shouted "forgiveness". His "lifeless" body was successfully resuscitated and the execution was halted, IHR said.

    Under Iran's sharia law, a victim's family can ask for blood money to spare the life of the perpetrator or also decide to forgive. However, in many cases the family of the condemned person cannot afford the sum set and the execution goes ahead, according to activists.

  • India Times ☛ Iranian Execution: Iranian man, once pardoned, hanged again after victim’s family revokes forgiveness

    Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights (IHR), condemned the execution, calling it part of Iran’s “execution machine.” He noted that Alizadeh, a “talented student,” had always maintained his innocence.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ GPON power budget calculations

    Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) is not a new topic. However, its challenges, along with its benefits, remain relevant. I recently visited an Access Network operator in Islamabad, with whom I had previously worked as a vendor trainer. During the meeting, I was asked to simplify the concept of power budget calculations for new hires, and I was happy to oblige. I decided to share my brief discussion on power budget calculations and related parameters with APNIC blog readers as well.

  • APNIC ☛ [Podcast] The IPv6 transition

    In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the current state of worldwide IPv6 uptake.

    Despite remarkable national achievements within the Asia Pacific region — such as India, which is now over 80% IPv6-enabled according to APNIC Labs, and Viet Nam, close behind at 70% — the global rate of IPv6 adoption remains slow. When adjusted for population and Internet penetration in developed economies, the uptake has shown a largely linear trend since 2016. In some places, such as the United States, IPv6 capability peaked naturally at around 50% in 2017 and has since flattened, with no indication of achieving full deployment there or in many other economies.

  • The Register UK ☛ Starlink's paperwork to enter India under consideration

    To operate in India, Starlink will need to store all user data locally and encrypt all signals. The outfit is said to have committed "in principle" to complying with the guidelines.

    But even if Starlink ticks all regulatory boxes, it still faces industry opposition.

    At an open house held by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) last week, the prospect of Starlink undercutting local carriers – who already operate on thin margins – and sparking a fresh and unsustainable price war was one topic of conversation.

  • APNIC ☛ Out-of-Band network design for service provider networks

    The design I am going to discuss in this article was inspired by a variant that Wido den Hollander originally built in a data centre environment, where he architected a medium-large network. It is not the typical Out-of-Band (OOB) design referenced on the public Internet.

    Firstly, I recommend you read my IPv6 Architecture and Subnetting Guide before proceeding with this article, as the implementations described here are heavily dependent on global routing with IPv6.

    A quick primer on OOB networking — it is basically a network segment that is isolated from the production network or what I would call the ‘transit path’. Transit path, here, means the path used by customers to reach an endpoint on the public Internet and vice versa, the same way roads are public, but maintenance tunnels are not.

  • APNIC ☛ The IXP — a privileged observation point, the airport of the Internet

    Monitoring also helps plan network capacity expansion, allowing operators to anticipate traffic growth and prepare adequate infrastructure. Furthermore, in case of failures or technical issues, constant monitoring enables quick detection and resolution of the incident, minimizing the impact on users.

    Finally, the data collected is also valuable for research and innovation, providing useful insights to study the evolution of the network and develop new technologies.

    In summary, Internet traffic reflects the health not only of the IXPs but of the entire Internet infrastructure. Active and continuous monitoring, therefore, becomes a priority for those operating the exchange.

  • Techdirt ☛ If You Like Being Ripped Off By Comcast, You’ll LOVE Trump’s Likely New FCC Boss

    Current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent much of the last decade positioning himself to be Trump’s likely pick for the next boss of the FCC. He’s likely to get his wish; after spending a lot of time crying about TikTok to get on cable TV and kissing AT&T’s and Comcast’s asses, Carr’s widely considered the frontrunner to head the country’s top telecom and media regulator.

    If you’ve tracked Carr’s policies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that one of his top goals will be to dismantle the FCC’s already shaky consumer protection efforts.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Internet outage hits Verizon Fios customers across Northeast

    The outage reporting website Downdetector showed Verizon or Verizon Fios outages spiking to more than 50,000 customers shortly after midnight Eastern time Tuesday, before the number of reported outages trailed off to a few hundred by 4 a.m. The website’s outage map shows the loss of service occurred across the Northeast, including clusters around Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City and D.C., as well as in parts of Missouri and Kansas.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ Spotify to start paying video creators to compete with YouTube

    The company will soon begin paying creators based on how much engagement their videos receive from paid subscribers. Automated ad breaks in videos will also be turned off for paid Spotify subscribers to encourage more consumption. Both of these changes go into effect starting January 2nd, 2025 in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Amazon plans to shut down Freevee, its no-cost streaming service

    Freevee, which got its start as Amazon’s IMDb TV but adopted its current name in 2022, is one of a handful of streaming services that rely on ads for revenue instead of paying subscribers. Paramount Global’s Pluto TV and Fox Corp.’s Tubi have similar models.

  • Adafruit ☛ What to do with the Spotify Car Thing

    You may have heard that Spotify’s car thing will stop operating after December 9. If you’re looking for things you can do with your investment check out Dammit Jeff’s video on YouTube where you’ll learn about 3 different firmwares you can use so “not stuck with a paperweight in December.”

  • The Independent UK ☛ Paul vs Tyson live stream and channel: How to watch fight online and on TV

    In late May, Tyson suffered an ulcer flare-up on a flight, leading the contest to be moved to this week. Barring any late issues, it will finally go ahead on Friday, streaming live on Netflix in an unprecedented move.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Inside M4 chips: P cores hosting a VM

    One common but atypical situation for any M-series chip is running a macOS virtual machine. This article explores how virtual CPU cores are handled on physical cores of an M4 Pro host, and provides further insight into their management, and thread mobility across P core clusters.

    Unless otherwise stated, all results here are obtained from a macOS 15.1 Sequoia VM in my free virtualiser Viable, with that VM allocated 5 virtual cores and 16 GB of memory, on a Mac mini M4 Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.1 with 48 GB of memory, 10 P and 4 E cores.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Washington Post ☛ FTC gets green light to continue its antitrust case against Meta

  The FTC first launched the complaint in December 2o20, near the end of the first Trump administration. The suit was initially dismissed the following year after a federal court found that the agency had failed to make its case that the company held a dominant position in social networking. The suit seeks to break up the giant, which also owns the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging platform WhatsApp.

• Semafor Inc ☛ Meta to face US antitrust trial over Instagram and Whatsapp acquisitions

  The FTC sued Meta in 2020 during the first Trump administration, alleging the tech giant, then called Facebook, acted illegally to maintain its monopoly over social media when it bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and Whatsapp in 2014 for $19 billion. The FTC alleged Meta overpaid for the apps.

• India Times ☛ sMeta will face antitrust trial over Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions

  Facebook owner Meta Platforms must face trial in a US Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking its break up over claims that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition in social media, a judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday.

  The FTC sued Meta's Facebook in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • EFF ☛ Tell Congress To Stop These Last-Minute Bills That Help Patent Trolls

      While Alice hasn’t fully fixed the problems of the patent system, or patent trolling, it has led to the rejection of hundreds of terrible software patents, including patents on crowdfunding, tracking packages, photo contests, watching online ads, computer bingo, upselling, and many others.

      PERA would not only revive these dangerous technology patents, but also expand patenting of human genes—a type of patent the Supreme Court essentially blocked in 2013.

    • FSF ☛ PERA Act votes tomorrow - A major step back for software freedom

      PERA aims to eliminate crucial judicial exceptions that have served as barriers to granting some types of software patents. These exceptions have been vital for protecting developers and the broader tech community from some of the worst software patents. But under this bill, those safeguards would be stripped away.

      Instead, PERA introduces codified criteria that would enable broad software patents—allowing anyone to assert ownership over even more abstract software ideas. Among its many provisions, PERA would amend Section 101 of the US Code to provide that: [...]

• Trademarks

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Ukraine Cannot Trademark Phrase ‘Russian Warship, Go F*** Yourself,’ EU Court Says - The Moscow Times

    An EU court ruled Wednesday that Ukraine cannot trademark the phrase “Russian warship, go f*** yourself,” ending a two-year dispute over intellectual property rights to the viral slogan.

    Ukraine’s border guard service filed a trademark application on March 16, 2022, three weeks after a Ukrainian soldier uttered the defiant phrase during a radio exchange with a Russian warship on the first day of Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ FMovies Piracy 'Mastermind' Confesses, Authorities Confirm Piracy Prosecution

    The alleged owner and operator of FMovies and affiliated platforms, together considered the most visited pirate sites on the planet before they were recently shut down, has confessed and will be prosecuted in Vietnam. Phan Thành Công, 34, is said to have operated the site between 2016 and 2024. An accomplice, Nguyen Tuan Anh, also 34, allegedly uploaded 50,000 videos.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Dutch Court Orders ISP to Block Torrent Site TorrentGalaxy

    BREIN has obtained a new blocking order in the Netherlands targeting TorrentGalaxy, one the world's most popular torrent sites. Internet provider Odido objected to the request, arguing that the Dutch anti-piracy group could have done more to target the problem closer to the source. The Rotterdam District Court found that the anti-piracy group can't be expected to do more than it's already done.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge: Just Because AI Trains On Your Publication, Doesn’t Mean It Infringes On Your Copyright

    Part of the problem is that these lawsuits assume, incorrectly, that these AI services really are, as some people falsely call them, “plagiarism machines.” The assumption is that they’re just copying everything and then handing out snippets of it.

    But that’s not how it works. It is much more akin to reading all these works and then being able to make suggestions based on an understanding of how similar things kinda look, though from memory, not from having access to the originals.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge In Absolute Bullshit Copyright Case Against Mariah Carey Signals She’s Leaning Carey’s Way

    As the saying goes, the arc of morale judgment is long, but it does bend towards justice. And even if we accept such an optimistic worldview is relevant in this year of our lord, 2024, that certainly doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about how long that damned arc is. It’s been over two years since Mariah Carey was sued for copyright infringement by Andy Stone, accusing her of infringing upon his own song All I Want For Christmas Is You. As Mike laid out in great detail in that original post, the entire lawsuit is a complete mess. The copying that Stone alleges amounts to two things: the title of the song and its theme. Neither of those are protected elements as far as copyright law is concerned. But that wasn’t the only issue.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The AI lab waging a guerrilla war over exploitative AI

    But these artists saw this technological wonder as a new kind of theft. They felt the models were effectively stealing and replacing their work. Some had found that their art had been scraped off the [Internet] and used to train the models, while others had discovered that their own names had become prompts, causing their work to be drowned out online by AI knockoffs.

    Zhao remembers being shocked by what he heard. “People are literally telling you they’re losing their livelihoods,” he told me one afternoon this spring, sitting in his Chicago living room. “That’s something that you just can’t ignore.”

  • JURIST ☛ French media outlets sue X over unpaid content usage

    A coalition of major French newspapers announced legal action against social media company X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, alleging that the platform has been using their journalistic content without proper compensation.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ 'There's no half-cheating': Wichita State University students favor consistent academic standards

    Freshman Ryan Whalen briefly pondered whether a new academic benchmark was set when no sanctions were levied against Wichita State University president Richard Muma after it was revealed up to 5% of his doctoral dissertation was copied without quotation marks to recognize original scholars.